A M A Z I N G

Okay, before I start about Saturday (which was FANTASTIC by the way) some older pictures I haven't posted yet:

I cat sit for a couple that hs 2 cats...they have a black and white cat and the white cat is VERY skittish to the point that it doesn't like being in the same room as people. Anyway, when I was sick, I was sleeping on the couch there and then watched some "How It's Made" on the Discovery channel. The cat was up on a chair next to the TV and went bananas swatting at the globe in the corner. It was super cute!

Then he jumped down off the chair and was watching the show.

Oh, and my actual Real Estate license from the State finally came:

I'm a dork. It's okay.

So...back to Saturday. I woke up and got ready for the day. My hair appointment was at noon in Queen Anne so I grabbed food, got gas and headed down there. And then I realized I forgot my camera. WHOOPS. So I used my picture phone. Here's me before hair and make up:

Gross...er...good "start" ?

And here's my hair after Ashley at Salon Joseph had her way with it:

I didn't get a picture of just my hair and make-up before I had my dress on, but here's "the picture" of Jason and I:

AWWW!!! YAY!!! :) Jason was texting me all day saying how excited he was to see me and stuff - it was so much fun!! And he kept telling me over and over how beautiful I looked and stuff - I felt so special! :)

Just for some cues as to who we were with, we went with Jason's best friend Clint and his wife Jenn:

And Clint's brother Dan and his wife Emily:

Jason, Clint and Dan basically grew up all together and are super close. It's fun hanging out with them all cause it's such a differnent group, but it's fun. I was a little nervous cause I hadn't been out to eat with Dan and Emily since Dan's operation (he's now permanently blind) but it went really well!

Here's the whole group:

So...for those that haven't been to the Melting Pot...SO much fun. It's quite an event - it has taken about 3 hours for the whole meal each time I've been. They sat us at a weird table - 3 people on each side, so one of the couples had to split up and then they only had 2 burners on the table. Weird. A round table would have been better but it was still good! :)

Emily, Dan, and Clint

And Jenn and I didn't realize this was going on during our picture (obviously):

So we had them take another one:

When we got to the table there was a GORGEOUS bouquet of flowers on the table and I noticed a card inside it. I pulled it out and saw everyone but Jason and my last name on it but wondered who sent them. I flipped it over and saw the note said:

AWW! He sent flowers to the restaurant for me!! :) I felt like a Princess! :) They're so pretty I brought them to work with me today:

Anyway, back to Saturday.

The first course is CHEESE (with bread, apples and veggies for dippers) and I was embarassed to take pictures with the flash, so those didn't turn out. The second course was the salad which was SO good - no one remembered the salads being so good, so that was a fun surprise.

Then The Meat:

Jason and I don't eat seafood, and I didn't get pics of the enormous lobster tails everyone else had, but you get the idea.

Our mess of a table with all the sauces to dip things in:


And then...the dessert.

We got the Original (milk chocolate with peanut butter mixed in) and the S'mores (milk chocolate with flambe'ed marshmellow) and it was SO good!! I ate a lot before I remembered to take pictures:

The pot o' S'mores:

All in all, it was SUCH a fun time. If you go, go with someone who works at Microsoft cause their Perks card gets 20% off the total bill. Nice.

(this is the good part)

Jason and I went to his house and were taking more pictures of ourselves (he was humoring me) and it was fun. We were just hanging out and talking about everything and nothing all together (anything from work, to us, to farting. I'm not kidding). :) It was really good. I was kinda having a moment of really wanting some reassurance/affection from him when he leaned over and kissed my forehead and just held me for a minute. It was so sweet and exactly what I needed right then.

He pulled away and looked and me and told me he had something he needed to tell me but wanted me to promise that I wouldn't cry and that it wouldn't change the mood we were in. I told him I would try not to cry, and that I couldn't promise anything about the mood. He laughed and said okay, and then:

"I love you"

I - Becky Noël - was speechless. It was totally unexpected, but totally perfect. I whispered it back before kissing him so hard and when we pulled away, he laughed cause he said I was beeming from ear to ear. We talked about how we don't want to abuse that word and how it's really hard for him to say that so it needs to be "handled with care" even more. We even agreed on still saying "I heart you" most of the time, but the "L word is out there" (that's his words). We kissed some more, and then it was my turn to pull away and laugh cause:

"This will make getting you a Valentine's card SO much easier!!"

He laughed cause I'm a dork for thinking of stuff like that, but it was sweet. We talked for a little while longer, then played Bejeweled (the game I am obsessed with on his Xbox) so he could learn how...and then I went to sleep. It was so nice falling asleep saying "good night, baby" and having him say back: "good night! I love you!"

Makes the picture we took earlier that night even sweeter:

Bad News Bears

Jason and I are dying. Something is very very wrong.

We are totally addicted to Diet Coke. Like it's bad how much we drink. Both of us have been known to keep a pack in our cars, it's all we drink when we go out to eat, and if the restaurant only serves Pepsi products, we remember and try not to go back. Yes. It's that bad.

We even have pictures of us to show our devotion:

It's something we're totally known for. We drink so much of it and we know it's bad, but we do.

And something has happened.

Sometime last week both Jason and I started getting stomach aches and we couldn't figure out why. This week we noticed a trend: we're perfectly fine until we drink Diet Coke.

This is bad. I don't know what to do. I know a girl that ate Altoids so much she got ulcers, and I know other things...even water, in high doses can be bad, but why are we getting stomach aches? This is so very sad.

Swinging back

**Edited to add pictures**
Things are starting to get back to normal after being sick. I had to miss work Monday because I was still really sick and a trip to the doctor really did nothing. It was pretty miserable. I don't really get anything accomplished at all while I'm was sick and actually made a pretty big mess to clean up (when I normally force myself to clean I didn't while I was sick). So I did that yesterday. Whoo-hoo.

I did (finally) get an offer from the agents I had been interviewing with, and if money was all I was interested in - WOW. That would be a great job. Seriously - a substancial amount more for the remainder of this year and even more next year. Plus having the office a mile from my house...it seemed really great. But once I had the offer, I kinda knew I was stuck. I talked to my parents for a long time Wednesday night about what I should do...my dad was gung ho for me to take the offer and my mom really wanted me to think about the choices.

I ended up talking to my manager yesterday to see what the department changes *might* look like so I'd have a feel of what my job choices really were, and talking with her went really well. I don't know why I was so calm, but that helped a lot. It all really boiled down to the fact that she acknowledged that I have earned a raise, deserve more responsibility and she's excited to have me take on more. We talked about my wanting to continue my schooling and she is very supportive of that which helps a lot. And after all that, I'm staying where I am. I'll still have to commute, but I won't be working by myself and hopefully, I'll work my way up out of being an assistant. And Tuesday will be my one-year anniversary here. :)

My bosses are both gone today and so is the HR department that works in our office too. It's very quiet and hard to stay focused. :) It's nice though.

I realized this morning that I am SLACKING on the scrapping. Sad. I want to do the Book of Us by Months page for January and start on a project idea I am stealing that I saw on Treasury of Memories blog then took more pictures of it when I went up there a few weeks ago:

The cover:

Tab dividers:

Two page spread (journaling on the face side of the card, picture(s) on the backs) :

Sample of how she did her pictures: (some of the weeks had more pictures/elaboration)

I heart that store. I need to get the jump rings for the playing card book and punch holes in all of the cards...maybe that's a good tv-watching activity for tonight. (Grey's Anatomy is on...hello!!) And it was fun to do pages for no reason last week - I want to do that again. :) And I bought so much freakin Valentines stuff I REALLY need to use it! Jason likes when I make stuff about us/for him, but he doesn't really know what to do with it. It's not like he has a desk to put it on or anything, so I'm trying to think of things that he could use. That's hard. I can't even think of a VD gift. :(

Another store display they had that I LOVED (mostly cause it seems pretty simple) was this:

Simple decorated paint can, paper stuffing, paper mache stars with glitter, glued to clothes pin clips, glued to dowels. Simple enough, right? :)

Close up of how they attached the stars and clips to the dowels:

Seems easy enough. I think it'd be fun to do for someone that you can include pictures with it. Like give it to my sister and have pictures of us in the clips or something. Anyway.

This weekend we are going with some of our friends to the Melting Pot for a group Valentine's dinner. We're all dressing up and stuff..I think it will be fun and I really like that place. I had scheduled an appointment to get my hair done since the dress I was planning on wearing was only $7 on clearance (I KNOW!) so I scheduled the appointment at noon since I was told reservations were at 5. (Hour for hair, commute time to get dressed, commute to meet up with everyone, drive to restaurant...would have worked out okay) Well, yesterday for some reason the reservation was changed to 7pm - not sure why - and so that kinda messes things up. So...I thought maybe I'll get my make-up done. Asia's brother's gf does make-up downtown at DuWop (hair appointment is downtown too) so I scheduled a time with her...we'll see how this goes. I'll definately take pictures as this will be fun to remember. :)



My sister's friend had this picture on her blog and I L-O-V-E it!! OMG.

Chillin...

Since I'm sick now I'm chillin, trying to get better. So I'll post pictures. :)

Last weekend Jason and I played Home Town Tourists and went to both the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and the Museum of Flight. It was so much fun. :)

That big cone is the building they do the glass blowing for a few hours every day.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the art in the galleries but I took this one before I knew that. It's a wall of bottles! :

We actually got to the museum about a half hour before they started 3 hours of glass blowing and we stayed to watch it the whole time. It was rad. Like I said, the glass blowing is done inside the big cone, which actually functions as a vent-type thing to let all the heat from the fires out of the building. It totally reminded me of Willy Wonka and the Fizzy Lifting...ha. :)

First, though, some pictures of some of the glass displays in the cone, all by Chihuly, who is from Tacoma:

It was set up really cool - there were four "glory holes" where they warm the glass to work on it, and one glass pit, where they would actually add glass to the blowing stick thing. Some lady guest artist was there the day we were and she and her team were working on one piece the whole 4 hours we were there! It was ornate and stuff but the "home team" made 3 different pieces in that time!
Here's the "view" from the grandstand observatory thing:

Oh, and by the way, my camera did something kinda cool and captured everything really hot in a purple color. Like in the picture above, in real life that purple light was red/orange/yellow (fire) but the camera got it as purple. It's kinda neat.

The "Home Team" was my favorite. We saw them go from this:

And doing this:

To make this:

And ending up with this:

Yeah...they broke it. Whoops. I felt so bad for the guy!! But they did well and started over again. They went from:

To this:

And then when they transferred it off the stick, this happened:

It chipped!! The "narrarator" guy that was explaining what all they do said that since the museum opened, he's never seen 2 pieces break in a row.

They managed to not break the last one. I'm not sure what it was but here's 2 pics:

The "Away Team" was making another one of these:

And since it's so huge, it's actually 5 pieces, the top, a ring to go around it, the middle part with a decal, another ring, and then the bottom. Craziness.


This is the beginning of the top:

Making the middle piece:

Attaching the two (with the ring in between):

And attaching the bottom:

Then they added these STUPID looking stars onto it...not sure why they'd do that... :

And that was it.

It was such a good time!! I would totally recommend it to people that can go. Watching it all was my favorite. (If you couldn't tell...)


This past Sunday I took Jason to the Museum of Flight in Seattle since he'd never been. It was okay...I'm not all that into planes (I appreciate that they can take me places, but that's about it) so I was a little bored but Jason cracks me up. :)

There are planes EVERYWHERE inside. The place is COVERED. Like it's a plane museum or something. Wait... ;)

I turned into Amelia Earhart and Jason was Neil Armstrong:

They have 2 planes outside (and across the street) that you can tour, one being an old Air Force One:

It was pretty cool but it sucked that everything was behind glass and...well...it's a plane. ;) It did have the Presidential Conference Room:

Jason and I goofing off with one of the bathroom mirrors:

They also had a Concorde to tour:

It may be fast, but it's TINY:

It was a lot of fun!!

This week I also did some scrapping!!! YAY! :) I did my first Effer Dare (#54) and asked Jason what one word he would use to describe me and then I scrapped it:

Of course I had to do one for him too:

Awww...he is a genuine boy. : )

Last night one of Jason's friends invited us to hang out with him and his girlfriend. He is hysterical!! It was a lot of fun too. I suck at bowling and was really sick on top of that, so that was hard, but it was still a good time! :)

Funny friend:

Silly boyfriend and a sick girlfriend:

And our bowling shoes! I have a picture of our shoes from every time we've gone bowling. Fun. :)

Anyway, that's all for now. (As if a million pictures weren't enough.) :) Later, skaters!!

It's a brand new day (but not the Valtrax kind)

I hate that I can't say "It's a brand new day" and not think of that stupid Valtrax commercial. Jerks. Okay, I joke.

Yesterday turned into a better day since I had a steady stream of things to do all day that were actually my responsibility (verses the ones that I usually do that are someone else's, but you know). My bosses have been very nice lately about all the work I've been doing but certain kind$ of thank$ $peak louder than other$. Of course this comes when I'm interviewing with another job.

Oh yeah...haven't talked about that on here. Someone sent me a Craigslist ad at the beginning of last week for an admin assistant position with 2 Real Estate agents in my part of town. The salary range was EXACTLY what I've been wanting and both major competitors of my company have offices about 1.5 miles from my house, so that'd be VERY convienient. With the help of my proof reader (mommy), I submitted my resume and cover letter last Monday night. On Wednesday I got a call from one of the agents and found out they did indeed work out of the close offices (my preference of the two offices as well) and that they are top-producing agents that have been in the business for a long time. Last Friday I had my first interview, and Wednesday I met with one of the agents for my one-on-one follow up with her. I will still need to meet one-on-one with the guy agent, but it's all looking VERY good.

The problem with all this is that as much as my current job may frustrate me, it's a great job. It's for the most well-respected company in the area, people know I will do a great job at anything they give to me and I've been there for a year giving them all the reason to "promote" me which is what (I'm hoping) they will be doing soon. There's some BIG problems that need to be fixed in the office (replacing me as admin so I can do the full promotion job 100%, pay me accordingly and not 10k less than the other people, etc) but it's seemingly like they want to do what they can to keep me, within reason. So why leave now? I don't have a promise of any of this at my current company, but I'm also tired of moving around so much. I want to stay somewhere! :) With a corporate job I can blend into the wall on a bad day (like yesterday) but when I'm the only assistant, my troubles are under a microscope. BUT instead of commuting over an 1.5 hours every day, it'd be a total of about 5 minutes. Car insurance would go down, gas use would too, and their minimum salary in their range is more than I make now.

The 2 agents haven't made a formal offer yet, but I'm 90% sure they will so it's a waiting game now to see what they'll do. Which, you know, is the greatest thing ever. :-p

ANYWAY. So after yesterday's bad day got worse (a "disagreement" with boyfriend ended because it had to, not because we were finished) today was pretty good. I'm sick (bronchitis is going around - yee friggin haw- so I went to work at 7:30 and left at noon. I can't really sleep cause my nose is plugged and my throat is scratchy so breathing is a task, so...just thinking. Things will be fine. Opportunities come and go, and we sometimes regret decisions we make, but they're never (usually) the end of the world. Growing up sucks. ;)

PS. Boyfriend and I are doing perfectly fine. It's growing pains I think. He's been in the long relationships and settled into ours while I was still feeling it out. Now we're trying to mesh and it's hard, but not impossible. We'll be fine. :)

Frustrated. :(

I'm frustrated. It's not good.

Jason calls me every morning on his first break (8-8:15). Usually, I'm driving at that time. Lately, I've been coming into work earlier (getting here at 7:30 or so) and so I'd be sitting at my desk, on my cell phone when he calls. We don't really talk about anything much but it's just nice that he does that, right?

ALSO, lately I've been setting an alarm to wake me up at 4:25 am when he's driving to work so I can call and say good morning and tell him to have a good day. It's weird to disturb my slumber every night, but I like that he likes it, so I do it anyway. Usually it's like a 2 minute phone call and I fall right back to sleep so no big thang. I've been doing it for about 2 weeks now.

For some reason 2 days ago, my phone stopped making an audible ring when I have it set to do that. So, if someone called, it wouldn't ring or vibrate - just light up. So yesterday I didn't wake up to my alarm cause it didn't make any noise. So no "drive to work" phone call. Then when I got to work early, my phone was in my coat pocket and didn't make any noise again when he called and I didn't realize it was "that time" so I missed talking to him on his break. I sent text messages so he knew I knew about it, and managed to get my phone to make noise again. We talked for a second at his final break and then on the way home and again after a meeting I had last night.

I called this morning on his way to work - we talked. It was fine. I got to work early and was in the middle of a conversation when he called at 8:02. I finished talking and called him back at 8:07. He asked why I would bother callling at the end of his break.

I'm frustrated.

Not at the fact it wasn't the end of his break. Not at the fact that he might be joking about something that obviously wasn't my intention. Just at the fact that it rubbed me the wrong way and now that I'm in a funk. I snapped at a co-worker and just am annoyed in general.

I hate that things get to me like that.

How do I go about communicating to him how I'm feeling when I'm restricted to using the words "like", "care", and "heart". (We don't say "love" yet. I know, I know...don't get me started) I'm a writer, too, damn it! I should be able to communicate it and I can't. I don't know why. It's so frustrating. Geez

I need candy.

Burn, Baby, Burn

So about that whole working out thing...hasn't worked so well this week. Why? I will tell you.
Monday I wasn't feeling so well - it's been really cold lately and everyone's getting sick and my voice was going bad from my throat hurting so much. Didn't think it'd be a good idea to do a cardio workout and breathe hard, so I did something else I've been wanting to do lately: Go tanning. (dun dun dun)

Everyone that knows me knows I am whiter than Casper (Casper's actually clear so that's not hard, but whatever). I usually go and tan for about 6 minutes the first 3 or 4 times to get a pink base so when spring/summer comes I don't fry while driving to work. (5 minutes of actual sun burns me. No joke. The tanning's been recommended to me by dermotalogists so don't lecture me). So I went to use some old tans I had from like 2 years ago and said I wanted to go for 7 minutes in the conventional bed. Seemed good but about minute 6 something didn't feel right, so I checked on my way out that I'd only been in for seven minutes since it seemed so long. The girl told me yeah, only seven minutes so it should be like 11-12 since they had just changed the bulbs. MINOR DETAIL, GOLDILOCKS!!

So for the past 2 days I have been in severe pain. My burns have bulb lines (no joke) and now they have blisters. It's painful. Especially to wear clothes. :) I'm about the color of this background. So I'm not working out.

All the more motivation for next week, right?

Free School? OKAY!

SO...on top of my work reimbursing me for my Real Estate Class and paying outright (without me having to front the money first) for my test and renewal classes, I just found out that I get to go to school for the rest of the year FOR FREE. No joke.

Back in the '01 when I graduated from high school, I was awarded the Washington Award for Vocational Excellance. (WAVE) This was good for 2 years tuition at any WA state school as long as my GPA stays above a 3.0. and can be used anytime within 6 years. SWEET.

So my first quarter of college, free tuition, got mostly B's which was worse than high school, but enough to keep my scholarship. Winter quarter - not so good. Started getting the itch of "I-only-went-to-college-cause-I-wanted-to-get-away-not-cause-I-wanted-an-education" and decided social life was WAY more important than class. So I didn't get my scholarship spring quarter. Sucks. Then I left school and went to North Carolina, then came back, started working and have been wanting to go back to school.

Fast forward to this past September when I signed up for my Real Estate class...wonderful.
Wanted to start taking MORE classes, so I went and met with an advisor at the community college and discovered that I do still have a year's worth of credits left before I get my AA, but my Real Estate classes can count for some of that (and those can be done during work if I want to). So...I thought "Hey, I should call the WAVE people" and asked how many credits I have to be taking for a 3.0+ GPA to count towards my elligibility. Their answer? "More than one". "Do Technical College credits count?" (I took my real estate class there) "YES!" So I just found out that I can take the rest of the year's classes for free. No. Friggin. Way.

The next quarter doesn't start until March but I am SO EXCITED. I hate being in school, but I really want to use this since it's my final year of elligibility. It'd be nice to be working, going to school (for free) and paying off debt all at once. SO GLAD.

YAY.