It looks like the Reston Town Center does a fun joke each year for April Fool’s! Last year the balls were all rainbow colored and this time around they went with a new theme. Pretty fun!
This year, there was a sports theme!
I claimed a giant blue one. 🙂
There was no way it would fit in the car like that.
Obviously stuck, and so started the deflation process.
Getting there…
Success! Snugly inside.
Buckle up for the ride. 😉
This was my view from the driver’s seat.
Selfie with the ball, of course.
Panda and I were going to do a trip to Nashville last weekend, but due to the weather we thought better of it and ended up staying more local. One of the things he found nearby is a fun little farm! I’d driven past it on the way to work before (and wondered about it), but I had no idea it’s part of a park and free to the public. Nor did I know there were so many cool animals waiting to be visited.
We went on a freezing cold day. I totally underdressed, so I was quite cold and we didn’t stay long. However, we still managed to see horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and rabbits! Next time we’ll have to go when it’s a little less brisk so we can stroll around more and check out the general store too.
The pigs kept pushing each other out from under the heat lamp. The right one has a black head with pink body!
She just looks like she should be a Bessie, don’t you think? Her eyes and nose are HUGE.
This mama has three little lambs! Two boys and a girl.
One of the boys was super friendly and wanted to be pet. 🙂
One of the lambs and the cow would sniff each other.
Getting the stare down from the mama.
Cow mom and baby calf in their stall.
Rabbit with a mustache. 😛
It was so cold most of the water bowls were frozen over!
Would you kiss a cow? I pretended to. Those tongues are weird!
Back when I first got Missy and Molly from the shelter, I also added Rupert to the family and eventually deemed him Missy’s boyfriend because she loves to massage him so much. A few weeks ago, Panda and I were at Costco (check out their cute video) when we came across what can only be described as Rupert’s uncle. Or granddad.
This guy is impressive. He is absolutely MASSIVE at 93″ tall and who knows how many pounds. I could barely lift up the top half that I’m holding here. There’s no way I could have dragged him out of the bin without assistance. You could potentially use him as a backup mattress if you ran out of guest beds. I mean, I had an easier time dragging my LoveSac around. Poor Rupert looks measly at just 53″ tall (feel free to send him condolences if you’d like). Check out how his cousin of identical size, Gogobear, compares to us human folk.
As you might suspect, the price tag on this giant teddy is hefty too, at just under $180. But gosh, think of the awesome things you could do with this guy, including some pretty awesome photo shoots. Costco has sold out of their first batch, but promised more to come this spring. In the mean time, get your fix on the Facebook page for this guy! You bet I’ve liked it. 🙂 Since I have Rupert though, I won’t be getting one of these
Yesterday our company had our holiday party celebration at a laser tag place! I think it was my first time, but then I have this faint memory of darkness, glowing lights, and being downright awful at the game. I don’t know if that was just a dream from my childhood or an actual memory. Either way, I was very new to this experience and had a lot to learn. We booked the whole place for over 4 hours and it was quite the night of fun and exercise!
Arriving at the holiday party after the Secret Santa at the office.
We signed waivers, gathered in the break room, then moved on to the briefing room before putting on our packs.
I’d show you those pictures, but some of my coworkers might not want to appear on my blog. 😛 Just imagine a break room painted with some sort of alien landscape with observation domes. There are a bunch of long tables and chairs there for people to sit (in our case, eat and drink). Across the way are doors leading to the briefing room, which is mostly kept darkened. There are other things painted on to these walls and it sort of looks like the background in the next picture. Three sides of the room have wooden benches lining them, one row in front, one row in back much like bleachers. Along the forth wall are the rules, a sample gem (glowing thing on the wall that can give you power-ups but also tag you), and a blown up example of what the display screen on the gun look like.
They walk you through the basics and then let us choose how we wanted to play each time. The first time it was two teams against each other. The second time we went crazy with four. The third time we toned it down to three and the forth time we had team captains split us into two teams (I’m pretty sure I was the worst player on my team then, but we still won!). And finally they went a fifth time with free for all. I really wanted zombies and didn’t want to get demolished in the free for all, so I sat out and got to stand by the entrance to watch everyone else battle it out. The same 6 or 7 people kept running around and around the area closest to me. Seems like many people had zones they preferred, so some sort of pattern.
Got my pack 14 on and ready to rumble!
The display on our laser guns let us know all sorts of stats that thoroughly confused me. Half the time I couldn’t tell if someone got hit or hit me.
In we went! It wasn’t until later that I realized there was a gem right at the beginning.
A few rounds in, I suddenly noticed the sign for our party!
After each game, we’d convene outside to check out how everyone did.
They even handed out score cards! I was pretty consistently one of the last (usually third to last).
It’s our first Halloween as homeowners and you can tell by the massive bags of Sour Patch Kids we gave out (along with Rice Krispy Treats too). The Sour Patch Kids were a hit with pretty much ever kid who came to our door. I think we had a total of twenty-some-odd visitors over the course of about half a dozen doorbell rings. A mostly quiet night, but that’s probably partly due to our neighborhood still being new and many condos still standing empty. It wasn’t easy to tell whether people were home and/or living in each unit, plus with our condo style, the doors are down a sidewalk between the walls of our buildings. The other style condos in the area have the front doors all along the front facing the street, so it’s easier for the kids to run from one to the next.
We made sure to turn on our front door light and we lit up fairy lights in one of the windows facing the road. Inside the front door, we lit up the tiny pumpkin I got from my recent HelloFresh box. Panda originally wanted to shine a light on it to cast a shadow like the bat signal, but the shadow was either too small or too blurry, so we decided to light the mini pumpkin instead. Next year we’ll have to make sure we carve a pumpkin and light it up out by the end of our sidewalk to get more people to our door. It also took use some time to hop off the couch and run down the stairs, so maybe we can read books on the stairs or something to be closer to the door.
Overall it was a fun Halloween, not too crazy, but it had its moments (especially at work). Here are some highlights:
This idea for Where’s Waldo sounded much better in our heads, but still provided for some great amusement today.
In no other scenario would you find a lumberjack axing a shark attacking a Waldo. What fun!
Fits in the palm of my hand.
Our makeshift lighting for the “pumpkin signal” that didn’t quite work.
From the outside, I think you get the idea that we’re open for business, right?
Smokey tried to dig in as soon as the kids were gone and the doorbell stopped ringing.
Recently, Canvas decided to do a Shark Tank initiative to gather ideas from across the company for what we can do to increase the trial subscriber volume. Everyone was invited to partner up and present an idea to five Sharks – a panel of decision-makers at Canvas. I was interested in participating, but didn’t really have any good ideas. One of my coworkers had reached out to me to partner up and just as we were about to get together, he found out that another guy one our team had already signed them up as a team. I kept an eye out, wondering who else I could team up with, but nothing really presented itself.
Today rolled around, with pitches scheduled throughout the afternoon. Right before lunch, a colleague who is a good friend started talking about it because she’d just learned about our Shark Tank (she didn’t get the emails). She needed someone to work with, so I offered to join her. After lunch, we met up with our coworker with the idea – he had to leave early and didn’t want to present anyway, so we took the idea and ran with it. He acted as our adviser and really helped make sure we had a ton of great information, so we were well-prepared. We took all that content and broke it into a bunch of slides, then started practicing. We even rehearsed walking in and greeting the Sharks. It was hilarious and so much fun!
I signed us up for the first time slot at 3:30 under our chosen team name: Double Trouble. After about an hour, we were pretty confident in our presentation. We had the entrance, presentation flow, and even synchronized moves all ready. We did a practice run in front of the idea man before he had to run and he loved it! Just as we were looking forward to going first, the Sharks came over to ask us to move to 4:10, the second slot. They had to postpone the start to 4. While it was sad we wouldn’t be first up, it did give us extra time to rehearse! I then booked a meeting room so we could practice clicking through the slides.
When it finally came time to pitch, we went through our presentation nearly flawlessly. Our high energy and funny moments really captured the Sharks and they had a great time with us. We certainly had the most memorable and entertaining presentation! The idea was a hit too, and we finished off on a fabulous note. I think the Sharks were not only impressed with how prepared we were (especially considering we’d only prepared for about an hour and a half), but how enthusiastic we were! I think some of them know us both to be more quiet, and not nearly as goofy as we turned out to be. Wins all around for team Double Trouble!!
We were still high from the rush of joy after that fun experience when we were told about the free food in the kitchen for a “Christmas in July” Happy Hour. Check out the awesome spread, including some super cool Australian dessert – pavlova – and an assortment of fruit as well as cocktail shrimp. We had a fabulous time enjoying the food before I decided to get back to work. I’d lost about half a day due to all this Shark Tank and Happy Hour fun, so it was time to get crackin’ again.
Homemade and oh so delicious!!
When cats see a cardboard box, it may as well contain catnip for how much they enjoy it. What a silly cutie!
cat leaps and licks from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
cat in box playing with finger from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
cat playing in cardboard box from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Was it really my birthday today? It feels so surreal. At times I marvel that I’m now 28 though (more recently) sometimes I kind of am ready to just be in my 30s already. I guess I should enjoy the next two years before that big 3-0 hits for real and I can’t go back to these crazy 20s. 😉
I started off my day much like I ended my night yesterday: with Missy sleeping on my chest. 🙂
Once I got up, I went to get Panda and he took us to this dim sum place with MASSIVE lobsters (no, we did not eat any). Note the normal lobsters in the tank next to it.
After our meal, we explored a fun Japanese store. These earmuffs are fun but too cutesy for me. I got a hedgehog microfiber glove instead, lol.
As we sat looking for a tea place we’d heard of, I was amused by how Panda’s pant leg rode up and he had a random thread on his socks. Silly boy.
We found the place with 3D latte art!
Such adorable designs! I got that marsh-minion for free just for checking in on Yelp.
As I drank my drink, the bear slowly drifted away into oblivion (or my stomach, as it were).
The next stop was Frances Bakery for deeelicious cronuts.
I was so excited I totally over-ordered!
Nom nom nom… couldn’t wait to enjoy the goodness.
Then it was off to Glendale Galleria, where we wandered around the stores and I entertained myself trying on these crazy heels.
What do you think of making this necklace a headdress?
L’Occitane had a free hand massage offer so I got treated to it.
For dinner, we went kind of overboard and ordered 5 things, not thinking the portions would be ENORMOUS. Sooo many leftovers!
We stopped for boba and then went to our respective homes. I arrived to find Missy ready for my attention.
As my mom and I chatted in the kitchen, Missy lay claim to the cronuts. Or maybe she just likes the box. 😉
And now I’m comfortably in bed snuggling with Missy. I think she’s pleased I finally went to bed… she’d been waiting over an hour for me!
You shouldn’t always take yourself seriously. In fact, I think every day we should be a little goofy, wacky, strange, even. Tonight as Panda and I were getting ready to head out to his company’s holiday party, we took a few moments to be utterly silly even as we got all dressed up. There’s no better fun than that! I had him carry me and then I gave him a piggy back ride. Later in the evening, we got home and took a selfie video of us doing a fake cheers from our silly plastic cocktail glasses. Comic relief can be a useful way to disperse tension and being goofy is a splendid way to have some fun! If you’re not already laughing or even giggling every day, maybe you should try goofing off a bit more. It’s a great way to make more memorable moments and keep a playful spirit alive.
What fun it is to goof off. College is the perfect time to go a little crazy and try out some wacky things, like sliding down stairs on a mattress. I mean, when you’re moving in or out, why not have some fun with it? That’s exactly what my friends and I did one year, when we decided that the mattresses in our rooms could use a little excitement. We took turns throwing ourselves down the stairs atop this padding, having a grand old time. Between the bumpiness and the awkwardness, it was pretty hilarious. Stair surfing is not for the faint of heart but it’s a rewarding experience for those insane enough to throw themselves headfirst down the stairs. It also happens to make for some great entertainment. Don’t try this at home, folks.
