... courtesy of James Dean (seriously, that was the name of the stylist).

write_out and I were joking today that we should send each other pictures of our bruises to compare injuries. If anyone can empathize with falling down it's her :) The pics aren't great because I took them myself.

( Black and blue and sore all over... )

Well I finally uploaded the pictures I took in Denver. I didn't really take that many pictures there. But there were a couple of things that I couldn't resist snapping pics of.

( Denver )

So last Sunday (not yesterday but the Sunday before) the sky around sunset was just incredible and I snapped a couple of pictures from our deck.

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I have every intention of responding to comments, but I'm just not feeling 100% today so it probably won't be this afternoon. Yesterday was a lot of fun. theemmer and I did almost everything we had planned to do. We did not do the Ducks tour. When we stopped there it would have been over an hour wait till there was space on the next tour and neither one of us felt like standing around for that long. But that's okay, the day was great without it.

( Warning pictures ahead )

I won't get into all the details about the family event on Sunday other than to say that it went well. I got to get reacquainted with people that I had not seen in 14 years. I also got to meet my cousins' wives and kids (Nick (4), Sam (2), and Abby (2) ). And I got to see my grandmother, who not surprisingly did not remember me. I don't think she did the last time I saw her (again, 14 years ago). But she's almost 90, has a bit of dementia, and some brain damage from the years of physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her second husband.


My cousin who is going to Okinawa - my father said he was going for 6 months - no, it's actually 2 years.  I finally get to reconnect with my family and a chunk of them take off for another country.  But he said that he'd stay in touch as best as he could.  He admitted that he is horrible at correspondence.  But it sounds like I'll at least get the family Christmas letter.  

I also found out that my great-great grandfather was big in helping to found Seattle.  The things that you learn about your family....

Last night was the birthday dinner for my fabulous roomie, theemmer . Almost everyone showed up. About halfway through dinner I realized that our friend G wasn't there. What does it say when it takes us halfway through dinner to realize that she wasn't there? She never called to say she wasn't coming and as of a couple days before she made it sound like she was still on board to be there. Oh well... she missed a really good time.

We returned from the ocean close to noon. Since then we've just been hanging out and relaxing. It was a great weekend. I got lots of reading and writing finished. The major project I was working on I got what I needed to get done accomplished and sent it off to a couple of people to read for their opinions. Back to work tomorrow. Ugh!