Author: Pam Kocke

NOLA mom of identical triplets. Talent Acquisition at Automattic. Enjoy reading and photography and sewing and bookbinding.

Lots of things

– You know I’m a big Morrissey fan, right? I got to see him 8 years ago in Virginia, but I was pregnant and, I don’t know, the show wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped it would be. Well, I found out last week that he’s playing HERE! In New Orleans! For the first time since 1992! Exciting, right?

Except it’s the same week George and I will be in England. (We’re even flying into Manchester. Life is cruel.)

– In somewhat less sad news, I started planting jasmine vines along our iron fence. We don’t have a back yard, just a side yard, so maybe this will give us a little more privacy. In a few years, anyway. And it will smell nice.

– In case you were wondering where in the heck my “Bootcamp Day XX” posts have been (only kidding, I know no one has) it’s because I’m trying to let my achilles’ tendon heal. I’m not sure what’s going on with it, but it hurts sometimes, mostly when I’m going down stairs, or running. So I’ve been sticking to cycling. And sleeping later. It’s frustrating, I’ve never really had any running injuries before.

I ran a tiny bit on the treadmill this morning, just to see how it felt and it definitely felt weird. Tomorrow I have some new shoes coming in the mail (going back to my old trusty Nike Structures that I wore from 2001-2013, but got too expensive, but yay for old models on eBay) so maybe the extra stability will help.

I also read that I should be wearing shoes with a bit of a heel (I mean, not stilettos, but not my beloved Toms, either) so I guess I’ll be the cool mom sporting sneakers with my high-waisted pleated jeans this summer. Or something. Or maybe I’ll just get some wedges. Or something.

I just want to make sure that I can still do the Rocketchix triathlon in July again. We shall see.

– Just had the most delicious lunch, must share. I mixed together the following in a bowl:

  • shredded chicken that I slow-cooked last night in taco seasoning and salsa (the shredding-in-a-stand-mixer is the bomb, btw.)
  • quinoa
  • chopped avocado
  • salsa
  • plain greek yogurt (stand in for sour cream)

And  I just mixed it all up and gobbled it up. If I wasn’t doing the Simply Filling thing with Weight Watchers, I could have added beans, corn, and cheese, but it was really good even without those.

– I never finished posted pics from when everyone was visiting last week. This is one of my favorites, so I’ll just share this one. Me and my nieces and my boys. When we’re in Virginia, I’ll do one with Andrew and photoshop them together or something.

 

 

 

Look, there’s our house!

Last night’s episode of NCIS New Orleans was terribly exciting, no? I don’t mean the plot or the atrocious accent of that one guy (HUH?) or just the typical New Orleans cliches they threw at us, but MY STREET!

Just for fun, a few screen shots from the episode, next to the photos I took while they filmed…

My view: The gray SUV that carries NCIS people (I guess) screeches into the driveway of the “coroner’s office”!

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On TV: The gray SUV that carries NCIS people (I guess) screeches into the driveway of the “coroner’s office”!

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My view: People run out of the building, away from the gunman! (Then they stood in our driveway.)

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On TV: People run out of the building!

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My view: Scott Bakula and other randoms run to help the security guard who got himself shot!

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On TV: The pain is so real!

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Okay, that’s enough. You get the idea.

One more screen shot, where you can see our house! And our garbage cans! And a tiny bit of my van! And my neighbor’s house/coffee shop!

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Handily labeled for you.

Well, I think we’ve proved that my block makes a great place to film things. Now if anyone just needs a cute 7 year old boy and some spares, have your people call my people!

NCIS New Orleans

Watch tonight! It’s the episode they filmed in front of my house last month. You might catch a glimpse of something from one of these scenes… (spoiler alert?)

https://me.sh/azj7mym/1j4-7f3

Those are mostly pictures I took from my desk, so the action was really close. It was cool to see how everything is done, but I also got pretty jaded towards the end.

“Yawn, there goes Scott Bakula again.”

(Look, my mom loved Quantum Leap when I was growing up. This is exciting stuff to have the star on my sidewalk!)

Anyway. Look out for the coffee shop – that’s really my next door neighbor’s living room.

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Here’s the preview for the episode:

Drawings

It’s like I don’t know my own children anymore.

For the past few days, they’ve been drawing, reading, and playing chess. WHO ARE THESE STRANGE KIDS?

Yesterday, I came home from a bike ride (that’s kind of a lie. I went for a bike ride, popped a tire by the pub and ended up spending a few hours there.) and the boys were surrounded by drawings. Good drawings.

Somehow they found some video on YouTube that teaches kids how to draw using letters and numbers, and they’re now obsessed. I approve.

Here’s the channel:

Muffalo Potato

Month 88

You know what this means? Twelve months from today, we’ll be taking #100. Then, maybe I can consider stopping. (No, not really. As if.)

This month, we had a very special guest, all the way from Los Angeles! Give it up everyone, for COUSIN ELLIE!

88 months

Then and now

My brother and niece came to visit in August 2012, when Ellie was 7 years old (plus a few months.) We took a walk around the LSU campus (where my brother and I both went to school) and I took a picture of my brother with his daughter and nephews.

August 2012

Today, Ellie is almost 10, and the boys are 7 (plus a few months) and we went back to LSU, visited Mike the Tiger again, and found the same bench in the quad for a reprise of that old photo.

April 2015

Looking at the boys’ legs dangling above the ground in the first picture compared to today’s kind of kills me.

Thursday

I posted a picture of the cousins in birth order a couple of days ago, but here’s how my brother got them to do it. Cue the giggles!

We came home on Tuesday so we could sleep in our own beds (my mom’s house, while large and lovely, is not quite large enough for four families, so the boys and I were camped out on the floor of my mom’s office on various mattresses and sleeping pads) and it was kind of sweet how sad Linus was to leave his cousins. Mean of me to take joy in his sadness, I know, but it just makes me happy that they are having so much fun together.

(He was also sad to leave the big house with the big yard. Yeah, kid, we all want a big house with a big yard.)

We had crawfish and shrimp Monday night, yum.

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Ellie and Miles in their matching Wapuu shirts

 

Mesmerized by the fire pit.
Mesmerized by the fire pit.

Relatedly, my brother has spent a bunch of time working on his current Kickstarter project, which I promised I’d pimp out for him. A few years ago, he drove cross country and did a time lapse of the drive, which you can see here:

Now, he’s doing one around Iceland. Gee, must be nice.

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So, go support him so he’ll stop bugging me already.

 

Cousins!

My brother made standing in a line, in birth order, into a game. Voila! Pics of the boys and almost all of their cousins. (Andrew is at home, but we’ll see him next month when we go to Virginia.)

Ellie, Emily, Linus, Oliver, Miles
Ellie, Emily, Linus, Oliver, Miles
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Jump!

 

Happy houseiversary

I cannot believe I forgot our 11 year houseiversary the other day. Okay, okay, maybe I don’t have to mark every anniversary of every thing that’s ever happened. Yeah, I don’t have to. I just like to.

But wait…I’ve only posted once about a houseiversary, and that was ten years ago! So now I don’t feel quite so ridiculous for posting one today.

Love these doors
Old stairs
Living room, pre-kids.
The kitchen, back in the day.

In the past eleven years, we’ve been through a lot in this house. Engagement, Hurricane Katrina, marriage, and the arrival of three kids at once (as you can imagine, we bought this house on the assumption we’d have one or two kids, max.)

We’ve redone the kitchen, rebuilt the stairs, moved rooms around, built in triple bunk beds, painted the exterior, and added a wall, but I still want to repaint the living room and get new floors downstairs and fix the ones upstairs and redo the totally ’80s downstairs bathroom and finally change the lightbulb at the top of the stairwell that has been burned out for a decade.

One day.

Would I love to have a bigger house? One without so much wasted space? God, yes. The boys won’t fit in those beds forever, and I’d kill for, say, an actual laundry room and a back yard. But I also love the idea of the boys growing up in the same house forever. And I can still remember the knee-weakening feeling I got when we walked through the front door for the first time.

(Of course, the previous owner was an artist, and had one teenage kid. And was more on the minimalist side than we’ll ever be.)

Getting into the habit

Well, I can’t very well give a talk on Making Blogging a Habit and then just not blog, can I?

I should talk about my trip to Dayton. It was nice. The flight there was uneventful, as was the flight back, which nowadays is a pleasant surprise instead of, you know, just the way things should be.

The hotel I was staying in was attached to the convention center, so I didn’t see too much of Dayton, but dinner Saturday night was at an Irish pub in an interesting district not far from downtown.

I have to be honest, didn’t expect there to be a red light district (really red light 1/8 of a block) in Dayton, Ohio, but there you go.

I’m kind of skipping around here. Friday night was a speaker’s dinner, which was nice. I met some great people in the WordPress community, had a delicious meal, and got to see some of my coworkers.

A lot of people seemed puzzled by why I went all the way to Dayton for a WordCamp, when they happen all over the place. Well, there’s not one in Louisiana. In fact, guess who will probably be helping to organize one, one day? You’re looking at her. Dayton was a perfect first WordCamp for me. It wasn’t too big, so I didn’t feel too nervous about speaking.

(That’s a total lie, of course. I was petrified. I had assumed maybe 10 people would come to my talk, but it was more like 25, which filled up the small room.)

In the end, my talk went well, I got lots of great feedback from people, and someone even QUOTED ME in a TWEET during my talk! That was pretty amazing, I have to say.

Love that! I’m going to frame it.

Now I’m excited about the next one. Speaking, attending, organizing, whatever!