our valentine's day....

So i realized i forgot to blog about our Valentine's day. :) As you may recall from our last V day celebration, i wanted to do something intimate, nothing fancy, just dinner at home, the 2 of us this year. Although it was on a Saturday this year, I still didn't feel like going out to crowded restaurants. So anyway, John had said he would make dinner for us and we could watch our netflix movie rental, which arrived that morning (perfect!).

The week before Valentine's day, I invited Janet over to have dinner with us when I found out that Jimmy was going to be out of town for work that weekend. Since she was going to be alone that weekend, I invited her over to have dinner with us. No one wants to spend their Valentine's day alone, and if for some reason John is not going to be in town, I would like to be hanging out with my friends too. :)))))

On that Sat morning, we spent the day cleaning the old house before we turned our keys in. We then had lobster & fillet Mignon for dinner!!! John was totally unprepared for making us dinner! Janet ended up marinating our fillet & I ended up boiling our lobster tails. John did actually grill the fillet and cut the lobster shells for us though... haha. I will give you credit for that babe, but remember, you still owe me my "real" dinner. Someday... one day...

Later that night, Shane came over to hang out with us. We watched our movie together. Half way into the movie, Dustin swang by too. We had just moved into our new tiny place and I am happy that we had guests over for the 1st time.

So you see? We didn't exactly have our intimate dinner together, but i definitely enjoyed myself that night doing low key stuff ... surrounded by the people we love! Sorry no picture that night.

On a side note, I am beginning to love our new place... and John's spice rack is finally up & running. :)

he filled these little suckers up and labeled them all...

i swear i didn't help him

he is so darn proud of it ;)

bring back memories....

So I have officially started my first day of class today. The company has sponsored a few "kids" to an Advanced Excel Training Class at the COC. I know i know... you may say it is not really necessary to attend an Excel class but you may be surprised at some of the things you learn at this class. 

I was kinda hesitant about joining especially when I found out that it occurs every Wed night from 5-9 pm for a good 6 weeks. Say what??! yes... a total of 24 hours of class. Insane. Anyway, John encouraged me take the offer. He said "never turn down an opportunity for training/classes that a company sponsors". So I signed up last friday. 

Today i was dreading going to class. (By the way, coc is only less than 2 miles frm my house!) I haven't been to school/ sit in a classroom for almost 7 years? (i think... feels like a century!) There are 6 of us including the president of the company. We were given a map of the campus and a parking permit to place on the dashboard of the car. We all went straight there frm work. Yay for getting off 1/2 hour early frm work! I guess that's one of the perks for going to this class. ;P 

Well, much to my surprise- I really enjoyed my first class so far. I can't wait to learn the rest of it. It was weird sitting in a classroom again and actually learning something. Given handouts and some small tests. Kinda cool. :) Half way into the class, everyone was getting tired & hungry. I found myself on and off tuning the professor out, hence losing track and fell behind. "what? what happened? how did you do that?" And of course, back on track again with the help of classmate. The class went by rather quickly with a 20 min break. The professor said we all did good and we are actually ahead of schedule. Much to my surprise, the president raised his hand at this point and said "does that mean that we get to go home early?". We all laughed but deep inside were so relieved that it came out from him instead of us. Well you never know if you will get a write up at work for saying that during class. We did get to leave early. 20 min. =D 

Tonight's class reminds me so much of the school years i've been through. Back in the days. It is totally normal to feel like not going to school, going in late, skipping class, hoping that the professor would let us out early, ...etc etc etc. I learned... adults do the same thing too.

And oh... I got a parking ticket! yep, on my freaking 1st day of class. I forgot to put the parking permit on the dashboard. Fortunately, our HR said he will take care of it. See? Maybe the school in cali is different. That's one thing that I didn't use to do when i went to school in Michigan. 

hoo... hoo....

I am obssessed with anything owl!!! They are the cutest thing in the world.... wait. Next to my husband of course. ;P

Anything with owls always gets my attention. Here are some of the most adorable things i saw when trying to google to see what other owls are out there.
(If these images are yours, please let me know. I will definitely give you credit. They were collected randomly by googling... and I don't remember where I got it.)

owl t shirt

pillows

adorable valentine's card

owl tea set

Of course there are just some of the few things i found... there are tons... tons.. these people are geniuses!

I haven't made a single purchase of any owls yet, but i am afraid i will. Soon. Pretty soon.

settling in.....

Our new place is coming together slowly. If I haven't mentioned, we have moved out and got a place of our own without a roommate. We rented a small cozy one bedroom condo about 2 miles away from our old place. It was tough at first trying to adjust to the new and a lot smaller place but I must say we have done pretty good job at making full use of every corner of the place. I am pretty darn proud of it. We still need a few more pieces of furniture but at least each room is functional now.

We were at Ross one night and John found this cute sign. 

we knew we had to get it. :)

We went to IKEA today and found this fabulous gadget for our kitchen. It was perfect for our small kitchen, where currently my spices have been tucked away in one of the tiny drawers. It was so inconvenient, and needless to say I was very unhappy about it. I am so glad we found this... although John had to make some alterations to the rod, it is still the perfect solution. It was one of his proudest projects for the house so far. He was so determined to get it although i was a little reluctant due to the hefty price tag. But. Like he said, it is something we can use for many years... maybe it's worth it :) It looks so nice in our kitchen too. The spice jars are currently empty. The next project would be to label each jar and fill these little suckers up.

I am slowly liking our new place and most important of all, our privacy! :))))

such luck...

I have been in 3 minor accidents within the last few months. Got hit twice and hit someone from the back this morning. I feel extremely awful about the incident when I found out she had kids in her car. She of course was furious (who wouldn't be?) but was kind enough to let the whole thing slip away.

Thankfully they were all minor accidents and no damage was done to the car, let alone myself!

I was thinking about the accident this morning.... it was probably a punishment for me. The reason i am saying this is because last night we almost had an accident which would have been bad. I told John i wish we had gotten into that accident because it would be totally the other party's fault. John said if we did get into that accident, i would have gotten a broken leg & my head would have probably hit the dashboard because there is no airbag at the passenger side. I was surprised how bad that accident would be and replied "oh really? never mind then, forget what i said." realizing that it was a stupid idea. See the connection there? I got into one this morning although it wasn't even half as bad as the one from last night but it was still an accident. So seriously... be careful of what you wish for.

Despite these accidents that i have got into within the last few months, I am lucky that i didn't hurt myself. Although the last two accidents weren't my fault, but I really need to be more careful when I am on the road! How ironic that my commute now is less than 5 miles a day, I have been into more accidents than when I had a 50 mile commute each day!

free breakfast!

Attention people! Free Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny's till 2 pm! Fed 3rd 6 am to 2 pm. 

We found out about this from the Superbowl commercial. Jimmy said he would go in the morning, I hope he remembers because John forgot! He was planning on going there for lunch but he forgot, and went to Chuy's instead.

I would imagine it would be very crowded, so I decided to stay home and eat my leftover Parmesan Crusted Chicken. Not a huge fan of pancakes, but if they served free curry, i'll be the first in line!