Archive for the 'Weekend Wrap-Up' Category

March 1, 2010 | "Whoa whoa I gotta go...back to schoooool...again",2nd Semester,Family Portrait,LAS: Community and Social Change,Life in General,Prescott College,School Daze,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up

Mr. Maul and I got home yesterday after spending a week in Orlando last week. My parents have a timeshare and they had a “use it or lose it” situation with their points, so they had to plan a trip before March, I think. Therefore, they paid for airfare for 5 people (Me, Mr. Maul, my parents, and my niece), lodging for a week, and SUV rental. My older sister and her husband moved to Orlando around July-August of last year so we spent some time with them.

The weather was cold (high 50′s to high 70′s during the day..but only on one day) and rained 3 out of the 7 days we were there. My Dad was able to get us 4-day Base Passes (he’s retired military) to the theme parks (visit one park each day, no same-day park hopping) and Mr. Maul and I paid extra for Universal Studios tickets. We stayed at Summer Bay Resort and needless to say, I wasn’t impressed with the place. Compared to the place we stayed at in Kauai, it was sadly lacking:

~ On the one day we decided to sleep in (Tuesday), we were awakened early by the sound of drilling and hammering. Apparently, they were replacing tile in the condo above us. Thanks for the warning, people.

~ We had to deal with an absurdly loud garbage disposal. Now, I know garbage disposals are loud, but this thing sounded like it was grinding glass every time it was turned on. According to Sonny, resident handyman, that sound is normal. Alll-righty then.

~ Wi-Fi was not free in the rooms. It cost $10 a day to have that privilege. However, it was free 24/7 in the clubhouse. So much for “like-home” accommodations.

~ The pool and the jacuzzi were heated and was not only enjoyed by people, but by ducks as well. We saw the pool guy scooping out duck shit one morning, but received no notification that the pool was being sanitized. Maybe we missed that phone call or people were given a verbal warning before they got out there. I dunno.

~ Housekeeping cleaned your condo only after check-out (in Kauai, they came on Tuesdays). If you wanted the room to be cleaned before then, it was extra. We might’ve had to pay extra for clean sheets and towels, too, I don’t remember. Either way, my parents requested clean sheets and pillowcases (we washed the towels ourselves). When they were dropped off, my parents gave them the dirty sheets and pillowcases. “Oh, you want us to take them?” was the response. Uh, yeah. What the hell are we supposed to do with dirty sheets? Really? C’mon people.

The only good thing about this place was the view. We were on the third floor and our balcony faced the jacuzzi/pool area and the lake beyond. I will be posting a daily travelogue of our trip this week.

School Daze – My community project for my LAS course has been a success. The goal of 200 journals donated has been reached, but the drive will continue until Mar 15th. If you’d like to donate, check out the details here

Technorati Tags: Universal Studios, Summer Bay Resort

February 18, 2010 | Life in General,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up

It’s been forevah evah since I’ve done a weekend wrap-up. Nothing much to talk about and you can only say “not much” or “laundry again” so many times. Now that school’s in session, it’ll mostly be about homework. Again, you can only say that so many times before you lose your audience. Or, the little that I currently have, that is. With that in mind, I’ll just do weekend wrap-ups when there’s something worth talking about.

Friday – went to eat sushi at Kabuki with DSG friends. And found out another couple are engaged. Very cool. Good food, good times.

Saturday – we’re visiting family next week in Orlando (first time going. Very excited), so we went to Marshall’s and bought a new 21” wheeled, carry-on luggage…thing. The handle on our other one no longer goes down, so we had to get a new one. I also needed better athletic shoes to walk around in and I found some comfy Nike’s at the Nike store in AZ Mills. Surprisingly enough, they’re a 6.5Y. Y as in Youth. Yeah, shocked the hell outta me, too. Apparently my feet are small enough to wear certain youth sizes. Needless to say, Mr. Maul was happy to only have to shell out $25 for them.

Sunday – Went to eat at “Ron’s Place” (aka The Original Pancake House) for breakfast. This has now become a Sunday morning tradition for us. We’re there practically every weekend now. Then we went to see THE WOLFMAN. I was expecting the violence to be along the lines of VAN HELSING or SLEEPY HOLLOW. It was more like UNDERWORLD. I must admit, some of the scenes were a little cringe-worthy, but overall it was a good movie. Sir Anthony Hopkins always makes for a good bad guy. Saw a preview for a movie with Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker called REPO MEN. Looking forward to seeing that. It’s definitely a different take on the whole thing “repo” thing. When you can’t make pmts on your car, it’s taken from you, right? Same concept, but instead of taking your car, they take your organ. Yeah, I know. That’s some freaky-ass shit right there . You get an organ transplant and can’t make the pmts on it they send people to come and take it back. This is going to be like MINORITY REPORT, though, in that the person doing the hunting becomes the hunted. Should be good. Also saw a trailer for PRINCE OF PERSIA and wow, doesn’t Jake Gyllenhaal look good with long hair and all buffed-out. Nice! Also saw a trailer for WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS with Shia LeBeouf and Michael Douglas. I don’t ever remember the first one. But it looks interesting, so I may see it.

Monday – Had the day off. Woot! Cleaned house, did some laundry, went to see PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLMYPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF. I’ve never read the series, but if they continue to make movies in this series, I’ll go see them. Mythology in YA is kinda interesting.

So, that’s it for me. Were you off on Monday, too? How was your weekend?

Technorati Tags: Kabuki, Marshall’s, Nike, AZ Mills, The Original Pancake House, THE WOLFMAN, VAN HELSING, SLEEPY HOLLOW, UNDERWORLD, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Forrest Whitaker, REPO MEN, MINORITY REPORT, PRINCE OF PERSIA, Jake Gyllenhaal, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, Shia LeBeouf, Michael Douglas, PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLMYPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF

December 28, 2009 | Family Portrait,Life in General,Movie Queue,Music Queue,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up

Click here for Christmas pics. My Dad took more pics so I’ll have to get them from him. Needless to say, it was hard taking pics while unwrapping presents

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday. It was our first Christmas without my sister and B-I-L here, but we got a chance to speak with them. And we’re visiting them for a week at the end of Feb, so I’m very excited. Mr. Maul and I went to my parents house for breakfast and my niece and nephew were already there. It was good to see them. I live closer to my niece than my nephew and I’ve seen him more in the past two months than I’ve seen him all year! He just lives so far away (over an hr), it’s like a road trip to see him. Anyhoo, let me expound on all the goodies I received.

From Mr. Maul – bought me an iPod nano. I love it. For the past few days, I’ve been downloading onesie-twosie songs—from artists like Papa Roach, Coolio, Blur, Michael Buble, Godsmack, Drowning Pool, Disturbed, Faith No More, Course of Nature, and Chris Cornell– as well as downloading certain CD’s from my huge collection. I don’t plan on downloading ALL my music, just the stuff I’ve been listening to lately and stuff I’d like to have on there (like all my Linkin Park and Live CD’s). When I got it, he had already downloaded songs from GLEE. Whoo-hoo! I also downloaded new Creed and plan to download new Gavin DeGraw and 30 Seconds to Mars. Needless to say, it takes longer for whole albums to download. Especially if there’s a lot of songs. One of the many things I love about this little gadget is that I can listen to my favorite radio station while I’m at work…and I can record video. I got some footage of my niece teaching her brother how to tango. LOL. Funny.

From my parents – a trip to Orlando for a week. We’re going to visit my sis. Thank God for timeshare. My parents and nephew are going too and my parents paid for lodging and airfare. The most expensive part! I’m looking forward to the mini-vacay. I’ve never been to Orlando, but it’s been on my list of Places to Visit.

From Elissa – Mr. Maul’s best friend’s wife bought me a lotto ticket, a little bottle of Sea Island Cotton body lotion from Bath and Body Works, a gift card to The Body Shop and a $25 AMC movie card. She took our Halloween pic and somehow put it on the AMC card so it looks like we’re on the big screen. Very cool. We spent nearly all of it when we saw AVATAR in 3D opening weekend.

From my nephew – ROLE MODELS DVD (unrated version), Slinky Jr and a little popcorn cup.

From my niece – Tther than a little container full of baked goodies, I’m not sure yet. She left my gift at home! *rolls eyes*. She remembered Mr. Maul’s gift, but not mine. Go figure.

From Lisa – my coworker got me a sweater to wear at work. It gets cold in my area and I wore my other one so much, I wore a hole in the elbow and had to throw it away. I was bummed.

While we were at my parents house, my niece decided to pull out some old photo albums. It was a walk down memory lane that was highly enjoyable. And entertaining. Thought I might share a few with you all:

(more…)

Technorati Tags: iPod nano, Papa Roach, Coolio, Blur, Michael Buble, Godsmack, Drowning Pool, Disturbed, Faith No More, Course of Nature, Chris Cornell, Linkin Park, Live, GLEE, Creed, Gavin DeGraw, 30 Seconds to Mars, Orlando, Sea Island Cotton, Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop, AMC, AVATAR, ROLE MODELS

December 21, 2009 | Book Stuff,Life in General,Movie Queue,Reading is FUNdamental,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up

Here are more pics from my company holiday party

Friday night was date night for Mr. Maul and I. We had dinner at Claim Jumper then went to see AVATAR in 3D. It was long, but I liked it. James Cameron did a really fabulous job. I’m glad he waited as long as he did to do it right. When they were in “Avatar” world, it was so cool. It was so real, right down to the movement of hair. When they did up close shots of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana. I LOVE this name. It’s going on my Girls Name List) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), you could hear the beads in her hair when she moved her head. But the planet of Pandora was just…amazing.

They say that humans are connected to Earth and we need to get back to that, but the race of the Na’vi really are connected to their planet. Literally. And I didn’t really understand how tall the avatars were compared to the humans until the very end. Since the two races were always fighting when together in the same frame, you couldn’t really tell. Needless to say, tall is an understatement. They’re more like giants. LOL. James Cameron created a beautiful world and I can totally see why Jake wanted to stay. So cool. I wish I’d seen more behind the scenes on this movie.

Saturday and Sunday, we did a little shopping. Both for Christmas and ourselves. On Friday, we exchanged gifts at my job and I snagged a $15 GC from Barnes and Noble. Woot! I think if anyone tried to take it away from me, they would’ve had to pry it from my dead cold fingers. LOL. So I used it to buy Karen Kelley‘s latest in her Planet Nerak series, Dating Outside Your DNA. LOL. Neat title, eh?

I also bought a Betty Boop 2010 calendar for work, some reasonably priced Cal King sheets for our bed from Ross, and a couple of body butters from The Body Shop (Mr. Maul’s best friend’s wife gave me a GC here for Christmas). I’m trying two new scents: Nutmeg and Vanilla, and Black Velvet Apricot.

I’m not a big fan of the scent of Vanilla. Never have been. But this stuff smelled pretty good and the Vanilla scent was light, not overwhelming.

I also found this kick-ass short-sleeved shirt at Hot Topic (CLICK PIC TO ENLARGE VIEW)

LOL. Barbie is Diggin’ It. And so was I. That’s why I bought it. I won’t be able to wear this until it starts warming up, but I laffed when I saw it. I don’t think they had Barbie’s like this back in the 70′s did they? Wouldn’t that be cool if they had? Hah!

That’s it for me. So…how was your weekend? Are you all ready for the holidays?

Technorati Tags: Claim Jumper, AVATAR, James Cameron, Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Barnes and Noble, Karen Kelley, Dating Outside Your DNA., Betty Boop, Ross, The Body Shop, Nutmeg and Vanilla, Black Velvet Apricot, Hot Topic, Barbie

December 15, 2009 | The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up

The highlight of my weekend was my company holiday party. I don’t get to dress up very often, and since this comes once a year, I like to “clean up”.

Mr. Maul, me, Lisa, Sam

The food was good. I had the salmon. But I didn’t win anything. We were entertained by the Foot Klan Dance Troupe and a DJ rocked some good tunes. Funny thing though: we brought the camera, but didn’t take pics of the rest of the people at our table. Everyone in our dept showed up except for two people and we didn’t even take pictures of them! That’s pretty sad. Guess we didn’t think of it. *guilty chuckle inserted here* Mr. Maul and I also took advantage of the “prom-like” pics there for free. I’ll be able to download our pic this Friday.

Sunday, we did a little shopping at Aeropostale. I think that’s become our new favorite place to buy clothes. Mr. Maul likes the striped polo shirts. I pretty much like everything there. Hehe. And I did 5 loads of laundry. Sunday is usually laundry/clean house/movie day. I wouldn’t have minded seeing THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, but there is no way Mr. Maul would be seen in public buying a ticket to a Disney flick. I can’t wait to see it, tell the truth. While we were at the mall on Saturday, we hit up the Disney Store so I could check out all the merchandise they made for it. Once I see the movie, I may have to buy a little stuffed Tiana frog. They’re too cute.

Well, that’s it for me. How was your weekend?

Technorati Tags: Foot Klan Dance Troupe, Aeropostale, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, Disney Store