And the winner is...	July 19, 2007

Many thanks to those of you who participated in my kitten-naming contest. In addition to the comments I received on this blog and on myspace, e-mail suggestions poured in from around the globe. Well, more accurately, around the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states. After carefully reviewing the nominations to date, we have selected a winner. The honor goes to...

Karen, who suggested the name Navin.

This kitten has already proved himself quite the spastic idiot, so a namesake like Navin R. Johnson from The Jerk seems more than appropriate. Plus, Steve and I are always referencing that scene in Freaks & Geeks when Ken realises that he and his hermaphrodite girlfriend belong together because she loves The Jerk.

The Ellen-news trump-off	July 16, 2007

If there was an Ellen News Channel, offering 24-hour coverage of my exciting life, this weekend would’ve probably produced the highest ratings ever. Here are some of the things that have happened in the past few days, and note how they seem to trump each other in terms of importance:

Tomatoes
Take a look—my tomato plant is bearing fruit! We’ve had crap for rain lately (though as I write this, I can hear thunder and am wondering how much we’ll get tonight), and I’m sorry to report that my cilantro, once so robust, has pretty much withered to nothing. The other herbs and the tomatoes are going strong, though! They may be tiny, and they may be green, but I’ve got tomatoes!

Birthday
Here we see one of my birthday gifts, which Karen and Darcy sent to me. It’s been a great birthday! Thursday, there was a work-friend happy hour, at which I was challenged to drink 8 mango margaritas and rose to the challenge, and earned a whole lotta respect from my coworkers that way. Steve’s gifts to me included a set of CamelBak back packs, something that I find myself really wishing I had at both Bonnaroo and at our recent hike. We also went to a yummy birthday dinner at Carlyle Grand on Friday night and treated ourselves to some Maggie Moo’s afterward.

Then at a Bastille Day party on Saturday (at which Steve’s band, Gaslight Society, performed), Steve surprised me after his set with a candle-covered cake and a round of Happy Birthday from the party-goers. I was truly, truly surprised, and touched. My cake-spotlight was shared with Julie, Steve’s former-drummer’s girlfriend, who was also a birthday girl. Then we drank keg beer and danced to the classics for the rest of the night.

Meow
On Saturday afternoon, we got ourselves a kitty! We got him at PetSmart, where they have shelters from rural areas bring their animals into the city to be adopted. The sweet and frisky little guy we ended up with is from Madison County, VA, which I understand is near Charlottesville, and he was one of a litter of abandoned barn cats. He’s 14 weeks old, and we adore him, but so far, he has no name! We’ve been trying to think of ones (Iggy, Teddy, and Dexter are the three we’ve come up with that we hate the least), but nothing’s jumping out at us as the perfect name. Please offer suggestions!

Personality-wise, I’d describe him as a kitty with ADD. Everything he does, he does for about three seconds, then he runs (literally, runs) off to do something else. We bought him to be a companion for Kesey, Steve’s seven-year-old kitty, who seems a little bored alone around the house lately. So far, I’d describe their relationship as turbulent, at best. The new guy seems pretty happy with us, the house, and having another kitty around, but Kesey seems pretty surly about his new roommate. It’s only day two, though, and it will surely take some time!

Wheels
When I decided that I was going to move to Virginia, I knew that I’d need a car sooner or later. I went through several rounds of internal debate, starting with the conviction that I wanted another Nissan Sentra, then the exploration of several other little Japanese hatchbacks (the Honda Fit, the Suzuki SX4, the Mazda 3, and so on), but this afternoon, Steve and I pulled into a Volkswagen dealership. Motivated by my brother’s recent suggestion that I take a look at the new VWs, I’d been researching the Rabbit and found that they offer all the bells and whistles I was looking for, are cute, and are reasonably priced.

So, we went to the dealership, with the expectation that I’d take a test drive and see what sort of offer they’d make then I’d go home and think about it for several days. They had exactly the model I wanted (blue 4-door with automatic transmission and upgraded audio package), I was really pleased with the test drive (it’s small, quick, handles well, gets good gas mileage, and has a surprisingly roomy interior), they offered us a good price ($1100 under invoice), a good deal on financing, and I called up Geico to get an insurance quote and was ASTOUNDED at how cheap it was (I was all the talk around the dealership water cooler once they faxed over my policy). All signs were pointing to yes. So… I bought a car! Just like that! And drove it off the lot! Here it is in front of my house:

So, that completes the slow but certain transition: Virginia, townhouse, housepet, car—I am officially a suburbanite!

It's my birthday	July 12, 2007

Leading up to my Fourth of July vacation in the Black Hills, I was surprisingly busy at work, tying up odds and ends from the late-June event blitzkrieg that we somehow managed to survive. Then I was out in the hills for 6 days, where I had no internet anywhere, and seldom any cell signal (which, I gotta say, was annoying at times but awesome overall). Now I'm back, and somehow my birthday kinda snuck up on me. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a restaurant in Tennessee, bouncing exciting birthday celebration ideas off of Steve--maybe Six Flags instead of Kings Dominion? Dinner party? Something involving waterslides? Then time sped up for a while, and now I've got nothing planned. I guess that's OK. I plan on commandeering this weekend's Bastille Day party and declaring it my birthday party. That'll work right? We're also planning on getting kitty #2 this weekend, which will be festive, I'm sure!

My Black Hills trip was great. All of the photos can be seen here. We flew to Sioux Falls on Tuesday, the 3rd, stayed with my mom in Brookings that night, then made the 5-hour trek out to the hills on the 4th, making sure we arrived in time to eat dinner and see some fireworks. For some DUMB reason, the Mt. Rushmore fireworks were held on the 3rd, so we missed those, and saw the ones in Custer on the 4th instead, but they were awesome! Some of the best fireworks I've ever seen, and cool, because we were seated close enough that we could watch the dudes lighting them off.

On the 5th we went to Deadwood, and since Steve and I are avid fans of the HBO show Deadwood, we gobbled up all the history we could find! We visited the Adams House Museum (where the folks who wrote the series did all their research), and we took a bus tour up to Mt. Moriah, the cemetery where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried. The 6th was devoted to the Crazy Horse Monument, which I've seen several times before and enjoy every time. This time was especially cool because my mom (thanks to having friends in high places) was able to score us a ride to the top of the mountain. It was spectacular! After that, we rode through Custer State Park and the Needles Highway, where we got great views of wildlife and scenery.

On the 7th, we returned to Deadwood and got old-time-ey pictures of ourselves taken. My brother had done it a few days prior, and we were jealous of their cool pictures, so we did it, too. I'll scan them and post them at some point. That night, we went to Mount Rushmore, which is another sight that I've seen several times before, but I felt that Steve should see it, so I went yet again. On the 8th, we drove back to Brookings, stopping in the Badlands National Park, as well as in Mitchell to see my Grandma and aunt, and in the Sioux Falls area to see another aunt and cousins.

Interspersed with all this sight-seeing was much family fun, including: grilling on the porch, winning toys for my cousins in the big claw machine, seeing the Transformers movie, drinking many beers, winning five whole dollars in a slot machine, watching the Discovery channel, taunting prairie dogs, and so on. A great time was had by all!

Ow.	July 2, 2007

The weather was beautiful this weekend. NBC4 weatherman Chuck Bell used the word “scrumptious” to describe it (dispelling any uncertainty I may have had about weatherman Chuck Bell’s sexual orientation). Steve and I were thrilled to get an opportunity to get out and enjoy the scrumptious weather on Sunday by joining my friend Sarah and 5 of her buds on a 5-hour hike around Harper’s Ferry. The scenery was spectacular, the company was superb, and the weather couldn’t have been better.

I knew that it’d be a long day of hiking, and that I’d be tired afterwards, but I didn’t notice the hike’s elevation profile (despite the fact that it’s there in plain view on the website), and I was a little ill-prepared for the long stretches of steep hiking/climbing. While I know better than to try to pretend that I am in excellent shape, I simply wasn’t prepared for such an ambitious undertaking! Yesterday, my muscles felt like they were doing OK, but I had a hard time catching my breath on the long uphill stretches (compounded, I’m sure, by the fact that I’m still dealing with the tail end of a cold). Today, however, my muscles have a lot to say about what I put them through yesterday! I’m hobbling around like an old man!

Oh well. I’m proud of myself for making it through, and I’m hoping a nice long swim tonight will help to work the achiness out of my muscles (have I bragged on this blog yet about the fantabulous swimming pool that I have at my disposal at home? It is the awesomest thing ever).

Two other noteworthy things happened yesterday: 1) I finally beat the Pit of 100 Trials on Super Paper Mario, something I have been struggling to do for weeks, now; and 2) we watched the movie Idiocracy. This straight-to-DVD release from Mike Judge sparked my interest when I first heard of it, and I didn’t really know what to expect. It’s a tale of Like Wilson and Maya Rudolph getting accidentally frozen for 500 years and waking up in a new world where natural selection has weeded out the intelligent (who have too long elected to have few or no children) in favor of idiots (who have been reproducing like mad). There are funny moments and background visuals (such as an ad for Jack in the Box, now termed “Jack inuh Box”), but one simple fact remains—it’s a movie full of people acting stupid. It’s supposed to be funny that we’re watching a guy watching a TV show entitled “Kicked in the Balls,” but, um, that means that we also have to watch it. I think the premise is interesting and some parts are funny, but they feeling I felt more than anything while watching it was annoyed.