Tag: birthday

Categories
Travel Work

Winter solstice (hooray) and more important stuff

Winter solstice is finally upon us (the end is nigh for these lame early nights/short days) and since it’s been such a long time between posts, here’s an update of what’s been going on the past few months.

Kelly and I went to the coast again in late October with a group of friends (split the rent on an awesome house in Lincoln City near Roads End State Park that Aymie found, thanks again Aymie!) and had a blast, despite the stormy weather that weekend.

Around the same time, I turned 36. Hooray or whatever. The big news from this was that I finally took the plunge (with a big, helpful push from Kelly and the rest of my family) and got an iPhone (4). No more cheap, crappy Virgin Mobile ‘pay as you go’ phone for me. Now I can retire my iPod Touch and post inane crap to Twitter anytime I want without having to hunt for a WiFi signal. Yay for everyone!

In late November I had an awning installed on my back patio (pic here), which will be nice come spring when it’s rainy but warm-ish again. Kelly and I also painted the dining room and several other rooms in the house (keep reading).

Work has been extra hectic the past few months, which is one reason I haven’t written in a while. I’m off work for a few weeks though, for reasons that will become apparent shortly.

Last night was a lunar eclipse, which we couldn’t see due to the cloud cover and rain.

Today we got hardwoods installed in the dining room, and they look awesome (pic here). If you’re in the market, Floor Factors does excellent work.

Another big reason I’m finally writing after such a long gap, Kelly and I are expecting our first child (a boy!) to be born any moment. Due date is/was today! So far the little man has remained content in Kelly’s tummy and isn’t in a hurry to join us in the world. I can’t blame him to be honest. It’s probably very nice in the womb, all warm and squishy. However, Kelly (and I) are getting ready for him to come out and say hello.

Over the past few months we’ve got his room cleared out, painted and decorated, and got the crib and co-sleeper set up. Also, due to the extreme generosity of friends and family, we’ve received a load of clothes, diapers, toys, a rocker chair for Kelly to nurse with, two strollers and an infant car seat which we barely we squeezed into our Scion xA. We’re ready to go!

Any day now (hopefully before Christmas) he’ll decide he’s fully cooked. Otherwise we go in to start the induction process at midnight on December 26th.

I’ll be writing again soon. Stay tuned!

Categories
Beer Food Music Travel Work

OMG it’s 2010

OK, so, I gave up for the past 3 months. Guess I lost the love. It’s not that I don’t love the 3 or 4 of you who actually read my blog, but I just lost the love for spewing out nonsense for no particular reason. It affected my Twitter-ing too. I just felt no need for it. I could barely keep up with consuming everything coming my way (outside of my work-related duties), and just didn’t care to add the burden to myself or anyone else.

But I’m back, baby. (for now)

Here’s a recap since my last post (when I was happily relaxed on the Big Island).

At the end of October I had a birthday, and I turned 25 (again), and had the good fortune of having friends and family over to celebrate. I had a great time (I think, can’t quite remember since it was so long ago). Looking at the photographic evidence there was a lot of time spent bowling on the Wii, drinking beers, and eating fondu and other delicious treats that Kelly (and others) had made. Again, let me reiterate, I turned 25. Not 35. Nosirree. Nope.

Around mid-November, my company sent the Engineering team down to Napa Valley and San Francisco for a day/night to celebrate the latest release of our software. Had a fun time, despite the fact that I don’t have any love for wine. However, some awesome coworkers had my back, and picked up some cans of Guinness and Boddingtons for me to gulp while on the bus. Thanks guys!

Shortly after the trip to Napa, I got sick with what I can only assume to be the dreaded pigmanflu (given the fever, aches, etc). It wasn’t much fun.

Guinness is back on tap on the Kegerator (yay!).

Christmas time! Kelly and I got a nice tree this year from a daycare up the street from our house (proceeds go to help the daycare, so that makes it extra festive). Our evil cat Arthur Guinness took to climbing it repeatedly. Stupid cat. We went out to my folks place on Christmas day (as is tradition) and ate too much and opened gifts. A couple days later we went to my aunts and exchanged white elephant gifts and again ate a bit too much, and got to hang out with some of my cousins.

A couple days later I got sick again, this time with a more common cold (I blame this on Kelly, since she had it first). Sniffles, cough, bleh.

The other day, out of nowhere, it snowed a bit in PDX. And this one was unexpected and caught everyone off guard. It started around 2pm or so, and by 5pm, there was a little over 2 inches of snow in our neighborhood. Watching the news of the rush-hour traffic, the roads were a mess, especially since nobody was prepared for the conditions and loads of people got stuck trying to get in or out of town. People, including my brother, spent 8 hours or more trying to get from point A to B.

That same night, Kelly and I attended a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert in Southeast Portland (at the Aladdin Theater) which she had bought for me as a Christmas gift. We weren’t sure if we were going to bother going out or not up until an hour before the show, however I’m glad we braved the roads because it was a really fun show. We hadn’t seen them in about 5 years (since their hiatus), and they put on a really good show, putting some stylistic twists some of their old songs, and performing them all with all the fun that I expected from a SNZ show.

Tonight we celebrated New Years at our good friends T & S’s place (who fortunately live just over a mile away from us) which meant for the first time in many years we didn’t host the party. This was good primarily since both Kelly and I are still recovering from our illnesses. However we came home pretty quickly after midnight, and here I am.

Here’s to hoping that 2010 will be a better year all around than 2009.

And for some Way Back Machine-ing, here’s a quote from the Counting Crows song ‘A Long December‘ (watch the video for a younger Courteney Cox, back when she dated Adam Duritz in 1997):

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

Happy New Years all!

Categories
Beer General Music Work

May’s Mega Recap

Since I realize I’ve so blatantly disregarded the ‘ol blog pretty much all month, here’s a mega-recap of the month of May.

Most of the month has been spent working some very late nights. This is largely why I haven’t written in so long. Spent several nights designing and coding some prototypes until nearly 2 AM, trying to meet deadlines. It’s been a crazy busy work month.

I finally retired Guinness from my kegerator (which I’d been pouring since October). Got a half keg of Trumer Pils going at the moment. Decent beer for the hot weather that Portland has had for the past couple weeks.

Kelly had her birthday last weekend (happy birthday Kelly!!!) and we had a super small BBQ at our house to celebrate. Really low-key, but a lot of fun. I spent the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend working in the yard for 5 hours, the house for 2, and had the BBQ that afternoon. Woke up Sunday with what I thought was merely a mild hangover. Only it got worse throughout the day. Spent the rest of the weekend with a nasty cold/flu (which I dubbed PigManFlu). My Memorial Day was spent watching TV on the couch with a box of tissues. Hrmph!

Last night Kelly and I went to see this 80’s tribute band show at the Wonder Ballroom. Three bands; Black Celebration (Depeche Mode), The Love Vigilantes (New Order), and This Charming Band (The Smiths). It turned out better than I thought it would. All three bands were competent musicians, and did a fair job at emulating the character of the originals. The clear winner for me were The Love Vigilantes, who were, honestly, better than the real New Order live (who I’d seen only once but are historically not a good live band). Fun night.

Today was yardworkapolooza. I mowed, pruned, raked, trimmed, and generally cleaned up the place. Later, my parents and brother T (and his family) came over for another dinner to celebrate Kelly’s birthday (since they weren’t able to join us last weekend). While they were over (and with the aid of my dad’s truck and chainsaw) I finally pulled the stump of the tree T helped me trim down a few months back. The stump came out easily enough since the tree was so rotted, but it meant a lot more cutting, chopping, and stacking. The upside, however, is that I have loads of wood for the outdoor fireplace.

After the tree carnage (and finally ending a total of 8 hours of me working in the 80+ degree weather), we all ate the delicious dinner my mom had lovingly prepared for Kelly’s birthday. After everybody left the house I took a nice, long shower and planted myself in a chair on the front porch with beer to write this post. Hurrah!

And there you have it. I suspect I’m going to be a little sore tomorrow. 🙂