the pre-cursor...travel, hotel check-in and psycho (but not in my hotel room)

monday morning i had some last minute things i needed to do before going to the airport. i'd forgotten to make a reservation at the parking spot, so i ended up going with: PARK-N-FLY...not sure what to expect. i also knew that before the flight, i had to stop at the store for more chaco-food and drop it off at joanne's. i really should have set up the new printer the night before...so here i was last minute trying to get the printer all set up, somehow (i don't even know) i was able to set it up through the router and manage it all and it actually worked the first second third time! i may or may not have accidentally turned it off a couple of times and blah blah blah...what you need to know is that i was able to get my parking receipt printed!

so park-n-fly...i reserved a spot, and when i arrived to the spot my google maps indicated, i didn't see it, so i had to do a stealthy turn-around in a private parking spot, and on the second pass, i found it...only it looked incredibly full. there was only one slot left-and i snagged it, then made my way to the shuttle.

i was thrilled when i got to the terminal and brian informed me that due to the nature of our tickets, i was able to go through the tsa prepass! woot!! so i LOVED it...i may be investing in the tsa prepass and going to the bldg to get approved. totally worth it. i mean, who doesn't want to feel like a super-rock-star?!

brian was on top of it: he was our go-to-guy...our contact man...our 'handler'(just finished a great fbi/spy series on netflix)... he booked our flights, kept us in the loop, checked us in, booked the rental...we were certainly spoiled this time! #nevertakeitforgranted 

randi met up with us at love field, coming in from new orleans. and then we met janet at the gate. we had fabulous seats (always a plus in my book), plenty of time to write a great letter to one of my former kampers, whom i've not written to in ages. we got to denver a little delayed due to storms in the area-we were in a holding pattern for a bit before the let us land, so we met up with angelica when we landed, and took off for our luggage and rental car. on the ride to the hotel, randi provided her own version of navigational play-by-play...glad he was driving, not me.

in the airport upon arrival

upon trying to check in to the inn, there may have been a couple of glitches. it was almost like mary and joseph when the keeper said:NO ROOM IN THE INN, and there was no stable or anything like that, because all was booked in town for special conventions or something...but basically we KNEW that we had bookings, but the nice, young man at the counter couldn't find us. apparently when the reservation names were changed to reflect the correct inhabitants, the random on the other end of the line may have either had too much 'legal cannabis' in their system, or been of thick, heavy accented persuasion, not inputting names correctly. either way, we had to call in the heavy hitters..julie k and sabrina were there in a minute and it was as if they were all playing with one of those three part kid books, with the mix & match pages where kids create alien-looking-animals, only with names...so we made it work, as the place was completely booked...we may have inadvertently snatched someone else's rooms, but the fact is, we booked it, we weren't leaving the counter without our rooms! #notfeelingguilty.

after settling into our rooms, a group of us set off in search of food. parking was the biggest issue, so finally when push comes to shove, one must valet the mom-mobile. and due to the excessive wait-time at the restaurant LINGER (irony)...we backtracked to vita...apparently a fancy wine boutique/restaurant. the hostess was by no means "the mostest." well, perhaps she is the mostest rude...snide...there were six of us and it was slow, not busy, yet under her breath she mumbled something about a reservation and how we should have one. i was about to giver her the stink-eye, but i'm pretty sure alicia got to it first, so i got to be nice. dinner was lovely, but we were all exhausted, so we finished, and made it a short night.

great area-restoration and lots of historical buildings

the following morning, we were going to be off to our first training-not going to get into that right now, it will come later. i went out to wait for the rides to pull around and the girls were out talking, which was when i heard the story. brian had heard noises all night long, and had difficulty sleeping because it sounded like someone was in his suite (they are two bedroom suites-one up, one down), so he went down in the morning to shower in the good bathroom, and when he came out, the mirror had fogged up, as mirrors do when one takes a hot shower. then he saw the word HELP! on the mirror...cue twilight zone music and psycho scene... of course, i'm of the nancy drew persuasion, and i explain stuff away. in my mind it was previous tenants, college students our silly teens pranking and writing it on the mirror in soap or something..ala invisible ink-type thing. but i digress, if i were brian, i would probably still be a little weirded out.

so there you have it, round 1, just the beginning-tomorrow will be promising! we've only begun! more to come-
julie

smells like mexican santa in here....

today i decided i wanted to try hollie's santas. now, i will admit, hers look MUCH better than mine... but that doesn't stop people from eating them!

i obviously didn't have enough red food coloring because the suits are a deep pinkish red...also, i only found spice drops instead of gum drops, and there were no black, so i used black cookie frosting for the belt...and then i took them up to my new taste-testers (they don't know it yet), the managers office, and when i mentioned that they were oreo cakesters, faces lit up-which is a good sign.

i had to swing by the tom thumb down the street so i could get the necessities for salsa, and when i got to the self check-out, i accidentally pushed on the red banana button, but i didn't want red bananas, so the guy had to come and take it off...he said, "red bananas?" and i explained that the screen changed just before i was able to click on the cilantro. so he just went ahead and finished off the rest of my produce-assuming that i couldn't handle it. which is fine because he had all of the codes memorized...which again is fine because if we had been at the airport, i would've schooled him on airline codes-so there!

then i came back and let's just say that my little apartment was a confusing, myriad of smells (using the term myriad as a gross exaggeration), although there were several things going on. santa cakesters, some wonderful scented wax, cilantro and onions creating (once again) a delicious salsa to make my taste buds dance (a salsa dance, i'm sure....), and then there was whatever smell was wafting up from the downstairs apartment...oh, and i might mention that i am now drying cilantro for later use because they sell it by the bush!

Christmas smells in my potpourri pot! yum.

 when i first walked out of my apartment early this morning to take down the trash, i had this note on my door:

very sad that there was a naked cat on the loose out there...i hope they found him.

losing an animal is the worst. i remember when i was young in brodhead and our dog got off his chain and ran off-there had been a fresh snow, so we went looking for him early in the morning before there were too many tracks to follow. he must've been adhd because the tracks were crazy-everywhere...we finally gave up on frisky, in sadness, and i think someone ended up finding him way out by the bait lady. (that was the day i realized i was no nancy drew...i couldn't even find a dog and there were tracks everywhere...but in actuality, there was no mystery, so i shouldn't have given up on the nancy drew dreams; i should have just been reconciled that i would never amount to much of a sacajawea and left it at that).

good night,
julie

maybe nancy drew is part elvish...

a little late. i stayed for the pta at school because no one else was able to. it was cute for the first 2 minutes...then it got progressively less cute as the time went on. i would've posted pics, but i didn't have time to get waivers and permission slips. oh, and i didn't take any pictures.

i won't be doing that again anytime soon.

the boys were not happy that i got home after dark and did not leave the lights on for them...so i told them i'm not the motel 6! (but it was wasted sarcasm)

so..tonight i pulled out a long sleeved t because it's so cool out and it was inside out. it made me wonder whose idea was it to EVER decide that seams and stitching had to be on the inside instead of the outside? it's more comfortable to wear the seamless on the inside!

that's the sleeve cuff (i typed it, then deleted it b/c i thought that wasn't a thing, so i looked it up and it IS!)

it strikes me as i sit here looking at my movies, thinking about nancy drew (no lie, i purchased the t.v. series off amazon about 2 years ago)...it strikes me as nearly impossible for a teenage girl to have been able to be involved in as many mysteries as she was and still go to school! unless she's like the girl on law and order, who pretended to be a teenager to stay in the foster care system, until she was caught at 28...anyone else ever wonder how she managed? or maybe she's like the elves on LOTR; they age slower than time as well!

after just reading that, it made me wonder if nancy and the hardy boys had ever met, so i looked it up, and there are a few books out there with adventures for the two of them-i need to get those!!

'seams' like it's time to go b/c eternal youth is not what was written into my script,
julie

i was always the 'smart' angel. all mystery solvers are smart.

this morning i woke up with a terrible headache and so i took 2 aspirin-it didn't really help, so i drank some coffee (hoping the caffeine would help..it didn't) so awhile later i took two more aspirin. still waiting.

 when the aspirin didn't work i thought maybe a brisk walk with the dogs would help. i was determined that bruno would actually make it further than the stairs so we kinda drag/walked for awhile (no, he didn't dress like a girl, i dragged him). we got out to the back and bruno just stopped again and sat.

look carefully he's the little bump in the shadow of the tree...he did NOT want to come with us.

i'm afraid i might have to find an animal behaviorist or something. it's getting ridiculous.

when i was young, i watched charlie's angels. i LOVED it! so i thought i'd watch an episode of the new charlie's angels...i don't think it's ok to have a hot bosley. it just doesn't seem right. it really doesn't hold a candle to the original. bell-bottoms and ascots...my favorite angel was sabrina because she was smart. she was probably the least 'hot' angel, but she was the brains of the operation and even at that age, i had an appreciation for intelligence (without even realizing it).in fact, when we lived in costa rica, we would play charlies angels and i was always sabrina. i didn't tell the other two why. but i think i knew why.  i also find it interesting that kelly (jaclyn smith) is the face on the 'fancy line of clothing' at...wait for it..kmart! i don't think there are any kmarts in dallas...?

i guess i would have to say that mystery is my favorite genre. i loved the nancy drew mysteries, which led me to the hardy boys and trixie beldon books. i was intrigued by encyclopedia brown mysteries and when the mystery books came out with the reporter whose siamese cat koko helped him solve mysteries i was fascinated.and i always opt for the mystery shows like murder she write, diagnosis murder, magnum p.i, cagney and lacey...does anyone remember moonlighting and remington steele? all winners in my book. maybe i like them because (again subconsciously),i know they are thinkers. at least in the script they are.

the new show that i am REALLY looking forward to is once upon a time it starts in late october on sunday nights ABC; it looks very interesting-hopefully it will pan out. t really seems like one i might be able to appreciate.


 this afternoon i felt the need to cut my hair.not to get my hair cut, i  decided to cut it myself (as always). short enough to feel shorter, but long enough to still get it into a ponytail. perfect.i know that has nothing to do with everything else, but that's how chain of consciousness works! (if you're used to me, that's how i work!)


although we cannot solve all of life's mysteries, hopefully we can solve the little mysteries...like...who pooped on the floor? i can usually solve that one (i can automatically rule myself and any human guests out). then i know which puppy is bigger and which one is smaller...don't have to be a genius to solve some mysteries.


may your problem solving skills not be wasted,
julie