WTF? And garden update

First, the WTF? So... there I was driving to work yesterday morning, minding my own business, but running a little bit late. Traffic ahead of me came to a stop, and so did I. Unfortunately the guy behind me? Not so much! That'll teach me... I was rear-ended on the Long Island Expressway. I'll be okay (loads of soft tissue damage and accompanying soreness, but nothing major), but the sheriff thinks my car is likely to be a total write off. Poor car :( OTOH, cars can be replaced, and I'm a lot harder to do that with!

So, that kind of put a bit of a dent in my plans for today. I had planned to get the garden fully planted. But Brian came to my rescue and helped with most of it, and there are lots of photos below! Hopefully there will be some good eats here this year!

I recently bought an eye-fi card for my camera, and hope it will make posting photos a lot easier. For now I've started a picasa account (username heather.eberhardt) to which I can auto-upload photos. If I've done things right, the title of this post should take you there!

When it rains, it pours!

This time, in a good way!

Brian has been looking for work for quite a while. He's not happy where he's working, and wants to change it. But it's a VERY tough job market out there. So he'd pretty much let it sit on the back burner for the last couple of months.

So now, while NOT actively pursuing the hunt, he has two interviews next week. One of which is actually the third, and final interview for a great paying job, but NOT very close to home. The second is not as nice a job in case of career or pay, but much closer to home. And they pay is still more than he's making now.

So keep your fingers crossed for him please and think good thoughts!

Post Training "Rest"

So Brian has decided he's going to run a half marathon, and do it as a fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Foundation as a fundraiser in honour of his grandpa. He'll be running it in January with friends at Walt Disney World. In the meantime, he has some training to do. This is him just now on the couch after his first 8 mile training run. EIGHT miles. Phew! But the part that made me grin the most was the random shirt he grabbed without looking to put on. It's one of the ones I've made for our Disney trips.

Another Fabulous Weekend

We had another crazy busy weekend, but it was worth every minute of it. We went upstate for our friends Johnny and Alisen's wedding at Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills. It was a lovely wedding, and the venue was INCREDIBLE. The road up to the resort was certainly fairly white-knuckle inducing! We drove up to the area Friday night with Saul, Carrie and Yvie, as Saul's parents had generously allowed us to stay with them Friday night. The rooms at Mohonk were $570/night!!!! We had a lot of fun, Johnny and Alisen are firmly married, but we decided to leave in time to get down the mountain while there was still light.

Because neither of us are in any shape to dance, we didn't stay for the full reception after the wedding. :( But to make up for it, back on Long Island, we had friends waiting to go out to dinner! We met up with Tina and Neal, who were here for I-Con, and a bunch of their friends. Dinner itself was a total bust (food barely so-so and service horrible), but the conversation, and new friends Keith and Wrenn more than made up for it!

Sunday had been scheduled for a bunch of housework, but Tina, Neal, Keith and Wrenn managed to convince us to go out for linner with them before they left. I finally ate at the diner that other friends have been looking at holding DinerCon at, and now I totally understand why! It would be a perfect venue! Much hilarity ensued, Brian still can't get over the fact that something he said was live-tweeted, photos were taken* and everyone managed to still get on the road at a decently early hour.

Today is Brian's un-birthday, and he's celebrating it by having a job interview this afternoon. He's not positive he wants the job, but it's still an interview, and worth doing even if he doesn't want it. The experience never hurts!

*And none by me. I had none of my usual cameras with me as it turned out, no camera, no cell-phone, no iPod! Strange!

Tonight's Grateful Moment

We went home to Canada for the weekend for friends' wedding. I'm so very glad we did, and the ceremony was lovely. We try to break the drive up into two parts each way, so after Kim's baby shower this afternoon we headed out. A little later on the road than we wanted, but not too bad. It was dinner time when we got to Buffalo. We strongly, strongly considered pushing on for Syracuse, but in the end decided to go for the early to bed, early to rise option. And for that, I am very grateful. The rain that was forecast to begin late tonight arrived early.
It has already turned to SNOW.
We would have still been on the road, and stuck with the crappy weather and trying to drive through snow to make it, late at night, to a hotel in Syracuse.
Yaaaay for deciding to go to bed early.
Which I am NOW going to go do.
Travel safe everyone.

Brian and Patches

Yesterday evening we arrived at our friends' house just as Laura was coming in from a trail ride. I'm still too gimpy, but she talked Brian into having a quick ride on Patches. And he had so much fun that he's over there again this afternoon riding. Yay!

Apparently this whole healthy eating thing might have stuck...

I cooked bacon tonight for the first time in literally years. YEARS. I know it's bad for you, and know it's high in fat, but every now and then, a little well cooked bacon as garnish is heaven. Heaven in each crunchy little bite. So I bought a package at the grocery store on a whim. Tonight I set out to cook the whole package planning to freeze it once cooked and use as needed.

I am so completely and utterly revolted by the amount of fat in the pan after cooking 10 slices, I can't eat ANY of it. None. Not a chance. Not one bite. I don't think I'll be having any of it any time soon, either. I packed up the rest of it and stuck it in the freezer rather than finish cooking it. I just couldn't do it. Maybe I'll pull it out in another 5 years or so...

This sign outside a local church says it all...

We have already had twice the normal total snowfall for a full winter. It's not yet quite the end of January. There are two months still to come this winter. We got more today, with more coming tomorrow. The banks at the edge of the driveway are taller than I am. And February is usually the snowiest month here...

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently my new iPod also has a sense of humour

When I pulled into work on Friday morning (last day before vacation, and I knew it was already looking to be a 10 hr day minimum), the song that started, literally as I turned into the parking lot, was "Hard Knock Life" from Annie

Hey Mom! And you too Becca!

I can honestly say I've had enough snow. That's our second storm with over 20 inches. In just over two weeks... The snow bank at the end of the driveway is taller than Brian. I took the photo on my way out to work this morning, so it's had two days of melt time as well... And work did NOT call a snow day. Delayed opening though, so I can't complain all that badly. And just in time for these, which I finished making last night. :)

I have not laughed this hard in a LONG time!

Birthday Report

For my birthday this year we had long planned to take the day off work and go into the city to see the King Tut exhibit. The delivery for the new bed (go Black Friday specials, wohoo!) was scheduled for the next day, however, and I couldn't really justify two days off that week since we were pretty busy. But the next weekend, we took the Sunday and went in. Our friend Randi came and joined us, and we had a really nice day.


There were no cameras allowed in the exhibit itself, unsurprisingly. This is the big mural out front.



Afterwards we went to linner/lupper at Bubba Gump's, one of our favourite restaurants. We hit the absolute sweet spot between lunch and dinner crowds. It was quiet, calm, and the service was excellent as usual.



Given all the walking, Brian was in a fair bit of pain by then. So Randi got treated to her own personal Adventures of Vicoden Man! :P



The next two photos are of each end of Times' Square. I'm sorry Bonnie, no matter how much you'd like to live vicariously through me, I WILL NOT go there for New Years. Nope, nut-uh, not happening. These are the closest you can get! :) Sometimes I still have to pinch myself and remember how amazing our life is when we can just "pop in to" places like this for an afternoon.







And a final reminder of why Becky is my best friend...



Okay, so I'll admit it, I'm cheating. I wrote all three of these on Boxing Day and just set them to post in sequence. :) I had the time while Brian was watching Jonas Hex, which I had seen earlier in the day.

Trip Home

Since I had the card reader out, I figured I should grab some other photos to post. These are from our trip home in October. They're just of my family, I had a fresh card in the camera from David and Brenda's wedding. And it ATE the photos. That'll teach me to try to be good and make sure I had lots of space. I was SOOOOOO mad. But Brian's mom sent us one of the ones of the full family (including us) with our Christmas present and it turned out wonderfully. I'll have to scan it at some point and post it.

Le Chateau Des Eberhardt est pret pour les reservations!

I finally have the downstairs bedroom set up as a guest room. I love the concept of having my own craft room/library, but the truth is, I rarely used it as such. I'd grab what supplies I need and bring them out to the living room to actually *do* whatever craft I was feeling like. And given the "delightfulness" of my crappy sleep habits, we were strongly considering putting a bed downstairs for me.

But book early, we're already filling up. No, seriously, April is already completely booked up for us!










And what's with all the bright white out that window you may be asking yourself? It's slightly late, but I'm getting a white Christmas after all. Better late than never! They're currently forecasting 15-20 inches (38-50cm) of snow by the time it ends tomorrow! Good thing I got myself that present two posts down, isn't it? And I liked mom's comment about it being a necessity and made Brian buy me another Christmas gift. Good thinking mom! Below are the photos from the snow in the last post, and I'll post photos of this snow from tomorrow. Ish.

Real Snow!!

We had a bunch of flakes last night while I was running errands after
physiotherapy, and that's all that was forecast, but hey, it was snow,
and I was happy. Hell, it was 55F/13C on Sunday, so at least it was
starting to feel like December with the flakes. So imagine my thrill
when I got up this morning and discovered about half an inch of the
fabulous white stuff. Photos will come once I get home tonight and
can download them.

What? Yes, I took photos, so Pssssbt!

I'm a very naughty girl

I just bought my own Christmas present, AGAIN. Brian's going to be mad at me for it because I have a bad habit of doing that. And in this case, I don't really care, because it's as much for me as it is for him! Click the title if you want to know what I got!

It's official

We had snow today! Just a slight flurry, not even a bare dusting, but
it counts. I saw snow!

Never mind the fact that it still caused multiple car accidents on
this morning's commute.
Really folks? It's not like we never get snow here. You shouldn't be
losing it over that.

Discussions with Vicoden Man

So Brian was given Vicoden for his hand. And he can only take it while home and not going to drive. It usually makes him pretty sleepy*, but also leads some interesting conversations. *After taking this mornings at about 5:30am when I got up for work, he proceeded to continue to sleep until after noon.

I think all who know him will agree he's had many odd conversations all on his own, drug free. This one was priceless:

Brian goes upstairs to work on laundry, and about 10 minutes later I realize I haven't heard anything...

H: "Brian, whatcha doing?"
B: "The bed got me"

All normal so far, that's a phrase we use to say we're just flaking out upstairs in the quiet for a little while.

10 more minutes pass and I go upstairs to see what he wants to do for dinner.
He has gotten undressed and fully tucked himself into bed.
Teddy bear and all.

H: "Really, the *bed* got *you*? It doesn't look that way to me..."
B: "My clothes conspired with the bed"

Brian's Newest Fashion Accessory

Is it wrong of me to laugh at him as he tries to tie his shoes? It was sporkworthy stupidity that caused it. And who knew? Brian-the-lefty apparently punches with his right.

My most adorable hour spend hand sewing EVER.