Spring!

Went grocery shopping today, and finally took a picture of the beautiful cherry trees that are starting to bloom! So PRETTY! Got the added bonus of hearing a Rush block on the radio: "Freewill," "Red Barchetta," "Limelight" and "Closer to the Heart." Happy drive!

Treats or Not?

TODAY
Don't know if it's because of the stormy weather or PMS or because it's a weekend, but on the way home from work tonight, I rented 2 movies, treated myself to flowers AND ice cream. The movies appear to be girly..."The Jane Austen Book Club" and "Paris, Je T'Aime." The flowers are coral colored mini gerbera daisies. They're happy flowers. They are Spring! And they were a total impulse buy. (I put them in Grandma Antrosio's half-pint cream bottle. CUTE!) The ice cream is Haagen-Dasz white chocolate with a raspberry swirl and chocolate truffle pieces. I've never tried it before, so we'll see if it's as lovely as it sounds. Sweets are my weakness :( I think perhaps I over did it with treating myself today. Probably not in keeping with the spirit of Lent either. BOO. Bad Nicole.

Update
"The Jane Austen Book Club" - great movie! Definitely girly. Several women form a book club, and as they read, you see how their lives mirror the themes of the books. Really good.

"Paris, Je T'Aime" - WTF. That is all I have to say.

Road Trip

02/29/08
I saw Joe!!!!!! At the last minute, he was approved for leave so he could fly to his parents' and drive his car back down to the base. My generous boss said he didn't care, so I flew to Boise and met Joe there. We stayed one night at his parents' house in Eastern Oregon (his dad was unfortunately out of town, but it was a treat to see Betsy) and then loaded up the X-tizzle with everything he had in storage and headed off.

We drove through Idaho (yawn,) Utah and then Arizona. A lot of Utah was in the dark, including Salt Lake City. But Southern Utah surprised us with some pretty scenery. An even greater surprise was the fantastic '80s butt-rock radio station we found! I never expected to discover such a glorious thing in Utah. I may have disturbed Joe a bit with my enthusiasm. It was loaded with happy, hilarious hair-band music from my high school days including a rarely played Def Leppard song from Hysteria called "Women" and my favorite Tesla song "Love Song." So good! That's one redeemable quality about Utah.

Arizona was quite pretty. I think I would miss the green over a long period, but the landscape was so different, it was really enjoyable. Beautiful red rocks and bizarre looking cacti. Arizona was a quick drive so I didn't have time to visit Cousin Carrie or Friend Bruce. Hopefully at a later visit. Luckily, we were able to make a quick stop at the Grand Canyon before it got too dark. Neither of us had been there before, so that was a fun little perk. Well, not little. Ginormous is more like it. Very cool. Literally. It was freezing up there. Had to be 10-20 degrees. Fa-reezing! We ran out of the car, snapped a few quick pics and ran back into the car. By then, our hands were numb.

I've never been on a military base before, so Fort Huachuca was pretty interesting. A lot bigger than I imagined. A lot of stores and places to get food, gas, schools and Army housing. If I tell you any more, I'll have to kill you. It is surrounded by some beautiful mountains...there's nothing worse than flat, boring land...and it's so close to the border, one of the mountains is actually in Mexico.

It was a perfectly lovely time with Jojo after not seeing him for a month!

Photos
- Joe and Henry the parrot
- Pretty red rocks with interesting striations
- Driving
- 3 of Grand Canyon
- Joe playing bass again
- Joe's barracks