Merry Christmas!

We have to confess, our house hasn't been showing much for the Christmas spirit this year. Our wreaths, ornaments, and lights have remained (lazily) tucked away in our attic. Since we'll be away in NY, we decided to skip the tree for fear of the cats ingesting the entire thing in our absence. But have no fear, the "children" haven't suffered. Here is Squirt being presented her Christmas gift, giant rawhide bone:

Don't worry, I didn't give it to her until she said please and thank you, we require good manners in our house. Except for the crotch sniffing, we're working on that.

At first, Squirt didn't really know what to do with it. She sat next to it for a good hour and even scurried away when we moved it closer. Finally she got things figured out and dug in:

In posting this, I've realized that we didn't really get the cats any Christmas gifts. I honestly don't think they'll feel too neglected. Hobbes found a hair tie to drag around the house a few days ago, and I think that is pretty much the equivalent of Christmas for him. And Cali? Well, Hobbes puked up his dinner tonight, just a few minutes after eating (too fast, I guess). I think this is pretty much the equivalent of Christmas to Cali, since she ate it in the 15 seconds that it took me to get a paper towel to clean it up. This probably explains why Cali is fat, she prefers food that's already been partially chewed and partially digested so she doesn't have to waste the energy to do those processes herself. She's highly evolved like that. So they're pretty happy. As for us? We'll be heading to NY on Wednesday morning and staying until Sunday and are sure to be enjoying lots of family time and good food (we'll do the chewing and digesting ourselves).

Summary of Events

So, I've been told our presence in the blogosphere has been missed. I want to give a big shout out to mah peeps Nirit & Laura, who have patiently waited for important updates to our lives...too bad we spoiled their suspense by actually seeing & talking to them. I know, personal interaction, how terrible (for them)! It's hard to remember where the past 6 months have gone, because it felt kind of like.....Lauragotmarriedyayforthem
WenttobeachtwicetoseefamilyWenttoNebraskatoseeLauriegetmarriedyayforthem
WenttolakeandsawthatAndrewgetscutertheolderhegetsKevinappliedfor5millionjobs
WenttolakeagainJackiegotseriousaboutstudyingforherexamKevinscoredaseriouslyawesomejob
Hadthanksgivinganddidn'tgetsickfromthestuffing

And then, I took a breath and realized it was 6 months later. As usual, evident from the above statement, summer had us traveling nearly every weekend. Also as usual, we have hardly any pictures to show from it. So I hid from the blog out of shame. Actually, we do have some "before" pictures from when we did P90 (an exercise program w/ a bunch of videos), but I don't think you'd be interested to analzye how much belly fat we have. We forgot to take "after" shots, but if you want to imagine you can just check out the latest Victoria's Secret catalog, that's about what I looked like...really, and Kevin looked like one of the American Gladiators. Those aren't the only pictures, I tried to take some creative shots at Laurie's wedding, but apparently they suck (vote given by Kevin & Christopher). In summary, there's not much to share.

Now we're gearing up for Christmas in NY with Kevin's family, a belated Christmas in Raleigh with mine, taking my engineering exam in April, Kevin getting settled in his new job, and spending the newfound paycheck :) We'll be getting some carpet for our family room. The current carpet is about 25 years old and has weird neon green stains on it. All we can figure is that the former owners were closet aliens and some slime from their outer shell stained it. So we're pretty jazzed about that..I hope this exciting purchase doesn't make everyone jealous of the Hollywood lifestyle we live. Maybe we'll share pictures or at least some details on it's pile or something.

Well, I guess that's about it for now. Hopefully we'll be back soon1!

Memorial Day, pt 2

Yes, our memorial day weekend was so exciting that it necessitated two posts. Ok, maybe it wasn't and I just got tired of writing the last one, so sue me! To wrap things up, we returned to Maryland on Sunday, stopping at Laura's new house in Harve de Grace. Then, we went to dinner at Hunan Manor to celebrate Christopher's completion of his graduate degree. There, Kevin was reunited with his first love. I took a picture so he could stare at it and drool during their long seperations:




Sometimes I catch him staring off into the distance, and I know he's thinking of this chicken, dreaming of a time when they can always be together. After dinner, we accompanied Christopher for some furniture shopping. Here's the face he made when he found a winner:

All in all, it was a packed weekend, but a fun one!

Memorial Day Weekend, pt 1

We kicked off the summer travel season with a bang, a roadtrip to Maryland and Pennsylvania. But we didn't leave before adding a new toy to our bag of tricks. For those of you who don't know, the men in Kevin's family are genetically inclined to be obsessed with photography. The gene has been laying dormant in Kevin, but I think the new camera may have massaged a little life into it.

We arrived in Maryland on Thursday evening and spent the night at my parents house before continuing to Harrisburg, PA on Friday. My old neighbor Erica has called Harrisburg her home for a little over 2 years, and I was so excited to finally get to see her humble abode. Erica has been training for an olympic distance triathalon as a part of Team in Training, an organization that provides training for athletes who dedicate themselves to fundraise for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She's been working so hard training and fundraising, so we were thrilled to see her in action for a sprint distance triathalon, a stepping stone to the olympic distance she'll be tackling next month. If you're interested in supporting her and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, you can visit her fundraising page here:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cpa/cpaphly09/etindale

The spring distance is a 500 m swim, 16 mi bike, and 5K run. Whew, that's a lot of stuff! My inner nerd is wondering what the heck is up with them measuring each distance in a different unit? Regardless, it was a great race to watch as we were able to position ourselves to see her near the start and finish of each leg. She looked so strong and confident every time we saw her, I know she's going to do great when she doubles the distance. She totally made my day when she introduced me to one of her coaches by saying "This is my neighbor, Jacqueline, she lives in North Carolina"...which makes no sense, but it's exactly how I speak about her too :) 400 miles apart, yet forever my neighbor. Here are a few pictures of her from the race:

Chilling (literally, it was in the mid-60's) in the water before the start:



Transitioning to the Bike:



Finishing up the Bike:




And wrapping up the run:

After all the activity (in addition to her 4:30 am wakeup!), you'd think Erica would have been up for a nap after we went for a post-race lunch. Yet, it was her boyfriend Ryan who was ready to fall asleep on the job when we visited a local brewery after the race:

So, in that picture was Erica, Ryan, Brian, and Laura. I think I might need to give either Ryan or Brian a new nickname that doesn't have the "ian" sound to it so I don't accidently call one the other!

After this picture, I had to give Kevin a lecture on sharing:


And finally, we checked out downtown Harrisburg, which was having an art festival along the riverfront, which made for some fun browsing. Here's a picture of the "neighbors" with the river in the background:

More pets!

Our camera putzed out on us, which has made me very unmotivated to do blog updates since I can't share pictures of the deck Kevin stained, the wheels Kevin painted, the garden we're growing, and the various creatures that hang out in said garden. In the absence of our camera, I've gained 25 lbs, grown a hairy wart on my lip, and dyed my hair pink. Just kidding, but maybe I should take advantage of the absence of life documentation by doing something crazy.


We made a trip up to Md/Va a few weeks ago to attend Kevin's cousin Laura's bridal shower & bachelorette party. Well, I attended those events, Kevin hung out with the groom and other family that came to celebrate. Kevin's traveled to Memphis this weekend to do the bachelor party thing with JP, celebrating with a weekend full of beer and bbq. In a little less than a month, they will be Mr. & Mrs, and we couldn't be more thrilled for them!


I ended up a little short on my push to run a second 1/2 marathon. 10 miles short, to be exact. My knee started bothering me a few weeks before the race, and intensified to the point that I was unable to finish my last 10 mile training run the week before the race. Knowing that I couldn't push through 10, I realized that 13 was out of the question. I raced a 5K instead, and cheered my running partners Keri-Anne and Amy to the finish line for their 1/2. They did amazing, though I have to say I was a tad sad that I wasn't right there with them. And that's when I knew I was sick. Who gets sad when they can't run 13 miles? I think I'm an addict! Like any good addict, I was a total crankypants during a 3 week running hiatus, but I'm happy to say I'm getting back out there. I'm starting slow & short and hoping my body doesn't mutiny.


Kevin's job search has been...going. The job market sucks and we're trying to be patient, which if you know either of us, patience isn't something that comes naturally. Nonetheless, we're happy the summer is here with lots of weddings & weekend trips to look forward to. This is good news for the blog as well, since I guess I'll have something to talk about!

A month later...

Ok, so I'm not the best about updating this blog. I'm really good at other things. Like eating french fries or waking up 5 minutes before my alarm..sometimes. Oh well, I don't suppose being a bad blogger will sentence me to eternal damnation or anything like that, though I might have that fate covered with other habits. So, I suppose I should get to the "what we've been up to" part. For some reason the phrase "not much" pops into mind (as evidenced by the empty blog), but that's not really true. Here's a quick run-down of what we've been up to:

We got to show off our house when my cousin Jane visited at the tail end of a business trip. It actually fooled her into thinking I was a "grown up", which proves that I am truly a master of illusion. We enjoyed a weekend of 80 degree temperatures by taking a short trip to the lake with our good friends Christy and Chris. It was perfect weather to roast some weenies and lounge by the lake. Tehehe, I said weenies. See? Very grown up. It was a great preview for the summer to come and we're hoping we can convince Christy and Chris to join us again when it's warm enough to try some water sports. Last weekend, my parents came to visit and we didn't force them to do any physical labor, which probably made for a pretty decent weekend from their standpoint.


What else? I fell off the bandwagon on studying for my test because, lets face it, engineering is boring. Alas, I am trying my best to get back on the bandwagon, although I have to say that an increase in my studying also corresponds with an increase in alcohol consumption. This explains college a lot. Kevin has been busy around our house being way more ambitious than I would be if I were laid off. I can't even begin to list the projects he's completed, but everywhere I look I can see something that is better because of his efforts.

My job is going pretty well, and actually served as part of my inspiration for posting today. In order to inspect water systems, I have to do a file review for each system, looking through every piece of correspondence between our office and the system. Occasionally, there is additional correspondence with regard to specific customers of the water systems. This brings me to the gem I stumbled upon today, which I simply cannot keep to myself, it's just too good. This letter, written before I was born, is from the water system to a customer who apparently has not paid their water bill. Here it is, only edited to remove names/dates:

Dear Customer's Name,

Inregards to your water, I was by your home on (Date in early 80's) to talk to you concerning your late payment and you came out and asulted me by hitting me with your fisk and drawing your shot gun on meand cursing me for no reason, threatening my life by threatening to shot me if I cut your water off.

I want you to know that if you give me any more trouble concerning your pament of water use or cutting your service off because of your payment, I am going to seek permission to discontinue your service PERMANENTLY, because it is not worth facing a shot gun to collect a measly 5 or 10 dollar water bill each month.

I hope you know what permanent means, well it means when thatis done that your water will not be turn on any more regardless of how much you are willing to pay

Your considering about this matter is necessary.

-Provider of Water

Luckily, the provider of water is no longer in charge there, and there wasn't any new article enclosed in the file about shootings there. I think I'll need to play "Dueling Banjos" to get me in the mood for this inspection!

Slacker Blogger

Sooo, it's been awhile since I posted. Life has been pretty uneventful, but yet busy at the same time. I've decided to make the commitment to study for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, which will make me an Engineer in Training (EIT), a pitstop on the way to becoming a Professional Engineer (PE). Given the number of acronyms in the previous sentence, you can see that I've really taken to life as a government worker. The exam isn't until October, but it covers basically every engineering class I ever took. Seeing as how I can't remember anything about the last movie I saw, I have my work cut out for me to resurrect information from classes I took over 4 years ago. So, if you want to find me, I'll be snuggled up to this 5 pound literary masterpiece.


Aside from studying, I've been keeping up with my running and plan to do a 2'nd half marathon on March 28'th. Between the studying and running, the evening hours seem to pass faster than I'd like.

Kevin has been staying busy with job applications and house projects. It's a little mystery for me when I come home - trying to figure out what he's done in the house on that given day...it's always something! He's taken down several more trees, in hopes of letting more light onto our lawn so it won't be as muddy. He also put screens into our downstairs windows. We had the screens & frames, but they were the wrong size for our windows, so he had to re-size them to fit. He'll do the upstairs on a weekend when I can be home to make sure he doesn't do unintentional ladder acrobatics. I can't tell you how many times I've wished to open up the house to air it out (pretty much anytime Squirt farts), so it will be nice to enjoy once spring comes! Speaking of spring, our yard is confused and thinks it's here already. Our daffodils pushed up the week of Christmas and started blooming about two weeks ago. It came in handy since I could clip a few and have free flowers for Valentine's day :)

Sweet kicks

As a state employee, you don't expect too many perks with the job. So I was surprised when my boss said we'd be going out to get some boots. Since we are frequently in muddy & waterlogged locations, water-proof boots are a must. Oh yeah, and a coworker pointed out that it's a good idea to protect your ankles from snakes...yikes! Presenting the newest addition to my style:


They come complete with a steel toe so if anyone causes any trouble I can kick ass. Plus, I think this trendy shoe makes me totally runway-ready. Don't be jealous of the glamorous life I lead.

Life has been pretty unexciting otherwise. Kevin was down for the count with a nasty cold last week, but recovered enough to play lumberjack on Saturday. We cut down about 5 trees in our yard, but they were all pretty small so you can hardly tell the difference. Otherwise, our days have been full of work (me) & job-searching (Kevin).

N is for....

So, I've been tagged - thanks Jamie! The game is coming up with 10 things that start with a letter and Jamie gave me the letter "N".

10 Random things that start with N:

1. Nodding off - All the car riding I've been doing lately seems to make me want to nap!
2. Nachos Grande - Who doesn't love some Taco Bell? Me, that's who. Well, actually I haven't ever tried it. *horrified gasp*
3. Nicey- As in Queen Nicey. I gave myself this nickname at my old job when a coworker gave me the nickname of Meanness. We had fun giving each other a hard time.
4. Nest- The website where I met my running pals, I'm so grateful to have found a great group of ladies to keep pace with.
5. North Carolina- It was 70 degrees here while it was icy cold in Md yesterday!
6. Neener-neener- A phrase to rub in the aforementioned temperature difference.
7. Not Many - words I can think of that start with "N".
8. Neuse- A river that runs through the area.
9. Nearly Done- Seriously struggling here.
10. Nachos Pequito - I wonder if the Taco Bells in other countries have normal (smaller) sized portions and call the dish Nachos Pequito?

Yeah, that was a little painful at the end there. What can you expect when half my vocab is "thingie" and "whatchamacallit"? Anyway, now I'm going to pass on the fun and tag Kathleen
with the letter "S". Kathleen went to grad school for technical writing (or something like that?), so I'm expecting big thingies out of her.

Didn't even have to dance

On our ride home from Maryland, we kept seeing crews treating the roads, but it wasn't until late Monday night that we thought to check the news (duh!) and saw that snow was in our forecast. Since I'm no longer forced to use my "payed time off" for snow days, I was super excited at the prospect of a snow day! It was kind of sacrilegious, but we didn't bother to put our pajamas on inside out or do a snow dance, yet we still woke up this view from our front porch on Tuesday morning:



Like the awesome employee that I am, I tried to venture to work, but after fish-tailing a few miles from home I decided to turn around. I wasn't the only one, there were over 600 closings listed on our local newschannel's website, all for only 3" of snow! The schools in the county are closed today (Wednesday) also, as some backroads are still pretty slick and North Carolina just doesn't have the equipment to keep up. A point that amuses Kevin & I is that a ton of our neighbors move their cars to the end of their driveways when it snows. I guess I'd understand if their driveway was steep so they might not be able to get out if it was icy, but some people do it for flat driveways. If you have trouble getting out of a flat driveway, I don't think you should be going anywhere! I guess it's a North Carolina thing.

Squirt didn't seem to mind the snow, but also wasn't over-the-top enthusiastic. She enjoyed eating it and running around in it, but wasn't super excited about squatting in it. I can't say I blame her. Here are a few more pictures of our winter wonderland:

An extra bonus for the day was that we could be at home snuggled up to watch this:
By the way, if anyone knows where I can buy this hat, let me know. I think it would be an awesome accessory for when I attend my kids' school functions. They will be so proud that I am stylish.

Christmas, Part 2!

Since we haven't secured financing on a chopper or figured out how to fix our teleportation chamber, we had to do a belated Christmas celebration with Kevin's family this weekend. Although we missed them during the actual holidays, it worked out quite nicely since it allowed us to attend Nirit's birthday party as well as an event put on by Kevin's cousin, Jen. Because of the events, we saw nearly all of the family, which was great!
Saturday morning was "Christmas", which was delightfully different from previous years since it now includes 9 month old Andrew. It was fun to see all his new toys and how amused he was with the boxes & wrapping paper. A great moment was when he was chewing on the end of the cardboard from a wrapping paper roll, and Squirt came along and stole it from him. How rude! Here are a few pics:

Nirit & Andrew get the party started:

Kevin & I got some designer duds, but Squirt wasn't left out. Here she is modeling her new warm coat, which lasted about 15 seconds. I think with a few more tries she will get used to it!


The boys hanging out:

I think Squirt and Andrew were equally fascinated with each other:

This one just made me laugh. It's a toy gumball machine that is laying down, Andrew thought it tasted yummy :)


Looking cute:


On Sunday, we traveled to JMU to attend a dinner that served as a Senior project for Jen's hospitality management major. It was a 5-course meal with an Oscar theme serving about 180+ people, complete with wonderful decorations & entertainment. Jen was in charge of organizing & preparing all the food, which included a lamb & couscous appetizer, a salad with hearts of romaine, palm, and artichoke, pork with bourbon sweet potatoes & sweet peas, a yummy mocktail, strawberry shortcake, and chocolate-dipped blondies. We were in awe of all the work she and her group did at putting the event together, and were so happy to be able to attend! I've stolen some pictures from her Facebook since mine kind stunk.

Excited to walk the red carpet:

Posing with Oscar. He was a hottie, I couldn't keep help but touch his biceps. Kevin didn't seem to mind.


The lamb & couscous appetizer:

Most of the group, missing Kevin's parents and uncle Mike. We got to spend most the weekend with his family from New York and enjoyed having dinner with (bourbon experts) Laura & her fiance John who traveled from Kentucky.

We had a great weekend!

All the cool kids pee their pants

During my interview for my new job, I was asked if I had any limitations that would prevent me performing my job duties which would include trekking through rough terrain and lifting items that weigh up to 40 lbs. Seeing as how I was training for a 1/2 marathon, and had worked at the gym in college (thus, knew what 40 lbs felt like), I said "Of course not!". Little did they know that they left out an important physical consideration, and my limitations were about to be stretched like they never had before. My deficiency can be summarized in two words. Peanut Bladder. Every day, I average about 3-4 hours in the car driven by my male coworkers, whose kidneys must be wired in superior way. Since we are usually caravaning from one location to another with a water system operator, there's rarely an opportunity to stop along the way without feeling like I'm making a fuss, so I just suck it up until we get back to the office. So we go from well site to well site and the FIRST thing that we do when we get there is turn on the water, full blast. Usually this makes me cross my legs and squeeze out a tear (.1 oz less to go in my bladder, victory!). It doesn't seem to matter what I have to drink that morning, I end up with spending half my mental energy telling myself "HOLD ON!"

I confessed my peanut bladder situation to a coworker this morning, and he told me that I could always go in the woods and it's "not THAT hard for women" and "What's REALLY hard is pooping in the woods". I didn't ask him to detail his qualifications in deciding the degrees of difficulty for these events, because I really didn't want to hear any tips on how to grunt one out in the woods. Regardless, I'm just going to assume he would rather stop so I can enjoy the luxury of a gas station potty rather than ride with me while I smell like my own piss since (for me) it's just not as easy as he makes it out to be.

So there ya go, people. Probably not the "cleanest" blogging subject ever, but I didn't promise to tackle important topics here, just talking about things going on in our glamorous lives.

New Beginnings

The new year marked the start of my new job with the state. My official first day was New Years Day, which I had off, so I'd say that was quite a nice beginning :) I'm within the same division, but am at a different building w/ different coworkers. I'll be doing evaluations of new and existing water supply systems to determine whether they are complying with regulations and documenting other changes. This means a work schedule which is about 50% office and 50% field work. It's pretty rare to find a non-desk job these days, so I'm pretty excited at the opportunity to stretch my legs and see some sunshine while I expand my skills.

Kevin embarked on another house project this week, setting his sights on our kitchen which I have always described as "country bumpkin". After two coats of primer & some spackle we put on the first coat of color today..a green that is kind of a cross between a sage and olive-y color. By "we" I mean Kevin did the painting that requires fine motor skills (edges), and I did the portions that you might trust with a highly-coordinated monkey (the middle). I think Kevin appreciated my company, but as usual, I won't be making the MVP list for our house projects. Don't worry, I bring a different skill set to our relationship, specifically my ability to smell cat pee on the carpet and the ability get the dog to pee quickly on cold/rainy days. So basically, I have a solid base of skills when it comes to pet urination.

In other news, I can now see things! For about 4 years, I have become increasingly dependent on glasses while I drive. Since my new job will put me in and out of a different cars and dragging a bunch of supplies with me, I decided to get contacts so I would have one less thing to keep track of during my travels. I can't believe I waited so long! I can see scores on television! And the time on the DVR! And Kevin picking his nose!!! OK, maybe not the last thing, but really I can't believe how clear things are and feel like I had been missing out before. At this point, it is still a pretty big production to get them in, but I'm thinking this is the start of something wonderful.

More Christmas Fun

Posing with the mosquito zapper Christopher got us. Hopefully it will let us enjoy our deck during the summer :)


Mom & Dad:


Christopher looks on as Squirt begins joyfully shredding the paper:


Further destruction:


Hobbes poses with the University of Maryland flag/windsock that my parents got us, he's a true fan.

Family picture in front of the Christmas tree. Several attempts were made to get the cats included, but they were having none of it!

We did manage to snap one with all of us in a different spot, though :)