His niece - well our niece I should say - was lucky enough to be on some school work thingy where she got to be a the Masters golf thingy recently. Dave asked her to pick him up a shirt from Augusta. My dad's birthday is in May, and it suddenly occurred to me that it would have been a good idea for her to get him something too.

I mentioned this to Dave last night, saying 'I wish I'd thought to ask her to get my dad a hat.'

He says to me 'I did ask her to.'

He is such an amazingly thoughtful man.

What is there to say about the utter...WTF that went down in this country this week.

I'm going to focus on the fact that New Zealand passed the whole same sex-marriage thing. That's good news. Yay New Zealand! And they sang at the end of it. That is so awesome.

In personal news I took Charlie to a college fair yesterday. Charlie. To a college fair. When I started this blog he was six. SIX. College fair. Wow.

He wants to go to Temple. He made a beeline for that booth. I'm glad he has a dream. He isn't sure what he wants to major in, but he has time to worry about that.

College fair. Seriously you guys. How did that much time pass already?

My husband and I enjoy going to local wineries, and one thing I found is that the people who own and run the places are uniformly kind and interesting people. I love the smaller wineries, the ones that are basically in the owner's back yard, because they are doing it out of love for the process, and they are always full of interesting stories.

The people who go to wineries are also great to interact with. I don't know if it is because wine mellows a person, or if going to wine tastings attracts only a certain type of person, but interacting with the other customers is so much fun. We've had wonderful conversations with people we meet at wineries. One time, at a customer appreciation day at the winery where we were wed, we wound up sharing a table with another couple and by the end of the afternoon, we were chatting like we'd been friends forever.

I also enjoy working craft shows with My Brilliant Friend kirathaune. It's fun to people watch, and learning to read the body language of people when they stop to look at her wares. I enjoy engaging these people in small talk as they browse, and sometimes in the course of conversation I learn some amazing things.

This weekend I got to combine the two experiences, as we did a art show at one of the Bucks County wineries. We sat next to a woman who created some beautiful works in fused glass, and Kira was thrilled because she got some times on how to work with glass. (She's starting to experiment in that direction). The woman was fascinating in her own right. She was an engineer for years until she decided to start a mobile dog-grooming business, and she owns horses who compete in hunter shows.

We also met a woman, one of the customers, who kept bees, and she educated us on both the process and the very real problem with bees dying. She said something is wrong with their immune system, and it is getting harder for the bees to survive the winter. She had 11 hives and when she was able to check them this spring she'd lost 7 of them. People like her are working really hard to keep the honey bee population alive, and, therefore, I met a woman who is literally trying to save the world.

Sometimes one just reads too many stories of injustices, of people being horrible to other people, of people forgetting that we are all human, and not 'different races bound on other journeys'. The little acts of having pleasant conversations with strangers who share a like interest, or hearing stories from some of the many interesting people who populate this planet make me glad to be alive, and give me hope for the world.

Hi.

So...a few weeks ago I did a job that consisted of nothing but putting stickers on fake iPhones for some marketing ploy. Now I've just agreed to put these iPhones in boxes. 1,000 of them. The only reason I can come up with is that I hate to leave a job left un-done. I get paid for it, so that's something anyway.

Bought and watched Doctor Faustus starring Arthur Davrill, of Dr Who fame. OMG it was freakilng awesome. Also it was fun seeing the Globe Theatre now that I've been there. I was all 'oh, that's totally where I sat!'

Hopefully this week they will finally get started on the addition to our house. Not looking for the chaos of the work, but am looking forward to it being finished. We'll have a bigger kitchen, a bigger bedroom with a walk-in closet, and a master bathroom. Woot.

Charlie is almost 5 foot 10 now, scary, isn't it? Big, giant, teenaged boy.

Funny story...well, funny to me. You know the British Chip Shop right? The restaurant that I frequented quite a bit since it's opening a few years ago, and the place where Dave and I had our first date. Well, the owners opened a new restaurant in Philly that's basically the Chip Shop but with alcohol. We finally got there last Friday, and one of the owners was there, and came over to say hello to us. The server was in the middle of telling us about something so she stepped away, and when he left she kind of had this look like 'oh, swell, they know the owner!' Just made us giggle, because it's fun to feel a bit important sometimes.

And...that's about it for me. How are you?

Today is my blog's 9 year anniversary.

LJ is, as we know, a shadow of its former self, being swallowed up by the beomouth that is Facebook (and Twitter, I suppose) but I can't give it up.

Livejournal, and the friends who I've made here, have been with me through some pretty epic ups and downs, and saying goodbye to it forever would be, well, sad.

Charlie was 6 years old when I started this blog. A little boy with a gap-toothed grin. Now he's a teenager, ridiculously taller than I. It's amazing to go back through the pages of my blog, and see the child he was. I'm pretty proud of the young man he's become, and I want to continue to share his growth with everyone here.

I've gone through a ridiculous amount of changes in my life too, from jobs to relationships to where I actually live. I am very grateful I had this place to turn to when it was hard, and I'm more grateful I have this place to come to when I want to celebrate.

Nine years.

Thank you Livejournal. And thank you all, the friends I've made on this journey. Here's to 9 more.

Just a little rantlet I want to get off of my chest.

( cut for spoilersCollapse )

There. I feel better now.

Working a 3 day temp job wherein all I have to do is answer the phone, as the entire office will be out for a few days at some sort of convention. In between (far between) calls I'm able to do whatever I want, so basically I'm getting paid to play on the internet, which is swell in theory, but I have a feeling it is going to get boring rather quickly.

Yesterday for Mothering Sunday Charlie made dinner. It was very sweet. And I apparently panicked one of my friend's husband when I posted this on Facebook, as American Mother's Day doesn't happen until May. I think he thought for a moment he'd missed a memo.

Did I ever mention to you here on LJ about my husband and me going to local wineries? It's kind of our 'thing'. Started, logically enough, when we were looking for wineries for our wedding. We really enjoy doing the tastings, and I like the idea of supporting local wineries. They are all family owned, and my favourites are the ones where you are chatting with the owner while sampling the wines. Also, people who go to wineries are nice. It's always such a friendly atmosphere. Everyone is in a good mood (because, hello? Wine!) and it's so much fun.

We also collect wine glasses from these places, and we're up to about 25 pairs, I think, just from New Jersey and PA. One of the things we are going to put in our new and improved kitchen is a display case for all the glassware.

And that's my life at the moment, in a nutshell.

Because Charlie is currently in love with the 80's and 80's movies especially, we've been trying to think of good 80's movies to show him. This weekend was Ferris Bueller's Day off, which, let's face it, is pretty quintessial as far as '80's movies' go.

He loved it. Not as much as Back to the Future, I think, but he liked it. He really enjoyed, as he said, 'all the shocking twists'; the moments when Ferris almost, but not quite, got caught.

I remember thinking way back when I first saw the movie, that there was a sort of hint that Slone and Cameron may actually fall in love some day, and after the scene when Cameron and Slone had the conversation during the parade, Charlie actually asked if that was what was going to happen. 'Are Cameron and Slone in love now?' is what he said.

And at the end of the movie, Charlie asked 'what happened to Cameron?'

For all of Ferris's antics, the movie in large part is about the personal growth of his best friend, Cameron, and Charlie actually cottoned to that, which surprised me, as it was so subtle, I didn't think he would. I think he rather identified with Cameron, actually.

We showed him Wargames, too, but that one didn't impress him quite as much.

I think next up will be Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure.

Anyone have any other good suggestions?