Baby Fever

It’s been a while since the blog has been updated. Lots of things have happened since then. Just a few shout outs:

Congratulations to Cindy & Keith on baby Trinity (June 22nd)!!
Congratulations to Michelle on buying her first house!!!
Congratulations to Phyllis & Travis on baby Hannah Grace (July 4th)!!

It’s all very exciting news and I’m so happy for everyone! To add to that, Peter and I should become an Uncle & Aunt (respectively) in September! We are so very excited about that. In fact, that’s what I will start the blog with.

Barbara & Ryan are due in September. Her pregnancy is going really well and things are really coming together. Having dinner with them the other night, it seems that everything is going well, the baby’s room is nearly set up, furniture will come together soon and the baby shower is almost here!! The baby shower is only a couple weeks away and my mother-in-law, Lee has everything planned. It’s going to be a fun and wonderfully intimate baby shower! I offered up my condo to host the baby shower which gave Lee a lot of ideas and room to breath in terms of decorating, food options and availability. I hope to finish the baby blanket I’ve been working on in time for the shower. It’s really coming together and I’m so excited!

On top of that, I have been at my new job for about 2 months now. I am enjoying the challenge though some of the learning process is frustrating. I wish I just had the knowledge to jump right in and get it done but it’s different from my last position and so I start from scratch. I’m asking a lot of questions though and my colleagues are all really helpful. I get along well with all of my coworkers and things are going great. I’ve actually been tasked with my own territory! So, I must be doing something right in order to be in charge of my own territory!

To add to that, I have taken on a second job for a wedding/event planning company. They were looking for some part-time hires (I’ve sent them my resume months ago) for some weekend work. I figured it was a good opportunity to see if this is a career path I want to pursue. I don’t have to sacrifice my day job to pursue something I may or may not like and this will be some extra cash on the side that I wouldn’t mind having. Who doesn’t mind some extra cash? Besides, I might enjoy it. Whoop whoop!

And in addition to THAT, I am volunteering with the Make-A-Wish foundation. In fact, I am going to be volunteering for the first time at Lime Rock Park (CT) for the American le Mans Northeast Grand Prix! It’s for a good cause and I get a chance to see the Le Mans Grand Prix?! SIGN ME UP. I must admit, I do have to partially blame Peter and EFI Logics for really getting me into the whole car scene. I love cars, looking at cars and discussing cars way more than I used to. Now, I can understand why Peter paid so much attention to his car in the past (poor Peter). For as long as I have this car, I will never get tired of seeing the surprised look on guys’ faces when they realize it’s a girl driving this badass EVO (and they know I can beat them). It’s even better when I’m able to talk them down because I know so much more about cars than they do. No, I didn’t just read the brochure (if anyone can guess what movie I got that from, I will give you a cookie), I actually know how my car mechanically works. I can’t say I know a lot about other cars but the more I’m exposed, the more I learn. It’s fun stuff!

Speaking of cars, Peter and I just recently went to WBM (Wicked Big Meet) in mid-June. It was one of the largest Subaru events in the Northeast with over 1300 cars and probably well over 2000 people. I set up EFI Logic’s vendor booth for the event which was a lot of work. But, it was well worth it. Seeing the end result as well as how much traffic & exposure we got was just priceless. Peter got really sun burned but survived. It was a hilarious sight when he took off his shirt that night! Best part of the day? Getting a run in the EVO race car at the end of the day, squealing through the turns and being thrown around! Being a race car, it was gutted so the seat was literally sitting on the floor. I could barely see a thing but the run itself was just amazing. I’ve been wanting to track my Evo and that was even more encouragement to go and do it! The Evo needs to pay a visit to Lime Rock.

Speaking of the Evo, she recently got new wheels as well as some new rubber to go with it (Dunlop Star spec Z1s). They are white Rota Grids, 18x9.5, making the car look super aggressive. Apparently, Rob & Peter say it looks sick on the highway as it crouches and looks lower. I almost want to have Peter drive my car so I can see, but…nah! I think I’ll take their word for it! Putting a wider wheel on did mean I did rub my fender a bit so Peter got the fender roller and rolled them for me. Now, no more rubbing!! I’m glad the rubbing is gone because it annoyed me so much, I didn’t drive my car for a week or two. In addition to some new wheels, it got a detailing over this weekend! It really did look spectacular afterwards though I wish we were able to do all that work on Peter’s car instead (his needs it more). It was also raining that day so it was a little frustrating to work in and we weren’t getting as much assistance as we had hoped. Any assistance we did get, we got different opinions from different people so it was a little difficult to gauge. But, it was all good and a worthwhile trip. The guy next to me detailing his Mustang GT was kind enough to buff out the scratches on my spoiler, whoo! Due to the wheels & tires, I won’t be adding new mods for a little bit (or so that’s the plan). But, when I am ready, I will be changing out my intercooler for a larger one, changing my flex intercooler pipes for some metal ones (probably preferably AMS) and adding a cold air intake. After that, I will have to get it retuned. I don’t think I’ll do much more to it after that.

To end my blog post, my cousins and their significant others decided to come up for a visit this past Friday & Saturday! So, they all came up on Friday, we had breakfast for dinner (pancakes, waffles, eggs and bacon) and then we started on our first Heineken keg. We found out pretty quickly that wouldn’t be nearly enough as we started our first game of Kings and asked Peter to go out and get another! We went through that one as well during our second and third game of Kings. We weren’t drunk, just happy and decided to have a second dinner which consisted of some quickly grilled frozen hamburgers! Then we all chilled out, played a bunch of Jenga and proceeded to go to bed at ~1am.

Saturday came and everyone was up by 11:30 or so! I went out for my interview at around 9am and by the time I came home, everyone was pretty much awake. Chilling out on the couch, a few watched Space Jams, you know, the one with Michael Jordan (been a while since I’ve seen that one) and I started to cook lunch which were fresh hamburgers, hot dogs and chips! After lunch, Louis mentioned how nice it was outside and suggested we go out to enjoy the outdoors. Between Deanna & Danny, we had a couple bats, a couple balls and baseball mitts as well as a nerf football…thinger. We went to the park at the end of the street and ran around, threw the ball around, etc.! As surprised as you may be, we all got some good exercise in for at least a good hour or two or even more and we brought a whole cooler of iced water (not beer!). We were actually active, who would’ve thought that would happen?!

We stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up some drinks and went back home to find Peter had washed my car! Came home, relaxed a little bit and started a game of Life! I did not have the original and this version really sucked. I will have to get the original. I was set to win with my 1.5million but Lauren took a bet on the wheel and won! So, she became automatic winner and millionaire of Life! After that, they all started to play some Apples to Apples while I prepared dinner. Dinner was simple enough – marinated chicken (teriyaki, green onion, sesame) and beef skewers (marinated beef, bell peppers, onions, pineapple) with rice. Simple enough, just grilled everything and we all had dinner. Then, more Apples to Apples as I prepared Sammy’s surprise ice cream birthday cake! It was a great surprise and a good dessert. A couple more rounds of Apples to Apples and everyone left around 9pm!

So, life has been very busy lately and will continue to be busy but I’m okay with that. I’m enjoying everything and doing my best. Work hard, play hard and enjoy life.

Oh, as a last note, can you believe that Peter and I will celebrate our 1-year anniversary in just 19 days? I really can’t believe that a year has really gone by so quickly! We have no major plans for our anniversary yet, other than to go to our geek fest anime convention, Otakon the weekend after. We are gearing up to begin planning our Japan trip all over again as well! I will need to research if any of the places we researched were affected and if there were any significant price changes.

I’m looking forward to our 1-year anniversary. Time is really flying. Before you know it, we will be pregnant! For the record though, while I do have baby fever with all of these babies surrounding us, we do not plan for one until at least after the honeymoon.