Labor Day fun and Chicago!

Happy Labor Day weekend!

We had a fantastic weekend!! I spent Friday night at a friend's house for game night and ended up staying out until 1 a.m. (For those of you who know me, you know that is HIGHLY unusual, but I was having so much fun I didn't even realize what time it had gotten to be!)

Also, one of Alex's best friends came into town for the weekend. He makes it in to visit about once a year--he is in the Air Force and is back stateside after being recently stationed in Qatar. He is a huge Longhorn fan (I mean, really, who isn't?), so we got tickets to the home opener Sat. night. We were only about 20 rows up from the field in the newly renovated stadium (with the new seats just completed, there were over 98,000 people at the game!). Tim LOVED all the girls walking around in short skirts/shorts and cowboy boots. I don't remember so many risque outfits at football games when we were in school...I guess times have changed. That makes me feel old. The other thing that made me feel old was realizing that we were 11 YEARS older than the freshman. Yikes! Anyway, the game was awesome and we had tons of fun--and we ended up eating at an all-night joint on the Drag at 1 a.m. Two nights out past midnight and you know we're really living it up.

We spent Sunday recuperating and had dinner and a sizzling scrabble game with our good friends and their adorable daughter. (For all of you scrabble fans out there, don't challenge "AE"--it is a word and you'll lose your turn.) Monday was spent getting in some quality solo time with Alex, which was better than all the excitement of the previous days combined.

In other good news, Alex's next business trip is a 10-day-er to Chicago. We had discussed me flying out over the weekend but decided to keep the miles in the off chance he will have another exiting international work trip in the not-too-distant future (think South America!). Last night, my world's-most-kick-ass dad gave me HIS free airline ticket so that I can do it all!! So it looks like a weekend getaway to Chicago is in the near future. I've never been, and I'm so excited!

Hope all your lives are as charmed as ours!

Just to share...

The English teacher in me has to share this! This is a poem I would have taught (back when I was teaching). I came across it today in search of something for work, and I can't believe I've never read it, much less had it taught to me in school. It has been added to my (long) list of favorite poems. I hope you enjoy your daily dose of poetry!

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

12 years ago...

12 years ago today, my best friend asked me to do him the honor of being his girlfriend. We were just starting our senior year of high school. I said yes, and we've never looked back.

We had a wonderful "date" lunch to celebrate and spent the entire time talking about our favorite memories over the last 12 years. I feel so incredibly blessed that we had enough to talk and reminisce about that the conversation lasted the entire hour...and those were just the highlights!

Not many people are lucky enough to have met their mate so early in life and to have had such time together to watch them grow into the person they will be forever. I know Alex better than anyone on the planet--I know where he's come from, I know what he's been through. I've seen the forces and events that have shaped him into the man he is today. And he knows the same about me.

We are so very, very lucky.

Hells to the Yi-zah!

Alex "surprised" me with tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance tour! (That gets " " because we had talked about it for a while but decided that we should save the money. Trouble was that we decided that same thing about FOUR different fun things we were going to do, so Alex decided he had had enough and got the tickets anyway!)

I am so excited!!! #81, here I come!!

Catching up

Have you ever had a lunch date with a friend who had all kinds of exciting news about his or her life when the best you had to share was the sale on bell peppers you caught when you went grocery shopping two days before?

That's kind of how I feel now. I know I haven't updated in a while, but quite frankly there hasn't been any blog-worthy events going on in our lives. I've considered taking the route some of my blogging peers have and start making posts about my personal feelings about global events (the IOC banning the Iraq athletes from this year's games; Yao Ming and Dirk Nowitzki representing China and Germany, respectively, at the games; the So You Think You Can Dance tour tickets being $65+; etc.), but I'm trying to keep this pure for family and friends who simply want to stay updated with life here in P-ville, TX.

So I'm that friend who has nothing cool going on. The most notable event in our lives recently is my sweet bruise I got in our softball game last Wednesday. This pic. was taken 24 hours after the game. We won the game, by a lot. In fact, we've won our first 4 games of the season, a feat unprecedented since we've been on this team. We may have to throw a game or two of the second half of the season because we'll be forced to move up into the "intermediate" league if we win our league, and we don't want to do that. Those people are serious. We just play to hang out with our friends once a week and drink beer. Well, Alex is serious about it sometimes. Like that game he got kicked out for throwing down his glove, kicking the dirt, rushing at the ump (just a little bit) and cursing...in English. It was the cursing that did it. I told him there was really no excuse for that; if he's going to get so worked up, he needs to switch immediately into Russian.

I also have a nice new scar, but I'll spare you the pictures of that. On my last dermatology check-up, I had a spot taken off my back that came back as "severely abnormal" and the doctor hadn't gotten it all off. So I went back in to have the rest removed, which apparently meant he had to take a 2 mm perimeter all the way around and under it. So I have the first stitches of my life. But the wonderful news is that all the tests came back clear: no more bad stuff left in the area! Nothing more to worry about!

So, as you can see, if those are the height of excitement in our lives right now, we're living pretty smoothly. Jobs are busy. Cats are funny. House is clean. Grass is (amazingly) alive.

Life is good.

#28: Keep a potted plant alive for at least one year

Unfortunately for the plants, I'm kind of limping across the finish line on this one. I was given two gorgeous plants as housewarming gifts last July: an aloe and a beautiful flowering plant (front left; hibiscus, maybe? who knows...). In the early eagerness of domesticity, I bought the third plant (front right).

Knowing how living-plant-challenged I am, my friend who gave me the aloe assured me they are hardy, nearly impossible to kill. Thank goodness, because as you can see, the poor, not-so-hardy mystery flowering plant only has about five leaves left, and one of them isn't looking too hot.

I haven't had blooms on either of the flowering plants since last August, a fact I was told could be remedied by repotting them with some fertilized soil or miracle grow or some such. I consider that to be level II care; I was concerned with level I care: water the correct amount in order to keep alive.

I nursed them through the winter, and when sunny skies and warm weather again arrived in central Texas, I happily moved them to the front porch, prematurely delighting in the mistaken assumption I had guided them through the toughest stretch. They were all promptly burnt to a crisp (literally--they were blackened), and I thought I (they? task #28?) was/were doomed for sure.

They've spent the remaining time since that ill-fated first warm-weather spate on our kitchen table. I feel like they are in an assisted-living plant ward--not too much sun, not any fresh air, no excitement. What do I do now? Continue to nurse them through a premature old age? Is that any life for a plant?

Maybe I'll plant them in our little shrub-bed in front of our front porch--this will give them the chance to flourish as they were meant to...and if it means they die, well, at least they'll die under the wild blue wonder of the great outdoors instead of cooped up in my kitchen.

I can't believe I forgot!

I can't believe I forgot to add these two stories to the post about our family reunion weekend.

We flew in and out of JFK. When we flew in, while we were waiting to pick up our bag, we were standing next to two girls and a guy who were all extraordinarily drunk and engaging in a fully clothed, very public threesome. Welcome to NYC!

On our way out, our flight was delayed 3-4 hours, so we sought refuge at the terminal bar/restaurant. When we walked up, a girl we assumed was the hostess walked up and grabbed a couple of menus. Alex said, "Two, please," to which she replied "Seat your own F-ing selves," and walked off to hand the menus to another table.

We were SO glad to get back to Texas! ;-)