I Waited a Year to Take This Picture

Isn't this cute? Do you get it? OK here, maybe this helps:

I saw these beer bottles (separately) in Croatia and thought, "What a great picture that would be. I need to get some of those bottles." Only the opportunity didn't present itself to buy both of them and we came back from Croatia with just one - the "Karlo" one. How sad and lonely. But last week in Atlanta I happened to notice the "Paula" beer on the menu. I had to have it. Truth be told, the beer was terrible. It is wheat based and tasted awful. I had to throw half of it out. But that was OK. I really only wanted the bottle. I smuggled it out of the restaurant and now I'm happy. I have my Croatian Karlo beer finally joined with the German Paula beer on one of our "shelves of the world." Yes, technically the Paula beer came from Atlanta, but let's pretend I actually brought it back from Croatia or Germany, shall we?

iLove iTouch, iThink

My genius husband won himself a new iTouch. It’s even engraved on the back. Take a look:

He used his freakish talents in the multiaxis world to score this new little gadget. Who knew that his multiaxis knowledge would ever be useful in this way? When Karlo called me to tell me about his big score all I could picture was this:

I spent some time last night playing with it. I loaded some songs, pictures and contacts (MY contacts of course). I marveled at how cool this little gadget is. I dazzled Karlo by showing him the maps and how you can watch YouTube videos in a flash. I can definitely see where this thing rocks when you’re stuck at an airport (that has free wifi) and you’re bored out of your mind. But on the other hand, it wasn’t all that intuitive to load the info on it, it forces you to use iTunes, and without free wifi it’s really nothing more than an mp3 player, picture viewer, address book and calendar. My Palm LifeDrive does all those things and in addition it has games and useful apps on it. I’m betting I can buy some apps for this iTouch. I can’t imagine that Apple wouldn’t love to sell you more stuff. It will be interesting to see how much we use this shiny new toy. I think maybe Apple made these things just to get you hooked on the coolness so you have no choice but to buy the real thing . . . the iPhone.

Happy to Be Home

I rolled into town a little after 8:00 last night. Not the best way to spend nearly the last weekend of the summer, but at least my travel day was stress free. I had two uneventful flights and a long enough layover to avoid the sprinting.

As I sat on the Roncari shuttle bus, anxious to get home, my mind suddenly went from walking in my front door to greet Karlo and the dogs to . . . my car. I thought, “Holy cow, I can’t wait to drive my car home!” My heart actually fluttered as we drove into the Roncari parking lot and I craned my neck trying to catch a glimpse of my beautiful car. I peered and peered for it, but finally resolved myself to the fact that it must be too small to be seen and was hiding behind some SUV. Oh well, within minutes I’ll be sitting behind the wheel. But after I paid for the week of parking and ran out to greet my car I realized that everybody else drove off and Coop was nowhere to be found. I stood there on the curb, all alone —just me and my hot pink suitcase, wondering where Coop was. Did some young car attendant fall in love with it and steal it?

Eventually the friendly attendant felt sorry for me and went to hunt down my car. I big smile came across my face as I saw it pull up. I just couldn’t wait to jump in. The commute from the airport is now at least an hour and I loved every second of it. It’s so good to be back!

One More Day To Endure

I survived my trip so far. It's been long days and nights, but that comes with the territory of working shows. I almost still have a voice left for this last day of the show. After the 10 hour work day I get to stay in the hall and work four more hours tearing our rather large booth down. I know I won't get it all done tonight so at least I'm not setting myself up for disappointment. I'll have to go back tomorrow morning to finish up. I already changed my flight later in the day on Sunday to relieve some of the stress. Hopefully all will go well and I'll have a non-rushed, easy, dry, and eventful flight home.

I think I'll spend most of my show time today dreaming up things I'll make with our new router at home. After all, this is the biggest woodworking show in the country. It should inspire me with some creative ideas.

I Don't Like Cities

Did I ever mention that before? For the most part cities are loud, dirty, and over crowded with strange people who are mostly in my way and for some strange reason are compelled to talk to me. I just don't like it. But I tried to make the most of my stay in Atlanta today. I started out with a lovely little breakfast at the Corner Bakery (one of the few benefits of the city - cool places to eat everywhere). I went back to the hall and got my work done much sooner than I expected. This left me plenty of time to relax. Since I missed "Gup" so much I decided to go to the relatively new Atlanta Aquarium and get my fish fix.





And in the spirit of the Olympics, I took a few strolls through the Olympic Park.



I even had time to go back to my hotel and lounge by the pool. Hey, maybe this day wasn't so bad after all. I lounged and read my water-logged book. After glancing at my watch I realized that Oprah was on and I haven't taken the time to watch Oprah in ages. Yipppe. I ran back to my room, turned on the TV, got settled on the bed and got the dreaded phone call that I was needed back at the show floor. uuuugh. There went Oprah and here comes a 20 minute (one way) walk in the afternoon city heat. Nothing is worse than city heat. The heat coming off the asphalt is only half of it. In addition to that you have the exhausts of all the traffic zipping by mere inches from your legs and random huge exhaust vents pumping hot air onto the sidewalk (as if all the other hot humid air wasn't enough). Did I mention that I don't like cities?

If I ever complain about my 15 mile drive to go buy a loaf of bread please remind me how much I love living in the middle of the woods.

And the Complaining Begins

I warned you . . . any posts this week will probably include whining and complaining. You may want to navigate away from my blog while you can.

So here’s the story of my travel day. I got to the airport nice and early – no stress there. The plane boarded and took off on time. That was too good to be true. Then we got to my connection city, Philly, and the notoriously congested airport was chaotic. We circled in the air for a good 25 minutes until we finally got clearance to land. Yeah. We’re already 25 minutes late and I only have a one hour layover. At this point I might be in danger of not having time to grab some dinner. And by the way, I didn’t get so much as one peanut or one pretzel on the plane. I had to pay $2 for my ginger ale and I really thought that purchase might score me a small bag of peanuts, but no such luck.

We are now on the ground, but there seemed to be a problem finding an available gate. So we sit there and wait. And wait some more. OK, now this is starting to get stressful. Nearly 30 minutes later the pilot announces that a gate just opened. This would literally leave me five minutes to make my connection. Luckily the plane was tiny and I was in the 10th row. I made it out with less than two minutes to spare. I made a mad dash sprint to my connecting gate, which thank God, was only five gates down from where we landed. I made it. No dinner, but all was well.

That plane was now delayed as we waited for baggage to get loaded. Cool, that MUST be MY bag we are all waiting for. Come to find out later that was wishful thinking. I sat down and settled in to what I hoped would be a relaxing flight. I opened my backpack, reached in for my book and found a soaking wet book. Oh my Lord, what happened? In my mad dash sprint to the gate, my water bottle popped open and 15 ounces of water poured into my backpack. Not only did I have a brand new book, but a journal that contained the first couple chapters of MY book . . . . and my beloved new MacBook Pro. I pulled the laptop out and water poured out of it. My heart sank into my toes. But there was nothing I could do for the next few hours.

I got to my room after 10PM, hungry, tired and with no luggage. All I could do was immediately turn on my computer and see what happens. The first thing I notice is the screen is pretty much destroyed. But it fired up so it wasn’t a total loss. However, none of the applications would start. My next course of action: call Karlo and cry.

After tossing and turning all night, worrying about my computer and how I would explain this accident, I had to get up early and run down to the convention center to bust my butt for 9 straight hours. I won’t even bore you with those details. On the brighter note, after taking a hairdryer to my computer for 15 minutes last night, it did fire up and the apps work today. I’m thanking my lucky stars for that. Perhaps I can just get away with a new screen. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Off to Hotlanta

The depression is starting to sink in. I hate this feeling of knowing that impending travel is coming up all too soon. Given the fact that I only have half the weekend you would think I would really enjoy the time I do have at home. But I can't get my mind off the dread of driving to the airport tomorrow. This stinks.

Because I'm getting ripped off this weekend I decided to take Friday off. It was great. I did nothing productive at all. I expected rain, but was thrilled when the sun was out for most of the day. I hung out on the deck, read magazines, played with my dogs, just simply relaxed. I so needed that mental vacation. It was nice to spend some good quality time with myself.

Today I tried to spend some good quality time with Karlo. We started off the morning talking to the wood stove salesman that was nice enough to come out to our house. We wanted to order the biggest stove we could possibly fit to keep this house as toasty as possible without oil this winter. The stove is now ordered and we can finally rest knowing that it will be installed before the cold weather starts. After that it was time to test out our new bike route. The weather stayed perfect for our entire three hour ride and it was awesome. I would SWEAR that we rode all the way to Vermont or New Hampshire. I still can't get over how spectacularly beautiful it is out here. Love it. Actually, we loved it so much we went out for more after lunch, only this time with the help of a motor.

And now I'm all packed up and getting sadder by the minute. Tomorrow afternoon I take off (all alone) for Atlanta. Not the most ideal destination for mid-August. Drat. Not that it matters much because I'll be working 10 hour days, in the air conditioning. I'm bringing Mac and hopefully I'll find some time to blog so that I can complain publicly about my crappy week. I bet you can't wait for that . . .

Gup is Still Alive – and Growing

I took Penni’s advice and found a real guppy nursery. We just happened to be in civilization (Manchester) yesterday so I took advantage of the stores. Not only did I go to Petsmart, but I also slipped into Joanns. What a treat. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a craft store that I forgot what it felt like. Too bad I had Grumpy outside, sitting on his bike, no doubt tapping his foot and staring at his watch.

I didn’t really get to enjoy my short craft shopping. I was on a mission to get some fabric to make ‘slip covers’ for our multiple dog beds. You know, these pets of mine sure are causing me a lot of work. Not sure when I’ll find the time to sew the slip covers, but at least we got the nursery all set up. And that was no easy task. Our tank is about an inch thick so Karlo had to do some crafty tricks to get it in there. But he did and now the guppy is safe and sound in fresh water. I wish I had a web cam set up on the tank so I can watch him/her grow next week . . . and monitor the care that Karlo will be providing.

Oh, and did you know that baby guppies are called ‘fry?’ I hope Karlo doesn’t get any ideas while I’m gone and use Gup for a pizza topping.

When Will I Learn?

There are some life lessons they just don’t sink in. No matter how many times I think I learned them, I keep making the same mistakes. For instance, when will I learn that it is NOT a good idea to play catch with Karlo . . . with a medicine ball? I have tried this stunt a few other times in the past and every time resulted in the same scenario – me in pain. Yesterday afternoon I felt as though I was in a car wreck and my back hurt so bad last night I could barely get off the couch. The next time I get the urge to let him whip a medicine ball at me I truly hope I remember the lesson once learned.

Then there’s the lesson that I should never leave food or drink unattended anywhere in the house. Karlo has an amazing extra sensory for anything edible or drinkable. (Is that a real word?) I can leave a can of seltzer on the counter and he will come up from the basement, drink it, and return to the basement without me even knowing. Then when I stroll back into the kitchen to get my drink, it’s gone. Do you have any idea how annoying this is? I have successfully trained two dogs not to swipe food off the counter and coffee table. Why can't I train my husband? Hmmmm, maybe I should buy another zapping collar.

Last night I prepared a small bowl of grapes for myself. This was going to be my special little treat during the Olympics. I washed them and set them aside for later. No big surprise what happened there. Uuuuugh, I could smack him. It is physically impossible for him to be exposed to food and not eat it. I decided to take revenge on his bowl of ice cream. I gobbled down as much as I could, risking the inevitable stomachache, for no other reason but to eat HIS food. That should teach him a lesson! ( . . . as I curled up in pain from the stomachache). Who should have learned the lesson there????? I give up.

Miracle Baby

I'm very pleased to report that one of my baby guppies is still alive! After accepting the fact that I blew it and let those poor little creatures get eaten alive, then suffering the heartbreak it caused . . . I took one last hopeful glance at the tank last night and to my surprise I found a tiny little guppy still swimming. I was ecstatic (as excited as one can get over a fish). I jumped up and down and begged Karlo to help me. He has notoriously been against having the fish and is never eager to do any fish-related activities. But after seeing my excitement, how could he not help me?

So we devised a plan to save the guppy. We got a plastic zip lock bag and somehow managed to maneuver it in that tiny 2 inch thick tank, to not only fill the bag with water, but catch the little bugger in the process. So now "Gup" is swimming safely around in his own little tank. I even threw in some gravel to make it feel more homey. I am praying that it survives – especially under Karlo's care while I'm away. I wonder if caring for my newborn guppy is grounds to get me out of this upcoming business trip . . .

Weekend Report

Another great weekend has quickly slipped by. I'm starting to get that sinking feeling that the summer has passed all too fast and we didn't get to do enough. Next weekend I have to leave for a business trip and will be working the entire following weekend. Few things are worse than work robbing me of my precious summer weekends. I hate it.

So we tried to make the most of this weekend. We met some new biking friends that live in Eastford and accompanied them on a fantastic 40 mile route through Woodstock. It was so beautiful - the scenery, the weather, the company. It was the definition of the perfect ride. And Paula didn't bring her camera. uuuugh.

We had enough time left in the day to actually enjoy our house. We lounged on the deck, we took the dogs for a hike, I swung on my rubber horse, Karlo played with his bow and arrows. Life was great. We even took Coop out for a spin to grab dinner. And I ended the night watching the Olympic beach volleyball on TV. Pure bliss.

On Sunday we did something that I always wanted to do. At Zion National Park there is a trail called "The Narrows." It is nothing more than a shallow swift running river and the so called trail takes you straight upstream. The challenge of the slippery rocks and the swift running water makes it quite interesting. We reenacted this trail in our own backyard!

Here's me and Peanut navigating our way through the shallowest water:

Not all of us where smart enough to wear cropped pants:

Sometimes we needed to take a break and sit down:

Some of us just gave up and laid down:

Fun was had by all!

Update on the Fish Front

My poor adorable Fred didn't even survive 24 hours. How sad. I had to flush him yesterday and what is a Ginger without a Fred? I was not only sad, but slightly ticked. Yes, I know that the pet stores offer a 24 hour guarantee on their fish, but it would cost me more in gas than the $3 cost of the fish to drive back to the pet store. Not to mention nearly 2 hours out of my day. So I resolved myself to the fact that I got ripped off and moved on.

But wait . . . Ginger looked different. She was very . . . lets say "puffy," when we got her. I took a picture when I first dropped her into the tank. I would say she looks down right pregnant. Wouldn't you?

And not too long after flushing Fred, I went back to check on my tank and low and behold, there are tiny little baby guppies swimming around. I could spot 4 of them all together. I just couldn't believe my eyes. I went from getting ripped off to having 4 bonus fish. Now I know the chances of any of them surviving are slim, seeing as the rest of those evil fish are trying to eat the babies. I wonder if there is something I can do to ensure their survival. I fear there's not and this story will also have an unhappy ending. Sometimes I wonder why I own fish. Seems to be one disappointment after another. Pray for my guppy babies!

Can Fish Get Seasick?

This is what keeps me up at night. I can't seem to just sit still and be. My mind never shuts off. I actually ponder these things.

Karlo and I planned to go out dancing this evening. I was so excited. I wore the perfect outfit (layers) for outdoor nighttime dancing and planned our entire evening out. Since we had to drive to Hartford to dance, I thought we would kill a few hours shopping and dining in Manchester. I had a long list of errands to run and was looking forward of an evening with Karlo. So far I lost him to the woods and his chainsaw every night this week.

So you can imagine how disappointed I was to get the email that announced the dance was canceled. Apparently the crazy storms last night caused the CT River to swell so much that the park was flooded. Sigh. There went my fun night. So as a consolation prize, Karlo took me to the pet store to buy some new fish. I lost my male guppy weeks ago and getting to a pet store within an hour of getting home almost never happens. So we got my fish and I was happy. This time I bought a male and a female. A cute little couple.

I held them carefully on the drive home. I peered into their tiny little eyes and waited for names to pop into my head. I decided to name the couple Fred & Ginger. They are my dancing fish and they are beautiful. I tried really hard to get some pictures of them, but the pics didn't do them justice. I immediately bonded with my new fish, as I always do, and worried for the rest of the ride that Karlo's bad driving was going to make them sea sick. Hence the big debate of whether or not fish can get sea sick. I still think they can. ANYTHING can get sea sick with Karlo's driving!

Comic Relief

Work has been such a pressure cooker this week that I haven’t had much time to blog, or even think about blogging. It seems I went straight from the Hell of Karlo’s book to the Hell of the craziness at work. Thank goodness I had a vacation in between.

What better time for some comic relief? I adore Jeff Dunham so much and I recently bought two of his videos. I swear I can watch them every night and never stop laughing. You might not recognize his name, but I’m betting you heard of Achmed the Dead Terrorist. “Silence . . . I keel you!” OK, perhaps you think I’m crazy at this point. Just watch this:



Check out his web site at www.jeffdunham.com for more info on Jeff and his other hilarious characters. If you have a bad day, just jump on YouTube and search for him. Most of the performance videos are up there. They are all sure to give you a good laugh, over and over.

Is It Connecticut or Is It My Dogs?

What exactly am I more allergic to, my dogs or CT? Once again I traveled away from CT and was blissfully sinus-headache-free the entire time. I'm getting so accustomed to living with nauseating jaw pains and headaches that when I have a few days without it I can't even believe how good it feels. This time was no exception. I had 4.5 straight days of feeling great in Vermont. Then, within 3 hours of arriving home I started to get my first sinus pressure headache. I know that I'm allergic to my dogs and I know the house needed vacuuming. There was no big mystery there. But please explain to me why I wake up feeling fine and then by noon I start to feel terrible at work. My dogs are not at work. Why do the headaches start at the office? Is it CT that I'm allergic to? Or maybe it's work that I'm allergic to. I'm tempted to retire, buy a poodle, and move out of CT.

Last Moments of Vacation Slipping Away

I hate this feeling. Our vacation is coming to an end and I’m not happy about it. What a blissful week of not dealing with work and Karlo’s book (which by the way is officially done). We got the proofs from the printer during vacation. Not the most ideal situation, but luckily everything went OK and didn’t cause any undue stress. We actually lounged by the pool and proofed all the pages. It was actually kind of nice that we signed off on it during vacation and feel that immense sense of relief.

Coming home from vacation on a Friday was the best. We had a week of vacation plus a long weekend. Ahhhhhhhhhh. This weekend we managed to go kayaking, biking, hiking and took a great motorcycle ride . . . to the outlet stores . . . where I got new clothes. I wish every weekend was just like this one.

Here’s some pics from today’s ride:



But reality is now setting in. It’s time to go iron my clothes and get ready for the work week. It’s a good thing that Karlo and I work together and he will drag me to the office tomorrow. I have zero motivation to go. I can’t even imagine what this would be like if I didn’t love my job. Sigh.

Dancing Fools

We survived our ballroom boot camp and had a great time. Not counting the small near melt-down on Wednesday, we managed to do very good. You would be amazed at how hard it is to learn how to dance . . . with a partner. Karlo and I have tackled just about every other team activity. We ride a tandem bike and a tandem kayak - both of which can be relationship breakers. You would think that dancing would be easy for us, but it wasn't!

Then again, we never take any ‘easy’ vacations so this was no different. It was definitely a challenge and we rose to it. Every day included at least 6 hours of classroom instruction. We didn't have real dance shoes and as a result my feet were barking. Plus the rooms were air conditioned for polar bears. Thank goodness for the gift shop and my new wardrobe of long sleeve Killington shirts/sweatshirts. Here I am smiling because it was the first time all week that I had bare arms and no goosebumps.

On Wednesday and Thursday the true stars showed up and what a treat that was. Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose De Camps, the U.S. National Professional Champions in American Rhythm and Mambo were there hosting workshops and they also put on a performance on the last night. Both of these dancers appeared on Dancing with the Stars. Karlo and I took their Swing workshop and amazingly we were able to keep up. I got to dance with Joanna!!! How exciting that was. I got some pointers from one of the best dancers in the world. I think just touching her helped me. Sorry ladies, I didn’t get to touch Jose. Bummer.

I still can’t believe that we performed in the big show on the last night. I never dreamed Karlo would agree to doing that, but he did and we managed to do a good job. Sorry that I don’t have a video of it (yet), but we looked something like this:

Ok, maybe it didn’t look exactly like that, but that was a nice fantasy.

We really did have a great time. So great, in fact, that Karlo wants to go back! I’m still trying to get over that fact. Now that we’re actually dancing I hope that we continue the trend and make a better effort to practice our new skills.

Here is a little movie I made for our new dance friends: