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.

Sea World

This year for our anniversary, we (well, actually I - and Jared went along with it) decided to go to San Antonio. I really wanted to check out the Sea World here. I've been to the San Diego one a couple of times and loved it. So we went this weekend. For those of you who haven't been - I highly recommend it. There are a lot of cool shows and even roller coasters. It's amazing what they can get the animals to do. Jared's personal favorite was Uncle Max. He is in the show with Clyde. Unfortunately, Clyde himself decided not to participate in the show about halfway through despite prodding. I'm not sure whether he forgot his lines or is just sick of showbiz, but he just jumped in the water and starting swimming around and completely ignored the trainers. More than likely, he was actually sick. Because after the show he did some rather gross things to the pool.

Clyde before he decided to quit for the day.

I really don't know if I'm allowed to show you the video we took of Uncle Max. But he's a pretty humongous walrus. I think Jared thinks he identifies with him because he's been complaining about being a walrus himself. The internship he is in feeds him free (and expensive) meals constantly - and if you know Jared, you know he's not very good at resisting food.

Good old Uncle Max.

I love all of it, but one of the more fun things we did was feed the seals. Here they are - you can tell why the the chunky ones are fat. They fight dirty for their fish. Sometimes they sound like you think a seal should, and then sometimes not.

Anyway, here some more random pictures of various other things we saw.

A shark ready to bite my head off

Jared with a Budweiser Clydesdale

Of course, we also saw dolphins, penguins, otters, the Shamu show (OF COURSE!), etc. but I have a tendency for my blogs to fill up entire pages, so I will leave those out. I have to include a blurb about the western show we saw though. They don't have this at the other Sea World and basically they save animals and train them to be in this show. It's was pretty cute but what Jared and I were really interested is how they trained the cats. Having these guys ourselves (and for anybody who has a cat) training them seems impossible. Though we did notice the cats did seem to have the hardest time sticking to their task in the show (they were so interested in the audience).

A good example is this cat who usually "square dances" but he was looking straight at us and was so distracted by the audience, they couldn't get him to do ANYTHING. However, they were successful with all the other cats (and skunks, pigs, dogs, and geese).

It was definitely a good time though it was so hot and humid and FULL of people. But it's the summer, so I didn't expect anything else. I'll give you an update on the rest of our weekend later.

Call for Fishing Experts

Okay, so we have been fishing twice now. Jared has been three times. And all we've caught so far is a few of these.

Michael Judd with his "catch".

What is sad is I think Jared is starting to get a little envious of the people that are even catching sticks. Last weekend we went to Lake Conroe (which is a much bigger and better lake than Lake Houston). We bought a fishing license for me and even a guide to help us figure out where the fish were. But it didn't help. Of course, we didn't realize Conroe was for people on water skis and huge recreational boats on the weekends. That probably doesn't encourage the fish. But our bait sure didn't either - not even a bite. Right now, I'm thinking our cats may have an easier time with getting the fish.

Even funnier, Jared is now building a gate for a boat trailer he doesn't have. He's become pretty obsessed with this boat thing. It's pretty much all he talks about. One really cute thing he's doing is naming the boat after me - The Berms. Now, I don't know how I feel about an old, scratched up boat with many, many years behind it being named after me, but I'll take the good with the bad. After all, Jared spends 90% of his time thinking about it, so maybe somehow that trickles down to me since its named after me.

Jared building the boat gate. We had to rip up all the plants right there in front to do it. I'm sure two gates (one being a double gate) will help the resale value of our home. ;) Ha.Ha.

Symphony

So we have now gone to a symphony twice (well, 2 and a half times - one was a Disney thing). For those of you who know Jared well, that is quite a feat in and of itself.The first one we went to was a couple of weeks ago - an outdoor symphony. Houston has these free outdoor symphonies every week where you bring a blanket and sit on the grass and enjoy the music. There were people there with wine, fine cheeses, and sushi. So apparently even outdoor symphonies are classy. Or snobby, whichever way you look at it. One of the good things about living in a big city is there is always something going on (when you find them that is, we stumble on them once and a while, but being new we miss more than we hit). While we were there, I noticed that Jared seemed to pay more attention to the dogs than the music, but I guess that's good enough.
He looks like he's enjoying himself, doesn't he? That's probably because it hadn't started yet.

I look like I'm trying to fit in with my bun and nerd glasses.

Then Sarah, one of our friends, invited us to go to a 1 dollar concert the Houston Symphony does every year. So we went to that too. They did Beethoven 6th symphony and they had this wonderful cellist playing. It was pretty amazing. Some of you may know, but when I was younger I played the violin. Then I moved to Willcox and the nearest violin teacher was in Safford, so I gave it up (my choice - I don't want Mom feeling guilty:) But I certainly do have a respect for those that play so beautifully.

Before the indoor one - apparently you're supposed to be a little more snazzy than with the lawn ones.

Then we also went to a Disney one - outdoor as well. They had singers and dancing this time. The singers didn't do a great job at singing, but I was singing to myself the entire night. Jared told me later he was about to go to the other side of the lawn. I just told him I was doing a better job with the singing and I certainly knew all the lyrics. No, I really wasn't that loud. But the evening did make me realize how much I absolutely LOVE Disney. Especially the music. But pretty much everything about it. I told Jared maybe next year I'll tryout to be a character at Disney World. Wouldn't that be a great summer?

Oh, be sure and check out the 4th of July post because I added some pics.

Our Anniversary

Married for 4 years today. The award goes to Jared for putting up with a stubborn redheaded wife - it isn't as easy as it looks. In fact, when I was in college, my friends and I made a list of who we thought would get married first. I was last on the list along with the words referring to when I would get married - sometime..maybe...if ever. So it took me by complete surprise when I found somebody I wanted to spend my life with at such a young age. I was somewhat devastated about the whole thing - but also very in love. So I married him - much to the distaste and/or worry of a number of people. We've made a number of mistakes mostly due to being so blasted young, but I'm still in love with him (even more so now)- and I realize it everyday I live. Since I am promptly getting too sappy, I will quit now before my loyal readers throw up over their keyboards (all 3 of you:)

Oh and more to come on the 4th of July, Jared has stolen the camera for the upteenth day in a row (he's on a field trip until late tonight- which is typical behavior for our anniversary - we haven't actually celebrated one anniversary together, but thats another story) , so I still can't post about it - but I have some great butterfly footage for those of you that are into the Discovery Channel. Yeah, I know. Now you can't wait.