something delicious, P.E.

BABY!!

I'd like to announce the birth of my first nephew (by blood).  Noah Jay was born in Honolulu, Hawaii at 12:43 AM this morning (5:43AM Eastern Time), weighing in at a healthy 6 lbs, several ounces, and measuring 18" long, whatever that means.  Apparently he has a full head of fluffy black hair, but I haven't seen the pictures yet.   My sister-in-law, Jen, is doing as well as you would expect.  She is seriously one of of the bravest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.  And my not-so-little-anymore brother is now a proud father, which I'm still trying to understand (he used to eat dog food, people!).   

Noah is lucky to be a Pisces, and will share a birthday with Gilbert Gottfried,  Mario Andretti, and my aunt Terri.  He will excel at everything he attempts.

Other notable February 28 events that will now have to live in the shadow of mighty Noah's birth:

• 1900 - The Second Boer War:  The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.
• 1935 - Nylon is invented by Wallace Carothers.
• 1983- The final episode of M*A*S*H is broadcast in the USA, becoming the most watched television episode in history.
• 1993- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh.

Congratulations you guys!

 

Update:   
Picture!

what is my deal?

Today has not been my favorite day of the year.  I woke up cranky.  I yelled at Joe for puting the dog bones on the counter that is usually designated for food preparation.  I don't feel like doing anything.  My throat is scratchy and my nose is dripping.  I'm mad at Netflix because even though I mailed both movies in on Monday, I'm not going to get my next two movies in until tomorrow (Saturday).  That is bullshit.  To top it all off, I just found out my 10 year high school class reunion, something I've actually been looking forward to for the past, oh, 10 years, is on the same night as my brother's wedding and I'll be in Hawaii.

SO WHAT IS MY DEAL??  These are all bullshit reasons to be sad and angry.  Joe ALWAYS puts the dog bones on the counter to put peanut butter on them in the mornings for their kennel treats.  Hell, I put the bones on the counter too.  Netflix is always slow, I should know that by now.  And the reunion thing?  I'm going to be in fucking Hawaii!  What the hell do I have to complain about?  And yet, I'm complaining.  I'm sad.  I'm angry.  I'm feeling sorry for myself.  And honestly, all I want to do is lay on the couch and eat cheetos off of my belly all weekend.

argh...maybe I'll try going for a run.

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*Post-run update:

I'm better.  Five and a half miles on the "hilly route" later, I'm over myself.  While still a little bummed about having to miss the reunion, I no longer think that my classmates found out about my vacation and purposely planned the event for when I wouldn't be able to make it.  So no couch, no bellies, and no cheetos.

Ass crack

To Whoever Took the Belt Off of My Pants While They Hung in My Locker at the Gym During Kickboxing on Thursday:

First of all, you are weird.  What kind of crazy steals someone's belt?  It wasn't even an expensive belt.  I understand that it had a pretty design and the buckle was shiny, but it was just a simple, cloth belt.
Second.  It's not yours.  Please return it.
Third.  Really, it wasn't funny.  I was wearing the black pants that are now too loose on me and they hang around my hip bones. This would be cool if it was 2002 and I was a 22 year-old bartender looking for bigger tips, or a Pussycat Doll, but I'm not.  I work with men in an engineer's office so I need to be taken seriously.  I had to wear my jacket for the rest of the day so my ass crack wouldn't show when I sat down.
And finally, thanks a lot.  Now I have to get a lock and waste precious workout time trying to remember the combination before and after each workout.  I now realize it was naive of me to think that only sane, upstanding citizens patronized my gym, so thanks for shattering my little dream world.

Love,
me

ps.  I hope you accidentally leave the belt on your pants when you wash them and it gets wrapped around the agitator and breaks your washing machine.  But you probably don't do laundry since stealers are dirty, dirty people who rarely wash themselves, let alone their clothing.

But what can you do? Medicine's not a science.

Abby's formula for the perfect evening:

• got out of work a few minutes early tonight and went to the drugstore to browse birthday cards for a good fifteen minutes, minimum, without Joe breathing down my neck asking me if I had to take that long to select the perfect card (answer:  yes, I do...and I found one that played the chicken dance song). 
• Then I went home, played with the dogs for a while and
• took a long, hot shower; with the drain plugged and bath salts. 
• Several minutes of primping followed and we were on our way to meet our friends at a new restaurant downtown to celebrate a 30th birthday. 
• A couple of glasses of really good Cotes du Rhone, an orgasmic medium-rare grilled beef tenderloin with lobster Bearnaise, and chocolate mousse birthday cake with a side of champagne, followed by the belly-laugh worthy animated comedy of the now 30-year-old guest of honor
• I love my friends.
• Get home and find out The Office is on late tonight so I will get to see it after all.  It's a rerun, but so what?  I missed most of this one the first time around (prison Mike).
• Now, 30 Rock is on and I have one dog curled up on my feet and the other one leaning heavily against my side.  Oh, this is the one where Tracy sees the "blue dude".  The very episode that made me fall in love with the show.

It's going to be 25 below (BELOW!!) zero tonight.  I will be slumbering beneath a perfectly heavy down comforter next to my hot-stuff husband in a wine-induced coma in just about 10 minutes.  I might wake up with cotton mouth and a small headache tomorrow morning, but it will have been worth it for my perfect evening.

happy birthday Jenn!

Let's all shout yay because today is Jenn's birthday!  On this day, back in 19-none-of-your-damn-business, Jennifer L. Kelly entered the world screaming to make all of our lives a little more fun.

congratulations on all that walking

In case you haven't had the chance to click on any of my people links, I though that one (of the three) in particular should be brought to your attention.  It's Dan.  This asshole* got to take leave from work to prance around the west coast forests like Grizzly Adams for six months.  And by prance I mean hike, and by west coast forests I mean the Pacific Crest Trail...all 2,650 miles of it...and by Grizzly Adams I mean, well, just check out the "after" picture.  The PCT stretches from the Mexican border at its southern terminus to the Canadian border, traversing California, Washington, and Oregon.  It goes over some mountains, through some valleys, and all that great shit.  If you want to get a better description than "and all that great shit", along with some photos and an entertaining story about a lunatic whoring out his cranial real estate for food, I encourage you to read his trail journal.  I recently received word that he may have completed his journey, so in celebration of that, I'm sending all four of you guys over to sign his guestbook and congratulate him and his ruggedness.  Dan, also known as Sweatbox in some circles, is cooler than I'll ever be, and I consider myself lucky just to be one of the names on his 12-page address list.

*because I'm jealous, not because he parks in handicap spaces

introducing joe...

My husband:

unfrozen caveman lawyer


thoughtful visionary

happy 21st little sister

Today is little sister's 21st birthday!  Unfortunately, the miles and the embarrassment of your older sister seeing you drunk is keeping me from celebrating with you, but that can't stop me from giving a shout out and posting a picture of you taken during your awkward teenage years: 

Just kidding about the picture, that would be mean.

HAPPY 21ST ANNA!  Enjoy the last birthday that you will actually look forward to!

may contain adult references

This evening was the first official meeting of the Vermont chapter of Engineers without Borders.  I signed on as the secretary, mainly because I wanted to help out in some way but I am too lazy to be either the President, Vice President, or worse, Fundraising Chair.  Treasurer would have been cake too, but someone had gobbled that up by the time my two week standard waiting period for volunteering had passed.  So now I am in charge of minutes and probably something else.

Because our chapter is just getting off the ground, we had a man with a curly white mustache and snakeskin boots come to our little meeting and give us some pointers on how to get things moving, with project selection, etc.  He presented a fascinating slide show on a recent trip that his chapter had taken to Kenya to help with a village water system, a very popular Engineers w/o Borders type project.  I learned that Nairobi is a very dangerous city, so time spent there should amount to stepping off the airplane and immediately leaving.  I also learned that Kenya is actually very lush and has several gorgeous waterfalls, unlike the desert plains Lion King scene I had been picturing in my mind. 

In a seperate, somewhat more valuable lesson, I'm now going to tell you why, if you are making a public presentation using your personal computer and a projector, you need to know EXACTLY what is on your screen saver.  After Mr. Snakeskin Boots finished his slideshow we were in the middle of discussing how best to select a project for borderless engineering when the projector screen went from the standard windows background to black, and a photograph started to automatically reveal itself in the lower left corner of the screen, from the bottom up.  I thought, 'sweet, he has pictures of Kenya as his screen saver', and what I initially saw as two water jugs carried in a couple of nets actually revealed itself to be a woman in (only) thigh-high white fishnet stockings bent over kissing her own knees accepting the results of a very excited man standing directly behind her.  Photograph number two unrolled itself left to right in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and was also burned into my brain, but I'm a lady and I will not describe it (there was a horse).

Mr. Snakeskin Boots literally dove out of his chair toward his laptop and disconnected the projector cord faster than it took for the redness to work it's way from my neck up to my forehead.  I'm glad the lights were turned off.  He said a few things that I'm sure no one remembers and we all laughed uncomfortably about how not to attract people to our organization.  I couldn't look at the man anymore without cracking up and thinking PERVERT! But Joe was more forgiving and thought that he had been the victim of a cruel teenage prank.  That dude learned his lesson the hard way, no pun intended.

a series of very unfortunate events

A quiz:

Which of the following has happened to Abby on her 27th birthday:

a) Backed into Joe's car in the driveway this morning, possibly having been distracted playing with her new SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO RECEIVER!

b) Left her wallet at the grocery store

c) Had her project denied the prior evening

d) Birthday was forgotten by husband

e) All of the above

If you answered e) all of the above, you get an A+ forever.  The day can only get better, and it already has because an e-mail from a friend reminded me of a camping trip I have coming up shortly which instantly cheered me up.  Also, my coworker brought in a chocolate cake for me.

Last night was a full moon.  I guess that explains Evvy's abnormal desire to scratch at the door at 2AM this morning and frolick in the backyard for a few minutes.  I've decided that when my birthday and the full moon are in alignment, very bad things can happen (see above quiz). And when Jupiter aligns with Mars, peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.

Tonight we will be entertaining Joe's cousin, her husband, and their adorable 11-month-old son for dinner.  So does that make them my cousins-in-law?  I'm not that good at the family naming thing, for example:  are my husband's sister's husbands my brothers-in-law?  Or are they just my sister-in-law's husband?  The other thing that makes me bad at being married is that I still don't know how to address my parents-in-law.  I feel that, coming out of my mouth, calling them mom and dad would sound really fake because I'm not that comfortable with it.  I'd like to call them by their first names, but on his side of the family, this may be construed as disrespect.  I grew up calling my aunts and uncles by their first names, their family makes the kids say "Aunt" or "Uncle" before the names.  I asked my mom what she does, and apparently she's gotten through 30 years of marriage addressing her in-laws as "excuse me" or "um" or just making eye contact before conversation so they know to whom she is speaking.  But this is getting off the subject.

I am excited to have guests over to our home tonight for dinner. So excited, in fact, that I am going to leave work a couple of hours early to get the house ready.  I'm going to do hibachi steak kabobs -- or meat sticks on the grill, and a few vegetables.  I think that saying "hibachi kabobs" sounds A LOT cooler though, and you kind of have to bow forward quickly when you say it.  Try it, it's fun.  hibachi kabobs.  Hopefully the rain will hold off so we can use my favorite outdoor dining set.

I'd rather be here right now.