So after a long time of going through them and adding little synopsis to them... I've finished uploading both cameras worth and sorting them. Good god I took a lot of pictures.... even more so than Europe or Maui. Anyway... go check them out.

Had lots of fun and glad that we have a good travel group with Julie, Aaron, Louis, Courntney and Phillip.... went to Maui with Julie and Louis along with Krystal and we all had a great time then. I dunno seems like some trips its hard for people to all get on the same page and do stuff together... we seem to effortlessly.

Oh yea I guess I should include the link!

Costa Rica Pictures

Lots of fun... crazy zipline by an erupting volcano... so many pictures and I got them off of my camera just now.. gotta sort through them since we took two cameras. One is the expensive nice one... the other is the handheld waterproof camera that is good for toating around. I'd like to get them all in chronological order on my flickr but lets see how long that takes.

Costa Rica is a beautiful place with lots of wildlife... the only thing that disappointed me was how so many Americans living down there and buying property has gottten the locals to jack up prices that they are almost the same as America. You don't get that added benefit of getting discounts and going on a cheap vacation like you would in some parts of Mexico, etc. Cancun was kinda the same way but I kinda expected it there. Anyway... had lots of fun and drank lots of drinks and had about a half an inch of sand in the washing machine today hahahaha. oops. Pics to come soon!

I figured I'd post something on here to update and share more pictures! Just got back from a trip to Texas where we saw tons of people... more than before and still felt like we got nothing done and missed quite a few more people!

Anyway... I posted a few sets on my flickr account from the trip. Enjoy!

Here are some pictures from my Dad's new place on the Blanco River ... pretty nice looking

Here are some pictures from Jordan and Julia's housewarming party we surprised them at in Austin.

Here are some random pictures from other parts of the Houston leg of the trip

And finally some pictures from when a few of us went to Number's for one more Friday night happening.

Had a great time... I am just glad to be back in dry heat than that sticky mess in Houston. Sheesh!

So for the past few days or so Christopher has been a busy bee getting things for a server at the house done, backing up stuff, and transferring things to his new laptop and mine! No more 14 in screen that makes me want to keel people when I am using Photoshop... no more screen with little dark spots due to me cramming it under my car seat. So excited and even the internet works so much faster to load pages.

So while I was sleeping he got just about everything fixed up on my new laptop.. thanks baby! mwah!

So I've been going through and uploading them from the tour of California... we went on a tour of coffeehouses and cafes that started at San Francisco.. went down on the 101 to Monterey, picked up PCH which looks soooo beautiful just like the pictures I've always seen, stayed the night in San Luis Obispo, went through Santa Barbara... then ventured into LA. After touring the cafes there we met Bravo for sushi at our favorite place, Asuka, got me some new sneakers... then met Krystal Rocha in Santa Monica for some drinks at a random bar.
THEN the next day was my *birfaday!* and went to Disneyland ALLLL day long. It was so much fun. Slept the night in Anaheim and went to San Diego. Toured the cafes there then hung out with our friends Heather and Lou ... Krystal met us down there for some food and drink (she had a business meeting) and drove back the next day to Las Vegas

Mind you this was all within 6-7 days. We would have gone back to Napa if we hadn't gotten so drunk with our friend in San Francisco. Dangit!

Anyway here are the pictures with the nice camera from San Fran and the pretty pics from PCH. I only included the pictures of the top winner cafes from each of the major cities.

Here are the ones from the small digital camera we took in Disneyland and San Diego
Whew! We also went on a tour of shops in Portland (which was a neat town) and Seattle (which is a weird cold place) for some of the best coffee on the west coast.. I will have those posted soon as well. Woop!

So after a somewhat short trip to H-town and some unfortunate events.. we are back here just in time for the weekend. Woo man flight changes get expensive.

Had a great time.. glad we got the chance to see people on tues night. Got to go to Fioza to see Mike and Stacy's place with Stone and Meghan.. woo it was awesome! I had the Frappe Fioza, coconut cheesecake (omg soooo good) and raspberry angelfood cake that was really good as well. I went to pick up Jenny jen jen and met everyone (plus Sasha) at Chuys. Oh man how I have waited for me some Chuy's queso. Then Chris got off of work early and got to meet up at Cafe Brazil. More desserts! Mmm.... I feel like a whale now

We thought about going to Austin for the weekend instead and see the rest of the Texas folk but... realized it was Flipside this weekend so... that wouldn't have worked out. Hope all of you guys have a great time there, though.

Ah... well gotta go get my car out of the shop. My a/c went out and I prepared for the worst. Luckily my freon was overcharged and just needed to be drained and refilled properly. Awesome... 140 bucks compared to 1,200. First good news all week!

Here are the pictures from the trip.. not too many tho :(

But kids playing games need to have some damn respect. A whole herd of them running up and down the side walk at 9pm isn't the greatest time for kids to be playing but as I was on my computer by the door... a kid ran up and rang the bell 3-4 times repeatedly and ran off. Normally I wouldn't care.. its just kids playing... but little do they know Christopher is sick and trying to sleep and Nick goes to bed super early because he has to wake up at 4am. I was so fast out of the door the kids scattered like cockroaches... I yelled "WHO DID IT?!?! Someone is sleeping and very sick upstairs and it's getting late" oh not me not me I didn't do it they all said.
Their parents came out and said they dont know who did it but all apologized for them as well as some of the kids did... they said that whoever did it they told them not to. I said it's all good.. I wouldn't be so mad if people weren't sick and sleeping upstairs. Bah!
I am glad people feel like this complex is a safe place for their kids to live and run around... I just wish they had some sort of playground because the area our house is in seems to be the middle meeting point for a lot of the kids. I'm afraid they are going to get hurt with all of the gravel and curbs you can trip on when running.

Las Vegas is known for their horribly long wait times but I actually had a good experience the other night when I decided to see what stitches felt like! Yea... lesson learned... when freezing a bunch of turkey don’t put it all in one bag so you have to stab at it like your in the movie Psycho only to have the knife slip... go thru the turkey, the bag and ... your finger. I panicked and Christopher was sitting on the couch and I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was something along the lines of "help... cut!" while blood was going all over the place. I didn’t mind the blood but the site of the 1 inch cut splitting open almost made me pass out. Christopher calmly reminded me that its better to bleed over the sink instead of my nice dress and the floor.. then got me changed into comfy clothes that wouldn’t matter if they got messy and headed off to the ER. There are 3 hospitals in the area we live in and I had forgotten about the new one only about 2 miles from the house. One of the St. Rose Dominican chain of hospitals.... surprisingly I was in and out, stitched up and everything, within an hour and a half. Nice staff... real quick and followed up with me the next day. I will definitely go there again if another problem arises. In a city where its known for 5-8 hour wait times in the ER glad to know there is a place that isn’t like that...

So on the way home Continental lost one of the bags. Which is odd since we both checked in at the same time and she put little fancy yellow "elite member" tags on them. We waited and waited and alas.. the second bag never made it out. The good thing was all of the dirty clothes were packed into that one bag but bathroom stuff and my very needed hairdryer was in it! Whatever shall I do! heh.

This is the first time I have had a bag lost by someone OTHER than America West (aka America WORST or even crappier now US airways) or Southwest. Actually the baggage handlers didn't do anything wrong, it was the lady at the counter. She was in such a damn hurry to get us moving along because we were worried about the storm brewing in Texas that she miss labeled Christophers bag with some womans name on it. We stopped in houston but stayed on the same plane... but that one bag got off while we kept going to Vegas. So when we got to Vegas the man said "i show you didn't even check a bag".. swell! Luckily I stuck an id tag on it when we left town.

So lesson learned? Check that little computer printout of the baggage label to make sure it says your name and not something like Michelle Calgry or whatever. Got it delivered this morning as we were waking up.

We've been in Boston since Sunday evening ... flying to the east coast just BLOWS when you cross three time zones going from west to east. Left when the sun was coming up over Sunrise Mountain in Las Vegas around 7am and landed in Boston around 5 pm as the sun was setting (one hour layover in Cleveland on the way). Mike LaRosa and Donna offered us to stay at their new townhome in Cambridge ... which was awesome and not too far away from the subway so we could get to the convention center in about 30 minutes.
First night we went to a Brazilian cafe that was really good in their neighborhood... two of the days we went to bed around 8pm since we got up at 6am and went for 12 hrs at the convention so.. by the time we got back to their place I could barely stand. Had a mixer at club Felt ... met some interesting ppl in the cab line and had some sushi a block away from where the mixer was going to be held. Went out until about midnight and had the worst cab ride on the way back... haha. Had a 3lb lobster for lunch one of the days and some clams on the halfshell at another place nearby the first night. I think I have had 3 bowls of clam chowder this week... mmmmmm so good.

Last night we went out to dinner with Mike and Donna at a place in the North End (italian restaurants one after another on little streets like it is in europe). Omg the food was so good... Christopher and I had this for our main dish. Its an open ravioli with whole shrimp and scallops on the inside and the sauce was a lobster marscapone sauce with zucchini in it. Afterwards they took us to an Italian dessert place... where I had a phallic rum cake that was yummy.

I have never been to the north east (besides a trip to DC in 8th grade) but I have liked it here quite a bit. Besides it being colder than a witches tit, I really have liked Boston. Seems like only the rude ones end up visiting Las Vegas so I was pretty surprised when everyone here has been nice/helpful (well except for the one cabbie .. but hey... i dont expect much from them.. though the cabbie on the way to the italian place was super nice when we couldnt find the restaurant and even turned off his meter). On the way to the convention center today there were 2 women who were randomly nice pointing at our suitcases and telling us how the bus we were getting on didn't go all the way to the airport and that bus is on down the platform. How nice of them...
Anyway.. wish we had more time to explore and visit with Mike and Donna but alas.. we are out of time and our flight leaves here at 6pm. I hope it wont be delayed much due to a front heading to Texas (our layover is in Houston!) we shall see!

Anyway.. back to the Drupal sessions... my head might explode