Pittsburgh Water

Pittsburgh may be the #1 city in the country for soot, but it does have some pretty water.

Canon PowerShot G9, ISO 800, F8.0, 1/3 sec

Don't tell Skip

I have had a crush on Neil Patrick Harris forever and I'm glad to see he's getting the recognition he deserves. He recently did a great interview in Out magazine worth checking out.

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)!

Hillary!

My Hillary shirt and I had a great time at Baltimore Gay Pride. I did get funny looks from the Obama Pride booth but I got hugs and some great comments from a lot of people there. I still love me some Hillary.

Bradley Whitford!

A last minute decision on where to eat for dinner found us running into Bradley Whitford, currently starring in the Tony-award winning Boeing, Boeing. Love, him, love him, love him! I miss West Wing.

Dunkin Donuts

Here is a really bad picture taken at probably the biggest camera store in the world, B&H Photo Video in Manhattan. Seriously, it's bigger than any Best Buy I've ever been in, probably by 2.

But back to the point. What can you possibly buy at Dunkin Donuts for which you would need a bag this size?

Taken with a Canon G9, F3.5, focal length 16.8 mm, no flash (and no focus or proper white balance!)

Not much can make me go wow at 5 am

but this quote did.

"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Well why is that quote wow-inducing, you ask? It was from Conservative Robert Novak in 2001 (Reliable Source, Lloyd Grove). Last Sunday he hit a pedestrian in DC drove away. Someone had to chase him down and stop him until police arrived. Robert claimed that "I didn't see him there" although a witness claimed the person hit "is sort of splayed into the windshield."

Lovely.

Those eyes

Taking a good picture of Blossom staring at me while I am driving while I am actually driving is no small feat.

The Catch Up

I realize it's been forever since I've done any type of substantial post, so at 3 am let me see if I can catch you up...

Our cruise to the Bahamas was simply amazing. We got sun, did yoga, pilates and stretch classes, walked forever, swam in a lagoon, kept over 300 pictures that I took (once I trimmed down the 600+ I actually took, had wonderful food, a pretty small room, got room service at midnight, perfect weather all four days we were in Bermuda and came home to a very excited Blossom. The picture was taking with my iPhone as we were leaving the islands. All the real pictures are on my other laptop which is already packed for my imminent drive to Pittsburgh. I'll post some better ones in the coming days, promise.

I've been in Pittsburgh every week with no end in site. The draining of my soul and energy continues.

Skip's travel business is finally taking off. We are even going on a free cruise next year because he sold so many rooms for Carnival's first cruise out of Baltimore in years. He still has rooms left if you're interested.

His cake business is doing well although he's scaling back a bit due to the travel. The wedding cake he did last Friday was the heaviest he has ever done. I do a minimum of 5 hours of hard cardio a week along with yoga, stretching and lifting and I had to really concentrate to not drop that thing. Skip of course can't pick it up yet. His car accident was in December and he is still not even allowed to work out. Guess who gets to mow the lawn!

Blossom is doing well and as cute as ever.

I finally found a few hours this week to get more studying done for my Digital Photography hobby. I want to get some more knowledge in before my second course this fall so I watched another DVD on using my camera and am working through a 7 or 8 DVD series from Strobist.

My sister is getting married in October so we will be driving to Colorado in late October with Blossom for the festivities. Skip will be making the cake (brown!) and our friend/previous next-door neighbor was kind enough to let us host and stay there. I want snow. I want snow. I want snow.

The last weekend in July we'll be cashing in a few Hilton points (I'm at about half a million right now) to see a few shows in NYC. A Catered Affair has been on my list and since it closes at the end of the month and prompted the trip. I've seen Xanadu but wanted to see it one more time and wanted Skip to see it. Since it didn't win any Tonys I didn't want to waste any time.

My knee is slowly getting better. I can do three days in a row of an hour on the elliptical cross trainer without much of a problem any more. A few months ago I could only do my normal elevations for the first day and had to dial it down the second two days.

We FINALLY found a good Vietnamese restaurant in Baltimore. Security Square Mall of all places!

People keep asking if I'll be getting the new iPhone. Honestly I don't think so. If it could do turn by turn directions and replace the Garmin then I probably would, but supposedly it can't, so no. I already have the upgraded software and some cool new apps (Remote, Mobile Banking, PhoneSaber, Bejeweled 2, etc.)

How's that? If I could figure out why Blogger won't publish my pics when I send to the email address I would be doing a lot more blogging. Just one more thing in my life to troubleshoot...

43!

Skip and I are going on a cruise tomorrow. It's our first and I'm starting to get excited. I went to the Doctor today to get a patch for motion sickness (just in case) and evidently my resting heart rate is down to 43 beats per minute. She said that must be wrong and did I exercise? Well, 5 - 9 hours of cardio a week along with stretching and lifting will do that to ya.

Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along

Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is working on a new project titled Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along.

How can something with Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillon be anything but incredible?

You can check out the trailer here.

How was your day, Jeff?

Well, I broke a record. 9 and 1/2 hours of meetings in 11 hours. That's after doing 1 hour on the eliptical cross trainer and then chest/arms/abs/stretching.

Then I had a wonderful Indian dinner.

RIP Mitch Mullany

I always thought Mitch Mullany was so cute and funny. His show Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher was horrible but I watched every episode because of him. I'm certainly not used to reading about someone my age dying.

What the hell?

TNT has started a new way to advertise. They literally pause a show while it is airing, the ad shows up in the bottom corner and when it's done the show starts again. I just saw this during Family Guy on TNT. Well, Mr. Bill Engvall, there's one more reason I won't see your show.

Despicable.

Karma and Vista

I replaced the graphics card on my Mac Pro on Friday. A side benefit is that the card supports DirectX 10. So what does my brain do? It tells me (totally without my permission) that I should now upgrade my boot camp partition to Vista. I had tried the Release Candidate and totally hated it, but now that Service Pack 1 is out I decided to give it a try. First I decided to be bad and try an actual upgrade rather than a clean install. It took forever of course and ended up leaving to take Blossom to Day Care and to go to the gym.

When I was in Day Care buying some more tickets for Blossom, a guy came up to me and asked if I had a white Honda. Well of course I do, and he told me that the car had rolled backwards. Into another car. Down a slight hill. It was one of the groomer's cars and there was a very small bump which she wasn't worried about. Skip had to bang our bumper back into place but that was the extent of the damage.

I think, though, this was the universe's way of punishing me for doing a Vista upgrade.

I got home and the install was totally hosed. I ended up having to do a clean install. It actually turned out pretty well (minus the microsoft normal abnormalities) and I haven't had any real problems yet. Fingers crossed.