Brian’s visit

For Patrick’s birthday, Brian came up from Texas to hang out for Halloween weekend. I requested some time off of work and was able to spend 2 out of 3 days with him and Patrick so that was fun. :) Here’s how it all went down!

Friday: Brian came in around 11am and Patrick picked him up from the airport. They went downtown for the day and visited all the Boston sights. They went to the Boston Commons, Fenway, Beacon Hill, Faneuil Hall, Harvard Square, Cheers, etc. There are a few pictures but I don’t know much about that time since I was at work. :) After their sight seeing, they came to get me from work and we went out for sushi at Yoki. It was awesome and fun. We then spent the night watching the Ghost Adventures Live show which wasn’t so awesome. It was actually pretty lame and they did not show any of our questions on the live chat so clearly it wasn’t live!! We went to bed at 1am after finally giving up on Ghost Adventures.

Saturday: I took Saturday and Sunday off so we decided to do something very New England-ish and went apple picking on Saturday. First we had breakfast at the Neighborhood restaurant in Union Square (which is always awesome) and then we drove to Stow and picked some awesome apples. After apple picking we drove back to Somerville and I made some apple crisp while the guys carved the Halloween pumpkins. We didn’t plan on giving out candy for Halloween but who can resist carving a pumpkin? Once that was done, we went out for dinner at Out of the Blue with Darcy so that she could meet Brian. The seafood was pretty good but it was a bit pricey. I have no idea how this place got a reputation for having cheap and good seafood because it was good but certainly not cheap! After dinner, we went to see Paranormal Activity at the Somerville Theater. Brian wanted to watch the movie in an old theater and this one was perfect. It was creepy and weird. I kinda liked it. Very clever of them. I can’t believe they made the film only spending $11,000 and made over $67,000,000!! Pretty good investment!

Sunday: We got up and decided to go to Salem. We figured that they would still be all decked out for Halloween so we drove out there. Of course, all the parking said that it was for residents and if you wanted to park in the parking garage, it was $20. How freaking ridiculous is that!? Well, I drove around for a while looking for a parking spot and ended up parking in resident parking. On my way to the museum, I looked at someone’s parking ticket and if you parked in resident parking without a resident sticker, the ticket is $15. Why would anyone pay $20 for parking in a garage when you can park illegally in Salem and get a ticket for less than the cost of parking!? Stupid. So I was parked illegally but we didn’t get a ticket so it was free parking! Yay! :) We did the museum, and walked around their small harbor for a bit. We then had lunch at some Witch cafe or something and that was good. We then drove home and invited Darcy to come over and hang out some more. We hung out at the house and I made apple sauce while the guys watched bad TV and we talked. It was fun. We went out to Mr. Crepe in Davis Square for dinner (also awesome, as usual) and then drove Brian to the airport.

Overall, it was a super fun visit and it was really nice to see Brian and hang out. It feels like it’s been so long since a visit from someone from Texas (other than family) so we had a good time. Sadly, I have to go back to work tomorrow and Patrick is already back to work today. If you want to check out some photos from the weekend, click on Brian’s photo below.

Happy Halloween

Auntie Diane shared this photo with us and I couldn’t help myself. Check out her awesome Halloween costume.

Noumi is weird

Noumi likes to lay down in pretty much any open drawer. I was putting away some laundry and he made himself at home in my sock drawer. Isn’t he cute? :)

Patrick turns 30!

Patrick turned 30 on Monday so we had a mini celebration for him. I made him open his present at midnight because I’m a complete loser like that and I was so excited about it. :) He wanted this new biking coat that goes down lower in the back so that the draft doesn’t go up his back and he showed it to me a few times online… so I visited his web browser history and found it and bought it for him. The company (Swrve Cycling) sent me the wrong color and never answered my question about returning the coat when I emailed them so they are probably never going to receive our business again. Check out Patrick in his new coat:

Patrick and his new jacket!

I had Monday off so I made Patrick a flourless chocolate cake for his birthday cake. I was going to get something from Lyndells but it was closed by the time I got there on Sunday. Oops! Better luck next year! It turned out OK and we enjoyed it after having indian food for dinner. Here are some photos of the cake and the blowing out of the candles.

Birthday boy

Blowing out the candles

Cake!

After dinner, Patrick got some phone calls from my parents and my aunt and uncle. Everyone sang happy birthday to him. He was pretty happy about it. :) To continue the birthday celebration, Brian is coming to visit us tomorrow for the weekend. He’s coming to celebrate the big 3-0 with Patrick and I get to hang out as well because that’s what happens when you’re married! Hahahaha! So I’m sure you’ll hear more from us later when we have more pictures and fun stuff to talk about.

Surgery update

I met with my surgeon today and I’m having my gallbladder removed on Tuesday. I’m pretty excited about it because it’s been bothering me every time I eat anything that has any fat in it and I don’t particularly enjoy eating fat free yogurt for every meal! :) So after the surgery and my awesome recovery, I can eat whatever I want again! Huzzah! Wish me luck!

Hospital visit and other fun stuff

Last Sunday, I was feeling super horribly sick and thought that I got food poisoning from this vegan chicken patty that I ate for lunch… I was in pretty bad pain from cramping in my upper abdomen and basically ignored it and tried to sleep it off. I suffered about 5 hours before finally being able to fall asleep. When I woke up, the cramping was gone but I still felt pretty sick and nasty. Throughout the rest of the week, every single time I ate anything at all, I felt sick to my stomach and nauseous. It was gross but I figured I either had a stomach bug or I just couldn’t shake the food poisoning from Sunday…

Last night, I started to get the same painful cramping in my upper abdomen. It started at 11pm. I pretty much decided to ignore it like last week and went to sleep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any sleep and the pain was getting worse and worse so I woke Patrick up at 1:45am and we rented a ZipCar for an hour so that I could go to the ER. Patrick drove me and then returned the car and walked to the hospital (about 20 minutes from our home, walking). I checked in, they took my vitals, made me pee in a cup and got me set up in a room. I sat around for an hour as they set up and IV with fluids and took some blood samples for testing. The doctor finally saw me and told me that he thought I had gallstones.

Being completely ignorant, I had no idea what gallstones were or what they do to your body… so I didn’t really care as long as the pain would go away. I was given morphine (yay!) and the pain went away quickly. It was a very happy moment for me. I spent the rest of the night in the ER as they were waiting for the ultrasound technician to come in and check for the stones. She came in around 8:30am and did the ultrasound… guess what she found!? Gallstones.

So it looks like I have problems with my gallbladder because I eat fatty foods. I was told that it is common for women who are fat and in their forties. I’m not in my forties and I didn’t really think that I was too terribly fat but I guess my diet has screwed me over and now I’m stuck with this bullshit. I will most likely have to get the gallbladder removed in the future but right now I’m going to have to stick to a strict diet with little to no fat and little to no fun. I’m not excited about it.

I’m clearly back at home now and still feeling pretty gross. I have some vicodin to deal with the pain and I also got a prescription for some anti-nausea medication but it costs $13 a pill (I don’t have insurance right now…) which means that I didn’t fill that prescription and I’m just drinking ginger ale hoping that the nausea will go away soon. So far, I’ve been nauseous since 10:30am when I left the hospital… so it’s been 11 hours but I am going to go to bed early and hopefully be better tomorrow.

In other news… we have no other news. I saw the movie Fame. It wasn’t very good. The characters weren’t very well developed and the dancing/art scenes weren’t that awesome… Maybe I should see the original and see what all the hype was about because I don’t get it from this remake.

Work is still going well. I’m keeping busy even though I had to call out sick from this whole crazy gallbladder episode. I go back on Tuesday and I hope I’m better by then. I guess this means that I won’t be trying any of the food I make at work or at school (come January)! Wish me luck!

Henna

I forgot to post this… but the other day I worked at a health fair for my job and there was a lady there doing Henna. A bunch of people were getting super weird and contemporary things for their tattoos but I got a traditional design instead. Check it out. :) I get tons of compliments now. I’m just sooooooo cool like that. Ha!

First snow

Just thought I’d let everyone out there know that it is snowing here. Our first snow of the year. Patrick rode in the snow and said that it was stinging his face. Can’t wait to get out there on my bike!

Visit!

I have to go to work in about 5 minutes but I thought I’d update the blog since it has been severely neglected lately! Here’s the low down on what’s going on with us these days….

Brian is coming to visit us for Patrick’s birthday. He’s going to be coming for Halloween which is super fun because I’ll be watching the Ghost Adventures overnight show and now I don’t have to watch it alone! I can watch it with Brian and Patrick would probably stay up as well as long as Brian is there. It’s going to be awesome. I’ll probably have to work one day while he’s here but that’s ok. He’ll hang out with Patrick while I slave away. Haha!

Other news… nothing else is new. We’re still boring. We’re having a vegetarian week next week. I decided we should have only vegetarian dinners for a week since I feel like I’ve been kinda eating junk. I think it’ll be a good week. Maybe we’ll lose some weight in one week? Ha! Who knows!

Oh yeah, Audrey is also extending her trip to Boston so she’ll be staying longer at Christmas time than originally planned. I can’t wait til the holidays! :) I’ve also already bought nearly all the Christmas presents for the family this year since we’ll be pretty poor by the time the holidays come around. That’s all folks.

Consultation

Well folks, I have finally scheduled my consultation for my half sleeve. :) I’m pretty excited. I’m meeting with a tattoo artist in Brookline right near Boston University. The tattoo shop is called Good Faith Tattooing and I’m pretty excited. I don’t want to spoil exactly what I’m getting so you’ll just have to wait and see what happens. It’ll probably take 2 or 3 sittings but I’ll post a photo once it’s done! Yay!