Maybe this is why I'm afraid of bugs

I just got this error message while at work:



Gotta love pessimistic developers!

I'm still alive - FYI

I'm still alive.

I just haven't had the time/energy/attention span/inspiration to blog in awhile.

I should be able to come back up for air after February 8th. Drivers for that include: work, church, reading list, sleeping, etc.

Peace out.

A Mighty Wind

Also known as, we lost another tree today.

Yes, I know. The odds of us losing 2 trees to wind within a year are pretty low. Well, we're over-achievers here, so we just like to keep setting the bar high.

Here's a before glimpse of what our front landscaping used to look like:



Notice, if you will, the tall, skinny tree off the the left of the photo (helpful labels added by yours truly). Pretty. Elegant. And infested with spider mites.

By the time we knew what was wrong with it, the tree was pretty far gone. And apparently the only way to fix that problem was to douse the tree with a vigorous spray of water and soap every so often.

Since we didn't have a 40 foot ladder, this was a bit out of our league.

So we just decided to do the humane thing and let it die of natural causes at its own pace.

Last week, it was a bit windy...and I honestly thought that we'd lose the tree soon. So just about 2 days ago, we talked about calling someone to come and get it before it fell and potentially caused damage.

But we were a bit too late....

After a windy morning, we looked out the front door and saw this:



Here are some shots of the aftermath:













We had to use a circular saw, 3 extension cords, a spade, and a hand saw to cut the tree into movable pieces. Yay for manual labor!!

Just thought I'd mention...

Yet another local business that you might be interested in: Palmer Concierge

Here's a blurb from the founder:

We endeavor to give back to the community by helping busy people shrink down their t0-do lists, giving them more time to focus on the important things. Palmer Concierge can help you by shopping for groceries or gifts, organizing your office or home, taking your pet to the groomer's, wrapping gifts, making your retail returns, and bringing you coffee, lunch, or dinner. Some of our other services include event planning, photography, making your scrapbooks, and wardrobe consulting.

When you use Palmer Concierge, we commit to returning 10% of our profits to organizations that assist our fellow Austinites in need. By helping you, we are helping others, too.

And a view of their pretty flier...



I don't know about you, but this is especially timely given the holiday season. Shopping, gift wrapping, various errands...anyhow, just thought you'd want to be in on the latest scoop!

My first book

For a few Christmas presents this year, I decided to create a book on Blurb that showed some of our favorite places from our trip last year to Israel.

And you can check it out as well, if you're interested:

Book Preview

Enjoy!!

The Christmassing...and attack of the Scotties

Christmassing is in full swing at the Ramas. I have proof. And two furry black helpers.

Filling small amounts of time with randomness

Given that there was such a flurry of interest regarding the various aspects of redecoration that have occurred at our abode, I shall soon be posting the newly updated "Christmassing" of our house.

I've noticed something about myself: I tend to fill small amounts of time with tasks that I had no notion of attempting until just the last moment.

Case in point: random Christmas decorations were pulled out of the storage shed yesterday afternoon and were complete within about 90 minutes.

Done.




P.S. I just invented the word "Christmassing". You are now free to use it to your heart's delight. Enjoy!

Redecoration results

After a little shoving around of heavy things in our living room, we arrived with this:












I have a vision for what I want to do about the wall above the sofa...hoping to work on that this weekend.

I'm also wanting to add seating, since we don't have much now. Also hoping to work on that this weekend...

Cool new site...

Ok. Before you read the rest of this post, you must promise me NOT to read too much into this. I'm posting this, not out of any personal necessity, but rather to help spread the word about a neat site a friend of ours just launched.

Ready?


Are you sure?






We have a deal, right?








Ok. It's about babies.

BabysList.com is a new site that a friend of ours launched due to their own personal quest for all things baby. Here's an excerpt from Jeff's email:

I'm happy to announce the beta launch of another Austin Startup Lab company called BabysList.com. BabysList is a niche site that will serve the Austin and surrounding communities by assisting parents that want to sell, swap and search for all things baby, locally. It's my hope that this site will develop into a marketplace for parents to help others in their community that don't have the means to buy "new" baby products as well as provide a platform for letting stay at home moms and dads make additional income without the cost of shipping charges and risk of fraud.

BabysList was "born" (sorry I had to :) ) when Jen and I were shopping for Elise before she arrived. I was amazed at how much stuff we needed and what it all cost. Given the life cycle for most baby items is measured in months, I saw them as barely used, or in some cases not even used at all before the child grew out of that product. I set out to create a place where parents could market their used baby items to a very specific, local audience as well as find great bargains on all sorts of things for their baby.

This holiday season is shaping up to be a hard time for many people, so if you have any items that you were waiting for your next garage sale or were going to donate, I would ask you to consider posting them on BabysList so that local parents needing a little help with finances this holiday season have an alternative to buying "new". It's good for everyone when we all lend a helping hand.

Happy shopping!

Redecorating

I am in the mood to redecorate. And luckily, I've been able to convince Amar to help.

So tonight, we'll be completely reversing the arrangement of items in our living room. Who knows, maybe it'll work out? Maybe it won't? Our living room has perplexed me since we moved in. It's long and narrow, and we have a rather spacious couch...so even though I'd love to introduce additional seating, it has been a challenge to figure out exactly how to accomplish that.

So we're just going to move stuff around a bit to see how we like it.

Also, I made a new masthead this morning. I hope you like it!

Happy December!!

A few updates

• My boss gave me the day off, even though I didn't ask for it. A great way to start the holiday weekend, if you ask me.
• I made some kickin garlic & Parmesan mashed potatoes for our dinner group the other night. I love trying new recipes, especially when everyone loves the dish!
• In the last 4 business days, 2 managers in my group resigned. Change, anyone?
• On that note, Monday will mark me getting my 4th manager in 14 months. Given my recent track record, I preliminarily predict that she will resign in 4-6 months. (Kidding...hopefully!)
• I'm working on a book on Blurb as a Christmas gift for a few family members, and I'm really enjoying it. I'll post a link once it's fully baked.
• Medvedev is freaking me out a bit. Stay tuned.
• I'm reading a new book called Epicenter, and really loving it. If you're at all interested in the Middle East, end times, and specifically the future of Israel, you should check it out.

Anyhow, happy Thanksgiving to you all! Enjoy the long weekend!

A river runs through it

Or at least it did last night for a bit.

It seems that our neck of the woods is experiencing a little plumbing trouble. A few weeks back, Amar and I called the City after seeing water gushing up from the pavement around the corner. It was literally coming from a crack in some one's driveway.

A few hours after our call, the City crews showed up and seemed to fix the problem after some minor repairs.

Then a few days later, they were back at that same spot, ripping up the bike lane on that side of the street. It seemed the initial repair was a bit lacking.

Fast-forward to last night. As we walked to the car on our way out to get some food, Amar asked why there was water in the street. Upon further investigation, right around the corner (this time a bit closer to our house) it seemed that water was again gushing up from the ground. We called the City again and reported the issue.

Two hours later, when we returned home, water was still everywhere and there were no repair crews in sight. Amar called the City again, and they said they would have someone out there in "a few hours"...brilliant. This was around 9PM.

At midnight, we were awakened by loud thud, and another one, and another one. This went on, intermittently for about an hour. The repair crew had finally made it out to the newly formed spring.

Then this morning while walking the dogs, I wanted to survey the damage. Surely they had to have done something last night, right? Well, the whole block seemed to have traces of silt and sand that had been washed out of the construction site. And upon arriving at the scene of the crime, we saw where it came from:

A huge hole, about 15 feet long, 4 feet wide and deep enough for one guy to just barely stick his head out above ground. Half the road was closed.


(Not the actual picture of the street, but also not too far of an exaggeration...)

I mean, are we good citizens or what? We're practically on a first name basis with the 3-1-1 operator at this point.

Sometimes I surprise myself

Last night, on the way home, I started thinking about dinner. Now, this is highly unusual for me. I usually don't ever think about dinner, or if I do, it's about 5 minutes after both Amar and I get hungry.

For some reason though, yesterday was different.

I knew that I had some beef stir-fry strips in the freezer. I had bought them quite a while ago, optimistically thinking at the time that it would be fun to try that...

And I also knew that I had frozen broccoli florets as well as some left over rice.

And in a moment of sheer inspiration and sense of impending victory, I decided that I would make beef and broccoli "stir-fry"*.

Adding to the level of complexity for the evening was the following:

• Amar had a meeting to go to at 6PM. I made the decision to cook at 4:45 PM. Past cooking endeavours such as this one had dragged on for an hour or so, thus I knew I had to step it up...
• I had no recipe that I could reference, so I had to find one by digging through a few cookbooks.
• I have never made beef and broccoli, much less anything resembling "stir-fry" before.
• After locating a recipe, I realized that I didn't have any ginger. Gasp!

In the past, this would have paralyzed me. I'm a perfectionist, and I don't like to try things that I know I can't win. The above constraints would have just sent me packing.

But last night was different.

Unencumbered by self-doubt or the fear of failure, I pressed on.

I started cooking additional rice, since I didn't have enough left-over.
I started mixing the stir-fry ingredients for the sauce.
I started chopping vegetables (onions, garlic, etc.).
I started prepping everything else.

And without stressing, without snapping at Amar, without setting anything ablaze, it happened**:




And we both actually liked it.


*Note: we don't necessarily have a wok, so I made due with what we did have: Pots and pans. I know, genius.

**Note: Not an actual picture of our meal, but pretty darn close.

White House hopes...

When I took our dogs out this morning, they seemed a bit distracted. They just couldn't quite concentrate, and it wasn't because of the squirrels.

Nope.

It seems they are quite concerned as to the future of the White House: it's four-legged inhabitants, to be specific.

You see, the White House has been occupied for the past several years by two very distinguished, very proud little Scotties: Barney and Miss Beazley.

And as you might know, the Obamas will bring a new dog into the house after the Scotties move on.

While our girls will be quite sad to see such wonderful dogs move out, they are increasingly hopeful that yet another Scottie will be chosen to roam the Rose Garden. Before I left the house today, they provided me with a list to share, noting the benefits of adding a Scottie to the Obama family:

1. Scotties are quite opinionated and tenacious, thus making them valuable advisers to any policy issue that might arise on the Hill.
2. Scotties will keep the White House free of any potential rodent, specifically squirrels, which can be quite pesky. No worries of any mice on the premises when a Scottie is on the lookout.
3. Scotties will dance on command, and can be very adept at breaking any awkward silences that might occur when greeting foreign dignitaries. If any new Scottie needs training, Bella has offered to train them, as she happens to really love to dance. Her favorite song, of late, is "I like to move it, move it" as well as that Indian song at the beginning of "Inside Man".
4. Scotties can go from a day to evening look in mere minutes, requiring very little grooming.
5. Scotties like rope toys and peanut butter. (I'm not sure how this fits in with the whole "White House" theme, but I think Bella and Zoey just wanted to remind me...)

That was the extent of their list from this morning, but I'm sure it's so short simply because they got distracted and thought that they heard a squirrel.

So Obamas, please take these wise words into account when choosing your new pet.

Barney and Miss Beazley, I think Bella and Zoey speak for all Central Texas Scotties when they say that you will be missed.

Until next time...B & Z

Not to bug you too much, but...

Here's another review of I.O.U.S.A. on another blog I read. Good stuff:

Slide:ology review

Change

More embarassing pictures...

I'm beginning to think that about 80% of the pictures of me on the Internet are pretty embarrassing. Not that I mind....but I just wanted to put a number on it.

Anyhow, just to pile on a bit, here are some pictures of my Small Group Bible Study at a Halloween party last week. We've gotten rave reviews on the costumes, so no pressure, but I think you're going to enjoy them as well.

Now, I who doesn't love a good red? And I must say, that being red had it's perks for the photo shoot. I mean, you can't deny that it's a primary color, and is a critical part of so many other colors and color combos. I don't want to assume anything, but the secondary colors were looking at little envious.... ;)



The crayons, in all their glory.




Arrogant primary colors.




Red and blue make purple!




Orange was a little embarrassed by his parents. I mean, who wouldn't be? His dad was wearing a skirt!




The color wheel - wheeee!!!




I'm red. He's brown. Got a problem with that?




Girl colors - unite!

Movie Reviews

Within the past week, I've seen 2 movies, both of which I would recommend to you if you have $10 burning a hole in your pocket (or $20 if you want to see both, and spring for some popcorn).

I.O.U.S.A.



Yes, it's a movie about the national debt. And I can totally understand how you would just assume that this would be a real snoozer. But it was really good. It's hard to make a good movie about a global financial crisis, but these guys did it. I actually want to get it for people for Christmas....

You need to watch this. Even if you have no clue about the national debt, or don't care, this is an issue that requires our attention. It was really eye-opening, so if you do go see it, let me know! We can discuss :)


Body of Lies



Now, I'll be totally honest. It's never hard for me to watch Leonardo DiCaprio. However, this was not originally on my "must see" list until it became the movie chosen for our off-site at work. It's a spy movie set in the Middle East, and it was pretty entertaining. One of those that made me think about the plot for the rest of the day, trying to figure out who told who what and when and where they were and how on earth did this happen? Oy.

Anyhow, if you like action movies, or movies with plots about international spies who also happen to be fairly attractive (wink!), then you should go see this. I will warn you, there are a few scenes that I couldn't watch (violence-wise), but the rest of it was good.

One question: why do all spy movies have the same font? You know what I'm talking about. It's that all caps, computery-looking text that you can just imagine someone using to type in the coordinates of some safe house in the desert. Just something I noticed...

Enjoy!

How did we get here?

Here's another little gem about our crazy financial times. Now, I don't really care if you're pro- or anti-bailout, it's nice to have a summary of how we got here, and just how much cash has been shelled out.

And the comic is just for fun, because apparently I enjoy making fun of the government (wink!).





Image courtesy of the Consumerist

A long week...

I miss you, coffee.