The end is here

So NaBloPoMo ends today. In a way, I'm sad to see it come to an end. And in a way, I'm not. I love the fact that we were forced to hit the computer every day and make some sort of contribution to the cyber world. Definitely got us into the habit of thinking of ideas and sharing with everyone. But as you can tell, the entries were a little weak at times. We don't want to write something just for the sake of writing something.

So all we can promise is that we will keep blogging more often than we were. We hope you enjoy what you're reading. Hopefully we give you a reason to keep coming back!

Happy NaBloPoMo!

Hold update

So we finally gave up after two hours and nine minutes with no answer from the Circuit City people. I sent them a nasty e-mail but never got a response. How does the story end? Circuit City CALLED US today (and not in response to my e-mail) to let us know that the plan had expired and to renew the plan. Now I know why there was no one there to answer -- they were too busy making calls out!

We're ready for our close up

I was going through some pictures tonight, and I came across this one. It's one of my favorites of Matt and me. In case you're unsure about the location, we lying down on the start/finish line at the Daytona International Speedway on the weekend of the Daytona 500 last year. I mean, where else were we going to pose for a picture?

The Day After

Here are a few pictures from the day-after-Thanksgiving get-together of aunts, uncles, and cousins at Drew and Heidi's house (unfortunately Matt was working hard on Black Friday). It's OK, Meredith, you can look now.

On hold...

I wish we had something witty to talk about today. However, we've been on hold for almost two hours now trying to renew the extended warranty on our TV with Circuit City. Two hours! We're trying to give them money, and no one seems to want to answer the phone to take it. And who are all the other people who are on hold with us? Hopefully we'll be off the phone by tomorrow and have some better news. Until then...

Second home

In July and October, Matt and I got to spend a couple of days at Watkins Glen. Yes, we like it because it's a racetrack. But it's more than that. It's the reason that we met. Short version of the story -- I saw a picture of Matt standing in front of the very distinctive guardrail at the Glen on his online profile. I wrote to him, he responded. You know the rest. The nice people at the Glen even gave us a piece of guardrail to use as a cake stand at the wedding.

The purpose of our trips this year was to drive at the track. This is me driving in July. While I have been at this longer, Matt is now faster than me. I'm OK with that. So long as we're both having fun. Safe fun, that is. There will be a few new additions to our "baby" over the winter. Check back for updates.

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanks again to Drew and Heidi for having Thanksgiving at their house. And to all of the cooks. Here's one of the cooks taking a break. That's Drew chillin' with Sam.

Each of us drew our own hand turkey on the refrigerator, including Sam. The two Indians on the bottom? That the cats, Spot and Spike.

Mom and Dad carving the turkey. All of the food was excellent!

And to those who wondered, Matt's pecan pie came out awesome. He's going to tweak the recipe a little bit, but he was very pleased with the results.

And then there's the food coma at the end of the day. Looks like someone had too much turkey!

Catchin' the Thanksgiving spirit!

Leave it to Sam to be the best dressed for Thanksgiving. Here's a little preview of our holiday. Still full from all the food we ate (thanks to the cooks!). More to follow tomorrow.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to our readers! Enjoy your turkey, your stuffing and trimmings, your parades. your football, your pies. Most importantly, enjoy your time with your family and friends.

Pies!

Here's a little preview for tomorrow. Matt and I spent the late afternoon and early evening making a couple pies and other assorted baked goodies. I made the brownies and the pumpkin pie. Matt made the M&Ms cookies and the pecan pie. Oh the pecan pie. We can't wait to try it. Matt has modified the recipe slightly by soaking the pecans in a little borboun and adding 2/3 cup of melted chocolate. We'll let you know the results.

We're with the band

Last month we met up with my cousins. The occasion? To see Rocco, my cousin Cheryl's fiance, play in his band. His band is No Code, which is a Pearl Jam tribute band. We cheered for Rocco all night, and one of my cousins (who will remain nameless and unidentified) got up on the stage to dance with him. Good time had by all.

But wait! We haven't even raked any leaves yet!

Imagine our surprise this morning when we woke up to snow! Yeah, there was a possibility of some flurries. But this was definitely a snow shower. If the ground had been colder, we could have some accumulation. This was the view out the front window.

Here's the view out the side window. Snow was sticking to the bushes.

Here's the fall foilage we promised you. We just didn't think that we would be showing it to you with snow in the background. It's amazing how many leaves are still on the trees. We could be raking leaves at Christmas!

Holy testosterone, Batman!

Last night we headed back to the Rock in Newark. However, instead of going to a hockey game, we went to see UFC 78 Validation. That's the Ulimate Fighting Championships. It was part of my Christmas present to Matt. After a free train ride to Newark because there weren't enough conductors on the train and our no-so-legal dinner of pizza and beer in a bag in the shadow of my law school and with the blessing of the nearby police officer, we headed over to the Rock for a night of fights. Here's the view from our seats.

The fights started at about 8:15, and the first four were pretty good. At 10, the pay-per-view portion of the night started. So in theory, these were supposed to be the better fights. For the most part, they weren't. But they were entertaining nonetheless.

Here's some pictures from the second-to-last fight with Houston Alexander and Thiago Silva. The crowd seemed to liked Alexander better, but Silva won in the first round.

The main event was Rashad Evans and Michael Bisping. Each of them found their way into UFC by winning their respective seasons of the Ultimate Fighter, which is a reality show in which they look for new UFC fighters. Evans won in a split decision. Here are some photos from that fight.

We definitely had a good time last night. Hopefully this was a success and the UFC will be back in Newark some time soon.

Turning over an old leaf

Matt brought the big leaf back with him from his trip to Massachusetts. Woburn to be exact. Looks like they had some great color up there at the end of October. Maybe it's Matt's lucky leaf. You know, with the World Series and all.

And the small leaf? Yeah, that's from our backyard. More on the fall folliage here next week.

Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let's go racing!

Here's a video to get you ready for the last weekend of NASCAR. Enjoy!

Halfway there

Can you believe it? It's halfway through NaBloPoMo already. We've enjoyed using the opportunity to share what's been going on with us, and there's plenty more where that came from. Hopefully we will blog more often once the month is over.

By the way, today brings another milestone. This is our 50th post!

A word to our readers -- don't be bashful. If you have something to say, please comment! We would love to hear from you. It's a two-way street, you know.

Thanks for reading.

More than words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's 16,000 words from Matt on his trip to Utah in August. Enough said.

Curiousity killed the front porch

This what our front porch looked like when we first bought the house. As you can see, there is a brick planter and a brown wrought iron post holding up the house. Or so we thought.

One day, Matt got curious and wanted to see what exactly was in the planter and how the wrought iron post was attached. The plan was to rebuild the planter. Well, he started digging and quickly learned that the wrought iron post was attached to ... nothing. It was buried in the topsoil. That was it.

After some discussions with the men who were working on our neighbor's much more elaborate front porch, we decided to take out the wrought iron post and replace it. Of course that meant putting in a new footing for the post. So we decided to break up the slab on the front porch (which needed to be replaced anyway) and have a new slab poured.

Once the wrought iron post and the planter were removed, this is what it looked like. Because our neighbor had a dumpster for masonry materials, we decided to break up the slab ourselves and dispose of it in the dumpster. See that yellow machine in the bottom right corner of the photo? That's the jackhammer we rented from the Home Depot. Who knew you could rent a jackhammer?

Matt quickly got the hang of the jackhammer. For better or worse, the slab broke up pretty quickly. So quick we returned it to Home Depot sooner than we thought. I did try out the jackhammer. Can't say that I was nearly as proficient as Matt.

But I did get in on the action when it came to moving stone. We actually did the job on Memorial Day (missed the races at Lime Rock for this). It was unbelievably humid. Nice workout.

And here's what it looked like when we were through. We got the area down to dirt. Under the bucket is the hole for the footing. Dug down three feet. Turns out we did a little more work than we had to. We could have left some of the gravel behind. Oh well.

Here's the final product. We had the slab poured and the column installed. I painted the column. It definitely gives the house a more modern look. Not that there's anything wrong with wrought iron....

Paparazzi!

I'm back. Did you miss me? [Thanks to Matt for helping out.]

This is one of our favorite pictures from the wedding. For a minute, it was like we had our own paparazzi. [Thanks to Drew for the photo.]

However, this picture also is evidence that there were quite a few shutterbugs at the wedding. Thanks to those of you who have sent pictures to us from the wedding. But if you have any pictures that you'd like to pass along, please feel free. You know who you are.

40 degrees of picnicing

Greetings from frosty New Jersey! Matt, your blogger here. Jen is taking the night off... well... sorta... I asked if I could actually post once in our blog. Well, it is day 10 of NaBloPoMo, and we haven't missed a beat. Today's post is a picture of Jen sitting by the warmth of the fire at our 2 person picnic in the back yard. Though the mercury was teetering around 40 degrees, I did a little grilling and kept wood on the fire to heat the outdoors (my mother would see the irony in that one...) We bought our home more than 2 years ago and we have been collecting kindling and wood since. Today we decided it was time to start to burning some. (content edited/corrected by Jen)

Surprise! You're 40!

Tonight was Barry's surprise 40th birthday party. Happy Birthday Barry. We may not be that far from 40, but you'll always be ahead of us.