Santa's Story

I found the autobiography of Santa. It's cute, it tells the story of the original St. Nicholas and then gives a sort of history lesson while chronicling what Santa did after his 'supposed death' in 343 AD.

I'm reading it to Chris and recording it as we go. To download the mp3 and listen for yourself click here. It's set up with 25 chapters so you can read one a day in December leading up to Christmas. I haven't been able to keep up with it enough for that though.

Art Basel

John and Laura drove from Orlando to Miami this past weekend to experience Art Basel Miami and the invited me to tag along. We had a lot of fun. Being art students they really enoyed the art. I enjoyed it but I what really held my attention were the people. They have a friend who lives in Miami, Michael, who convinced his parents to let us all sleep on their couches. His parents turned out to be amazing hosts and even cooked us breakfast the next morning.

The whole weekend was really nice.

Thursday Chris, Roger and I are heading down to Orlando. Roger and I won't return until sometime in January - I have lots to do so that's all I have for now.

Oh yeah, pictures from Miami can be found here.

Movie Review - The Ex

The Ex - 4 thumbs down
I am so disappointed in Zach Braff - poor choice man! It sucked! We gave it four emphatic thumbs down. We actually turned it off half way through - when Zach's character drug an invalid up a flight of stairs just to hurl him down in an attempt to prove he can walk, we had enough.

Very disappointing.

Boston Commons

Chris had a long overnight in Boston this week so I went out to join him. We both got in around 11 on Tuesday and had the afternoon to wander. I went out on the 7:30am flight that Chris flew back to Cincinnati.

We had fun, we sat and people watched and chatted in the Boston Commons and wandered around the Quincy Market. We had dinner at the McCormick & Schmidts in Quincy Square - it was happy hour so they had $2 appetizers - yum :)

Pictures are here.

Over the River and Through The Woods

...To my parents house I go!

I'm leaving for Orlando, with Roger Doger, the weekend of December 14th. We plan to stay at my parents' house through early January. Chris has off the 8 days around Christmas (holy cow, I know!) and we planned last year that his family would meet us in Orlando for one big Christmas fest. So - I'm heading down early. (Roger's newest nap time position ----->)

With my Christmas vacation starting so early, Chris and I have already begun thinking about gifts and we're pretty much done shopping (crazy huh?). Don't get too jealous though, I still have to buy everything we've picked out once I get to Florida.

All of the holiday thoughts have prompted us both to update our wishlists too. Mine can be seen here and you can find Chris's on his site.

The business is going well too. I expected the holidays to thwart all new business, but I've been surprised and things are going strong anyhow though I'm hoping things will really pick up after the new year. We have a site about to go live this month, another in December and a redesign in process too. I've been taking advantage of my new freedom too. Last week I worked from Denver with the boys and tomorrow I'm working from Boston where Chris has an 18 hour over night. :)

Happy T-Day

Chris had a 30+ hour overnight in Denver that put him there Tuesday night through Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning. I decided to use my new found freedom to join him and take advantage of the free hotel and an opportunity to visit The Boys in their new home. I got to cross another state off of my list too! I forgot the camera so no pictures to show, but we drove all over Denver and even down to Boulder - the weather was crummy but I think the landscape has potential to be pretty on a nice day. It snowed (yay!) while we were there. We had yummy Chinese food and great conversation - it was nice.


Chris had to work a really early flight this morning so I slept in a bit and then caught the next flight out to Cininnati.


The past several T-days I've found myself alone in Cinci while he worked. This year we're lucky and his seniority is finally kicking in - he gets home tonight around 8pm and doesn't go back until Monday - woohoo! Recently though, I've spend my T-days alone in the house, watchin old movies. This year I found myself out an about.


It was nice.


The airports were dead. The roads were nearly empty. Every parking lot was abandoned (except a few restaurants). Nearly every car I passed contained a family unit obviously heading somewhere for their annual feast. It prompted me to consider how corrupt our country seems to have become, how crazy things have gotten with the latest generation seeming to place little or no value on family. How Sundays are no longer a time to focus on spirituality and family but just another day. How many families seem to quickly becoming stratisfied and disjointed. But even with all of that seeming to happen in our society that we still drop everything and shut down on Thanksgiving. I found the empty roads and deserted parking lots to be very reassuring. As I drove through the neighborhoods on my way home from the airport I could tell which houses were the host of this year's celebration and which had been abanonded for a cousin or aunts larger home. Some houses even had people braving the dreary weather to toss the football before dinner. I even saw one house where some adults were seated in a semi circle on folding chairs etc. while the kids put on what I assume was a play or talent show - adorable. I decided that this play has become a family tradition and that the kids draw names for who gets to play what role and that while all of this is happening the grandparents are inside laying out the feast so as soon as the curtain falls they can all dig in.


Seeing the traditions carried out and the families gather did make me feel a bit lonely since my family is mostly in Florida. But it also made me feel profoundly thankful that I have my own family now and I get to spend tonight with them (Chris and Roger) eating our own T-Day feast.


Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Pre-T-Day

We had our 6th Annual Pre-Thanksgiving Celebration this past weekend. My family has gotten rather large and it's become difficult for us to all gather on holidays because so many of us have to juggle time with in-laws, friends etc. So to be accomodating and make life easier, we've started getting together a bit before the actual holiday in order to make the actual day less stressful. The other nice thing is that we invite EVERYONE. Our family tends to suck people in growing beyond blood related boundries. This way we get to see our family and all those important to us.

As usual we had a good time and for the first time in a long time all of the cousins etc. were able to make it. The only family member missing was Grandma Doris - she suffered a small stroke earlier in the week and was trapped in the hosptial. We asked my cousin Donavan's son, Clayton to pray - he did an awesome job. See?



This video is also on YouTube here .

We also had a great gamenight (as referenced here) and a picnic too. All of the pictures are up here.

Wise or Otherwise

We had a family game night on Sunday. We played a new one that John(ny) found at G-mart called Wise and Otherwise. It's basically a version of Balderdash only instead of making up definitions you have to finish an old proverb.

We had a lot of fun. Here are some of the Proverbs we found and our versions of them:

Money is hundred-footed.

Chinese Proverb

Money is an earthquake in your pocket.

Meg

Money is like rice, hard to grow but quick to go.

John(ny)

A girl's love is like water in a basket.

Spanish Proverb

A girl's love is as sweet as honey, fragrant as roses and rough as sandpaper.

Meg

The world will not conquer him who is always rubbing his beard.

Hindu Proverb

The world will not conquer him who does not fear victory.

Jess

The world will not conquer him who conquers himself.

Velma

The world will not conquer him who prays on the cow.

Chris

Happy nations have no history.

Belgium Proverb

Drink or Run.

German Proverb

Eat what you can with your grandfather's fork.

Estonian Proverb

Coffee and lover are best when they are hot.

British Proverb

A mouth that has eaten salt can no longer eat unsalted.

African Proverb

A mouth that has eaten salt needs a drink of water.

Sara

Beware of squint eyed persons and buffaloes with outspread horns.

Siamese Proverb

Beware of squint eyed persons and curly haired dogs.

Cindy

Beware of squint eyed persons and those who always have one hand behind their back.

(not sure who)

Overall the game was a lot of fun.

Audio Books 101

When you read a book you put your own inflections and emphasis on the words and phrases, you interpret it in your own way. In some cases this is the best way to experience a book. It's a very different experience listening to a book versus actually reading it, you're now subject to the inflection and emphasis that the reader places on the text. If the individual reading the book is good at it this intermediary can greatly improve the book's impression. If the reader is bad it can ruin an otherwise good text. Things like tone, cadence, articulation.

I have found that the best way to experience a good book is to hear it read by the author – it seems that when this is possible you get the exact intentions of the author the text is read with the emphasis and inflection that they intended which in turn encourages you to take it in and interpret it as intended.

Another thing that makes a big difference in audio books are voices. Some readers are great at using voices or different speech patterns for different characters. Some books even have completely different readers for different characters - espcially if the book is written from the perspective of multiple characters.

Below are great examples of the various type of audio books - all of which I recommend.

Author Read
- Eat, Pray, Love by Liz Gilbert
- Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
- The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Great Reader
- The Queen of the Big Time read by Cassandra Campbell
- Water for Elephants read by David LeDoux
- The Wedding read by Tom Wopat

Great Voices
- Citizen of the Galazy read by Lloyd James
- The Lottery read by Paul Michael

Multiple Readers
- My Sister's Keeper written by Jodi Picoult

Halloween, iPhones, Mountains and more

We went to Seattle for a few days and wound up staying almost a week. Here are some scattered thoughts and updates from the trip.

I finally got to see the new house which is looking fabulous and we made it up to Mount Vernon to see Chris's cousins. We went trick-or-treating with them which was a complete blast. After the kids passed out in a sugar induced coma we stayed up late drinking wine and chatting with Debbie. We, of course, also called Chris's sister Jen and had fun picking on her drunken state.

While up north we met up with Rick and grabbed a quick lunch at the Skagit Valley Co-Op (which is completely awesome by the way - I now want to live in a town with a co-op). David let us take the new Porshe on the trip so Chris was very happy - my tush however was a bit bitter about it.

Once back on Bainbridge Chris gave his parents a very, very long iPhone lesson (puke, I know) and we were able to meet up with some of the old Smolland Lane crew for dinner.

My mission for the trip was to find lavendar - I succeeded with flying colors! I got two satchels of lavendar along with shampoo, conditioner, body wash, soap, incense and lotion - woohoo!

Saturday Chris was able to race with Chris - they lost, but just barely - to Demeyer. Then the whole racing crew had lunch at the pub. It was festive, fun and yummy. Chris had an Elk Burger (eww) and I had a crab and artichoke melt (yummy). Sunday we went over to Hurricane Ridge - WOW. You have too look at the pictures and watch the videos (there are three and they're all worth watching). It was amazing!

We've been home a couple of days and tomorrow Chris is off to work I'm Orlando. I love this new freedom!

Costumed Weekend

My last day at work was Friday (yay!). We celebrated by going to a couple of parties over the weekend.

Friday night we went to the 5th annual WAABI Bourbon Tasting. It was an enjoyable night and it was really great to see all of the folks I used to work with at Beam. They were are very nice and seemed genuinely glad to re-unite. They had a great turn out at the event and based on the prices of the bids on the silent auction I think they did very well for the two charities they support. Last year Chris and I came home with two baskets of goodies from the auction, this year everything was out of our price range which means great news for them.

Then Saturday night we decided to take a chance and go to a stranger's costume party. I ate lunch with a group of programmers at my now old job. A friend of theirs and a previous co-worker had a costume party and invited the whole crew. They said that I should come and bring Chris and we decided to go for it. We shopped for costumes that afternoon and were able to throw some pretty great ones together for a very affordable price.

The couple (Brandon and Carrie) hosting the party were awesome and made us feel right at home. When Carrie realized that neither of us had ever met her or her husband she was thrilled and excited to meet new people. The party doubled as a house warming party for them so we got the grand tour. Their home was gorgeous. As the night wore on Brandon (who is in a band) provided us with an impromptu guitar sing-a-long. Over-all the company was great and the costumes creative. The guy in the plaid is the BudLight hitch-hiker - his axe isn't a weapon, it's a bottle opener - he actually afixxed an opener to it. We're glad we crashed. More pictures here.

Career Changes

I realized that I never really posted here about the big changes coming up in my life. Chris and I did an analysis of our financial situation and decided that we could make it on one income. Knowing this we agreed that it wouldn't be irresponsible for me to quit the corporate world and give my business a shot full time.


I've become increasingly frustrated with corporate jobs and I've always felt I had it in me to be my own boss. In addition to getting the opportunity to test out my theory, working from home will give me more flexibility to travel and enjoy life with Chris now while we're munchkin free. If things go really well (fingers crossed, breath held) I can turn my little side business into something that can serve as our backup plan and allow me to work from home on my own terms indefinitely.


So, I did it.


Only two and a half more days and I will officially be free of my repressing, boring corporate job. Yay! I received calls/e-mail from 6 new potential clients for The PCoach in the past week alone so I am very encouraged.


We already have all sorts of plans to take advantage of my new-found freedom. The WAABI Bourbon Tasting is this Friday so I'll get to see all my old Jim Beam homies. Then Tuesday I'm finally going to ride on a flight where Chris is flying (which I've never yet been able to do because of work), we're going to St. Louis and back. Then we get to run across the airport to catch the last flight out to Seattle. We'll spend Halloween with Chris's cousin and her kids then the rest of the week and weekend with his parents, friends etc. We'll get to have (early) Thanksgiving with his parents. Once we get back I will be hitting The PCoach advertising hard and hopefully working 20-30 hours a week for a client that I'm still working the details out with.


The weekend of 11/10 is my family's traditional Pre-Thanksgiving celebration so I'll be down in FL for a long weekend. Then our whole family, both sides (!), will converge in Orlando for Christmas so I'll be spending almost two weeks down there for that.



Lots of fun and exciting changes for me. Now you know!

Movie Review - Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her

Watched Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her with Roger tonight and we give it four thumbs up. I don't even know how it wound up on my Flix List but I'm glad it did. It was a pleasant little surprise.

It reminds me mildly of Magnolia meets Playing by Heart only more real. It's one of those plots where everything intertwinces, only in this one they're clear about it. It's broken into several stories that are clearly defined. When I reached the end I found myself caring about the characters, feeling like I knew them and wanting to know more about their stories - a fairly amazing feat considering the short time in which each story and character is preseented. The shots are smooth throughout the film and some creative angles used. None of those cheesey scene transitions I always hate.

The casting is superb. I don't necessarily like Calista Flockhart but she was perfect for the role of Christine. Her monologues were well done. Glen Close is normally too stern for me but she was a perfect fit for Dr. Keener and her facial reactions during her scenes are so subtle and suitable.

Overall I was very impressed. I'm adding it to my wishlist, it's one I think I'll re-watch.

Road Trip!

Chris and I have the whole weekend off together (yay!) and fall suddenly hit our area. The leaves are rich tones of gold, auburn, red and orange. There is a nip in the area and today the sky was clear blue.

We went for a two hour drive through the windy backroads of the "tri-state" area. We wandered over to Madison, Indiana - a quaint little town that Chris discovered via the internet. The drive was amazing, Chris's M3 hugged the roads perfectly and the farms and forests were great scenery. About half way there we started seeing barns full of drying tabacco and signs to "watch horse drawn carriages, next 4 miles" etc.

We started off at the park along the river where I accidentally got some of the river water on my shoes. Chris is now monitoring my feet for contagious infection ^_-. With the changing leaves and the cloudless sky it was actually a pretty sight.

We then secured a parking spot on Main Street and hit the antique shops and at the first one we found a spice rack for $12. The owner was a sweetheart who interupted her lunch to ring us up (all the while trying not to stare at my nose ring - it was cute). I know it seems backwards but I am going to paint it fun colors and then paint the names of the spices on the jars. We went to the Madison Mercantile and bought a Veggi Soup mix and two Veggie Dip mixes. The owner recommended stufing peppers with the dips which we plan to try next time we entertain.

After we had made our way up one side of the street we had worked up a hunger so we stopped at the Downtowner Cafe for some fuel. We hit it right after the lunch rush so the service was great. Chris enjoyed a Frisco Melt and I had a "Duo Combo" with a BLT and a garden salad. We people watched as we ate and marveled at the Biker Dudes sitting outside, with perfect posture both devouring supper healthy salads - it was a slight contradiction :)

After lunch we bought some Fudge at the Toy Shop and then finished making our way back down the other side of Main Street. The drive home was just as enjoyable and we saw proof behind the "horse drawn carriage" warnings when an Amish family pulled out in front of us.

Over all it was a very pleasant day. The rest of the pictures are here.

Remembering

Only one person in this picture has passed, but I feel like two of them are gone...

Sometimes I miss them.

CoNair

It was SOO vital for the Comair pilots to take paycuts that Delta pushed the issue with the pilots for a year. The pay cut got Delta around 2 million in savings per year.

As soon as Delta came out of bankruptsy what did they do? Re-brand. Spending $10 million!

Delta has been out of bankruptsy for a couple of quarters now. Yesterday they announced their third quarter standings. $2.4 billion in cash lying around? Why not give some of it back to the employs then huh?

I know he loves his job, but the industry sucks!

Finally! The Saga Continues

My all time favorite book is Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. An odd choice, I know, but I just love it. I love how epic it is, how you really get to know and love or hate the characters. I also have always like the time period. This book was assigned as the summer reading at the end of my junior year of highschool to be studied when we returned as seniors. When we received our copies of the paperback from our English teachers they already had huge chunks of text blacked out with a sharpie. I was furious - how dare they require reading and then censor it. I raised a fuss, encouraging everyone to fight and go to at least go out and buy an uncensored version. In the end I didn't go back for my senior year, I finished my required credits that summer, but I still read the book. I've re-read it every summer since. I'm oh so familiar with Prior Philip, the Evil Lord William, gorgeous Aliena and the quirky carrot-head Jack.

Chris knows this and he apparently got wind some time ago that Follett was releasing a sequal, which I had no clue about. It was released on Tuesday and on Wednesday he stopped by the book store to buy me a copy - they were already sold out! He wound up surprising me with a copy in the airport when we were heading town to Orlando this weekend.

I am already about 200 pages into World Without End and I already love it though I don't yet know if it will compare to it's predecesor. It takes place about 200 years afer Pillars of the Earth and so far is chronicalling the continued life at Kingsbridge and following many of the decendants from the first novel. So far the characters are just as dymanic and fabulous.

I just wish that Chris could get into the first one so he could be excited with me about the new one. I do wish I had a fellow admirer to share it with...

PS - for the record I have read every single one of Follett's books and there are few I didn't thoroughly enjoy so if you haven't read anything by him I highly recommend that you give him a shot. He tends to do extensive research on topic before writing about them so most of his books include amazing and accurate details.

PPS - I do wish he wouldn't insist on putting his picture on the back of every book - he's so weird looking!

Wow - Look at Me Ma!

Sometimes when I look around my house, at my cat, my husband, our things, accomplishments and the life we've created together I think to myself, how did I ever end up here? What did I do to deserve all of this?

If you had asked me five years ago where I would be now, this is the last thing I would have come up with. I never would have thought my best friends would be members of my family, that I would be married, with my own business and living in a house...

I need to dream bigger. :)

For those who are curious this tangent of thought was triggered by our upcoming anniversary - 4 years since our first date. Nothing compared to my parent's recent celebration of 35 years, but it's still a lot to us.

Movie Review - The Guardian

The Guardian - 3 1/2 out of 4 thumbs down

I know, I know - what were we thinking right? Chris and I watched The Guardian a few nights ago. It wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be, it was worse. The script was so incredibly cheesey, the acting was mediocre at best and the graphics were laugable. The entire movie we could so easily predict what was going to happen next that it wasn't even fun to tear it apart.

I am glad to say though that this particular bad movie is Chris's reponsibility as it was on HIS Flix list.

The only reason it gets half of a thumb is because it still wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.

I got a chuckle yesterday because based on my current movie ratings Netflix recommended The Guardian as something I might like. Shows you how accurate their recommendations are!

Roger

Apparently even though we had a great cat sitter stopping to play with and feed Roger, he missed us immensely, as you can see.---->

He has been especially affectionate since our return and even has some mild seperation anxiety. I just got these pictures downloaded from the camera. I don't care if I seem like one of those creepy people who treat their animals like kids. He's too darn cute not to brag about!

<-----We don't know how he got there but he apparently decided that Chris's bicep is a force to be reconned with:

Finally was able to get some video of him as well. My favorite is below. Notice how he goes about getting my attention, leading me to his toy and then decides that gnawing on my hand is more fun than the toy...




If you're intersted, more pictures here, videos here.