I'm hiding behind my capiz shell chandelier because I've messed around with the template of the website and messed some things up. :( I'm hiding because even though Chhimi is in Bhutan I'm afraid that somehow he will magically sense that I've jacked everything up. In other news, I love GORGONZOLA! Also there was cake at work today, and pizza, and caesar salad. I love it there.

Ma and Pa Maghanoy sent me these flowers! Aren't they beautiful?

If last month was my big day, well then Arnold's big moment has come as well. Today Arnold was featured on a Univision story about his high school. He is now no longer a lowly first-year Spanish teacher, but an accomplished professional urging his Latino students towards success in the health professions. Go Arnold! I also think he looks quite snappy!

In other equally important news. Today is Chhimi's birthday! Some of you might not know Chhimi but he is very important as he is the WEB MASTER who controls the fate of Maghanoy.com If not for him you would not enjoy the riduclous distraction of my overly-verbose blog entries. Thank you for everything Chhimi! You are the best!!!

And speaking of the best. Thank you Sonia Kuarz for remembering that today is ASH WEDNESDAY! Ironic that only my Sikh friend seems to know that it is Ash Wednesday, huh? :)

Maghanoy.com celebrates 1 year of internet greatness! Well I was just checking my archives and about 1 year ago my AWESOME friend Chhimi helped me start this nonsense. Happy Birthday to us! To celebrate Maghanoy.com's birthday I finally got my Vespa. I won't narrate more, I think the pictures will be enough.

In life it's the little things that make you happy, or else it's being in a good mood because you have been resting at home all week instead of working... either way I've been enjoying myself. After the food fest that was our weekend with the parental units I've been kicking back(sort-of) by taking care of some personal business before I start my new job. Tomorrow (yikes!) I would be nervous except my Grandma is nervous for me, so I don't have to bother with that detail. Anyways, here is a list of little things that have brought me joy this week...

1) The Chhimi-Wong family called me from Bhutan! IT WAS SO EXCITING! I am no stranger to international phone calls, my mother-in-law calls me quite often to say hi from Colombia, but still! Bhutan! Or maybe Singapore? Chhimi didn't really detail where they were, his message was more along the lines of "Loser! Where are you?" But still, I was so excited!

2)Last weeks fiasco of an IKEA trip has resulted in a dresser that works. The dresser I previously used had two drawers that didn't really close. It's nice to look in my closet and see a dresser with closed drawers. Ditto when I look at our new (less than $200 bed and night table set), it really makes a difference to get rid of crap furniure, even if you replacing it with fiberboard. :)

3) I taught my Mom how to do on-line bill pay. She did pretty good, there was no emotinal breakdown at any point which is not something I can say about when my parents taught me to drive, or when I tried to teach my Mom how to use the mouse. Good job Mom! Welcome to 1999!

I think this picture says it all when it comes to how my last week of work went... according to Chhimi this picture only proves him correct on the whole "Evil eyes" theory. Anyways, of course this picture does not mean I went postal on my last day at the chocolate factory, it merely means that my awesome co-workers put together a little get-together for me and that there was chocolate cake! I love you Dona! I love you Jen! I love you everybody! Anyways, I am grateful to all my work friends, every job has it's ups and downs but with great friends you can get through it all... without having to resort to using sharp knives at any point. Thank you to all of you who made my time there great, but especially to Elizabeth, Sara and Chhimi without whom I would've spent everyday crying alone in the bathroom. :) Due to your support I coped not with violence but with copious amounts of eating croissants (Elizabeth), sushi platters(Chhimi), and anything we could get our sticky little finger on (Sara). I am already missing you!

Live from Temecula - Some of you know that I am on a constant quest to fatten Arnold up, since... well I don't like being the chubby bunny of our little duo, but if ever I wanted to know how to do it, I could of just called my parents, they've been feeding us non-stop since we arrived yesterday morning. We went to a place called the Big Kitchen, a Rachael Ray recommendation, because whatever Rachael says goes.... of course no one had been there before and despite having learned quite awhile ago how to use the internet my Mom didn't think this was necessary. Also she talked too much so even after she got directions she missed the turnoff and basically took us on an hour detour of the San Diego area. I correctly predicted that a breakdown was emminent. When Mom continued giving "suggestions" despite her obvious ineptitude at this particular activity, my prediciton was realized when my GAD had a slight hypoglycemic breakdown on the way to aforementioned Big Kitchen. I must confess he said some not very nice things about Rachael Ray, but the insanely big pancake we ate at big kitchen went over quite well. There was a lot of French being spoken there, and my Dad will be the first to tell you that he does not approve of the Frenchies and their ways. According to GAD all of Europe is one big security disaster. Despite this my GAD seems to have always handled this going to Colombia thing each year very well, so I congratulate him on that one.

Well since the Big Kitchen it's been one big food fest after another. And today we've spent the day sitting and eating and watching the Grammys. My Mom likes to cheer people on in odd ways "Go Shakira!" "I like Prince... I mean not his music... I just like him." My GAD likes to criticize people in increasingly bizarre and pointless ways "That girl is bowlegged", apparently GAD is not a Hillary Duff fan. Arnold likes to make jokes that no one understands because they can't tell when he is being sarcastic. I like to bury my face in the couch and wish that Duffy was still alive so that there would be at least one other non-insane person in the room. Oh Duffy, we miss you so!

Can you believe that Anna Nicole Smith died? I was so surprised, I mean she seemed invincible to me. Obviously this is not super-important news, but still. Sometimes one runs a bit dry on blog info.

Anyways, on to my theme of the day... IKEA. I for quite some time now have had a sort of un-healthy obsession with IKEA, this of course has been somewhat tempered since IKEA came to town and I have easier access, but still I love eating the 50 cent hot dogs and wandering around marveling at how well they lay out a 500 square foot apartment. Arnold likes the 99 cent breakfast that includes coffee. He says the coffee is good, not Juan Valdez worthy of course, but he always seems cheery after the IKEA cafeteria loads him up on caffeine and protein. The thing is that everytime we go to IKEA it seems to end in some kind of disaster...

Arnold and I had pre-meditated it all, we would go to IKEA buy the on-sale MALM bed with three-piece headboard and dresser, load it into the Enterprise rent-a-vans that are available on site and go home on time to heat dinner before our weekly Thursday Night TV party. Simple, right?

So we are wandering around enjoying ourselves, perusing mattresses and eating hot dogs and everything is peachy. We load up our bed and dresser without incident. I intelligently mosey off to call the Rent-A-Van so that they'll be there when Arnold is done paying... except they aren't... there. They've closed early for absolutely no reason. That's when Arnold wanders up and I get to inform him that we need to magically load a bed frame, the headboard with included side tables and a dresser into our Honda Accord. It's flat-packed, but still! Honda Accord!

Did I mention that it was raining?

Needless to say when Debi arrived for TV night, she did not arrive to the sight of Amelie calmly heating up Italian Stew in a reasonably clean apartment. She came home to a raving lunatic who was unreasonably focused on scrubbing the crap off her stovetop instead of focusing on the boxes of flat-packed furniture still blocking the front door. Still, by the time Sara arrived things were looking up for me. When Sara arrived she said "I just dropped my sweatshirt in the middle of the street and when I looked back and realized where I dropped it, a car ran it over."

I think my constant-mini-disaster syndrome might be contagious.

A tree is growing inside my house! And not just any tree, a Meyer Lemon tree that I have been personally caring for since that blasted heat wave last July or so. This tree has been under my care for the past 8 months and it is still alive! I do feel bad that my poor little guy has scale, something that was discovered during it's vacation with the Power family, but still it's alive. And... it smells heavenly!

Many of you have been asking to hear something about my awesome new job, which I would love to blog about to the whole world, so excited am I... but, the excitement is not enough to temper my paranoia that I should never, ever talk about my professional life... so unfortunately the new job is something that is relegated to the list of topics that are censored from the blog. This lists includes so-far 1) "She who must not be named" - i.e. a certain relative who believes this blog is "everything bad" and 2) Anything about my job, seeing as I am overly paranoid about somehow getting in trouble The good news is that the hijinks of Amelie and Arnold are still totally fair game for the blog and it should only be a matter of time until something moderately interesting happens, like I fall down the stairs or Arnold wins a trip to Greece or something. :) And now that I think of it, we are visiting the Maghanoy elders next weekend so I am sure that they will provide some excellent blog fodder.

Well, I might not be known for my tech saavy but I have to say that I am pretty proud of myself. Some would say that "smugly accomplished" is my default setting, but we'll leave that aside for now. I am proud of myself for not only keeping up this blog for a whole year, but for my newest blogsphere accomplishment. I attached a google map to this thing that allowss me to see where people are reading my blog. This however has brought up some interesting questions... such as

Who do I know in.... London, KARLSRUHE, BADEN-WURTTEMBERG, Toronto, Ontario or Somerville, Masachusetts, Leon, Mexico.. And why can I not spell Massachusetts?

Questions, my friends, deep, thought-provoking questions....