Happy New Year!

This year has been an incredible year. Talk about monumental year I will never ever forget! I've experienced so many different emotions, done things that I have never done before in my life, seen so many different sites, and learned so much about myself and others. 2005 is when I finally gave into those little indulgences that I always thought about doing, but never did.

Here's a year-end wrap up:

• Experienced what true friendship and love really means.
• Started a workout routine that I actually kept.
• Bought fruit in the middle of the freeway.
• Tine cheered me on until I was finally able to succeed.
• Had fun adventures with Nicole.
• Went line-dancing!
• Played dodgeball with a bunch of geeky adults.
• Had a disastrous allergic reaction to something which changed my eating habits for a few weeks.
• Learned that I cannot read backwards.
• Learned to play raquetball.
• Helped Blogger to release a bunch of new features and the launch of BlogSearch.
  
• Got trapped in an elevator...and survived my worst nightmare.
• Traveled to British Columbia, Disneyland, London, Stonehenge, Barcelona, Villefranche, Nice, Monaco, Rome, Naples, Pompei, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Avignon, Le Pontet, Cinque Terre, Lucerne, Paris. (Europe)
  
• Attended a couple of conferences: blogher and WITI
• Learned to ballroom dance!
• Was thrown a bridal shower.
• Added a bunch more gadgets to my collection.
  
• Scarred myself for life.
  
• Oh yeah...minor detail...got MARRIED!
• Settled into my new home.
• Had one of my teenage fantasies fulfilled.
• Began my adventures in cooking and actually prepared a feast.
• Saw my first hockey game and attempted to play in the actual hockey gear.
• Got to sit at the "adult" table...finally.
• Learned to appreciate my family and true friends for the foundation that they are to me.
• Experienced a new level of emotions and what it means to share that with others.
• Learned what "unconditional" really means.
• And much much more...
  

Happy New Year!

Vacation

I am on some much needed vacation until the beginning of the new year. It feels like it has been so long since I've had a chance to be...bored, and boy does it feel GOOD! The past year has been full of monumental events and excitement. Even the month long honeymoon in Europe was an event in and of itself. Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas have passed, I am finally breathing a huge sigh of relief. I have been sleeping without a bedtime...without an alarm clock in the morning...waking up whenever I please...and actually sleeping straight a full nine hours plus. This has not happened in years. I've had a chance to catch up with friends, spend time with family, watch a boatload of movies, read a couple of books, and get those little things done that always seem to slip off the plate.

The best part? I still have five days left to enjoy. Yippee!

Merry Christmas!

May this Christmas bring smiles at your doorstep, joy in your heart, and love & togetherness of friends and family!


Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la




P.S. Santa, I've been really good this year...

Leave me in peace

The mice are taunting me.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Bertrand!

To love someone deeply gives you strength,
Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
- Lao Tzu

Mondays

Mondays are always hard. Especially Mondays right before a holiday.

To make my Monday a little less traumatic, I woke up early and got an extra-large coffee from Peet's. Now I am totally wired and bouncing.

Good Monday.

Blogger Web Comments

Google just released Blogger Web Comments, a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox that makes it super easy to see what other bloggers are saying about the page you are looking at in a snazzy little window on the side. You can even add your own comment.

A couple of years ago, after a little convincing, Bertrand converted me to be a Firefox user and ever since I have been hooked. There are all sorts of neat extensions out there, but this new one is by far a fun and addictive addition.

Other handy ones I love: GoogleToolbar (with BlogThis!), IE Tab, Web Developer.

Mousey

I don't like rodents. I know they have a purpose and in the big circle of life, help keep things balanced...but I personally think my life would be better off without them. This past weekend I had a bad experience involving mice. Let's just say it was traumatizing.

The new joke around our house is comparing everything to mouse poop.

"He's worse than mouse poop."

Blogger Hoodies

We got new Blogger Hoodies!

And comfy and warm they are! We're pretty excited about them.

You can get your own at the Googlestore.

last.fm

last.fm tracks the music you listen to, let's you create your own music profile, find people who like the same type of music as you, and see what your friends are listening to. It also creates a personalized radio station with the type of music it thinks you might like.

I love it.

So often, a song can describe how I'm feeling so much better than I could ever put into words. Wondering how I'm feeling today?

What I'm listening to.

A year ago

One year ago today...a handsome young man asked me to be his wife and to spend the rest of my life with him.

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

Thank you for choosing me. I love you.

WITI

I'm going to be at the Women in Technology International (WITI) Conference tomorrow.

Come say hello.

Doggy Daycare

Ever since I got married and moved out of my parent's home, my baby, Toby has been on a Doggy Daycare system. My parent's house is much more attractive to Toby than our house. They've got a spacious yard and people are usually coming in and out of the house during the day. So instead of being lonely at our place, he spends the days over there. On his way to work in the mornings, Bertrand drops Toby off at my parent's house and on the way home from work, either one of us will pick him up to spend the night with us. This makes all involved parties happy. My parents get to spend time with him, he gets to run around in a big yard all day, gets spoiled with attention at night, and gets to take a little road trip twice a day. This just helps us set a nice routine for when we have a few more little ones to drop off at my parent's. =)

Blah

So that minor detail I mentioned in my previous post...about being sick...was not a minor detail. I have been sick for the past two weeks and it will not go away. It made Thanksgiving a little more tiring, concentrating difficult, and snowboarding impossible. Grrrr.....

Jam Packed

I just got home for yet another awesome company holiday party where I got to hang out with my friends and have a blast. Now I am going to pack up some clothes for the rest of my jam packed weekend of fun. After attending our friends' engagement ceremony tomorrow morning, we will be heading up to Sacramento for some shopping, dinner, and then to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert. After rocking out to the electric guitars, we'll hop in the car and drive up to Tahoe so we'll be ready for a day of fun in the snow on Sunday.

I'm so excited! What an awesome weekend.

Too bad I'm sick (minor detail).

Holiday Spirit

We got our Christmas tree today. Toby loves it!

Firsts

This year has been full of firsts for me. We decided to host our first Thanksgiving as a married couple at our home and to invite both sides of our family to join us. This meant I was going to host my first big family event and prepare the meal. I woke up early yesterday and started preparing all the food. Bertrand got into it too and even made pumpkin pie and bread pudding. After a few mishaps with meat juice on the wall and floor, onion in the windowsill, and pate in the sink...we managed to pull it all together and had a fantastic Thanksgiving. The turkey actually turned out well and everyone ate (and survived!). We were even visited by wild turkeys halfway through our meal. Who knew turkeys could fly!

After much eating and family time, we went to bed and woke up a few hours later for some major shopping. Survived that too....barely.

How many?

The holidays are coming! This will be our first year hosting Thanksgiving, which means I will need to prepare for the festivities including the food. This is quite a monumental moment since I don't cook.

Since my lucky-duck husband has the entire week off from work, he got to be in charge of getting the groceries. On Sunday night, I sat down and wrote out a grocery list for him. I'm not much of a cook myself, so needed to look at the recipe for a couple of things in order to write down the ingredients for the list. One of the items called for 10 3/4 oz. cans of soup. I wrote this down on the list along with everything else to make it easier for him. When I came home from work yesterday, I was greeted by my husband and a counter full of groceries. I started going through them to see what he had gotten, then noticed only one can of soup.

I asked him why he only got one can and said we needed 10. He said, "oh, but this one is a 10 3/4 oz. can."

Oh.

It would probably help if I could read a recipe correctly or knew how much 3/4 oz. was.

And I'm supposed to cook?! Scary.

Grown up

We had a small family gathering this past weekend and we were "upgraded" to the adult table.

Woah.

Hockey

Yesterday I learned all the ins and outs of hockey. I used to play street hockey when I was younger, but that involved no rules and just a lot of skating and pushing. Yesterday I learned what "icing" meant and what a "hat trick" is and...how to do C-shaped things on hockey skates. I also learned that hockey gear is incredibly stinky. We watched the San Jose Sharks play the Vancouver Canucks and I even got to see my very first hockey fight. Woohoo.

Watch it

Swoon

I was just rocking out to the music on my iTunes when Kai came on. Now I am swaying side to side and if I had a lighter, it would be up in the air.

When I was in high school I was obsessed with a music group called Kai. I played their songs on repeat, over and over, especially "Say You'll Stay." When I met Tine, we squealed and screamed together when we found out our mutual love for the same group. We joked about how cool it would be if they sang to us at our weddings (which at that time were far from happening).

Over the years, Kai split up and a few of the original members stayed together and formed a new group, 6th Day.

My girlish fantasies were fulfilled a couple of months ago when, as a huge surprise, Bertrand and his best friend Arnold arranged to have the original members of Kai come and sing for me at my wedding. I had stars in my eyes and was about ready to pass out from sheer joy.

I still have to pinch myself to make myself believe that it was all real.

Hectic

Want to hear about my morning?

This morning I slept in a little later than usual on purpose, since instead of fighting the morning traffic, I had to go to the doctor's and could come in later once traffic died down a bit. I thought that was a sign that today would be a good day. Wrong.

I got caught up in some work and ended up running out the door to hop in the car and get to my appointment in time. I did my hopping and running, and as I sat in my car, realized I had no keys. The door was locked. I was sitting in my car, stranded...AND late for my appointment. Bertrand was already at work an hour away from home, and him coming back would have wasted a lot of time for both of us. I called my mom who supposedly had one of our spare keys. She didn't know which one it was and brought over a pile of keys for me...none of which was the right key. She ended up driving me to my appointment and waiting for me. I then left her stranded and took her car to Mountain View so I could make the few meetings that I have today. As I neared the freeway entrance, the gas light came on.

What a morning! At least I'm here now.

Little Princess

I absolutely love this picture.
Courtesy of our photographer Chris Pechard.

The geek in me

We all know I'm married to a geek. And actually...we all know I'm really a closet geek myself (or maybe not so closet). It's good that I am also very girly which somewhat balances out the geekiness.

Our house is all tech'd out with everything connected somehow to each other wirelessly, etc. We are always brainstorming of neat new things we could get/add to make it even more cool and get giddy with excitement.

Today, I told my husband that I would love to get a new flat screen Apple monitor for our office, along with a new Powerbook to use it with, and a new video iPod so I can watch shows whenever I want.

I am almost as excited thinking about it as I would be about getting jewelry.

Just almost... (you hear that honey? *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*)

Times a changin'

I just realized that I was dancing in my seat listening to my music while working. I looked around and people just kind of smiled. I miss the days when Tine and I used to sit facing each other. Back then, when one of us saw the other bouncing in their seat, we'd sync up our iTunes, listen to the same song and bounce together.

Those were the good ole' days...

Aggression

I feel the need to let out some aggression. Bertrand says it's the pirate outfit and that the attitude comes with it.

Now where are those shooting nerf arrows...

Shiver me timbers!

Happy Halloween!

A whole new woman

I've gotten most of my IDs and accounts updated with my new name. Yesterday, the lady at the DMV said, "You're a whole new woman!"

I realized that...I am a whole new woman.

Right now, I am sitting here watching college football with my husband, and am also screaming at the t.v. Of course, every couple of seconds, I say, "what does that mean?"

What's next? Monday night football?

Update: WoW! That was awesome! Go UCLA! (Not that I'm biased or anything)

Stiff

I got the best surprise yesterday.

Tony Pierce sent me a signed copy of Stiff!

How cool is that?

Want one too?

Who stepped on my shoes?

Toby spent his first full weekend with us in his (our) new home.

Red shoes!

I have been dying for red shoes for the past couple of years. Tine and I both shared in this want together and always pointed out red shoes online or while shopping.

Today, someone came skipping over to my desk and stomped her foot to show me her new shoes. I stomped right back and we squeeled together.

*sigh*

Girlfriends are great (so are red shoes).

I ain't no Hollaback Girl

B A N A N A S!

We'll be going bananas tonight at Gwen's concert. And even better? Another group I love is opening.

Ah! I'm so excited!

Word of advice

From Nicole:

Kimmy, if you mess with it. It will mess with you.

And then, we danced

Lately...

we have...

gotten married


landed in London

browsed the markets of Barcelona

taken a cruise around the Mediterranean

explored the streets of Villefranche

seen how nice Nice is

seen Monaco

held up the Leaning Tower of Pisa

roamed Rome

visited the Vatican

hiked to the top of Mount Vesuvius

perused the ruins of Pompei

ate Pizza where it originated in Naples

overindulged ourselves with food

drank A LOT of Orangina

re-visited where Bertrand grew up in Avignon

were awestruck by the beauty of Cinque Terre

shopped to my heart's content in Milan

had a romantic gondola ride down the canals of Venice

got attacked by birds at San Marcos Square

Lived it up in Luzerne

ate some croissants

tromped around Paris

went to the top of the Eiffel Tower

lugged our luggage around the world

walked, flew, and took the train many many miles, and enjoyed every minute of it!