Happy Birthday, edamame!!!

Wow. My mother can spend hours talking about the most inane things.

I am in Wisconsin. I am very bored. That is all.

So, I haven't posted on here in a while, but I thought I would today to mention that Alex and I got engaged, and I have a very sparkly new ring. We're planning on getting married in Vegas in September. Not by Elvis though.

We adopted another puppy this weekend, and she is the cutest dog ever... really (just don't tell Pablo that). We named her Bella. She's a four month-old Beagle/German Shepherd mix, and she is just filled with love. Her and Pablo get along pretty well, although they're pretty rambunctious together.



( More pictures... )

So, Alex just got out of surgery a bit ago, and he now has a bionic back! Woowoo! They replaced 2 of his discs, and everything went really well. I am so incredibly relieved and happy that it's over. Thanks to all of the folks who have given their well-wishes and stuff (and thanks especially to Dayv and Julie for puppy sitting the Pablo monster). Anyway, the doctors say he should be up and walking around in a couple days or so. And, conveniently, there's a huge Ocktobertest in Bremen this coming week. I'm sure his recovery will be far more pleasant if it involves beer. We are in Germany after all... I'm pretty sure beer drinking is mandatory.

Yay! Alex and I got a dog this weekend. He's a Heeler mix, and is just a little bundle of cuteness. His name is Pablo. Here's a picture we took when we were bringing him home from the shelter...

Yay! We're driving to Atlantic City right now to see Infected Mushroom tonight. I'm so excited. And, I must say, having this Sprint wireless card for the laptop is awesome, so I can be online in the car. It makes the time pass so much more quickly. Only 65 more miles...

Alex and I moved into our townhouse on Saturday, and it's such an awesome feeling to actually be a homeowner. I love our new place, although dealing with the chaos of moving is a bit overwhelming right now. But, I finally have the kitchen in order, so I kind of feel like we actually live there. Needless to say, a housewarming party will be forthcoming once we're a little more settled and actually get some more furniture to fill the barren spaces. Although, we did promptly go out and purchase a grill. Woowoo!

It is now official... Julie and I are going to Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. Plane tickets have been purchased; hotel reservations have been made. Woowoo!!!

I would be unbearably giddy right now if I weren't so utterly exhausted.

So, we had a really great New Years and even ended up making it to three events. Megan, Mark, Alex and I started out at Bert and Erin's, which was a lot of fun, and we were sad to have to leave so early. But, it was really nice to see several people that I haven't seen in a while, if only for a brief time. After that, we left to go to Buzz, which was also fun. I even had a rather amicable chat with Spiggy for a bit, which was... odd. Then, we went to Simon's for the after-party, where we meet some interesting people, heard some of Simon's new stuff (which is totally kickass), and learned of the amazingly cool article of clothing that is the Buff, which can be worn as a ninja mask. We got home right around dawn (after which, Megan and I both promptly ordered our own Buffs. I mean, really... who doesn't want to be a ninja?). All in all, the new year started out exceedingly well.

Woohoo! I finally figured out how to knit in the round tonight. And, the hat that I'm knitting actually looks pretty decent (so far) for my first attempt. Time well-spent at work indeed.

Last night we decorated our christmas tree. This is the first time I've had a live tree in an exceedingly long time, and it is really kind of nice. Although, the tree is a bit on the large side for our not-so-large apartment, but at least the place smells all piney and nice now. For some reason, I am far more enthused about christmas this year than most; Julie and I are even planning on baking cookies, which is altogether unprecedented on my behalf.

Avast ye, scurvy dogs! The day be ripe for bloodshed. Arrrr!

This whole working days thing totally sucks. I should be sound asleep right now.

So, Alex is in Minnesota this week, and I really miss him. It's so lonely coming home from work in the morning to an empty bed. *sigh* I'm trying to keep busy to not think about missing him, but work is just too dull tonight to be very effective. I had much more success with this last night after five pints of Guinness at Murphy's with Dayv and Julie. Guinness is clearly the solution for all problems.

QoS makes me sleepy.

Happy Birthday, edamame!!

Now that I'm mostly recovered from this god-awful bronchitis that I've had, I've finally gotten around to creating a flickr account and have uploaded our pictures from Europe, if anyone is interested in seeing them. We had a really awesome time, especially while we were staying with some of Alex's friends in Nice and while at the Loveparade in Berlin. Paris was somewhat interesting, and we did the whole sightseeing thing there, but the atmosphere seemed very uptight and the people weren't overly friendly, of course. We did, however get to see Paul van Dyk at the Queen club there, which was pretty cool. The French Riviera was altogether different though, far more relaxed and friendly, and we had a really great time there. The France-Italy world cup game was on while we were there, and all of the cafes and bars in Nice had huge flat screen TV's set out, and it seemed like the whole town came out to watch the game. Everyone was walking around waving French flags, blowing air-horns, and shouting. It was kind of an interesting experience; I even found myself rooting for France, whereas otherwise I could have cared less.

Anyway, another day we took a day trip over to Antibes, which is an incredibly beautiful and quaint little town. We did some shopping there, passed some time in an absinthe bar, and had a really fabulous dinner at some little restaurant that we just happened upon. We were going to go to Monaco as well, since it's so close to Nice, but we just didn't have enough time. We really want to go back there and spend a bunch of time just traveling around Provence, Monaco, and maybe Italy. I wish we could have spent more time in Berlin too, as it is such a cool city (in retrospect, I think we should have just skipped Paris and spent two extra days in Berlin). We did as much touristy stuff as we had time for, but the Loveparade took up most of our time. We went to the Love from Above at the Berlin Arena too, and saw PVD again and some other really good DJs. It was a huge amount of fun, but unfortunately didn't do wonders for the bronchitis that I somehow managed to come down with somewhere in between Nice and Geneva. Happily, it is finally going away, and I no longer sound like a 70-year old smoker, for the most part.

Wow. It would be truly amazing if this day could get any crappier. So, I got stuck at work late this morning because one of the maintenances I was doing went horribly awry since Cisco screwed up and sent the wrong parts. This meant that I only got four hours of sleep because in some moment of utter insanity I agreed to work a double today/tonight. And, if that wasn't bad enough, I got pulled over on my way back in to work this afternoon and was given a ticket for reckless driving, since I was going 79 on the toll road (slower than much of the other traffic though). So, I get to look forward to going to court and having my license suspended again, if not worse since it's my second offense. And, then I find out when I get in that they are *finally* going to be interviewing for the new TAC position here (that they've been talking about creating for the longest time and that I've been very interested in), but they're going to be doing it while I'll be on vacation. I keep thinking that it can't get any worse, but somehow it keeps managing to... good thing I only have 14 more hours of work to look forward to.