You mean Shenanigans?

Wednesday night was Celtic night at the Empire State Plaza. Steve, Alex and I went out because the Glengarry Bhoys were going to be there (along with the Prodigals and the Saw Doctors, but we’re not too familiar with either of those bands). Glengarry went though some changes in the last year or so and the only remaining members from their previous lineup are the lead singer and the drummer. The bassist, fiddler, and bagpiper are all new to the band. The previous fiddler, bassist, and bagpiper went on to be in Greenwich Meantime (GMT), which is now one of my favorite bands. We’d seen “the Bhoys” once or twice since the change and weren’t all that impressed, but we had an awesome time on Wednesday night.

The new fiddler is a redhead and is pretty hot (which makes Steve very happy), but she’s not as much fun as the previous fiddler, Shelley. Shelly is an awesome dancer as well as a fiddler and watching her perform was always a lot of fun. The new fiddler seemed pretty moody. She didn’t smile a lot on stage and they had her dance for one song and she seemed pretty unhappy about it (and not very good). The new bassist is just kind of lame. He’s weird looking with long red hair and he doesn’t face the audience – just stands sort of back near the drums and looks off to the side.

The new bagpiper is hilarious. Picture Farva from SuperTroopers and give him a set of bagpipes. Hilarious! He kept strutting around the stage and dancing like he was Bon Jovi or something and it just cracked me right up. I was hysterical. Then, during one of his big solos parts, he ran off the stage and played through the crowd. We were right in the midst of the crowd and I joked to Alex that he was coming right for us. Then he stopped right in front of me and proceeded to bounce around while he played on his bagpipes (which, by the way, had flames printed on them). I lost it. I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. I’m sure that he thought that I was having a great time and enjoying the show. Oh, I was…

We had a great time and it totally made me freaking excited for IrishFest. I can’t wait!!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Our Effeminate Looking Son….

The Photojojo Newsletter had a link to MorphThing the other day. I read the newsletter at work and couldn’t wait to get home and morph pics of me and Alex to get a preview of what our kid might look like some day. I couldn’t find any pictures of Alex without his facial hair, so we’ve got a son. It’s very odd to look at the morphed pic – to be able to see a bit of myself and a bit of Alex in the person in the picture. I guess it’s a sneak preview of what I’ll feel when I look at our kids some day….

I couldn’t take the hair across the forehead, so I cleaned up “our son’s” head in Photoshop….

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The Quest Begins….

clipped from www.kods.net Wedding Name Change Tips and Information Name Change Checklist Social Security Change Application: http://www.ssa.gov/online/ss-5.html Driver�s License – check your local DMV U.S. Passport Agency U.S. Post Office Employer / Work Car/Title Company School or Alumni Associations 401k / Retirement plans Bank accounts / names on checkbook Mortgage Post Office (change of address) Voter registration Card Credit card company Doctor, dentist, HMO Health, life, auto, and home insurance policies Clubs and Gyms Magazines and Memberships Discount, courtesy, and frequent-flyer cards Utility companies (phone, cable, gas, electric, etc.) Legal Contracts Will (you may want to change the beneficiary to your spouse at the same time) Start using your new name! It will feel weird and may sound funny at first, but the more you start using it your friends and family and coworkers will catch on and get used to it and before you know it you�ll think it sounds weird when you hear your maiden name.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Geeky Excited!!

I maintain a pretty busy calendar at work and, unfortunately, there’s not a way for me to view my calendar away from the office. It’s difficult for me to make commitments during the work week without knowing when my scheduled meetings with clients are. I’ve created a Google Calendar for my work stuff and have been adding meetings to it while I’m at work to keep me in the know away from my desk. But… I wanted a calendar app. I didn’t want to have to have my browser open and I wanted something that would sync automatically for me.

I decided to switch to Thunderbird the other day (because I just needed something new) to handle my email. The promise of extensions was just too much to resist. I discovered the Lightning calendar add-on and then… ta da! The GData Provider extension which allows for 2 way communication with Google Calendar. After following the easy step-by-step installation instructions here, I was up and running. I’m so excited and can’t wait to get this going at work as well!

I’ve found a few other extensions that I am looking forward to using at the office as well. The Xnote extension for Thunderbird allows you to add sticky notes to email messages. I love it! I’ve been so busy lately at work that I’m not able to respond to emails right away. With Xnote, I’ll be able to quickly jot a note about an email – right “on” the email – so that when I am able to respond to the email later on I’ll have my notes right there. Also, the sticky notes look like little yellow post-its – so cute! Love it!!

The Show InOut extension is going to make my life a little easier. I store all messages – incoming and outgoing – related to a client in a folder for that client. When I open the folder, it’s sometimes a little confusing to look at the emails because the outgoing copies always say my name since I’m the “from” person on it. Show InOut adds a graphical designator to show if the email was incoming or outgoing and then shows the sender or recipient. Nice!!

Yay! I love new things! Especially new things that don’t cost me a thing.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Extra Super Way Cool Online Music Thingy

clipped from www.visualcomplexity.com Musicovery Musicovery, by Frederic Vavrille, is an interactive webRadio Frederic made all come together in Musicovery. The user can start by selecting a mood in the mood/energy matrix or choose a radio acording to their mood by clicking in the colored matrix. After that the interaction is very similar to MusicPlasma, where one can easily navigate between different artists, only this time with sound. URL: http://musicovery.com/

Popularity: 8% [?]

Guidelines for Cats

clipped from www.jamesshuggins.com Guidelines for Cats Doors: Do not allow closed doors in any room. To get door opened, stand on hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. Bathrooms: Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything . . . just sit and stare. When supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted. For book readers, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself. Bedtime: Always sleep on the human at night so s/he cannot move around.

Popularity: unranked [?]

What's Next?

Months of Planning – check.
Wedding – check.
Honeymoon- check.

umm….

What’s next?!

I think Wham and Pa would like a grandchild, but we’re WAY too poor to do that yet. Oh, and I think Alex’s head might explode. It’s fun to tease him about it, though.

So what’s really next? Well, here are some ideas, in no particular order:

* Thank you notes, thank you notes, thank you notes.
* Buy a Hutch so that we can put away all our beautiful wedding gifts.
* Decide on colors and paint apartment.
* Work on resume.
* Organize office/guest room.
* Do official changing of name with Social Security, DMV, etc, etc, etc…
* Edit wedding and honeymoon pictures and provide captions. Get prints.
* Review professional proofs and decide on pictures for albums.
* Work on Wedding Albums, scrapbooks, etc.
* Scottish Games!
* Irish Fest!
* Alex’s Birthday!
* Joe & Christina’s Wedding then Michele & Darrel’s Wedding!
* Halloween.
* Clean out and organize room of doom – transform into library/organized storage area.

Ok. I’m starting to feel a little better – all of those are things that I expect to do in the next few months and it’s starting to look like I won’t be as bored as I thought I’d be! And then it’ll be Thanksgiving and Christmas… Time is going to fly by!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Back in the States

The Honeymoon’s over. Well, the actual trip is over. Most of it. We arrived back to JFK about an hour and a half ago and are now at the Fairfield Inn where we’ll crash tonight before driving back home tomorrow. The room is not 5 stars like the hotel we were staying in in London – but it’s clean and it’ll do. We’ve now been up for over 21 hours and are very tired… and smelly. Travel makes you gross.

I’d love to blog all about the trip but I need to make myself go to sleep as it feels like 5am for me right now. Tomorrow is going to be a big day – driving home, stopping to see Beck and Nora if they’re up to it, and then saying goodbye to the family as it’s their last night before they move to Dubai.

Popularity: unranked [?]

It's Almost Over :(

I am in a funk this morning. We had another great day yesterday – this time ending our day on a London Walks Pub Walk. These are Pub walks and not crawls, so you don’t necessarily get hammered on them… but I pretty much got hammered last night. We had a lot of fun and got back to the hotel a little after midnight.

About an hour and a half after I passed out, I woke up because Alex was shaking me. “Listen!” There was a very polite but firm male British voice speaking in our room. “… the fire alarm has been activated. Please vacate the building and go to the assembly point in Lincoln’s Inn Fields behind the Hotel. Please do not attempt to use the lifts.” I immediately wanted to throw up. Shaking, I jumped out of bed and pulled on the clothes I was wearing earlier. I was flying all over the room while Alex tried to calm me down. “Grab your bag,” he said which made it all too familiar for me. At least this time I had my camera in the bag… I grabbed our passports out of the safe, slid on my flip flops and followed Alex out into the hall.

We passed other hotel guests in various stages of awakening – coming out of their rooms with their hair askew in wrinkled pajamas, rubbing their eyes and asking if we’d heard an alarm. I’m sure that I was not a reassuring site to them as I likely had a look of extreme panic on my face. Alex located the “in-case-of-emergency” stairs and we fell in line with others walking down the winding staircase.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs we met with some hotel staff members who apologetically informed us that it appeared to be a false alarm and invited us to return to our rooms. The line of us on the stairs turned around and trekked back up to our rooms. I wouldn’t get undressed when we got back to the room and couldn’t lay down right away. I was drunk and scared and not reassured by the fact that it “appeared” to be a false alarm. I kept trying to peer out of our window into the courtyard – “What are you looking for?” Alex asked. “If you saw a fire truck and lights would that make it better?! Come back to bed!” I eventually did return to bed but left the passports and my bag fully packed next to the bed along with my flip flops and fell asleep in my clothes.

Thankfully, I’m not hungover today. I’m still a little freaked out – I’m having a hard time returning to calm. Today’s our last full day here and I’m excited to go out into the city, but Alex is taking forever to get ready which is making me antsy. I’m sad that our honeymoon is coming to an end – Alex said that he’s been having a great time but is ready to return home to our kitties. I’m not fully sharing in that wish yet… I’m not ready to return to wash and dishes and work and bills. I’m not ready to go home and say goodbye to my family. I’m really not ready for that. I’m going to try and pull a Scarlet O’Hara, though, and “…not think about that today.” I’ll push it all out of my head for now and focus on having fun today in London!

Popularity: unranked [?]