Things to do when I go back to the states.

Yeah, I've already started my list. Here is the beginning of my ever growing list of things I want to do when I go home. Please feel free to comment with things that should be added.

• Go to Target
• Go to the Mall
• Go to the Gap
• Go to Old Navy
  
• Eat at Fisoli's - large diet fountain soda and unlimited breadsticks only :)
  
• Eat at Arby's
• Eat at Coldstone - YUM cake batter light!
  
• Eat at Jose Pepper's everyday
• Buy everything that will fit in my suitcase
• Eat at Dairy Queen
• Go to the Casino boats
• Go to the P&L District
  
• Go to Legends and Dave and Buster's
• Go Shopping at Hallmark
• Buy a Wii Fit
• Buy something (really anything) that costs less then $1,000
• Test drive my new Toyota Prius
• Test drive my new Smart 4Two
• Get a mani/pedi and maybe a facial (I still have the polish on my nails from before I moved 5 months ago. Now it's a game to see how long it'll stay)
• Buy chapstick (maybe the cherry kind)
  

Maybe I should just keep a running tally along the side...

Street Parade 2008 - Take 2

So I haven't gotten the pictures yet from Roland and Liza that I took with their camera but they did post them to their tumbler page. So here are some links to the rest of the pictures.

HERE is the link to all the pictures with the people we know in them

HERE is the link to the rest of the crazy outfits/people

Now please remember that beer is cheaper then water here (no seriously, beer can be as cheep as $.60 a can and water is at least $3.00 a small bottle) and when you're thirsty you have to drink something. Yes, most of these pictures were taken by me and I am in a lot of them. They were 'Ohh, look at that. That guy's in a crazy costume.' pictures.

My Weekend Was Better Than Your Weekend

Or - Dark Knight finally came out in Switzerland

Or - It was the best of concerts, it was the worst of concerts
Or - Madonna Rocks My Face Off
Or - Reason #23,485 the Swiss people suck

So. Friday night we FINALLY got to go see Dark Knight. It came out in Switzerland this week...yeah, you're reading that right. the Dark Knight CAME OUT THIS WEEK. How long has it been out in the states? 1 month? 2 months? Isn't it already in the dollar bin at Wal-mart?

Anyway, it was a great movie and both Kyle and I will be seeing it again. They did the crappy EXACTLY half way through the movie throw in an intermission thing. But this time I think they forgot to stop the reel for the 10 minutes we were intermission so it came back on and everyone in the theater was like 'did we miss something?' I had to watch most of the movie through my fingers because there was so much shooting and nasty and suspense...but I'll still see it again through my fingers I liked it that much.

Saturday I woke up at the crack of 2:30 pm. In my defense I woke up at like 8 and checked my email and had breakfast and stuff and then sat on the couch to reread Harry Potter. Well, I fell asleep until like 11:30 so then I went into the bedroom and slept there until about 2:30...All I can say is I must have been tired if I slept for like 15 hours.

I finally get out of bed and great ready and we call Lori (No - I haven't talked about her before in the blog. She's a girl that I found through my international newlywed - I know I'm not a newlywed anymore... - message board and we found out we were both going to the Madonna concert) to see if she wanted to meet up before the concert. They were just down the street at the park having a couple drinks before the show. We went out to the park to meet up with them.

The concert was at an air force base. The stage and stands were completely make shift and as I type this (12 hours later) are probably completely gone. Going to this concert really makes me appreciate the Sprint Center with my 7 block walk to get there, holding only 18,000 people, CLEAN bathrooms every time you turn around, and food/drink galore.

The distance from where they checked our tickets to the stadium was probably 7 blocks. We went to the concert of 72,998 of our closest Swiss friends. There were banks of port-a-potties (toi tois). And, we couldn't find a Diet Coke to save our lives.
This is Gina and Lori rockin' out to some Madonna prior to game time.

How do we get to the concert again?
73,000 of our closest friends


I really like this picture...maybe the best one ever
Anyway. On to the concert. Our seats were AWESOME. We bought them off of Ebay for $150 for the pair. They were $250 dollar tickets... and we actually had seats. There were only about 20,000 chairs the other 50,000 had to stand. We even had aisle seats!

Madonna always puts on a great show. This is the second time we've seen her (the first was the day after we got married in Las Vegas). It's always an experience to see her in concert and would highly suggest that everyone go and see her at least once. I personally think she's kinda kooky and only like some of her music but she always sings the best stuff and you always sing along with her. It is an absolute production!

She opened with a couple songs from her new album and then did 'Human Nature' with a video of Britney Spears stuck in an elevator on the megascreens behind her. To show you just how cool her movie screens were here a snippet from her entrance. Watch the front screen pull apart. The intro is supposed to be a gum ball on it's way out of Willy Wonka's gum ball machine. Her new album is called Hard Candy so that was the theme for most of the evening.

About half of the songs she played the guitar for. She only did that once or twice on her last tour. I'm chalking this up to the fact that she's getting older. The songs she danced to you could tell were lipsynced but still so much fun to watch...she can still dance like a pro (but only 1 song at a time).

She sang a lot of older songs from the 80's and 90's and you knew what all of them were; and could sing along, but she remixed every one of them. It was very VERY cool.

One of her new songs is 'She's not Me' and there was a great little skit she did. She had 4 female dancers dress up like her former self (the material girl, the virgin girl, cone boobs girl, and the short black haired girl) and she went around and ripped up their clothes and tore of their wigs and stuff. In the background on the screen were old publicity pictures from all of her different albums. It was fun to watch because I could name just about all of them. (I just had to tell Kyle that the dancers were dressed up as her.)

This is Kyle watching the concert as a Swiss. Please not the Swiss guy in the background looking exactly like Kyle. Which brings me to why the concert 'sucked'. I seriously think the Swiss are missing the 'good time' gene. Everyone around us sat there (no, they really sat, in their seat) and watched the concert like it was a television program. Kyle and I were dancing and singing and having a gay ol' time. I could completely tell that they thought we were idiots.

At one point toward the end of the show Madonna said 'Are you tired? Do you want to go home?' and the audience might have well have said 'Yes, please end your program immediately so that I may retire to my bed.' I was pissed off for her! Come on, there are 73,000 people in the stadium and you could have heard crickets. So she sang some more then said 'If you don't sing along I'm going home.' No one would sing along (well you know, except for Kyle and I who were belting it out!). Finally she just said 'Eff you. Good night.' And started to walk of the stage. She ended up coming back and finishing out her set but when she was done she was done. She walked off stage and immediately the lights went up. No encore, no nothing.

That was the first time Madonna ever performed in Switzerland, and probably also her last.

Hard Wood Floors=Bane of My Existance

Here are all the reasons that they suck:

1. They're hard
   
2. They hurt my feet when I walk around on them all day without shoes
3. They hurt my back - see above
4. I can see all the dirt on them at all times.
   
5. They are IMPOSSIBLE to keep clean
6. I have to sweep the house on a daily basis
7. When I don't sweep the dust just blows around the house and gets on everything
   
8. They are cold/hot - which ever I don't want them to be
9. I have wear shoes in the house all the time - which adds to the dirtiness because I don't have 'indoor shoes'
10. Things slide around on them that aren't supposed to - like the couch when you sit down with a thud
11. They get all marked up when things slide on them.

Note to Self - I don't care how pretty they look or how much value they add to a house I will not have them in my house in rooms that are not inherently messy (Kitchen, eat in dining room, bathroom, entry way). Hard wood (or fake hard wood like this crap in Switzerland) will be kept to a minimum at all times. I will own the highest powered vacuum available for human use so that I only have to vacuum occasionally. It is MY HOUSE, I should have to feel like I'm about to go outside all the time.

End of Rant - We now return you to your regularly scheduled program...

Clean, Clean, Clean, Dust, Dust, Dust

So you probably know I HATE (repeat HATE) to clean.

Well, we're in the process of planning our next few outtings. It looks like we could do some really cool things in the next few weeks. BUT, we won't know until shortly before we're supposed to leave and then could have a couple trips back to back to back...

Anyway, I'm been running around here crazy cleaning for like 2 days now. It's tiring. I don't see how 'normal' people due it. I have all the laundry done and folded except for 1/2 a load. I've swept the entire 175 square meters of our apartment. I've swiffer wet moped about 1/2 of it. I'm constantly washing the dishes or loading/unloading the dishwasher. I washed all the sheets in the whole house. And tomorrow I'm tackling the bathrooms.

OMG I'm worn out! And probably for no reason. I keep telling myself that 'it needs to get done anyway' and 'I'm a better person for keeping up with the house work' but come on! How am I supposed to get my 6 hours of Will & Grace time, 4 hours of message boarding, and 2 hours of Harry Potter reading in when I have to do all this work?!?