Keep 'em coming!

I have been logging on to CSU Pomona's website daily and more then once. It;s driving me CRAZY! This waiting game is killing me. I received an email last week saying Freshman applicants had acceptance emails sent out already and if they didn't get one, they should be looking at other schools. Luckily, I am not a Freshman... so I still had a shot!

The email said that transfers students should hear back by the end of the week. Friday came and went and still NO email! Arrggg!

I must have checked every 30 minutes on my personal email account and CSU Pomona website and still no updates. Then today my application status change to ACCEPTED!

*jaw dropping*

I was preparing myself for a decline letter since my major is impacted, so I didn't know how to react.

*pinching myself*

Nope, this isn't a dream... I have been accepted to my dream school.

It finally hit me... *eyes watering*... *sniff*... GO BRONCOS!!!

So keep the blessing coming... I hand open arms for them! :)

Flowtriss on Blogger

We have a new family memeber on bloggger, the one, then only... FLOWTRISS! AKA "Messy Jessy," AKA My lil sister AKA Jessica :)

Welcome! Now I have even more reason to come on here.

Prince & Spring Break '09

The last 2-3 weeks have been amazing, to see the least! Where should I start???

Saturday, April 18th Jay and I had a busy day ahead of us. We were driving to San Diego for his Marine Corp buddy’s wedding in the afternoon. The drive took us about 2 hours and we had only anticipated an hour and half max. However, we got there right as the bride was walking down the aisle. Talk about good timing. The wedding ceremony was at tops 20 minutes! It seems wedding nowadays are getting shorter and shorter. I had a beautiful new wine colored dress and Jay was wearing a suit with a matching tie. We looked too cute BUT my camera’s memory card had an error and the pictures are lost. We had to skip on the receptions because we had to drive north (about 200 miles) to Los Angeles to see Prince in concert! Yup, Prince in the flesh... woohoo! On the way there we stopped by this cute store and picked up a $900 Pottery Barn table for $250. SCORE! The proceeds go to charity and that’s how we got a great price. The store owner thought we were a couple couple because Jay went out of his way to match his outfit with mind, so she sold took an additional $25 off the table.

Let me say that the concert was AWESOME!!! Jay is the big Prince fan and I’ve always wanted to surprise him with Prince Tickets. It ended up not being a surprise, but still a special evening! Prince was doing three concerts in one night and we were part of it. He was so good and his energy rocked! Funny thing is this guy next to me seems pissed from the beginning and had his arms crossed the whole time. Towards the end I looked over at him because he was the only person sitting down and notice it was because he was sleeping! Who go to a concert to go to sleep? Talk about an expensive nap. Nonetheless, we had a great time.

So… fast forward a week and I was off on my vacay! I was going to my sister’s place in CO first, then to my youngest sister’s place in NC.

CO is beautiful! It was snowing and the air was crisp. I was greeted by my sister and brother-in-law at the airport and we made a bee line to dinner. Both of them are vegan, so we had a bunch of stuff of the vegetarian menu at PF Changs. It was so tasty and I was glad that I was open minded about different food otherwise I would have missed out on some fantastic stuff. Her house is up a mountain out of reach of cell phone reception. I was surprised at how easy it was to live without by cell phone. It’s weird to think that we used to call people’s homes and if they weren’t home we would just leave a message and wait until they called back. Nowadays, we can hit up someone with so many methods of communication that you are almost guaranteed to reach them. Maybe it was because my trip was only 4 days, but I didn’t mind it not having my phone.

I was spoiled by home cooked meals! My sister and her hubby make a mean pizza from scratch… yup, the dough, too! The few days I had with them (and their dog Fang) were filled with exploring their small hippie town and neighboring ones, eating at local restaurants, visiting shops, hiking, getting a massage, watching movies, visiting the Denver Art Museum and taking a yoga class.

But soon it was time to be dropped off at the airport and off to my next destination… NC. I left CO in such a Zen mood. OM!

On a side note (and not so Zen like), never make connections through Dallas Fort Worth. Man oh man, do they suck! My first flight had 5 gate changes and was delayed. They have a train that you have to take to get to gates, so it’s not like I need to pick up my stuff and just walk a little ways. On the way back, same story more gate changes!

Here's some photos from my CO trip:


Awww... Fang looks so darn cute!!! His daddy tucked him in for the night.

At the Denver Art Museum. We also went to the Psychedelic Experience. That was SO much fun!!!



North Carolina was beautiful with tons of tall trees. There we visited Duke (where my bro-in-law goes), visited their gardens, ate some delicious food and took a trip to DC. There was a tornado watch because of the tornadoes that hit TN and SC, so I was a little nervous, but everything was OK.

One of the days we were shopping for mud mask stuff we passed a Petco and walked out with a hamster for my sister. Meet Dahlila…

DC was awesome! The drive was more then we had anticipated, but it didn’t ruin the trip. The first thing we wanted to see was the White House. We parked and made a bee line to it, only to see an illegal protest going on regarding Gautama Bay. One of the protesters actually chains his dumb ass to the White House’s front gate. After seeing that, we were off touring our Nation’s capital for 7 hours on foot. Take about a work out! We took a break to quiz each other on the citizenship test book we bought near the Potomac River under the Cherry Blossom trees. It’s was such a good time and funny on the way we tried to stump the other on questions. You had to be there. Because of the weather warning we spend the night in VA in some dumpy Inn because it was the ONLY Inn/Motel/Hotel in town. We woke up the next morning to see tress, grass and three abandon houses in front of Inn and that was it. It looked like a scene straight out of a scary movie.

The funniest moment of the whole trip was asking for egg whites at the Waffle House in NC. Our poor waiter was throw a curve ball when I asked him if I could have egg whites to the point that he left and forgot to take the rest of the orders. He literally came back 4 other times to specifically ask about my egg whites. “Do you want to hold the white part or the yellow?” “Ummm… let me ask the chef if he can do that.” “Ummm… it’s going to be an additional 70 cents, do you still just want the egg whites?” It was too funny!!!

Meet on a hike in NC


We are heading off to the base in NC to meet my cousin's GF

Duke in the background. In building like that there are study hall and random things like a Chick-fil-a

From our visit to DC... Andrew Jackson's monument. My favorite out of all of them.

Washington Monutment

WW II Monument

I think this is PF Changs

White House in the background. It looks SO small.

My Happy Place

(I wrote this during the end of November...I know...it's been a LONG time!)

You gotta love IT friends. My buddy Paul had recommended some time ago to download Mozilla (I know it took me forever to finally do it Paul) to gain access to websites that I normally can't access at work. I did and sometimes it lets me through. Yay! But I still can't access blogger.

I miss blogging at work. It was such a great pass time and a great break from work. Now I can only read a selected websites from work. Honestly, by the time I get home from school, I just want to relax and rarely pick up the laptop to type away. The thought of "Ooo… I'm going to blog about this" does come to mind a lot though. I decided to do what Cindy thought of and email my post to myself and just post them when I get home .. so you should hear from me a little more frequently. *crossing fingers*

Sunday's have been dedicated to volunteering at the zoo. It's been fun to getting to know the keepers and zoo life, meeting the animals and getting to work with some too! I don't mind doing the dirty work of picking up the habitats and shoveling and raking crap. My favorite part has to be working with the Lemurs. My first week was just cleaning habitats of primates and basically we would move them to another location before cleaning, which meant I didn't get to be in there with them. Then two weeks later I was paired to work with zoo keeper T. He is the coolest ever! He made sure to inform me of all the details of the animals, where they came from, there habitat, fun experiences he has had and a little about him moving to Panama to retire with his wife. The day flew by. Luckily, I missed the boa feeding of a dead rat! The whole process of
feeding the boas is gnarly! The zoo keeper has to thaw the rat out in hot water for 20minutes to make it appear to have a warm life-like body temperature and then dangles it in front of the snakes face to bring out the natural killing instincts of the snake and tad dah dinner is served. EW!

But the part I'm glad I didn't miss was HAND FEEDING the Lemurs. Yup, those cute animals in the movie "Madagascar" are the ones that I fed. Zoo keep T is awesome! He knew I was leaving at noon and wanted to ensure that I was able to interact with the Lemurs, so he changed up his routine and headed for the commissary for a bunch of grapes. We headed off to the Lemurs habitat and he armed me with a ton of grapes. Lemurs are the sweetest and most gentle animals. As they saw I had treats they all came over lightly placing their little hand on my leg, to let me know that they were there. Some would make light noises. There was one that hangs upside down for his grapes. I was so excited and as I placed it in their mouth they would gentle grab it with there little hands and chew away. I think I must have called my whole family that day to tell them about my day.

Oh an they sun bath too. They sit facing the sun and look like they are meditating.

Thanksgiving '08

Thanksgiving Day was interesting. I welcomed the holiday with being at the airport at the stroke of midnight waiting for my Mom at LAX. She was coming back from a 3 week trip from her home country, Costa Rica. Her plane landed early, so had to be escorted two terminals downs. I rushed over just to learn that all together 4 planes and all their passengers and crew were clearing customs, so it was over an hour delay. It was good to see my Mom and was happy to hear she had such a great trip. My grandfather is my last living grandparent and is a strong 78! He makes his living building homes and as he gets older it hurts to do stuff like writing, so he didn't send any letters home this time. Instead, he made fresh bread that morning, so I just had to break my diet and try one. Man, he is a GREAT baker! It was so tasty! But I was good and only had one.

A few hours later my immediate family had a delicious breakfast of soy sausage, turkey bacon, chocolate chip pancakes, fresh fruit, my grandpa's bread, and egg whites. YUMMY!!! It was a small gathering as two of my sister's and their hubbies are now out of state and this year Jayla was with mom.

Afterwards, Jay and I got ready and headed down to San Diego to Jay's niece's (and boyfriend's) place. I was wiped out from the trip to LAX and waking up to make breakfast, so minutes into the drive I passed out. I guess I missed 2 hours of Thanksgiving Traffic. When we got there we were welcomed by the lovely couple, 3 kitties, a dog and a HUGE feast!!! Jay's niece was telling us that she wants to attend a culinary school and have a catering business focusing on cakes and baked goods. She was going to bake a cake for a friend's b-day part on Saturday and look at the amazing job she did!!!

I jokingly told Jay that she could make our wedding cake. Jay's response "oh lord!"

It's not a real party, unless there is a fight

October is always a month of much celebration with three family birthdays and all. This year I had three work birthday's, as well, and Jay's BS graduation to add in on the celebration month. It was a special month with my niece turning the big 1-6. I don't recall my 16th birthday, but I do recall being able to apply for my driving permit. My niece's parents were throwing her a huge birthday day bash and rented out a local community center for the event. It was a dance room that has huge floor length windows that looked directly to the street. There was a candy bowl station that with tons of treats to make your own goodies bag, tons of people, DJ .. and did I forget to mentions 80's themed! These kids were dressed SO cute! Why didn't I have style like that back in the 80's? My sis, Messy Jessy, flew from North Carolina to join in the celebration and we dressed alike for the event. The nite was going great with some little hic-ups. Like the birthday girl having a fit that her friends were not dancing much. Oh and then there was the party crashers. I walked out o the dance room that lead to the outdoor eating area to see a group of teens just looking out on the dance floor. They weren't causing trouble or giving dirty looks, just looking in awe. I invited them in thinking they were my niece's friends and they said they were "scared" to go in. The red flags were immediately raised and soon my niece came out telling the group that they were welcomed in but not her *niece pointing at some chick* because that girl was an unwanted and uninvited guest. I guess the girl talks a lot of trash on all my niece's friends and recently started up the trash talking on my niece. Naturally, my protective aunt-instincts had me keeping an eye on my niece and this group. Good thing too cuz all of a sudden I saw my niece dart out for the parking lot and I literally ran to see what was about to go down. As I turned the corner I saw my nieces dad and that girl yelling at each other. I passed up my niece to hear her dad telling the girl to leave and the girl telling him that my niece was a bitch. OH HELLO NO! I ran up, texted myself the license number of car she was in, told the girl to get the F in her car before I called the cops to escort her little ass out and she sheepishly did. I envisioned throwing the girl across the parking lot jujitsu style. LOL! I seriously did, though. I know... I am like 10 years older, but someone had to get this uninvited guest and her posy the heck out of the party and if she would've swung, I would have happily introduced her to the pavement. The funny thing is Jay had said earlier that evening "it's not a real party unless there is a fight" and jokingly I said I was gonna be in one. Now here I found myself about to. I acted like I was calling the cops and the group left. Boy, I don't miss HS!

The weekend got even more interesting as the next day we celebrated my oldest sis' b-day by going to a play. For some reason we thought it was going to be a comedy, but quickly learned that it wasn't once it started. It was a drama filled play filled with murder, ex-cons, corrupted government, drugs, alcohol and tons of cussing with an ending in the main character and a psychopath falling in love a burning themselves to death for fear of some bugs. It was so far from a comedy!!! But hey, at least we all got to go out together as a family, right?

It was the birthday of my sister who lives in CO on Sunday, so I called her to wish her a Happy B-day and had sent her some gifts throughout the week. It was the big 3-0 for her and I wanted her to have a special one. I tried sending her flowers for that weekend, but she lives in such a small town that neighboring cities do not delivery to her "remote" location and the ONLY florist in town was on vacay for two weeks. Even 1-800flower, proflowers.com and ftd.com wouldn't deliver. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. My sister got a good laugh at my amazement that there was only one flowershop in her city. You just don't hear of that in Souther Cali.

The next weekend was Jay's big graduation day!!!

Jayla came down from Az for the festivities :)

And so did my Mom!

And this was our celebration cookie cake from mrs. Fields...YUMMY!!!

Congrat honey! All those hours of studying, cramming, driving to SD is all over! You did it!! :)

The mark

Ummm... I wrote this about two weeks ago, but saved it instead of post. oops! But like they say, better late, than never.

Wow... can you believe it's been officially a year since Jay popped the big question and we became officially BF & GF. We moved kinda fast... less then a year into our relationship and we live together, but it didn't seem fast -- Instead more natural. Jay was coming home Saturday from visiting Jayla in Az, so I knew we were going to have a chill anniversary. It was an impromptu trip which prior to the trip, both of us had signed up for The Boot Camp Challenge.

(Don't I look like I am dying???)

The morning of the race I woke up at 3AM!!! Something was telling me to check my phone alarm and good thing I did because it was set for PM not AM. I hadn't decided whether I wanted to do the race yet, but just in case I did, I thought I better set it my alarm correctly. I woke up at 6, which was the time I wanted to leave and decided I better make the 100miles drive to the Marine Recruit Corp Depot.

Once I was there, I was proud that I got myself out of bed and was about to do the race. The race was harder then last year. Maybe it was because I was doing it myself. This years cadence that was over the loud speaker was rifles going off, people yelling and bullets flying... less motivating then the marching cadence from last year. When I got to the 2nd push up station (where the DI don't tell you how many push ups to do) near the end of my three miles and did like 5-7 guy push ups and said F-it and got on my knees. Bug mistake as a DI came to "motivate" me to get off my knees and do my push ups lower. I did like 5 more and just got up and kept running. LOL! I know this a boot camp challenge and I think I failed with that stunt I pulled. Nonetheless, I finished! YAY! I think my time was 42 mins and some change. But if you delete all the wait time, then probably 5 mins or so would be shaved off. :)