Basil

I have 2 kids:
Say hello to Basil, Jr. (Basil died last year)

and Basil, III

They have grown a lot since I first got them! I'm the type of person who likes to watch the grass grow, so I'm quite proud of my Basils! Wish me luck on keeping them alive!

Congratulations, Counselor!

My sister graduated!

We went to dinner at Boulevard in San Francisco and it was DELICIOUS! Because we waited 20 min for our reservation, they gave us complimentary appetizers. They served a thin slice of ahi on top of whipped avocado, and it was all topped off with caviar. Mmmm... Next, sweetbreads, which had the consistency of a clam and tasted like yummy bone marrow. Below are our entrees, which were goo-oood. Clockwise around the table: halibut, lamb x2 (prepared in 3 different ways, including lamb cheek shepherd's pie), and guinea hen with morel mushrooms.

I always forget what a small world it is. Audrey's good friend is good friends with my good friend!

Lunch time

I rarely go out to eat for lunch, but I just got back from California yesterday so I didn't have much in the refrigerator. I treated myself to two slices of organic pizza. It was a nice day, so I headed over to the Diag to sit on the lawn and have a lovely little picnic. Of course, I didn't want grass stains and was wearing a skirt, so I put down my notepad and sat on that. Mmm... one slice gone. I picked up my second slice and started to eat it when the sprinklers (facing away from me) started to go off. Uh oh! I got up, picked up my notepad and then felt water on my head and back. Think quick! I covered up my pizza with my notepad -- now my notes were wet and had pizza sauce on them. Great. Way to rain on my parade.

I went to sit on a concrete bench in a concrete plaza. But! When I sat down this odd little squirrel came out from underneath the bench. It ran funny. Like it had stiff hind legs. I think it may have had a tumor hanging from its abdomen. I watched it hobble away from me, and then watched a guy stop in his tracks to watch it for a couple minutes, and then take out his phone to take a picture of it.

Eventful lunch for Mayz!

Puppies and mirrors

What happened to dogs not being able to see 2D? Apparently that is just a myth.

GRADUATION 2007

I'm delayed in posting pictures, but still, most schools haven't even had graduation yet. Crazy, huh?

And the chocolate cake with graduation hat:

Thanks, sis, for sending me this song. Love the crackling voice!



In other news, my sister has also given me homework.

Watch Grey's Anatomy Seasons 1 & 2
Due Date: May 18

I'm going home May 18, and at that time, will receive Season 3 from her. Now, I've seen a few episodes and know the basic story line but have never become a religious watcher. My sister told me that I had to watch from the beginning to acquire character attachment. I've finished Season 1 Disc 1, and now am in love with McDreamy. Those sneaky twinkling eyes...

NEW HEROES EPISODE TONIGHT!! DON'T FORGET, EVERYBODY!!

CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS

I have to keep track. :)
I sat across the aisle from Dan Rather on my way over to New York this past weekend. I love free upgrades. Oh, hello, Dan Rather.

I contained myself through the entire 2 hours that I was sitting next to him, all the while wondering why the woman sitting on the other side of him hadn't said one word to him yet. I would have to yell across the wide aisle, and she was *right* next to him! I'm also chicken. I waited until we were deplaning and for him to tell me to "Go ahead" to talk to him. That means that I said "Thank you" back to him. :)

So here's the count (concerts don't count):
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Claire Forlani
Mandy Patinkin
Angie Everheart
Ziyi Zhang
Chris Kattan
Jennifer Aniston
Frances McDormand
Joan Cusack
Catherine Keener
Josh Harnett (x2)
Lucy Liu
Enrique Iglesias
Uchenna & Joyce (Amazing Race)
Laura Linney
Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Regina King
Mike White
Adam Brody
Molly Shannon
John C. Reilly
Tom Arnold
Kevin Bacon
Camryn Manheim
Terry Hatcher
Alan Alda
Kathryn Morris
Daniel Dae Kim
Roger Fan
Dan Rather

OLD MAN BUS RIDER IS BACK!!!

I saw him this morning. His hair is longer than normal, but otherwise, he looks pretty much the same. I wonder what he's been up to. Maybe he got a nose job. ;) Hahaha...

ST. PADDY'S DAY IN CHICAGO

I had a pretty Irish St. Patrick's weekend. Although, being a bit sickly throughout the whole weekend trip, I didn't drink a drop of alcohol. However, I still had a great time as I got spend the weekend with good friends and sorely missed friends. Three of us from Ann Arbor trekked over to Chicago Friday night, met up with Jessi (who flew from Denver) and Marwa (our "local" ;) ) at a bar near Marwa's 21st floor apartment. We closed the bar, and then set an alarm for the next morning so that we would have the potential of watching the parade the next day and the dying of the river. Yeah right. We could see the river from Marwa's apartment, and we gave up on the parade pretty quickly. But what was with the river? We waited and waited for the river to turn this bright radioactive-looking green, but it never happened. Only when we roamed the streets did we see some green. Why so skimpy this year, Chicago?


That night, we went to a place called The Abbey, paid the best ever spent $10 cover, and listened to a handful of Irish bands... and then bagpipers!

Next we watched about a half hour of Irish dance. Adults, teenagers, and kids came out and performed routines in front of their proud parents and friends, and a bunch of drunken party-goers. Hooray! Very cultural of us.



The next day we went to Millenium Park, where the famous shiny bean is. Look, we're like cartoons. Torsos the same length as our legs. :)

MORNING BUS RIDER

For the past year, I've reliably seen an old man (~70 years old) on the same bus everyday. The 8:57 AM bus. He's usually on by the time the bus reaches my stop, and then he gets off at State Street. He wears a maize and blue jacket and maize gloves. In the summer he wears jeans and often a fashionable white button-down. Recently I have not been keeping a regular schedule, but I don't remember seeing him for a month. I took note this morning to check for him (as I am often caught up taking care of my bumbling self in the morning) and didn't see him. I'm a little worried. :|

BUTTER 'N THINGS

There's been a lot happening with my friends here. And with my new interest in making and decorating cakes, I made cakes for their big events. Here's cake #1 for Nadder's birthday, a chocolate cake with coffee butter cream frosting.

And there was an engagement and a graduation. You can see the red velvet cake in progress. I still have to work on my piping. :) Maybe I should move on from the ziploc bag.













And then I made a chocolate cake with ganache for Pete for Valentine's Day, but I didn't manage to get a pic before I left with it... maybe because the butter started to separate from the chocolate. :( I have to work on my chocolate. However, he sent me some lovely lovely flowers. Orange lilies, orange gerber daisies, brandy roses!

NEWFOUND PROWESS

I have lived on my own before. I've done a lot of things by myself for my place. But ever since I started living with my male housemate, I've sorted just left some things for him to do. Like, for instance, hooking up cable, modems, changing light bulbs... Well he had been gone since last Friday, and on the first day, the light bulbs went out in the ceiling fixtures in the kitchen. Crap! It took me 2 days (as was also busy) to replace it because (1) had to figure out how to get to the light bulbs in the fixtures (2) had to go buy light bulbs (3) had to replace light bulbs. This is ordinarily a task I just let my housemate take care of. I dunno, silly, especially since I'm taller. I was pretty proud of myself for having done this task.

Another empowering event involved the tremendous snowfall we got over the past few day. Now, this might be just something a Californian had yet to experience, but it snowed about half a foot overnight. Normally, my neighborhood is really good about shoveling snow (even before I'm out the door), but I had to make first tracks yesterday morning! When I got home after a day of working, I had to take my car to go to the gym, so I got all dressed to do some dirty shoveling. I shoveled the steps to our house and shoveled around my car! Very satisfying. Got in my car, burned a little rubber, but got out of the snow!

Thank you, thank you.

CONGRATULATIONS, DR. TSE!!!

A nice stamp of the 3 letters Ph.D. to commemorate a tremendous body of work packaged together in a nice neat bow. Great job!

Much delayed pictures that I took of the crazy freezing rain a few weeks ago. I thought that "freezing rain" sounded pretty treacherous, but really, it was quite beautiful.


Crazy sideways ice:

Dear It's-It,
Oh how I lovingly remember you from my childhood and how I've reveled in your rediscovery. Your delicious vanilla ice cream embraced comfortingly between two spicy oatmeal cookies (mmm... oatmeal cookies) all enveloped in a chocolate coating makes me want to have you every night.

But why why, It's-It, do you evade me so?

I've looked for you all over Vail, Ann Arbor... I'd take you home from the grocery store in the Bay Area and then fly you over to Ann Arbor with me if I could, but you wouldn't survive. So delicate, poor little It's-It inside your plastic wrapping. You wouldn't be happy anywhere else besides the freezer.

I wish I could enjoy your company wherever I am...

Missing you,
Mayz

P.S. Since I'm too lazy, and you can get the same update from my lovely sister, read her Sundance blog.

Heh! Embarrassing...

During the holidays, my sister asked me to distribute secret santa assignments for her friends. I, being the funny person I am, changed the identity on my email address to "The Holiday Armadilloooo!!!" (as Ross in Friends).

A few days ago, I got an email from a job head hunter. Important stuff.


From Dave **: Hi Andrea, I saw your resume online and was curious if you are in the... Jan 17 (6 days ago)

From The Holiday Armadillooooo!!!: Hi Dave, I am in the job market for a position starting in the Fall (followin... 11:18 am (3½ hours ago)

From Dave **: Would you click the link below and fill out the form so we can more easily up... 11:18 am (3½ hours ago)


OMG. My message was sent from "The Holiday Armadillooooo!!!"???? aaahhh!!!

WRITE YOUR COMPLAINTS

If any grave wrongs have happened to you by an airline (most popular of course) or other service, I encourage you to write about it. It just seems wrong to let some of these things go.

1st good Example. Three years ago, I took a delayed international Delta flight with layover in... Atlanta? I had to go through customs and recheck my bag. I asked the lady checking in my luggage which gate my next flight to Baltimore was. I had no time to check! I was full-out running. Not easy when you're groggy from sleeping on the plane. Turns out, it was the wrong gate. I checked the monitors and finally got to the right gate. Plane hadn't left yet. They gave my ticket away. Huh. Don't they know that my flight was delayed and we were rushing to the connecting flight? I wasn't the only sad victim. They can't give away my ticket like that when I've already landed in Atlanta. Anyway, I got on the next flight out, but apparently, my luggage didn't make it. It didn't even make it out to my hotel the next morning. I was in Baltimore for a wedding. I rushed out the morning of and bought a dress and shoes.

I had been wronged! I wrote a letter of complaint. They gave me money for my dress expenses and a voucher. :)

2nd good Example. I'm going to a Film Festival this year. You're given random registration times to buy the tix that you want. We had a couple time slots on the first day. Turns out, nasty people are buying movie tix only to turn around and resell them for hundreds of dollars (eBay). They never even plan to go to the festival in the first place. Festival rules explicitly state that the tix cannot be resold for profit. eBay won't take the items off their site. Nasty. We didn't get any of the movies that we wanted to see, and we had a lot of options just in case our first choices were sold out. A friend emailed a complaint about all these nasty people selling on eBay. The festival people were sympathetic and got tix for us. :)

3rd ? Example. My US Airways/America West flight got changed. My outbound flight changed by a matter of minutes. Fine. My 2nd leg return flight got cancelled, so they put me on the next flight, which created an excruciating 4 hour layover. Nasty airline. I called back requesting a co-chaired United flight. Their policy wouldn't allow it. Why? My America West flight is a co-chair. I could have booked the United co-chair flight from the very beginning through US Airways! Makes no sense. They cancelled my flight, they should give just compensation. I wasn't being ridiculous. I wrote a letter of complaint. I have yet to hear from them, but I feel better for having given them a piece of my mind! I was wronged! All I want is some monetary compensation or an adjustment in flight schedule. Pennies to them. Pennies.

NICE LONG HOLIDAY

I'm went on a nice holiday. It was nice to hang out at home, watch all episodes of Friday Night Lights, and got caught up on the Heroes episodes I missed. TV online is fabulous. What geniuses at NBC.

My family spent a few days in Vail. Here is a picture of my sister and where I should be if there was another person to take our picture.


Later that day, after a much-awaited lunch, I popped myself out of my ski bindings, only to take the binding brake along with me! Very upset. No tools or ski shop mid-mountain.

However, annoyance offset by clam chowder

and snowmobile ride to the bottom lodge.

Other news in holiday break:
Ran into old high school... acquaintance?, who we decided not to say hi to because we decided she wouldn't know who we were.
Saw old college... friend? who had scary crush on me. He decided not to say hi for whatever reason. Ran out of restaurant in a rush. He once told me that he thought that I disliked Celine Dion out of spite because he liked her.

NASHVILLE

What you would expect:


I tried on a pink hat and cowboy bots for fun. Lo and behold, there was a lady *ACTUALLY* trying them on in the background.

PROJECT RUNWAY

What a finale! This show really makes me want to be a fashion designer, and with my recent job rejections, well... an alternative career seems pretty attractive. Too bad I've never sewed anything before in my life, except for perhaps buttons. My mom hems my pants. :)

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FINALE YET, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.

I don't know about any of you, but I was really rooting for Uli. I just personally love her clothes and she really showed her range. True, Jeffrey's collection was cohesive and innovative, but I thought his designs were sort of boring overall. Pluse, Uli is cute, and Jeffrey is scary.

Hm... what am I going to do now on Wednesday nights? Job applications I suppose...