A while back, I was asked to take photos of our friends’ wedding that took place last month. I was nervous – I had never photographed a wedding before, and quite frankly, I never wanted to. So nerve-wracking! What if I totally screwed it up and they ended up with zero pictures? Well, I got over myself and agreed to do it. And here are some of the results. I really just wanted to capture the spirit, not have a ton of posed stuff.
I’m in Dallas now for work, helping out as Volunteer Coordinator of the DFW WordCamp. It’s really great to get to see how these events come together, since we’re working on organizing a WordCamp NOLA sometime next summer. This has been a great learning experience.
This is my second WordCamp ever – I attended the WordCamp in Dayton, Ohio earlier this year and gave a talk on Making Blogging a Habit. I…have not been habitually blogging lately. But I am going to take my own advice and just put something down and publish it.
Sign!
Speaker dinner
Kids Camp! I love this idea. Totally doing this next year.
A year ago, I had my first day at Automattic. Mind you, it wasn’t my first day as a full-time employee, but it was the first day of my Happiness Engineer trial. A few weeks before, I’d sent in my resume at the urging of a friend, and the intervening days had been filled with checking my email obsessively, hours-long Skype interviews, and hopes that I’d move on to the next step. And here we were, the first day of my trial.
Now, two years after that life-changing first day, I’m actually running trials. Earlier this year, I started working on the Happiness Hiring team, and now I do that half of my time, and spend the other half of my days helping users. I really love it. I interview prospective Happiness Engineers, and guide them on the path to hopefully getting hired, but I also still get to interact with our users. I really love all of it.
This was a great “second year” with Automattic. I traveled to Utah, Spain, uh, Dayton, and New York City. Next month, I’ll be back in Park City, and who knows after that?
On to year three!*
*I mean, technically, no, I’m still a couple of months away from my official Automattic anniversary, when I started full-time, but let me have this, okay?
I forgot to mention in last week’s post that we also got a new security system. So many improvements!
Also, we were looking at putting the boys in Cub Scouts, so we went to a meeting the other night to check it out. One of the activities they do is sleep on a warship, which sounds really cool, but Oliver told us later that he’d rather just sleep in his own bed. So we decided that Cub Scouts maybe isn’t for them, and instead, Oliver and Miles will be playing soccer and Linus will cheer them on. I hope.
The other night I made waffle pizzas for dinner. It was actually George’s idea. I guess he’s been perusing Pinterest in his free time. I toasted some waffles, let the boys put cheese and pepperoni on them (no sauce for them) and then stuck them under the broiler. Yum! They all gobbled them up.
Speaking of gobbling things up, I relented and bought those cotton candy grapes at the store. I’ve always been a bit weirded out by them for no rational reason, but Linus and I are huge fans. At $4 a pound, this could get expensive.
My ankle is doing a bit better, thank you very much. I got a brace that has these little gel pockets right around my achilles tendon, and I’ve stopped going barefoot. I hate wearing shoes all the time, but it’s working, so I’ll just have to suck it up.
Saturday, we went to my cousin’s house to have a big ol’ cousin hangout. We’re going to try to start doing that more. It was really great. Got the kids together for a pic:
A friend from work got a photo made into a cartoon of herself, and I loved hers so much that I went on fiverr.com and found an artist whose style I liked and got my own.
I had them use this picture:
Which resulted in this:
but a “friend” said I looked like THIS:
so I did a little photoshopping and ended up with this, which I hope looks more like me. Hmmph.
If not, who cares, it was $5.
(But everyone who agreed with Betsy is on my shit list.)
So that’s…let’s see…seven times twelve is…uh…84…plus nine is…
NINETY-THREE.
Sheesh. The math is getting harder.
I am extremely bummed that it was so foggy this morning, because Oliver voluntarily put his arms around his brothers for the picture. The smiles weren’t even forced! They were excited to wear their new school spirit shirts (don’t ask what a Loup-Garoux is, I’m still trying to figure it out) and I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. (My new monthly photo bribe.)
Last summer, we redid the kitchen, which was a big, dramatic improvement to the house. This summer, we’ve made some more subtle improvements that will save us some money over the long run.
First, we insulated the attic. The upstairs of the house has no insulation, and it would get uncomfortably hot in the summer. The air conditioner would run constantly, but it would never cool off, really. We have window units in the bedrooms, but not all of them, so at night we’d have to run window units and the central a/c.
So we looked into insulation, and after much research, we settled on spray foam insulation in the attic. It was done in early August, and the difference has been dramatic. The guys doing the installation said it was the hottest attic they’d been in all summer (one of the companies that came out to give an estimate said it was 140 degrees up there.)
The day after it was done, I stuck my head in the attic and was amazed at how not-hot it was. And we just got our first post-insulation electricity bill, and even though it wasn’t for the entire month, our average daily usage has already gone down compared to the same month last year. Woot!
Actually, that wasn’t the first thing we did. The first thing we did was pay someone to finish off the doorway to our bedroom that George and his dad started, cough, six years ago. So now we have a door that closes! And no more bare studs!
The door. It is not exciting, but my sister wanted to see it. So here it is.
Which leads to…
…some updating of our living room. Hooray! I’ve been waiting so long to paint up here. Haven’t done it yet, but I’ve started working on making it a nicer space. The IKEA coffee table is gone, replaced by a velvet ottoman that I adore and George tolerates. New light blocking curtains also help with the heat. The toys and Wii U were banished to the boys’ room, as well as the LEGO table, which I replaced it with something more grownup.
Definitely there’s more work that will need to happen in here, but this is a start!
Finally, the pièce de résistance: a new fridge! I just couldn’t stand how small our old one was, plus we’re paying for water delivery every month. So I sweet talked George into letting me get a new one (I mean sure, over time, it’ll pay for itself since we can cancel water delivery. I mean, it might take ten years, but still.) We now have almost twice as much freezer space! A necessity with three boys who are starting to eat more and more. Do you have any idea how many waffles I can now fit in there?!?!
The boys were invited to two birthday parties last weekend. They all went to the one on Saturday (we found a far superior laser tag place, so they say) but Oliver only wanted to go to the one yesterday (he is the closest friend of the birthday boy.) So we got a little one on one time again!
Honestly, the last thing I want to read right now is more about Katrina, but I can’t just let 10 years (such a nice round number) go by without any acknowledgement. But mostly it’s just going to be links.
I am really grateful I’ve been blogging for 14 years at times like this.
Saturday is my first fitting for my wedding dress. I’m so friggin’ excited. It can’t come fast enough! And then I’m going to DC for Labor Day weekend, courtesy of my dear dear dear friends and big sister. Fun two weekends coming up. Yay!
It’s impossible to comprehend what’s happening. People have always talked about the Big One hitting New Orleans directly. But we didn’t really think it’d happen in our lifetime. And it’s playing out exactly like they said it would. Of course, I wouldn’t have predicted the lawlessness that would take over the city. I can’t believe there are people taking shots at helicoptors.
I was at Target this evening and behind me in line was an elderly man with his son or grandson. The grand/son went to get him some razors and while we were waiting in line, the man asked me where I was from. I said Algiers and he said he was from Chalmette. Chalmette, in case you don’t know, is gone. I read that 96% of all of the homes are under water. Under a lot of water.
September 4, 2005 (another post): Moving our wedding. You can read more about that here.
I have come to realize that I just don’t care where it is. As long as it happens, who really cares where it is?
September 10, 2005: On the road. We headed to Virginia just to get away from it all.
Found out our New Orleans offices might not reopen until the new year. Which means I might spend the first month of married life living in another city as George.
The boys are almost done with their second week of second grade. Time is flying, and I’m having a bit of a tricky time getting everything done. New schedule always takes some getting used to.
Last weekend we went swimming for the last time. That was sad.
I bought some new headphones for work. Nice Bose ones on sale at Target, but they hurt the top of my head. I really want a replacement pair of my old headphones, but the earpiece snaps off if you so much as look at it wrong (I’ve already been through two pairs.) But they cradle my noggin much better. So I’ll probably return the Bose headphones and keep looking for new ones.
I’m trying Dukan again. It worked so well last time, crossing my fingers it will work again. So far so good. (Almost 72 hours without sugar!) Meat meat meat meat meat.
My Achilles tendon is still bugging me a bit (it’s been six months) but I got some heel cups from Amazon which seem to actually be helping. My friend Steph and I meet at 6 every morning to walk/run about 3.5 miles. Some days are better than others. Nevertheless, I’m signed up for the Jazz half marathon on Halloween.
Tonight we finished watching the last Harry Potter movie with the boys. I almost forgot how great the last one is. My cold hearted children didn’t even flinch when the Weasley twin (Fred?) died, but that part just really gets me every time.
Took Miles to the doctor one day last week because of a weird blister thingy on his arm. I was paranoid it was mrsa or something, but turns out it’s just molluscum. And it could take a year to go away. But at least it’s not something really awful. What I am not going to do is google either of those terms because both will bring up vile photos. No thank you.
I hope this doesn’t affect Miles’s acting career. Oh, well, I mean, it doesn’t exist yet, but when he said he wants to be an actor when he grows up, I put him in an extras database, and signed him (and Oliver) up for the Drama and Improv after school activity. YES. That means there will be extensive documentation of a play in a few months. I think I’m going to be an awesome stage mom, I really do.
Last weekend was the New Orleans Moms Blog‘s annual Mom’s Night Out. The theme this year was 90s prom. It was super fun, and I had a great time reliving that decade.
Clothing-wise, I wore pretty much exactly what I spent my two years at LSMSA and my (cough) six years at LSU wearing: cutoff jean shorts, doc martens, baggy t-shirt. I added some leggings and went a tad overboard on hair and makeup. (For real in the 90s, my hair looked pretty much exactly as it does now, but hennaed, and makeup was limited to mascara and lipstick.)
Hee hee heeee hee heee! I made sure not to smile at all. That would have been out of character.
Okay, once I couldn’t help it. Prom pic with Megan!
The event was held at NOMA, which was pretty cool. I can’t believe they let a bunch of punks hang out with Picasso paintings and such.
I gotta give the makeup artist kudos on that eyeliner. It didn’t come off until maybe two days later.
The cakes made by a local bakery were soooooo perfect. (Tasty too!)
And people really got into the theme:
It’ll be fun to see what theme we have next year! How to top this?!?!
pyjammy dot blog 