the toilet saga continues (gasp!)

so if you read my below post, the story didn't actually end there, my post was premature ;) see the full story in pictures ;) and since the pictures could be considered less than interesting, i've captioned the whole thing for your reading pleasure.

http://FloridaIveys.smugmug.com/photos/sspopup.mg?AlbumID=3340993

my husband, the plumber

so when nate and i got married (and let me preface this by saying i love him just the way he is) i figured i was marrying a wonderful man, but that i'd be paying a repairman or specialist to fix most of the things around the house. because lord knows i'm not patient enough to do it, and nately didn't strike me as the handy type.
but lo and behold! since we've lived in our own home he's proven himself to be extremely handy and in possession of nearly limitless patience. he's done all kinds of little projects and is gaining skill with each one. his latest endeavor (if you will) was our leaky master bath toilet. 2 trips to home depot, 3 trips to ACE, and approximately 6 hours later- we have a repaired toilet! the man's skills know no bounds ;)

ah, home sweet home...

Angriest City in America?

"The winner -- Orlando, FL -- home of Walt Disney World, the so-called "happiest place on earth." Three other cities in Florida -- St. Petersburg, Miami, and Jacksonville -- make the top 10, with Tampa, FL trailing at 12th place.
New York City, infamous for its rude and angry citizens, ranks 57th.
Tha calmest city award goes to Manchester, New Hampshire. Portland, Oregon, the urban planning "Shangri-la", comes in at 96th place, just four above Manchester.
Men's Health magazine judged 100 cities on high blood pressure, traffic congestion, aggravated assaults, workplace violence and speeding tickets."

a collection of my favorite property photos :)

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
-G.B. Stern

new blog title, new obsession

so lately i've gotten more and more into photography and it's got me thinking. seems like i'm always trying to get into something artsy. well, maybe not always, but if you recall the previous title of this blog (think back really far to yesterday) it was 'beware of poetry.' but i find myself reading and writing less poetry and taking pictures instead :) so state of flux it is for now.

oh i also recently got photoshop 7 (thanks drew!) which has contributed greatly to the blog changes :)

happy birthday to a whole lot of decade turners and more!

off to PA!

and a photo from last week :) makes me want to go watch the movie!

i'm in gryffindor!

i'm finally picking the harry potter series back up :) i'm almost done with book 5, then plan to read 6 & 7 right after that :) nate and i are also behind on the movies, we're getting ready to watch 4!

bloggity bloggerson!

cassie's here and we're all getting ready to head to the beach :) it's definitely hot enough! i've been posting pictures from all our adventures, most recently from last weekend, we went to mgm studios and epcot with ian, ben & sam. it was a good time :) sam even let me borrow her lens while we were at epcot, so if you're wondering why i took so many pictures of singular items with blurry backgrounds... that's why, i was playing with it :)

for example:



a few weeks ago, nate and got to go on a cruise for work (yes, i know how ridiculous that sounds) :) we were really excited to be able to go on the same one this time! we did quite
a bit of data collection and got some time in to have fun too :) we went looking for the queen's staircase in nassau, but unfortunately we thought we couldn't find it and stopped looking when were just a block away! we also spent time at nate's favorite, castaway cay- the beach we were on was almost entirely empty and extremely shallow! as evident in this picture:

that's pretty much the last few weeks :) AND... next week we're headed to pennsylvania for the Big O Party- a celebration with nate's family and all of those turning a decade this year. and my mom and my sister will be joining us so i'm really excited to show my mom around connellsville and pittsburgh (cassie's already been a few times). AND we're going to get to spend some quality ghoon time as well, we're looking forward to seeing little o and his ghoon parents :)

happy birthday gram!!

living green!

so nate and i have been trying to make changes in how we live to better conserve the environment. thought i'd share many of the things we found simple to do ;)

• we've been running our dishwasher on air dry and light wash and only when it's full


• we programmed our thermostat to better suit our schedule (i.e. let it get warmer during the day while we're working, and cool it down while we're home) and since we live in FL, 78 degrees has become the 'new cool.' to help out with the less cool air, we're using our ceiling fans more often.


• we're steering away from bottled water (takes a lot of resources to package it), we're lucky enough to have good tap water here.


• we're unplugging power 'vampires' like our TV or other devices that pull power even when they're turned off.

that's a start of our list so far! more to come :)

i'll take a coffee, black.

so i used to drink my coffee blonde (healthy dose of cream) but recently i've started drinking it black. like the ella fitzgeral song ;) nathan had poured me a travel mug but we were out of cream so instead of using milk (gross!), he left it out altogether so i could add cream when i got work. i drank it all morning before i realized i'd never added cream, so i thought i'd try it black.
seems odd i guess because the way you take your coffee (2 sugars, black, with cream, or even not at all, etc.) is in my opinion part of the basic description of someone. so am i a different person now? i guess no more than if i dyed my hair, right? ;)

hi!

i need to blog about our last couple of trips (nashville and sanibel were both fantastic!) but i'm currently preoccupied with painting :) john (nate's dad) is here helping us paint and nate and john have been busy! they've finished the kitchen and the dining room in a lovely green color of my choosing :) i updated our pictures page with the latest -- next is the living room :) i'm so excited to have paint on the walls! gives me a bug to decorate everything :) now i want to pick art for all our walls -- and i love this print done by rodney white -- but not sure if i'd be overdoing the green in my house!

in the details

i want to tell
her about the postcards under
my windshield wiper, the day spent
surrounded by books (my dictionary
too). the way your shirt sleeve
gets damp but i keep my hand
there for the whole movie anyway,
i want to tell her about mixing pancake
batter at 2 a.m. and how you send
me words, save me words, love
my words. she should know that when
you told me you weren’t leaving, you
tightened your hand on mine just slightly
and i thought how no one (not even
me) has ever stayed.

i wrote this in march after nate and i had just started dating :) i discovered it in a notebook in a box in the garage recently so thought i'd post it.

we're headed to nashville this weekend to visit laura and drew-- nate and i are flying out together on friday afternoon, then i'm heading home sunday evening and nate's staying for a few days for the iie conference. i'm really looking forward to spending time with laura and drew, and time in nashville :) the may trip has become a yearly pilgrimage for music and tasty american beer :)

other than that we are deeply in love with our screened in porch and have spent most of our waking moments sitting on it. the weather has been in our favor, nice and cool in the evenings. this past weekend we spent a lot of time in the yard/porch making it a nice little haven. nate's project was pavers for the screen doorstep, which he did a fantastic job with. my project was lots of foliage and flowers for the porch and reviving the flower bed that was almost entirely destroyed by porch construction.

while i was kneeling next to the reed grass in the flower bed i heard a rustling which i've gotten used to given all the lizards we have around, but then saw a 4 foot (at least!) black snake shoot our from behind where i was working. needless to stay i screamed bloody murder and ran in the opposite direction. put a serious damper on my gardening but after prompting nate to poke around with the end of the rake, i was satisfied he didn't leave any friends behind and finished off my planting!

that's it for now :) hope your week is going well!

summer in florida and the living is easy :)

our new porch is in! we've been out here every night since they built it on tuesday. i've posted updated pics on smugmug of the whole process :) i also posted pics from our trip to PA for music weekend which was a fantastic time- we were all sad to leave.
we did get to share connecting flights with laura and drew which was really cool :) we met up in cincinatti at the starbuck's airport, and one the way home, we flew through atlanta together, so that was a nice way to prolong the trip a bit :)
nate's dad will be coming to visit and help us paint at the beginning of june which will be great - not only for painting help, but also for a definite date to get painting! left unchecked, i think i would paint the entire house various shades of green, but i'm trying to branch out a little :) i think the living room will be blue, the kitchen 'asparagus' green, dining room undecided, guest room a goldish color to match reds and quilts, our bedroom a nice sagey green, the guest bathroom a bright green, the study.. no idea, the extra bedroom... maybe tan? and our bath i haven't figured out yet either!
i want to buy all kinds of palm trees this weekend to turn our porch into a tropical oasis :) we also want to catch a good sale on a chaise or double chaise lounge- we have a couple of chairs and a loveseat, but as we'll be spending a lot of time out here reading we want to be able to lay out :)
i think that's it really... work's been pretty crazy busy lately, but hopefully i can get that under control soon enough. tomorrow our department has an all day team building event scheduled at one of the parks so that should be a nice way to spend a friday :)
have a great weekend!

and congrats to jilian and todd :)

saving the earth...one piece of junk mail at a time!

so i just joined greendimes.com -- it's a service that aims to reduce the junk mail you receive by 90%. takes about 8 weeks to take effect, so i'll keep you posted. it's $35ish dollars per year but they plant a tree for every new membership and if i can save at least a few trees by not receiving ridiculous amounts of credit card apps, that would be awesome ;)

hi grandma!

i've been a total slacker on the blogging front... but i'll do better soon ;) i promise :)

We Are Virginia Tech

by Nikki Giovanni

“We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech. "