Ringscapades.

Most of you know about the wonderful customer service we received from Gordon's Jewelers when we bought our wedding rings. Most of you also know that a couple of weeks ago we traded in H.'s troublesome ring for a brand spankin' new, easy on the hand ring. This past weekend, we tried to go pickup said awesome ring. We figured that since it was five weeks and a few days since we ordered it, it should be in by now.

Paulina is the name of the lady who we always end up working with because the one other person at the shop is busy. Paulina is also the lady that promised us she would call when the ring came in in two weeks from the purchase date. Yeah, she never called.

So we walk in and Paulina walks over to come and greet us. We ask if the ring has come in yet. She checks one place, checks another place, asks for some keys from her associate to check the last place. As it so happens, our ring was in the last place she looked. She pulls it out of the bag, saying "I alwayz jhuust check dee Special Order merch-un-dice - I checked eet ev-er-y day j-waiting for you guyz." Yeah, I'm sure that you checked in the wrong place for it every single day. (By the way, the ring came in three weeks after we ordered it, and apparently nobody at the store cares about their customers enough to call them.) Whatever. We've got our ring and we're happy. Until H. tries it on and it's three sizes too big. To her credit, it did say on the receipt for the factory to size it down, and the factory didn't. I almost felt bad for her getting the short end of the stick until she started laughing about it. H. even said, "I'm glad she finds this funny," which I guess she didn't hear because she kept on laughing.

Paulina says that she can overnight us the correct size, and that the ring will be in on Wednesday (she would call the factory Monday morning). It was at this point that H. and I asked for someone else to fill out the order form and request a new ring. She took it pretty well, and we ended up ordering the new ring with a lady named Bea. She made copies of all of the receipts, gave us the originals, and said she would call when she had ordered the ring to keep us in the loop. In general, we like this lady.

She called Monday morning to say there was a problem with ordering the new ring, and that we needed to call her back. We didn't get this message until late Monday night for some reason. I called her and asked what the problem was. She said, "I know you guys wanted the tungsten ring, but for some reason when I reorder it from the factory it tries to make me order a yellow gold ring."  ... /facepalm. I ended up telling her the whole Paulina story, and once she knew that, it helped her figure out how to order the ring, I think. She says that it'll be in before the weekend, and I really hope it is. If it isn't, we'll be getting what we paid for the ring back in cold, hard, credit card cash and taking it to one of the four other jewelry stores within twenty yards of Gordon's Jewelers. Or, we'll just order the same ring from them online and get 3 miles per dollar. And lemme tell you, we won't be using the Ship-to-Store option, either.

In my wedding ring rage I wrote an email to the customer service department of the Gordon's Jewelers website. I wrote that on Sunday, but still haven't received anything back from them. Turns out their online service might be as awful as their in-store service.

So there you have it. If you value your sanity, don't purchase anything from Paulina. She'll just bat her eyelashes and tell you it's not her fault.

And just so we're not ending on a sour note, here's a picture of the mountains tonight. Gotta love those sunset clouds.

Curse You, Neck.

Yesterday I woke up with a bit of pain in my neck and shoulder. I took some Advil, had H. massage the knots out of the affected areas, and thought it felt much better. Last night, I woke up and stayed awake for a long time while I tried to find a spot I could lay my head without a neck twinge. It was the middle of the night, and I was seriously considering taking a half a TylenolPM just to get past the almost-asleep stage. Thankfully, I finally went back to sleep. This morning, my neck feels like there's a pinched nerve somewhere, and while I can move around I'm having trouble doing so. (I should mention that I haven't actually ever had a pinched nerve, but I imagine this is some form of it. All I know is that this doesn't feel muscular.) So for today I'll be taking more Advil, some magnesium, and I might take a nap if I can really get to sleep.

H. took me to see Transformers - Dark Side of the Moon in 3D yesterday. (SPOILERS)  As most sequel-to-the-sequel movies are, it was pretty good, but the story was a little disjointed at times. The graphics and fight scenes were really well done, though, so that was nice. The particular 3D theater room we were in insisted on being superbly loud for the entire movie. I don't know what it is about 3D movies that want to blow your eardrums out, but they all do.

H. and I had a little tiff about something Ranger related over the weekend. You know the guy (Shannon Stone) that unfortunately passed away at the Thursday game? Well, this is probably going to sound callous, but I just feel like the media is talking about his death too much. I understand that it was a tragedy, that it was an accidental death, and that not only is his family in mourning but his son had to watch him fall, but I just don't get why they are talking about it so much. H. says that there might be a lawsuit coming against the Rangers, so that's adding a little to the headlines, but really? Compared to the number of soldiers that die each week/month/year, why is this one guy getting so much air time? H. says that I'm just cold-hearted, but I honestly don't understand what makes this one person so much more important than anyone else who has died recently.

But anyways. It's been actually kind of warm and not hot here over the weekend. What the Monsoon Season actually translates to is cloudy skies with an honest to goodness chance of rain. It hasn't rained on us in particular since the last time I posted, but it's been falling on other parts of the area, which brings down the temperature a good deal. It'll be 91 degrees today, and we only get up to 101 later in the week. Actually, scratch that. Looking at the ten-day forecast, it'll be back to 107 next Monday. Although, a little reprieve from the scalding sun is nothing to be sad over.

Neck willing, I am going to try and paint some more today. Laundry and paint. And a nap. And some morphine. But first I've got to return the Netflix movie we watched on Saturday - Braveheart. H. says it's one of the best movies of all time. I will concede that it was a really good movie, but my all time favorites are still locked in place.

I'm wondering what to do for dinner, which reminds me that H. has put a ban on slow cooker pot roasts for the time being. In the six weeks since purchasing the cooker we (cough, I) have made four roasts - Costco had some decent prices on 3 lb. roasts. What I would really like to do is finally get our own Costco cards so that I could just walk in and purchase stuff without bringing H. along every single time. Specifically, I want to make chicken enchiladas tonight, but can't because I don't have access to the rotisserie chickens. And after trying the Fry's brand rotisserie, there really is no comparison. I would also like to be able to pick up a couch every now and again.

I think we'll have either teriyaki chicken or teriyaki beef tonight, seeing as how we have a jumbo-sized teriyaki  sauce jar thing that we bought a while back at Costco. It will most likely be beef, since H. is a little bit of a chicken snob (read: will only eat chicken breast, will definitely not eat chicken tenderloin strips). Maybe we can also use some of the twenty pounds of jasmine rice we bought the first day we moved in. Literally, twenty pounds of rice. "We'll definitely use this within a year." <-- actual quote from day of purchase.

And with that, I am off to mail the Netflix. Yous guyses enjoy your hundred degree weathers!

Uno Año Mas.

First annual birthday post! Somehow, I don't think I'll forget to post about my birthday from here on out, but someone remind me if I don't, eh?

Yesterday was my official birthday, and even though I had a pre-birthday party while H. and I were in Texas, I wanted to make a little cake for the occasion. I knew exactly what I wanted: a lemon-almond cake. Turns out a lot of almond cake recipes use almond paste or blanched almonds, but I didn't feel like running around outside on my birthday. I finally landed on this Swedish Almond Cake recipe and edited it to my liking (substituting 1/4 c. whole wheat flour for all purpose flour, using butter even though the commenters tell you not to, etc.) including adding some lemon juice drops to the batter. After baking and cooling, I iced it with whip cream and promptly took many pictures.

Oops! This is a pre-icing photo, complete with the box of chocolates
H. got me, and a flower that didn't quite make it into the vase.

The pie plate was the perfect thing to ice on.

We didn't have any candles, so I used a match.

A peek inside the cake!

I forgot to take a picture of a slice of cake. Well, I say "forgot", but it was really that I inhaled that slice like a good whiff of helium. The cake turned out light and fluffy, and the slight hint of lemon cut through the richness of the whip cream. In other words, super delish omg.

For two consecutive days it has rained after H. gets home from work. The first day there was a little rain and a lot of wind (50 mph), and yesterday there was a lot of rain and a little wind (30 mph). There were actually road closures this morning from all the rain last night, and we've got rain in the forecast for the next couple of days. That makes the temperature no higher than 100 degrees, and I am super excited about that. We might even go hiking if the temp stays in the 90s (maybe I should ask H. before I plan that).

Clouds cover the mountains. While we get rain, they get hail.

Pigeons huddled together to hide
from the rain.

On the news last night there was a story about a flower that opens once a year (and not necessarily every year), and if you wanted to see it in person you better get your hiney down to some place or other. I wanted to go, but I feel like these time lapse videos are a pretty good second since it was raining something major.

Cereus Time Lapse (professional)

Cereus Time Lapse (home-grown)

Such beautiful flowers! Although I don't think I could wait five years for one to bloom and possibly miss it overnight.

So far, I've gotten one rejection email from a hospital that I applied at. I'm not really all that down about it because (1) people kept telling me how awful looking for a job is, and (2) I didn't feel I was actually qualified for the job, but I applied anyways just to see. Coincidentally, H. got another call from some company that wanted to interview him for a job.

I've been diligently cleaning things up around here (more so than everyday stuff), and I finally got the desk all cleaned off. What better thing to do first than put flowers on it?

It will stay this clean forever (fingers crossed).

These birthday flowers that H. got me smell absolutely
divine. I never knew I loved the smell of eucalyptus!

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. 

One more quick update for you all - my wedding flowers are growing! Right now they're just in the green leafy stage, but upon closer inspection there are a couple different types of leaves, which means different flowers. Since we were gone for the 4th, they all started crawling along the dirt towards their light source, so I think it would be detrimental to them to turn around the window box at this stage. In short, they'll be crooked, but hopefully they'll still flower.

I thought there would be more,
but I'm happy with my little harvest.

One was smart enough to crawl over the edge of the box.
We'll call him Leo, as in Da Vinci.

Well, I think that about wraps up my birthday-day. I wish I didn't have to wait 364 days for the next one!

Super Quick, Super Stolen Post.

Remember how it was the Fourth of July recently? Of course you do, most of you are American and regularly eat hot dogs and watch football and drink beer. Well, there was also a national holiday recently, only it wasn't for this nation. Canada Day falls on July 1st, and you would know that if you were Canadian and regularly eat moose and watch hockey and drink Canadian beer (there's a difference).

In a small tribute to that lovely day, here's a post that has pretty much got it right about America's neighbors to the north - You Know You're In Canada When .... 

Tonight for dinner I'm making prosciutto-wrapped, cheese-filled chicken breasts with some corkscrew pasta on the side. Fingers crossed that they turn out marvelous!

Nighttime.

Driving back from the airport was just magical tonight. It had just rained, and off in the distance there were still lightning strikes within the retreating cloud-line. There were also fireworks lighting up the sky - the rain must have lifted the ban for the Fourth. Some of my favorite songs just happened to be playing on the radio, and H. enjoyed mocking the horrible rhyming in some of them (rhyming "things" with "things" apparently isn't legal). It was just the perfect ending to our exciting and wonderful trip.

I might have mentioned that our downstairs neighbors had moved out. Well, walking up to our apartment I noticed we already have new ones. These neighbors seem classy. Maybe it's their umbrella and patio furniture on the balcony, or maybe it's their crib and rocking chair that they've got in one of the rooms. (I promise I'm not a creeper - they just left their lights on and their blinds open, and I was curious.) While I can't say I'll ever meet them on purpose, it's nice to know that they aren't doing anything illegal in their apartment.

The one thing that stopped down the apartment homecoming bliss lay in the kitchen. Before we left, I had rinsed all the dirty dishes, loaded up the dishwasher, put some detergent in there, and closed it so that I could clean the rest of the kitchen. I distinctly remember not starting at that moment because H. was working from home and I didn't want to disturb him with our incredibly loud dishwasher. As you may have guessed, I never actually turned it on. But, it is running now, and hopefully everything comes out clean.

Did I mention practically every utensil and dish was in that dishwasher? Everything was dirty, but I wanted to eat an Activia while I typed this up. The closest thing we have to a spoon is a teaspoon, so that's what I'm using. My percent efficiency of eating this yogurt is not where it would be if I had a spoon, but at least it scoops.

My wedding flowers didn't die over the weekend. It's always nice to come back to living things. Wait, I meant living plants; if there are bugs in this apartment, they've got one more night of freedom before I suck them up with the vacuum. I gave the little green guys a nighttime sprinkle. I imagine if I were a sproutling I would want a midnight snack of aych too oh.

I might request mid-evening flights instead of early-evening flights from here on out. It means we get to see the sunset as we descend into the airport. I tried to take some images on my phone, but we'll see how well those turned out in a minute. There was some heavy duty cloud coverage around our little burg (it had just rained probably ten minutes ago). The sunset was so beautiful on the mountains that now it's all I want to paint. I might run out and grab a small canvas tomorrow and see what I can do.

So apparently my phone can take decent photos. I always thought that they would be minuscule once on a computer screen, but they're actually kinda nice. Those white-ish striations you see are from the window, not my phone.

Lots of clouds highlighted by the sun. 

Ominous cloud is ominous.

Kind of a bad picture, but the sunset was so beautiful.
By the way, those little hills are 2500 ft. tall. 

I hate that they make you shut off all electronics way before you're anywhere near the ground. All I've got is my memory of that sunset to go off of; I just hope I can do it justice. Fingers crossed.

Lots to do tomorrow including laundry, mail-grabbing, painting, job-applying, and general everydayness. Hope you all had a great Fourth of July weekend, because I most certainly did. =]