It’s been three Independence Days now that I’ve lived in Houston, and we’ve gone to the same event each time - the fireworks show put on by Katy Mills. It’s really an awesome show and close.

Other than going to see the fireworks, we spent the weekend doing a lot of house work. We finally cleaned out the garage, and it really needed it. We couldn’t even walk through the garage with all the crap that was just piled up in there. We made quite a bit of garbage piles and now are just waiting for the next garbage day to get rid of it all. I’ve also made few piles to take down to Goodwill. We (or should I say Hubby) installed new doorknobs and some deadbolts so now all the bedroom doors can be locked for privacy.  Hubby also installed the attic fan so hopefully that will help keep the attic cooler and lower our energy costs. We also got some sprinklers for the lawn since it’s basically dry and crunchy now due to the lack of rain recently.  We also hung a different mirror over our fireplace to replace the one we had that I couldn’t stand. My friend with the same name gave it to me for helping her pack up her office since she bought a new house.  I helped her pack up all her books and today Hubby helped take down her built in shelves and take them to the new place. I also sold our old entertainment center on craigslist finally. I’m also selling our old washer and dryer since we got a newer set from Christina when she moved. Phew, lots of work.

And two years ago tomorrow, June 26, hubby and I left the crazy and too socialist for anyone’s good state of California (or Kalifornia as we like to call it) and moved to Texas. And it’s been great.

The next day was the lake day. We rented a pontoon boat at Lake Conroe for half a day so we could go inner tubing and just have a fun day on the lake. We brought the dog with us hehe. It was so much fun. We had some issues with inner tubing as there were only 2 of us, we weren’t technically even allowed to inner tube without a spotter, but we did a little anyway. Mostly we used the inner tube for laying on when the boat was stopped, and we also had the dog inner tube. She’s so much fun in the water. She loves to swim and would jump in and join us if we were on the tube and left her on the boat. Even though I reapplied sunscreen a bunch of times, we still ended the day rather pink and I’m still a bit sore on my legs and back. But other than that, it was a ton of fun. I love swimming and laying around in the water. Laying on that big tube was so much fun just letting the waves move you gently while you nap hehe. Here’s a pic of the inner tubing dog.

Today I had my 8 hour HAZWOPER refresher course, which was really long and boring but the topics we discussed were interesting and new to me since I don’t do a lot of field work, well, no field work really. I suppose it’s nice to have a day where no real work gets done heh. It’s not billable, but it’s approved training (required, really), so hey why not.

My friend is moving apartments and sold us her washer and dryer today. The set is only about 3 years old. We are still working on getting the new set installed but already moved our older pieces into the garage for future craigslisting. We had dinner with her at Smashburger, which is a really neat little place. It’s like burgers for grown-ups heh. Has some more interesting taste and is fresh, unlike regular burger joints. Hurray for being introduced to new places.

This weekend is our 2 year anniversary. Friday, the actual anniversary,  we are going out to dinner (haven’t quite picked the restaurant yet). Saturday, though, we rented a pontoon boat at a lake and we’re gonna have so much fun driving around in the water, inner tubing, and just sunbathing. I’m sooo looking forward to it!

For those of you reading who are Houstonians, this will make sense to you. This law office he’s working in is right across from the Galleria. Today we got off early and went to lunch at the Kona Grill. I really liked that place. He said he has been looking at it all week thinking it’s very much a Julie place so we’re happy that we got to go there. I had the Macadamia Nut Chicken, their signature dish, and omg it was so good.

Now for the sad news. My favoritest awesomess boss lady ever told us yesterday that she is resigning and is going to work for industry again. She said this is the only consulting company she would work for, because she really likes the way it’s structured compared to other consulting firms, but she prefers industry work and she will get a pension there which is important to her. This is a refinery client that she’s been doing a lot of work for and spending months where she’s only working out of their office for the past two years that she’s been with our company. So when their Air team manager got moved to another role, they asked her to apply. I’m not surprised that they grabbed her, because she is really good at what she does and is just really awesome in general, but it sucks that she’s no longer going to be my boss. She says as soon as she gets authority she will get rid of the other consultant there and get us more involved, so we should still be able to work with/for her, but it won’t be the same. She’s so flexible and so friendly and we just talk about things for hours - pets, travel, food, whatever. We got along so well and I’ve never gotten along with a supervisor like that before. Everyone is just shell-shocked over this. It really shows how much she was liked in the office. They gave an offer to someone to take her place, and hopefully he will take it, but in the meantime while we get the new person adjusted if he decideds to join us, we’ve got some of the other senior staff stepping in to help out, one from our office who is never around and has passed on work to us randomly anyway because he doesn’t have time or doens’t want to do it, and another who’s in the Dallas office and is hard to communicate with when not in person. Great. The previous Department Manager is going back to being DM, and I have mixed feelings with that because she’s really demanding sometimes. I also wonder if my bonuses will continue with her being gone, because I know she’s been the one to push for taking care of me while she’s been my supervisor.  It’s funny cause a colleague said betcha ten bucks within the year she gives you a job offer down there. Well, I’m not sure that will happen because of the way the refinery is structured I doubt a position will open up, but at the same time, would I want to drive so far? It’s almost 70 miles one way, and the office now is only 30, and that takes a full hour sometimes. Hopefully things will transition smoothly and turn out ok, but right now it just seems scary and everything is uncertain.

My Momma is 2000 miles away, so we don’t really get to do anything together. I sent her a card though, and I got to talk to her on the phone. I miss her, and on birthdays and holidays like this it’s really hard being so far away.  We need to invent teleportation!

Anyway, just some random ramblings now. Friday, hubby and I went out to dinner because we didn’t have food in the house and didn’t really want to cook. We used one of his gift cards he got with his LexisNexis points - $25 at Chili’s! Nice. So that’s where we went. We had a good meal and all but also something funny happened. See, hubby drinks his cokes very very fast, and usually the wait staff doesn’t keep up with bringing new drinks when he’s finishing up his current drink. Well our waitress brought new drinks pretty quickly, and toward the end of the meal, she brought over TWO new glasses of coke while he was still drinking one. We just busted out laughing. It was so funny to us. We’ve never seen someone bring over two drinks to replace one. Funny stuff.

Yesterday we went and saw the Wolverine movie. I didn’t want to see it at first cause I figured it was going to be another one of those blowing stuff up action movies and I wasn’t in the mood for that, but it turned out to be really good. It actually had a good story to tell, so that was nice.

Hubby has one more week before he’s done with finals and when it’s his birthday, so next weekend should be nice.  Poor guy needs some rest.

Anyway, this has been an interesting day. My humans slept a lot this morning, and it was quite annoying cause most days they get up early and let me out to go pee. But it seems like a couple of days a week they forget to get up and let me out and I have to wait and wait until they finally start moving. If I get up and try to remind them it’s pee time, they get very mad at me. Then they yell at me to go back to bed and say something about hating being woken up on a “week end”, whatever that is.  Sometimes when they sleep long and wake up but don’t want to get up yet they let me and the cat up on the big human bed with them. I like being up on the big human bed. It’s my favorite thing.

Anyway today my humans decided to play in the yard. I love playing in the yard. It’s my favorite thing. The man human has been lazy lately I think because the yard grass has gotten very tall and scary. There were thick patches that caught my pretty fur and poked me. I didn’t like it. So today they decided to do “yard work” as they called it. I got to follow the man human around while he pushed the loud grass eater thing they call the “lawn mower”. It was fun chasing it around. It’s my favorite thing. The lady human walked around with another loud thinger and got the walls and edges shorter. She wouldn’t let me sniff where she was working. Something about getting my nose hit with some string. I don’t understand humans sometimes. They do such weird things and get mad at me when I want to sniff and learn. They also yelled at me when I laid down on some soft dirt patches but I think they were actually being nice because the dirt patches had little critters that bit me.

After they stopped playing with the yard, they decided to turn their attention on me. It has been warming up a lot lately and my fur has gotten very long and curly. While I love my long soft fur, it’s just been hot for me. Usually when my fur gets long they take me to the vet people to get a fur cut. But this time the lady human got a buzzy thing and gave me a fur cut herself. Well, the man human helped. But I got lots of hugs and rubs and praise for sitting and getting a fur cut. It was so much fun. It’s my favorite thing. The long tangly fur went away and so did all the pokey things that got stuck in it. Then I got a hose bath which was kinda fun because I like to bite at the water spray. It’s my favorite thing. Then the humans gave me more rubs and snuggles after. And now that I have less fur I have so much more energy. It’s so exciting having short fur again. It’s my favorite thing.

I like that I got so much attention today. Usually the humans get up and feed me then they tie me up and leave me for many hours while they are away somewhere doing some soft of “work”. Then they come home and feed me again and sometimes we get to sit and watch TV together and other times they tie me up again, like last night, and leave again. Why do they always leave? Don’t they love me? Why would the humans want to have a life outside of me? I’m the best dog ever. And I love my humans. They’re my favorite thing.

I am now 26. But I’m 25 again, cause I said so.

I just got home from a very nice dinner with my hubby at Carmelo’s. Wow their food was yummy. I had lamb chops. (OMNOMNOM *drool*). And after writing this I will go finish off my birthday cake.

Friday night is when I had my celebratingness with the friends. We went out to dinner at Allie’s Steakhouse and Piano Bar with a group of 13. They put us right on the stage! The lady called me to confirm the number of people (I had 15 at the time but 2 canceled last minute cause their babysitter got sick) and asked if it was OK that we were by the piano. Well I said sure cause we want to hear the music and all. Well turns out “by the piano” means “on the stage” right next to the guy. It was.. interesting. I can’t believe I didn’t end up taking any pics of the piano and how close we were. Anyway the dinner was pretty good and the company was awesomness! The piano playing was OK, but until about 9 (we got there at 7) he played very slow music and I wanted a real “piano bar” type serenade the whole time. Next time I go there I know to go at 9. My friends are super awesome. I can’t believe how many pressies I got. I totally wasn’t expecting anything cause we were all paying for ourselves and it was already kinda pricey. I took pictures and posted them to my facebook album here. After we left the restaurant we went back to my house for cake. Well, only two couples came with us, everyone else left early, losers, lmao. I had chocolate truffle cheesecake so more for us!

I’m very thankful for the sweet friends I have. This definitely was a memorable birthday.