Andrea & Tyler Visit the ATL

This past weekend has been pretty awesome. Andrea and Tyler flew in from Newport News for a long weekend visit. They were welcomed to Georgia with a pretty long wait for their bags and then got to see the lovely pick up area outside. My favorite part had to be right after they were loaded in the car (literally just shut the door), a car pulled up to my side and parked blocking us in. Lovely. People are so considerate of others.

We got back to the house for some delicious dinner and watched Meet Bill . I got to say, I thought it would be a better movie. Oh well. We hung out and ate the remaining cookies I baked earlier that week.

On Saturday we did the tourist thing. We thought getting downtown was going to be awful with the highway being shut down, but we didn't have any trouble getting in or out. Neat. We were surprised to find that Clemson and Alabama were having some sort of all day pre-party for their opening game. A see of orange and maroon everywhere. Almost looked like a VT infestation.

We made our way over to the CNN center for the tour there. That was actually pretty cool and our tour guide was pretty nice too. After the tour was over, we went to the World of Coke. It was my fourth visit and the most crowded visit for me. But it was still pretty cool and the Beverly still tastes like nastiness rotting in your mouth. Just in case you were wondering.

That night they took me out for dinner to La Paz for my birthday. I have to thank the Pennocks for introducing us to that place. It's probably one of my favorite restaurants in the area.

Sunday we hung around, had a cookout, and I was beaten pretty badly in Scrabble. I have accepted this as the norm. However, I did learn a few new words. Knute is probably my favorite. Just in case you are writing poetry and need a word to rhyme with flute. Cqit I think was the other one.

Today we dropped them back to the airport, but first we hit up Chick Fil A for their free chicken strips. I had on my new UVA hat, Rob and on a UVA shirt, Tyler wore his William and Mary shirt, while Andrea sported her new RIT socks. The lady behind the counter admitted she really didn't know schools. I was also wearing my Breckenridge shirt and she thought that was the school I was sporting. Whatever, we got free chicken. Yum!

All I can say is I need more weekends like that. Hanging with friends I don't get to see very often and just having fun. :) What a way to start my birthday week!

Labeling Posts

I have just discovered how this wonderful feature can help me blog better. 151 posts in, this being 152, I am finally getting it. Better late than never right?

I was thinking the other day, I wonder how many blogs I have written about topic A, if only there was a way to know. Turns out there is and I am going back now and trying to apply labels to posts to help me figure that out. The crappy part is that it takes a while to do it all, but once it's done, it will be nice to have.

So instead of writing about my next blog topic, I am farting around with labels. It's the dangerous sort of activity I could get caught up in doing for a while. I promise to blog with a better entry next time. :) Sometimes I dislike my learning curve....

My Summer Reading

Over the summer, I was not exactly diligent about updating my reading list on the side bar. I did pretty well, then faltered a bit. I thought I would fill you in though on my recent reads. You can pretend to care. :)

The last one that was accurately recorded in the side bar was Men in Arms by Terry Pratchett. That was better than Guards! Guards! which came before it. So that was pleasant. It was like murder mystery meets bizzaro Disc World. I appreciated the odd twist in the book series.

The book that followed next is an annual read, but still my favorite and inspired my blog name, Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Every time I read it I just fall in love with it all over again.

Then I decided to get back to the next book in The Cat Who series, The Cat Who Played the Brahms. It was a refreshing book because the setting of it was not in the main characters normal town so the books mood was changed. These books are quick enough that I can read them within a week usually, but good entertainment value. :)

Then I decided to go a different route and try an author I had never heard of. Hooray libraries! This book is by Joanne Fluke and it's called Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. I really enjoyed it. It was one of those books I kept wanting to pick up and read more of and even when I am too tired to read, don't have the sense to stop. :) There are quite a few cookie recipes included in his book too. She has written a series of dessert named novels too. I am hoping I can find the next one at the library.

And I have been reading bits and parts of the two wedding book resources I have managed to accumulate from a purchase and a friend. Here's hoping I will have learned valuable information when I am done. :P

Ok, now onto some future ones! We stopped in Borders in Rochester quickly before heading to the airport to see if there was anything worth picking up for the couple of hours we had to entertain ourselves. There was a book that drew my attention, I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley. It's a collection of essays, but the cover seemed to promise wit and humor among them. I am hoping to find it at the library as well. I am starting to shift from "why not buy it" to "see if it's at the library first" mode. Saving me some serious $$, which is good because I have a better place to put it now. :)

Drum Roll Please.....

Over the past few months, Rob and I have been struggling trying to find a location that we would both like to get married. There was an initial idea that had come to mind, but we had set it aside thinking, no, it will be closer to home. We bounced around some more ideas and came up with Northern VA, the Poconos, most major cities in Central New York, and even in Jamaica as a wild card. We just weren't finding "the place".

I think now it was because we were trying to make everyone else happy but ourselves and that's when, after most friends and family repeated to us, "It's YOUR wedding", we finally took a look at our initial location and seriously thought about it. Turns out, that's our place. It's where both of us have very happy memories together and where Rob got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. We are going to be married in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and we couldn't be more excited about it!


The actual event itself is a ways off yet (looking at April 2010), but it almost needs to be with everything we have going on. Rob is in school for another year and then we are going to be moving (better be!), and before you know it the holidays are upon us and then into the spring. But since Rob and I are crafty people, we want to do a lot of stuff ourselves and this will allow for that to happen as well. While a longer engagement isn't something we wanted initially, it's showing positive points for us now. :)

Marie and Adam Get Married

Marie and Adam were married last Saturday, August 9th, in my home area of Syracuse, NY. This worked out well for me since I was able to combine attending a friends wedding with a trip home to see my own family. Thank you Marie and Adam!

The wedding was really nice and was followed by a wonderful reception at Borio's on Oneida Lake. It provided a pretty backdrop to the evening.

Since Marie is Rob's friend from college, a lot of his friends were in attendance. We had a pretty fabulous time hanging out with them all Friday night and Saturday between the end of the ceremony at 3pm and the start of the reception at 6pm.

Since Syracuse is the closest thing to my home stomping ground, I was in charge of entertainment on Friday evening and made the executive decision of going to Armory Square to the Empire Brewing Company for dinner. The food was pretty tasty and the micro brews weren't bad either. We meet up in Ben's hotel room later to party and drink beer while watching to opening ceremony of the Olympics. There are a lot of freaken countries that go to the Olympics. And a lot of those I have never heard of. I am pretty sure they were made up. Also, I thought the last torch carrier was going to die when his harness shifted. Turns out, it was all part of the act.

Saturday we killed time pre-gaming with the gang in Ben's room again. He's the party master. :) Then we made our way on over to the reception for a great night of poking fun at each other, dancing, and more drinks. It was just great to hang with everyone again.

Below are some priceless moments that I am very glad I had my camera out for. Got to love your friends.

Amanda Pennock is explaining to Marie what Ben has been up to over the last 30 minutes.

This is where Marie finds out that Ben has been stealing her center piece and has not been very conspicuous about placing all the stones in his shirt pocket.

Let's celebrate with a sugar shot!!

Cleaning Machines

We are moving up in the world, we have purchased large appliances!!! Our new place came without a washer and dryer, but had room for full size ones to go in. The apartment complex offered to rent them to us for $35 a month, which doesn't sound like a lot, but over 12 months, that adds up. It adds up to $420 in fact, which is enough to purchase a half way decent dryer. So we went and bought our own.

Choosing them was a little tricky as I know virtually nothing about washers and dryers as far as what sets them apart. I know they clean clothes and I also know I do not need to spend $2000 for my clothes to be super, spotless, brand new, fabulous, wonderful. If I had all the money in the world, why not?

So where to turn? I went to consumer reports and just decided to see what they said. I figure they beat up enough of plenty of models to tell me what to stay away from and what to look for. So we purchased their "best buy" in washers and a dryer that rated well too. We had some hiccups (which I won't detail here) with the washer initially, but it's a wonderful piece of machinery now. It even smells nice!!

Let's just say after 3 weeks without a washer and dryer, I couldn't have been happier with our deliveries. It took an additional week to get the dryer, but with a front loader taking out 90% of the water and some drying racks, we still managed clean clothes before we had any real incidents.

If I told my 17 year old self that someday appliances will make you happy, I think I would have replied, "Are you on drugs?", but now I know, and knowing is half the battle. G.I. JOE!

Juan Visits Hotlanta

When I was working in DC, they were trying to set up a buddy system for new hires that were going to be transferring to the area with people that were already at site. Since I am an over achiever, I jumped at this and said, "I'll do it!".

I got the name and email address of my buddy and proceeded to write a long and detailed email to a Mr. Juan Figgers. I talked about places he may want to consider and pluses and minuses of being in each area, some of the things that go on in DC he may want to look into, grad school sites, and whatever else popped into my head. Then I heard nothing back from him.

Months later I heard we were getting a new team member and that they would be working directly with me. How exciting! Until I found out it was the jerk I emailed who didn't have the common decency to write a one liner email back saying thanks. So I was holding a grudge from the beginning.

A few weeks later while we were working on mids, Juan kept dozing off and was having a hard time staying awake. Some people were giving him crap for it and he was looking for a sympathetic ear when I told him, "Oh you are already on my list". "What did I do?!" He was lost. I let him sit there for a minute or two and then said, "Remember that email you got a few months ago from someone who took the time to tell you all about the area?" "That was you!! Oh man, I'm sorry!"

From that point forward we were cool, but it was a questionable start. He and I spent many 12 hour shifts next to one another and saw each other at all hours of the day. He knows that I don't function at 5:45am, ordering Chipotle for 5 nights in a row annoys me, and that I love Rob and my kitties. He even helped me move a few times, but hey, hasn't everyone?

So I was excited to hear that Juan was going to be in town this weekend. We decided to meet up for lunch over at Perimeter Mall this afternoon. We had a good chat and caught up on jobs and what's been going on with each other lately. I had a great time visiting with him. Sometimes I wish those visits were closer together, but I take what I can get. :)