Category: Life

Brussels Here I Come

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Today I start a short trip to Paris and Brussels. This trip has been a long time in planning and came together only a few weeks ago. Some friends and I will be meeting up in Brussels and doing a short beer tasting around the city with a side trip to Brugge.

We started planning this in the middle of last year and the fares at the time were completely unreasonable but over time the prices have nose-dived and I was able to find a cheap ticket to Paris and connect to Brussels via the Thalys train.

I will be flying back to the States on Monday, January 19. The flights to and from Paris and Brussels are completely empty. I should have a whole row to sleep in.

G Commercials

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If you have spent any time watching college football, especially the bowls, then you have seen the commercials that show a panning shot of a host of different athletes and celebrities and ends with a giant “G” showing up on the screen. Don’t know what it is about?

After researching some context clues, I’ve figured it out. At the bottom of the commercial you will notice a copyright for S-VC, which, if I did my homework correctly, stands for Stokely-Van Camp, the owner of the Gatorade brand. My guess is that the commercial is for Gatorade G2.

Just in case that commercial was bugging anyone as much as it does me.

This is the Fun Stuff

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Jessica spent a portion of her break from work hanging pictures around our home. Even though this picture was not one chosen to be put on the wall it is a great representation of what we love doing together.

Cadillac Ranch is one of those “off-the-beaten-path” tourist attractions that is just fun to walk around and take pictures of. On this particular day there was a family at the sculpture and they were all carrying spray paint, part of the tradition behind this place. They were running around, painting their names and messages on cars and just having a good time.

As we walked around, I realized that it was quiet for being so close to the highway. I started reading the messages that people had left on the cars and saw plenty of hearts and peace signs.

So, if you get the chance, head to Amarillo, put the windows down, and just enjoy the fun stuff.

A Year of Firsts

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As 2008 draws to a close, the realization that it was a year full of “firsts” for both me and now my family is finally sinking in. The year has been a great one, with highs and lows and every combination in-between.

Jessica and I were married this year and will always look back at 2008 as the beginning of our lives together. We traveled to Belize and endured a hurricane in Houston — something that I hope stays a “first and only” event. I became a co-host of the SitePoint Podcast and rebuilt this site. Our new family celebrated its first Thanksgiving and Christmas and just recently we decided it was time to add another member to the family and adopted a puppy named “Sofie”.

A year of firsts is coming to an end and leading us to a year of seconds, thirds, but hopefully some more firsts thrown in along the way.

Happy New Year!

May your 2009 be blessed and full of joy.

My year in cities, 2008

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Maybe this will become a yearly thing. I decided to post a list of cities I visited in 2008.

  • Austin, TX *
  • San Pedro, Belize
  • Amarillo, TX
  • Lubbock, TX
  • New Martinsville, WV
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Denver, CO *
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Honolulu, HI

 

One or more nights was spent in all locations except for Amarillo, where we spent an entire day. Cities marked with an asterisk (*) were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Making dinner an adventure

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As much as Jess and I enjoy different hobbies, food is one of our passions. In every city or town we visit we try to find the restaurant or restaurants that have great tasting food. I guess you could call us non-professional “critics”.

Lately, our love of food has turned more to cooking rather than eating out. We have a great farmer’s market down the road from us and a bunch of little co-ops in the area. Two weeks ago we placed an order at a co-op to test the waters and see what produce came in the box. We received oranges, a nice sized mango, kale, lettuce, acorn squash, cilantro and some potatoes. Overall, not a bad box. The issue became what do we do with two of the ingredients that we have never tried, kale and pumpkin squash.

The search began for recipes for kale and there are a lot of different options, sauteing, soups, salads and everything in between. We settled on a kale and apple soup that at first we were a little hesitant to try due to the somewhat bitter flavor of kale. Having apple act as a sweetening element was also a little strange but Jessica decided to go for it and last night she whipped up a batch of the soup. Wow! What a great soup!

The picture does not do it justice, the color looks bad but the flavor and aroma of the soup was just fantastic.

Kale Soup

This dinner as an adventure thing is getting fun…

The Ethics of Self-Reviewing

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There are few things that get under my skin more than businesses that post false reviews of themselves to create a better image. I’ve seen it done a whole host of ways, a family member reviews a product, store, or experience and posts it on a website. Web shoppers, being somewhat gullible, take the review as a valid one and sometimes base their purchases on it.

Reviewing yourself to boost business is an unbelievable practice, even if it is done by family or friends. In your day to day work, if a close friend of yours walked up to someone and told them about your store and how great their experiences was, do you think it alright to fail to inform that person that the opinion is biased? The thought of telling someone I liked a store without informing the listener that I was biased is, in the end, a poor way of doing business. If you cannot generate walkthroughs, purchases, or interest on your own, then maybe you should not be in business.

Wedding and Honeymoon Pictures

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The pictures from our wedding and honeymoon have finally made it online. We apologize for the delay, the hurricane threw a kink in our uploading plans.

An Austin firm called I Do Photography photographed our wedding. They posted a slideshow and a gallery where you can view the pictures and order them. They did a wonderful job and we are extremely happy with the way the shots turned out!

I have posted separate galleries at Flickr. You can view the ceremony, reception, and the honeymoon.

If you have pictures from the wedding and would like to share them with us, just e-mail them to thecouple@stephanandjessica.com.

After Ike, no television

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Ike cut the cable line; Well, it made it possible for a passing truck to cut it. Needless to say, our home has been without cable for almost three weeks and it has been an interesting unintentional experiment in time management.

The old routine was an evening with at least one news program, a sitcom, and possibly an episode of Law & Order. A waste of time is the best way to describe it and without television I have more time than I know what to do with. Reading is our favorite pastime and now we are doing that even more, we are taking walks at night, and we are just enjoying the quiet.

Comcast is coming on Friday to fix the issue but I may just tell them we do not need their services…