this place often has the steepest gas prices in town but it was about $4.00 for premium at other gas stations around town

flower patch in Old Town San Diego

we might move again. all along it has been the plan. we never intended to stay in San Diego long-term but we did stay here one year longer than planned. landscape architecture as a whole is getting hurt by the state of the economy right now. it makes sense i guess; why would one invest in landscaping when they can't afford their mortgage.
its not that we are exactly suffering or anything but it is time to move on with our intended plans of moving to Minnesota where we do plan to live for the rest of our lives. buy a home. have children. live the dream. and hopefully work hard and save big so that we can retire early. well, so Carl can retire early. i honestly don't mind working a little longer, especially if i take some time off from a paid position to raise our family. i do want to vacation though but perhaps i will have a flexible job by that point. that would be ideal so we could explore the world from time to time but wouldn't necessarily be around each other all the time. that would be hard on my nerves, although i love carl dearly, because i just NEED alone time so that i appreciate our time together so much more, and i have something to talk about.

I had a hard time getting rid of my last name. it was something i was so proud of growing up. Everyone knew who the Medinas were, even if they didn't quite know who i was specifically, people knew of me because they knew my brothers.
When i got married i didn't want to give up the last name so i hyphenated it and dropped my middle name instead. it was too much anyway and my mom was the only one who used my middle name, when she wanted to make me mad.
Medina, MN is about 45 minutes outside of Minneapolis and i just had to go see it when we moved to Minneapolis. There isn't much to it. i can remember a bowling alley, a motel, and two water towers. Not much to mean much to me about the town but the surname means a lot to me and although I have four brothers to carry on the family name, I just couldn't let go.

looking back at my childhood. this is a photo of my brothers and i in front of the house in Grace, Idaho. i am guessing i was about 6 years old making noe 5, esau 7, abe 9, and junior 11. i am just guessing though.

one

as you can see in the photo there is only one baby. Maybe i am not seeing things clearly but I don't think there are two babies anymore. It might have been eaten by that crow we saw lurking around the nest a few times, or perhaps it didn't hatch, or something else. whatever the case its sad to us that we are only seeing one when we earlier saw two. it also makes me wonder why the beak doesn't look hummingbird like. is this even a hummingbird? i will keep my eyes on it.

carl and i started running again. i don't want to run more than 3 miles at a time this time around, at least until i resolve the issue with my knees. they use to hurt all the time just from standing all day but the pain has decreased dramatically. i have been taking glucosamine and it seems to have helped because my knees no longer hurt, even when i wear crappy flip flops instead of shoes with cushion and support. my right knee still makes some squishy sound that worries me a bit but i rarely notice except when doing lunges or other exercises focusing on the knee.

It was my mother-in-laws birthday today. we called her earlier today. well carl did and i just yelled from a distance but than i had to brush my teeth and couldn't talk.

My day...

It's my dad's birthday today. He's 54 today. Is that right? He was born in 1954. I believe its right. I called him earlier but he wasn't answering his cell. Maybe I should try again. this day was full of photo opportunities. i started my day by volunteering at an MSWalk as a cheerer at the start/finish line. I just had to shout, 'Hurray, good job' for an hour and a half. it was more fun than i thought it would be but i didn't get a free pass into legoland like i kind of hoped i would. From there i took the long way home along the 101 and stopped at various spots to look around. the first photo was at a campsite in carlsbad, the second at the beach in Del Mar, and the last one was at a site in La Jolla where paragliders take off. That was fun to watch. one paraglider didn't look like he was going to make it and just as he took his last step off the cliff and started going down his parachute did its job and he started climbing into the sky.

gas prices guzzle up money

I paid over $32.00 yesterday to fill up my car. This is the first time I got over $30, a new milestone for my car. The price per gallon is up to $3.739 in San Diego right now. I heard that the national average is at $3.49. That would be nice. I get my gas at Vons because it gives me a 3 cent per gallon savings but if I were to drive next door to Chevron I would find myself paying about 10 cents more and if i wanted premium I would be paying up to $4.00 per gallon. OUCH!!
I guess certain things will always be monitored and any little price mark-up is widely discussed such as gas, or milk or eggs, as well as some fruits and vegetables. Those are all essential to me though so I pay no matter what the price. I can do without meats but I need my veggies, fruits, and dairy. Actually, I don't always notice the price hikes when I am paying because I buy when items are on sale or in season and if they seem too pricey at the time I just put off buying that particular item until next time.

If you look closely within the nest you will see that the two eggs have hatched into two baby hummingbirds. I believe they hatched yesterday or even the day before because that is when we first noticed that the mama was standing at the nest instead of sitting on it but it wasn't until today that we really noticed what was going on within the nest. Actually Carl noticed when he saw a crow hanging around the nest and he shooed it away. It made us wonder what he was doing around the nest so Carl peeked into it and said he thought he saw two birds. I didn't fully believe him, it seemed too soon, and i was a bit afraid that the crow had somehow hurt the eggs so i was hesitant to look but i finally got the nerve and grabbed the camera in order to get a better look and this is the shot i got. Since the birds make no noise we still wondered if perhaps they were dead but after many anxious minutes of waiting for the mom we saw that they were and she was feeding them.
that was just part of our day. It was hot this whole weekend but because we hate being cooped up we went out for a hike this morning in this Mission Gorge park. The hike was about 4 miles roundtrip but we saw an old dam. the hike was nice overall but it was so hot out there even at 10 a.m. and when we got back to the car we found that we had a flat tire. So we had to deal with that and it took up the rest of our morning (waiting in line for 40 minutes at Sears didn't help).
so that was my day. A busy Sunday full of surprises.
by the way the soup the other day came out really good and close to the original.

Byerly's Wild Rice Soup

This a soup from Byerly's, a high-end grocery store in Minneapolis (it has carpeted aisles!). Carl introduced it to me on a cold Minnesota winter when nothing could warm me up, then I tried a hot bowl of soup with crackers and I warmed up all the way down to my soul. It was amazingly good and became a special occasion meal from then on. The problem came when we moved to California because I couldn't find it here, not having any Byerly's nearby.
We still got our fix when we visited Minneapolis but that has been so infrequent that today I decided that I would attempt the recipe from home. I went online and found the recipe and started....
Well, I haven't finished making it yet because I have to cook the rice for an hour first but I will be finishing it soon and I will let you know how it turns out. I hope it turns out as good as the original because I take pride in recreating my favorite restaurant recipes (like the Olive Garden soup I mastered a few years ago).

i've been sick

a severe cold or the flu? i don't know but i do know that i have felt horrible for the past four days, yesterday being the worst day of all. i didn't even enjoy the many hours of daytime TV that i would ordinarily enjoy on a healthy day. the plus side has been that i got to use two sick days to get better. i rarely use sick days. in fact these are the first two sick days i have used at this job that i have been at for a little over a year. the sick day i am using today is mostly to make sure i am feeling better and to get everything cleaned up and washed in the apartment (blankets, germ-infested surfaces). i had a slight fever last night, nothing too high but high enough to keep me sweating all night long although i slept pretty soundly when i was out. i woke up only once at 2:30 a.m. i woke up thinking, "wow, i feel much better". it must have been when my fever finally broke and i was back to normal. well, not normal but the cold sweats stopped and that was nice. now if i can only get rid of my cough and chest congestion i will be 100%.

why i struggle with going green

I recently went to a sight about going green and it had a quiz to see how many "green leaves" i had determined by how many questions about my green habits I could answer. I got 27 leaves. It is not great but i realized that I could do better but do i want to?
My problem with going 'greener' is that i have trouble giving up certain things such as showers everyday, not flushing the toilet when i go pee, recycling (in a recycle unfriendly area), biking to work (it may not be far to work but that's because i take the freeway), our two vehicles (but when they die we are thinking are getting hybrids).

I must state that there are many things Carl and I have done in order to be 'greener'. such as...

1. walking when something is close (like the grocery store, the bars, the bank, and many eateries)
2. buying recyclable bags to use at the grocery store (we do have to remember to bring them though, and often we just go without any bag and just carry our stuff in our arms)
3. replacing most of our light bulbs with fluorescents
   
4. not using any heat or cooling in our place (blankets in the winter and cool breezes in the summer keep our temps bearable, plus we live in San Diego)
5. using refillable bottles (i just changed from my Nalgene bottles to Kleen Kanteen and Sigg and it was costly, over $50, in order to avoid the possibility of plastic leaching
6. we try not to buy too much new stuff and donate our old stuff, as much as possible

We are trying like you can see and there are many other things we intend to do such as buying from farmers markets, getting energy-star appliances, using other house products that don't introduce harmful chemicals into our home, and composting. Some of these things can be started now but many won't be implemented until we get our own home because as renters we can't do certain things (composting!). oh well, we are trying and hope to do better over time. It is easier then in the past since it is now everywhere.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR GILLIES

This is the cake creation for Carl's 35th birthday. It is a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting with a caramel swirl ice cream center. I found that frosting does not stick to ice cream, but only after I tried it various times. I am pretty excited about trying it out but that will have to wait since Carl and I are going out for dinner and a movie with some friends of his. The friends coming along was supposed to be a surprise but not that long ago, as I was having Jenn help me figure out who would be coming, Carl found out. He is at the office right now and that's how he found out. Mark asked everyone, "who's coming to Carl's thing tonight", while Carl was in the office and Carl immediately called me to let me know that Mark had let the cat out of the bag. Oh well. He does hate surprises.
I do to. I just found out that a trip I had planned for the two of us tomorrow got cancelled due to insufficient interest. Bums me out and I am scrambling to find another option.

35 reasons to love Carl L. Gillies

1. you are always there when I need you
   
2. You make me laugh till i cry (and panic till i cry but you don't mean to)
   
3. your need to excel in even the smallest of things (card games)
   
4. you are friends with my brothers and kind to my parents
5. you are good to your parents and sister
6. you are such a good host and have great manners (something i must work on)
7. you are never jealous, well perhaps just jealous enough, but not scary jealous
8. you don't try to control me
9. i love your intelligence
10. i love the way you encourage me in my never-ending hobbies
11. your secret ingredient, love, makes all your food taste better than mine
12. i love that you can change a car radiator then make a lasagna, blowing away my father's ideas of what is man's work
13. I love how you will encourage me when i am frightened to try new things
14. i love that you know when to back off when i am not willing to try a new thing

More reasons to be added over time

Pregnant Man Makes Headlines

okay. this image has been all over the news recently. the 'man' is actually pregnant. 'His' name is Thomas Beattie and his story is that his wife couldn't conceive so he decided to carry the child. what makes this possible is that he was formerly a she and had a sex change above but left the uterus below making it possible for him to carry a child now. He is to be on Oprah to discuss this today but i doubt i will watch it. My views are already set on this whole situation, and my views are? I accept it and would hate for Beattie to recieve negative attention from all this (although i am sure he is) but it is bizarre. The news has a lot of bizarre stories and because I am a big news fan I will likely be commenting on them from time to time on my blog.
I also wanted to mention a story about some third-graders who were caught in a plot to hurt their teacher. It all started when one little girl got in trouble in class and was instructed to sit in time-out. It didn't go over all that hot with the girl because that evening she got two classmates, a boy and a girl, to join her in a plan to get back at the teacher. They all had their own parts in the plan, such as covering the windows, hitting the teacher over the head with a blunt object, than stabbing her with a knife. One student even had the role of clean-up. Now what kind of children are these? I imagine the main little girl comes from a family that doesn't give her the proper attention but allows her to get away with everything, therefore making a small time-out at school seem monumental to her. They were all caught before the teacher was hurt and charges pressed against them. So young.

the blue M&M

their is a commercial on tv right now that shows a blue M&M sitting on a couch. it looks just like CArl. it makes me laugh so hard that i don't actually know what the commercial is about. what happens with this M&M? i don't know. i laugh so hard i cry and get cramps then i stop laughing only to think about it again and start all over. i don't know if carl likes this or not but he showed the commercial to a buddy of his at work, and the buddy agrees with me. Carl is a blue M&M.