pillow talk?

so a lot of times people ask me, sharon why are you so smart? and i always give credit to my parents. but seriously, i wonder the same? but i think i have discovered a possible answer to this question.

probably most people have generally the same amount of intelligence for 24hrs of each day, right? i mean, how smart you are is how smart you are, 24/7, barring periods of extreme fatigue or other odd things that can alter your brain functions. i, however, have an ability to concentrate alll of my intelligence to my waking hours. this has the effect of making me 2x as smart as i am genetically...which leaves me as pretty dang smart.

at least when i'm awake. apparently in the wee hours of the morning i'm a complete moron. you might be currently skeptical of my intelligence doubling theorem, but after you read these conversations that i have with ross at 5 or 6am, i think you will be sold!

sharon: you know who i havent seen all day? (this in itself is dumb. i spent all day by myself at the house)
ross: who?
sharon: minnie!
ross: i put her in the other bedroom.
sharon: with the cat?
ross: who?
sharon: minnie!
ross: minnie IS the cat. (and also the only 'person' i HAD seen all day)
sharon: oh.


phone rings at absurdly early hour
ross: whose is that??
sharon: i think its lingerie?
ross: what?
sharon: lin-ge-rie.
ross: i dont know what you mean.
sharon: <> its like bras and panties.
ross: i know what lingerie is. i think its a phone ringing.
sharon: it is?
ross: yes, is it mine or yours?
sharon: i dont know.

there goes another one

so while ross and i were in jamaica doing cool things (ATVs, zip lines, horseback riding, etc) my 2 water frogs and 1 betta fish were chilling at my mostly empty apartment in san antonio. i put a time delay feeding capsule in the aquarium that should last 20 fish for 10 days. 20 fish. 10 days. I was gone for 10 days. I have 2 frogs and 1 fish so i thought this should suffice. i'm not sure if it happened the moment i turned my back or if the last day they were just staaaarving because they hadn't had their normal diet of fish flakes AND dried shrimp. i also am not sure if it was a joint effort or what, but one or both of those stupid frogs ATE MY BETTA FISH. and when i say ate, i mean when you look in the aquarium you'd never know there ever WAS a betta fish because it is 100% eaten, bones and fins and eyes and all. so now i just have 2 albino african clawed frogs who have caught on to the american trend in obesity.

the homeless jobless bum i married is now working and we are living in our new house together in our new town. i don't really recommend it so much....that much change at one time that is. but i DO recommend taking about a month off of work, because it feels amazing. i also recommend getting married because its very nice.

new toys

wedding countdown:18days!

we took advantage of our 'wellness' dollars from work and invested in some mountain bikes from bike world. the past 2 weekends we've been able to go out for a few hours and test them out. 2 weeks ago we went up to austin with our friend todd and he took us on a 10mile expedition near town lake in downtown austin. this past weekend we went riding out at o.p. schnabel park here in san antonio. we've been having a blast with the bikes, and hope to continue making good use of them. if you want to come along, give us a shout!

also picture below is our other new toy that ross picked up in austin. it will be a nice addition to our new home. the other night i was watching tv, while he was playing video games...on the same tv. i find this to be very 'american', but also kinda cool!

the beans & rice idea

ross and i went out of town this weekend, down to kemah, tx where we are getting married. we met with our wedding lady and the baker and the florist and the candlestick maker. just kidding, we didnt meet with the candlestick maker. after our busy day friday, we at at ninfas mexican restaurant. i guess we were thinking about it because we ate out a lot this weekend, but it seems rather disgusting if you dwell on the amount of food wasted at restaurants. at mexican restaurants its seems there's the obligatory rice and beans on the side of the meal, not to mention the whole bucket of tortillas. this is not a bad idea except that your meal has so much other food that one could not possibly need also the rice, beans, and 4 extra tortillas! it seems sad that a large portion of the world actually lives on just the sides....rice & beans. therefore, i'd like to see what it'd look like for american restaurants to stop serving the sides. take that food saved and $1 per entree and give it to a distribution agency to get that food to africa or other places battling malnourishment. i haven't done any calculations, but just in texas alone, i'm thinking....thats a lot of rice & beans that are otherwise thrown away!

what? a post?

haha my blogging skills have deteriorated to the point that i have no earthly idea how to spell deteriorated. i shall blame it on my job and falling in love....both of which have kept me quite busy lately. we're currently at t-minus 5weeks to our wedding and each and every one of those weekends is jam-packed full of adventures all over texas. so should be fun!

meanwhile, i've been contemplating the changes i will have to go through to adjust to married life. i'm sure there are many things that i haven't even begun to think of that will come up, but i have already identified some areas that i will have to make adjustments in, some of which are listed below for your perusal.

1. because ross and i will be living together, i'm going to let the lease run out on my apartment and move somewhere else. this inevitably means that at some point between now and the end of march i will have to take down my christmas tree. :( this is sad because i am still enjoying my christmas tree and wish i could leave it up longer. also, i am wondering if ross will oppose leaving up our christmas tree so long. this could be my last february to have my christmas tree up!

2. also i assuming that ross will not enjoy my current habit of having the alarm clock go off at 6:51am, 7:00am, 7:09am, 7:18am, 7:27am, 7:36am(sometimes i get up here), 7:45am(i usually get up here), 7:54am(non hair-washing days) and 8:03am(oops!). some would point out that i could actually get another full hour of sleep if i would just set the alarm for 7:36am, but i like to have a little bit of warning (namely, 45minutes) that my precious sleep is about to end. i'm sure ross will understand?

3. no one tell my parents but since i live alone i find it an entirely useless exercise to make my bed unless i have company in town. i mean seriously whats the point. its not that i dislike a made bed, but there are just a whole lot of other things that take priority and that chore never seems to make it to the top of the queue. maybe that will change. but as they say, what does not kill us, makes us stronger. but i do like my snooze button, no matter what they say.

engaged :-)

last night ross came over to my house and gave me 2 roses: one yellow and one red, because "we are 2 very different people, both roses but 2 different kinds." and then we went to Milanos, a fancy little Italian restaurant near where we live. There was live music there and some people were dancing. We had a great dinner together and then we drove into downtown San Antonio (in ross's red camaro, which always boosts the mood!) to the Tower of Americas, where he mentioned that he'd like to spend the rest of his life with me and would i marry him. so i said yes.

yay for fall

the cool front that came through last nite for us here in san antonio was most welcomed by me. its been cool enough for me to turn off the a/c the last week or so and just have the windows open in the evening, but his morning when i got up it was downright chilly. translation: hi 50s. tonite we had volleyball game and flag football game and the weather was amazing to play in. vball team lost (no surprise there) and in my flag football game we managed to knockoff the previously undefeated 1st place team before we head into the playoffs next week.

monday nite ross and i both carved a jackolantern for the first time, it was pretty fun. on tuesday we drove up to meet his parents for dinner in austin. and i'm happy tomorrow is friday. i get to see lauren play volleyball this weekend against 2 san antonio schools and probably listen to a&m on the radio and hang out with some friends from work.

this one's for freda

well hello. it seems i've taken a hiatus from blogging. sincere apologies.

i've eclipsed my one year anniversary of working at USAA as of Sept 12th. i can remember as an elementary school and high school student and even to some extent a college student wishing that i could be older. not necessarily old, but just that my peer group would be more mature, less self absorbed. i had some sort of notion that adults stopped comparing themself to their friends and that adults didn't talk about each other behind their back and that adults knew who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do. oops.

additionally, i've decided that the greatest stifling of creativity seems to come from people who are 'experts' in any given field. i think this comes from the fact that 'experts' necessarily have spent a lot of time doing whatever it is that they do. meanwhile they have become jaded, bored, and content with the status quo. 'this is the way we've always done it.' oddly, this occurs while at the same time 'experts' are dictating that things must change, meanwhile holding onto certain 'sacred cows' that must remain the same, when in fact these are the very same things that need to change. corporations, churches, families--i think they all experience this.

i would venture to say this was the most difficult year of my life, except for perhaps my freshman year of high school. but i think 2006 wins out. also though 2006 has held some of the best memories of my life. so ya gotta take the tough times with the good i suppose. at any rate i learned alot about computers, God, people, business, myself, my faith, and a certain young man. i also learned how to park my car on a campus that holds 2x as many people as live in my parent's town and find it again, with minimal diversions.

in other news: a visit to College Station for one rainy football game and some good family times, a trip to Missouri for Labor Day to visit ross's family, an unvictorious volleyball team, a fun flag football team, an undefeated tennis league record, a new project at work, a new fall tv season, a great football season, a new condo to move in to, a night out on the riverwalk and at the san antonio symphony, an a&m game here in san antonio, trying to cook new things, a night out at the movies, 1 happy betta fish, 2 happy water frogs, and 1 happy sharon.

august visitors

i'm still here in case you were wondering.

i have had privilege of 2 sets of visitors to SA this month. the first was m&r & little L. we had grand fun, and L stayed the nite with me. ross came over and we ate pizza, played video games, and....watched dora the explorer. it was fun times. the next days we all hung out together, swimming, eating out, and such...i think little L was a little perturbed at his parents leaving him with me, because though he behaved extremely well, he gave them quite a stern talking to upon their return.

my other visitor came all the way from london...my brother matt. he was making the texas round and made his way down to SA for an evening. we went to texas land & cattle, celebrated matts bday, visited usaa, ate freebirds, and then made the long drive up to graham to see the fam. we ate good food, hung out, and played tennis. fun times fun times.

so those were the hi-lites of the month so far. in my normal boring life, kickball ended and the end of sand volleyball draws close. we are occasionally victorious and always competitive in sand volleyball, but we were just miserable at kickball, never winning a game. starting in september i will be playing tennis, court volleyball, and flag football. o, and working. thats about it.

sport humor

so this week during a hard fought, back-and-forth sand volleyball game this guy on the other team dove backwards for a ball and we all heard this awful noise that sounded like something in his body had just been crushed. i quickly turned around and saw his...well his shorts were ripped wiiiide open. we were all quite glad to know he was okay and that none of his bones were cracked, but it was .....slightly awkward.

geek humor

so ross was trying to help his friend in germany download this dvd. so ross broke the dvd files up into little pieces for the guy. ross thought he would make 60MB files so there'd be about 70 files. only problem is he set them up for 60KB and then took me to the movie. when he got home, he had 69,334 files on his desktop. nice.

new pet & a crazy evening

so last night i made one of those late night runs to walmart that are so prominent in college years and still fun to make even when in the working world. i decided i needed another frog to go with my water frog and betta. so the guy got one of them out for me and i noticed where one of its eyes should be was simply a gouged out socket. i asked for a different one. you may think i should have kept it and loved it, but i already have a frog with gimp arms so i opted for a healthy frog this time. the fun part is he is super tiny. he is about 1/8 the size of my current frog. i'm not sure i'm my frog has just grown that much....after all he is super fat now, or if this new guy is just ultra tiny. at any rate, there's a new frog in the hizzouse

tonite was the one night our kickball team should have won b/c we were playing the other worst team. oneproblem: not enough people bothered to show up for the game. most disappointing.

some friends came over after the game for burgers and swimming but in the meantime while they were on their way over from picking up their gear at their house, ross and i managed to catch my kitchen stove on fire and as i tried to open patio door to get smoke detectors to stop beeping a birds nest fell on my head because thats apparently how often i go out on my porch and then a wasp flew in my door and so i ran into the bathroom and hid while ross killed the thing like the man that he is.

summer happenings

work is going pretty ok right now...for work. keeping busy and leading a project effort, so fun times. meanwhile, usaa intramurals and other happenings are keeping me entertained.

monday nites-- chuck norris is awesome kickball games. chuck norris may be awesome, and indeed he is, but his kickball team sucks.

tuesday nites -- sand volleyball games. slightly better than chuck norris kickball in the winning games effort but only slightly so. at any rate its fun to get out in the sun and get...sandy.

wednesday nites -- golf nite. current best on 9 holes is 49. workin on it.

thursday nites -- backup golf nite should i need to run media screens at church on wednesday nites. otherwise, hang out at the pool nite.

weekends -- media screens at church, hanging out at the pool, additional fun with friends and trips to the beach, etc. last weekend i had ross and some other friends from work over to participant in the apartment pool luau and a rousing game of CSI: the board game. this game is nice if you have a bazillion hours and no idea what true fun is. otherwise its slightly boring. similar to Clue, but not quite as cool. currently looking forward to some august visitors and maybe some road trips.
additionally, we have seen pirates of the caribbean and you, me & dupree, both of which left something to be desired.

i hope your summer is going well and that the national heat wave will end soon. that is all.

the football incident: childhood revealed part 2

matt and i had a lot of fun playing outside when we were young. there was the time he fell out of the tree while my mom was gone and got in trouble for crying where the neighbors could hear. we had quite a few tournament basketball games, complete with brackets and championships. also there was our favorite imaginary baseball game, in which one person pitched and the other caught, and the rest was all in our heads. i think matt mostly won....always.

at any rate, when we were much younger i had a 'heavy coat' that i really enjoyed that was blue and pink. it had a detachable hood and a hidden pocket and was overall quite cool. matt and i were in the front yard in big spring enjoying a wonderful game of imaginary football when i went long for a pass and tripped and fell on my face in the grass near the curb. naturally, i feigned injury as this player was clearly going to need to come out of the game. it was rather cold outside so i had my hood on and so i just lay flat on my face staring at the ground. matt sauntered over to check on me, but meanwhile an older man drove by and felt compelled to stop. he saw matt leaning over me and me not budging and feared i'd been seriously injured. it took us nearly 5minutes to convince him that we really were just pretending and finally he drove off.

there was also that time matt and i picked milked weeds out of the backyard for several days for $2, a deal we'd made with our dad. i'm pretty sure matt complained because he'd gone out an extra time and picked for awhile and so he ended up getting $3.50. this of course made my $2 seem rather small so i was bitter. but thats a story for another day...

sea world adventure

my parents and bekah, jared, and rachel came down for a san antonio visit this weekend. friday was rachel's 10th bday so we went out to eat at clear springs cafe and had birthday cake and stuff. saturday my parents and bekah went to austin for a wedding (after watching portugal defeat england) so it was up to ross and me to entertain jared and rachel. we hit up barnes & noble, baskin robbins, church, my swimming pool, and blockbuster, all just biding the time for sunday morning to hit so we could go to....sea world. for my 5th or 6th bday my family made a well remembered trip to sea world which i still remember, with the sea lion show (still playing the same show) being my favorite. second time around, it is still the favorite, of everyone that went i think. rachel was quite determined to ride 'the steel eel', a roller coaster with 3700 ft of track, with speeds of up to 65miles per hour with a g-force of 3.5, and an initial 150ft drop. i was unsure of her dedication (and my own) but she never wavered, even as we buckled in. it was on the initial ascent that she whispered to jared her first signs of fear, and i began to regret my decision the minute our descent started as she began to scream things like 'make it stop! make it stop!' and i began to fear what my parents might do to me, as you can see below. but, props to the kid on her 10th bday, she did it and had a great time. though we did sit out the great white shark roller coaster, which is inverted, and left the boys to their own on that one. 2nd favorite was feeding and petting the atlantic bottlenose dolphins at dolphin cove. we also went to see the new shamu show, and rachel thought she might like to sit close enough to be splasehd. so we marched right on down to the front row (which didnt lead to very good viewing) and laughed as the other side was playfully splashed by shamu. when it was our side's turn to be splashed, much to our surprise, 4 killer whales were sent out to heave i dunno about 500 gallons of water over our heads. lets just say we were slightly wet. thunderstorms prevented us from enjoying the water park portion, but we did see the dolphin & beluga whale show, the sea lion show, the clydesdale horses, the sharks & sting rays, penguins, etc, and we also rode the log ride. at any rate, it was a fun day. best part is, ross and i opted to get season passes...whoop!happy 10th year, rachel!

the wood glue saga: childhood revealed part 1

there was this one time my brother matt got a little tool set with wood and nails and sand paper and such to create little crafts with. i was insanely jealous of this. and i'm not sure if he was coerced or just felt sorry for me, but at any rate he would let me build some stuff with it sometimes. but not too much stuff. and i was limited on which pieces of wood of i could use: if matt thought he might need that particular piece for a later project, i was forbidden to use it. also, i was only allowed to use small tiny pieces of sand paper (conservation people...lets not even get started on the easter candy issues), while i craved to use the entire big sheet. if only i'd had my own set, i could have done things my way. but as it is, i guess i'm pretty lucky he shared at all.

i dont remember the exact argument. i'm pretty sure it had something to do with either conserving particular pieces of wood or that darn sand paper, but one day matt infuriated me. and i apologize for not remembering the exact sequence of events but i do know they ended in me taking his wood glue and squirting it out viciously in a nice little decoration on our back patio concrete. muwahaha. if i couldnt be wasteful with the sand paper, i was going to waste as much of his kit as i could. matt was devastated, as i had planned. but he also threw a wrench in my plan by announcing (news to me) that this was not going to come off the concrete. i was just trying to show him what true wastefulness was so he could agree that i could use more parts of his tool kit, i didnt mean to permanently affix a whole bottle of wood glue to our porch.

matt assured me that i was going to be in great trouble because it would be impossible to get that up. my dad inevitably noticed my artwork and asked how it got there. i honestly can't remember if i said it was an accident and matt covered for me, or if i said it was an accident and my dad said that such a design could not have happened 'by accident', or if i confessed my belligerent act and got in trouble for it, or if this is complete news to my dad. at any rate, the wood glue, as matt foretold, was impossible to get up, though i think my dad tried several times, and probably can still be seen there on that porch on vicky street in big spring. i just wanted to make something out of wood, the way i wanted to make it, being as wasteful as i desired. instead i made a different kind of craft: concrete wood glue painting. sigh.

summertime

so far the summer has been pretty busy down here in s.a. now that there are no more tv shows to watch i've invested my time elsewhere. lots of tennis playing. the last lesson was yesterday evening, but they hope to start up a doubles league next month and also i play wednesdays at lunch with a group of friends. but kickball is just beginning. first game was last nite...and we got demolished. better luck next game i hope. sand volleyball starts next week. also trying to get some golfing in as well. that is all for those sorts of activities at work. also, sometimes, i actually work while i'm at work. that is going pretty well.

also sometimes i do things not at work, aka the compound. several wkends ago i went up to graham to watch jfer graduate. it was fun times, as lots of the family came up. the following weekend i went to team awesome reunion at markum's wedding. this was fun as i got to stay with m&r&l and eat wings n more and hang with lisa. also, team awesome was....awesome. hilite of the wedding: hearing 'lost' secrets from the bride's uncle who works for abc. if your nice i might fill you in.

also during that time ross had a bday. then i had a bday. for ross's bday i cooked dinner here and we had fun times celebrating.



for my bday we went a little crazy. friday ross and i had off work and we drove down to the beach at corpus (mustang island) and went swimming. we also made a campfire and cooked dinner. it was at this point we were attacked by vicious mosquito bug things as we rapidly loaded the car and got the heck out of there. saturday nite i had friends from work over and ross made fajitas for us and then we all swam at my apt. pool and had a blast. then, to close out the marathon weekend, sunday after church, ross, todd and i went tubing on the guadalupe and then ate bday dinner at the gristmill there in gruene.

and so it ends

stupid mavericks. the spurs season ended last night, but not without one huge battle. i think i will have a lot more free time in the evenings now because i will not be so busy watching the spurs. san antonio is really crazy like that, everyone is so intense about their spurs. it was kind of fun to get in the spirit though. went to several games and had fun at all of them. also enjoyed going out with friends to eat wings, play pool, and cheer with the crowd at hooligans, as well as watching the game at my place with friends too. basically spurs games are great excuses for way fun hang out times. summer is really a pretty lame time for sports.

also this week signals the very end of alias. saaaad day. and also the season finale of 24, and almost every other show i watch. i'm not entirely sure what to do with my evenings anymore. i AM still taking tennis lessons on monday nights which is, obviously, fun times.

i won a computer from work...occasionally they have PC giveaways from their inventory that they have upgraded from. last week i was delighted to see that i had indeed been selected a winner! this involved going to work to pick it up at 8am on saturday morning, so it was a mixed blessing, but we already had a great game of doubles tennis slated for 10am that same morning, so it worked out quite well. additionally, summertime at work means kickball league time. watch out, here comes one fun time of playing in a kickball league!

everyone is like graduating from high school or college, or going away for their summer plans, and i'm starting to get that 3 month itch. you know, the one where after one semester you get a month or 3 months off to revamp and try something different and probably live in a new place and enjoy a new schedule. then there's where i find myself now. where its just the same. my first summer without summer break. soooo sad. and so, just like the spurs and my tv shows, my love of the summertime has ended. no breaks, no oregonian fab-o times, just work. and its hot.

a spot of rain

earlier this month we had a couple big rain storms complete with hail, wind, and all that jazz. several car dealerships are trying to cut deals getting people to buy the hail damaged cars. the texaco station across the street from my apartment is painfully aware of the storm as you can see below. i dont feel particularly sorry for them because they were not customer friendly, nor did they ever seem to have any gas. what good is a gas station that runs out of gas?

how dare they

so on thursday nite ross and i decided to celebrate the almost weekend with the wonderful invention that is the $1.50 movie theatre. i wanted him to see the pink panther so we loaded up with soda and greasy popcorn and walked down the sticky hallway to the theatre with the hard seats and ancient wooden cupholders that are too small for todays gynormous cups....but the tix were only 1.50!! at any rate it was at this point that we were accosted by....her. she was probably about 67 or so and had large glasses with my favorite: the flip up sunglass shades. and they were flipped straight up looking pretty dang fancy.

crazy woman: excuse me, do you all have children in yalls familys that would see curious george?
ross: no.
sharon: takes 2 steps backwards
crazy woman: breathes heavily . well i saw it and there's this one part where he is looking at the sun and saying i cant see i cant see and then he looks away, rubs his eyes and opens them and then yells yay i can see again i can see. but thats not true! in real life if you do that then you cant see again because your retina's been fried. now why would they teach kids to do that its just crazy.
ross: yeah thats not good.
sharon: makes mental notes of nearest exits/escape routes
crazy woman: i'm just so upset right now. i cant believe they would try to teach kids to do this. dont let anyone you know see it.

after she walked to the front of our theatre and sat on the 2nd row i debated discussing with her the damage this might cause her ears due to the large number of decibels, but instead stayed a safe distance away, including hiding in a bathroom stall when i heard her approaching after the movie. so, readers, be advised: avoid curious george like the plague. and dont you dare look at the sun and expect to ever see again.

best quote of the week, from the food network's special on 'deep fried treats':
"corndogs. the perfect marriage between haste and taste."

and from our expedition to double daves last nite for pizza and spurs game:

"the refs should call a foul on his hair...for being foul." --thesharester

"o my ugly" --dj