Weekend Update

Last week I had the lovely Lindsey and Cameron over for a visit! It was the first time I've seen my sweet ASU friends in a long while!

Last Friday night Andrew surprised me with a date night: we went to Cabo Fish Taco for dinner. I love the Charlotte skyline.

Then we went Uptown to see King Lear.

It was a 3 hour production.

Saturday we went to a pool party with some friends and while I didn't take any pictures there, I got one of Lake Wylie on the way home. Ahh, I love summertime.

Saturday night we went to visit and have dinner with the family I used to nanny for! It was so fun to hang out and spend time with them. Mar Mar Chickadee is getting so big.

Have a great week! :)

Happy Left Handers' Day!

Yesterday was national Left Handers' Day! Since Andrew is a leftie, I thought we should properly celebrate.

We started out the day by writing a note to each other (me with my left hand):

And Andrew with his right hand.

(I know... we're so weird. Actually I'm just weird because I made Andrew do all this.)

Last night we had a beer from Left Hand Brewing Co.

Left thumb up.

Yay for silly holidays! :)

Meet Jolly

Well Andrew's post below made me want to talk about decorating a home after you're married. I think I had this idea that I would get to decide/pick out/choose everything we did to our home. Oh no, no. While 95% of our home is "my taste" and decorated by me, Andrew did have his opinions and things he brought into the marriage that he didn't want sent to Goodwill. I mean, this is his home too so I met him halfway.

Here's where I introduce you to Jolly.

Andrew had this Jolly Roger (pirate flag) hanging in his old house and wanted to put it up in the apartment. Our apartment. You can only imagine my reaction (coming from a house with sisters and female roommates). I gently told him that there was no way this would be hung in our living room. So he hung Jolly in the laundry/storage room and here he is:

I never, ever would've done this but actually I've become fond of Jolly and we call the storage room Jolly's room and we like to think that he's watching over the place when we're gone. This was a good lesson I learned in marriage: learn to pick your battles. ;)

Two can play at this game

Some of you will recall the last time I invaded this space to discuss the great sense of loss I had at fine art from my swinging bachelor times coming to unfortunate ends in the course of daily life in marriage.

Life, my dear readers, as they say, has happened again. This time, alas, I have nowhere to lay the blame but squarely on my own shoulders. Behold, this glorious artifact from my youth, now quite literally cut off at the knees. I give you あしたジョー, or "Tomorrow Joe" for those of you without Japanese language translation software.



This particular glorious piece of Japanese sculpture requires a bit of digression into my life back in the gloriously early 2000s, circa July 2001. I, being an up and coming summer missionary wannabe and imagining myself to be a bit of a Japanese scholar, signed up for a 2 month stint in Tokyo with SEND International, an organization that my family had had some positive relationships with going back before my time. That summer, beyond being the time of my adopting hair-dos not seen since the era of Billy Idol and Joey Ramone, also proved to be a time for learning about all things Japanese high school, as seen through the eyes of an uncomprehending white guy who's language ability extended about as far as "Domo arigato..." etc. You, no doubt, are familiar with the song. But I digress. Towards the end of the summer, I, along with a smattering of counselors and other staff, descended on a camp for 3 weeks of high school camps. For me, this amounted to sleeping in a cabin with about 10 Japanese high school guys, pretending I knew what they were saying, and repeatedly muttering my catch phrase of the time "しばくぞ、ボケ!" (roughly translated, I'm going to beat you down), though in this case it was a rough term of affection between myself and the aforementioned high school guys. Fast forward about 1 month to the big send-off party for me and my fellow summer missionary. One of the high school guys from my cabin that summer found me in the crowd (admittedly, not very hard, being the only white guy with a blond mohawk there), and gave me the late Tomorrow Joe as a parting gift.

That dearly beloved bobble head has stayed by side these 10 years, most often residing on the night stand next to me. His devil-may-care grin has watched over my sleeping form ever so faithfully, never allowing Bison, Tyson, or any other real or imaginary boxer to interrupt my Zzzzs. It was this loyal companion who I so ill-treated this morning, as you can see above. In a moment of grogginess, reaching blearily for my phone cum alarm at 6 am, I severed Joe from his feet. Shed a tear, or three, and then take a moment of silence for this poor piece of statuary, so slighted by his master.

Joe, I'll miss you. We'll see if superglue can make you good as new.

Weekend Update

We had a pretty fun but low-key weekend! Friday night had friends over to watch a movie (The Prestige... wow, intense!) and then Saturday we ran errands then hung out around the apartment til we met some of Andrew's college buddies for drinks. After that we went to a going away party for our friend Jeremy. He wore a kilt to his party. It was a good time.

Yesterday we went out with some friends after church and then had pizza and game night with two other couples. We've stayed mostly indoors except for when we exercise. I would say that I'm wishing for fall weather but I've been working on being content with where I am/life's circumstances. So, I'm trying to embrace the heat although Andrew and I went for a walk yesterday and I think I was so hot at one point I cried. Anyway, here's to being happy with life as it is now!

Oh, I also volunteered at Levine Children's Hospital this morning (where I've been for a year & a half)... here's a little plug for those of you who live near a {children's} hospital: this is a great time to donate school items such as scissors, construction paper, crayons, etc. to hospitals.. especially if you're out of school but still want to go back-to-school shopping! Even old magazines, movies (not R), and toys are welcomed!

Have a happy week!

MarDo Staycation

After two weddings this year, my parents (MARshall and DOrothy) decided to have vacation at home this year. Hence, MarDo Staycation. So we all drove up/over to Oak Ridge and enjoyed a wonderful and relaxing weekend with family.

We celebrated my mom's bday and I tried to make this cake and while it's a hideous mess, it tasted pretty good. Sometimes I don't have patience for baking, especially when there's ice cream and travelling involved. Oh well.

The next day they surprised us by renting a van and driving up to Chateau Morrisette Winery in Virginia. It was beautiful!

We enjoyed being together!

And drinking wine, of course.

In the gift shop there was a picture of this dog. It was especially funny to us because we named our cat Zuzu and dog Petals!

Beautiful sunflowers!

First attempt to get a family picture on the camera's timer.

I LOVE them!!

Me & that Ginna girl.

This morning we went to hear Uncle Hunter preach at Redeemer. Then we went to a pub for lunch in Winston Salem.

Ginefferson.

Family!

It was a great weekend! We had yummy food, enjoyed the beautiful country, watched home videos which made us laugh so hard we cried, snuggled with the sisters, enjoyed our MarDo Staycation goodie bags (complete with a whistle dad put in the girl's bags... you know, to put on our keychain in case of an emergency. Dad's always think about these things.) , read books and sat on rocking chairs on the porch. Ahh, tis the life!

Thanks, Mom & Dad for a great vacation!

Another one bites the dust!

As every newlywed husbands knows, or at least quickly finds out (especially if he has a peculiar, shall we say, taste in decor), there are certain material things that he brings into the marriage that don't fit into the interior decorating plan devised by the two newlyweds. What said unsuspecting gentleman will also soon discover is that such items have a tendency to break, disappear, or otherwise fall into unfortunate circumstances that bring about their demise.

There was one such item of mine, a little, cheap, ceramic figure I'd brought back from Japan about 10 years ago of a number of cheery Japanese racoons on a boat. Imagine a 100 yen ceramic version of the below:


Now, imagine my surprise, when I come home one day to my tearful wife explaining how the boat had inauspiciously plummeted from its home on the back ledge of the stove to the tile floor, where needless to say, it found itself in a completely unpresentable state, so I ceremoniously consigned it to the garbage bin. This occurred some weeks, or maybe months ago.

Well, today, another unfortunate event has occurred. If any of you were at our wedding, you will perhaps recall this lovely arrangement.



The large centerpiece was one that I had purchased on a lark when we were looking for vases for the reception. Let's just say that post wedding, it hasn't seen much of the light of day, and I've complained not a whit since honestly I'm not sure what we'd do with the thing. It was quite probably the largest champagne flute ever devised, and useful for drinking one whole bottle of the bubbly, at minimum. Alas, gravity has struck again and my giant drinking vessel is no more.

Now, for certain, I would ascribe no ill motives to my wife, since gravity does indeed often strike with importunate regularity. That said, there does appear a curious correlation between things original to me that she does not find fit for public display in the apartment and ones that end up in an unpresentable state, while I'm not around to prevent their departure from this mortal plane

So...to my intrepid reader, what's next? My probably not original pressing of Thriller, by Michael Jackson? My Jolly Roger, which gleefully watches over our laundry room? I confess I know not why it falls to these specific articles to meet an early demise, but there is certainly a haunting of some sort about this place, and it has no taste for the silly eclecticisms of a bachelor.