Sister visit and PIK-toors!

Pictures that should be in earlier blog:

Friday pictures:



This is us having no sense of decency at the Donner Memorial State Park.

 

Lunch somewhere along I-80

 

About the take the Jelly Belly factory tour.

 

Lots of interesting things to buy in the gift shop

 

Stopped at IKEA, go figure.

Somewhere in here, we get into Saturday and Sunday.  I forget where.

Fashionable scenery shoot

Riley's favorite thing to do

Tracy fixing all my technology problems

Sunday: Walked Riley, ate something I can't remember, went to see the may-or-may-not-be Van Gogh exhibit at the NMA.  This totally uninformative article

http://www.mynews4.com/mostpopular/story/ONLY-ON-4-A-Real-Van-Gogh-Mysterious-Painting-on/-NhSJmXr-EOkq3aHM3lx3Q.cspx

explains that this painting may or may not be real, but only News 4 was allowed in to film it.  It's actually a very interesting debate, but I think it's real, and not just because I am an idealist.  My main reasoning is that if you were going to fake a painting by a master, would you stop it when it's almost done and draw a caricature of a samurai warrior on it?  Yeah, probably not.  Besides, the samurai has Van Gogh's nose and he was apparently very interested in Japanese art and supposedly traded this painting for some.

We were going to go see The Great Gatsby, but bailed on that.

What else did we do on Sunday?  Ah, we cooked dinner.  We made mini meatloaves in muffin tins and they not only came out awesome, but the leftovers are now individually wrapped in my freezer.  Meals for single people!  We also went to my apartment complex's gym, but don't worry- we didn't work out.  They have a pool table.  (That was Sunday, right?)

Riley would like some mini meatloaves

Monday:  The smoke alarm started chirping again at 6:30am.  We took turns sitting with Riley until I was dressed and alive enough to go march into the office.  They said their weekend guy had come in on Saturday, but we never got a note and the smoke detector was still hanging off the wall.  They immediately sent their real maintenance guy in, who promptly fixed the smoke detector and left.  Whew.  Silence.  Riley's eyes stayed wide for a while, worried that it would start again.

We spent our last day together shopping and wandering around, installing Rudy the tissue box, working on the Jelly Belly puzzle, reheating mini meatloaves, uploading my cds to iTunes, and playing Wii.

Solo loves puzzles

You can see him AND get a snot rag now!

The Wii said Tracy has balance problems.  This is illustrated above.

Tuesday:  The smoke alarm started chirping again at 6:30am.  Riley lost her little mind and climbed into my lap, shaking- even though I was standing up.  I went to deposit Riley with Tracy and she told me it was Dad's smoke alarm- the one he installed in my bedroom as an extra precaution.  "It was quieter," she said.  Not on our end.  I went back to look and sure enough- the battery in the second smoke detector was dying.  How in the hell does this happen?  And why did I tell Tracy that we would enjoy waking up to regular phone alarms instead of the smoke detector?  I jinxed us.  I think I said that Sunday night, too.  I have not replaced the battery in that one yet.  I'm going to have to take it outside, I think, because if Riley hears this again, she might explode.