Pressure Cooker

Blogging may be a challenge this week. Actually life is a challenge this week. Work is just about to the point of breaking me. We are getting ready for our biggest trade show in Chicago and I'm convinced that there just aren't enough days between now and show time for me to accomplish all that I need to. I'm a certified chicken with my head cut off at the office and I'm wondering how long I can endure this pace before falling flat on my face.

And it's not easy either because I'm in the perfect position to take all the blame if things don't go well, but yet receive none of the credit if they do. I've been down this road before in a different job and it didn't end well.

So on the back of the motorcycle this afternoon I couldn't stop thinking about work. It's a common occurrence there days. Work monopolizes all of my waking thoughts (and most likely my sleeping thoughts too, but luckily I can't remember those). Every year we are tasked to come up with our 'personal goals' for the following year. This is such a ridiculous BS exercise, but it occurred to me that this year I'm going to have some good goals. They are as follows: (I need to document them here so I don't forget come goal making time!)

1. Make the people that matter understand that the amount of hours you sit in the building is not nearly as important as the amount of work you produce.
2. Get recognized and rewarded for all the hard work I do and the extra miles that I go.
3. Try really hard not to get so frustrated that I quit!

Those should keep me busy all year . . .

In Search of Fun

As the last weeks of summer are slipping away I'm starting to feel this panic that we didn't do enough. I don't want the summer to end and Lord knows I want to make the most of what little summer time we have left. I would say we did a good job this weekend at packing in the fun. Don't forget this year was supposed to be all about finding and having fun . . .

Friday night we went to a dinner party and two important things happened there. Karlo and I got inspired to both run and cook. Two things that I would normally otherwise hate doing, but strangely I couldn't wait to try both. And we did this weekend. Not only did we have the best run of our lives after our 10 minute running lecture, but we also cooked up some mean Hungarian Goulash. yum yum. We need to hang with these inspiring friends more often.

Saturday was all about playing . . . playing on our bikes, playing in the woods, playing on the deck, playing music. OK, maybe we didn't actually play the music, but we went to UCONN to watch my nephew play in the marching band. What a hoot that was. First of all, just being on campus is a thrill for me. But watching John play in the enormous band and hearing the Husky fight song. God I loved it. I still have the "Connecticut Uuuuuu Conn Huskies" song in my head.

Sunday started off very leisurely. We had no plans and a nice visit from friends. That forced us to lounge around on the porch and relax. That was so nice. Before we knew it it was lunch time and one minute we were eating sandwiches on the deck and the next minute we were on our motorcycles heading South, in search of fun . . .


And we found it. We drove down to Watch Hill, RI. We wanted to watch some waves on the ocean. We totally lucked out with parking. Of course it helps when you're on two wheels. First stop was the gelato shop. Second stop was waddling in the water.

My darn feet were so hot in my motorcycle boots I thought they would explode. I tried and tried to convince Karlo to take his boots off, but he was being stubborn (big surprise, I know).

But look how's he carrying mine for me. Such a nice guy. By some miracle I finally got him to agree to waddling in the water with me.

We walked and walked along the beach and it was great. We didn't want to go home. The beach was so beautiful.

And thank God our boots were right were we left them when we got back. I never would have heard the end of that one!

The traffic driving back home was Hell, but I got a lot of practice at driving at such slow speeds the bike wants to tip over. And I strengthened my gripping muscles in my left hand by 300%. It was all worth it because we had some much appreciated FUN :-)

To see a few more pics from the day please click here.

Egg Scare

Lisa left a comment on my last posting saying that she’s proud of me for my adventurous cooking. I’m glad somebody can appreciate it because I was, indeed, proud of myself. With the recent egg scare, Karlo and I are really in trouble. Eggs are our fall back, fail safe dinner solution more nights than we care to admit. But now Karlo is insisting that we shouldn’t have eggs. Lord knows we don’t want to get sick with bad eggs. And how can you trust that the egg police know all the ones that should be recalled?

That led me to look back at this photo and marvel at the difference in eggs. Which egg stands out from the others? Which egg is more likely to be tainted? Which ones look fresher?


Isn’t it amazing the difference in color between a fresh egg (orange) that was pulled from the chicken’s rear end days ago from a local farm (actually from our friend’s back yard) and the eggs that were bought in a grocery store (yellow)? I never realized how different they were, both in looks and in taste. It’s times like these that I wish we had some chickens running around the back yard. But I suppose having the chicken’s running around our friends' back yard will have to do. We can’t possibly survive two weeks without any eggs!

Spices For Dummies

Two nights in a row I found myself standing over my spice draw completely perplexed as to which spice to pick to season my dish. That's when it hit me that I have no clue in the world about spices. I mean I truly don't know one from the other. Unless I'm following a recipe that specifically tells me which one and how much, I almost never reach for a spice. With all the choices how on earth are you supposed to know which one goes with what?

Last night we were making sweet potato fries - one of my favorite things on Earth. One time when Jessica was visiting she made it and it looked so incredibly easy. She just cut the potatoes, drizzled some olive oil on them and them seasoned them with salt, pepper . . . and some mystery spice. What is rosemary, oregano, basil? I hadn't a clue, but I somehow picked rosemary and was later told that was indeed the correct choice. Wow, beginners luck.

Then tonight I was trying to grill some eggplant. I never attempted such a feat and I knew that without any seasoning the eggplant would be blah and less then stellar. But again I was faced with picking the right combination of things. Karlo gave me the advice of smelling different spices to see what goes with what. Is he kidding? That was no help at all. I decided to pick garlic powder and . . . . well, I already forgot. It may have been oregano, but I'm not really sure.

I just wonder how people get the experience to know what goes with what when they are not following a recipe. Was there some Spices 101 class that I missed in Home Ec as a kid? Why am I so dysfunctional when it comes to spices? As a joke I googled "Spices for Dummies" and low and behold, there's a real book with that title. Sounds like it may be a good investment for me.

The Perfect Saturday

This past Saturday was the third gallery opening and it was the best one yet. We had a steady stream of visitors all day and it seems that they all overlapped at the same time in the middle of the day. It was busy for sure and I’m happy to report that I made lots of sales too. In addition to the gallery doing well, I had a ball visiting with the friends that came. My only regret is that it seems I never have enough time to really visit with everyone. I wish I could have stopped the clock or made everyone come at different times so I could spend more time with each. But luckily I had my gallery assistant helping to entertain visitors.

Early in the day I did get some quality time with Tina and her kids. That was so nice. Karlo took his first willing victim “G” (see, I paid attention to the Nicknames) for a ATV ride while the rest of us girls battled it out with ladder ball. Next it was T’s turn on the ATV. We’ll call this terribly burry photo “Flying T.” They were going to fast to capture with my point and shoot.


Apparently T had so much fun she wanted to go for a second ride. I have no idea how she managed to still be smiling and hugging Karlo at the end. I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day after my last ATV ride. Only Penni may be able to relate to that statement.


One huge relief was having ‘Auntie Jean’ visit us and see how our dog’s really live. Karlo and I have been stressing over this for quite some time. When you adopt a greyhound you have to swear on the Holy Bible and sign documents promising that you will NEVER let them off a leash. I sort of had my fingers crossed behind my back when I signed those forms because I think it’s BS. We have proved three times now that greyhounds are no different than other dogs and they can be trained to be off a leash just like any other dog. When I see them bouncing and playing around the yard freely, having a ball it gives me such joy. I so wanted ‘Auntie Jean' (Peanut’s foster mom and all around greyhound ambassador) to see it too. After the initial shock of it all she was fine with it. So now the secret is finally out of the bag and she didn't have a heart attack when witnessing something as shocking as this: (very bad pic of Cooper chasing the ATV)

I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Thanks to all who came out.

Hungarian Lesson #1

Since it was so much fun to ask Karlo the meanings of all my nicknames, and the TV murmuring in the background during dinner tonight talked about a guy that could count to 10 in 40 different languages, I was prompted to ask Karlo to teach me how to count in Hungarian. Nothing gets us laughing like me trying to mimic Hungarian words. As a matter of fact the guy on TV was asked which language (of the 40 he can count in) was the hardest and he said Mandarin Chinese. Karlo heard that and said, “Obviously he doesn’t know Hungarian.” I heard somewhere once that Hungarian is indeed one of the the hardest languages in the world to speak. So it’s not just me that simply can not do it.

Our little after-dinner-lesson led us to all kinds of laughing. So much, in fact, that I now I have a stomach ache! But anyway, I was positively miserable at both pronunciation as well as memorization. I determined that I’m a very visual person and I need to see the written words. I proceeded to write the words down and that gave Karlo a good laugh. He let me write down ‘my versions’ of the words and then he wrote down the real spelling. I personally thought I did pretty good!

Just in case you want to try to learn along with me . . . here is lesson number #1 (click on image to enlarge)

Numbers to 10 . . . followed by Colors

Next week we’ll start with verbs, or other words that involve a dozen consonants with no vowels.

Pet Names

The other day I was thinking about all the silly pet names we have for our dogs. It all started with Bentley, who quickly became Bents for short. Then that morphed into Benci, which is a Hungarian name (Karlo’s cousin’s name). And his cutesy name was Benci Wenci . . . then I would add “with the meatball eyes” because you know . . . he had meatball eyes!


Next came Peanut, AKA the Nut, or Nuts for short. But of course we couldn’t stop there. She is also fondly known (and responses quite promptly to) Stinky, Slinky, and Princess.

Now Cooper is on the scene and his obvious nickname is Coop, but that quickly became Coopy, Coopy Poopy, Pooper, and of course Pooper Scooper. Yes, I actually call him Pooper Scooper and he comes running. Actually he’ll come happily running to anything that rhymes with Cooper . . . he’s just so excited to be called.

So this thought process also led me to think about the list of nicknames that Karlo calls me. For years he lovingly called me all these names and finally I asked him what they all meant. You ready for this? Here’s the list:

Kacsa - [pronounced Ka-tcha] - the literal translation for this is duck. Funny how he refuses to let me have a duck, but he calls me a duck. Go figure.

Tucsok matyi - [pronounced tu-chuck-mutt-chee] Tucsok means cricket and Karlo said that he just likes the sound of the word. Not really intending to call me a cricket. And the second part is just a nickname for a real Hungarian name which in English is Matias. OK, whatever the heck that is supposed to be all about.

Julcsa - [pronounced uewl-cha] This one makes the cricket sound good. Julsca is the pet name that you would give a cow. Yes, a COW. Sort of like our “Bessie” but it gets even better. Karlo explained that you would use a different variation of the name . . in his exact words, “ . . . if you were talking lovingly to the cow. But if the cow was being bad and you were yelling at it, you would say Uewl CHAAAAAA.” So not only is he calling me a cow, but he’s calling me a bad cow! And this does make me stop to wonder what on earth a cow could be doing that is bad . . . sitting on the furniture, walking over cars, stealing shoes, chewing homework . . .

Cincy-pincy - [pronounced tzincee-pincee] - That first word is pronounced similar to the Italian word for aunt Zizi. I can’t even spell it phonetically. This one loosely translates to little or tiny cat. Given that Karlo doesn’t like cats, this too makes me wonder.

And for his English nicknames . . . he also calls me ‘SweetP’ (finally something truly sweet) and also ‘bad chicken.’ Good grief.

I think I’m going to go work on a new list of new nicknames for him.

So what are your family nicknames? Come on, I told you mine. Nothing can be worse then these!

Party Weekend

This weekend Karlo got overwhelmed by our social calendar. He simply couldn’t process three events in three days. Granted that is much more ‘getting out’ than we are used to. And to think I never snapped one singe picture. Shame on me. So let me give you some pictures in words. You will have to use your imagination a bit.

[First picture goes here]
The Little Big Band playing on the lawn of the lovely Roseland Cottage in Woodstock. A handful of couples (NOT including Karlo and I) swing dancing on the grass. Yeah, I know . . . why do we bother with all of our dance lessons when we never actually dance? In my defense there was no way I was getting up in front of all those people and dancing with motorcycle boots on! But the picture was lovely, no?

[Next picture goes here]
Various folks sitting by a bonfire at dusk, drinking beer, and listening to live music at a party in Union. Karlo and I felt slightly out of place at this event, given that Karlo could have been the father of most of the party-goers. But that didn’t spoil our good time. I was just happy to be near the fire. Karlo was just happy to be gobbling down brownies ;-) If nothing else, it inspired me to pick up my bass last night.

[Next picture goes here]
An enormous pig, with a cherry for an eye and a big apple in its mouth, being smoked on a mobile BBQ. This was actually quite the scene and I really should have gotten my camera out for it. Not something you see every day. Yesterday we went to a pig roast welcome home party for a friend’s son who just came back from Afghanistan.

[Last picture here]
Another one that I really wish I took. My ladder ball partner standing by the game with the game balls wrapped around his head, hanging over his ears like huge earrings. That was too cute. I’m officially addicted to ladder ball and must get the game before Saturday!

What's Next?

After years of nearly ripping apart my eardrums with my constant itching I finally broke down and went to see a doctor today. I truly can't believe that it's taken me this long. The constant annoyance of the intensely itchy ears is sometimes more than I can bare. I wake up every single night from a deep sleep in order to itch them. I go at it with such fury that I wake Karlo up, who in turn punches me to get to me stop. It's the same old story every day. Karlo has threatened to put me in a straight jacket. You should see me trying to drive my motorcycle while trying to reach under my helmet to get at my ears. It's a dangerous situation. Why I waited this long I'll never know.

So I went to see the doc in hopes of getting the magical ointment that makes the itching stop. As it turns out the itching is caused from an allergy. Great. That is just what I need–yet another annoying allergy. I'm already allergic to just about everything that grows outdoors. Oh and then there's my dogs and dust. What's left?

Yeast. That is what's left and it's in EVERYTHING that I consume. The doctor started off by saying, "The good news is that you haven't really damaged your eardrums. The bad news is . . . " The minute he launched into the bad news portion and started to list 'bread, cheese . . . " I stopped him right there and said, "Please tell me that you have a pill that will allow to me to continue to eat what I want and not rip my ears off." I mean come on, how on Earth can one (an Italian bread and cheese loving one) give up yeast?

So we'll see if my miracle drops work. It's time to stick them in my ears now so I better get to it. I wonder what my next allergy will be . . . perhaps I'll be informed next year that I'm allergic to water. Or maybe air for heaven's sake. Life is not getting easier as I get older, that is for sure.

The Penguin Story

Sometime last Summer I had the strangest nightmare that involved giant penguins. Karlo and I were on his motorcycle driving either to or from work and there were these mobster penguins lurking around every corner. They were each about 3 feet tall and were shooting at us with big rifles. It was incredibly realistic. You would think these would be cartoon penguins in the dream, but no, they were totally real. I didn’t tell Karlo about the dream, but when we hopped onto the bike for our morning commute I said, “Watch out for the penguins.” Nothing like completely confusing Karlo first thing in the morning. It’s usually pretty easy to do.

So later that day I told both Karlo and Jill the story about the giant shooting penguins dream . . . and it’s been a long running joke ever since. Once day during the winter Jill and her husband popped over early on a Sunday. I had to scramble to get dressed because I didn’t want to greet them at the door in my PJs - especially since the PJs had penguins all over them! I figured I would never live that down and it would be pointed out as the cause for the penguin nightmares.

Jill’s daughter will always think of me when she sees penguins now. She even gave me one of her silly string bracelets. Of course it’s in the shape of, you guessed it:



Then she drew me a special ‘shooting penguin’ picture and when her aunt saw it, she of course questioned it. So the story now went to their extended family . . . a few days later said aunt is shopping at Marshalls and runs into a shirt with giant penguins on it and proceeds to BUY IT FOR ME. All this from one silly dream. This sure has been one long running joke. Before you know it I’ll have an entire penguin collection. Pretty soon I’m going to want one for a pet. Maybe some time after I get my duck.

Zenful Weekend

Sunday was our road trip day to the beach, but now that I think about it, most of Saturday was also a road trip day. We started off in the morning with our new bicycle route. We did this ride the weekend before and I enjoyed it so much I just couldn’t wait to do it all over again. The first time we were slackers and drove our car to the center of town to begin and end our ride. That shaved about 8-10 miles off the ride and granted us a downhill finish rather than an uphill finish. Given this was a new unchartered route for us we decided to play it safe - something that we don’t normally do. And as it turned out the ride felt like a walk in the park and we were both embarrassed to climb into the car at the end. I think just the newest of the route is what made it feel so easy. When you ride the same route over and over you get way too familiar with ever little nuance. I know exactly where every hill is, the degree of incline, which gear I ‘should’ be in, etc. It sometimes takes the fun out of biking. Heaven forbid I find myself in a lower-than-usual gear. That just ruins the day. But on a brand new route there is no ‘normal gear’ to strive for. I just pick the gear that feels right at the time without much thought.

So this time we departed from home on our bikes. The weather was perfect and I had my new favorite thing in the world (my Droid) strapped to my aero bars. I’m amazed that I haven’t crashed my bike yet due to the fact that I’m constantly looking at, what is now my on-board computer. That thing is simply amazing. Not only does it give me a map and track our route as we ride, but it tells me how fast we are going, how many miles we have already traveled, and even how many calories I burned. Love it!

And it’s amazing at how the ride we thought was so easy wasn’t really all that easy after all. I truly thought the ride was ‘pretty flat’ but at the end I hit this handy little button on my phone to show me the graph of the route. This is what it looked like:


Those spikes are all the hills we went up and down. Gadzooks. Over 800 calories burned. It’s amazing how I didn’t remember all the uphills. I kept saying, “I don’t remember this. Are we going the right way?” All I remembered after the first ride was how pretty it was and how much I enjoyed the new scenery.

Well enough pedaling for the day. We got home, changed clothes and jumped on our motorcycles for the rest of the day . . . riding in search of ice cream. Now THAT was pure enjoyment. Who cares about the hills when you can just open up the throttle? Nothing like taking a guilt-free motorcycle ride after huffing it up all those hills on our bicycles.

And at the very end of the day, in my meditative state, I made that little rock sculpture pictured above. OMMMM

A Day at the Beach

I’m skipping ahead to Sunday because it’s more interesting and includes photos. Any story is better when accompanied by photos!

My cousin Jamie is staying down in Newport with his family on vacation for a week so Karlo and I decided to crash his vacation. I was just looking for a good reason to take a topless road trip so off we went. It didn’t start off too good as the temps were in the 60s, no sun was in sight, and I was shivering in the car. But I stuck it out. There was no way I was whimping out and putting that top back up.

Thankfully the temperature gauge went steadily up and before long we were baking in the glory of the Newport traffic. Thames Street never disappoints if you’re looking to take a 2 mile per hour cruise. Luckily we found Jamie before we both melted into puddles on our seats and my good ole cuz hooked me up with some nice free parking. That was pretty sweet.

We spent the first hour strolling up and down Thames Street (one of my favorite Newport past times). Jamie and I had a ball on our “do-it-yourself-not-so-official-Kelby-Photo-Walk.” It seems Jamie and I can talk endlessly about cameras, lens, and photography. Lizzy, Jamie’s oldest, didn’t seem to mind and Julia, the youngest, did a great job at keeping Karlo entertained. I wish I could say it was the other way around, but I’m pretty sure the 5 year old was babysitting the 50 year old!

Karlo posing on the balcony.

From there it was time to hit the beach. Jamie told me to ‘just follow’ him to the parking lot at the beach. We didn’t get 2 feet out of the driveway before we got split up and Lizzy and I were lost. Lizzy insisted in getting a ride in the convertible and now she was my only hope at reuniting with everyone in the van. Jamie tried to call me, but that was no help as my tiny little car has no room for my purse so my phone was ringing away–in the trunk. Not so helpful. Imagine a car that makes a MINI look and feel like a mini-van. Go figure.

Well, we managed to reunite and got to the beach all together. I was very pleased about our previous free parking spree as the beach parking cost $20. Highway robbery as far as I was concerned, but after scoring myself a front row spot where I can keep an eye on baby from the beach I wasn’t too upset. You know, I just wanted to watch as the seagulls pooped into the car. OK, that didn’t really happen, but I was convinced it was going to.


We hung out on the beach for a good long while, had some lunch, watched the kids play in the water and caught up on each other’s lives. It sure was nice. Karlo and I squeaked in a walk on the Cliff Walk, I guess because too many hours had passed without exercise! All in all the day was really nice. Makes me sad to think that the summer is already almost over.

To see more pics from our day, please click here.

Little Old Lady

I’m not prepared for my weekend report, but to fill the empty space on my blog I thought I would post a few pics that are sure to crack you up. Lord knows I laugh out load every single time I see these . . .

On Saturday Karlo says to me, “Take a look at Peanut.” I look over at her bed and there she is, looking like a little old lady. I was so happy that my camera just happened to be sitting right on the counter. Some how she managed to pull her bandana up over her ears like a little babushka. Holy cow, how cute is she?

This was her 'sporty look.'

We have no idea how she did this, nor do we know how she put it back in place. We just left her like that as we went for a motorcycle ride and when we got back the bandana was right back in place. It would have taken one swat of her paw to knock it off, but she’s a girl and she truly loves to wear clothes!

My Theory Just Gets Stronger

Last night really reinforced my theory that God had a flawed life design. It’s bad enough that we humans can’t go outside and enjoy recreational activities without the constant annoyance of bugs buzzing, but when these stinkin’ little things take away our basic human needs, there is a serious problem!

Last night I laid in bed and simply marveled at the fact that a minuscule little creature could completely ruin our night. One single dreaded stray mosquito found its way to our bedroom and proceeded to buzz by our heads all night. That dammed thing has about a million square inches of air space to fly around in inside our house, but yet it needed to spend most of the night within one foot of our heads. I drew the sheet up over my ears, trying not to suffocate while Karlo swatted around aimlessly slapping everything in sight. He turned the lights on and off so many times my eyeballs may never recover from the shocks. Never did catch that freakin’ thing.

Not that it mattered anyway. In one single night we had a breech in our security system that caused a loud series of beeps to our bedroom. That sure does get the heart pounding in the middle of the night. Then, while we laid there for hours trying to ignore the mosquito, the stupid driveway alarm chimes went off, followed an hour later by the dogs barking at each other. What a disaster of a night. We both got no more than 4 hours of sleep and are now completely exhausted, partially due to a tiny little BUG. I need to have a word with God about this problem.

Footnote: As I laid in bed, sleepless for hours on end, the Bestie Boys song "No Sleep to Brooklyn" played endlessly in my head.

Random Observations

Last night I tried really hard to shut my brain off from ‘work mode.’ Karlo and I drive side by side in the car, without saying a word to each other. We are both so far off in our own little worlds. At one point I asked him, “What are you thinking about?” and he said, “Work.” I knew the feeling. That was exactly where I was too and it’s pathetic. Is it not bad enough we have to spend 9 hours a day in the office working like dogs? Then we leave the building to go home (physically), but mentally we’re still there. I hate it.

So I tried to force myself not to think about work during our hike. That’s when stupid random observations come to me. The strongest one being the big flaw with God’s life design. Something went serious wrong with His plan. How is it possible that the smallest and most insignificant creatures – the lowest ones on the food chain, put here only to serve as snacks for insects – can completely and utterly ruin the day of the highest creatures on the food chain. Doesn’t that just seem ridiculous to you? Here we are, the superior humans . . . nothing else can compare to us (OK, maybe the monkeys) and yet we can’t figure out a way to eliminate the constant annoyance of those freakin’ tiny bugs from buzzing all over heads, into our eyes and ears. They totally ruin my good time and it drives me insane. I get mad at the bugs and I launch into this deep analysis entitled, “What the hell was God thinking when He made this plan?”

From there I started to think about retirement and where I want to live. Karlo and I have been thinking about this lately, pondering where we want to be. Do we want to live by the sea, in the mountains, in the desert, close to civilization, near big attractions? We just can’t seem to decide. But last night I think I made one huge decision. I want to live where there are far less bugs. Forget school systems, tax rates, crime rate, etc. All I want to know is the strength of the flying bug population.

My other random observation came during dinner. We went to a local roadside shack for dinner and ordered fish burgers. I had this vision in my head of the fish burgers we recently had in Mystic and I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into it. But when it arrived I was quite disappointed. Instead of a freshly battered and fried piece of fish it was a perfect greasy square of ‘fish parts.’ This may have been one step up from McDonalds, but I doubt it. I still can’t believe I ate that ‘thing.’ And that’s when it hit me that I will never again eat any square fish or poultry - or meat of any kind. If the food processing plants are going to work hard to make perfectly square fish why don’t they at least squish the parts into fish shape forms?

A Lesson to be Learned

Do you remember back to when I just HAD to have one of those fancy new iPads? It was simply killing me that I didn't get one the second they came out. I would look longingly at anyone who had one and I it took all the will power I had to NOT buy one. Somehow I let my logic take over, and when I really thought about it, I decided to first get a Droid phone and then wait to see what the Google alternative would be to the iPad. That sufficiently cooled my jets on the iPad.

Now I finally have my beloved Droid phone and guess what? The thrill of having an iPad is just so yesterday. The truth is that I've had one (sitting in my office in a box) for over a week. I never mentioned it because I never even took the time to open it. Hard to imagine, I know. But on Friday I finally opened the darn package and I had the thing at home all weekend. See, here's proof:

And I am just so underwhelmed. And sooooo proud of myself for not buying one months ago. So now I have a 'company-issue ipad.' Yeah, I guess that is yet another 'work perk' to add to my work perks list. I can do what I want with it and take it home whenever I so desire, but I'm trying to figure out why I would want to. So far it's caused more frustration than pleasure (living up to my Apply expectations of lock-down control infringing on my every desire) and I don't see me buying one any time soon. $500 saved.

I think I learned a valuable lesson here to force myself into a waiting period every time I get the burning desire to buy something unnecessary. Too bad I learned this lesson after my latest car purchase. But better late than never. Let's see how useful this lesson is in the future.

A Weekend of Nothing

I can't believe how much fun nothing can be. We had no plans this weekend and those weekends always make me feel lighter on my feet. It seems the slightest commitment weighs so heavy on my shoulders. I just love feeling like a drifter, going wherever the wind takes me. And this weekend I just let the wind blow me around.

Our most significant accomplishment on Saturday was taking a new bike ride. We rode a route that I mapped out last month. We have been test driving it on the motorcycles to make sure we got it down before venturing out on our bikes. We are getting smarter in our old age. More details about that ride coming soon.

In addition to our bicycle ride we also took the dogs for a nice hike and went for a motorcycle ride, with a destination of ice cream. God I love those rides. Yum. No work and all the pay off. Oh and we added some cheer to my day by hanging up the fish I bought in Mystic a few weeks ago. Finally, some color on our porch wall. And more fish I can't kill.


One funny story that came from this weekend was me complaining to Karlo that he needs to train Cooper not to bite my hand off when I'm giving him a treat. It really bugs me how rough he is. Peanut is a perfect little polite princess, gingerly taking any treat out of my hands, while Cooper tries to swallow my entire hand. Karlo just had to laugh at the mere thought of it and says, "I never thought the day would come when I have to give somebody lessons on being gentle." We both got a good laugh out of that irony. I knew it was a hopeless case that Karlo teaches anybody to be gentle. Looks like I'm on my own with Cooper training.

Today the weather turned out to be just as nice as yesterday. It was two picture perfect days as far as I was concerned. I did a lot of lounging around on the deck and it was just superb. In the afternoon we went kayaking and then came back for more lounging - this time with a glass of wine in my hand. I am happy to report that my eye did not twitch even once all day. I wish I could drag this day out forever . . .