More modern News

A few more notes, just while Jess finishes up some more playing in rock band, about stuff that's been happening, you know, recently.

1) We took off this Friday to go tubing with people at work, a tradition three years at this point. There were slightly fewer of us, and it was a little overcast, but that just made it easier to organize and less likely for us to get sunburned as far as I am concerned. Good times.

2) Inspired by Nana, we had a local neighborhood get-together grill. We didn't get *everyone* showing up, but we did get to meet and re-meet some neighbors, and we did get to see a lot of them when we handed out our little 'announcement fliers', though we had to convince some people, first, that we weren't there to tell them about the latest issue of The Watchtower.

The grill went off pretty well, although I made *way* too many hamburgers. Turns out grilling is pretty easy, I'm getting halfway accomplished at it. Lots of fun, lots of food, really hot, and we got a lot of 'thank yous' for organizing it. Next time, we may have to try Ice-cream, or maybe just have it indoors. It was pretty toasty.

Also, Rock band three has been announced, with the following upgrades:

a) A real keyboard
b) Upgraded Drums
c) Upgraded guitar
and, most importantly:
d) A version called 'pro mode' where you are pretty much playing the real guitar, drum, and keyboard parts. I could be learning how to play the keyboard! And the drums better (they'll have cymbals on them now) and the pro guitar, which is optional, has a button for every string and every fret now, and six strings to strum. How's that for realistic? I'm excited.

3) Jess and I are seriously considering joining the new century with sexy new smart phones, but being a good nerd I'm researching the possibilities. As in previous tech revolutions, the hardware is getting outdated every couple of months, but considering we're upgrading from really, really old phones, pretty much anything is acceptable.

4) Jess is still playing...what else...

5) We're trying to plan our vacation time for the rest of the year, which is pretty limited being as we burned pretty much all of it in Europe. We get more every month, though, so we're trying to figure out when we can go see Jessie's family, which we haven't seen for a really long time.

And that's about it. We've got a few more days of Europe and then we're done. It's been a pretty big writing project, and I'm *still* way behind Sandlin on the post count. Heh.

-N

Sleeping off the Sunburn

Yesterday a bunch of us played hookey from work and went out tubing, again.  We did this last year and had a pretty great time.  The theory is that you rent a few tubes and float slowly down one of the rivers, usually keeping a cooler of beer in one of your tubes.  

We decided to try something a little different, we brought a keg.  Not a full one, mind, a pony keg, only 5 gallons, and there were 14 of us on the river.  Jess and I brought some food, too.  I was proud of myself for bringing some individually-wrapped little snack cake things.  They float!  :)

We went down once and it only took us about 2.5 hours, and since we weren't quite done for the day, we went back and did it again.  It was alternately relaxing and exciting, as there are a couple of places where the river gets funneled down a pretty exciting chute at relatively high speeds.  One of our cargo-tubes ended up flipping, and we discovered that our cooler floats.  Neat.  :)

I managed to keep myself unburnt by reapplying 30 to 50 spf sunscreen on myself with almost ocd-like intensity.  I escaped unscathed, but Jess got some pretty bad sun-scorches on her knees and shins.  She's napping next to me now, and is already healing up, but the drive home was no fun at all.  We do have some good aloe beach-burn stuff, though, and we layered that on for some pretty impressive relief.  We also put on some white wine vinegar, which is supposed to help out.  Anyone else ever heard of that?

Later today, we may go try and buy a car.  Wish us luck!

Oh, and THANKS to everyone who has offered feedback on my book.  I know everyone's being extra nice, but it does feel good to know that people like it.  It also feels good to have that second draft finally done.  

With love,

-N

Tubing

Yesterday a bunch of us at Ticom skipped off of work and floated down the river on inner tubes. I'm not sure whose idea it was originally, but word got around that we should all meet up at George's house (he's my boss!) for some breakfast and then go out to the Guadalupe river (pronounced Guad-a-loop here in Texas for some reason), bring a whole lot of beers, and float for about 4 hours.

It was a tube-load of fun. We got to hang out with a bunch of people we work with that we haven't gotten to spend a lot of time with before, and everyone had a really great time. Jess did some butterfly races with fellow swimmers and I ran a beer/watermellon delivery service for a while. One of the most exciting episodes happend when we were all swimming around and a few of our tubes got away from us and got swept down some swift-moving water. Too shallow to swim through, but too deep and fast to walk through, I ended up flopping my way down the river, tubeless, bonking up my shins a little bit, but otherwise doing just fine. We caught up with the tubes, though, and all was well.

After the river, we went to a nearby restaurant to get some food, and then our DDs took us home. Hurrah!

Tonight we're going to the Master Pancake Theatre (think MST3K, but live) presentation of Catwoman, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It should be hilarious.

Also, I'll be working on another kitten movie today. It may come out later, if you're good.

-N