i finally got it posted!

be sure to check out the food blog for our night at woodfire!

helloooo midtown, it has been a while

we're all moved into our corporate digs. it's weird being back in midtown after all these years...it's changed a lot since i was 21, but then again i guess i have too. both for the better i hope. thank god.

the trude and i enjoyed a very long walk in piedmont on this sunny (finally!!) and blustery winter day. along the way we stopped to enjoy the view and bark at some geese...

she's baaaaaack

My current life provides me with more “me” time than I’d normally require. I have hours upon hours alone each day to fill in in different ways in various locations. Since leaving Puerto Rico I’ve had none. Zero alone time means no real time to think or reflect, much less write.

I decided to skip breakfast with the girls this morning and try to get a hold on everything that is scattered around this hotel room and my thoughts.

Soooo, home leave in a nutshell:

We came home to Atlanta to spend a few days with friends before heading out to the families. We saw Santaland Diaries and had some great brunches, lunches, dinners and drinks catching up. We headed north and visited my Grams and got to see some long lost fam of mine, which was great. Then we headed south where we ate, ate and ate some more, had a visit from Santa and spent time with the fam and friends in Albany.We then came home and celebrated the new year with dear friends and a great meal…





Then we continued the tour of friends with a trip to Athens, played in the snow, came down with a case of cabin fever and were cured by a 30th birthday and a very cautious cab driver…






A day or so later we moved into the hotel and the conference began. In one night we were sucked back into our other life…friends from all corners of the world that we hadn’t seen in months some in even a year were all together again and since then we’ve yet to really come up for air.

Although we did pull away for our night at Woodfire Grill with my favorite guys and it was AMAZING! I’ll be sure to get up the pics and review on the food blog soon. Until then you can feast on this…



We’ve got one more week of the conference, one more week of living in this weird black hole in Buckhead where we feel a million miles away from Atlanta and all our friends here.

Saturday we move into our corporate apartment in Midtown and relieve Pablo of dog duty because we get to have our little monkey come live with us! It will be sad to say goodbye to friends who we may or may not see this year but thankfully a good handful of them will be here in Atlanta with us.

I’m anxious to introduce and merge these two lives a little over the next 7 weeks, to really catch up with all of you that we’ve missed so much and of course living with this little terror…

hiatus

obviously, i'm on one with regards to the blog and probably will be until the initial craziness of our return subsides.

hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and wish you all a happy new year!

as promised

behold, the wonders of an alien seeking radiotelescope...





who says that $100 million was a waste of money? obviously, that thing is working...

2009...

With a blink of the eye it has arrived, the end of our first year is upon us and we’re left baffled by how these eleven months have escaped us.

From the places we’ve seen, to the things we’ve done, to the people we’ve met it has been a year swollen with memories and experiences.

When we land in Atlanta on Friday we’ll have 60 flights, 40 hotels, 5 continents, 20 countries and over 50 cities under our belt. From North America to Asia to Europe to Africa to South America back to Asia and finally back to North America we’ve cut quite the path this year. It makes me tired just typing it. But, somewhere we found the energy and even wanted more when we were limited by our location.

Now, as the year draws to a close we’re ready for home, for our friends, for our families, for southern food and Christmas. We’ve gotten over the initial disappointment of not traveling the first round and embraced a chance to recharge, regroup and reconnect.

All I can do as I reflect on this year is say my heart is truly full of overwhelming gratitude. Gratitude for this incredible opportunity, for the experiences we’ve had, for the places we’ve seen, for our safe journeys and the safe journeys of our new friends, for our old friends who stayed in touch, for our friends that came to see us, for our families that forgave us our distance, for being missed and having people to miss, for the memories we’ve created, for all the laughter, all the tears, all the joy and the sheer frustration you experience while living abroad…I’m grateful for it all. It seems an impossible feat to sum it all up or resurrect all the hundreds of memories and gather them up in one place.

These are but a few from what has been an unbelievably incredible year…

Sunday, Pouring Sunday

Our last weekend in Puerto Rico…I have to say there hasn’t been much I’ve been dying to see or do here. After multiple vacations to this lovely island there just isn’t much left to pique my interest. Also, it’s the last weekend of the travel year so it's going to need to be something pretty spectacular to make me want to get up early on a Saturday.

But, we had planned to see the Camuy Caves and Arecibo Observatory and after wimping out on Saturday we finally made the 90 minute trip on Sunday morning.

We arrived at the Camuy Caves with clouds looming. Everything I had read or heard said “if it rains at all they will close the caves”. Warnings from like every other person on trip advisor “watch the weather!!!”…well not sure who was in charge on Sunday but they had no problem taking us down in the pouring rain.

Had I come prepared with my quick-dry shorts and raincoat I would have been fine. I’ve spent many a weekend getting soaked to the bone and loved every minute of it. I was not prepared.

The caves themselves were pretty impressive. It was a much shorter tour than I had expected but hey we got to wear hardhats so that was cool…





Because Murphy’s Law was apparently ruling that day it had stopped raining for our entire duration underground only to start pouring again as we made our way back up. The Arecibo Observatory was about 20 minutes away and when we arrived my shorts and t-shirt were still soaked…and it was still raining.

We were told it was about 500 steps up to the observatory and that was when I had had my fill. There may have been a minor meltdown half-way up where I seriously toyed with going to back to the car to wait while they did the tour.

The Arecibo is the world’s largest radiotelescope. It was featured in that movie “Contact” and is ran by Cornell University to search for radio signals from distant galaxies in hopes of finding other forms of life. Yep, this $100 million dollar piece of equipment is there to search for aliens.

It was impressive as far as its size and its space-station quality aesthetics. The best part of the place was that we got to take pictures with an alien…that and MJ lent me $2 for an awesome coconut ice cream bar. I’ve still got to get the photos from MJ but will post when I do…of the alien, not the ice cream.

It was wet day with some mediocre sights but, when we got back my pants were fairly dry and we ordered a pitcher of margaritas at lunch. So, all in all still a pretty good Sunday!

beware of coronas on the beach

So, this is my hand 2 weeks after my phytophoto dermatitis outbreak. It has faded significantly and has gone from looking like age spots to freckles. Not that I don't like freckles, I just don't have any on my arms so it looks ridiculous and very out of whack to have a hand full of them.

It took me a while to figure out when this sun/citrus fruit combo actually happened. But, after reading it usually peaks at 72 hours I realized it was the day we went to Old San Juan with E & K. Before spending all day in direct sun I had sweetly squeezed my Wife's limes into her margaritas at lunch. She had asked me because she didn't want to get sunscreen in her cocktails. Sunscreen that she had been smart enough to slather herself in and I had been stupid enough to forget.

I was hoping it would be gone before we got home but at this rate I'm seriously doubting it.

Lesson here is if you're dealing with citrus fruit, especially limes and you're out in the sun make sure you have on sunscreen. That, or make your spouse squeeze their own dang limes.

Dominican

In all honesty, we chose to go to the Dominican mainly because the tickets there were much more affordable than any other neighboring island and after the Philippines we just weren’t dying to island hop. We had looked at going to Punta Cana, but our apartment is just steps from the beach so it wasn’t a huge draw. Eventually we settled on going to the capital, Santo Domingo.

I have to say, we could not have been more pleasantly surprised. Granted we did no research and knew nothing about it but I guess we had expected it to be like old San Juan or maybe not even as nice. We had no idea the rich, rich history of Santo Domingo and the myriad of “firsts” we were going to encounter.

Did you know that Christopher’s Columbus’ final resting place is in Santo Domingo? Or that the first street built in the new world was is in Santo Domingo? Or the first Catholic Cathedral? Or the first sundial?

You get the point.

Anyway, we did a half-day tour that turned into an all day tour on Saturday and really enjoyed ourselves. That night we all went to dinner at a restaurant actually set in a natural cave. The atmosphere was wonderful and except for our poor choice of flaming Dominican hunch-punch, I’m glad we went.






Our crazy tour guide, Bill, had told us there would be a merengue festival that evening on our streets but sadly it wasn’t until Sunday night :(

Sunday we had lunch back in the old city and tooled around the few shops that were open before heading back to San Juan.

I have to say it felt pretty great at immigration once we reached the States…last time this year!

This weekend we’ve decided to stay put again. We’ll probably make a day trip out to the Camuy Caves or just relax at the beach by our apartment. We’ve got to start organizing the suitcases and packing because we’re going to be heading home before you know it!

lost a battle but the fight will continue

"There's never a good time for civil rights. There's never, ever, ever, ever a good time for civil rights. I know. I get that," said Sen. Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat who was the chamber's first openly gay member. "But the paradox is, it's always the time to be on the right side of history"

*thanks to dr. pants for the video. and when i say "dr." i mean it in the most literal sense...as for the "pants" part i can't for the life of me remember where that came from*