virginia city saloon girls

our adventures in virginia city were so numerous, i'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking of how to explain them all. i will succeed, though!

so lauren and i got up and out of the house to pick up karen, lauren's old roommate from college... and might i say, next to both of them i definitely feel like a giant. karen is 4'11, and lauren is a head taller than her, and i'm a head taller than lauren. we're like the cingular bars all stacked up in heighth order. good grief... so funny.

we walked around virginia city for a bit and bought a few things like hawaiian lotion (TOTALLY manufactured in vcity? no, not really), summer dresses, and little random things like my bottle of gingerale. i cant wait to taste it!

we went into a quaint little shop, and lauren tried on something called a "magic wrap" which is double layers of fabric that are large enough to wrap around your body in a variety of ways. you can make a skirt, dress, halter shirt, tunic, or even bathing suit coverup...



we saw a group of tourists on the street, and i told lauren and karen to come with me as i pretended to be a part of their group. it was awesome! we got details on the famous "suicide table" in a local saloon and took some pictures...



then we visited the old newspaper printing shop, where the headlines were pretty absurd... and therefore pretty fantastic!






then we were off to the bucket 'o blood saloon, where you just HAVE to go and have a rootbeer. we were also told (as the barkeep looked at karen skeptically) that we couldn't be at the bar unless we were 21... to which she sassily replied that she definitely is, and i guess they figured since we were ordering root beer, it wasn't worth a fight. so funny!





i asked around and found out there was a local cigar shop in town, so we stopped by there where i got a lesson in cigars from a toothless man who (to his credit) did have an awesome selection of cigars ranging from $3 - $100. super impressive. i bought three "black dragons" that apparently are really spicy, and have a kick to 'em for a few guy friends of mine... we'll see how they like them.



we went to the shooting gallery where we got to show our stuff with laser shotguns... it was fun times. karen hadn't shot before, so lauren showed her how, and karen thought she was pretty clever, surprising lauren with a kiss when i took the picture.





after our shooting adventure, we decided to take an old-time saloon picture and i dont think we stopped laughing the whole time. from the scandalous ladies behind the counter taking our pictures and helping us into our costumes, to the absurdity of hilarity that must come to even get into character for a photo shoot as a saloon girl, it was just nonstop giggles and laughing.

the lady took our picture by saying "serious pose... slight smile... full smile... random" and we would go from looking like we hated the world, to a smirk, to a full smile, and then a cheesy scream look on our faces. when we looked through them at the end, we just died laughing. you woulda thought we were watching a comedy show or something... well, lets face it... taking a dressup picture with me and lauren IS a comedy show. you add karen, and it just gets CRAZY, i'm tellin ya!

here is the one we ended up with... we're pretty hot sauce, ya'll.



you would think that'd be enough adventure for the day, but it wasnt...

we went to lunch at the hungry miner's diner, and while in there we ran into a producer for a local virginia city commercial documenting the diner we were in. we were told we should come back and be in the commercial next saturday... to which i laughingly told the producer that i knew where to get a saloon girl costume if he wanted me in old fashioned garb for the picture. he laughed and agreed that was a great idea, if i came. haha... lauren and karen and i laughed as the producer and his assistant left.

when they walked out, the owner of the diner walked up to us and told us the producer's assistant was adam lambert's sister, ashley lambert. adam lambert is on american idol... he was the runner-up this year. how funny is that?!? karen almost had a heart attack right there. she wanted to run out the door and be ashley's best friend i think.

not too shabby of a day in virginia city, i must say...

backstube with autumn

today was lunch with autumn at backstube, a unique little austrian bakery near my house.

autumn and lauren got to chat for a bit and we laughed our way through a sunshine filled lunch on the patio.

i love the little quaint eateries in my neighborhood!

after my work day lauren and i went to housechurch with the crew, and then back to my house to watch the season finale of LOST with andrew. he grilled up some steak that we diced and put on fettuccine and it was to die for.

how tragic that we now have to wait til 2010 for new episodes!! grrrr.

riverwalk, lasagna & i love lucy

avocado on toast and coffee is what i had for breakfast today. favorite breakfast ever...

lauren took my car and went home to sleep for a few more hours before her lunch date with danel at waldens, a local coffee shop here in reno. from what i hear, it was a great time.

i had a meeting around lunch time, so afterwards lauren and i spent my late lunch hour at the river where we got coffee at dreamers coffee shop and took a stroll in the sunshine. i showed her the kayaking area of the riverwalk, and the parks and outdoor theaters for plays and things... she loved it.

then we just sat and talked on some stone steps. its was one of those unforgettable conversations... one where it just makes your heart happy and solidifies those strong bonds in a sincere friendship. i hope everyone reading this knows what that's like, because it's one of those things that just makes life worthwhile.

lauren headed off to an afternoon with andrew, and when i got off work we met up with at the "i love lucy & lasagna night" at faith, joy & saprina's place later that night. saprina made her mom's amazing lasagna recipe, and it was fantastic! boy i love me some lucy, too. that woman is so frickin funny. here's a clip from what we watched tonight.




lauren and faith and i laugh at how similar faith and lauren are. it's why i appreciate lauren, i think. she reminds me of faith in SO many ways. here's some pictures of us twinsters with lauren.

qdoba community and in-n-out

sleep? what is that?

sleep is pointless when you'd rather hang out with people you love than get some rest. haha... i feel that way all the time. with lauren here, it's worse.

we dont wanna sleep, because it takes away from hangout time... although we get alot of that as it is.

we wake up in the morning and she laughs at my "i hate the world" attitude on the way to work... then we meet for lunch in the afternoon, and have serious conversations about life and the Lord while we eat... then in the evenings we get together with friends until late at night, and when we drive home she laughs even MORE at my nighttime "awake" attitude when i have no filter. its just laughter laughter laughter... all the time laughing, and i wouldnt have it any other way.

i tell her i love having an audience... it eggs me on.

today was our errands day. i had two appts this morning... one for the dentist and one for the optometrist... so i took the morning off work. she decided to tag along, and so after my dentist appt we went and grabbed coffee before my eye doctor appt. the starbucks man macked on her while we were there, and she got not one but TWO free drinks in our 20 minute stay at the coffee shop. it was freaking funny.



we also met jake, the golden lab tied outside starbucks. THEN we met his owner who we have affectionately named "the starbucks surfer dude"... he was not ugly. he introduced us to jake, and then conveniently decided to move jake closer to us so he could "be in the shade". this meant starbucks surfer dude could show off jake's many skills in doing tricks, much to our delight.

an hour later, i was done with my eye doctors appt in which they dilated my eyes and gave me hideously ghetto-fabulous sun shades to wear with my glasses. this was something lauren "needed" to documented with a photo. it wouldve been a much better photo if she wasn't shaking and laughing so hard while taking it.



soon afterwards, we were off to lunch with mellum at qdoba where we did alot more laughing and even got asked to get up from our booth so the manager of the restaurant could grab a couple pots that he'd forgotten to remove from the storage area inside the bench seat... oh man! that ONLY happens to us.



then i relinquished lauren to mellum for the afternoon where they spent five hours at starbucks talking before i grabbed her and we went to go hang out with ruth before community. i decorated her nails with a toothpick. dont they look fabulous?!





community was great, and afterwards lauren and i voted for an in-n-out adventure at 11pm. here are some pictures of the randomness...

pho and tea bubbles

while lauren is here i have to work. it sucks because i'd love to hang out with her 24/7, but we think we've come up with a way to hang out and still allow for my work schedule too.

i love being lauren's social planner. people call or text or facebook me and are like "hey is lauren doing anything?" and i subdue my desire to tell them "yes... i am hanging with her all day!" and call in sick to work (which i would never do), and i be an adult and pencil them into her social calendar.

we thought it was gonna be tough to hang out since i work all week, but it is actually working pretty well. we have a default lunch date everyday unless someone else wants to steal her, and we SO look forward to it.

today (monday) she dropped me off at work, and then covertly filled my gas tank (grrr) before relaxing for a couple hours and then meeting me for lunch. we went to pho 777, a vietnamese noodle house, for lunch and it was fun to sit and chat for a bit in the middle of my busy work day.

then i relinquished her to andrew for the afternoon, and they spent four hours at starbucks and then went to visit mellum at his work. from what i hear, he about died of excitement when she slyly walked in and checked out the ice cream counter without him knowing she was there. mustve been a great moment! :)

i met up with them after work and we had a not-so-healthy dinner at wendys before everyone headed off to young life.

lauren had heard stories of how much i adore bubble tea, so at her request we headed over to partake of the brilliant bubble... it was really funny watching her reactions to the tapioca bubbles in the bottom of her tea.



after bubble tea we decided to invite ruth lipparelli to go on our pending grocery shopping excursion with us since we were near her house. she was finishing dinner her man had made when we arrived, and we sat down on the patio with luke and ruth and danel to wait for her to finish... and then we didn't move for four hours.

we laughed and talked and joked around for an hour or so before larry and mike bishop returned from a coffee date... and then shortly after they got back, andrew got home from young life, too. what a group we had! all fiesty and animated, telling stories about life and each of our respective africa adventures, too. we all can relate on that topic, for sure.

inbetween our stories and laughs, larry pegged the neighbor's barking dog with frozen paintballs when throwing it food to keep quiet didn't work anymore. one of larry's pet peaves is not being able to hear conversations in his backyard because of the barking dog. i could barely concentrate on the conversations around me when larry went to war with the mangy mutt.

then... after four hours in the lipparelli's backyard... lauren and i headed off to go grocery shopping. that was an interesting experience, since the last time we went grocery shopping included a man telling me his wife no longer satisfied him, upon seeing me at the kenyan marketplace. ha! being around each other is so weird when we think of everything in retrospective to the last time we hung out together. soooo different.

the way we roll

let me just say the following: i am having so much fun with lauren here in reno!

only a day into her week here, and i've loved every second ive spent with her. its a blast building upon the friendship we struck up in kenya. its so different that what we experienced there, but so relaxing. we have both changed so much since africa...

one thing hasn't changed, though... we still exhaust everyone around us by laughing constantly. we find alot of joy in life, although my scope of vision is a lot more sarcastic and ironic of an outtake on everything than hers is... but we just laugh and laugh because we love being around another person who enjoys just LIVING.

after our adventure in the ghetto (previous blog) , we slept for a few hours and then drove to washoe valley where we met friends who had been camping for a few days. we avoided the bugs, cold nights and set up and tear down of the campsites, and that was fine with me!

we spent the afternoon driving around the campground in the back of andrew's truck...

layed in the grass outside of bower's mansion, laughing as half naked children swam around in the water fountain...

took pictures of anything and everything just to document such a gloriously relaxing afternoon...

went to the chocolate nugget candy factory for some homemade ice cream and sweets...

i introduced lauren to the "miner man" on the hill near the candy factory - he seemed to really want her to take the rock he was holding out to her...

but try as we might, we couldn't get it out of his hand... he just wouldnt let go!

by the time we were done with our afternoon of grass and ice cream and mining men, we were exhausted. we said goodbye to the friendlies for the afternoon and headed home to a night of hair dying. faith joined us a little later, and i was pretty proud of my handiwork when all was said and done...

i gave faith highlights... i got chocolate brown... and lauren got blonder.

we finished our night by relaxing and watching the movie p.s. i love you.

for the record, that movie makes me want to take a trip to ireland to visit a land where saucy accents and rugged facial hair is the norm. wouldnt it be awesome to attend an irish community event where large men wore skirts that somehow didnt look awkward on them, and compete to see who can throw a tree the farthest?

cuz dang.

that is all for now... more adventures to come...

an adventure in the ghetto

my friend lauren, the one who was in africa with me, decided awhile ago that she wanted to visit reno sometime upon us arriving back in the states after our trip. this weekend was the weekend she arrived.

she was supposed to arrive at sfo yesterday around 2pm and have around 4 hrs to safely find her way via public transportation in cali, to oakland airport. due to many delays on the first couple legs of her trip from texas to the west coast, she arrived at sfo around 4 hours later than she planned. she tried her best to get to oakland airport and make her scheduled flight to reno, but arrived just in time to see it take off.

she called me after she was supposed to be in the air already, and i answered my phone to hear her say: "so... obviously, i'm not on my plane. due to delays of my other flights, i missed it. i have checked all the airlines, and no other flights leave oakland or san francisco until tomorrow morning. so, i'm gonna find a place in the airport to crash for the night until i can catch a flight."

i was horrified at the thought of lauren staying at the airport - OR OAKLAND - alone, and promptly told her that was an unacceptable solution. she'd never been there before, and had no idea how ghetto it was. i told her i'd come pick her up, and i started driving. it took me four hours to get to her, and traffic was actually not too bad, so for that i was thankful.

at 11:45pm i arrived at oakland airport's hilton hotel, which she'd taken an airport shuttle to, and thought "well, this'll be fun" as i parked the car between the hotel and its sports bar. there were about 20 men outside the bar who all took notice as i got out of my car.

i decided to check for lauren in the hotel lobby first and try to avoid the throng if i could, but she wasn't there. earlier when i'd spoken to her on the phone she'd mentioned something about the sports bar, so i gripped my purse a bit tighter and walked briskly towards the entrance to the bar. i got about five feet from the throng of men, and one stepped towards me from the side of the walkway.

"you looking for me, girl?" he asked as he looked me up and down. oh good grief. lets just be honest... i wanted to shove him into the concrete pillar he'd just been leaning against, or at least throw his drink in his face... but i throttled my emotions and kept up my brisk pace as i looked him straight in the face and said "NO."

the 15 men around him erupted in ribbing and remarks about how he'd been shot down, but i was already in the door to the sports bar. i looked around and lauren wasn't there. after a thorough examination of the many dining rooms of the establishment, i walked back to the front. i noticed the obnoxious man (and i use that word lightly) was back and walking towards me with a sly grin on his face.

i quickly sized him up and decided i'd thoroughly shaken his confidence once already and only needed to show i wasn't caving. sure enough, i turned towards him and put one foot in front of me, creating my personal space and throwing him a steely gaze for a few seconds as i put my phone to my ear to call lauren. he got the drift and did a not-so-casual quick turn towards the bar, pretending to ask the barkeep a question before walking out again.

mission accomplished.

lauren answered, and told me she was aware of the throng of men downstairs (only after having to deal with them herself a few times). she had gone to hide on a second floor lounge of the hotel after a quick dinner at the sports bar. she headed downstairs to meet me and i envisioned myself being an untouchable brick wall -with legs- as i walked past all the men again on my way across the driveway to the hotel lobby again.

a hug and a few squeals later, lauren and i grabbed her bag and ignored the bellhop hitting on me, and the sultry "its okay baby.." from the parking attendant when i told him i'd lost my parking stub. we got in the car, locking the doors the second our butts hit the seats.

lauren let out a huge laugh as we drove away, and said "what IS it with you and the men tonight?!"

"i dont know," i replied, "but i'd like to know where my future husband is right now... he needs to come protect his goods!"

we laughed ironically at the fact that our first adventure together in the states dealt with warding off men (something we did frequently in africa), and sighed in relief as we embarked on our journey home...

lauren and i arrived in reno at 4am. after 8 hours of driving for me and a whole day of travel for her, our heads hit our pillows pretty quickly. a few hours later we were up and going to meet friends for the tail end of their camping trip.

here are a few pictures from our day in the sunshine with friends...

death by automatic faucet

we're into our spring events season at my work, and that means lifting tables, hauling chairs and setting up rooms before our events start. my coworkers and i bring a change of clothes so we can get out of our jeans and tshirts and into presentable outfits before our events.

yesterday i grabbed my change of clothes and headed off to the restroom to change. i got all gussied up and realized my tshirt and jeans earrings didnt match my (gorgeous) dress. not to fear, i'd thought of that already and dug around in my purse for my matching earring and necklace set.

i took the necklace out, and the earrings went flying because they had gotten tangled up in it whilst in the bottom of my purse. one i caught in midair (what skill!), and the other went swirling around in the bottom of a sink. i fastened the necklace and one earring, and reached my hand in the sink to retrieve my remaining earring.

as per the function of automatic sinks, my hand set the motion censors off (which i hadnt considered), and the water jetted on at full blast upon my hand that had just grasped the other earring. i was so shocked at the surprise attack of ice water on my hand that i jerked my hand back and my earring went soaring through the air and hit the floor, bouncing across the bathroom.

in a matter of seconds, my heart was racing like a freight train from the shock of the unexpected attack on my hand, but nonetheless i raced across the bathroom trying to catch my earring which was still rolling across the tile.

earring in hand a short 20 seconds later, and aerobics workout completed with the reaching and stretching under sinks and stalls, i sternly put it in my ear and then leaned on the sink vanity to catch my breath and thought, "why work out? in my life, i get my cardiovascular system pumping just by putting jewelry on!"

only me... only me...