Brown paper packages tied up with string

Life is good.

These are a few of my favorite things, in no particular order, with an incomplete sentence and brief description for your viewing pleasure.

My adorable German neighbor. He gardens in his dress socks and floppy hat and hates our dog but loves us nonetheless. Bless his heart, and pray Lupe never accidentally gets to one of his hand-painted gnomes. Germans are tough; it wouldn't be pretty.

My fleurs. I planted seeds this year. I think I planted them too early in my excitement to be a new home owner, though, and nothing happened for months except some spotty looking plants that looked suspiciously like tomato bushes. Without any warning at all, they exploded into these beautiful orange flowers. Isn't it great?

Our place in line (after 45 minutes of waiting) when De and I went to the Layers clothing warehouse sale . It was 150 degrees in there, and smelled of Mormon women. It's a sister-in-law-ly tradition to go to these types of things in our pajamas and laugh at the girls with giant hair who got up early to put on their makeup.

Beto's. Always good for a laugh-- and a burrito that tastes great going in and is likely to hurt coming out. Sometimes, it's a risk you take.

This grainy cell phone photo of a water spot on black pavement in the dark. One time, we were hanging out with Bri and Kinzy, and we just might have been wandering out onto a freeway overpass to laugh at an obscene teenage stunt. On our way back to the car, it's possible that we may have seen a full grown woman pull down her pants, squat against her truck in the parking lot and, while delicately balancing her cigarette between her lips, urinate right out in public. And I might have taken a picture of it with the sole intent to blog about it later.

Finding out the 'fireworks' setting on my camera lets me take wicked sweet campfire pics.

This empty room. It's meaningless to the rest of the world, but priceless to me. You see, this room has been crammed with junk, garbage, clutter, and miscellaneous items that didn't really belong anywhere else in the house since we moved in. In March. Today, as part of my Labor Day Weekend Goal List, I have finished organizing it. I was way too embarrassed to take a picture before I started today, so you'll just have to trust me-- this is a big deal.

The way taking a Jeep camping always makes it look like it belongs in a Jeep brochure or something.

Simple pleasures, indeed.

Let beauty abound

Please join me in a huge shout-out to my dear pal, Alice, for generously offering her skills to transform our boring blog to this ever-so-styligh version. Isn't it fabulous? Al is a wonderful, hilarious, and kind-hearted social worker dedicated to changing the world (if not through radical social change, then at least one ugly blog at a time.) Thanks, lady!

Did you know?

I've been running a little dry on the blog-juice recently. By way of a recap:

Did you know that this mound of dead juniper madness has finally (mostly) been taken to the dump? I know we're happy about it, and while I haven't asked him, I bet the fire marshall feels a little better about things, too. Turns out that stuff dries out quickly when you use a chain saw to sever it from its root system.

Did you know that about a million years ago we had a hilarious barbeque with Vince and Mary? Aren't they cute?

Wouldn't you know it, they were even good sports about the fact that we only have one steak knife and we had to pass it around the table during dinner. Ah, the plight of being newly-weds. (Can I still use that excuse after 2 years? Yes. Especially when it comes to rather expensive dinnerware.)

Mary has a much more thorough and timely report of the night's events here. For my purposes, suffice it to say that Vince and Paddy matched a little, even though they swore it was an accident.

Mary and I did not match. Maybe that's why we lost at mini golf later that night. (Thanks for letting me steal the picture from your blog, Mary-dear.)

I'm not really sure what's happening with my belly in the picture below, but I'm pretty sure it involves a drawstring and a bad, bad dream. Bah.

Moving right along...

Did you know I got a new job? It's true, but even though it all happened about a decade ago, I haven't started it. I'll have the same bosses and all that, but it's much, much closer to home and I'm very excited about it. Hubbie, being the cute hubbie that he is, took me out to dinner to celebrate. I remembered how fun it was to date him, and I also remembered why I hate hot rollers.

See how my hair is still straight? Yeah. Also, this was the best picture we could come up with by setting the camera on our mantle and setting the timer. The rest looked a lot more like this:

We ate at a Mexican place that had three kinds of salsa with the appetizer. Some of them tasted funny, but the presentation was nice.

Did you know anything as horrible as this could possibly exist in my house?

Ugh. This was before the last round of spidery ethnic cleansing at our hood, and I stumbled upon the picture while downloading from the camera. The Hub-ster killed it silently on his own, and then snapped the picture, complete with coin for size reference. If this whole life insurance thing doesn't work out, he could be a CSI, I swear.

Did you know we watched the Opening Ceremonies with Michelle and Christian?

Fast, friends, we are. So are Lupe and Titan. After a minor skirmish in the front yard (turns out Lupe is a brat on her leash) the two wrestled in the back yard for hours. Just in case you were wondering, Lupe had mud stuck to her entire body in all the squiggly little lines of slobber that Titan gave her as a present. Trampy little thing on her first date, isn't she?

Mish and I are destined to be good friends, whether she likes it or not.

Christian is destined to make his only appearance on my blog minus a good portion of his head. Sorry. He's taller than the person I'm married to.

Paddy got to sport his new USA Basketball D Will jersey. Some super cool wife (who shall remain nameless but might start with an "M" and rhyme with "ee") must've surprised him with it. Golly, he's cute.

He's now asked if he can attend volleyball camp in preparation for 2012. Watch out, London. 5'9" height be darned; my honey wants to spike it down Brazil's gullet.

Did you know any dog in all the land could be so cute? Note this is before her makeout session with Titan, so she's still reasonably put together, unlike the ragged, slut-sort of version we saw after her romp in the yard.

Um, precious. Too bad she likes us so much, or maybe you could take her home like you secretly want to.

That's what I thought.

Just to keep things interesting...

Attention, all:

In a day or so, our blog address will be changing. If you'd like to continue to follow along in our adventures, please email me at ladyk44@hotmail.com and I'll pass along the new address.

Also, if you happen to have our blog linked from yours, could you kindly remove our last name from your link? After all, safety first! Thanks so much.

Carry on.