PARTY!!! PARTY!!!

In Jen's family, everyone is born by a holiday. Her brother is two days shy of Christmas, one sister is the day before New Year's Eve and the other is the day after the 4th of July. But Jen has a special holiday by her birthday: Super Bowl Sunday.

It's been somewhat a tradition for her to watch the SuperBowl on Sunday and cook whatever tailgate food she wants; usually burgers, but she's gotten really good at steaks and other stuff too. But this year it might be different.

There is a four-month streak of events for us: November is our anniversary, Christmas in December, Jen's birthday in January and Valentine's Day in February. Usually we do well the first two, have fun on her birthday, and then just relax for Valentine's. But this year, since we had a somewhat lean holiday season, and because her birthday falls on a Saturday, we're switching things up a bit.

We started our celebrations yesterday. Since Jen put a lot of OT in these last few weeks, and since she refuses to claim it to avoid the wrath of the money-counters, she took off early yesterday and met Jeff at the California Cafe, a really nice restaurant between Stanford Medical and the shopping center. It was a pretty nice restaurant that has a slightly elegant feel to it, especially considering Jen had a burger ;-). But it was a calm way to start off the festivities.

Tonight we are eating out again, this time in downtown Palo Alto. There is a restaurant called Pampas that serves Brazilian churrasco (pronounced something like Chew-hah-sco). They roast different meats on swords with only a little bit of salt, and the waiters go around offering different pieces to the diners (still attached to the swords... the meat, not the waiters!). There is also a very beautiful salad bar with all sorts of exotic fruits and dressings and a bunch of wines and drinks that we won't try, but are pretty to watch everyone else enjoy.

Despite wanting to sleep in, that doesn't look like it'll happen tomorrow. Jen's brother wants to go shooting for her birthday (I think we did something like that the year before) so we're going to a range in Milpitas to target shoot (With all the animals Jen has, there's no doubt she will never try hunting). Then the afternoon will be the family dinner at Texas Roadhouse, another steakhouse. Jen picked it so she could continue with her "Red Neck Birthday" theme, and since it's not too expensive or fussy, she figured her folks would enjoy it as well.

Then, finally, the big event: SuperBowl Sunday. We are still debating on that one. One of the doctors that Jen works with is having a huge SuperBowl party, and that is somewhat appealing, since Jen has never been to his house. Otherwise, if we partied too hard, we'll probably make a ton of snacks and enjoy the game from home. So Sunday is yet to be determined, but it should be a packed weekend regardless.

It's about time!

I apologize. I really do. I am still trying to find out how to add the slideshows to the blog itself, instead of on the side. Oh, well. At least we're blogging, right?

Last weekend was pretty crazy. It was supposed to be my last days home and I was supposed to start work back at the University on Monday. Well, that didn't QUITE happen.

On Saturday, some good happened. Stewie, one of the chinchillas that we saved from the garage sale, gave birth to two babies. The lighter baby is a little boy we named Scout Finch and the dark gray little girl is Boo Radley (From "To Kill A Mockingbird"). Mommy and mini-chinchillas are doing wonderful, and Jeff and I are finding any reason to play with them!

Then, Sunday morning, IT happened. We woke up in the morning to a flood in our apartment! I had woken up at 5 in the morning because I heard the babies making noises, and all was good, but when we got up for the day, we discovered an inch of water in our second bathroom, office, front door, and seeping into our dining area and kitchen! It turns out that our noisy neighbors upstairs flushed things that are unflushable (I'll spare you the graphic details) and it lodged into our shared pipes, and since we are on the bottom, we had the worst of the damage.

The managers of the complex were less than nice about it, and most of them still won't answer when we call (stupid caller ID) but at least the maintenance and rug guys were quick. I ended up missing two days of work because they wound up replacing ALL of the carpet in our place in 48 hours.

I'm sure many of you think it sounds nice. New carpets at someone else's expense, right? Well, it wouldn't have been so bad, except we had to find out where to put all of our furniture. The first day was the hardest because we only had one hour's notice to empty our office, dining room and walk-in closet, and it was raining so our patio was off-limits. Needless to say, with the help of the rug men (who we gave lunch to both days for helping us move it all!) we pulled it off.

The one downer was the office. I had finally organized all of my books (no easy task, mind you) and my DVDs and was about to start our CD collection, but in order to move the shelves, we just took stuff off and stacked it everywhere we could. So tomorrow I will probably finish reorganizing it all. My only day off this weekend, because I went in today to make up for the work I missed the other days. BLEAH!

But on to more news.

Tonight Jeff and I managed to actually spend time together. Lately he's worked nights at GAP and I'm at Stanford during the day, and with all the catching up with the research we've been doing, I haven't been awake when he's gotten home. But that will all change soon. Although he's only been at the store in Newark for a month, he was offered a promotion at another store. I haven't seen the new store, a lot of my coworkers tell me it's in a well-off area in Los Gatos. So I guess that's a good thing.

Well, off to munch on ice cream. If I get the photos up, I'll have to tell you the story about tonight's dinner.

The Final Headcount

It's way late here, but I thought I'd share the newest numbers in our family.

Humans: 2, Jeff and Jen
Dogs: 1, Christopher
Fish: 8 still, we think.
Parakeets: 4, Thing, Horton, Ren and Stimpy 2.
Chinchillas: 11, Andy, Cullen, Fibel, Calvin, Hobbes, Dash, Violet, Brian, Stewie, and now, Scout and Boo, 36 hours old.