wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

I’ve got 3 or 4 things I want to write about… but I don’t want to overload all of our faithful readers, so check back over the next week. I’m sure we’ll have some new stuff going on!

So, the other night, Kris and I went to Target to get me some new work clothes. Woo hoo! We walked around the store, picking out a bunch of stuff. I got 3 new shirts, some dress socks, some workout clothes and a new belt. All in all, I got everything I needed and wanted. The excitement, thought, was just about to begin.

We kindly declined our Target Visa offer and headed out the door. As we were walking out, we saw a bunch of people standing, looking to the left side of the lot. “There’s a car on fire!” someone shouted. My hear immediately jumped because everyone was looking right over where we parked our car! I looked over and saw a white mini-van parked two cars away from ours that was engulfed in flames! The flames were coming out the sides of the hood and from underneath. You could see some stuff falling off and dripping onto the ground below the car. The thick black smoke billowed up. This car was not overheated or anything… it was ON FIRE!

People were running around crazily yelling for people to call 911, even while there were about 20 people already on the phone with the fire department. A bunch of people darted towards the fire to get their own car out of the way. I started running for mine, then thought for a sec and decided that wasn’t the best idea. Funny thing about that: I didn’t think that I might die or anything, i thought, “wow… If that car blows up when I’m right next to it, I’ll look really stupid!” Luckily I thought quickly enough and didn’t end up looking stupid at all, yay!

We were sitting on the curb next to the entrance with a bunch of other people and a black car pulled up.  The driver got out and the lady in the passenger seat rolled down her window and started yelling at everybody, “That car’s gonna blow up!  Stay back everybody!  It’s gonna blow!”  She just kept shouting at everyone, warning them about the dangers of fire.  -Thanks ma’am, I don’t know what I would’ve done without your vast knowledge of what fire does to living people!

While everyone else was on their phone with 911 or the fire department, I pulled my phone out to snap a few pictures.  I was trying to get close enough to get some detail and thought about how big of a prick I probably looked like.  meh.

Here’s my car, you can see how close the fire actually was!

Another shot of how close our car was to burning to the ground!

“Hello! From the fire-y parking lot of Target!” -this should be a postcard

Here’s the black car with the crazy yelling lady… and the Fire guys doing their thing.  Luckily there was nobody inside.

This shot is from my driver-side door… they’re trying to get the hood open or something.  Anyone know a good great mechanic?

I’m glad we got out of the store when we did.  It would’ve been really sad to miss it all!

…for zero posts.

bill and leila were in town for almost a week. yay! it was wonderful. so we’re just getting back into the normal routine these past two days after they left…the laundry is more like a battle zone than laundry, and there are wisps of dog hair clumps all around the floors. post writing hasn’t been too high on the priority list.

i’ve uploaded a bunch of pictures to my flickr from the last week or so. you’ll see bill and leila in a shot every once in a while, but i didn’t do a very good job of documenting our actual time together.

just a quick check in…a real post is due soon…maybe recalling our last week or so. maybe i can rope wil into writing it.

don’t have much…life’s been happening at a normal pace.

• ava has recovered well from her spay…she was lucky to not have to wear the cone or anything, and the fur on her belly is coming back. she’s also started to sleep in the room with us and gracie now (and not in her crate). a big step in life!
• our yard is turning green! believe it or not, we are actually seeing new grass rise above the straw. i hope it comes in thick enough to withstand the summer heat and our wear and tear.
• we did some more yardwork this weekend, beautifying our front planter along the path. it was nice to do some work outside with a visual difference and change.
• if anyone hasn’t seen the king of kong: fistful of quarters, do yourself the favor of putting it on your rental list. even if you don’t like arcade/video games, it was a really fun watch.
• wil and i cannot wait for bill and leila’s visit! i know we’ll have a good time just enjoying each other’s company, eating good food, doing fun things. yay!

that’s seriously all i can think of to report. sorry folks.

i’m not one to have any interest in politics, but while looking for cookie recipes online (that’s definitely what i tend to be interested in more…) i came across an article about tennessee and i thought some facts were pretty interesting to pass along.

a while ago i heard on the radio that lobbyists were trying to get tennessee legislature to pass a law allowing grocery stores to carry wine. i’m not that much of a drinker…maybe a glass every week or so, but this little tidbit of news really intrigued me when it first came up. it seems kind of silly that tn is one of the remaining few states to not sell wine in grocery stores, and it would just be so nice to not have to make a special trip to a liquor store and instead be able to grab a bottle during a normal grocery trip. so i was quietly rooting for it to pass as i continued to hear a snippet or two every few weeks about it on the radio in my car. but tonight, i think i’ve found out that it probably won’t pass.

“This year’s effort to put wine in grocery stores got stuck in the mud. Despite the support of thousands of voters who e-mailed, called and signed petitions; despite more than 200 news clips, the bill was shipped off to a summer study committee. Which is legis-speak for it needs CPR this session.” ok…so no wine this year…

in explaining that since it was popular this year, it will be brought back again, and possibly again for a few years because tennessee just does things at their own pace. a slow one that is. here are a few things that makes us that way:

• it took 20 years for a lottery to pass (just started a couple years ago). WOW, ok.
• adults were not required to wear seat belts while driving until 2004. WHAT!?!
• legislature has been debating on banning open alcohol containers for almost 20 years…unbeknown to me, i guess drinking alcohol in the car isn’t such a big deal because “people like a beer on the way to football games, so state law allows everyone but the driver to legally quaff”. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

where do i live? what the heck? i was physically laughing while typing the alcohol one because of the absurdity. but with all that said, the article did end on a good note…that because trader joes is coming to green hills in the fall (WAHOO!), the chain probably wouldn’t have made that commitment if they weren’t confident that the bill would pass soon enough.

bring on the two buck chuck!

it’s been a nice lazy saturday so far…well, pretty much every saturday is lazy, but it just seems extra nice for some reason. we went out to a wine tasting/jazz night with some friends last night, and with wil getting home by noon from an opening shift this morning, and me sleeping in a bit later than usual… it feels like he’s been home all day. even the girls have been fairly mellow all morning which is good for ava.

wil picked her up yesterday and i think she was relieved to be back home. she’s was only there for one night, and didn’t eat well while there, so just that made her look like skin and bones when she got back! it’s just so hard to keep weight on her because she’s so gangly and growing. i wondered if gracie missed her or not because she was bizarrely giddy and silly with me the entire night ava was gone, but wil affirmed that gracie truly was super excited to see ava come back through the door. ahhh…they actually do love each other. sleepy ava is a nice change from her normal state, but i doubt it will last very long. she’s supposed to stay mellow for 10 days. pssh….but she’s recovering well with shaved belly and all.

while the laundry’s tumbling in the other room, and with nothing good on tv (we attempted to watch a silly earthquake movie from a few years ago on tv, but it was too cheesy for us to last more than 10 minutes), wil has put the halo on and he told me to write a post. about what? nothing has happened…but i did realize we’ve got a few things on our plate in the next few months that all kind of arose in the last couple weeks.

in about a week we get to host bill and leila for a few days. yay! we love visitors! and we love family visitors even more! since bill’s work stuff is pretty minor, we have quite a bit of time to just hang out and enjoy nashville. we’ve started a list of places to eat, but a few nights i think leila will give us lessons on some awesome italian meals also. can’t wait for that. we’ll go to the hermitage for some civil war history, wil plans to give us all an authentic coffee tasting at his store, and i will hopefully be able to show them through the house that i’ve been heavily involved in at work, since it’s pretty amazing. otherwise our plans will probably fairly low key, maybe hang out with some friends here and there.

a somewhat impromptu trip has been planned for the first of may for me…cassie and i will get to fly out to california for a long weekend…seeing a few historical and architectural sites that we’ve always wanted to visit, going to brett’s azusa graduation and festivities, and then visiting michael at disneyland! we can’t wait for a fun girly/family vacation. flights were a bit tricky…it’s not quite as easy to take a bunch of time off of work when the two of us both work at the same company, of only 3 people! so to make our time off as minimal as possible we’ll fly out right after work on thursday (easy), and then on monday night we leave cal at 9 pm, hop all over the country, and get to nashville at 9 the next morning…and then go straight to work that day. yes we are crazy, and our boss agrees with that statement (she does realize she will be working with two zombies that day), but hey, we’re young and we’ll bounce back!

although not finalized yet, we have one more trip the next month…out to napa for van’s high school graduation in june. wil and i will be able to be out there for almost a week! i’ve been to napa only once before for his sister’s graduation, but have never truly experienced napa the glamorous way people think you would…it was just to visit family. i keep hinting to wil that i want him to take me to do something very wine countryish…or just something a tourist would do.

to look at the calendar and think that after these three big things, it will already be july! and hot! i hope our back yard is really usable and enjoyable by that time. and i really hope we can go camping more than the one time last year. we thought earlier, “great, we have a bigger car this time to take the dogs and camping gear!” but realized our dogs are so big, that we still don’t have enough room for both of them and all the camping stuff…so if anyone would like to come with us, please do so we can use your car as well! : )

well, the laundry just beeped…and if i don’t get up to change it right now, it will sit in there for hours. i hope everyone else enjoys their weekend! happy saturday.

ava goes to the vet today for surgery….getting her femininity removed. she has no idea what’s about to hit her, but i feel more bad about not giving her breakfast.

in ava’s world, i honestly think that the number one reason she wakes up in the morning is to eat breakfast. on a normal day she is too excited for breakfast to go to the bathroom first, and she runs around in circles and whines and yips until the bowl is finally under her nose.

but with anesthetic on her calendar today, she’s not allowed to have had food since 9pm last night. which means no breakfast. i tried to feed gracie before i got ava out of her crate as to not further the torment, but the minute she pushed passed the gate and we did a few turnarounds in the yard, she did her usual routine of running rampant through the kitchen and the den. and the fact that i wasn’t doing anything was driving her nuts.

once she eats, she immediately calms down, and often goes back to bed. but this morning? she’s still going crazy all over the house and it’s been 20 minutes! ava’s been running around in circles, throwing her toys everywhere, bucking, and looking at me and nudging me as if trying to say, “woman! get me my food already!”

i feel so bad. i hope she doesn’t hate me forever.

but speaking of breakfast, wil and i went on a baking extravaganza last night and i made muffins while he made granola. and i have to say, this granola in my bowl right now is pretty awesome. i hope this becomes a regular thing.