A whole lot of fun and a bit of aggravation too!
(the following is a direct lift of a post I did on TwoPeas a few days ago)
Our little Simba is not so little anymore!! Since his arrive in mid-June, he has tripled in size. He was neutered on July 11th and come through with flying colors.
He is by far the funniest and most affectionate cat I have ever met. He loves to be cuddled and will lay in your arms like a baby or like a rag doll. When he's not in your arms, he's jumping around in silly fashion. Alternately attacking piles of hay I put out for the horses, flying bugs, an empty feed bag or one the toys we've bought him. He thinks the tack room where we have hay stored is his personal playground. So many things to attack, places to climb and jump from, not to mention great hiding places.
By far though, his favorite past time is annoying our dachshund. Once he realized that the dogs can only go so far (constrained by the invisible fencing we have), he has come to delight in sitting *just* outside of her reach. I happen to place a "camp chair" just outside of this zone and he has come to consider this his very own thrown. He climbs and plays on it or just lounges as the dog sits mere inches away, going mad at the sight of him.
Today, I heard the usual mad barking from the dog and went out to tell her to knock it off. This is what I found:
At first I thought Simba was "trapped"...when I got closer (with the camera I had gone back inside to get), I discovered that he was actually a picture of relaxation. My guess is that he purposely went up the tree in his on-going plan to drive the dog totally and completely out of her mind.
This brush is a favorite toy. He was so focused on playing with the brush that he nearly fell out of the tree a couple of times.
And here's a closeup of the poor dog who has met her match in feline form. I couldn't have come up with a better exercise program for her...she will spend hours running back and forth in front of the fenced area where Simba rules.
My daughter and I went out last night. I gave her tickets at Christmas for the Broadway Across America show "West Side Story" in Baltimore at the Hippodrome Theater. I wanted to "document" the event so I had Tom take our pic before we left:
Because we both love sushi, I also added a dinner at a Baltimore sushi restaurant that I had heard about for some time now: RA Sushi.
Driving downtown is not something I do often and I'm not very comfortable doing so. It is always such a relief when that part of it is over. We easily found the restaurant but I didn't see any close by parking garages. Everything was either private or street parking. I was starting to get anxious over the matter (timing was somewhat tight) when we found great parking in easy walking distance. And because it was street parking, we spent $3 instead of $20.
We were immediately seated in RA Sushi. Talk about noisy!! The place was packed. The environment is dark except where the huge windows are on one side of the restaurant. It has a warehouse feel to it with ceilings they may have been as high as twenty feet. We immediately started trying to make heads or tails of the menu placed in front of us. Thankfully Kim, our great waitress, came over and helped make some great choices. We mentioned that we had to be out of there by 7:30pm in order to allow enough time to get to the theater. When she brought back our drinks, she let us know that she got our order in ahead of a large party to ensure there wouldn't be any delay.
Our first item was the RA Chips and Salsa:
Spicy tuna tartare mixed with cucumber, avocado & fresh salsa; served with wonton chips.
This was really good!! I highly recommend it!
Next came these:
The rolls on the the long plate were from their Signature Sushi list:
Spicy kani kama crab mix, cucumber & shrimp tempura rolled &
topped with seared tuna & avocado
The others are maki (a cut roll) sushi rolls: spicy tuna and spicy scallops. We get these at our local favorite sushi restaurant, Toki Sushi in the Rocks Springs Shopping Center. I really like the spicy tuna better than our favorites from TS but we both agreed we liked the TS spicy scallops a bit more. We unanimously agreed the Ultimate Shrimp Tempura rolls with the seared tuna were out of this world good.
We dug into our dessert so fast we forgot to take a photo! So I borrowed this from their website:
A traditional Japanese dessert—ice cream wrapped in sweet rice cake; mango, strawberry & vanilla flavors garnished with sliced kiwi & strawberries
Our order didn't have any of the mango flavored cakes, but the vanilla and strawberry were simply fabulous.
Kim volunteered to take our picture before our dessert came out:
Not sure why my face is *that* red, but attempts to color correct weren't working, so I left it as is.
We made it out of there in plenty of time, while managing not feeling overly rushed in the process. Now the hard part! Getting from RA Sushi to the Hippodrome required driving through the heart of downtown. As it was almost 7:30pm, we were well passed rush hour traffic, thankfully. Google Maps came through for us as we had no problems making our way there. Still, this was a welcome sight!
The show itself was great. It was the first time I went into a show not already knowing the music. I also really didn't know much about the story beyond two warring gangs called the Jets and the Sharks. The choregraphy and dancing were fantastic. Sometimes it was hard to decide who to watch! I thought the actors playing the title characters, Tony and Maria were really good (Ali Ewoldt was just lovely in this role). The actress playing Anita was an especially good dancer and singer.
The small role of Glad Hand was played by Stephen DeRosa to perfection. Bravo!
The drive home was uneventful and we were safely tucked into our beds by midnight. It was a perfect night out with my fabulous daughter.
Another blast from the past:
Sarah and Casey
Santa's Breakfast @ St. Mary's 1998
Casey has spent about 1/2 of his Christmas' sick on some level. And probably 1/4 of his birthday's sick too. His body's immune system has some pretty terrible timing. It will be two weeks ago tomorrow that his current cold began. Last Friday, we took him into the doctor's and he was diagnosed with bronchitis. She prescribed amoxicillin and he's been taking it ever since.
Unfortunately, he has not improved at all. In fact, he began running a low grade fever again last night. So, now we wait for the doctor to call back to tell us what she wants to do now. It would be nice that whatever we do next, it does the trick so that he's feeling at least better by Saturday.
In honor of this continuing "tradition," I give you "Sick Casey" - Christmas Day 1999:
Casey - 18 months
That's one adorable face, even sick as he was that day :)
I'm working on getting my photos organized, edited, deleted, whatever. It's part of my goal to get through the steps of the class "Library of Memories (LOM)" at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I've signed up for the class 3 times now...thankfully, you only pay the first time and then get two more chances at it. Despite Stacy's advice to the contrary, I have to get my 5 years worth of photos in order before I can move on. Of course, that's not something I've managed to do DURING the classes 10 week duration (nor the at least 4 weeks of pre-course timeline) in any of the three years I've attempted to participate in the course.
I really believe this system could work for me. The problem is ME not the system. Anyway, I've been going through photos in the last week as part of this project. Yesterday, I was going through the files from our 2009 Christmas Card photo shoot which included the horses. I'm always amazed at how much better images seem to me when I allow them to "age" for a time. I'm so glad I didn't get delete happy last November! I have some real gems that I didn't really see back then.
The saddest part of it all? I only ended up handing out the photo cards I created to a handful of people at work AFTER Christmas. I had grand plans to get them all addressed and ready to be mailed the weekend before Christmas, but that's when Missy colic'd on us and I lost 3 solid days to that insanely stressful experience. Doing cards was just not a priority after all.
Instead, I have discovered some delightful images some 8 months later that I think will make a lovely blog entry for today. Enjoy!
L to R: Izzy, Sarah, Missy, Baby, Casey & Cha Cha
And this is the card that most never saw:
A few days ago, my daughter told me she wanted to curl her hair. She wanted to try curly hair. This is my child who has told me for years "NO Poofy!" when it came to styling her hair. She likes it poker straight. Unfortunately for her, she got my hair and it has some wave/body to it so that poker straight takes some work.
The fact that she was coming to me to ask for curly hair was quite exciting. I actually has some foam "twist" type curlers that I had bought from Avon a year or more ago. Well, I never have learned how to roll hair and the whole thing became an exercise in frustration. While I did manage to get some of her hair in the curlers, it wasn't all and I didn't do it right so the next morning it didn't have the lovely ringlet look I was going for. The poor child lost a night's sleep for nothing.
The experience though, did bring to mind this photo and the story behind it. When I was a child, I loved having my hair curled. My younger sister? Not so much. For Christmas and Easter, as well as other special occasions, my mother would put up our hair the night before in pink sponge curlers. I loved every second of it and would sit quite still throughout the process. I would eagerly go to bed in anticipation of waking up to a head full of curls. I loved the feel of how they would bounce from my head. I was quite the prissy little girl back in the day!
Unfortunately for my sister, this whole process was complete torture. I remember her wailing through the whole process each and every time. I can only imagine that if she wasn't carefully watched, those curlers likely didn't last long in her hair!
