he said. she said. a married couple's blog.

Wednesday, April 27

This news story about "legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs" reminds me of a scene from Cinema Paradiso. The film takes place in Mussolini's Italy, and all the kissing scenes in the films must be cut out and the films spliced together. The village priest makes sure of this. One of the most poignant moments in the film occurs when the main character, Salvatore, comes across an old reel of all these moments strung together.

I'm not meaning to suggest that Bush's new legislation is on the level with Mussolini, just that it reminds me of the film.

Monday, April 25

taste

A little taste of some photos from Nate's 2nd birthday party on Sunday. They'll be in the gallery soon.*

Nolan is so huge. He's just over 2 months, and 17 pounds! Quite an armful.

Steven

and Nate on the trampoline.

Nate takes a break from opening a ton of gifts.

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*I'm using the flickr for "artier" stuff (or something).

don't forget

Also, don't forget to vote for PLWC!
Click here to vote.

testing

Took the new camera out for a test-drive this weekend.

Thursday, April 21

cheese!

Bren tried to surprise me with a new camera, the Nikon D70; my new digital SLR. It's something totally new to me. I've been a point and shoot girl all my life, but I was getting bored/frustrated with that.

Brendan, in case you were wondering, is not very good at surprises. He gets so excited that he just can't keep it in -- especially a good one. The other night we were at the store and he spent a little too much time fawning over the DSLRs. He had me hold them and look at them and what not. Then, a couple days later, told me that there would be something coming for me. Kinda gave that one away. He doesn't like it when I try and surprise him either. I've just about given up trying to get him good birthday/Christmas gifts. He can't stand to wait.

Tuesday, April 19

quick

Spring is moving in fast.

Both the lilac

and the snowball are starting to bloom. It amazes me every year that they are still alive. I am not the best with plants.

Monday, April 18

decisions, decisions

Grand Canyon/Pheonix/Sedona or Northern California?

[UPDATE: California won out this time. We'll hit Arizona and the Canyon later on. I'm so totally excited. Now I've just got to wait until the end of August...]

differences

Some differences between soccer and baseball at RFK.

1. Intensity. At the soccer match, the stadium bounces. There are drums and horns and whistles. We stand and scream for 45 minutes, sit down at the half for a few, then get up and yell for 45 more. Yes, we cheered at the baseball game, but there's a lot of sitting and waiting in between.

2. Section. Our tickets for soccer are in section 231. At the baseball game, we sat in 522. Not a bad view, but it's a big difference.

3. Attendance. 20,000 at soccer, ~~47,000~~ 37,000 at baseball. Which leads me right to number 4

4. Lines. Brendan was in line for 45 minutes before the game to get us hats, and food. He came back with hats and beer. Later on in the game, we waited for 2 innings in line* to get food. Some little 13 year old punk was trying to cut in line, too. He said to me "I'm not trying to cut." As I sent him evil eye darts. Stupidly, I believed him. He was looking at the menu, and moving up in the line next to, and a little in front of, us. I thought maybe he was with the guy in line ahead of us -- maybe it was his dad or uncle or something. But that guy ordered then we ordered and the kid got his money out, like he was going next. That's when Bren said to him, "Now I know that this young lady was before you. And you are going to go get in the back of the line and wait like the rest of us." The kid started to say something and Bren continued "You said to my wife just a few minutes ago 'I'm not trying to cut.' but you are. So go wait." It would have been a lynch mob if that kid hadn't walked away. Dumbass.

5. Length. A soccer game is guaranteed to be 90 minutes long. Maybe a few minutes longer for stoppage time, but just about 90 minutes. Baseball takes forever. Especially when they keep changing pitchers. Let the guy get into some kind of a rhythm. Jesus. He walks one guy -- the first guy he's facing -- and you take him out? Christ. It takes ages. The last 1/2 inning alone took ages.

Different as they are, I like them both. Right now, I like soccer more. Good thing, too since we have season tickets. We're going to another ball game, but that might be it for me this year. We'll see.

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* It seems so stupid to me that they didn't have the radio on by the concession stands. What's up with that? I'd like to know what's going on when I'm standing in line for 2 whole innings.

Tuesday, April 12

The Webby's

Check this out, it's the website I work on. Everyone go vote for PLWC on the people's voice award:

PLWC.org received word today that the website is one of five nominees in the Associations category for the 2005 Webby Award! Congratulations everyone!

Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, the Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality. Established in 1996, the 9th Annual Webby Awards received over 4,000 entries from all 50 states and over 40 countries worldwide. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences present the Webby Awards. The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes over 500 members consisting of leading experts in a diverse range of fields, such as musician David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, business guru and author Tom Peters, The Body Shop president Anita Roddick, fashion designer Max Azria, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening and Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser.

While the Academy selects The Webby Awards' winners, the online public selects The People's Voice Award winners. With frequently different results, Nominees often are as honored to receive the Webby People's Voice Award vote of confidence as it indicates a strong following by your site's visitors. Please encourage your friends and family to log-on and vote for PLWC! Visit http://pv.webbyawards.com/ to vote.

Webby Award and Webby People's Voice Award Winners will be announced on May 3, 2005. Winners will be honored at the gala Webby Awards ceremony to be held at historic Gotham Hall in New York City on June 6, 2005, hosted by comedian Rob Corddry of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Association Nominees:

AOPA Runway Safety Program, http://flash.aopa.org/asf/runwayS...

National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, www.childrenshospitals.net

New York Academy of Sciences, www.nyas.org

People Living With Cancer, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), www.plwc.org

State Bar of Arizona - Public Information Site, www.azbar.org

Monday, April 11

among

We were among the crowds Sunday at the Tidal Basin.

the state of things

This is the time of year when realtors are heavily courting people in our neighborhood. We get postcards with latest sales, little calendars, magnets, flyers... A whole lot of crap. Today, we got one in the mail from a real estate agency which shall remain nameless. I looked at it (the house was our model) and thought, "Only $300,000*? We won't be using them!"

One house on our cul-de-sac (also our model) without a basement, sold a few weeks ago for $317,250. And one down the street just sold for $350,000! Keep in mind our townhouse is small, and only has 2 bedrooms and one full and one half baths. Nothing special. Not to mention HOA fees. It's insane.

While it seems like we could make a killing if we sold now, where would we go? To get a single family, in a neighborhood we would want you've got to drop three-quarters of a million. Brendan always talks about selling, paying off our student loans, car payments and credit cards, and buying the best trailer we can find and being the envy of the trailer park.

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* A little math question for everyone... If we bought our house at a price of $145,000 what is the percent increase if we sold it with the sucky realtors for $300,000? First one with the right answer wins.

Saturday, April 9

@#%^&$ refs

Just got back from the DC United home opener. Shittiest. Refs. Ever. It ended in a tie, but the Chicago Fire should never have scored the goal they did. The player who scored was so obviously offsides, even my father, who doesn't understand the rule, would know he was offsides. And yet, no flag went up. The entire crowd stood there in disbelief until we all realized that there was going to be no call. Not to mention all the other calls that were obviously wrong or never called. We were robbed.

Tuesday, April 5

pain and Punky Brewster

Sunday night I got no sleep. All of a sudden, I was having these intense pains in my abdomen. Not too long after, well, I was as my Dad would say, "Having a conversation with my friend John." I had that conversation about every two hours. Of course, when I was up at 6, I couldn't resist checking my work email. Without getting into details, I had to go in yesterday for 4 hours. Not fun. The nausea stopped, but the pain had moved to the right side of my abdomen. They were pretty intense. Today, I stayed home and slept until 2, and the pain is much duller. Phew.

I've always been terrified of appendicitis. It's all because of one episode of Punky Brewster. Henry and Punky and everyone were getting ready to go on vacation, and Punky wasn't feeling well. She was having intense stomach pain, but she didn't want to say anything because she wanted to go on vacation. Eventually, she passed out from the pain and woke up in the hospital and had her appendix removed. There were a couple times in college when I had a stomach ache where I wondered if it was my appendix. And yesterday, everything I was reading seemed to point to it. Of course, I wondered if it seemed like it because I have always been afraid of it... So I was giving it until today to get better before I went to the doctor.

Right now, I'm satisfied that I'll live.

Friday, April 1

cruel joke

Today is so not my day...
I just went to lunch. It was one of those, I don't know where I'm going, but I've got to get out of this building kind of lunches. So when I started walking down the street, I decided: burrito. So I made my way towards Chipotle, and damn, the line was out the door. Alright, I can deal with that, but if I'm going to be standing in a long ass line for a burrito, I'll stand in line for an even better one at The Well Dressed Burrito which is just half a block away. So I go, and it's great, there's only one person in line in front of me. I place my grilled chicken burrito order and wait. It's not too long before I get my order and I'm on my way out the door. I'm excited, because I feel like I worked the system just right. Right? Wrong. I take a big bite, and instead of chicken, there's steak. Overall, not such a big difference, but I wanted chicken so bad.

It's time to go home.
I don't care anymore.

bum

Brendan has off today, the bum. His department is moving floors -- and today is the start of moving day. Bastard. It's so nice out today. I thought about taking the day off, but that idea was killed swiftly by a phone call at 4:20pm yesterday. Bah.

[I was already jealous of Mark, and now I am even more.]