Japanese Tree

The original and my vector art attempt via Adobe Illustrator. I've been playing around with Illustrator a lot lately. This is my first attempt to render something into Illustrator.

One-Room-at-a-Time, part 2

OK, see, my house must not be that bad that #2 is already up here, right?? Really, the problem isn't that is too messy, it's that I keep thinking, "I'll wait until we get it all fixed up- hang all the pictures, get the curtains up, etc." But, you'd be waiting forever, so here goes...Enjoy, looky-loos! (Insider tip: click on the photos to see them in GIANT SIZE!!!)

This is our bedroom, which has a nice little balcony off the side that is basically a blinding white spot in this photo. We have some more pictures to hang in here that still need to be framed, and I am going to eventually try to hem these curtains, but otherwise, we're done in here.

Joel had a funny joke about the little "displays" on the bedside tables and on the dresser: He calls them "The five treasures of Asia," because we have stuff from five countires in there. I guess it might be a little much; maybe when we have a bigger house I'll have more room to spread out my stuff. Anyway, hope these help satisfy your curiosity!

G.I. Milk

Just a quick post about our milk. For some reason, Joel took a picture of the "US Forces Europe" dairy products that we buy at the commissary here, and I guess it is pretty silly. I don't think IBM employees buy their own branded milk, nor do any other groups/organizations. Joel likes to buy the local milk, but it costs about 3 times as much as this milk, which goes for the low, low price of $1.77 for a half gallon.
Also, it sort of brings up the mythology of government cheese, which I have never really understood. I mean, free cheese, who's complaining??

The One-Room-at-a-Time Project

Since we moved here in December, people have been asking for pictures of our house. First, this was impossible because we had no Internet connection, and then because the house was full of moving boxes. At this point, I am running out of excuses to cover up my real reason, which is that my house is never really clean enough for pictures. So, I've decided to launch the one-room-at-a-time project, in which I clean up one room, at the expense of all others, and take a picture. For the first installment, I present the kitchen: Tah dah!!

When Joel first looked at this house, there was only one cabinet with a sink. Through an arrangement with the Army and the landlady, Joel was able to pick out all of our cabinets/etc from IKEA, and he installed them all himself, with only minor help from me and his parents. Amazing, huh?? Smart AND handy!

I was going with "colorful/ethnic" as my decorating inspiration; we had such a plethora of Asian tchotchkies that they really spilled into every room. Over the sink is my teapot collection- from Japan, Cambodia, China, China, and Japan, from the let to the right. Hopefully Euros drink a lot of tea, too, so we can add to it as we travel over here. The kitchen table is against the island, but you can't really see it in the pictures.

Anyway, look for more exciting rooms to follow...at some point...

Paging Dr. Aidan

Aidan has to wear a smock to his Italian school- it is so cute! Joel says he looks like a little doctor, and I say a little scientist. He says "I'm not a scientist!" and looks at us like we are crazy. I guess he also has a bit of an alter-boy look, but I'll stay away from those connotations. Here he is trying on his new "school shirt" after dinner (try to ignore the spaghetti sauce on his face and hands). Awww!

He has started saying "I'm handsome!" when he gets ready in the morning- it's so funny. He also uses cute and beautiful in the wrong situations- Joel put a desk together and when Aidan saw it, he said "That's cute!" Maybe that would be appropraite if we had gotten that pink Hello Kitty desk with the furry boa seat, but, alas, we got the "Jerker" from Ikea. We're still trying to teach him to say "That has a nice, minimalism appeal."

Plus-size modeling

The last time I was pregnant, Joel was deployed to Iraq and so no one was really around to take any pictures of me pregnant. There was actually only one picture- my friend's mom and sister were in town, and asked me to meet them at IHOP early in the morning before they left town. I woke up late and ran over there looking an absolute mess. One of them took my picture and emailed it to Joel in Iraq. If I can find it, I'll post it here, but just take my word for it that I'm sure it was not what Joel was hoping to see after not seeing me for months.
So, after seeing my friends' artsy pre-baby pictures, I asked Joel to take a nice picture of me. I figured that we'd better do it now, since I only have 9 weeks to go! We went out to the backyard on a sunny day and took 150 pictures... and about 15 are good ones. Have I mentioned how un-photogenic I am??
I know that Joel really enjoys me posting goofy pictures of myself, so here I am checking myself out between pictures:

And here is one of the nice pictures. When you picture me in your head, try to remember this picture and not what I looked like after that sweaty hike, or when I had too much to drink at your Christmas party, or any other less attractive moment:

happy valentine's day, kids!

Aidan has been talking a LOT lately about parties... when we are at the store, he holds up cake mix, plastic plates, balloons, etc and says, "For my party?" Sure, sure, for your party, sweetheart.
But, since his birthday is not until late fall, we thought it would be nice to have a little Valentine's party and have some kids over. I met some other moms on post, and invited three kids over on the 10th to make cookies. We bought balloons, which Aidan was totally excited about, and all of the prerequisite heart-emblazoned cups, napkins, plates, and table cloths. It was a little crazy, and I made some mental notes about what would help for the next time, but here is a picture to show it was an overall success:

I tried to have the kids make heart-shaped cookies with the cookie cutters, but I made chocolate chip cookie dough, not sugar cookie dough, which apparently is an issue. They ended up just making balls with spoons, and dousing them in sprinkles.
If the true mark of a successful children's party is how much the kids cry when it's over, well, this was the best party ever. It took us about an hour and a pizza dinner to cheer Aidan up after the kids left- a small price to pay to make him happy.

God Bless America

When I saw the explosion of news this morning on Anna Nicole, my first reaction was, "What has this nutjob done now?" One of my co-workers informed me that she was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room, Elvis-style.

Hmph... I thought. Who would have thought. I assumed it would be a short piece on CNN before they'd go back to covering the war or possible presidential candidates. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Throughout the day, everytime I take a peek at CNN in my office, they are "continuing to cover" the Anna Nicole story. There's been Anna Nicole experts, Anna Nicole montages, and a seemingly endless stream of Anna Nicole video clips. At the time that I published this entry, she was still on the CNN front page. Here's the screen from today:

Why exactly is this woman famous again? Wasn't her only accomplishment being a Playboy/plus-size model? She wasn't really an actor. She wasn't known for her philanthropy. Why is this news?

Remember that other high profile death that happened about a month ago? You know, former President Gerald Ford?



Is it just me, or is Anna Nicole getting more coverage than Ford? I don't remember nearly as much coverage on that. Maybe a couple of hours in between other stories, but Smith has shut down the channel. They've got multiple live feeds running from the coroners office, courts, Hard Rock Hotel. Live feeds! There was a reporter on scene informing us that "the autopsy on Anna Nicole Smith has just been initiated." What is that supposed to mean?!? They're slicing into her at this moment? Do I need to know this? What kind of a country do we live in where a Playmate generates more coverage than the former leader of the free world?

Just to illustrate my point, I took the liberty of googling Anna Nicole and Ford as a measure of their relative importance. The results may surprise you.





So... Anna Nicole squeaks it out by about 57,000 results. Ugh. I feel like I need a shower.

No excuses

Sorry to leave everyone hanging for so long without a post. There's no excuse for it really. I came back from my "business trip" on the 31st and just haven't sat down in front of my computer to do anything productive yet.

I updated my processor, motherboard, drives, and upgraded to Windows Vista. So there's been a lot of swearing and gnashing of teeth as I've been fighting through all that. No major problems just yet, except that my DVD burner has stopped working. Not sure why that occurred, or what I can do to get it to start working, but rest assured we're exploring all options.

Hope to have some actual content for you soon, but right now I'm just trying to keep everyone from thinking that this page has been abandoned.

Lock Down

It's been a long time since I've posted.

Sorry.

I've been on a "business trip" with the Army in an undisclosed location for the past week or so. I'm supposed to be back next Wednesday, so I'll have a big welcome back post then.

Unlike my other "trips" that I took when I was in Korea, these keep me extremely busy and away from any Unclassified computers for most of the time. But it's rapidly coming to it's culmination point, so I'll be happy soon enough.

However, until then I'm a miserable bastard.

Order my "World's Greatest Mom" t-shirt now

Sometimes, Aidan drives me crazy, but then sometimes he comes up with a gem that gets me through another few weeks of crying, tantrums, 5 AM wake-ups, and bathroom "accidents."

Today, Aidan asked me to kiss his boo-boo, and I asked, "Do my kisses make you feel better?" and he said, "Yes, mommy's kisses are magic!" He told Joel last week, "You're my best friend ever!" and when he broke a gravy boat (yeah, I know, what was I doing with a gravy boat??) that was in the refrigerator, he said, "Mommy, I too sorry! Too sorry!" Either he's just super adorable, or he's already a master manipulator to come up with that stuff to avoid spanks. The jury is still out.

Knocked Up

I guess everyone knows by now, but I'm having a baby in April. I went to the PX (the department store on post) to survey the baby shit that's available here, to see what I will need to order from the states. Unfortunately, there is only ONE stroller/carseat available at the PX, and they are too big to ship over from then states. Not one style, just one for sale. I spent fifteen minutes standing in front of it, wondering if I should snap it up before someone else got their dirty hands on it. Yes, there are some regular strollers, but I want the one that the carseat snaps into, damn it! Really, though, one of the hardest things to get used to in foreign countries is the lack of commercialism- can you imagine the outrage if a Target in Atlanta had only one stroller for sale?? Outrageous! God bless America!
Second, there is the whole TV issue, which I guess is just extra irritating now that I have all these extra hormones interferring with my usual calm and even temper (cough, cough). Overseas, the military makes available a cable system of sorts, AFN, that shows American TV shows from various networks. Nice, huh? Well, the first problem is that the prime time shows are all a year old. So, if you know who won The Biggest Loser (actual available show) last season, AFN saves you the trouble of watching this year! Huzzah! The reason this really iritates me, of course, is that I WANT TO WATCH THE OFFICE!!
The second problem is that AFN doesn't show commercials, but they have to fill the spots, so they make these silly Army safety infomercials. One today was about Al Jolson, and how he died just after making a 6-day, 42 show (!!) tour of Korea to entertain the troops. It was one of a series entitled, "American Patriots." I know when I hear "patriot," Al Jolson is in my top three, right after Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump and his big flag.
One final (semi)funny story about the AFN "commercials"- one "news" story today was about a soldier that served as a plambearer for President Ford, and all of the fore-arm muscle strain he suffered. I thought his name tag said "Laughter," which I thought was not very tough for a soldier, but then I realized it said "Slaughter." Big difference, I guess! Oh, and I saw a guy today whose name was "Begaye." Boy, I never get tired of bad soldier names...

No Fat Italians

Italians have beautiful foods.

For lunch today, I went around the little town where we live and picked up some a couple of things for a lunch. Bread, meat, and cheese from the local shops. Each of these come from a different little shop that specializes in the item. It's great.

Here's the spread that we laid out for our lunch today. It was delicious.



I should be a food photographer.

My kid does tricks

An excerpt from the Aidan show last night:



Don't know where Aidan got the idea to do this, but he pulled this trick yesterday evening. This was actually the third balloon that he dispatched with in this fashion.

This kid's got starpower.

Funny or sad?

It's been a while since I posted. I know; get off my back. We just got internet hooked up at my house today!

I saw this while screwing around at Amazon checking out the Zelda game for the Wii. Here's the link to the message board forum from the product review. This guy bought both the GameCube and Wii versions of the same Zelda game and played them both. He said he likes the GC one better because he's stuck on the fishing level. Observe:

Anyways I'm gonna get right to the point I actually enjoyed the GC version better because I couldn't catch any FISH with that freaking Wii Nunchuk controller. So I popped in the GC version and I actually passed a few stages including the fishing stage. I knew the regular controller would be so much easier to catch fish then with the new nunchuk controller. While on the Wii version I'm still freaking stuck on the 1st stage trying 2 catch 2 fish. TRAGIC!!!!!!

That's definitely not funny, and maybe a little sad. But here's the payoff: after 15 people give him little tips and advice on how to catch a fish with the Wii controller, he responds back with this gem.

Im seriously standing by the river waiting 90 min & no fish ever get on my rod, it was SUPER easy on the GameCube. I cant believe its been 90 min & not 1 fish yet and that F*CKING cat is still running around like some WHORE!!!

Har-de-har-har! Don't know about you, but to me, that's funny.


Oh, and Merry Christmas/Happy New Year.

Jam Packed

That's what my apartment looks like right now. Stuffed to the rafters with sticky, delicious jam. Mmmm... jam.

Actually, it's filled with moving boxes. Right now, about 60 of them. There's probably another 60 coming in about two weeks. The place seemed really spacious before all our junk cluttered the place up. I guess when it's all put away, it'll seem a little better.

As I'm going through the boxes, I feel like Steve Martin in "The Jerk". At first, my reaction is, "What is all this junk. I don't need any of this stuff!" Then I open a couple of boxes and find some things for the kitchen. "Except for these mixing bowls. But that's it!" On to the living room. "And this DVD player. Just these mixing bowls and this DVD player." It continues ad nauseum. I guess we just have a lot of stuff.

I've also been building a kitchen since our place was without one. We ordered some stuff and it came in big flat boxes, which I had to open and transport upstairs to assemble. At that point, picking out the thick solid birch countertops started to seem like a mistake. But I managed. Here's a little "from conception to completion" for you. This is from the kitchen planner software that I used to figure out the layout of this thing.



And here's an almost complete kitchen.



Pretty good, right? That's a one-man show in one day. And the one song that was in my head throughout the time that I was putting it together was Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing".

We got to install microwave ovens/
Custom kitchen deliveries

It was a long day, but it won't be long before our place starts to come together and we can finally settle into that long winters nap I've been hearing so much about.

Damned Singing French Woman

I've been packing this afternoon in preparation for a "business trip" that I'm taking next week. While I've been pulling all my stuff together, I've had on CNN to keep me company. It's the International version of CNN, with the anchors that are a special blend of nationalities so as not to upset or isolate any particular group of viewers. Is he Indian, or Arabic? African, or Asian? Their backgrounds are so muddled, it's anyone's guess. But they all speak the King's English, so it brings a nice sensibility to them when they announce riots in Lebanon or radiological scares on British Airways. But I digress...

There's a commercial for Novotel, which I just learned is a hotel chain in Europe, that has been playing in heavy rotation on CNN. It features animals making themselves at home in the hotel rooms while a woman sings this semi-creepy, semi-sweet song ever so softly in the background. I don't know if the song itself is noteworthy or I've just listened to it twenty times today, but I can't get it out of my head. And it's only five or six lines longs. A quick Google search yielded that the woman singing is Emilie Simon, who is French. She has a website, Follow the Blue Light, which is completely in French. Would it kill her to have an English translation site up? The only reason that I stumbled onto her was because I heard her singing in English on English language TV. But it's her site, I guess she can do as she pleases. Give her a look and see if you can download the clip from the commercial. I'm sure it must be somewhere on there. If you can find it, listen to it about twenty times throughout the day at about ten or fifteen minute intervals. If it doesn't start driving you nuts, then I guess there's just something wrong with me.

But I guess we don't need this little exercise in active listening to tell us that, do we?

Happy World AIDS Day

What's the last thing that you want to hear on World AIDS Day? How about this?



Jeeze. Thanks for "breaking it to them easy", Olde Tyme Quaker Man. You really are a jerk.


On another note, here's what I've been reading lately. Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes. It's a somewhat dramatic telling of the discovery and rise of electricity in the late 1800s. More specifically, how Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse helped shape the electrical world from its infancy into what we now have today. It's pretty fascinating. It also reinforces Edison as one of the baddest asses of all time. In his day, he had the fame and influence of a Bono/P. Diddy cross. Extreme crossover appeal. One of my favorite passages from the book describes Edison's method of dealing with striking workers in his light bulb factory:

At the lamp factory out in New Jersey, eighty highly skilled filament sealers formed a union and "became very insolent," said Edison, "knowing that it was very impossible to manufacture lamps without them." When they objected to the proposed firing of one of their members, Edison quickly designed thirty machines to automate their work. Then he fired the man as planned. "The union went out," said Edison, following up with the punch line: "It has been out ever since."

The moral of the story? Don't screw with the world's foremost genius inventor.

A Tree Grows in Vicenza

And it's yellow.

I was walking through my fair city this weekend, when I came upon this beautiful yellow tree in a park. If ever a tree was "ablaze" in color, this one was. I came back the next day to take some pictures of it to share what a fall day looks like in Italy. Enjoy.













The last one is my favorite. And done in manual focus to boot! Eat my ass, Ansel Adams!!

Hey guys, remember me??

This is probably not the most earth-shattering news to post for my big, triumphant, come-back post, but I'm warming back up slowly.
I came across this on The Onion, which, believe me, I know is soooooo freshman year, but I just read the main page and never really look at all of the linked articles on the left. Lo and behold, apparently they have stuff like this:

I wish some small-town newspaper would come across this and run it, for reals. By the way, I think that is baby Byrom making his cartoon debut as "Liberty Jr."