The Sleep

This was taken our 2nd or 3rd day with Shiloh. He certainly has warmed up to us fast. Pictured is Skip, Shiloh and Blossom (behind) taking a nap.
Canon G9, F2.8, ISO 200, 7.4mm

What's New?

Anticipating the arrival of Shiloh...

Still traveling to Pittsburgh for work most weeks...

Still pretty burned out.

Skip is still getting treatment for his car accident last September and still isn't allowed to exercise.

My photography is coming along albeit at a slower pace than I'd like. My next class starts in early September.

I see the Doctor again tomorrow about my knee. Neither is still really fixed so I'm going to try to get him to go back in there and fix it.

We're looking forward to my sister's wedding in Colorado in October. Skip is looking forward to making the wedding cake!

Your Way Holidays

Skip's travel agency is really taking off. He opened Your Way Holidays last year and as things are going now he'll be doing it full-time by next year. He sold so many rooms for a certain cruise last year that we are going on a cruise for free in one of the six penthouse suites (including hot tub)!

The life of Blossom

When I'm home I sleep like a mummy. Blossom is under the covers, pressed up against me from the right side and Lucy is pressed up against me on the right side. Rolling on to my side takes a bit of planning to not squish anyone. When I'm gone, evidently they both sleep near my pillow and actually sleep close to each other. I have never seen this phenomenon myself but Skip got a picture. Blossom actually takes her fluffy (the blue thing) and pulls it up to my pillow and sleeps there. This picture is the only time I've seen the two of them actually touching.

I'm not sure how she does it, but yesterday when Skip picked up Blossom from day care, she was on top of a dog house. The workers told him that Blossom likes to get up there but then only lets her friends up with her. I am not sure what is happening, as I did not raise her to be an elitist snob. As long as she votes for Hillary and doesn't hurt anyone or anything she can do what she wants.

Discrimination part ???

Who can keep track?  Here is the latest incident experienced by Skip.  Evidently Home Depot still doesn't care if one of their employees is called a faggot.   I would have love to have seen the outrage if the N word was thrown around.

Skip's words...

"A fellow associate asked me to help a older male customer with window tint in the decor department. I walked over to the customer to tell him with tint was the one with the mirror side. I started to speak and said "This is the one..." I was cut off by the customer very loudly stated " Don't come over here with your attitude you flaming faggot... You sissy boys are going to show me the respect I deserve." I was blind-sided I just turned away and said I was done and walked away. I went down the aisle where a policewoman that I had spoke to earlier and she asked me what happened. I told her. She asked me if I wanted her to say something to him. I told her no thanks. She said she would not have  been able to keep her mouth shut she would have had to say something. I went over and told my supervisor what had happened and he said I am glad you didn't say anything back. (I knew he felt it was no big deal really) I also told him I would not help the customer and he went over to help him. I was back in the aisle with the policewoman and the customer walked down the aisle and from where he was he could not see her.  He started to snicker at me and she stepped out and said what did you say.  He said "nothing". she said I thought so. She was leaving too and I told her to have a nice day and she said "see ya later sweetie,  smooches!" We laughed and she went on her way.   

This is what a rough night of bingo will do to you

Valentine's Day Candy and Cake Orders

Skip is taking Valentine's Day orders again this year.  You can check his order form out on his web site.

I know, I know, shameless cross-promotion!  Luckily I will not be partaking of his candy this year but I will have a special piece or two set aside for smelling!

Weight: 205

Shepherdstown, WV

We recently took a quick jaunt to Shepherdstown. It's very pretty in the fall, not that it was fall-like at all. Here are Skip and Blossom enjoying each other's company a little bit too much, perhaps?

Sleepy Dog

Blossom has taken to sleeping on her back in my arms in the car. That's Skip driving!

Stuff

Sorry posting has been light lately.

I'm getting as big as a house. My knee pain doesn't let me get much sleep or work out. Even when I don't do legs or cardio my knees still hurt at the gym, go figure. The insurance company is taking it's sweet time getting my referral number so I can get this fixed. Oy.

In other news, Skippy has an order for a great cake due Thursday night. If everything goes as planned, it will be the cake featured on his new business cards. Of course I'll post a picture here so you all can have a sugar-coma just looking at it! We ran to Michael's last night and got him a cake sprayer which Skippy claims will make the cake 50% more awesome. His new web site is coming soon, also, as soon as I finish it.

I see that The Bionic Woman had a 30% drop in the ratings in it's second week. Coincidentally, it's the same week that Isaiah Washington joined the cast. If there is any justice, ratings will spike back up after his guest stint (5 episodes) is over.

Medieval Times

Skippy wanted to go to Medieval Times for his birthday so off we went. It was fun but the acting was just awful. A guy would get hit and two seconds later would fall off his horse. Two fights were awesome but besides that it was like a first-time stage-fighting class. But the virgin margaritas were great!

Despite the pictures, we each had only (part of) one.

Updates

Let's see...

It looks like my years of working out, tennis, volleyball and raquetball are taking a toll on me. I'm going to have knee surgery one one or both knees rather soon. At this point I can only do the treadmill for 10 minutes at a time and can't even take my hour long strolls around NYC! Yay medicine.

I'm in NYC today but will be working from home starting tomorrow until who knows when. The client doesn't want to pay for travel and that's fine with me! It will be great to be home.

Skippy's birthday is on Monday. Over the last few years he has made a humongous cake and we've had a party. This year we decided to just go to Medieval Times. He might still make a smaller cake just to keep the Alzheimers at bay.

Do you know we have Blossom (our 1 year old Beagle) in day care? People seem to think that's very strange. Beagles are bred to run for long periods of time so short of me taking her out for 10 mile daily runs I see it as a very good choice and wise investment in her health and happiness.

I have been on the NYC subway more in the last month than my whole life combined. We stay in midtown but work on Wall Street so it's pretty much a necessity. Needless to say, being used to the ease and efficiency of the Washington area Metro, NYC's subway is very hard to understand for a newcomer. After a few bad detours (why am I in the Village?) I decided to give up and just use hopstop.com. I put in my route and it tells me exactly what subway line to take. Even I can do that.

I still love my iPhone.

Doh!

Life has been busy lately, so here's an update...

It turns out that Skippy is just miserable in Colorado as I'm gone most of the time, so we're moving back east! Cross fingers, we should know if we got the house we want to rent today or tomorrow. Plans are to move to just below Baltimore the last week of August. We'll be back near friends and family, and I will (mostly) only have 45 minute plane rides instead of these 4 hour affairs I'm going through now.

I'm finishing up the project I'm working on in NYC this week (although I'm in Cambridge) and supposedly next week I start as Senior Architect for another huge Manhattan-based client. It also looks like I'll start working as a full-time employee either for my contracting company or the company that hires my contracting company.

I learned about the new position last week at a great kickoff dinner at Delmonico's in the Wall Street section of Manhattan.

The Simpsons Movie was excellent. It certainly was strange watching it in a movie theatre, especially when I looked around and noticed that a lot of the people (kids) in the theatre weren't even born when The Simpsons started! I remember seeing their short films on the Tracey Ullman show and thinking what a great show it would make. Truth be told, I prefer the voices and drawings from the very early shows the best.

Blossom

I haven't posted a picture of Blossom in a while. She is doing great. She's calm around people and does her tricks very well (sit, down, stay, roll over, spin around, etc.). She will even stay while I go another room. But of course as soon as I "free" her she runs for me at full speed! Every night is cuddle time on the couch and last night Skip and I were both on the couch, so she just made herself as comfortable as possible draped over us.

Big News

Skippy and I are trying to buy our first house together. Neither of us has owned a house before. We actually have one under contract so we're just waiting for the financing to come through. We hope to close by June 29th so we can do a lot of work the week of July 4th, which will be my first week home in months.

Here are two videos showing what the house looks like now.

This one shows the outside...



and this one shows the inside...

I missed one...

Skippy and I had a great dinner at an Italian restaurant in the East Village last night. When we got back to the hotel, I went back up to the room and Skippy walked to get a piece of cheesecake. Then he almost knocked into Carson Kressley! Carson was on his phone and not paying attention. Skippy's fragile, so good thing he was alert.

Are we ready yet?

I firmly believe that kids are becoming numb to the constant violence they are exposed to through tv, video games, etc. I know for myself, when ER first came out I couldn't watch it at all. Now I can watch every second of it and not blink once, no matter the procedure. Luckily I still can't watch things like Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Anyone who thinks that all this violence isn't numbing us and making violence more acceptable in our minds is just kidding themselves.

I asked Skip a couple of weeks ago to play the new Lord of the Rings Online game with me. He likes to watch and says he doesn't like to play because he's "not very good" at it. I'm very very good at telling when he's not being honest with me so I pressed him. He finally admitted he just couldn't see himself doing all that killing. You know what? That's totally fine with me and I won't ask him again. Good for him.

Blossom update

Our little angel is mellowing and it is very nice. This morning (around 5:30 am) we were downstairs and she was trying to sleep on the couch. At one point Skip said "Hey!" (to Gaston? who knows) and Blossom perked right up and looked at him. He said "not you" and she immediately put her head back down to go to sleep. She's a smart one.

Sadness

We ended up with over 12 feet of snow this winter. In the thick of it (just around Christmas) Skip and I decided that we needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle as he couldn't even get the Honda to the airport to pick me up. So we ended up with a 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid that we love very much. But it's not financially feasible to keep both cars so we are in the process of selling the 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. It really saddens me as that car gets almost 44 mpg even going up and down the mountains every day! It will be interesting, as the only way I have ever sold a car is through CarMax on my way to a new car.

Here it is!

So sorry for the wait....

This is a rare 4 picture post. It's too hard to see detail with just the one picture. The cake is so tall that it didn't fit in the back of our Ford Escape Hybrid. We had to take the top layer off.