It's almost here...

...Turkey Day that is.


Hope everyone is getting ready for the big feast. I can't wait!
My dad arrives Wed. night and we are all driving to Arizona to spend a few days with Grandma Z. It's been a while since I've been to Arizona, which is where she spends her winters.

See ya soon Grandma!

9 more days until Black Friday

As a huge bargain hunter I LOVE black Friday. If you have never been shopping the day after Thanksgiving I suggest you try it at least once. I've been doing this for the past three years, this year being my fourth, and I hope to never miss another year. I owe my addiction to bargain hunting to my mom and owe my addiction to Black Friday to my wonderful cousin Jaci.

At the time, Jaci lived in Seattle, Wa. and I went to visit her just after they closed escrow on their first home. Her and her husband, Tim, kept talking about going shopping Friday morning and I didn't understand what the big fuss was over"Black Friday".

Oh I had no clue what I was in for. If you think shopping should be a sport then this day should be considered the super bowl of all shopping days, with elbow and knee pads included. I've seen fights, shoving, loud cussing and a whole lot of line cutting. Oh the joys of bargain hunting, everyone wants a piece.

So the key to getting a good Black Friday deal is planning. This year, my dad, Jeff and me will be driving to Arizona to spend time with my grandma, Viola, so the planning of our great attack will be a little tricky since I'm not familiar with the distance to the stores or the times they open. Last year Jeff and I were living in San Diego and we drove up to Lake Elsinore Outlets late Thanksgiving night to go to KB Toys. It was amazing how many people were already in line.

Last year we were getting ready to move into our new house so most of our items were focused around things we needed. My favorite purchase of all were my dishes, which I found at Kohl's for $40 (8 place setting) so I bought TWO. I know have 16 of everything and I never have to do half loads in the dishwasher because we are out of plates or bowls. I love it!

This year I have my eye on some Black and Decker garage cabinets that are MORE than 1/2 off. Originally they are about $100 and their BF price is $39!! I'm not going to give away the location because there better be two left for me when I get there, and they better fit in my car for the drive back to Ca.

Thanks Jaci and Tim for this wonderful addiction, and thanks mom for teaching me what a bargain is when I see it.

FYI: I'm going to be an auntie again, my sister is due in June. I'm really praying and hoping for a niece. I've been doing the niece dance so I hope it pays off.

Record High Temps in Nov.

What is with this weather? This weekend we had record high temps of 93 degrees. I'm tired of it, I want the rain and the 65 degree weather.

Saturday, Jeff and I started washing windows in the guest room. After thoroughly cleaning three windows we had to stop because of the heat. We cleaned the blinds, inside and outside of the window and the screens. The screens were so bad you could hardly see through them. Since we live in a construction area, war zone, the dirt gets everywhere and in everything. Once the cooler weather gets here we will be able to shut the windows and I'm hoping it will cut down on the dirt and dust in the house.

Bring on the cooler weather, and it wouldn't hurt to get some RAIN!!

<3 GLO

Ohio in 4 days

We had a great time in Ohio, the weather definitely got cold enough. The last morning we were there it was 34 degrees, Burrr! Ohio is so beautiful in the fall, I just love all the colors and the nice crisp air.

As we always do when we are in town, we spent a lot of time at Sighlo's Work Shop (aka the studio). Here is a picture of Jeff going over some tracks with Trevor.
I can't leave out a picture of the famous "Buck Nasty" who watches over the studio 24/7.Friday was the Sighlo show, which turned out great. Despite the rain there was still a great turn out. Saturday we took Jeff's mom to Chilis for her Birthday. We were able to spend time with his sister and her husband. It's always good to get together with everyone to get caught up. I'm looking forward to Jeff's parents coming to visit at the beginning of next month.

Next weekend we might be going to Mammoth to get a few early season runs in, but I'm not sure the snow will last since they weather is warming up again. I guess I'll have to have to start doing my "Snow Dance".

Mammoth opend yesterday!

We are so excited, the mountains have received over a foot of new snow and Mammoth has opened almost two weeks early. This is great news!

Last week we got a package from Jeff's mom, Marilyn, in Ohio. It was two beautiful pictures. We used to have one of the prints, but it got ruined during the move. I'm so glad we have both of them now, I've always loved these prints because they remind me of Europe, where I want to go, some day. But for now I can only dream or at least mindlessly stair into these paintings and pretend I'm there.



On another note Jeff and I head to Ohio in a few days. We leave really early Thursday morning and get back Monday morning. We will be celebrating Jeff's mom's birthday and going to a Sighlo show. We are expecting very cold weather with possible rain, which I'm looking forward to.

Experiencing a season is always a good thing. That's one complaint I have about Southern California, but I am not sure I would even call it a complaint because I enjoy the 70-80 degree weather almost year round. However year after year it can get a little repetitive.

Unmotivated

I have a lengthy laundry list of things to do around the house like wash windows and blinds, dust and clean bathrooms, but I can't find the energy. It seems the longer the list gets the more I don't want to start.

Where has my energy level gone?

Could it be that the 90 + degree weather that has wiped me out?

What is with this weather anyway? It's October, I want Fall weather! Fall is my favorite season (if you can say Cali has seasons). November and December better be full of cooler weather and bring lots of snow to Mammoth. It wouldn't hurt if it rained here in Orange County, but that might be too much to ask.

In a couple of weeks Jeff and I are taking off to Ohio to surprise his mom for her birthday, and to see Sighlo play a show at the Newport, our favorite venue. Jeff's parents will be visiting for the first time in six years, and they will get to meet my parents for the first time. I'm excited about them coming to town and I am sure we will have a great time.

Well I'm going to see if I can scratch a few things off my list.

Take care!

Weekend update...

Last weekend was busy but full of excitment. Saturday I went shopping with my sister and later that night I watched my nephew Nicholas, who is 17 mo.

He was very good for his Auntie Glo! He is a very mellow kid so he is very easy going and easy to take care of. Nick is just learning to talk so he is at the cutest stage. He loves to play "patty cake" and sing "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands..." he gets so excited, its adorable. Her is the only picture I took of him. Isn't he precious? I just love to kiss those cheeks!!

Nicholas loved chasing the cats around the house, but I'm not sure they enjoyed it as much. It was so cute, Sasha would sit right outside the door where Nick was sleeping, I think she was protecting him.

Sunday my sister picked Nicholas up early and Jeff and I took off for Six Flad Magic Mountain. Last year we bought season passes for the same price as a day pass. What a deal! Since our passes were good for the rest of '07 and all of '08 we have gone a few times.

Jeff is a roller coaster finatic, (even if he won't admit it) he can tell you the speed, how many loops, twists bends it has, what year it was built, and most importatnly how to navigate through the park to get to it. If it weren't for him we probably would have spent 3+ hours just locating the coasters. It is a very confusing and hilly park.We took 4 guys from Jeff's copmany with us who are from India. I think they had a blast. None of them had ever been on an upside down roller coaster before so it was a real treat for them.
Here is a picture of Jeff and the guys before we went into the park.

From left to right: Arpit, Bhupendra (boo-pendra), Amit, Jeff and Rajesh (ra-shish).

We rode 10 roller coasters, with 39 inversion or loops total. I sat the last three out because I had a raging headache by the end of the day. So I can't say I rode on all 10.

Here is a pic of Jeff and me loaded on Tatsu, which has 4 inversions.

And here is a video of us taking off from the plat form. (sorry about the clairity these were taken from a camera phone) On this coaster you ride on your stomach and it feels like your flying through the air. We were riding in the front row for the full effect.

Here is another pic of us on Viper, which as 7 inversions.

Backrow left to right: me looking straight at the camera with the largest smile I could make, and next to me is Jeff with is tounge sticking out. The front row left to right: Bhupendra and Arpit. We were having FUN! I think Bhupendra was holding on for dear life.

I just want to say think you to the guys for sharing such a great day. It was long and tiring, but well worth it. Thanks to Bhupendra for supplying most of the pictures with your camera phone. This post wouldn't be the same without pictures!

Thanks!

Look what arrived today....

For Jeff's birthday, in April, I bought him a season pass to Mammoth, and that is what arrived in the mail today. Can you see the pure excitement in his expresion?

Check out the size of that map!! Happy birthday babe!! We can now enjoy snowboarding when ever we want and we don't have to worry about scrapping together the whopping $80 or so for the ONE DAY pass.

Lately I've been so busy I haven't had time to sit down and post. I'm going to try to fill you in on everything that has been going on.

First of all, I have one more day of physical therapy. Although it has been time consuming, I'm not sure I'm ready for it to end. I have been having strange onsets of pain, but both my surgeon and my physical therapist have assured me it's normal and my muscles are still adjusting. Boy, it's amazing how much my quad muscles have been effected after the surgery. I've been told it could take up to 18 months after surgery to be back to normal muscle strenth and activity.

Aside from physical therapy twice a week I have been taking a class on Thursday nights, which is a Leadership Class put on by our city. I was lucky to be accepted into the class, which is 9 weeks long. Each night I learn about the community we live in, and I can't wait to run home and tell Jeff all the fun facts I've memorized. One night we took a field trip up to the Orange County 911 dispatch center. That was a dream come true for me, because as a little girl I always wanted to be a 911 dispatcher. My favorite show was Rescue 911. That field trip was very informative on how our County reacts to disasters and other emergency situations. The dispatch center we visited also houses the counties emergency planning. Since there wasn't a disaster or city wide emergency we were able to visit the many rooms that are need for the great organization of disaster relief. It was such a rush to think of the chaos that must go on in these rooms, the important decisions that were made at those tables.

Over the last couple of weeks Jeff has been traveling for his company. One week he was sent up to Norther California for work, where he was able to meet and have dinner with 3 of my girlfriends I went to college with. I sure wish I could have joined them, but it sounds like they had a good time. Thanks Gina, Megan and Jordana for taking the time to meet up. I know Jeff appreciated it and enjoyed it. The following week Jeff was sent to Minnesota for some more training, and then back to Norther California. He was a busy guy, but I'm glad he is back home, because the girls and I sure miss him when he is gone.

My mom and I enrolled in a college class offered by Saddleback College, which is only a once a month class and it focuses on Los Angeles Architecture. The first Sat. of every month for 5 months we have been venturing up to LA to wonder the streets with our professor. We both enjoy the class and I think we have learned a lot, but we also have fun. I'll have a post dedicated to my favoite buildings and houses we visit, along with lots of pictures. Next month we are visiting the Holly Hock house of Frank Lloyd Wright so I'm excited about that.

September 27th was Founders Day and my best friend Tiffany, her two adorable sons (Christian and Luke), her sister Tammy, and my mom (Lora) all went to the Aliso Viejo Ranch for some great fun and activities. Christian rode his first horse, we had a water baloon fight, and we won TWO cakes at the cake walk. I'm not sure either of the cakes made it home or even had a bite taken out of them because if I remember correctly it was about 100 degrees that day and the cakes melted like crazy.

Here is a picture from Founders Day of Christian on his first horsey.

Here is another of him trying to break out of jail. What a cutie pie!

Unfortunately his little brother Luke slept through the whole event, so I don't have any pictures of him. That just means we'll have to do it again next year!

This last weekend Jeff and I drove up to Montery for Megan's birthday. She is one of my College friends from San Jose. Happy Birthday Megan!!Megan and Jason holding the Barbie Doll cake. She had a "kids" theme party. Like the ones we used to have when we were kids with goodie bags, lots of candy, and more candy. It was a great idea and a great party. Thanks Megan for having us and for all the hard work you went through to throw such a wonderful party.
Jordana and me at Megan's party.

It was so good to see my San Jose girls. I wish we could do it more often, but seeing that I'm so far away it makes it kinda hard, so I definately cherish the time spent together.

While Jeff and I traveld the 6+ hours to Montery my dad drove down to meet us. I think it was a 2 hour drive for him. We enjoyed the Montery Bay Aquarium, which was very cool.
My camera didn't take very good pictures inside the Aquarium but here is a one at the jelly fish tank. These creaturs are so intersting to watch manuver through the water.

Sorry to make this post so long. I hope I haven't put youto sleep by now. Since it's been a while there is so much to catch up on. I promise I will do my best to post as often as I can. I didn't realize I had so many people still ready my blog, until these past few weeks I've had several people mention that I haven't posted in a while. So I know your out there please send me a comment from time to time as a reassurance that your there. I always enjoy reading your comments too.

Take care everyone. Love and miss you all!!

Glo, Jeff, Sabian and Sasha

Some unexpected organization...

Saturday Jeff and I got busy in the garage. When we woke up that morning we had no intentions of spending 4+ hours building shelves in our garage, but that's what we did.

We keep our garage relatively organized thanks to the ceiling shelves we put in a few months ago. But we have always had an eye sore in the corner of our garage because of the deep alcove under our stairs, leading up to the second floor.

The master plan all started over breakfast at our favorite pancake house, here in town. We started strategizing over how exactly we would construct the shelves. For the past month we have had the idea in the back of our minds that "one day" we would build these shelves, but after breakfast we were sure we had a final design and we wanted to implement it right away, so we jumped in the car and headed to Lowes.

Here was the problem area...

Lowe's here we come!


Jeff got handy with his new hand saw.


First we built the shelving support.

Here they are all finished. The bottom shelf is 8 ft deep and the top shelf is almost 6'.

And here they are being put to use.
I'm so happy with the outcome and we can sure shove a lot of stuff back in there. Currently we have all of Jeff's drums on the second shelf, and we designed the bottom for our snowboards. I have a feeling we will be building more shelves in our garage now that we know we can do it ourselves.

Camping in Mammoth

Was it a blast or a bust?

I would label it a bust, but not because we didn't have fun. We did. At times.

Jeff and I drove up Friday night and we got the camp site at 11:30pm. Most of our friends took Friday off and drove up in the moring, so when we got there everyone was already tucked in bed. The night was rough because the bed we were sleeping on was totally tilted. We both kept rolling to the outside of the camper, which wasn't very comfortable. The weekend forcast called for 75 mph winds and below 50 degrees. I was a little worried but I knew we would have a good time. Because that is what we do!

Brrrr...

Sat. we took the car and drove around to view the mountain without snow. What a crazy sight.

Jeff had never seen Mammoth without snow, and I think he would have been happy keeping it that way. It was kind of depressing to see the mountain so naked. We'll be back up there in 3 months for a week long snowboarding trip and there better be snow by then.




Sat. night the wind hadn't picked up yet, so we were able to have a fire. I had my three s'mores then went to bed. Oh, the reason our bed was so tilted was because my mom hadn't put in the two braces under our bed. So we fixed it and leveled the camper out, I'm not sure it did too much good. Jeff and I still woke up sore from trying to fight the leaning bed. I was just glad we weren't sleeping on the ground.

My mom on the left, my nephew Jordan (9), me with my nephew Nicholas (16 mo.)

Sunday, my mom and I took the kids hiking around some of the lakes. By this time the wind had considerably picked up and most of the lakes had white caps. Sunday night Jeff and I met up wtih my dad, who rode his Harley from Norther California to Mammoth wich is about a 3 hr ride. He checked into a hotel, so Jeff and I took full advantage of his shower, since the one at the camp ground was $4.00!!


Monday we took off for home. We fed the kids and loaded up the car. We stopped off to say good bye to my dad and Jordan, my nephew, used his shower. How do boys get to dirty? This kid had dirt in every crevas of his body. I'm sure he still had dirt behind his ears.



The drive home wasn't bad, and we didn't hit any traffic. We met my sister in Corona and dropped the kids off with her. It was nice to have a quite rest of the drive home. Nicholas my youngest newphew decided he wanted to scream his head off for the last 45 min. I thought Jeff was going to leave him on the side of the road (don't worry Gayla I wouldn't have let him).


At the end of the tirp I asked Jeff if he thought there would be a pop-up tent trailer in our future. He kinda chuckled and said "no-way".

I know it's been a while...

So it's been almost a month and I haven't posted. I've been so busy running around I haven't had a chance to post. So let me do a quick run through of my past month...



I've been doing Physical Therapy for my knee twice a week, and that's about 2 hrs an appointment. So I don't get home until 7pm a night on the days I have PT, which makes for a long day. My knee has been feeling much better of the past week than it has been. I had a spell of swelling but I think that is behind me and as long as I stay active it seems to keep the swelling down.



Last week my friend Jen and I went to Seattle to explore. We left Wed the Aug. 20th and got back Sunday Aug. 24th. I don't have any pictures to share because unfortunately most of the pictures were deleted from my camera or corrupted. But we had a really good time. We stayed with my cousin Jaci, who was our chauffer and took us to some amazing places. We went to the glass museum which was surprising AWESOME. I didn't know what to expect but it was really cool to watch them make different things. It is much more of a team effort than I thought. We spent some time at the Wild Animal Park (Northwest Trck). We saw some amazing animals. If you are ever in the Seattle area I highly recommend this park. The only pictures that were saved from our trip were of animals. So here are a few.

This is obviously a Buffalo. It was so close to the tram it was amazing.

Sometimes the animals were so close if you reached your hands out of the tram you could have easily touched them. Keep in mind this is a wild animal park, but the animals still roam wild.

Today we will be leaving for Mammoth Lakes, which is about a 5-6 hour drive with out traffic. I am not sure what we will be getting ourselves into on this Labor Day weekend. I'll be sleeping and Jeff will be rocking out to his tunes. That is our usual routine, anyway. My mom left earlier this morning with the grand kids (we are watching them this weekend, while my sister and her husband pack for their up coming move. I've been so excited about this camping trip for a while because we have rented a pop-up tent trailer which I have decided is the coolest invention ever! I've been skimming Craig's List for a good deal. Watch out!


I'll be using a different camera so I hope to not loose my pictures this trip.



Love lots!

I know good deals when I see them.

I've been addicted to Craig's List ever since my last post. We were in desperate need of outdoor furniture, and I knew I would find something on Craig's List. And I did!

This is our new patio furniture at our entry.



And this is our 2nd story balcony off our living room. The table came with an umbrella and stand, but our balcony is usually in the shade so I don't think we will need it.

Sabian and Sasha sure love lounging on the new furniture. I think they spent all day Saturday and Sunday out there.


I got all this furniture for $500, what a deal! I even paid the sellers husband $50 to deliver it because there was no way I could get it all in my car. I would have had to make several trips. and even at that I'm not sure some of the pieces would have fit. So her husband loaded it and unloaded it for me.

Some other Craig's List finds were the potted plants you can see in some of the pictures. I got 5 potted plants and a ficus tree for $40. I also picked up an nice hand made 35" square coffee table, which I was going to use out on the patio but this set came with one I may re-stain it and use it in the house. That find was only $20.

I'm on a roll!!

While I've been shopping on Craig's List Jeff has been doing some touch up painting. We noticed the places he had touched up weren't drying the same as the rest of the wall. Unfortunately, he was touching up semi-gloss paint on flat paint. OOpps!

Here he is at the bottom of the stairs trying to fix it. You can see the semi-gloss blotches at the top of the stairs. All three floors of our house have these infamous blotches all over the walls.

I told him it was a good excuse to re paint all our white walls with COLOR. So we may be getting out our painting gear next weekend and doing some major painting.

We'll see.

One mans trash is another mans treasure.

I've checked out Craig's List a few times before, but I found a new use, garage sales!! I can garage sale from the sofa! Since I shouldn't be on my leg for more than 10 min every 1hr this is perfect. It's better than going out and sifting through crap anyway. I can search for specific things like coffee table, snowboard or you can put in a generic search like "garage sales". Some of them have pictures of their crap for sale. The bad part is since it is Sunday, the garage sales started yesterday so most of the "cool" crap has already been sold. But I'm still having fun finding treasures, even though I don't have any intentions of buying.

Happy Hunting!

5 days post op

Today was my post op apointment, which wet well. My doc gave me the go ahead to go to work on Monday, so I'm free from the sofa!! I can go to work but I cannot walk around (except every hour I have to walk 5 to 10 min) so I will be asking a lot of my co-workers, but from the sounds of it they will be glad to have me back in the office.

I'll have to do 6 weeks of physical therapy 2 or 3 times a week. My doctor gave me a couple of exercises to do before I start therapy. Very painful! I can tell physical therapy is going to be hard, but I know it will help me recover quicker so I'm going to do what ever it takes to get back on the mountain this winter.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to sleep in our bed, which I'm really looking forward to. I haven't been sleeping well on the sofa, or at all for that matter, because I'm afraid of the cats jumping on my knee, even though they just want to cuddle, it would be very painful. I'm speaking from experience.

I want to thank my visitors for keeping me company, brining me junk food, and DVDs. Thanks for the flowers Gaines Family, your awesome. Love and miss you very much. I hope we can get together sometime soon. Especially with all the Birthdays coming up! I'm so thankful for all the prayers and support.

That's about it for now. Take Care!

A Good Friend and Good Food!

Day 3 after surgery:
My best friend Jen came to visit me, the cripple who doesn't leave the house. Jen lives in San Diego so I'm about an hour drive away. She is an RN nurse and works two jobs, so time with her is precious, since her free time is rare.


I GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE!

That's right, Jen, Jeff and I went to Baja Fresh for lunch. It was such a beautiful day and it felt so good to get out. We ate outside to soak up the summer sun. I think I may have over done it yesterday because my knee has been really swollen even though I've been icing as instructed.

Day 4 after surgery:
Today I plan on taking it easy and staying off my leg as much as possible. I am suppose to walk every hour for about 5-10 minutes. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that he will clear me to go back to work on Monday. But I have a feeling I'm hoping for a lot. We'll see, I'm keeping a positive outlook.

This morning Jeff is going to spoil me with some French Toast. Yummmyy!

Comfort foods...

My current choice of candy...
King size of Mike and Ikes,original fruits.

Junk food...
A cookie staple, Keebler's Fudge Shoppe- Grasshopper cookies. Yummy!







Sun Chips (Great Mulitgrains)








... And to wash it all down... Good Old IBC Root Beer.












Book I'm reading:















When Jeff isn't working, we like pass the time playing cards:













Jeff took Monday off, and he has been working from home Tuesday and Wednesday, but tomorrow he will go back to work and it will be up to me to keep myself occupied. Since he doesn't work far from home, only two miles, he will be able to come home and help me get something to eat around lunch time.

I get to take my bandages off so I'm going to try and take a bath this morning. The only problem is that our bath is on the third floor. I made it up one flight of stairs on Monday, so I'm on the second floor, but I think it helped that my knee was still kind of numb. I'm not as worried about getting up the stairs to the third floor as I am getting down, that will be tricky!

-I'm hanging in there.

A Sleepless Night...

Yesterday after my surgery I was feeling really good, I hardly had pain once we got home. I was able to put full weight on my left leg with minimal discomfort. Last night, didn't go so well, I couldn't get to sleep and I was in a lot of pain. At 3 am I had to call Jeff to come down and fill up my ice pump and then I had to call him down again at 7 am to help me to the bathroom, which I wasn't able to make it to on my own, now that the pain was so bad I could hardly put any weight on my leg.
Here is a picture of my ice wrap. It works great, however it needs to be filled with ice about every 4 to 5 hours, and our ice maker can't make ice fast enough, so Jeff has to run to the store to get bags of ice. Once I turn this machine on after ice has been loaded in it helps my knee SO MUCH!

Right now I have some pretty heavy duty ace bandages on around my knee cap, where the sutures are, so the cold doesn't really get through to my knee cap, which is where the pain is. Tomorrow I get to take the bandages off, and I can't wait. For right now it mostly cools above and below my knee cap, which still provides major comfort.

I've been able to get much needed sleep this afternoon. I have been taking 1 of my pain pills every two hours instead of waiting four hours. I didn't realize I was allowed to take two pills with in the four hour period. This extra dose of pain killers has really helped me get comfortable enough to sleep about 30 min to an hour at a time.

I'm still hanging in there. I'm getting pretty restless just sitting on the sofa watching TV, reading, and surfing the net.

It's only day 1 1/2 what am i going to do for the next 12 1/2 days!!!

I know I will have two cuddly companions. Sasha in the foreground and Sabian in the background.

I'm home!

I made it through the surgery, so the easy part is over. Recovering is going to be painful and it is up to me to make sure I follow the docs orders. I will say I have never been so awake after having anesthesia before. I'm usually pretty drowsy all day, but not this time. I was awake the whole car ride home which was a little over an hour.
The pain was pretty bad in recovering but the nurse gave me something to take the edge off, and now that I'm home I started taking my pain meds (Hydrocodon). I'm feeling pretty good, right now.

Just a little update for now. I'll post later to keep you all updated.

-GLO

Facing Reality.

I have been putting this post of for a couple of weeks. I'm having knee surgery on Monday and I'm dreading every passing day.

But, here I am facing reality.

About a month ago, I went to an orthopedic surgeon, who diagnosed me with a substantial meniscus tear in my left knee, which he recommended surgery.

I had NO idea where or what a meniscus was. I know I had heard the term before but I had never really paid much attention to what it was.

The meniscus is the horizontal tissue (shown in blue) that helps cushion the femur and the tibia bone.
The Medial meniscus is where my tear is, and it is almost the whole length of Medial side. I have what is called a flip tear, which means the tear at times can flip up when jolted out of place. This is when the tear causes me much discomfort and pain.
My surgeon will go in arthroscopicly and clip off the torn meniscus, much like clipping a hang nail. I will have three small incisions, two on the front of my knee and one on the back of my knee.


After my surgeon went over all this information I was still in much shock over his findings, and having to make the decision of weather to have surgery or to put up with the knee pain. The meniscus had a poor blood supply so it doesn't heal on its own very well.

My biggest fear is that after surgery my knee will never be the same, but even if I don't have the surgery my knee will never be the same. So it is a loose, loose situation. Almost a month has past since I decided to go through with the surgery, and I am still not ready. I had my pre-op appointing three days ago and my surgeon tells me that I must take two weeks off from work to recover. At first I thought he was joking, me take two weeks off from work? I hardly get that much vacation time in a year and seeing that it is July halfway through the year I have already used up all my vacation days. I had planned on going back to work a day or two after my surgery, but I guess that is out of the question.

I think I have it worked out to take a week off from work, but I'm not sure what to do about the second week. I'm going to play it by ear and see how I feel after a week of being laid and see how crazy I have become. I'm sure I'll be ready to get out of the house.

What am I going to do for 1 weeks on the couch??

The decision was made...

... we finally purchased our new "mountain vehicle". After many test drives and many discussions on what we really wanted out of our "mountain vehicle" we finally made our move and purchased a Subaru Tribeca and I couldn't be happier.

I love the color, Newport Blue Pearl.

I love the interior and all the amazing features.


I love the third row seat and ...

all the cargo room. We will definitely have room for our snowboarding gear.


Originally Jeff and I had narrowed our new car purchase down to either the Lexus RX350 (Jeff's choice) or the Mazda CX-7 (my choice). The same day we were introduced to the Tribeca we were very close to signing the papers on a pre-owned Mazda CX-7, but we decided to ponder our proposed deal, and I'm so glad we did. After leaving the Mazda dealership we went by the Lexus dealer to "just take a look". Of course there wasn't an RX-350 with AWD, which has been hard to come by. Vince, our sales guy pointed out the Subaru Tribeca and I didn't even want to walk over to check it out, but we did. As soon as, he opened the back hatch and I looked inside and saw all the room I was sold. I love the function of the hideaway third row seat. We ended up taking it for a test drive, which Jeff and I both agreed it drove better than the Mazda CX-7. We didn't make a deal with Vince because I had to go home and do more research on the Tribeca.

So we went home and I looked up all sorts of forums on the Tribeca. I like to read what current owners or past owners have to say about their experience with the car. There are always negatives to EVERY car, but you have to weight the negatives and see if they are something you could put up with. Honestly I didn't find too many negatives on the Tribeca. Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.

The next day, Sunday, Jeff and I went to check out the local Subaru dealer to see if they had a color I liked. Now that we found the vehicle it was a matter of getting the right color. At first we skipped right over the Blue because it was a rental. After seeing their inventory and talking numbers, we went home once again to weigh our thoughts.

Monday, we went back and looked at one of the cars they cleaned up for us which was a Gold color, but once I thought about it over night I didn't really like the Gold color. I went strait back to the Blue one, which skipped over the day before because it was a rental. We test drove it, talked numbers, and in the end we got a sweet deal.

I'm so happy with our purchase!