Emma's Fantabulous Blog

So its a little past 4am on Saturday morning and I’m totally battling some insomnia. I really hate bogus-ness. I’m the girl who slept for almost 36 hours with only minor interruptions when I was 19! I had sleeping skills of epic proportions. Now it seems like I’m always either exhausted or wide awake. Meh. I’m getting old or something. Am I loosing my sleeping edge?  Devon started snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow but I don’t feel tired yet. I guess I’ll fill the time by blogging.

On a positive note, Devon and I just threw an awesome Dinner & a Movie Night #3. We watched a French movie called Wasabi, with Jean Reno. We were lazy and watched the dubbed version instead of subtitles. It’s a really cool movie.

An over-zealous French cop returns to Japan after finding out that his long lost love died and named him in her will. Turns out that he’s the dad of her 17 year old kid, and he’s named guardian of her until she turns 18 in 2 days. Craziness ensues when he finds out that his ex-girlfriend was deep undercover in the Yakuza (Japanese mafia).

For dinner, I ended up ordering a big sushi tray from Central Market when I realised that we were missing our sushi-making implements. (Central makes a mean sushi tray, BTW) I made a tofu, noodle & veggie stir-fry and Devon grilled up some Chicken Teriyaki – using my dad’s recipe. We, of course, had sake. Both filtered and unfiltered. For snacks I served edamame, and random weird Japanese snacks (seaweed wrapped rice crackers, roasted green peas and sesame cookies) that i found in the Asian food section.

For dessert I payed homage to Jean Reno’s frenchness by making profiteroles. The pastry wasn’t from scratch, but I hollowed whipped cream out of pre-made frozen ones and refilled them with lavender ice cream and then drizzled some hot fudge sauce on top. We also had Mochi Ice Cream.

But yeah. Movie night #3 was a success. Now we need to start brainstorming ideas for #4.  A super cheesy movie & Fondue? An old western & chili and cornbread? Bollywood & Indian? We’ll see.

I graduated high school in the year 2000. Its now 7 years later and I still have regular nightmares about my high school experience. I get them once a month or so and I always wake up in a total panic that I am still in high school and have another year or class to complete before I graduate. Often there are teachers yelling at me, which is amusing because I rarely got in trouble… for my behavior…. Now, my grades were a totally different story.

Sometimes in my dreams, I’m my current age, 24, but still a high school senior. Sometimes I’m being harassed my my old classmates, which also was never actually a problem of mine. Mostly my frenzied panic comes from thinking “Oh god! I really can’t do this again.”

My high school was uber competitive and full of overachieving students and burnt-out teachers. (Not everyone fit this mold, but a great part did.) I enjoyed the social aspect of school, but loathed the academic aspect of it. I didn’t see why a person should be required to take 5 years of Latin, a dead language, unless they we going on to medical school, or something. The music and arts program was pathetic. The school itself was busting at the seams with too many students and not enough educators. I tried so many times to leave, or transfer or just get out, but as a public school student in the city of Boston there really weren’t that many options available to me, so I stuck it out for 6 rather long and unpleasant years.

This all happened 7 years ago. I’ve been out of the 6 year school longer than I was in it. But I’m still waking up with cold sweats in the middle of the night, terrified by my dreams and memories of that place.

Ok. Tirade warning here.

Just because you drive a mini Cooper doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to drive like a fricking stunt driver for the Italian Job. You live in Seattle, ergo, you’re a craptacular driver, regardless of what trendy pseudo-race car you own. Plus, even stunt drivers use turn signals.

Gawd, when it rains here, Seattlites start driving like blind paraplegics. Idiots.

Today is day 29 of Devon working without a day off. Most of those 29 days have been 12 hour work days. As of tomorrow, he is off for 4 weeks.  Its going to be so awesome. I finally have my man back. Well almost…. He’s still at work right now… But soon I will.

In a couple of hours I’ll be on a plane, on my way to Boston once again. Devon’s been working crazy hours, so it will be nice to socialize with people. Its kinda sad that I have to fly 3000 miles to find people to hang out with people that don’t suck. I’m going to miss Devon and Fifi, but the dark Seattle winter has already set in and I need to be around people.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to deal with living in dark and dreary Seattle, away from all of my family and friends. I think I’m over this city. I just need to convince Devon that we need to move back to the east coast. I should start sending his resume to random Boston companies.

Anyways. The lemur and I should go finish packing for our favorite red-eye flight on JetBlue.

In an hour it will officially be Devon and my first anniversary. I’ve never had one of those before. I never counted dating anniversaries, so this is quite exciting for me.

Devon, you’re amazingly swell and I love you more than our iguana loves waffles. May this be the first of many wonderful years that we spend together. Happy anniversary, my love.

Tomorrow we’re off to Las Vegas to stay THEhotel at Mandalay Bay and all of the fun and insanity that that entails.  Of course we’re bringing the Lemur along with us and he’s been busy all day, highlighting the best topless shows, liquor stores and casinos in our Vegas travel guide. Hopefully he’ll behave himself on this trip and won’t end up in jail again. We’re going to eat at Aureole tomorrow night, and I think the Lemur will probably end up talking the wine angels into letting him harness himself into and up the 4 story tall wine structure.

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend everybody!

I woke up this morning all motivated to go to the gym, which I havn’t been to in like 2 weeks. Before getting changed into gym clothes, I snuggled back into bed for a little bit and in the process, knocked over a glass of water. That started lots of water works and girl drama. Devon stuck me back in bed and turned on Animal Planet and has retreated to the office until the crazy girl emotions subside.

Where’s my chocolate, dammit?

He bakes bread in the shape of our iguana. Plus, it’s super tastey.

Devon and I have a flight in about 8 hours for Boston. I’ll be there about 2 and a half weeks. It should be fun. A nice pool and a nice lake. We’ll miss our iguana dearly.

Devon sold his old Eclipse to some kid who promptly went out and got it dyno-tuned. On the way home afterwards, he kid blew the engine. *uck, *uck, double *uck! Its unclear what will happen. He had it checked out by a mechanic before hand, who said the car was basically fine, so maybe it was the dyno’s fault.  Anyways. He has only paid half of the money so far, and we still hold the title, and its unclear on how to proceed. Hopefully the kid isn’t an punk-asshole and doesn’t try to back away and demand all of his money back. I just don’t want to end up with a busted car and no compensation. Grah! The whole situation just makes me feel like thowing up.

We were supposed to see the new animated film “Cars“  this afternoon before we left, but now watching a movie about cars sounds like the best possible way to stress myself out even more, and to make myself start crying.

But yeah. A vacation sounds really good, but this is just a hell of a way to start one. I just wish the whole Eclipse thing didn’t have to be looming over our heads until we get back.