Apple Has Done It Again

Apple has once again created quite possibly the best invention every, the iPod Touch. In fact, I wrote the title to this blog on my new iTouch which I bought today. It rocks the hizzy! I just bought it today after Jenny told us how cool it is at lunch. It is the coolest thing ever, they sold me with the WiFi, which you don't need a subscription to, unlike the iPhone which I have been debating whether I should purchase or not. I am so glad I went with the iTouch. As long as you have a connection you have Internet. It was the best investment I have spent in quite a while. In fact I have spent most of the night trying to wrestle it away from Marc who has discovered YouTube.

Days Off Rock!

Yesterday was my birthday so to celebrate it, I decided to take today off. I got the idea from my girlfriend Amy who always takes her birthday off from work. Marc and I thought it was a great idea so this year I started the tradition. Now I was going to take my actual birthday off but since it was on a Thursday it would have meant getting up Friday and going to work which would have been no fun so my brother suggested going to work on my actual birthday and taking Friday off and having a long weekend. It was actually the first good advice he has given me in 29 years.

Now I have to say, days off completely rock, now I absolutely love my job, but every so often it is so nice to just take the day off and relax. I slept in, well by in I mean 7:00 when I finally got sick of hearing Homer cough and I let him out of his crate to go potty (note that right now I can hear in snoring in the other room - why can't he do that early in the morning?) and to get into bed with me. We staying in bed about a half hour and then I got him breakfast and settled and then I got on the treadmill for an hour. Then I putzed around for a bit, taped a wall in the bedroom in preparation for painting, scrapbooked, watched Ugly Betty on DVR. The best part of it all, no deadlines, no rush to get anything done, if I scrapbooked 1 page, cool, 2 pages, awesome. There was absolutely no pressure. I loved it...but now I am ready for my husband to come home and kick the weekend off with me.

My actual birthday was good, my present from Marc was tickets to Jersey Boys back in December and then last Saturday we went to Mahalo in downtown Pleasanton with Jill and Edwin. I scored a rocking Snoopy Sno Cone maker from them for my birthday, I used to love it as a kid and can't wait to make Snoopy Sno Cones with it! On the night before my birthday Marc gave me these socks to wear:

He also gave me an amazing bottle of wine he picked up in Livermore while I was playing in the snow in Cincinnati a few weeks ago. We took it with us to Matsu Sushi (my favorite place) and had a nice sushi dinner and some excellent wine.

All in all it was a good birthday, I can't really complain, all of the important people in my life helped make it special. It is weird to think I am in my last year of the "20s." I better make it count!

Congrats Greg & Lyndsay!

This post is dedicated to our good friends, Greg and Lyndsay (they are avid readers of the Zimmerman Shenanigans) who welcomed their first baby, a bouncing baby boy, Xavier Francis, on January 14. Right on his due date, pretty impressive I might add. Marc and I got to go up to the hospital and see them on the day he was born and they let us hold him when he was only 13 hours old! He is such a sweet boy and slept the entire time we were there. He's going to grow up to be quite the cutie (since he already is). Congrats to Greg and Lyndsay! We are so happy for you and can’t wait to watch Xavier grow!

The Love Affair Continues

Many of you have seen Homer and Marc's love affair video, I for one am starting to get a complex but I am very happy my little dog thinks of Marc as his owner and not the other man like he used to. Marc has a new routine in which he gets out of bed at 6:30ish and puts on his gym clothes and goes to the Applied Materials gym, since I have been working out in the morning, this means that Homer stays in his crate until I get done and then he gets let out. This means Homer and Marc's cuddle time is greatly reduced. The last few mornings Homer has woken up when I have gotten up and started his coughing trick so I have let him out and let him upstairs to cuddle with Marc and lick him to death. This morning he actually slept so I let him out after my workout and while Marc was on his way out. After taking care of business Homer sprinted upstairs to jump into bed only to find Marc was not there. He was absolutely crushed and was looking around bewildered. I tried to reason with the dog that Marc went to work but he would get to see him tonight while I was at scrapbooking. Homer was confused. So I took out Marc's pillow and Homer proceeded to lick the pillow the entire 1/2 hour it takes me to get ready and was perfectly content. I better hope Marc doesn't read this while I am out and does the old switcheroo with the pillows tonight!

Marc and Homer's New Trick

Homer has become quite the licker lately and since Marc has been home for 2 weeks, he has been Homer's object of attention. Marc generally moves his face away from Homer because his breath stinks. Watch Homer's front leg as he is kissing Marc, he pulls Marc's face into his so that he has good leverage for the licking. Homer has been watching too many romantic comedies!

Looking a Little Green

Our other big project over the holidays was to paint the exercise room. I have had swatches from various paint stores taped on the walls throughout the house and I had a color all picked out and then we went the our favorite new store, Lowes, and they had a whole array of colors to choose from. We learned that they have all of their colors in the computer and the computer adds the right amount of dye to the paint so you get the same color all of the time so we decided to pick out new colors so we had consistent colors if we ever had to touch up or needed more paint.

We got our paint (green for the exercise room and a grayish blue for the master bedroom) and our supplies, i.e. cheap rollers and 1 drop cloth and went home optimistic that the painting was going to be a cinch. So we spread out our drop cloth and poured our paint and got rolling. Yeah, not so easy, see Marc and I learned we have textured walls and the paint did not stick very well to them. I like to think of our walls like an English Muffin, with all of the nooks and crannies and while butter melts nicely into the nooks and crannies of an English muffin, paint not so much. We went through about a quarter of our gallon of paint on one wall and realized it wasn't working for us (by us I mean Marc) so back to Lowes where we explained our problem to the guy behind the counter, he was nice but didn't really know what he was talking about.

Fortunately for us, another customer who happened to be a painter, overheard us and told us we needed to prime our walls (we didn't think we had to since we had builder grade beige on the walls) and also told us which roller to use, a nappier, wool roller. Apparently it holds the paint better and therefore spreads it better and it rinses out better than the synthetic rollers. So we stocked up on more drop clothes, nappy rollers (I just like to use the word nappy), another gallon of paint and we were off. A little less bright eyed and bushy tailed but still determined to make the room beautiful.

Marc's new painter friend is a genius! The primer made all of the difference and the nappy rollers rocked the hizzy! The paint went on so much easier and while we have been painting the room for over a week on and off (darn nooks and crannies are stubborn), the rollers were so much better than the value pack. We still have some touching up to do (i.e. the parts of the ceiling where my brush and/or roller slipped and I painted the ceiling and the base boards need some touching up in spots). Lucky for us there were no catastrophes with the paint, I did almost fall off of the step stool with a tray of paint in my hand and my roller tray full of paint behind me but fortunately I was able to catch my balance as I painted the ceiling. Here's what the room looks like now.

Room Before:

Boring right? Room After:

It's hard to see but I LOVE the green, it looks a lot lighter in the pictures. But we are really happy with the way it came out. I must say that when we first put it on the wall I panicked a little (I didn't tell Marc this) because it was so light but once it dried and darkened I absolutely loved it. I worked out in the room this morning and I loved looking at the pretty green walls! It is so bright and cheery and warm! I love it and as I always tell Marc, adding color makes the house feel like a home and gives it character. (He's finally starting to believe me). The master bedroom is on hold for a bit while we recover from this experience. Marc and I decided we are never repainting that room ever again and I for one will never again buy a house with textured walls. It's so hard to get the paint into the nooks and crannies!