Real Life

Our Anniversary!

Honeymoon photo7 years ago today (if you count aphian years where 1 aphian year= 1year and 5/7ths of a day) Kristen and I got married. Loads of things have happened since then and I’m looking forward to many more years in the future. (I got in trouble for not blogging about our anniversary but I thought that if I blogged on the anniversary I’d get moaned at 😉

Phone ringtones

Kristen and I were having tea at the Old Bag of Nails pub in Upper Arlington (the fish was obviously cooked by someone who had never had real english fish and chips – you are not supposed to be able to pick the whole fish up between two fingers and it stay in one piece) and I was telling Kristen about the Trigger Happy TV that I had been watching on You Tube this morning. There were two skits in particular – one was about a man walking up a street and the other was about a man playing squash whilst on the phone (fast forward to 1:53) and as I was talking about it – someone’s phone rang in the pub – playing the very same ringtone -which is infamous if you’ve ever lived in the UK. I was so tempted to shout “HELLO? YEAH – I’M IN THE PUB – EATING FISH AND CHIPS”
The other trigger happy clip I liked was the Stop and Stop board – the funniest thing is how the car moves forward twice!

Cincinnati


Kristen had the day off so I took the day off and we went to Cincinnati. We went to Newport Aquarium in the morning and I tried to do some geocaching.
We also saw Over the Hedge. I was not sure that I wanted to see it as the commercials looked too cheesy and I enjoy the comic online so didn’t want to get disappointed by watching the film. The film was very funny but the ironic thing is that the film has been plugged by Walmart and Kroger a lot – yet the film is about the excess purchasing and food eating habits of humans. My favourite character was Hammy – the squirrel (thats squ-ir-rel).
I’ve loaded some of the pictures we took up to flickr – there are more photo’s but these ones will do to start with.

Rewards!

Two weeks ago I got the honour of being the employee of the quarter from work which I am pretty chuffed about 😉 Thankfully I didn’t have to give an acceptance speech as there would have been too many people to thank. As a prize I was firstly awarded a Batbelt – complete with (nonworking GPS). This was because of the gps but mainly because of the fact that I always have a software tool to solve a computer problem and it’s become the joke to ask if I have a tool on my batbelt for a particular problem. Needless to say, everyone thought it was funny so I proudly hooked it up to the top of my cubicle to be on display – this also means the little dart gun is close at hand in case I need to ward off a particular nasty case of job sloping.

I also received an avaya t-shirt – again a gag gift – as I have done so much work on the avaya phone system that support should really be doing, that everyone thinks I am an avaya employee now! (incidentally I got a compliment from the tech I was working with last night (on our third firmware upgrade to solve persistent phone problems) when he said it was nice to work with a customer who actually knew their way around a computer and could help in the diagnostic problems)

Caricature at North Market The third gift was two tickets for the North Market 10th annual Apron Gala which we went to on Saturday night. The event was really good fun with loads of posh food to try out. We didn’t stay right to the end but did enjoy being there at the beginning when there wasn’t too many people around. One of the most popular stalls was Bob the fish guy who had two huge containers of shrimp which were really nice – lots of people made several trips to that stall! The picture framing stall had a caricaturist doing pictures so Kristen and I got ours done as you can see on the left – click for a bigger picture. We also purchased two aprons as our donation towards the event – the pockets in the apron were great for keeping napkings, forks and a cup handy whilst walking around.

Kristen also got me a congratulations cookie biscuit (thanks Rob!) which we are now half way through – thanks luv!

Employee of the Quarter!

Information Improvisation

Due to extensive wireless internet coverage, a number of wireless internet service providers are prospering. These include at&t wireless as well as rogers wireless. With the advent of wireless internet, how distances have been reduced to nothing is not exactly a miracle. Services like cingular wireless have made sure that one can find wireless internet anywhere.

Go Steelers!

Tonight is the Superbowl and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s the first time that I’ve been able to see it live (as it’s normally on about 11pm or later in the UK) AND the Steelers are in the finals (and going to win of course). Seeing as though I’m an adopted Steelers fan by marriage that makes it more fun. Kristen’s Dad is at the game so if you see a bloke with a ‘tache (ok, admittedly that is about half the crowd) and a flashing hat, that might be him – we’re going to keep a close eye on the crowd. Friday night Kristen and I put together one of my Christmas presents – a Steelers blanket throw so we can snuggle up and keep warm.

Slow updates for the next few days

Just to let you know that Kristen and I are unlikely to be blogging much until next Tuesday as that is when we finally get internet access back at the house. I signed up for Roadrunner last Wednesday and was told they would contact me in 7-10 days (when I assumed they’d arrange an installation in the next day or so). I rang them yesterday to chase and got told that the next available installation was in a weeks time. If I’d have known that I’d have rung them straight away.
There is no decent wifi signal in the house either which is good news in some respects as it means there is nothing to interfere with our signal when we install it.

It’s cold!

Rob’s posted some cold photos and mentioned that he didn’t have his thermals when he went out for a walk. On Thursday night we had a similar experience when we went to the Columbus Zoo lights opening night. I didn’t have any thermals but I did have three pairs of pants on (thats trousers to the brits) a shirt, two sweatshirts and a coat so I was nice and warm under all the layers but it was freezing cold – too cold to take photos with the camera. We had a good time although it was extremely crowded – loads of people were there. Didn’t see (m)any animals but we had a great time and went back to Donatos pizza afterwards – delicious!