Other than smashing my right hand with a car door yesterday, I'm feeling very proud right now. We did a full choir recording session yesterday (promo material for getting us hired for gigs, especially weddings), and our conductor picked two of us from each section to stay and record for the octet group, including me from the sopranos! I'm honoured. And hoping I can get a copy :)

And I'm just sitting here doing some web work for Amnesty, and realizing in awe how cool it is to be this close to launch and while sitting on a page, switch it to Arabic, change the window size to 800x600, increase the font in the browser... and have it not break anything. How many freaking sites can do that, eh??

We're going to Chicago on Wednesday until Monday to hang out with the boys for Thanksgiving. Hurrah for a direct flight out of the Oakland airport. Gonna hit some museums, eat some good food, and generally just have fun hanging out for a few days... and get a bit of a breather from coding.

Did I mention we're starting a new business too? I think we need professional help. I mean... we rock. I'm so glad I've found someone so much like me yet complementary.

Mmmm, cafe biberon, my new friend. Espresso and condensed milk!

So yes, been in Barcelona, Spain for a couple days now. Mostly on the time zone here now. I've never been so far away...

I love the small things that are different and interesting. Meal times, toilet seats, light switches, sirens, windows...

Finally up and running with my development environment on the MacBook, others are slowly arriving, gearing up for the big get-together in a couple of days, and then DrupalCon!

We own wine glasses now! I find wine pretty even though I don't drink it. Meagan's mom was kind enough to send us a Pier 1 gift card for the help prepping at her house for the wedding, so we went on a little spree today :) Money's tight after our big Canada trip, so it was immensely pleasurable to grab a few neat things for the kitchen (ironically mostly wine related, plus a bowl and serving platter).

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this with certainty yet, but we're going to Barcelona from the 8th-24th of September. Civic Actions is holding our retreat there to coincide with DrupalCon, whee! So I'll be somewhere over the ocean on my birthday :P I asked Chris for one present this year... and that's to have a birthday party! I haven't had an actual birthday party since... well, I can't remember. I don't normally care much, but I'm going to be a quarter of a century and that's a good excuse for some celebrating. But I think it will have to be after we get back. There's a conflicting party on the 7th, and the weekend before is Labour Day (aka. Burning Man for most people around these here parts).

So yeah, life's pretty grand! Never thought I'd travel this much, but pretty exciting getting to see Europe for the first time. I hear Barcelona is quite lovely too.

Making good progress with the sites, prepping for the GRE (I'm going to take an online prep course... urg, too long since high school math), trying to squeeze in some extra working hours to up our income to a more sustainable level (we really didn't get in as many hours as we were hoping while in Toronto), new hamster mommy-ing, and and and... yeah, lots :)

Ahh, finally getting some nice weather up here.  It's been pretty cold and rainy the past few days, but things are supposed to be clearer for a while now.  

It's proving slightly challenging, both technologically and focus..ly, to get a good amount of work done here so far  :\  It's kind of stressing me out.  Three days to set up my development environment on the MacBook, yeesh.  And it's still not exactly set up in the most ideal way.  Sigh.  Chris has the patience of a saint.

Anyway, I just posted some photos of the fun so far  :)  Most are private so if I know you and you haven't added me on Flickr, just do so!

 

Boo to late nights and early morning meetings. At least the commute is short :) Despite our neighbour deciding to take up bongo practice about 15 minutes after I crawled into bed for a nap late this morning, I did manage to conk out on the couch for a while this evening. Lack of sleep and I really do not get along well.

Tried to take it easy today for our one day off, despite a to-do list that throws me into a panic every time I look at it. Chris and I have been brainstorming and project managing ourselves over the past couple of days in order to cut down on our stupid number of working hours lately. Bottom line is that we're loving working with CA, it's amazing clients and coworkers with much less hassle than doing it completely independently, and we're absolutely flooded with work from them. So we're going to focus on that rather than doing a ton of smaller one-off projects too. I keep saying yes to projects and realizing that I really don't have the time, or quite frankly the interest either :( I just want to help get us back onto our feet as quickly as possible, but what's the point in making us miserable along the way...

Trying to get loose ends tied up before the trip... so much more to think about than just going away for a few days. And why must the Tool concert on the 9th be in Hamilton rather than Toronto? Driving down two hours from the cottage is potentially tolerable, but another hour and a half to Hamilton is just miserable. Urg. And so expensive.

Oh and Zoe got shaved today. Teehee. I feel silly taking and posting photos of her every time she gets shaved, so you'll just have to check her out on the cams.

PS. Court and Spark is definitely taking a place in my list of top albums. Joni Mitchell rocks.