So we had a bit of an occasion this weekend. On our trip to town, we stopped at the credit union and made the very last payment for our car. It is ours. All paid off. We were told we can expect the title in about a week. So to celebrate we thought we would give the car a sexy wash and wax. So here you go. Our sexy “the car is paid off” pictures.

Hosing down the motorcycle to get in the mood.

Ooh. Shirt is off. Now we're getting somewhere.

Ahhh. Look at that sexyness. That car is getting a good treatment. Let's see how Holly is doing.

OOoohh. Now that is some sexy car washing. 🙂 Owning your own car is fun. Woot

Yaaaay. We own our car. Aren’t we all happy now?

Gavin is away for spring break for two weeks. He’s been gone for almost a week already. Hard to believe. I miss him. Since he’s been gone I’ve bottled my beer, washed dishes a few times, eaten half a batch of bread pudding, had multiple shakes, drank most of a bottle of wine, taken a beautiful walk with Holly and Leif, ridden my motorcycle twice, monitored a inflatable castle full of kids, taken a drive down to seven pools, enjoyed a nice romp on the rug with my mate, started knitting my next knitting project, and cleaned the house. Not bad so far.

I look forward to tasting this batch of beer along side my previous batch. They are both from the same recipe. It’s an irish porter. The difference is that the first batch had more yeast then the second, and both batches were brewed with a different type of hops. Otherwise, they are the same. So I’ll be interested to see the differences.

Holly went to Oahu to drop Gavin off at her mom’s house. I stayed home and was willingly volunteered to watch the jumpy castle for the Hana spring break fair. Apparently I was suckered in to watching the tent because no on else wanted to do it. When the tent arrived, I was introduced to the person who owned the tent and was told to take care of the tent. Things were fine for quite a while. Then I was told there was a hole in one of the columns at the top of the slide. So we closed the slide and the kids (which ranged from 5 to 18) had to limit themselves just to jumping in the jumpy area. One of the teens who earlier offered to help me out sat at the top of the slide to make sure kids weren’t trying to get up and play around. All was good for a while. Then she started having friends up there to chat with her. I told her that there could be only two of them up there at a time. Otherwise, the castle was start to deflate if any kids ended up in a corner of the castle. After a bit of constantly reminding them of the two-at-a-time rule, they decided they would outright tell me “no”. I decided to close the castle at that point since the kids were being disrespectful. They still refused to come down. At this point one of the custodians from the library came over to see what was going on. I told him what was going on. He tried to play all cool with the kids because he wants to be the cool guy. He told me I could take a break and he would watch the tent. So I went and sat under the tent to listen to the band. After about 15 – 20 minutes, I looked back at the castle and the custodian was not to be seen. I looked around the fair and found him chatting up some people he knew no where near the tent. I walked back to the castle to make sure no little kids were getting trampled where I was met by one of the insubordinate kids asked if I was back to watch the tent again. I of course said yes since it is what I was asked to do. Five minutes later the same girl came and said that the custodian told her I could close the castle for good. I went to talk to him to see what was up and he told me that none of the kids were listening and were out of control and we should just deflate the castle. No arguments from me. It made me a bit happy to know that he couldn’t handle it for 15 minutes. So I told all the kids to get out and then pulled the plug. Poof. No more castle. And that was my day. Well most of it. Afterwards, I hopped on my motorcycle and took a ride down to seven pools to relax a bit. It was a nice ride. Very relaxing and of course beautiful.

Today Leif decided he was sick of the house. And frankly so was I. I needed to get out. So we all packed up and went out for a walk up the street. Today was a beautiful day. The sun was out and it was beautifully warm. The walk was good for us.

A few images of my beautiful family:

Today was just another day. Holly went to work. Gavin went to school. I stayed home and worked and watched Leif. The smoker neighbors weren’t home all day. At least the wife wasn’t. She got a job. But now they are home and smoke is blazing up into our house and increasing the redness of my throat. I noticed that my cough is more and more sounding like their coughs. So I have smokers cough and I don’t even smoke. So not cool. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some place will open up soon and we can move. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and the state budget will stay at %10 cuts and we can move to Oahu. Maui is nice and beautiful, but it is far from RSCDS, the opera, Gordon Biersch, beer making supplies, Kin Wah, friends, and more. Plus, we wouldn’t spend so much money on inter-island flight. I’m just a little frustrated right now because I’m getting sick our our smoking neighbors. And I’m a little annoyed that our landlord thinks it is our responsibility to keep the smoke out of our house. And he doesn’t want to tell the smokers to stop. Even though the smokers don’t have any sort of lease or anything. The landlord doesn’t even have their ssn. He just needs their money. But he’s gonna lose us and we pay him twice what they do. Anyway. that is that.

St. Patrick’s day is coming up and I don’t think my latest brew will be ready to drink. But that is ok. I still have previous batches to drink. 🙂 I’ll just have less. lol. Also, we’ll have corned beef. And that is very important.

Holly came home from her meeting in Kahului on Thursday with cinnamon bun ice cream. OMG it is so good. Amazing ice cream. It took all I had to not eat it all in one sitting. It ranks right up there with the Haagen Dazs Mayan chocolate ice cream (which is apparently discontinued). So sad.

Yesterday. We had a day of restlessness and tried to make the best of it. We can’t go anywhere and don’t have any money. So we had an imaginary day. We thought of all the places we would go and things we wanted to do if we could, and did our best to do it. We went to starbucks, the movies, the yarn store, and Gordon Beirsch. Which is to say that we made frozen iced coffee, watched a movie and made popcorn, found out that someone gave us a garbage bag full of yarn, and made Marzën burgers with bbq sauce and drank beer. It was really a good day. And it was made better by the fact that the neighbors weren’t home half the day and the rest of the day was windy so the smoke didn’t bother us. Unlike now. They are smoking for the 3rd time during this post. Grrr. But yesterday was a nice day.

Today was a pretty cruise day. Although I think we got a lot done. It was basically chore day. I did two loads of laundry, which included one load of nothing but baby blankets and towels. Something that much needed to get done. We swept, emptied garbages, cleaned kitty litter, took out the garbage, and made blondies. We also talked to the landlord about possibly finding a new place due to the chain smokers down stairs. I just don’t like waking up and having my first breath of the day be of someone else’s cigarette smoke. It’s just no good. I also met said chain smoker for the first time today. Surprisingly, he didn’t smell like smoke. But I still wish he would find himself without enough money for next month’s rent and move out. But his wife/girlfriend just got a job, so I don’t know if my dream of them moving out will come true. At least not next month. Oh well. I’ll keep dreaming anyway. So that was pretty much today. All the time in between those events were spent eating food or sitting on the couch doing nothing. For me anyway. Holly managed to complete two more drawings for her next book. I need to get a move on with the color. I’ve volunteered to do the coloring of the drawings. So I really should find the pen for the wacom tablet. It will be fun to do. Anyway. Not today. To end the night, I played a few games of UNO with Gavin. He is now coloring while I blog and watching Duff make a Boba Fett ship cake. After which I am going to put Gavin to bed. Which is to say, I’m going to lay with Gavin until he falls asleep, and fall asleep in the process. Which is fine with me. I’m tired.

Tomorrow, our to-do list consists of more eating, less cleaning, relaxing, drinking (need to empty some bottles to make room for the batch I’m currently brewing), probably watch a movie, and send Gavin to his friends house for a play date. I think that’s it. There will probably be a few things unplanned thrown in there, but whatever. It’s gonna be a chill day.

Ok. A night cap for me, and I’m out. G’ night.

I’ve posted lots of pictures and videos lately. But back to typing. There’s lots of drama here at our place. Each neighbor has something going on. Our new downstairs neighbors are stinky, jobless, donkey sex making, smoking, creepy people. The second newest neighbor is already gone. She couldn’t pay second months rent. She spent her one month here mooching off of everyone. Especially her closest neighbor, oldest neighbor. After 3 days, she decided that his house was hers and she should make herself at home there. She walked in, helped herself to the fridge and cigarettes, and even took spoonfuls of things that were still cooking to taste them. She tried to make friends with the locals and apparently has bad judgement. According to oldest neighbor and landlord, the people she was brining home were people that were not wanted here. Including a lesbian girl who spent the night and was disappointed when she tried to put the moves on her and was rejected. This was immediately followed by a brawl. But like, I said, this neighbor is gone already. I just hope the jobless, stinky neighbors follow suit. As for oldest neighbor, he’s been pretty cool lately and isn’t an issue. He smokes, but does so in front of his unit which is in the front of the house away from us. Even when I sit and chat with him, he stands a good 4 to 5 feet away to smoke because he is actually aware of surrounding people. Unlike certain jobless, stinky neighbors. But anyway, he’s pretty cool. He’s been out of work for a few weeks because he’s got some pretty severe pinched nerves in his back and randomly goes into convulsions. So he sits at home and smokes pot and plays guitar. He’s a good cook though. When he is working, he is a cook at the Hana hotel. We get along pretty good.

So yesterday, I managed to buckle Leif’s face into his car seat. 🙁 I feel so bad. He started to cry immediately. I thought maybe I pinched his finger and was surprised when a small oval white spot appeared on his cheek. Poor kid. I now know what his I’m-desperately-in-pain cry sounds like. Sad to say, I thought I knew what it was already.

I’m making my 3rd batch of beer tonight. It is the same as the last batch I made, only slightly different. I messed up the previous batch a little. You know, too much hops added at the wrong time, too much yeast, boiled to hot, etc. So I’m making it again. It won’t be exactly like the recipe says, but if it is close the the last one, it will be nice. The last batch (as well as this one) is an Irish Porter. It was quite delicious. It is really hoppy and a bit bitter, but it was really good. A real meat pie kind of beer. Yum yum. Next I make a hefeweizen.

Gavin is in Tai Kwon Do now. It’s actually been good for all of us I think. It’s a lot more involved and less “kids” oriented than his karate class in Bakersfield. We do kicks and sit-ups and push-ups almost nightly. Holly and I both do them with him. I’ve been back to using my door gym. Just a few every day. Might not get me crazy buff, but it will help keep from going flab. 🙂

So this past weekend when we went to Oahu so Mary and Holly could go to the opera, I got sick. Bleh. My tooth had been killing me from the root canal and it somehow migrated into swollen glands to fever to lightheadedness to no energy to a 5 hour mid-day nap. It was horrible. It sucked so bad. I was freezing all day long. Even if I was under blankets. I shook at night. I tried to fight it on Friday night while watching Leif and Gavin. I had to walk Leif every 45 minutes to get him back to sleep. And it wore me out so much. Saturday, we went to breakfast at the new restaurant across the street. It sucked. Not just that I was sick. The restaurant. It sucked. My waffle was delivered cold. Mary’s sausage and eggs and home fries were also cold. And the wheat toast they sent us was buttered with a knife that was covered in onion. Ick. I was sick and not feeling all happy and forgiving like, so I sent my waffle back. I wanted a warm one damn it. The rest of the day I was pretty useless. They all went shopping while I slept for 5 hours and then laid on the couch for another 2 hours.

Saturday night we decided to go out to eat at our favorite wanton restaurant, the Kin Wah. It is so good. And this was the night to go. We tried two new dishes; stuffed eggplant and honey-garlic chicken. The chicken was so yum. Right up there with their orange chicken. MMmmmm. On the way in, Gavin made me stop in the parking lot and admire some chinese drums and costumes and what not that was sitting in the back of a truck there. It was cool. I told Gavin that we’d have to see if we can show him a video or something of them in action. But I didn’t have to. Towards the end of dinner, our attention was brought to to just outside the doors by firecrackers and smoke. Then every few seconds we would see dragon heads pop up above a car. It was someone’s birthday and these dragons along with the drums and gong and other instruments made their way inside the Kin Wah and through the crowd towards the back where people from the party started stuffing little money envelopes into their mouths. It was really cool. Gavin wanted to put money in it’s mouth. So granny took him inside and let him stuff a dollar in. He was happy about that. I covered Leif’s ears to block from the noise a bit, but he was annoyed at me for trying to cover his ears. He wanted to see where the noise was coming from and didn’t seem to care about the cool costumes. But he didn’t cry or make a fuss. That was the best dinner at Kin Wah I think I’ve ever had. And we didn’t even have the mongolian beef. 🙂

Ok so I think I dragged on a bit. I’ll let you soak that in while I go get my wort into the fermenter. Good night all.