Dear Ellen, Accio!

Dear Ellen, How was your week?  Mine was pretty good, busy as usual.  ...Work, work, work, work, work, eat, work, work, work, eat and more work, that's how it goes.  Had a few fun things during the week though - date night w/GF on Tues, photoshoot with 2 beagles on Thurs, b-day party on Fri, and last minute SKIING adventure this weekend at Tahoe - fun! First off, please tell me everything about your sneak peek visit to the Harry Potter Theme Park!  It looks freaking amazing... I'm soooo UBER JEALZ (geek alert!), I wanna go so bad.   So you went on a tour of Hogwarts?  ...Went to The Three Broomsticks?  Drank some Butterbeer?  ....I thought I read somewhere that you also got to ride the Flight of the Hippogriff rollercoaster?  Is that true?  If it is, you are seriously the luckiest person alive!! So yeah, Tuesday night I had weekly date night with my GF.  She surprised me by taking me to a pottery class in West Oakland, just a few blocks from our old loft.  It was really fun despite the fact that the class was inside an industrial warehouse (converted artist space) with no walls/insulation, basically exposed to the elements (rain, cold).  From the outside looking in, it looked like total chaos.  Imagine walking into an organized landfill covered by a steel roof.  That's what it felt like.  Dusty concrete floor, rows and rows of small artists spaces filled with steel/metal "art" and "found objects", damp, VERY DARK (scary like in SAW or Hostel), then in the middle of it all, a nice redheaded guy with 4 pottery wheels playing Jack Johnson. Go figure!  Anyway, I managed to make (or should I say "throw") Harley a nice little dog bowl and myself a soup bowl. It was fun and the teacher said that "I'm a natural and I center well." No pics, sorry. Thursday was the dog photoshoot with 2 Beagles, Cora (a rescue) and Splash (a purebred).  I ended up bringing a bunch of Ellen faces with me since I left my original at home.  I jammed the stick holding your face into the grass and got started.  The sign says "Richmond, CA" if you can't read it.  Cora proudly pooped right next to it (above left).  Splash barked alot and she definitely rolled out the sass when we asked her to sit by you (above right).  ...I hope you enjoyed your first photoshoot moonlighting with me, LOL. I thought it was fun, and the dog mommies got a kick out of it.  More pics of Splash below being cute by the Ellen bush (thought it matched your hair). Oh yeah, HAPPY EASTER, if you celebrate.  I don't celebrate Easter anymore in a traditional way, but I ate a cupcake with a Peep on top at my friend's birthday party on Friday.  My family lives in Pennsylvania, otherwise I'd be with them eating ham and cucumber salad. These days Easter nostalgia usually leads me to eating a Peep every year that I'm away, since Peeps are made in my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It works. Lastly, as I mentioned, we went skiing over the weekend at Heavenly in Lake Tahoe, CA. It was real cold and snowing. It was also my very first time skiing ever.  ...Almost 3-0 and never been skiing!!  I've always wanted to ski, and I think after this trip I can definitely say that I think I was a skiier in a past life.  The only downside to the skiing trip is that I lost my iPhone somewhere, I think on gondola #113 on the way up the mountain.  Otherwise, it must have fallen out of my pocket and become one with the snow on the bunny slope.  It's a mystery to me, and I'm really sad.  🙁

Hope you have a gr8888 week! Until next time... Over and out,