|
cami is: in love married an artist a friend a sister a daughter a daughter-in-law shy an introvert dorky silly cool i took a break in november 05 |
 j u s t m e a n d m e another self-portrait with the mini camera. it's been a pretty typical weekend, which these days, means frantic house cleaning for prospective buyers than never come, and the swap meet. it really took a while for me to get into "swap meet mode", but now it's one of those things that i look forward to most during the weekend. just the chance to be out of our stupid house in the fresh air is worth the $1 admission (times two, for jeff and me). everything that comes with that $1 is just pure entertainment. the people watching is outstanding. and nothing beats the thrill of the hunt and the victory of finding a deal on some sort of treasure. we've found some great old transformer robots, a few deals on tiki mugs, and once, i found a really cool bracelet (that somehow got lost in our condo that night). last week, it was a $15 pachinko machine that a couple just had to get rid of because they were moving. they didn't know if it worked anymore, but i was confident that jeff would figure it out...and of course he did. this week ben joined us, and we came away with an old nintendo game and watch for $5 and what my mother-in-law called "the cadillac of warming trays" for $3. now if only we could sell our place and find a new one that we could really settle into. we've got so many great ideas...and i've got so many kitchen appliances i want to be using! i temporary dyed my hair "chilled plum" yesterday, and i'm pleased with the results. i read a review of the dye online and some girl said that when she saw her new hair color "I was so happy I wanted to cry." Ummm...well, while it didn't bring a tear to my eye, it's made me feel just a little bit sassy. you'd think after all the years of my dying my hair, i'd be a little more confident about going permanent with something. maybe. i have a box of permanent "intense auburn" under my sink. it's just nice not to worry about roots growing out. and since my hair color and shoes have always seemed to be associated with each other, i must confess that i bought 3 new pairs online the other night. my first go with zappos.com. they should be showing up in a few days and i'm pretty excited. it's seriously been a while since i bought new shoes. load 1 of 4 is in the washer washing right now. i was teasing jeff about how many dirty clothes he seems to produce. probably 20 times the dirty clothes i produce. looks like it's going to be quite the exciting evening in our household... cami (3:54pm, 1.29.06)
 t h e l i t t l e t h i n g s jeff's dad gave me a tiny little digital camera over the weekend...a sort of belated christmas present, and i think it is way fun. it takes pictures that are just about the same quality as my very first digital camera way back in the day, but this one only takes 1 aaa battery. which takes me back to the day when i started this website way way back. i don't even know if i would be able to find those original photos or journal entries. but it doesn't really matter. did you ever keep a journal as a pre-teen and read it as a teenager and just be mortified by the sillyness that you wrote about oh-so-many (2 or 3) years ago? and then do the same a few years later about your teenaged angst? i'm sure the same would go for my journal entries from long ago...and as funny as they would be for all of you to read...i'm sort of glad that they have disappeared. i just got back from a media conference, where i pretty much spent 9 hours a day in the front room of a hotel suite with a coworker. it was a very nice compliment when at the end of our 3 days spending 9 hours a day in the front room of his hotel suite he said that i had provided "really good company...which is a lot better than just good company" during the trip. i'm so shy around people that i don't know all that well, because i'm always worried that my real life goofiness will just put them off. it's that same shyness that made my original college dorm-mates think i was just a snob. in reality, i'm just evaluating the situation. my sisters and i got together while i was out of town, and we had a lot of fun eating dinner and being silly. it was nice to have the chance to spend some time with them, especially since we are all spred around Southern California these days. trista even spent the night with me at my hotel, and since i sneakily acquired an extra breakfast coupon for her, we got to have breakfast the next morning as well. my old friend henry took me out for dinner during the week, and we got to catch up on how our lives have been going since he moved away from san diego. it's kind of a funny coincidence that we met through a automotive-related message board. i bet if you had told either of us back then when we were college students that we would have been in automotive-related careers all these many years later, and not only that, end up at the same conferences/conventions, we wouldn't have believed you. of course, he's been doing it many more years than i have. but still...you get the point. and finally, while i was driving home from work tonight with the top down on my convertible, i started thinking about this kid i used to wait at the school bus stop with, who commented "Wow...your mom drives that van like a racecar!" when he saw her whip the astro through a u-turn at the end of the road to deliver something to me... i'd like it if somebody says that about me when i'm a mom someday. cami (6:08pm, 1.27.06)
 h a p p y 2 0 0 6 ! all sorts of stuff happened in the last few weeks of 2005, most notably, and saddest, was jeff's grandfather passing away while jeff was on his business trip in china. it made for an especially difficult time, but i'm grateful for the fact that i was able to spend some time with his family in his absence. needless to say, it was an emotional christmas for both families, with mine still reeling from the sudden loss of my grandmother back in september, and now the loss in jeff's. but so it goes... as far as presents from the family go, we both made out like bandits. bandits, i tell you! among the highlights of my booty, a hand embroidered apron from leslie, a mortar and pestle set from trista and kirk (my siblings must know i like to cook), and beautiful sweater from my parents, a great set of kitchen knives from the in-laws...but probably the two standouts... from BIL greg (and the in-laws), a TIKI BAR (which we are going to probably find a place of honor in the backyard whenever we actually buy a house, since as you may or may not know, we already have an indoor tiki bar)... from jeff, a PFAFF sewing machine! woo hoo! i was so surprised because even though i'd mentioned numerous times before that i would love to have a sewing machine, i figured it was something i'd have to wait for. the fun part about it is that my hubby is very interested in learning how to use it, too. we both kind of see it as just another great tool for expressing our creativity. and that's just a few of the great gifts we got. we are pretty much beside ourselves with trying to figure out to do with everything. so thank you, generous friends and family, for making it another fun christmas. after christmas, we headed out to arizona. we spent a night in phoenix and then headed to bisbee, where we stayed at the most awesome place in the world...the Shady Dell, a vintage trailer and RV park. yep, that's right. we stayed in "the manor" one night and the "tiki bus" the next. it was so cool. words can't even describe our experience there, so when jeff gets the pictures up, i'll post a link. the photo at the top is of when we stopped in tombstone on our way to bisbee. i'm actually standing in the OK Corral. and if there is one word to describe tombstone...it's cheese. big time cheese. everything is so fake and silly and touristy. the only thing we plunked our hard earned cash on was the tombstone historama which we found a flier for at the hotel we stayed at in phoenix. i mean, it was a multimedia experience narrated by vincent price, so we couldn't pass that up. and it's cheesy, too...but kind of old, 60s cheesy that made it supremely entertaining. and with our tickets to the historama, we also got to walk around the ok corral. bisbee is anything but cheese. it's a crazy old mining town that has slowly converted to a haven of antiques dealers, artists, hippies, and others ascribing to a more "alternative" lifestyle. so, of course, that's right up our alley. we ate at a fabulous cafe roka (supposedly one of the best restaurants in arizona), found a fantastic ceramic hanging light for a steal in one of the antique stores, took a tour of a mine, wandered around the old cemetary behind the shady dell at sunset, drank mai tais at the outrigger bar outside our tiki bus late at night, and enjoyed really bad 50s movies on vintage television sets inside our bus and our trailer. it was a really awesome getaway. and because carlos "infected" me, i'm going to post 5 random facts about me...but because i'm such a non-participator, i'm not going to infect anyone else...ok, maybe jeff because he is an easy target:
hooray for 2006! cami (6:34pm, 1.2.06)
|
Mom Trista Leslie Bryan Jesse Robert Tim Paul Cyn 6togo Kristin Carlos Winnie Faith Jennifer Andy Tammy Peg Scott Mark Linda Sarah Josh Cami Len
 |