Oh, happiness

I have to say, life is grand. The new job is coming up shortly (I got my offer on April 2, and James and I went out for margaritas that night to celebrate), and I'm scared and nervous and excited. Assuming all of my paperwork goes through ok, I'll be starting April 21. It's going to be tough at first, I won't know what I'm doing and there will have to be an adjustment at home since I won't be able to do all the cooking and cleaning like I've been doing. But James is great and tells me that once I start he's very willing to split chore duty with me (he'd do chores now but I get them all done during my long boring days at home).

Last night, Steve, James and I went to the farmer's market in town and had dinner. And crepes!!! MMM, hot nutella crepes. And James bought me gorgeous roses and a whole mess of strawberries, which I want to make into a pie this weekend.

My beautiful roses!

Tonight, James and I are going horseback riding up in the Hollywood Hills. I'm wicked psyched, I love horses and I haven't ridden in ages. Ages and ages. Yaaaay horsies! I'm so so excited. Can you tell? Will be sure to take lots of pics and post them on facebook, complete with giddy, horse-loving captions.

Since I'm starting a new job, I went to Target and bought myself some new clothes this week. Very necessary. It has to happen every once in a while, and I haven't bought any new warm-weather clothes since last year (and warm weather clothes see an awful lot of usage out here), and it was a lot of fun and I got a lot of things for not too much money. I want to be sure to look good at work and not be wearing the same thing all the time or be forced to wear older, worn-out-looking things. Aaaand I got a pair of silver ballerina flats because they were too cute not to. But it's okay because I'll have a job soon and I'll actually be able to afford it!

Last weekend, James and I wanted to go horseback riding but because of brutal traffic we couldn't get to the stables in time. So we ended up going to Pink's for dinner. (Pink's is a very famous LA hot dog stand that specializes in making lots of crazy-topped hot dogs with everything on them from bacon to pastrami to onion rings.) It was fun and I'd been wanting to go for a while. We last went in October. There's always a huge line, it's this whole experience. Good times.

Also last weekend, we went to see the George Clooney-John Krasinski-Renee Zellweger feature, Leatherheads. It was cute (JK was definitely cute) and amusing, but not great. And we went on a bike ride up to Marina Del Rey and had dinner up there on Sunday, which was lovely, at a rather fancy Italian place on the water.

What else. In the cooking department, I've made my very first ham, which I baked with a molasses-pecan-bourbon glaze. That was some goood ham. And I cooked the bone down into some super yummy split pea soup. Hooray for kitchen adventures!!

Other exciting news: last night, James and I bought the TimeWarner cable-internet-phone package, yaaaay!! No more stealing borrowing the neighbor's unsecured wireless, no more using precious daytime minutes for local calls, aaaand it should be a lot easier to call Norway when I won't have to use minutes. Yaaay! And of course, glorious glorious television. The Office started back up last night, I'm so psyched. Aaaand we bought tickets to PA for the week of the 4th of July, yay!! We'll be visiting with my parents, possibly (hopefully!!!) getting up to Laporte, and looking around PA for places we'd like to settle.

And the most exciting news of all: James and I are planning on taking a trip to Hawaii in August for our one year anniversary! Eeeee!!!!!!