Archive for November, 2006

I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving holiday. Andy and I went down to Austin to spend turkey day with his family (mom, dad, Griffin, grandparents, and the Johnsons). We had such a relaxing time! We talked, played with the puppies, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, we played the never ending game of Uno, and we ate so much turkey! The four day weekend was definately needed.

We drove back to Keller on Saturday and decorated the house for the next big holiday…Christmas!! We put up the tree, hung lights on the trim of the house, gold bows on the lights, and we got a beautiful green and gold wreath for the front door. I wanted a lot more stuff to make everything look more festive, but gee whiz! Christmas stuff sure is expensive! So, I’ve vowed to be the first in line at Target’s day after Christmas sale to buy everything I want for next year. I’ll post both Christmas house pictures and thanksgiving pictures at a later time.

Today was a miserably cold day…for Texas. Temperatures were under freezing for the whole day!! Okay, it was cold, but it was far from Iowa/Kansas cold. You know it’s too cold when you go outside and your snot freezes. However, I fully expected (along with everyone else in the university) for school to close for today. Alas, when I got up, there was no posting on the school website that would allow me to go back to bed. So, I grudgingly put on my layers of winter clothing and slid off to work.

Once at work, I discovered I was one of the first people in the building. Slowly, people started trickling in. They stood around the hallways musing amongst themselves about why the president of the university hadn’t closed the school. There were complaints, minute by minute updates on what the weather was doing, and I heard several people blame that darn yankee (our president went to school in Kansas City, Michigan, and Boston). I don’t think I have ever in my life actually heard the term yankee used in everyday conversation! Of course the people in our lab actually had work to do, so we half paid attention to our work while waiting for information about school closings. Noon rolled around, nothing from the president’s office, but Andy got to go home for the afternoon. How is it that a business sent people home so they could get there safely, and the university didn’t close?

Sigh…thankfully, the long awaited e-mail finally came, saying we could go home at 3 p.m. I was never really worried about the weather. It wasn’t actually all that cold or that icy. I was much more worried about the crazy drivers that slam on their brakes once they realize that they are on a bridge, and their memory pulls out the fact that bridges freeze first. The drivers that back up traffic because they don’t feel comfortable driving faster than 20 miles an hour on the highway. The drivers that get impatient waiting in line and speed on the shoulders where all the ice patches are. As you can see, I got home safely and have been spending some happy-in front of the fire-time with Andy and Jabber. Yay for ice and snow!

Very quickly, Andy and I have discovered that Jabber’s name (Jabberwocky) has the word “walk” in it. This leads to a little bit of confusion as we are trying to teach Jabby when we’re going for a walk. We’ve been trying to figure out what else we can call a “walk”, stroll? jog? jaunt? We even thought about changing her name to disclude the “wocky” part. Jibber Jabber? Sadly, we love the name Jabberwocky too much. Then as I was watching a rerun of my favorite show, Gilmore Girls, it came to me. Two times a day, we will be taking our puppy for a passeggiata! So far she has yet to respond to it, but give me time, our smart puppy will be multi-lingual if I have any say in the matter. Oh, side note…the vet at the shelter told us Jabby is 4 months old, but the vet we took her to for her shots said there’s absolutely no way Jabby can be that young. She’s closer to a year – a year and a half. Doesn’t really matter, we love her either way.

We had a terrific weekend. Andy and I finished up some christmas shopping (yup, we’re just about done…YAY!), cleaned the house, did some yard work, and went to see Stranger than Fiction. It was a good movie, but not the laugh out loud kind of material than one might expect from Will Ferrell. I do love Emma Thompson though. It kind of reminds me of the Truman Show. It’s a slightly dark kind of humour. I’m afraid a lot of people in the theatre didn’t get the subtleties. Andy, on the other hand, guffawed extremely loudly by his lonesome in the silent theatre. ^-^

This week is a shortened work week, another reason to love Thanksgiving. The three of us will be going back to Georgetown to spend the big day with Andy’s family. I’m excited and it promises to be a lot of fun. Not to mention, any time I get to spend not working…is wonderful time. Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Back when I was a young gal, my parents told me what many children have heard before me…”You cannot have a dog while you’re living under our roof!” Guess what! Now that I’m living under my own roof, it’s puppy time! That’s right, Andy and I adopted a sweet little puppy girl from the Keller Animal Control Center. (Did…did you hear that? I think that was the sound of my parents groaning from 522 miles away)

She’s 3-4 months old, an australian kelpie mix, completely potty trained, is mostly crate trained doesn’t smell particularly dog-like, doesn’t jump on people, follows instructions fairly well for a puppy, has all her shots, has been spayed, and is just all over a sweet dog. We have named her Jabberwocky Trommer. Yes, I know people all the world round are rolling their eyes. Andy and I have a tradition of finding slightly different names (Sir Widget, Baron Schnitzel von Hamsterviel, Ink Blot the Dark Avenger…etc) Jabberwocky, for those of you that think it sounds familiar, is from the Lewis Carrol poem in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Click here to read the whole thing. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the best nonsense poems ever. How many nonsense poems there are in existance, I’m not sure.

Jabby is very affectionate and loves to chill out with us. I took her for a long walk tonight (Brandon just got in town, so he and Andy are out doing boy things). She’s really curious, but her attention span is pretty short. Makes for rather tangling walks, but I’m sure she’ll get better as she gets older. We rescued her from the shelter after she was abandoned a month ago. I don’t know why anybody would leave behind such a happy dog. People suck sometimes, eh? But their loss is definately our gain. Want to see pictures? I know you do…so, click here. I am now one step closer to my dream of owning my very own duck farm! You didn’t read the Australian Kelpie article that I linked above now did you?

This past weekend, we flew to Kansas City to attend my friend Robyn’s wedding. We got into town on Friday night. Brandon gave us a ride back to my parents’ house, since they’re currently in China on vacation/business. Saturday was spent running amuck, trying to finish all our errands for the wedding. We had to stop by Pottery Barn for a wedding present, Target for a wedding card, DSW for…wedding shoes, yeah…wedding shoes. We were able to get back to the house just in time to get all dolled up for the wedding.

We spent the night oohing and ahhing over the gorgeous ceremony and fabulous reception. The ceremony was at a beautiful church (Southminster Presbyterian) with absolutely phenomenal architecture in the sanctuary. It was actually breathtaking! The reception was at the Mission Theatre. It was a cool idea. It was an old theatre that had tables set up around the stage. The food was incredible, the dancing was so much fun, and Robyn and Brad looked so happy. Yay for them!

After the reception, we met up with my friend Cryssie (who was in KC for an MK function), Dave, and Mary for a drink at McCoy’s. Everybody absolutely hated the raspberry beer, except me. Perhaps it’s because it no longer tasted like beer, and more like a fizzy raspberry clearly canadian that I liked it. Normally, I’d rather have a nice root beer than real beer. On Sunday, we took Cathy out for lunch at Noodles and Co, which I think is terrific. A place that has all sorts of noodles in every shape, flavour, and style. What’s not to love?? We then stopped by Beanology for some very fancy coffee. The lid actually had a cool slide-to-close lid! More companies need to invest in that lid!

Ashley was sweet enough to give us a ride to the airport. We sat back, enjoyed her brand new Ford Fusion, and watched the autumn leaves. That’s what I miss most about fall in Texas, nothing changes colors! In Kansas, there are all sorts of beautiful reds, oranges, and yellows. Come to think of it, I should probably should have taken some pictures of our neighborhood. Oops…you’ll just have to take my word for it. But if you want to see some photos from Robyn’s wedding, check these out! We were soon on our way, in the air, and zooming back towards Dallas. But there was a HUGE line of storms that we were passing above, the turbulence was horrible. I got rather sick, what with the bumping up and down, side to side. Blech, I hate the fact that I get motion sickness so easily. We’re now back home, doing laundry, and lounging around the house. It’s always so nice to be back home.

So, Andy is currently at a Dallas Stars hockey game tonight. His boss randomly invited him yesterday, and seeing as how Andy actually does enjoy hockey, he thought it would be fun. Alas, that leaves me here in an empty house with only Schnitzel for company. Actually, it’s not that bad. I had some dinner and since our bedframe and four drawer dresser came today, I assembled some furniture. Look at me being all handy! I was worried when the instructions recommended having two people on hand for assembly. However, with some inventive (and rather creative, if I do say so myself) uses with a stack of books and a few contorsionist moves, I figured everything out all on my own. Won’t Andy be surprised!

A quick summary of the weekend, let’s see…Jordan drove to visit us from his new hometown in Houston. It was great seeing him, and we really miss him. We’re still keeping our fingers crossed that he’ll be back in Dallas again someday. Anywho, Saturday consisted of lots and lots of video games for the boys (boys = Eric, Sean, Andy, and Jordan) and lots and lots of cooking/cleaning for me. I suppose that seems rather sterotypical, the man goofs around while the woman cooks and cleans. But since when have I ever been a fan of shooting people war games? Besides, I rather enjoy cooking, not so much the cleaning.

We had a bunch of my work friends over for dinner on Saturday (Ethan, David, Annie, Jason, Donald, Willie and Lorie). I had a sudden hankering to make pumpkin items. I do love this time of year, suddenly it’s okay to get all sorts of things in pumpkin flavors. Pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin lattes, pumpkin milkshakes, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin ziti (I made it last night, and it’s surprisingly tasty)…etc. The party went well, and we all switched over to the new time while rockin’ out on Guitar Hero. Andy has promised me that we can buy the 360 version when it comes out early next year.

Sunday morning, we went to IHOP with Jordan and Eric. The guys (guys = Jordan, Eric, and Ben) got us a very generous and thoughtful gift card to Best Buy for our wedding. Now we just have to figure out what the heck we should do with it! Please let me know if you have any suggestions, and do keep in mind that it’s a wedding present for Andy and I to SHARE (so no Mr. B, no televisions of gigantic dimensions). Andy and Jordan then went to see the Departed, which they proclaimed was a terrific movie but definately not my style. I, on the other hand, happily went shopping in their absence. Not a whole lot out there right now that I like and can afford. I did manage to find a nice pair of gray slacks from Ann Taylor Loft that I’m rather fond of.

Halloween was a quiet affair this year, being a Tuesday night and all. We decorated the house with a couple strands of orange and purple lights, two jack o’lanterns, and some spooky pumpkin lights we found at Target (I can’t find Andy’s memory card transfer thing, but when I do, I’ll post some photos). There were a few trick or treaters from around the neighborhood. Some were suspiciously too old for the event, but when have I ever turned away an ungrateful bratty pre-teen in an unidentifiable costume begging for candy that my hard earned money paid for? Hm…come to think of it, perhaps next year we should enforce an age limit. We had only 3 or 4 legitimate kids come by. A baby Piglet, a tiny princess, and a couple little baseball players. The rest were of the aforementioned bunch, coming around in what looked like…normal school clothing. Ah well, we know better for next year I suppose. Well, the week is almost over, thank goodness! We’ll be in Kansas this weekend for my friend Robyn’s wedding. Sigh…what a busy life we lead. ^-^