Autumn in New York

Hello from beautiful central New York!  We are here for a week visiting Eric's family for the holiday.  We landed in our little puddle jumper on Thanksgiving Day and enjoyed a delicious traditional holiday meal prepared by Eric's mom.  That evening we also paid a visit to the rest of her side of the family and met the older of the two new babies in our family, Eric's cousin's little boy, Aiden.  What a cutie! 

The next day we slept in a bit and relaxed until late in the morning so we wouldn't have to battle the Black Friday crowds.  My one major purchase was a new pair of classic black boots on major sale at JCPenney, but we also finished up our Christmas shopping for Eric's side and spent quality time with our beautiful and amazing teeny-tiny nephew, Andrew Wilson Kazmarek!  He was born November 9, so he's still only a few weeks old. We are crazy about him!  Here are some cute photos I've taken of the little guy.

Ain't he a sweetheart?  In the meantime, we've just been relaxing, spending time with family, opening gifts, and hanging out with Andrew, introducing him to our favorite holiday movie, Elf!  Perfect examples of the Comedy Rule of Threes for the future superstar. 

Pomp and Circumstance

Eric finally gradumatated this summer.  He has been taking online classes toward his Bachelor's in business administration, so he had been joking about having his own graduation ceremony and walking past the webcam on our laptop when it was all over, but since his mom was in town during the school's official ceremony, he decided to physically attend a school event for the first (and last) time.  We kept it a secret until the day of the event, so she was pretty excited when she found out where we were going that day!

Eric and mom at the ceremony venue

Eric meets the dean of the business school

(Don't look too closely at the above photo if you are easily offended)

This is what Eric thinks of Everest University

A celebratory bike ride

I'm very proud of Eric for sticking with it--I'm not gonna lie: the online program was bull$#!+ so he was tempted to quit many times--but now it's over!  Everest University, we will forever be in your debt.  Go, Sherpas!

On a Mission...to Chicago

I promised there would be a post about our trip to Chicago to visit my AXO sister Rachel and her boyfriend Ollie, so now, since we're about to have our own visit from the Londoners, is a good a time as any!

As you know, we moved into the new house in less than three non-vacation days because we'd already planned our Chicago vacation with the assumption that we would have closed on the house by the time we flew out.  We thought we would be a bit stressed out to leave behind such a mess, but the trip was actually a welcome distraction from the madness awaiting us at home.  We spent the first day flying, doing a little shopping, socializing, and regressing on the Scott family trampoline.  Eric split his pants during the making of this photo.

The next day we ventured from the suburbs into the city for authentic deep dish Chicago-style pizza on our way to the Cubs game!  They lost (no surprise there) but we have now had the official bleacher bum experience.

Our third day in Chicago was spent sightseeing in the city.  We rode the El, stopped by Chicago Lyric Opera, and found ourselves at the Bean.  (See our reflection behind us?)

Then we happened to run into the crew of Transformers 3 filming on location.  There were more childhood regressions when we sneaked a peak at Bumblebee!  Further down the street was faux destruction and controlled mayhem for the shoot.

Then we had a tasty lunch on the river and explored the Tribune building where we found a little piece of central Florida all the way up in Illi-noise.

Our final stop in the city that day was the Museum of Science and Industry.  We experienced a bit more regression mingling with the field trip kids, stopping by the ice cream parlor, and playing around on the exhibits.

The rest of our time was spent relaxing and spending time with our friends.  All in all, it was a sweet little taste of a city new to us and a great time with Ollie and Rachel.  They're flying in from England for a visit on New Year's Eve, so we're bound to have more adventures to write about in a few short weeks!

Holy Crap...

...as in, "Holy crap...it's been a long time since I blogged."  I know people have been waiting by the computer for a new post, so I apologize to those faithfully (imaginary) obsessed readers for the delay.  We really and truly were so busy around the house--until about three weeks ago (I'll explain in a minute)--that we didn't have time for much else.  Then I just became accustomed to not blogging, so it took me until now to get back into the swing of things.

If you know me well, you know that I'm not a morning person.  If you're any random person stumbling onto this post on the web, you can see that I'm posting this at 8:30 in the morning.  This is because Eric woke me out of spite this morning because I kept him up last night.  I might be a bit biased, but I don't think silently doing a crossword puzzle with the lamp on (while someone who can easily fall back to sleep is sleeping) should be repaid with being generally boisterous with the overhead light on (while someone who can not easily fall back to sleep is sleeping).  So, now I'm officially awake, on my day off, at 8:30am, and I decided to take on a big project that I've been putting off: moving my digital photos and posting about some of our recent adventures.  I had my mind all made up about what site I was going to choose, but after doing a bit of research, I changed my mind about trusting that service with my precious photos.  So now I'm back to square one, but in the meantime, I'm trying out Picasa Web Albums (Google's photo storage service, which stores this blog's photos anyway) just for kicks.  That way, at least for now, I can post about a few of our adventures and there will be visual aids!

We're Ready for April Fools' Day

Yesterday, while we were riding in the car, Eric said to me, "Remember that time when I farted into a cup and I handed it to you, told you to look inside, and you put it right in your face?"  How could I forget?  Needless to say, he learned after one time not to do that to me again.  However, he went on to say, "What if I did that into a bottle with a message in it?"  We decided it would be too disappointing to go to the trouble to prepare the prank and not know for sure if the smell was actually contained by the time the message was found off the coast of Africa somewhere, but then we remembered that our new neighborhood has several ponds and lakes.

Dinner Menu for March 31, 2011

Buffalo Wings

Stuffed Peppers

Refried Beans

Spicy Nachos

Beer

FYI

Because I care about your health!
(Click the image for a larger version)

The Pot o' Gold is online!

Guess what, everybody?  Since our last post, we closed on the house, packed, moved in, and already took a vacation!  Whew!  (The vacation wasn't planned to fall right in the midst of everything else going on, but that's for another post.)  The Bright House guy just left, which means the Brown family, and the Meet the Browns blog, is back online!  While I take a little break to catch on my virtual life and catch up our blog readers on our new home, Eric is hustling to do his handiwork around the house.  Already in the past few days since we got back from our trip to Chicago, we've already put a big dent in the unpacking chore, degreenified the pool, painted the laundry room, hung cabinets and cabinet hardware in the laundry room, repaired the wheels on the glass patio door, installed the master bedroom fan, and organized almost all the kitchen cabinets!  And before we even left on our trip, Eric had unpacked and arranged all of our new bedroom furniture which looks amazing.  And now, we're going to veg a bit and watch a movie.  I'll add updates--and a post about the Chicago trip--as we go along on our new adventure!! Yay!  We're finally here!

In the Meantime

Well, things are still chugging along on the house.  We were supposed to close on the 21st of this month, and then we were supposed to close at the beginning of this week (it's now Wednesday), but we really just wanted to leave a little cushion of time so we could close by the deadline on the 30th.  It looks like that's not going to happen now, but even though our realty team says it's no big deal, we're a little freaked out by it.  I hope it's realistic to think we'll be able to close by August 16 when our lease expires, but we're leaving on vacation on the 15th because we thought we'd be done with all this nonsense by then! 

Meanwhile, we've got all sorts of other foolishness going on.  There's stuff related to the house, like shopping for furniture and appliances.  And we've got company--Eric's mom and his friend Pete--because we thought we'd need their help working on packing (and unpacking) and organizing and home improvement and repairs, respectively, by this time.  Eric's shift times at work have been a little kooky lately, but he since has taken on a new responsibility that will give his schedule a bit more stability.  Then there's Encore opening in one week, which involves memorizing music, shopping for costumes, and, oh yeah, lots and lots of rehearsals.  With the house, company, and the crazy work schedule, Eric decided he didn't need one more commitment to juggle, so for the first time ever, he'll get to watch Encore from the audience!  And, of course, there's my work which is always unpredictable, and just trying to find some time to spend together!  So with all of this going on at once, we're pooped!  Needless to say, we're anxious to reach the denoument of this neverending Pot o' Gold saga.  Thoughts and prayers, please!

According to the internet...

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

IWL.me will analyze your writing sample and decide which well-known author's style it resembles.  Try it!

Geek Alert

Since we'll have to put money down on the house, pay for closing costs, and furnish the place, Eric and I are going to be doing our best to save as much money as possible in the coming months.  Our last biggish purchase before the Great Cash Ration came in the mail a few days ago.  You'll never guess what it is.

It's not for the house.  

No, it's nothing electronic.

Nope, not a pet.  Like you ever thought we'd get a pet.  

BINGO!  A tandem bicycle!  We took it for a spin yesterday.  Way fun!