New Bloggers!

We have some more bloggers on the scene!

I'd like to introduce my sister-in-law, Karen, the bold and the beautiful, and her blog, Prophecies.

Next is my brother-in-law, David, the young and the restless (sorry, needed a soap name, and you are younger than me, which I can't say about most people), who has evidently had a blog for awhile and I never knew. His blog is called Ramblings.

I've put the links to these under the "Links" heading in the sidebar.

I've been tagged?

So a few days ago, my future sis-in-law, Karen V., tagged me. I had no idea what that meant. Then I read her blog, and she had something about tagging, and answering a lot of questions, and then had my name at the bottom as someone tagged! So...not knowing exactly what I'm doing, I'm just going to copy and paste Karen's questions with my own answers and hope that's what I'm supposed to do. Is there a book on these blogging rules?

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD:

1. Trinity Valley Pools & Spas -- never sure what I did!
2. Texas Collection Library at Baylor University -- library assistant
3. Texas Life Insurance Company -- part-time graphic designer
4. Texas Life Insurance Company -- full-time graphic designer extraordinaire (really, it's on my business card)

FOUR MOVIES I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN:
1. You've Got Mail
2. Shop Around the Corner
3. Return to Me
4. Princess Bride

FOUR BOOKS I COULD READ OVER AND OVER AGAIN:
1. Chronicles of Narnia (re-reading those now)
2. Bible (haha! Sunday School Answer!)
3. Pat of Silver Bush
4. The Indespensable Calvin & Hobbes :)

FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED
1. Orange, TX
2. Palestine, TX
3. Waco, TX
4. Fort Worth, TX (Texas girl, through and through!...and I need a longer list)

FOUR TV SHOWS I WATCH
1. CSI: Miami
2. The Biggest Loser
3. American Idol
4. House

FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON VACATION
1. Mount Nebo, Arakansas!
2. Colorado
3. The Bahamas
4. Ireland (again, I need a longer list)

FOUR WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY
1. gmail.com
2. bodyforlife.com
3. google.com (always need to look something up!)
4. everyone's blogs

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS
1. chips and salsa, the absolute greatest
2. cheese enchiladas
3. ice cream (vanilla, with all the fixin's!)
4. roast, evidently the only healthy thing I like

FOUR PLACES I WOULD LIKE TO BE RIGHT NOW
1. in bed
2. under a blanket on the couch reading
3. on a warm beach
4. with Jon, but not in his classes

FOUR BLOGGERS I AM TAGGING
1. Teresa - Harvesting Tulips
2. Cliff - Cliff's Blog, where he narfels the garflak
3. Margie - Margie's Blog
4. Leanna - Leanna's Little Spot of Cyberspace...because she needs to blog!!

So now...if I understand blogging etiquette correctly, I am to "tag" each of these people on their blogs, right? Well, if I'm not supposed to, oh, well. Who needs etiquette? :)

Day o' Fun at the Zoo

This past Saturday, Jon and I took a trip to good ol' Waco. It was the first trip back for Jon since we moved (which has been eight months now, can you believe it?), and we spent the day hanging out with our best friends, Cliff and Teresa. We have really missed them since we moved. It's a rare blessing to have such good friends, and that we all get along so well (at least most of the time)!


Anyway, so we went to the zoo to see the new Brazos section of the place, plus it was 5 bucks and a great day (although a bit chilly) to be outside. We got there in time to say hi to my brother and sis-in-law, who were just finishing up at the zoo. They let us know that the otter, ocelot, and owls were a must-see, and we moved on from there.

Here are some photos:

Here are the gibbons. They're very far away, but you can see on the right one gibbon hangin' out on the rope. He was pretty cool, and had an amazing ab workout going on.


An R.O.U.S.


A little birdie.


Here's a big pelican in a flap about something.



The great crocodile




The meerkat and his two poses. The poor guy is right next to the lions. That's gotta be a little unnerving. You can tell it's starting to wear on him.



And us! Wouldn't be a zoo trip without a look at God's really odd creatures!

Every time we go to the zoo, there's usually at least one funny animal thing that we will take away with us. This time it was the tiger. Evidently it was feeding time, and the food was a little late. The lions were making their hunger known by pacing in front of the door where the food comes out. The tiger, on the other hand, was above such displays, and sat where he was and...meowed is the best word to describe it, but it sounded more like a cow mooing. Anyway, there was someone in the crowd who could exactly imitate the tiger mooing (mewing?), and it was really funny to listen to the two "talk." I caught it on video:



Ladies and gentlemen, Cliff Lusk, the one who talks with tigers!

All in all, we had a really great time. Thanks, Cliff and Teresa, for letting us crash your Saturday on short notice!

I love Fridays

I love Fridays. I love the end of the week. Yet I'm always at a loss on Fridays. I usually have been in Waco the day before, which is always a busy day. So Friday I don't want to be too incredibly productive. As a matter of fact I don't want to be productive at all. And then when I have something to do or plan for the weekend, I really don't want to think about work! So today, with only ongoing projects on my plate, and a trip to see Cliff & Teresa tomorrow, I'm not feeling overly productive. Plus, I got to thinking about vacations today, and where we could go, and then about my friend's wedding, and what her dress looks like, and...well, and now I'm blogging. So I'm feeling a little guilty, but obviously not guilty enough to quit blogging and get back to work. :) The reason I don't feel that guilty is that I worked all day on Monday, which was supposed to be a holiday. So I figure maybe this morning I could take my holiday. :)

In the meantime, at work I'm going to be starting work on the external website! I'm excited about it, because at the moment I'm too embarassed of our web site to tell anyone to go there. And there's nothing really there, for that matter. So I'm going to work on it--make it look like it belongs in the 20th century, streamline the navigation, and maybe add some useful tools on there. I'm excited about it, and it really needs to be done, but I know I'll have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it all approved. It's dumb how no one looks at the web site--hardly even knows it exists--until I want to make a change to it. Then suddenly it's a really big deal and everyone has to have their opinion heard about the matter. So I've got a meeting set up for a couple of weeks from now in which I plan to "unveil" the new website. I've already got it started on my own server (is that the right word? It's on my website, whatever I mean), so I'll have it up on the web for everyone to see, and I can "wow" everyone with the amazing-ness of the new site, so there will be no discussion and they'll just let me do whatever I want to do with it--plus give me a bonus for my genius.

:)

Hey, I can dream!

But I guess two weeks isn't really that far away, so maybe I better do something today. There are only so many times I can check other people's blogs (come on, people, you gotta post more often!).

So...back to the grindstone. No more slacking for the day. I'll be good, I promise. :)

Photo Fun

Well, as mentioned in Teresa's blog, Teresa and I had a blast last weekend. We did lots of fun stuff, and one of them was taking pictures around Waco...well, mostly at the Suspension Bridge over the Brazos river. I've had web problems trying to get my pictures up, but I've finally done it, and you can see them here.

Thanks Teresa for a great weekend!

Friday's Progress

Well, I know my last blog was about Friday, but I haven't taken many pictures of him (memory card full, no batteries, and other high-tech difficulties) so I thought I should catch up. Then when I did, I realized how much he'd grown! So here's a few pictures to give you an idea of what's happened since the end of August.


Here is Aug 22nd:



And Sept 7th:



Sept 28th:



And Jan 4th:



Isn't that crazy?