Spring is Sprung
or
I Vacuum Everyday
Following suit with Chico, Pii-chan is molting. There is not enough vacuum power in the world to overcome the amount of feathers and fuzz on the carpet, in the air, in my bathroom, in my cup, etc. All the birds are excitable and in heat, too, so they feel the urge to inform me that SPRING IS HERE when ever the morning sun hits them. Regardless of whether it's the weekend. Or that I finally got a day off from work.

Stepho, Richard and I went to watch Hot Fuzz yesterday. I loved it so much that I went and watched it again today with Aaron from work. Much fun.

In other news, I've lost a total of 7 lbs. since February and 10 lbs. since the new year:

... which means I've accomplished a part of my New Year's resolution! Brent's agreed to help me work out at the gym, so let's see if I can lose 5 more and get RIPPED.

Have you ever made a secret deal with yourself before? It's like a little wish that you don't want to divulge because it's either preposterous or you feel you might jinx it if you talk about it. You might even be trying to trick yourself into being in a better state of mind by saying you'll deal with an obstacle later (which is just denial.) I think the secret deal is just a coping mechanism in the end.

"I'll eat the icecream now, and I promise I'll work out tomorrow."

"I'm sleeping in now, but I'll study hard once I get up."

"I'll wait another month before I move on."

Picture Post: Long Over-due
Analiza, Stepho, Phoebe and I all celebrated 4-20 with homemade cascarones/confetti eggs and cookies (that I made from scratch, thank you!) at Broadstone. The other kids having a random party at the pool take notice, are slightly jealous-looking. Great fun was had.

This past weekend, MOM! came to SA to visit me. I stayed at the hotel with her to spend quality mother-daughter time between passing out from drinking room service champagne and getting facials and massages at the spa. She also bought me clothes, shoes, and a bag-clutch-wallet set at the shops, and took me and the Roomies out to dinner at The Melting Pot. I love you, MOM!

More pictures available on Yahoo album.

I really like going to HEB. Really.

The lease here ends at the end of June. Analiza and I went on an epic adventure to find new subdivisions to rent a house in, and boy, did we find some. I found one house in particular that I liked. I hope we can get it.

Bathtime for the Boys

Pretty Cockatiels

Woo!

The roomies and I decided to take pictures of our tans, and since we're not exactly the most conventional girls, we didn't pose conventionally. More in the Yahoo! Album.

See?

Things are getting a little bit brighter everyday.

Something's been bothering me a little lately. My stomach ... it, uh, creaks. I mean, if my stomach could, in fact, make creaking sounds, it would be ... Does that make and sense? (Why am I asking you?)

The thing that matters is that it happens pretty predictably. The good part is that I can prevent it by trying to relax. The bad part? I just can't relax during some of these episodes like during work and driving.

Advil and I are friends. Best friends.

Wow.
[Article taken from Snopes.com]
Dimunitive Dr. Ruth Westheimer (4'7") is the nation's most well-known sex doctor. Though you wouldn't suspect it from the grandmotherly appearance of "Dr. Ruth," this psychosexual therapist has been dispensing frank sex advice since 1980. (Across that span of time, she says the language in which queries are phrased has become more explicit, but the questions themselves have remained the same.)

The odd juxtaposition of her appearance and professional calling is not the only surprise to Dr. Ruth: there is also the small matter of her having trained in her youth as a sniper with the Israeli Defense Force.

The future Dr. Ruth was born Karola Ruth Siegel in Germany in 1928, the only child of an Orthodox Jewish couple. In 1939, after young Karola's father had been taken by the Nazis, her mother and grandmother sent her to Switzerland to get her out of harm's way. She did not see her family again, as her mother and grandmother lost their lives in the Holocaust.

At 16, the orphaned girl moved to Israel and joined Haganah, an underground Jewish military organization. She served as a lookout and sniper but never killed anyone. Says Dr. Ruth of that interval:

"When I was in my routine training for the Israeli army as a teenager, they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe. Not just that, even though I was tiny and not even much of an athlete, I was incredibly accurate throwing hand grenades too. Even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded."

Her military career was cut short when she was seriously injured:

"My legs were almost ripped off on my 20th birthday in 1948 in Jerusalem from cannon ball shrapnel which exploded in the student's residence where I was living. Three other students were killed instantly and many more were wounded. The metal pierced both my legs, and there was blood everywhere. A cannon ball from Jordan had smashed through the window. I was thrown 20 feet. The strangest thing was that all I could think about was whether there might be some blood on the brand-new shoes I had just gotten for my birthday, and amazingly there wasn't even a drop on them, which was all I cared about in some kind of strange denial."

Ruth later moved to Paris, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne and taught kindergarten, then immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 and obtained a Master's degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Education from Columbia University. A job with Planned Parenthood spurred her to study human sexuality.

Gah, the apartment was below 60 degrees when I woke up. Looks like it's a perfect day for being cozy.

So, by some freak of nature, all three of us here at the apartment are menstrual. And I'm not saying killing each other while simultaneously stuffing our faces with chocolate-covered Cheetos menstrual. We're not like that. We clean. "Nesting" if you will. All of us were scrubbing and vacuuming and sweeping like mad after dinner. Good times, good times.

Oh, how the place sparkles.

It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot bikini that she wore for the first time today!

As of 2 days ago, Stepho is officially our roomie! I mean, she lives here, so we see her ... about the same amount of time we used to see her, since she's been at our apartment during her free time anyway. But! That's not the point. She's here, and it's exciting.