So as some of you may have heard I proposed to Amanda on Friday. And she said YES! Phew!
First, I'll tell you the background info. There is this spot on Coronado, which is basically a peninsula that is across from the city of San Diego, the other side of the bay. One day, awhile back, Amanda and I found this tiny private beach the faces the city. It has an amazing view day and night. We started going there a lot, just to relax and hang out. It came to be called "Our Spot."
Second piece of background info is a bottle of almond champagne. We went wine tasting a little over a year ago and had purchased this "really good" ($10) bottle of it. We were planning on saving it for a special occasion. Occasions came and went and we never though it was worthy enough. Since I had bought it I told Amanda, despite her many requests to drink it, I'd let her know when we could drink it.
Lastly, is the way I "asked Amanda out." One day we were cuddling at a park. Not saying a word I switched her Claddagh Ring around on her finger which symbolizes that she is seeing someone. She was amazed and impressed that I knew what that meant and thats how the whole thing started.
Now the proposal story: So it was Friday and I snuck into her apartment to switch the bottle of champagne out with a new one so she or her roommate wouldn't notice it was gone. I went off to work. Talk about a long day. I left work early and went to her office to pick her up and head to Coronado to hang out at our spot and go to a dinner reservation we had.
One thing I've already learned about Amanda is that when she is hungry, she is hungry, and needs to eat. So when I told her we're going to our spot before dinner she begged me that we eat first. I told her no it will be too dark to go after dinner. Then when I grabbed the beach blankets out of the trunk she protested "How long are we going to be there!?" I told her not long, lets just go relax for a little.
As we walked there she also wondered what the heck was in my very full backpack. I answered with a quick quiet reply "My sweatshirt." For some reason this satisfied her curiosity. We got to the beach spread out and relaxed. About 1 min later (I got impatient) I got the ring out of my backpack, opened it and asked if she would marry me. To which she replied "Seriously? Are you kidding? Really Toddy?..." After a few moments of this I asked her, just to make sure, "So yes or no?" luckily she finally said "Yes, or course!" I busted out the long awaited almond champagne and the celebration began!
Click HERE to see a photo album of our whole engagement weekend!
First, I'll get the nerdiness out of the way. Apple finally released it's plans for the iPhones new features for software version 3.0. You can read about all the new changes HERE. It's not coming out till this summer, so it's pretty annoying to know about all the new cools stuff but have to wait to use it. Oh well!
Second, I'm 27 now and was slowly but surely gaining a little extra weight. Getting older sucks! So Amanda and I both decided to make it a goal to lose weight and change our lifestyles to be healthier. We are going to FL next month for Easter and we figured that's a great target date for weight reduction. Obviously weight is a huge issue in this country when it's such a simple solution. Eat less calories then you burn in a day and you lose weight. But when it comes down to it, it's very hard to keep track of all those calories. Since both of us have iPhones we decided to take a modern day approch to weight loss. We both dowloaded an amazing app called Lose it!. It' has a great interface to track excercise and food thoughout your day. You put in a target weight and date and it determines how many calories you should be eatting a day. With the decreased calories and the running I try to do, I lost weight. I weighed about 220 during the new year and I'm already down to 199.6 lbs as of last night. So it works! And the great thing is I eat anything I want, chocolate, fries, burgers, even ice cream. I just eat less of it.
Another thing that's helped is that we found an anti diet book called The 9-Inch "Diet". It's a great book about how diets don't ever work, and you just need to adjust the amount of food you eat. It really brings to light some of the horrific portion size changes that have happened in this country. If you don't have 9-inch plates at home for dinner, go out and get some! If you are thinking about dieting or losing weight, it's the first book I would read. It's easy to read and even written with a great sense of humor.
Lastly, I'm really excited about all the trips we have coming up. This weekend I'm going to Disneyland with Amanda. We are still using benefits of the time share presentation that we suffered through. So we are using our 2 free passes to Disney and 1 night in a local hotel on Sunday. Then in April it's off to FL with the family and then in May we have our Big Bear trip!
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As you may have noticed I've made a few more changes to my blog. And hopefully soon, when I have the time and motivation I might re build it from the ground up using a free open source process like WordPress. Until then, you get whats here. The best addition I think I've made is the small share button on the bottom of each post. I'm sure you've seen this or something similar before. It's now on almost every site. It's just an easy way to share a posts you like in many different ways. I use it all the time on other sites to post stuff to Facebook. So feel free to try it and share my amazing posts with your friends, haha.
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So I'm sure some of you may have heard the legend that a watch maker inscribed something on Lincoln's watch when the civil war started. I guess the watch broke, and Lincoln sent it out to be fixed. The watch maker upon hearing news of an attack decided to write something about it INSIDE Lincoln's watch for posterity. Anyway, it's been a rumor for a long time now. A distant relative of the watch maker recently claimed the story was true and that it had been passed down in his family. To prove it, they finally opened the watch and there WAS something inscribed.
The engraving, by watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, is dated April 13, 1861, and reads in part: "Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels" and "thank God we have a government." Source (Quote and Photo): Reuters
Pretty amazing huh!? I listened to the story on the radio and it was pretty cool to hear them open it and read what was written. What a sneaky little watch maker! You can read the whole article HERE. Share/Send
Rather then beat a dead horse for any overlap readers Amanda and I have. I'll just use this post to give Amanda's blog a shot out. Plus maybe the added pressure will make her update it more ;-)
So click HERE to see and bookmark her blog and HERE for a direct link to the post about this weekends desert trip, which was fun and amazing!
If you want to see pictures of the trip they are posted HERE on facebook and I think anyone can see them from that link. Join facebook if you want to comment on them ;-)
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You might have noticed, or more likely you haven't but I've changed a few things on my blog:
• I've added a search bar on the top right so if your looking for a certain post or key words feel free to use it, it works surprisingly well. Probably cause Google owns blogger, haha
• Right below that I've added a badge that shows you what trips I'm planning on taking and when.
• I've made my location map as small as possible because I thought it was just too intrusive on the page. I think it still is but thats as small as I can make it.
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So two days ago we, the earth, had a pretty close call. A comet (2009 DD45) came within 37,282 miles of the earth. Seems pretty far right? Well the moon is 2,388,550 miles from the earth, so it's quite a bit closer then our own moon. In some parts of the world it could be seen through clouds it was so bright. Being only about 150 feet across it wouldn't have destroyed the earth but it would have caused quite a bit of trouble for the area it hit. And we would only have about 24 hours to evacuate. Here is a video of it, it's best if you just wait till it loads then click and drag through it to see it in fast motion:
It would have looked something like this 1972 comet which burned up in the atmosphere: Anyway, I bring this up because as you know. The scientists of the world decided to test theLHC based on the chances of an astroid hitting and destroying us. HERE is the convo I had with my friend Chan about it. As I read about this near miss, I found the original article and it talks about how we really only know and have mapped about 5% of what could technically destroy us in the near future. Please read the article HERE.
My point? Well maybe the scientists are right, we should test the LHC. Looks like our chances aren't good either way, haha.
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