the bachelorette

Well, I'm single again. Sort of. Jonathan has been on a tour with a wind ensemble playing different venues around the southeast while I stayed home, being a slave to my career and taking care of our co-dependent cat. His departure last week reminded me of the fact that I'm just not all that clingy or needy when it comes to relationships.

There were no tears the day he left or fear that some unforseen tragedy would occur, just some "I love yous" before we parted in different directions.

Part of me feels sort of guilty for enjoying myself whenever he goes out of town. He usually drives home to visit his folks for a week around Thanksgiving and again during Christmas, so this is not the first time we've been separated. He leaves and I feel like the world is my oyster. I'm not closing down any bars or getting into trouble mind you, I just get to watch my Sopranos reruns in peace instead of having to sit through Man vs Wild and watch Bear Grylls drink his own pee. There are no three-hour negotiations on what we are having for dinner (this usually results in a trip to Sonic or toasted cheese sandwiches), I can have all the Waffle House and Popeye's Chicken my cholesterol can handle. I can troll around on YouTube without having to hand over the laptop so he can check his stock portfolio or the weather on his hunting lease.

It's the little things like this that I enjoy so. But sometimes I think that I am too independent. He tends to make his daily phone call when I am at a friend's house or in the middle of a good movie, so I sort of blow him off. My part of our conversations mainly consists of "yeah", "uh-huh", "work sucks", "love you babe", and "talk to you later". Poor guy, he deserves better. I wonder if he would rather me whine about when he's coming home instead of telling him it's okay to stop and see his folks for a day or two on his way back. It's not that I don't need him or miss having him around, I just ache for peace and quiet whenever I can get it. I'm kind of the same way at work.

The radio is always blaring classic rock or 80's heavy metal in the shop and people think it's so strange that I turn off the music when I'm working alone. In addition to Def Leppard, there is the constant buzz of the ultrasonic cleaners, the hum of the blower at the polishing station, the same 20 questions being asked to me over and over again, and the conversation amongst my employees regarding the episode of Family Guy they all watched last night. I swear if there were no South Park, Robot Chicken, Aquateen Hunger Force, or Family Guy, no one in that shop would have a word to say to each other.

I guess I'm just searching for some inner peace. I am sometimes envious of my single friends, the way they just go through life without having to consult anyone else about what to eat, what to do, or where to go. But ultimately, for someone like me who gets easily bored and lonely, this way of life is really only good for a few days. Usually by the time he gets back, I've worked all my wild oats out of my system and I'm ready to be wife-y again.

However today is not that day. It is Saturday, I am off work, and I shall life my life to the absolute fullest. There will be laundry and dishes washed, but only because I have neither socks to wear nor spoons to eat my Coco Puffs with. There will be cuddle time with baby kitty and the Sopranos episode where Carmela gets fed up with Tony's affairs and kicks him out. Oh, that's a good one. No sitting through Band of Brothers or Deadliest Catch, no trip to Bass Pro Shop.

Love and miss you honey, but you can take your time coming home. ;)

listen to the music

There's an old "Treehouse of Horror" episode of The Simpsons where Homer is trying to fix his toaster and manages to turn it into a time machine. He goes back to the prehistoric era and accidentally kills a mosquito, irreparably altering the outcome of the future.

Right now I'm trying to convince myself that if time travel were possible, minute changes such as these could actually change life as we know it. Had I brought my camera to the concert last night, the whole evening may have turned out just okay as opposed to the UNBELIEVABLY SUPER AWESOME OMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME experience that it ended up being. The same goes for the presence of a certain blanket and the absence of my husband.

A couple of months ago, my friend Scotty and I decided to check out a concert featuring The Doobie Brothers and Chicago on Father's Day. He was a Doobie fan, I was a Chicago fan, and general admission was ten bucks. It was a no-brainer. I was fully prepared to spend several hours sitting in the grass in 100 degree heat surrounded by hundreds of old stoners trying to resurrect 1974 with large amounts of pot.

Now Scotty is a concert expert. He's been sneaking into concerts and um, "upgrading" his seats to much better ones since he was fourteen. I sat on the lawn and wrangled with my moral values regarding this while he scoped out the arena for open seats. The problem, however, was the monstrosity of a quilt that I had brought for us to sit on. Kind of hard to sneak into the seating area when you are hauling what is the equivalent of a twin sized mattress.

But, heh heh heh...

As I folded it up to make it as tight and inconspicuous as any joint those old hippies could roll, we were approached by some guy offering to give us some extra tickets he had. I could have cared less if they were good or not, I was just relieved that I wouldn't be worried about my everlasting soul while sitting in someone else's $35.00 seat.

Dude. They were for the SIXTH ROW!!!!!! No kidding! And the show was incredible. I screamed my head off, jumped around in the aisle like a fool, and sang as loudly as I could for the whole show. Part of me wishes that Jonathan wasn't out of town then, but like Homer learned the hard way, things might have turned out differently. Had I not brought that ridiculous quilt, we probably would have already snatched some marginally better seats only to get bounced back to the lawn 20 minutes into the show. And if Ticketmaster's website hadn't incorrectly stated, "NO CAMERAS OF ANY KIND", I would have brought mine and been walking around, snapping pictures of the goofy pothead guys and the dried-up old cougars that made up about 90% of the audience. And good ole Bob from Louisiana would have given those tickets to someone who would have appreciated them less.

*Sigh*

So I have to fill this post with long, grammatically incorrect sentences and not one picture. I'm actually really upset about seeing such a great show with my buddy and having only my memories as souvenirs, which tragically fade with time. But the whole day was a super cool adventure and an unforgettable experience with no photos is better than missing out on it entirely.

That episode of The Simpsons ends with Homer finding a seemingly normal alternate reality, only people eat like frogs, zipping out their tongues to get their food. He resigns and says that this is "close enough". I suppose I should quit kicking myself for ditching the camera and agree with Homer on this one.

the neverending vacation slideshow continues...

Strangely enough, one of the things we enjoyed most during our trip was visiting a local macadamia nut factory. Who knew? After grazing their free sample area like it was a country buffet, we left with fifty bucks worth of flavored nuts. Fifty dollars. I didn't know we were such mac nut junkies. Oh and the blue car in the picture? A 2008 Dodge Avenger. Not recommended. My lawn mower has more horsepower.

Ok, here's where I'm gonna just give you the reader's digest version of the rest of the trip. My reasoning for this is a) there are literally about 400 more pictures in addition to the ones I've posted and this is seriously becoming a chore and b) most people don't give a rip about looking at other people's vacation pictures. Unless you're my mother and I promise I'll bring my laptop home with me in July. So here goes. i...

saw lots of waterfalls,

hiked until I wanted to die,

ate lots of sub-par food at the resort,

illegally cooked some fish on the beach,

saw some ancient ruins and rock carvings, and

shut my head in the car door (literally).

Well that just saved me about three hours. Oh, and for all those out there who were sorely disappointed that I did not post the gross video of the fish, I posted it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Just do a search under "amandathejeweler" and it will take you to both fishing videos.

our almost-free vacation part one

I felt that just a little blurb in my last entry was not enough to describe just how freakin' awesome our trip to Hawaii was. The other bonus is that I no longer feel obligated to email pictures to everyone. So here's some of the highlights:

Our room was great but who cares? I had no desire to spend any amount of time there, but the view was pretty okay. Not exactly an "ocean view" but I spent some time spying on one of our vice presidents playing golf one morning. And a little tipsy, too.

We spent our first day there just hanging around the resort. Jonathan spent most of the day snorkeling and had a blast. It came at a heavy price however...he sunburned his back horribly. Meanwhile, I entertained myself at the beach and the pool and visited with some honu turtles that come to the beach every day.

We also went to the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park a couple of times. The first time it was during the day and all you could see was steam coming up out of the crater of Mount Kilauea. We went again on our last night (this time to Pu'u O'o, the heart of the current eruption) and got to see the lava flowing into the ocean. We were pretty far away, but the park had set up a telescope for people to get a better look. It looked like 2 or 3 waterfalls of red molten lava pouring into the ocean creating big billows of steam when the tide came in. I'm posting some video we took, but it doesn't to it justice. Truly a moving experience I will carry with me the rest of my life.

I'm not sure if you can hear the audio, but on the video I had just asked one of the park rangers the age of the ground we were standing on. He said it was about 18 years old...ten years younger than me. Crazy. There were tons of people there that night and most of them were standing there silently, watching new earth being created before their eyes.

Fishing was second on Jonathan's Must Do list, after the volcano. We went one day with a shop manager buddy of mine. No sooner had I gotten up out of the chair, Doug sat down and reeled in a 70" spearfish. Whatever that is. Anyway. Jonathan and I were only slightly jealous but got a big kick out of seeing him get so excited about it, smoking cigarettes and calling his dad. I took some video when they pulled it from the water and didn't expect to see it get beaten to death. I would post it, but I'm sure I would hear about it from my mother so I'll spare her the lecture.

Okay, that's enough for now. The laptop is getting too warm on my lap. More later!

better than Indiana Jones' comeback

You know, it took me a really long time to figure out what my blogger username/password combination was. That's what I get for going well over a year without writing in this thing. It was entertaining reading some of my old posts (and deleting some of the ones that should have never been brought into existence).

I think I should thank my old friend Stephanie from high school for inspiring me to try to write again. This afternoon was one of those days when I tooled around on YouTube, read the newspaper from my hometown, and checked out who died recently on Wikipedia. I found her blogger page and figured I should try once again to login myself.

Yes, I have attempted to break into my page on several occasions, to no avail.

I can't believe that I haven't written anything in here since February of last year. The real tragedy here is that my profile and whatnot has changed little. I added a couple of books as my favorites and deleted "exercising" from my long list of supercool hobbies (which was a lie, anyway).

Things aren't all that much different from the last time I wrote, though. Fasten your seatbelts and stow your traytables, here comes a few highlights from the last 16 months:

1. Most of that funky green carpet is gone. Jonathan did an incredible job of laying hardwood floor in the living room, dining room, and hall. I like it when the cat gets scared and starts to spin out on it when he's running.

2. Speaking of mangy creatures in my house (no, not my husband...oh you saw that one coming did ya? My many fans are so smart...) yes, we still have the cat despite the many homocidal temptations we've had. His favorite pastimes still include chewing shoelaces and plastic bags and quickly puking them up. His new thing is sharpening his claws on our mattress while we sleep. Not cool. But we still love that stupid thing.

3. I probably wrecked my car at least twice since I last wrote. So now I have a new one. Love it. Not the payments. My employees make fun of me because I am not entirely sure how many collisions I have been in. Eight or nine? Maybe?

4. Went to Cancun last year for vacation. Went to Hawaii this year. Now before you start thinking we are big high rollers, know that we went to Hawaii on my company's dime. Sweet. Turns out I'm a pretty decent manager and I won a spot on my company's yearly incentive trip. Seeing Kilouea erupting into the ocean at night was truly indescribable. The big island is half volcano, half lush green jungle sprinkled with gorgeous waterfalls.

Everything else is pretty much the same. I've gotten hooked on The Sopranos, so I watch a little less Star Trek (see? I can be cool.) I still love Vietnamese food, but I also eat at the Waffle House twice a week. Work is still work, but I'm better and a little more confident/competent at my job so my stress levels are noticably lower. So now perhaps I can stop in every once in awhile and keep my family and friends updated. And hopefully not ramble on and on about work.

Ooooo...forgot to mention I cut my finger in half right after Christmas. Oh yeah. Combine holiday stress with a dull exacto blade and you will spend half a day in the emergency room. Good times.