trucks and eggs.

I have a new truck! Well, new to me anyway. Excitement reigns in my little world right now. I'll post pics up a little later.

To celebrate, tomorrow I cook hibachi steak and chicken...

preceded only by a breakfast of incredible eggs, local bagels, and coffee... and a lunch (for mom's day / mom's birthday) at Ganache. Sunday will be more amazing eggs and an early dinner at Bonefish to do mother's day with Kristen's folks.

This weekend, I will be fat and happy.

Where did I go hide?

I'm not sure I could really say I've been as busy, but I've been slack. Things have been kind of busy though:

Back in mid april, we set out on a trip to Kitty Hawk. I had a work conference there, and Kristen made the trip out with me. Contrary to popular opinion, it's actually an awful location for a work conference. Being couped up for 7 to 8 hours a day in meetings and seminars wouldn't be as bad if I didn't know that the ocean was a stonesthrow away. It has been over 15 years since I've been out to the upper banks. I'm normally a southern banks kinda guy. Give me a quiet beaufort corner any day. The northern banks have turned into a "little boxes on the hillside" community from kitty hawk north. Every McMansion looks the same... and it's sad being able to pick out the home that have been there for 15 years. We climbed up the currituck light and the wild horses that used to run about have been replaced with tile rooftops, bmw's, and swimming pools.

Seriously? Swimming pools? You have water on both sides of you. I'm going out on a limb with the assumption that 60+ % of the homeowners in corolla/duck aren't exactly "local" either.

Despite my complaints, the trip was enjoyable. Kristen got to see Jockey's Ridge, we had great food, and effectively had a free room. No real copmlaints, aside from the 39,000 knowitalls there from new england while we were there.

I'm also shopping for a car... er, truck. I've been looking around for something different to drive for a while now, and thought I had settled on getting a motorcycle. Even had the color, make, model, specs and everything else figured out. That's what wish lists are for though. So yeah, a new vehicle. New to me, anyway. My honda has served me well. It saw a cross country trek to and from Denver, carried me back and forth to college, stood up to two different awful work commutes (from troy to biscoe, biscoe back to troy, troy to asheboro, asheboro back to troy all in a day / asheboro to candor) and is still rolling along. I've put 188k miles on it. It has never seen an accident / wreck. I'll surely miss it. On the upside, I've tracked down a 2007 Nissan Frontier. Odd, I've been having the most difficult time typing out "frontier" too... Hopefully, everything will be said and done by either the end of this week, or early next week.

Let's see here, what else have I missed:
- Petunia had been sick, and we think that it may be bladder stones. The vet has sent us home with some painkillers/anti-inflammatory meds for her.
- Go to the mellow mushroom if you're in greensboro and want better pizza than what you can get at some places. I still like Elizabeth's equally as well, but the mellow mushroom is a beautiful building down on S. Elm st.
- I've applied at ECU online to finish out my degree, so that's a plus.

Next time, I'll try to update more often.. that way I don't lose the tiny details.

thanks to my sister..

So my sis is turning another year older today. I did the same thing 15 days ago. I'll have to upload a pic or five of the cake she made for me. As my wife and I are on a diet, she put together a cake that resembled a salad.

Happy Birthday Sis. You're a quarter of a century old today...

Also, thanks to her ridiculously creative side, I now have a new desktop image on my computer at work. Her birthday cake was from Creative Cakes here in Asheboro. While I would've loved to have made her a cake myself, I couldn't find the time (or enough modeling chocolate) to do it justice.

She had babies riding carrots. I love it. I think it's absolutely hilarious... and tasty too.

Speaking of computers, any of you folks that leave your computer running all the time.. or have constant internet access, I ask that you look into Folding. It's a distributed computing initiative that has been around for a while now. I know SETI had a program years ago, but I'm folding for Stanford University. Basically, they have a program where they send out different proteins to analyze to all of these folks that sign up for folding. The results of folding are helping advance the understanding of certain maladies (MS, etc). If you're interested in joining the cause, check out http://folding.stanford.edu

Ah, Spring!

Ah, spring...

while it may be a time of odd weather, it's been a time of not feeling too terribly good, dieting, chipping a tooth, staying busy at work, valentines day trips to wilmington, gorging on food at the front street brewery, road trips, and getting back our official wedding pics (make no mistake, the delay was on us, not Julie).

If you'd like to take a look, I'll post a link to our photographers blog:

Our pictures!

Her name is Julie and we worked together for a bit at the Coffee Xchange back in the day. I dig her photo-style and that's why we hired her.


As for the Valentines trip, Kristen and I took a long road trip from home to the aquarium at Kure Beach, had dinner at the Front Street Brewery in Wilmington, and milled around on the waterfront before returning home. All in all, one of the best 12-hour-long days I've had.

super-duper-mega-update.

Over the past month and a half, it's been a whirlwind of activities for my household:

We adopted a new kitten. His name is Charlie and he was a FCAP kid. Well, we call him Charlie.. but they called him Hughie. Yup, he had brothers Dewey and Louie. He was one of those "I'm going to stay under the bed for 9 days or so" cats, but has lately grown to be a bit more interactive. I say that because he's most likely climbing the curtains and taunting Bella the pug right now.

My motherboard burned out on my computer at home a while back. I build computers. I used to obsessively play games on said computers. I've spent a solid week and a half trying to get all of my components ported over onto a new motherboard (evga 750i SLI for you geeks out there) and then tucked into a newer and much smaller case (coolermaster 330, again for the geeks). It's been a constant tinkering. I don't really have a "shop" that I can work in. I'd love to build things for around the house and fulfill my stereotypical husbandly duties... everyone needs a crooked spice rack afterall. Instead, i'm putting together a computer so we can watch Netflix on our TV now instead of paying the time warner overlords.

A good pal stayed with us for a few days during the holidays as well. Joey came down from Elizabethtown, PA to hang out with us for a few days. We demolished other folks with a bit of online Mario Kart Wii racing, ate way too much, enjoyed the wonderful world of Harry Potter in HD, and basically wasted a few hours of time together every afternoon.

I was able to swing by and see Tom Gray and pick up a few Christmas gifts while there. Thanks again friend, you've added smiles to our Christmas. The salt pig is a permanent fixture now, and we've already made use of everything we picked up.

I'm going back to school as well. As much as I've thought about it, if there is no addition to my education field on my resume within the next few years, I'll be disappointed. Experience only speaks so loudly against those holding $40,000 piece of paper with "they're more qualified than you" on it, right?

We got a new coffee grinder for christmas. My old grinder died and I was stuck back into the world of preground coffee. I need to get back into roasting my own again. Small batch coffee roasting and grinding makes the world go round. Plus, I figure I'll need more coffee if I'm up working on a degree.

So let's see here, what else?

Oh, if you know someone that needs a PA System, let me know okay? Post a comment with your email address or some way to get in touch with you.

I should have my glasses in one day this week... and because my forehead is continually growing, I think I may dive again into the "no hair" phase. I've shaved my head a few times since 2004 and really like the fact that I don't have to shampoo in the shower. Plus, there's never any worry about how my hair looks.

I just wish I could come to the head-shaving decisions when it isn't 34 and windy outside.

I guess that's what toboggans are for after all.





Hurray for a new year, right?

Wedding Pics

So I put together this slideshow of some of our wedding pictures. Since things have, for the most part, calmed down a bit... I may be posting some older pictures that I haven't had the opportunity to until recently.

These pictures come from two of our friends who just happened to bring along cameras and snap away. I downloaded, sorted, and uploaded them through picasa. I love the simplicity of google.




Enjoy!

let's see here...

So I now have four nicely healing holes in my head. The wisdom teeth extraction was actually a breeze for me. I followed the recommendation of many folks and saw Dr. William Rabe here in Asheboro. There is an inherent and collective hatred for dentists between my sister and I, partially because our childhood dentist was a nutjob. That being said, I dig Dr. Rabe and his approach. The last part of the last stitch came out yesterday afternoon and I think the healing process is well underway.

Also, it should be noted that while I'm fawning over the care that I recieved, I certainly hope that my mouth doesn't need more services from the good surgeon... my wallet may not recover as well as my jaw has.

I'm happy though, I'm actually had a steak last night (Pittsboro General Store Cafe - local produce, great food, but the service can sometimes really suck) and I'm feeling good about food again.

Kristen and I adopted a new member into the family.. and as soon as he has adjusted, I'll get you some pictures of Charlie. He is an FCAP (feral cat societ) adopted cat and is taking home under our bed for the time being. Beautiful cat, he just needs to get himself acclimated.

...but at times, don't we all?