15 Boxes

My entire life fits into 15 boxes and they will be following me across the country TOMORROW to the 1606 :)

I HAVE SUPER POWERS

Of the hundreds – nay thousands – of photos I have of Paige one might rightly question why I’ve chosen to share this slightly out of focus, somewhat off center one with you. Well, if you’ve been at all paying attention to this space you (and the whole free world) are well aware that Paige is in the final countdown to THE BIG MOVE to L.A. As in California. As in the other side of the continental U.S. As in as far from Florida one can get without going to Seattle.

Not that this is cause for concern for her mother, or anything. No siree bob.

This photo was taken in the fall of 1989 and Paige is nearly five years old. With legs pumping for all they’re worth, she is tearing at full speed down the sidewalk away from me and, looking closely, you will see a cinch sac garbage bag cape tied at her neck and billowing out behind. You should know she wore this cape EVERYWHERE for a good six months – striking a “Super” pose every so often – silently communicating her sure command of the playground, the grocery store or (most often) her sister.
It seems the sidewalk just got bigger. I can’t help but see that cape flapping behind her as she tears across the country - complete with goofy grin, steady hands and a sure command. I just hope L.A. is ready for such powers.

Mom

Pyro

If you lived here you'd be one too.

Tabasco

This is a picture of our cat Tiger. She lives with my mom in Tampa, and when I say 'lives with' I am using the term very loosely. You see, Tiger has been an outside cat for her entire life, this means that aside from during the occasional torrential downpour/hurricane she is outside all of the time. We (previously Katie, now mom) feed her in the morning before leaving for school or work and then that is it, the rest of the day she entertains herself - we may not even see her until the next morning. Now some people would argue that she is not a good pet because of this 23 hour and 45 minute absence from our daily routine... but I beg to differ. This week I have been experiencing the opposite end of the spectrum caring for Guinness, Tapper and Jessie while dad and Julie are out of town. Their day begins (without fail) at 5:30 when they start barking to go outside an pee, I can get away with leaving Tapper and Guinness out back in their fenced in area but Jessie can't stay out (because she is too small to stay warm in the cold) so I have to stand there (as my chances of being able to fall quickly back asleep diminish) and make sure she pees AND poops and then bring her back in. If I do manage to get back to sleep it will only last until 7 when the barking begins anew because 7 is breakfast time. Tiger never woke me up.  Not once.  When Tapper and Guinness are inside they want to be right next to you, licking your hand or trying to get you to pet them.  When Jessie is inside you have to keep your eye on her so that she doesn't sneak off and covertly pee on the floor or chew through wires.  When Tiger is inside she sleeps.  An obvious solution to this problem would be leaving the dogs outside during the day (like we do with Tiger in Tampa - what do we have all this land for anyway?!) but that doesn't work because Tapper has a penchant for running away to terrorize neighbors and their livestock. Not only does Tiger not terrorize people, she comes home with gifts - what am I talking about? Look back at that picture and you will see she is wearing a pink collar, we have no idea where this collar came from - she left one morning wearing a perfectly good one we had given her, and showed up the next day with that one.  I also have no recollection of Tiger ever "passing gas", maybe she is just too classy.  Tapper on the other hand will sit there NEXT TO YOU and let them rip all night.  Give him a break, maybe he has a stomach problem you say?  I think the problem is that he eats his own poo.  Thats right, I said it, he eats it.  And now Jessie has picked up this lovely habit, Julie was worried it might hurt her little puppy stomach (I think she was worried Jessie might start 'passing gas') so we asked the vet how to discourage this behavior.  He said it wasn't hurting her, but since it was grossing us out he suggested using Tabasco sauce to get them to stop.  So now I get to follow the dogs around and put Tabasco sauce on their poop.  Not only does Tiger not eat her poop, she buries it.  I know, I know, Tiger would never have gone on walks with me up here and I know I would not have felt nearly as protected, but I think I am still a cat person. Look closely and you can see Jessie snacking in the background of this first one:

DFTBA

Here is an interview with John and Hank Green, two brothers whose "project" I stumbled across this past summer while procrastinating studying for an exam. John and Hank are both approaching the age of thirty and living in different states, they realized that over the past couple years their relationship had become almost completely textual in nature. On New Year's Eve 2007 (a year ago) they challenged each other to have no textual communication (emails, text messages, instant messages, etc) for an entire year, instead they would take turns posting videos to each other everyday on YouTube. Over the course of the year, they developed quite a following of people (like me) who discovered their videos and started watching each day. Here is the link to their website, if you scroll down a bit you will see all of their videos are archived on the left side. Go to January and watch the first couple (they are only about 3 minutes long), they are pretty funny.

12 degrees

After my shower this morning I walked from my cabin to the main house sans hat because my hair was still wet. Upon arriving at the house I reached up to brush my hair out of my eyes and realized that it was frozen... Jamaican bobsled style. I checked my phone to see how cold it has to be for your hair to freeze in under two minutes and it showed a whopping 12 degrees. Let me tell you, this cold front is really softening the blow when it comes to moving to California to start a job. Since it had only warmed up to 19 by the time I wanted to go up to the barn, Jessie got to wear her jacket which I think makes her look like a giant cockroach.

J.K. Rowling is a BAMF

Harvard University announced Thursday that J.K. Rowling will be giving a speech at their graduation ceremony this year. Yangda cannot possibly understand why I am more jealous that he will be seeing her live than I am of the fact that he goes to Harvard. I told him that if I was any closer than the other side of the continent I would definitely come, but unfortunately I will be about a month into working at UCLA by then (June 5th) and I think the trip might be frowned upon by my future employer. Katie, on the other hand, happens to not only be dating Yangda but she goes to school in the very same city! She has graciously promised to make a video blog of the event for me so keep your fingers crossed.

Stitches

Dad and Julie left early this morning for a week in Florida where Dad will be attending a conference as a representative of the board of our local Putnam hospital. Since I am about to have full time access to the California sun I volunteered to stay home and feed the dogs/guard the house/etc. Plus it will give me more time to spend with Jessie :) Jessie got fixed last Tuesday and the vet decided that she was too sweet to need a neck collar to protect her stitches. I can see how someone might be lulled into a false sense of calm around Jessie. She is, after all, very cute and dainty - not to mention that she was under anesthesia for about 99% of the time the vet spent with her... "Just don't let her get them wet, and try to keep her from running, jumping, stretching or doing anything that might put pressure on the wound" the vet said when Julie picked Jessie up. Oh really? You would think that major surgery (such as having your lady parts removed) might slow Jessie down a bit, so Julie said "OK" to the no neck collar and vowed to keep Jessie on a leash whenever she goes outside for the next ten days (until the stitches come out). Julie brought her home and we all took turns holding her until we thought she was calm enough to walk around, as soon as she was clear of our fingertips, Jessie took off at a full sprint around the kitchen stopping only to jump up and bite Tapper's tail. (No running, check. No jumping, check.) So we corralled her into her cage which worked for about five minutes at which point she started barking relentlessly. The thing about training a puppy is you have to try REALLY hard not to give it mixed signals so that it learns what you want as quickly as possible. We have been cage training Jessie and part of that cage training involves leaving her in the cage until she barks (which means she needs to pee) and then taking her outside where it is safe to pee. So Julie took her out (on a leash) into the fresh snow to pee. Jessie loves playing in the snow so not only was she distracted from the task at hand (peeing) but she was soon covered in snow. (Don't get the stitches wet, check.) We gave the rules our best effort for about a day and then got fed up - you can only devote so much brain power to stopping her from licking, chasing, getting excited - basically just being a puppy. It was a test of wills and Jessie definitely won. So it came as no surprise when we looked down last night and discovered that one of the three stitches was nowhere to be found. We have no idea how long it has been gone but she wasn't bleeding and didn't seem to be under any general distress. I took her to the vet this morning so they could check her out and they said she looked fine and we were doing a great job. Oh really?

Snow Storm

We woke up to about 6 inches of fresh snow this morning. The best thing about snow at night is that it gets a chance to build up on the trees without melting so the forest turns all white - it reminds me of Narnia.

Julie's version of the Killington trip

Paige taught me how to use IMOVIE! Here is my first attempt at a home movie...notice how different my version of the trip is from Paige's (posted right below).

Enjoy!

Skiing VS Snowboarding

Cylon

Katie and I both left Tampa on the 29th, she went on vacation with Yangda to celebrate New Year's Eve and I flew back up to New York to help take care of dad after his toe surgery. He had a bunion removed and they inserted a metal plate into his toe joint, so now he is part Cylon and he will probably set off the metal detectors at the airport. I'm jealous.

Soulja Boy... and Girl

I never got around to making a video on mom's new Mac because it was a VERY busy visit. Katie and I flew in on the 24th, just in time for a Christmas-eve dinner at the Munch's house, we have eaten at their house on Christmas-eve for as long as I can remember so I am glad we made it in on time! We opened presents Christmas morning, but barely had the computer set up before we had to be off to two more parties. The funny thing about all these holiday parties is that you see essentially the same people at each one, so it is basically just one big, continuous, roving party. We had one final open house to go to on the 26th and then our cousins arrived! Aunt Christine (my mom's sister), Uncle Jim, Alex and Emma stopped in for a few days on their way back to Atlanta after spending Christmas with family in Florida. We went to the beach one afternoon and as we were walking back to the car we passed some guys playing frisbee and listening to the radio, I bet Alex and Emma that they didn't know the song that was playing. Not only did they know what song it was (Superman by Soulja Boy) but they knew the dance:

Welcome to the Club

I was holding off on making another Christmas video because I was planning on making one when I was in Tampa for Christmas. Why would I wait? Because mom got a Mac for Christmas! Welcome to the club.

Where Have I Been?

It turns out that, while far more entertaining, video blogging is way tougher to pull off than just normal blogging. It is one thing to have my digital camera in my pocket all day to be whipped out at my convenience... it is an entirely different animal when you are talking about having the foresight to bring your not-quite-pocket-size video camera along. And if I thought it was hard to get candid pictures of my friends and family in their "natural environment" then I had no idea how they would react in front of a video camera! The minute I hit the record button they morph into entirely different people - they don't talk the same, they don't act the same and they stop whatever cool thing they are doing (that I wanted to film) to smile at the camera. By the time they get comfortable (usually around take 15) the novelty of the situation has pretty much worn off and I don't want to blog about it any more, especially since that requires re-watching all the takes so I can edit them together. This has resulted in me posting significantly less often which conflicts with my original purpose: keeping friends and family updated on my life. So while videos are fun, I need to find a better way to balance them with regular posts.