Archives for December 2008

Today is supposed to be work permit day. I expected to get up, check my work email and know that I have my work permit or not. But no! Not yet. I have to wait, so you all have to wait too. 🙂

Yesterday was a fun mail day! I got my box of books for the Italian lessons I’m taking, quite the stack of books. So I could do my homework. Yes, I have homework!! Tonight I have my second online lesson. 90 minutes of learning to speak Italian. Can you be “out of shape” for school? I think I might be.

I also got a box with my new camera – a tiny little Canon Elph. This doesn’t replace my amazing, wonderful Canon SLR camera for photos, but it does let me have a camera with me wherever I go. Brandon and I had a good time playing around, taking pictures of us together.

And it’s still snowing off and on…

Last night Patrick and I went to the KINK FM Holiday concert in Portland with Patrick’s friend Andy. It was great! There were four acts:
Matt Nathanson – my current fav (pictured, thanks to Andy). Love his music and he is fabulous live! What a great entertainer. We just saw him live in Eugene in November, where he played for two hours. I would have loved him as the headliner.

Amos Lee – Kind of a funky folk singer. I loved the music but didn’t like his voice at first, it grew on me through his set. Great beat.

Augustana – a young band that sang acoustically for this concert, because the stage was being set up behind them for the headliner band. There were some sound problems with their mic and the audience kind of left them, but I left the concert wanting to hear more and downloaded their 2 CDs off of iTunes today. They are a great “find.”

The Pretenders – Yes, the one with Chrissie Hein. They are still around – go figure! She’s been rockin’ for 30 years now and still put on a good show. Her voice is great! The lead guitarist (definitely not the original one, probably not even 30 years old) was fantastic. They were fun but didn’t play too much of their old stuff, and I don’t know their new stuff.

It was a great time! I’m lovin’ live music these days. It is fun to go to these smaller concerts (we were standing second row) and “get to know” the musicians in a different way. I also love finding a new band like this… now I have some new music to enjoy.

Brandon got this Lego guy in his Advent calendar this week. I love it! Too bad they don’t seem to make women Legos, or I would grab one, give her this camera and then claim it as my own. It’s amazing what you can do with Legos!

I went in to change my blog design to a more holiday template, and they didn’t have one! Eventually I’ll need to learn some of this HTML design myself. But in the meantime, I remembered this picture I took last December on a frosty morning and thought that would be a nice one for a holiday mood! Too bad I haven’t figured out how to make my own blog banner with the photo, or I’d put this up.

OK, I haven’t updated my blog because I’ve been spending my computer time on Facebook. Thanks a bunch Katey! She sucked me into it. Actually it’s been fun because I’ve already been chatting with people I haven’t been in touch with for years, as well as throwing snowballs at my brother and cousin. It’s easy to spend time on it though!

Today was a really good day for work. Really good. Last Tuesday we found out that we had a potentially HUGE problem on the project I’ve been working on for six months. Like it could delay the project another six months. We had to wait until today for the final data to come in though, and it was GOOD. So we don’t have the big problem we thought we would have and we’ve passed another hurdle. I am so relieved, the whole team is relieved, the managers are relieved. We have happy people on this project from here to Italy and Singapore. Whew! We’re not done yet but this brings us one step closer.

So that makes it a really good day! You don’t get days like this very often, where things go right instead of wrong. I am enjoying this moment for sure.