catandmuse.com

UDATED TO ADD PICTURE OF MY SOUVENIER T-SHIRT FROM THE CURE CONCERT!!!

It was my second favorite, but the one I liked most was sized smaller and stretched out Robert Smiths head across my boobs so that he kinda looked bug-eyed.  I wouldn’t have minded the bug-eyed expression so much, but the tee wouldn’t have survived more than a couple of washes and stretchings before it would be trash.

We just got home from seeing The Cure in concert IN HONG KONG!!

This is the first concert we have seen here (except a symphony), the venue was the AsiaWorld Expo. It is HUGE! I have never seen anyplace so big in my life. They could have had two live big-name concerts and at least 12 conventions. It is insanely huge.

 Anyway, Robert Smith looks pretty much the same, maybe just a bit heavier. If he has aged at all, the make-up is covering it up well. They sounded awesome, they played a lot of old stuff.

I bought a t-shirt to commemorate the event. I will add a picture of my tour tee later if I remember! I also got a hella workout jumping up and down for 2 hours. There was no opening act and the band played for more than 2 1/2 hours without a break…it was awesome *rockandroll fingers*.

It was so loud where we were sitting, I would totally be yelling this post at you if I were speaking instead of typing. Hehe.

If you want to see a picture, you will have to go visit my husband.  We didn’t take a camera, as they don’t technically allow them but he did get a shot with his phone.  If we had known that they wouldn’t check our bag or do a pat search like they do in the US, then we would have taken a camera. Oh, well…

This entry is part of StL Bloggers Blog Carnival #1…

I was not unpopular in high school by any means. I had a lot of friends but I didn’t really fit into one ‘clique’ or another, it wasn’t my thing. I was a friend to anyone and everyone who treated me nice. Of course, it was high school so not everyone was able to be nice, that’s the nature of the beast. Oh, and I was a bit of a choir geek, too (and proud of it!). That being said, I never had expectations of being a Homecoming Queen nor did I ever expect to even get voted onto Homecoming Court.

So, you can imagine how shocked I was when my name was listed on the morning announcement of the Homecoming Court. For anyone requiring a visual, I was THIS shocked.

I should tell you that I went to a St. Charles County school surrounded by cornfields. Yes, I went to Orchard Farm High School. It isn’t very glamorous, but it isn’t like a had a lot of choice in the matter.  This is a very small school, it is set in a farming community and is literally surrounded by cornfields. During the peak of the crop, you really had a difficult time seeing the school. It wasn’t uncommon for students to take leave from the school year to help their families harvest their crop.

Back to my story…

I was utterly shocked by this announcement of my being voted onto Homecoming Court. I met up with my friends after class and they were excited and congratulating me, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that this was a set up. I stewed on this gut-feeling for days, weeks trying to figure out why I was chosen and not someone more suitable based on popularity. It was usually the really popular, clique-y girls that had the honor…so why me?

I must admit, I came to the conclusion that the entire scene from the movie Carrie was going to be reenacted and that pig blood would be dumped on my head in an attempt to ridicule me in front of the entire school. This was very dramatic of me. Not very logical, but very dramatic indeed. I seriously doubted that I would suddenly grasp hold of any hidden telekinetic power in that moment of sheer embarrassment, so I decided I wasn’t going. No sense in getting pig blood all over me when I won’t be able to hurl people across the room with my mind powers!

I expressed my concerns and my decision not to attend to my friend, Heather. She chuckled at the thought of this because, clearly, I was being ridiculous. She informed me that I am not unpopular, I fit in as well as anyone previously on court, only with a better sense of style than most, and that no one is going to dump pig blood on me. She also told me that I was voted in fair and square and she would know. She would know because her and several other friends of mine all set out on a mission to persuade the student body to vote for me.

Basically, in every classroom the day of the vote, I had a friend strong-arming people into voting for me. Now that is some good friends.

I am not sure this story has a point, but I will list a few things that could be the point and you, the reader, can decide for yourself:

1. Seeing the movie Carrie really freaked me out.
2. Strong-arming friends are the best kind of friends.
3. All schools in small towns do not have access to pig blood, even if there is a pig farm across the road.
4. Being a drama queen only adds unwanted stress to the life of a teenager.
5. I probably just had stage fright.
6. All of the above.

By the way, I did fulfill my duties to the Homecoming Court, although I was not crowned queen (no disappointment on my behalf, please, I never expected to win). I did, however, take style to the whole other level that night and I had a great time. Good times, I tell you!

Once we arrived at the resort via seaplane, we stepped off onto a beach and were greeted by the cutest little three-wheeled golf cart thing. It was so cute, but I didn’t think to get a picture of it since I was really overwhelmed with everything at that moment. Oh, well.

We checked in at the reception area:

Then we went to our pool villa and got our things settled in and took a look around:

Our extra hard bed with the insect netting. Must. Have. Insect. Netting. I got used the hardness and slept very well, except for the first night.

Our private pool. Get up, (go pee), walk out front door, take in breathtaking ocean view, jump in for a swim. Life doesn’t get any better than that, in my opinion.  We took these pictures, looked around and then got naked and took a skinny dip. It was our honeymoon, what did you expect? Naked swimming, I would certainly hope!

Our villa looked out over the beach, but wasn’t directly on it. At first we thought we got gipped, but it works out much better to be on a little hill off the beach if you like to swim in the buff. Otherwise, if we had been directly on the beach as most of the villas were, people could see us in our nakedness as they passed by which would only deter people from ever going back to this resort.

This is part of main pool and some of the view. The pool was very big and beautifully shaped, but the latter half of our trip it seemed that the staff stopped maintaining enough that it was cloudy and had a layer of muck on the surface. We later found out that the general manager had left to go on holiday himself approximately the day before the pool seemed to become neglected. It was still a very nice place to swim. No nakedness allowed here, though. Bummer.

Taking off in a seaplane from Phuket Airport.

A gorgeous view out the window of the seaplane.

Looking out my window on the seaplane.

The view of Koh Yao Noi from the seaplane, the island on which we stayed.

This is how and where we disembarked from the seaplane…right into the water. It was awesome.

Once we are safely on the beach, the seaplane heads back to Phuket Airport.

What a kick ass ride! We both enjoyed it very much, it was a great way to start the trip.

Next post…arrival at the resort. There will be pictures with every post, I have to break it down a lot for three reasons. The first being that there are well over 500 pictures for me to sort thru.  The second being that I am exhausted. The third and final reason is that if I lumped it all together, then it would be the longest post ever and no one would hang out long enough to read it.

Stay tuned!

We made it home from Thailand last night. The flight was atrocious. Screaming, jumping, squealing children all over. Leaning over the seats staring at me and smacking their gum or candy so loud it almost made me barf. I was already not feeling well or it wouldn’t have bothered me so much. The airline food nearly killed me.  Kids crying doesn’t so much bother me, but screechy/shrill children bouncing all over a plane and in the seats while the parents just say “shhh” and let them continue even though it is well after 10 p.m. drive me fucking nuts. It makes me want to yell at the parents. Anyway…

Francois missed us so much that he kept us up all. night. long.  I’m so tired I could just fall over in a stiff breeze.

I took so many pictures on this trip that it will likely take me a week to fully sort through them all.  I will post them along with some fun stuff that happened and some of the stuff we did/saw in Thailand as soon as is humanly possible.

Now that I have not slept and spent half the night/morning in the bathroom cursing airline cuisine, I will walk my exhausted self to pick up the dogs from the sitter’s house. They (the dog sitters) are moving tomorrow so I hope it didn’t traumatize my kids to stay there a week while they were packing up their flat.  All of my kids are sensitive to packing and moving, as I have moved so freaking much in my life. That is a story for another time…

I am off to get the poopies. I can’t wait to see them!

This was found in our local grocery store, Park and Shop.  I thought it was kinda funny.

Wanna know what else is kinda funny? Our local grocery store is called Park and Shop but there are no cars allowed where we live, thus there’s not a lot of parking taking place. Funny weird, not so much funny haha.

These are rambutan fruit. The name always escapes me, but it reminds me of Rasputin.

They are really sweet and delicious. The shell is kinda hard and you peel it off and the fruit inside is extremely sweet. Mmm…delicious.

A little something while I am on holiday…

It has been a couple of months since we actually did this.  I have been really busy and I am a procrastinator. My bad.

I have posted about Mui Wo a couple of times now, we love to go there. It is good for relaxing and bicycling or hiking. So, we went again and here are the pictures from the waterfall along the hiking trail. It was not yet the rainy season, so there wasn’t much water falling but it was still gorgeous.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves…

UPDATE:  We are ready, the kids are at the sitters and we are out of here at the butt-crack of dawn…YAY! PARADISE!

P.S.  I left you with a couple of scheduled posts to enjoy in my absence

We have our luggage and Francois B. Dioux Dioux has fully inspected it.  The laundry is all caught up, the refrigerator has been purged, and the poop has been scooped.  All that is left is dropping the kids at the sitter’s and putting our belongings into the suitcases (we have to wait ’til the kids are gone or they get pretty bent), then we are all set for Paradise.

The kids are gonna be mad, cause we are out of here!

We are all set for our trip to Koh Yao, Thailand. Pool villa, here I come!!!

I am so ready for a vacation. It has been a long time since we really had a vacation. 

Yes, I know we came to the US for a couple/few weeks in April, but it wasn’t all play like a real vacation should be.

We are so gonna play!!

I will be bringing a ginormous amount of photos back and I will share all of them that I can.

So, the dogs are going to Andrew’s and Francois and Pixel will be cared for by my friend who will stop in everyday to feed/water them, check on them, scoop poop so Francis doesn’t get all backed-up, and I am sure she will clean up too. She did last time, even thought I told her not to worry about it.  Our hardwood floors never looked better, so secretly I kind of hope she does clean, hehe.

 

This was/is my birthday bouquet from my sweetie.

Just thought I would share. He is so good to me. He already got me a kickass camera for my (early) birthday, but since I was having such a crappy, drama-filled morning he came home with this gorgeous bouquet, a card and a bottle of Lambrusco (which is VERY hard to find here adn rather expensive, even though it is a $5 dollar wine back in the U.S).