Our New Mac

So tomorrow is the first day of school with the kids, so to distract myself from the barfing feeling I'm getting in my stomach, I decided to blog.   I hassle Jared about blogging everyday, but he doesn't seem to care very much. Instead I'll post this picture - that should make us even. While my nose looks slightly big, Jared looks like something out of a horror movie  - a goblin perhaps. We've been having a lot of fun with the camera on this thing. It has all kinds of crazy effects. And the screen on the computer it is huge. 

Now I'm finally starting to get adjusted to the Mac. For the first week I was doing nothing but moaning over it. There are quite a few differences. Like no Ctrl+C. But mostly my moaning was over the fact that we didn't have Microsoft Office on it for the first week or so. And then Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are funky looking. But I'm getting used to it. 

 Last weekend we went down to the beach with a bunch of Jared's friends and hung out playing on the waves, reading, and playing card games.  Besides that, I have been moping around going on about the loss of my summer. In a few weeks that should be out of my system and it will be business as usual. But I have a reason to be mopey this time I think. My brother and his wife, Tara, had their first little baby on Friday. A little girl - my first niece. My first time to be an aunt in fact. So I am miserable about being trapped here now, right when I have some place I want to go so badly. But it's okay - I'm already planning my Thanksgiving trip to soften the blow. I'll be sure to post a picture when I get one. 

Oh, and Jared got a job offer from both Marathon and Shell. I'm really proud of him - but not surprised. He is a pretty smart guy after all and certainly a hard worker. But I'll let him tell  you about it if I can ever get him this thing. 

Shopping Trips and other Scares

I took a picture, because I told Jared nobody would believe that I went on a 6 hour shopping spree. I know. Me. I hate shopping. But believe it or not, I did it. If there's one thing I pride myself on it's efficiency. So apparently all I need to get shopping is a budget, a list of things I need, and a motive. The motive came from my kids last year who one week said "Mrs. Hamilton, you always wear the same 5 outfits over and over again. And the same earrings everyday. And you never wear your hair down." Leave it to kids to be rude (some would call it honest) without knowing it. Well, they weren't exactly right, but they were close to it, and I realized that I had gotten lazy.

So I decided to go out and get some work clothes before school hit again. I went to an outlet mall (the only way to go when you want the best clothes for the money), but it was nearly an hour away. So I knew I had to hit it hard. At the end of the day (and a couple stops to put stuff in the car) I had 8 tops, 5 pairs of paints, 3 pairs of shoes, hair accessories, a swimsuit, sunglasses, earrings, necklaces, and a new purse and wallet. Right on budget. I bought all of these from 9 stores all over the mall, and I had literally shopped in every store that I thought might have anything resembling work clothes. It was one of my proudest moments. Jared guessed I would give up after hour and come back with maybe a top or two. So he was quite impressed as well.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little. But I was tired. As you can see, the cats were more than happy about the shopping trip. They love all shopping trips because of all the bags they get to play in afterwards.

This week was a good one because we had a day off for Tropical Storm Edouard. The news had us all worried, and the grocery store and gas stations were a nightmare the day before. But it turned out to be just some rainy weather with really nice temperatures and no traffic. And, of course, a day off where I got to devour my new book and spend some time with Jared. So it was a good time. I was disappointed though. I thought I was going to see my first real storm, but no such luck. Oh well. There is always next time.

Jared is off on a field trip this weekend, so maybe I'll get him to blog about it when he gets back. He told me when I started this blog that he would do it too, so he better get cracking. Yeah, Jared this is a dare. Your turn to write. The few people that read this are sick of me. :)

The Rest of the Weekend

So here we are a week later, and I'm finally finishing up with last weekend just as a new one is about to start. But by now, I don't really feel like it. I'd rather go on and on about the books I've been reading. But I won't, since that's not where everybody's interest lies. It is mine though. During the summers especially, I have always devoured a book or two a week (just ask poor Jared - who luckily likes the Wii almost as much as I like books). However, Michele pointed me to this website that apparently tons of people are on called goodreads.com. I like it because I always want to know what to read next, and now I have tons of suggestions from everybody I know. There is a certain book I am quite excited about getting my hands on this weekend. Anybody who is a Stephenie Meyer fan should be running to the store as her 4th book in the whole vampire series is coming out today at midnight - I have it pre-ordered, so I don't need to worry.

Anyway, enough about that. I said I wouldn't go into books. Back to the point. This past weekend we also stayed at the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Now, I've heard that San Antonio and a little north of there has landscape similiar to Italy's. And this riverwalk is on (who would of guessed?) a river. So while we were there, I told Jared I was pretending to be in the Venice, Italy - which is one of my big dreams. But Italy or not, it was still really nice. They had great music playing, good food, and a really cool atmosphere. I hear in December they put up lights everywhere. I bet that is even more beautiful.

If you look really closely, you can see the water behind us at the Riverwalk. And a restaurant to the right.

And, of course, we had to stop by the Alamo. Because what would a vacation to San Antonio be without the Alamo? Jared didn't seem to see why it was so important to go and tried to talk me out of it. But it is sort of the "symbol" for Texas. And if you care nothing for history or the fate of the men who died there, then the least you need to do is glare at it. Since it is the biggest tourist site in the state - San Antonio has a lot more things (Sclitterbahn, Six Flags, the Riverwalk, Sea World, the wax museum) that might have been given to Houston since it's much larger (and closer to the ocean) if the Alamo wasn't so famous. So we went and listened to a speech and looked at it. There was one building we didn't go inside because the line for it wrapped around 2 blocks. But it was still pretty nifty. Everybody says that they are always shocked by how small it is. But I think it just has unfortunate placement - it is smack dab in the middle of the city with huge, tall motels and buildings - really it just seems small by comparison. Because it's really not that small of a building. It seemed to accommodate a LOT of people in fact.

You can almost tell how hot it is.