I’m a Photoholic

Nikki and I went to the Farmer’s Market on Wednesday evening and then stopped at Rite Aid. They were having a sale on ice cream: 2 scoops for a buck! So I got each of us some. She didn’t want it after we got home so I gave it to Jonathan. It happened to be cotton candy flavor – BRIGHT blue, pink, and purple.

Rite Aid also had a sale/rebate offer on Sally Whatever nail polish. I had to pick two…. which do you sick I picked?

Self portrait in the car.

New parfait at Pinkberry. It was decent. Wouldn’t get it again. $4.

Arithmetic, Algebra, and the Like

As many of you know I will be taking the GRE really soon. Less than a month.

I have not studied for this test. Studying is hard because I’m a “partner” studier. I don’t have a partner to study this with. Mom is the obvious choice, though, but she’s busy watching the baby – which leaves NO time for us to study.

Plus, it’s fucking hot.

I went through the most of the first chapter of arithmetic. But I have gotten stuck on some ratios and some percentages (problems that I’ve always had, so what I used to know is coming back to me). After those two sections comes Algebra – which is more of what I like to do (or at least remember liking in HS, of the very little math I had back then). I could go on to that right now, but I don’t want to leave this chapter before having mastered (or at least studied) my areas of difficulty.

Currently mom is in her bedroom with Jonathan, so no luck on her helping at this point.

So, I suppose, I’ll take a break now. Hopefully Jonathan will fall asleep and TEO can watch him while he sleeps (when he wakes up he’s likely to walk off the bed. Ouch!) and then mom and I can study.

John was going to help me study, but he is busy and that won’t be until next week. Hopefully I can get through a lot of this before then. I was also supposed to study with a co-worker from Lime School, but I haven’t heard back from her, so… we’ll see about that.

Wish me luck… I need it.

NavWord

I made a friend a few months ago, who on here we call P.

P created a website called NavWord. It is a very cool website.

You can go to it to read about it, or you can just read a bit further here:

NavWord  is basically this:

Say you have a blog such as this one.

Say you don’t want to spend a gazillion dollars on a domain name.

Say you want to let other people how to get to your blog without having to tell them to type in the whole URL. Although this one is pretty simple, maybe yours isn’t – or maybe you have a document that has a long and complicated URL with symbols like “$%_-” and you know how hard those are to type up.

WELL! NavWord is the solution.

1. You register an account and log in.
2. You come up with a “NavWord” – for this blog I could use “life” or simply “Kathy” or any other word I feel like it.
3. You type in your NavWord and the URL that it will go with.
4. You start telling your friends!

• “Hey Jack! Check out NavWord Kathy!”

Because your friend is as awesome as you are he knows to go online and type in navword.com and in the search box put in ‘Kathy’. That will take him STRAIGHT to my site! (If my site were on there, anyway).

For a “real” example, go do NavWord Blog. I’ll wait.

Did it take you somewhere? Did it? See! It Works! It’s AWESOME!

Now, go tell your friends and blog about it!

Oh Weight, How Elusive Are Thee

Growing up I was skinny. Then came adolescence and I gained weight, but I wasn’t really “fat”. I just wasn’t skinny anymore. I was average. Then came college and I lost 15lbs and weighed less than 130lbs! Wow!

Then… I gained weight again.

Now I weight just under 170. So in the past 6 years I gained 40lbs.

It is NOT cool. At all. I look at pictures from that time and I looked so skinny (even if at the time I thought I was fat). I get sad, depressed, and stop looking at the picture and try to distract myself with something.

Loosing weight is hard. I go on “diets” in which I eat healthy, low calories, sugar, and fat. But I might loose a pound or two.

Today I get an e-mail from my doctor telling me that my thyroid is borderline low and THAT causes weight gain AND makes it difficult to loose weight.

Woohoo! It’s not ALL me!

I have something called hypothyroidism (thanks Dr. Google!). My doctor (the real one) asked me if I want to start meds to fix it. I promptly e-mailed her back and let her know that YES! I want medicine! I want to be able to loose weight more easily! I want to not be FAT anymore! Or at least not AS fat as right now.

That said, I don’t want to be a stick figure like BSIL. Cause, yea, that’s GROSS!

Moon, McDonalds

Like any other child growing up in the United States I ate at McDonalds. I don’t remember what I ate when I was little, but I do know I got Happy Meals. At least sometimes, anyway.

When we went to Argentina we would stop at a McDonalds that was outside of the airport. There’s a video of this adventure in 1991 before our first trip back to Argentina, but I have personal memories of it as well. I also remember being there in 1995 when I went with my mom and TEO.

As I was driving home from dropping the fam off at LAX on Monday, I drove past it. There was a red light and I had enough time to take out my camera and snap this picture:

Although I don’t remember the location of the McDonalds from those trips long ago, I remember it being a 2-story Mcdonalds – and this is the only one like that I’ve ever been to. So, there you have it.

Last night while out the moon was GORGEOUS! I was able to capture a pretty good picture. It has nothing to do with McDonalds, but it was cool:

Of course it was much bigger and brighter and beautifuller (eh..) in person.

More Pictures – Today Edition

We went to Toddler Time at Border’s where the theme today was “B is for Bob” for Bob Marley (and no mention of MJ). They had cupcakes which were donated by Universal.

Jonathan got to walk around the bookstore and look at books:

Jonathan got in on the cupcake action:

Nikki liked the cupcakes too:

I also took in the action. Unfortunately I seemed to miss my mouth and hit my boobs instead:

Police & Smoking Fireworks

Last year at the fireworks I remember seeing a lot of police. This year their presence wasn’t as obvious. At one point, early on, there were two cops near the trash can where we were sitting, they left after speaking with some woman who seemed to have lost her granddaughter. (There was only one announcement for a child who had been ‘found’.)

Later on, after it had begun to get dark, there were no cops around – and that’s when we needed them. People around us began to smoke. Specifically one person sitting behind us. We weren’t sure, but we thought there was a law or rule that said that smoking wasn’t allowed in parks, or at least close to the play area (which is where we were). Without confirmed knowledge of the law we didn’t want to say anything.

Off I went in search of police officers to ask them. There were none around us, so I decided to go towards this area that had a large truck type thing that said LAPD on it. It took a while and lots of change of directions because of the way people set up their blankets on the grass, but I got there. There were two CHP officers along the fence that separated the rest of us from LAPD so I went to ask them. One was very cute, the other not so much. They were unaware of there being a rule and weren’t being very helpful. I insisted, asking them about being close to the kids area. At that point the cute one decided to go ask an LAPD officer who informed him that smoking was not allowed ANYWHERE in the park.

I called my brother (because who knew how long it was going to take me to get back to where they were) to let him know so that he could tell the guy who was smoking. By that point, though, he had finished the cig. He started another one later on, before the fireworks, and my brother let him know. The guy immediately put the cig out and it wasn’t an issue.

Was this worth a whole post? I don’t know, but I did it!

This, That, and Today

First off, in anyone is interested in reading reviews and whatnot about my sister’s trip to the Yucatan you can go here. She’s really good at reviews and whatnot, so if you’re planning on going to the area, it’d be a smart place to go and read.

Yesterday I ended up taking Nikki to the library with me. I had to pick up some books I had placed on hold. The books: GRE. All GRE. Study study study! That’s what I have to do. Unfortunately it’s not always possible, as in: Nikki is rolling around my bed right now – and just fell off – so that makes it difficult. I will have to find time though.

I e-mailed my adviser and she told me that I should sign up for one class (which is all I can do at this point because of pre-GRE limits), take the test, get her the results, and then sign up for the rest of the classes. This will work. If I don’t end up passing the test then I will just drop the one class I register for and get the money back. I don’t want to pay for just one class – it’s too expensive. That must be done today.

We are going to Border’s today for the Toddler Time today. We haven’t gone in a very long time. Last time I really remember going is before Jonathan was born (we went with Dana and she was HUGE). There is something special today and supposedly there will be cupcakes. We are taking Jonathan as well… we’ll see how it goes.

Afterward, after lunch, I will try to begin studying. John said he’d help me study the math – because I SUCK at math. I need to see what I need help with and what I don’t need help with. Although I get the feeling that will be more help than not. i figure that for the reading and language areas I will just take lots of notes. I will get a notebook and just write, write, and write. I learn most things by writing and doing them. Well, less doing and more just seeing it written down by my own hand.

C2: Past and What?

We dated back in February/March. It was good. I enjoyed being with him, but it was very much a “fling” type of relationship. He left to North Carolina where he is from, and for one reason or another we didn’t see each other again until Monday night.

He hadn’t seen me since the car accident, so that sort of gives a timeline. Three full months without seeing each other.

Lately he began to try and make an effort to see me and I kept on being busy or otherwise committed. So Sunday I figured I’d see if he still wanted to get together (after all the girls were leaving and I’d have nothing to do). He agreed and so we got together.

I don’t know if I was hoping it would be different – and maybe something could come out of it or what exactly I was hoping/thinking.

I gave it a shot but it didn’t work. We had a good time. Okay, maybe the more appropriate word would be “decent”. I couldn’t date him even if I wanted to. We are too different.

But that’s okay. I’m okay with it.

Now it’s a matter of moving towards a new light.

I am seeing P tomorrow. That? A whole other story for tomorrow.

Then, either Wednesday or Thursday I shall go out again with John. I’m very excited and optimistic about this. We shall see.

Picture Post

I took quite a bit of pictures while the girls were here – and I figure I might as well post some! Mika outside Kohl’s showing off her new shirt and purse. Mika posing with a flower at Michael’s. Isn’t she cute? Nikki loves to make weird faces: The girls cleaning the driveway while Mika and I worked on dying some shirts.

Mika right after we got to the park on the Frouth. Camila at the park showing off her tattoo.

Nikki was showing me how many minutes until the fireworks would start.

Los Angeles Fire One and Two flew over the park. I liked this picture:

I told you that there were a lot of people:

The girls enjoying the Fourth at Warner Park.

Mika used the glow bracelets as earrings (which she later pulled out WITH her earring!).