fuzzykitty

Continuing with my car theme, this weekend I covered a plastic license plate frame with leftover mosaic tiles and grouted it.  Don’t you think the two red hearts add a nice touch? 

 If you want to see a further away picture of the frame installed click here or check out my mosaic process here!

While driving my car a few weeks ago Darrell got pulled over on his way to paintball because I did not have a front plate.  I quickly ordered a license plate bracket from Eight08 Customs so I wouldn’t have to drill holes into my car and to avoid any future tickets.  Well today my wonderful husband installed my license plate bracket.  He did get dirty, and he did break small pieces of my car, and curse a bit but he did manage to get it installed and it looks great!

 If you are interested you can see the installation steps performed by Darrell himself here.

 

A couple of weeks ago I brought my Roomba Red vacuum into work to show a co-worker because he was thinking of getting one.  This is right after the refurbished ones were for sale on Woot.  Anyway, I brought it in and it didn’t work!  My precious Roomba that had been working flawlessly all of a sudden quit! 

I was very sad and the floor got very hairy; I have long hair and shed horribly in the summer. So, I attempted to troubleshoot my issue on the Romba Review site and through my manual.  I finally attempted to call Roomba’s support line before my Monday night swim class and sat on hold for a technician for 30 minutes.  I finally hung up and called again from work later in the in week.  I have found that the best chance of getting through quickly is when they first open on Wednesday or Thursday.  When I finally did get through Emily answered the phone.  I had spoken with the same Emily in October when my Roomba failed to charge and she sent me a new charger and new Roomba.  I did have to keep my old battery though for the new machine.  Emily is a technical support super star and she has a great phone voice.  She asked me several questions and then said she would be sending me a new battery for free ($49.99 value).  Yay free!  I was afraid I’d have to pay for the battery or a new Roomba. 

Well my battery arrived on Thursday and I promptly placed it in my Roomba and set it on it’s docking station to charge. 

Today I started my Roomba and left for the movies.  As we drove to the theater I realized that I had forgotten to blow out one of my candles and I turned around to go back home.  When I got home I found that my Roomba had stopped and it’s light was flashing red.  I turned Roomba off and then back on.  It only went for thirty seconds and made a very unhappy beep.  I left the Roomba and went to see Nacho Libre, which was pretty funny!  When I got home I reset my Roomba, emptied the dust bin, re-seated my battery and tried to start it again.  It still wasn’t working right.  I started my normal Roomba troubleshooting routine again but found no help.  I picked up my Roomba again to see if was anything stuck in it and buried under the brush I saw one of Kitty’s mice!  Ugh!  Since removing the mouse Roomba works perfectly!

Besides the Roomba and movies I have been cleaning like mad and getting my car filthy by driving to the Walmart farmer’s market in the rain (which was a very pleasant surprise!).

 

We are so ready for our vacation in July!  This week we reserved a jeep and ordered a map of the Mayan Riviera so we can visit our favorite places and explore new ones on our own.  We also discussed our plans for this trip and decided that our favorite day was spent on the beach in front of our hotel sitting under an umbrella.  So, we agreed to have more of these relaxing days and to not take any guided tours. 

 

We celebrated my two year smokeaversary on the 8th with a good meal at one of my favorite places.  I am very happy that I quit and wish I had done it sooner.  Since quitting I have found that my sense of smell has become much sharper and that I am now a little sensitive to the smell of smoke.

 

I have ordered a new George Foreman G5 grill with changeable plates to replace my old, but wonderful, GF grill which I received for Christmas three years ago.  We have an incredibly small kitchen and I am desperate to find one machine that does several things such as this one as it has the ability to grill, griddle, waffle, and work other wonders.  This week I have been using my GF grill to grill veggies and some hamburgers from Omaha Steaks for my husband.

 

I am more than half way through my swim lessons and I already feel much more comfortable in the water.  Our teacher is trying to teach us some complicated moves to help us learn the necessary steps to freestyle which I am not very good at.  I have been trying to practice my moves in the pool with ‘Coach’ Darrell but I am still not very graceful.  I am just happy knowing that I won’t drown and can swim alright.  I am not hoping to join an Olympic team after my session is through.

 

I haven’t made anything creative lately and kind of feel like I have been in a boring slump.

The above picture was taken with our cell phone during the Nine Inch Nails show last night at the Verizon Amphitheater which was completely awesome!  We saw several co-worker friends there and sweated the night out in our VIP seats.  It was so hot I was afraid that Peter Murphy would melt into a little goth puddle right there on the stage but instead he carried on with some odd yoga inspired bird moves.  Nine Inch nails went on soon after and the crowd became very animated and sang just about every lyric to every song! 

 I was surprised to see that cell phones have replaced the lighter during slower songs.  Maybe it is just more common to have a cell phone than a lighter handy and less people are smoking, after all my two year smokeiversary is coming up on Thursday. 

Towards the end of the show a very drunk guy behind Darrell started leaning on the back of my husband’s chair and hanging over him.  It was kind of annoying but we didn’t say anything.  Before long, his friends were asking him to sit down but he refused.  Instead I looked over at Darrell and found a complete stranger hugging him and slobbering on his cheek.  I guess Darrell made a new friend, his name was Bob, and he was very sorry for whatever it was he was doing.  For the rest of the show Bob would periodically hug Darrell, slobber on his cheek, or attempt some drunken manly handshake with him.  Darrell was a good sport but I guess now matter how much you pay for your tickets you can’t pick who you are going to sit by.

Last week we took a quick trip to Falls Church, Virginia and also visited Washington DC.  It was great!  I had never been so far east before so I was really looking forward to the trip.  The three main places I wanted to visit were Trader Joes, Wegmans, and Lush.  In addition to these places I also visited the Museum of American History, Museum of Natural History and National Gallery of Art.

 We were pretty hungry and ate at the Elephant & Castle on Pennsylvania which wasn’t as great as I had hoped and then headed to the White House.  Darrell heard two big helicopters so we had to stop and look at them, they were both Presidential Helicopters.  So we continued to walk to the White House and were stopped, along with all the other tourists, until the helicopters landed and left.  Once they left we were able to actually see the White House which was pretty far away but huge!  I took this picture of Darrell in front of it:

 

We hung out at the Sculpture Garden and the Butterfly Garden and then hopped on the Metro and hit Lush in Georgetown.   I decided that my legs would not be able to carry me back to the Metro station so we quickly learned the bus route.

 We also got to see a couple of old friends (Gary & Chrizto) and a new one (Erin)!  I loved Chrizto’s license plate so I asked him to pose with it:

Tomorrow we are headed to our first Nine Inch Nail concert in over 10 years!  Oh man, we are old!