Ames and I are still down in our hometown of Vero Beach, Florida after spending Christmas with family. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go fishing about 20 miles offshore with my father-in-law. Here’s some of what we caught:

Tomorrow we’re going to start our treck back toward home in Columbia, stopping along the way to visit some friends.

Nacho Libre was, by far, my favorite movie release of the summer. Take what you may from that statement, but my wife and I really loved the movie. I knew that it was coming out on DVD yesterday, but didn’t plan to go out and buy it…until my sister-in-law sent me a picture of herself in a Nacho mask. Yes, for a limited time, the Collector’s Edition comes with your very own Nacho Libre mask. Best Buy has them in-store and online for only $16.99. I still have my wrestling shoes from high school. Now I just need a cape, some stretchy-pants, and some big red undies for a Halloween costume!

“When you’re a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants, in your room…it’s for fun.”

I already posted about Amy and I’s anniversary on amesnjas.com, so I don’t really want to duplicate that post here, but I don’t want to let the day just pass by either. Especially since I have an archive of our first and second anniversaries here already. I can hardly believe it’s been three years since we tied the knot. Even when looking at the pictures from our wedding, it feels like it was only yesterday. On amesnjas.com, I mentioned that we’ve now been married for half the time we’ve been together. So, to celebrate 6 years of being with Amy, I thought I’d share a moment from the year we started dating.

It was the Fall of 2000. Ames had just started taking classes at the Florida Institute of Technology and I had just started my second year at the University of Central Florida. UCF was just an hour or so away from FIT, so we spent most of our weekends together in either Orlando or Melbourne. At the time, UCF wasn’t very good at football, but we had a blast at every home game hanging out with my friends from Campus Crusade and buddies from the crew team. Things have changed so much since then, but I have to say it has been a fun ride. Thanks for so many great memories Amy, and I look forward to making many more with you.

Ames leaves for a couple of days and all of a sudden our cat thinks she runs the place.

I took this picture of her drinking out of my cup, which she knows she’s not supposed to do, and when she realizes I’m taking pictures she gives me THIS face:

She’s such a brat! To back the story up a bit, we met this little fluffball a few days after we moved in. At first she kept her distance, but eventually she’d let us pet her. In talking to our neighbors across the street, we found out her name was Abby and that they had been taking care of her since the neighbors next door to them had abandoned her. Unfortunately, they already had a cat named Abigail and preferred to call her Sally-Jane (poor cat).

One day a few months ago, the neighbors were going out of town and asked us to put food out for her while they were gone. We decided to let her in the house for the night since it was a little cold. When she decided to wake us up at 5am we decided that would never happen again. Somehow though, we eventually started letting her back in again, and now she pretty much stays at our house full time. She has a litterbox, food, and water and really only goes out for a few hours during the day.

The neighbors were fine with us adopting her (or her adopting us) and just asked that we take her to the vet and make sure she’s up to date on her shots. That’s a small price to pay for a cat with as much personality as Abby. For more Abby, check out Amy’s post from when we first learned her name, or the little collection of Abby photos on Amesnjas.

It’s hard to look back on the last year of my life and NOT be thankful. My wife and I are healthy and happy, we bought our first house together, she was accepted to grad school at USC, I have an amazing job that I can do from home, and I’ve recently started volunteering as an assistant wrestling coach at the local high school (which has been both tiring and rewarding at the same time). With all these positive changes though, it’s been my wife, family, friends, and beliefs that have gotten me through the hard times.

With all that in mind, I think I’ll have a little fun and expand on last years list with a few things you probably didn’t know I was thankful for.

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. Apple - As much as I resisted the temptations of joining what I thought all through college was the “dark side”, I’ve grown to love working on my iMac and in OSX. Sorry Bill, Steve won me over…and I don’t think Vista is going to make me anymore likely to upgrade the PC.
7. My Vans - In high school, all I ever used to wear was Airwalks, Vans, and Soapshoes. Yes, I was quite the oxymoron back in the day. I was a varsity wrestler, an aspiring webdesigner, and I dressed like a skater. Amy likes to tell the story about how I took her out for Coffee Coolatas at Dunkin Donuts and told her I would offer to pay, but that I was saving up for a pair of Soapshoes. In my defense…I didn’t earn much bagging groceries at Publix. To give a little more nerdy detail, I was driving a 1971 SuperBeetle at the time.
8. Our Kitty - She’s a little white fluffball named Abby. Our neighbors had been taking care of her since the other neighbors abandoned her. They call her “Sally-Jane” since they already have a cat named Abby (what are the odds?). I like to call her “Kitty LaLa” since she seems to be in some other place half the time and Amy calls her FluffyButt for obvious reasons. She has slowly made her way into our house and hearts and even has her own food and water here.
9. The Internet - Ahh, the internet. If it weren’t for that 486 Packard Bell Computer, 2400 baud modem, and IRENE, who knows what I would have done with my life. Without the web, I probably would have become an architect or an engineer. I’m glad I left the engineering classes up to Amy. I <3 Teh Intarweb!
10. Rita’s Gelatis - I managed to get BReese hooked on Rita’s when he came to Vero for the wedding and it’s a guaranteed stop anytime Amy and I go back home. I personally like Mango with Vanilla custard. Amy’s favorite is Strawberry with Vanilla.

There ya go. A perfectly random list of 5 things I’m thankful for…of which only 2 are technology related. In retrospect, those two are probably things anybody out there would have guessed. Oh well, I hope I threw you off with the other 3. Happy Turkey Day!

Thank you for two amazing years of marriage, Ames! If the rest of our lives are anything like the last 5 years, I’m sure there will be plenty more memories like the ones below:

As a married couple, there’s something inspiring and invigorating about being a part of a wedding. This last weekend Katie Lohuis, one of our best friends, was married happily ever after to Matt Stott. Amy was actually a bridesmaid so the last few weeks have been busy for her with the bridal shower, bachlorette party, and rehersals. All the planning and arrangements payed off though, as the ceremony was breathtaking and the reception was a blast.

I had a chance to write down some words of encouragement and advice for them at the rehersal dinner, but I used up my piece of paper saying how excited I was to see this day come and how they could stay with Amy and I any time. I don’t regret the words that I wrote, but thinking about it in retrospect, I wish I had passed along a little more advice. If I could sum up all the things I’ve learned so far in marriage into one statement, that would be “Don’t expect to fix everything”. There have been so many times in Amy and I’s relationship when Amy has presented a problem or an issue that I’ve wasted time trying to fix. Most of the time, communication isn’t about hearing a problem and trying to solve it, but about listening, feeling, and communicating back. In many ways, Amy and I are the opposite of typical couples. She’s the organizer, the brains, and as far as our job roles go, she wears the boots in the family. I work at home, I’m a creative, and I tend to take a very non-systematic approach to most tasks. When it comes to communication though, I fall into the same male pitfalls as all of our other young-married friends. That is, I fail to communicate.

Take tonight’s problem for instance. Amy wanted to play Word Racer on the mac for a few minutes tonight. It used to work fine in Firefox, but now it crashes the browser. Since the last time she played, I’ve upgraded Firefox from 1.0 to 1.0.4 and upgraded the Mac OS to Tiger. It does work in Safari, but all the letters become incoherent blobs for some reason. Well, I’ve been working on trying to “fix” that problem now for several hours and although Amy definitely wants to be able to play Word Racer on the mac, she probably would have preferred that I stuck to some kind of deadline so we could have spent time together working on a project that we need to get done. If I had just spent 30 minutes to an hour and told her that I’d come back to it later it would have been fine, but instead I’ve wasted most of the night trying to fix a problem rather than communicating. I’m such a creature of habit.

PS: If anybody has had any luck playing Word Racer in OSX Tiger, please let me know. After spending all this time, I’m still frustrated that I haven’t been able to get it to work.

During the course of the day today, I gathered together my Wacom tablet, usb webcam, picture of Amy, desktop organization kit, and desk toys. Tomorrow is actually my last day with Acceleration, but since Amy and I aren’t going home tomorrow before going up to Columbia for the weekend, I decided to bring home my accumulation of stuff today. After almost 2 years of working there, it’s hard to leave. My desk, with it’s well-worn chair, amidst those of the Acceleration Programmers is as much home as Amy and I’s Maguire Village apartment. I don’t know how working from home is going to go without the programmers’ code help, Russ’ explitory outbursts, and Ramon’s unpredictable behavior, but I know it won’t be the same.

On the brighter side of things, I start working from home for my new employer on Monday. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be joining the team at Erickson Marketing Studio doing exactly what I love to do: XHTML/CSS Website Design. Although I’ll miss my dual 19 inch monitors, I’m looking forward to working full-time from home on the 20-inch iMac. For some reason the design industry makes you feel like you’re not a real designer unless you do all your work on a mac. I think I’ve proved those people wrong enough to go ahead and switch.

In other news, Amy and I may actually make an offer on a hizzouse this weekend. We weren’t planning on going up to Columbia again for a couple more weeks, but decided to make the trek this weekend because of few sweet looking homes on the market. First though, I’ve got to make it through a sad final day at Acceleration. I love everybody there like family, so as I said before, it’s going to be hard.

As much as we've been trying to avoid it, Ames and I started thinking recently about our car situation:

We have a 1997 "Mommy Car" Camry that after replacing the AC compressor, we're worried is about to hit that maintenance prone part of it's life. Our other vehicle is a 1995 S-10 pickup with power nothing and a dead AC. Neither of which are really road-trip worthy vessels, and with the impending move to South Carolina, we've definitely got some road trips coming up - soon.

So we needed to do something. The weakest link is definitely my truck. Amy can't drive it because it's manual, and for all I know the thing might not even make the drive up to South Carolina. As pathetic as it is though, I'm really fond of my lil' red s-10 and would gladly drive the thing into the ground before trading it for another vehicle. Luckily, Amy doesn't feel the same about her Camry. We actually bought it as a rushed replacement for her beloved 92 Accord (with a sunroof) that was rear-ended and totaled in February of last year.

• The Idea: Ditch the Camry and get a newer used car that we can depend on.
  
• The Roadblocks:
  1. If we sell the car first, we'll have no time shop since Amy needs a car to get to work and cannot drive my truck.
  2. Even if we got what the car is worth, that leaves us with a budget for a similar year, high-mileage vehicle.
• The Solution: Figure out what we want, and what we want to pay. Go car browsing the dealerships on Easter Sunday when there are no salesmen. Get pre-approved for a used car loan. Go back to said dealership Monday night after work. Buy Car!

The newest member of our family: She's an 02 Honda Civic EX with under 38k miles, power windows/locks, keyless entry, CD player ...and of course, a Sunroof.

Dear Amy,

I am pleased to tell you that the Department has recommended that you be admitted to the doctoral program in Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina, effective for the Fall 2005 term.

Like all doctoral students, you will be supported financially as a graduate Research Assistant. The details will be forthcoming in a letter from the Department, as well as the official offer letter that comes from the Graduate School.

If you would like the Department’s letter to be sent to you by fax or mailed to some address other than the one in your original application, please let us know immediately - this letter will go out in a day or two. The Graduate School’s letter will be sent by regular mail and will go out sometime in the next week.

With the Department’s letter, you will receive a form that you will use to let us know if you accept our offer. We would appreciate your reply as soon as possible so that, if you decide not to join us, we can make an offer to another applicant.

Congratulations and best wishes!

I’ve always thought of myself as an enthusiastically positive, and easy-to-please person. I’ve always maintained a set of personal beliefs, interests, and opinions but strive not to impose those upon others or judge anyone by any kind of standards. I’ve never really been one of those people who fit into any of societies molds, so accepting other peoples incongruities has always been a priority.

Selfish, cocky, and opinionated are words I never thought would be used to describe me, but it seems that working as a designer has really brought to the surface some ugly traits. Working on an art project with Ames recently caused an argument which, although I didn’t see it at the time, could only be explained by my own obstinate refusal to be open minded. Realizing that this wasn’t an isolated incident, we talked out the issue and I decided to try a little harder to be more easy going. Since then I’ve been trying to be more introspective, especially when handling situations where I have more experience than Ames.

Today though, during a “conversation” with one of my co-workers about how a certain website design company’s look was not the design direction we want to be moving in, I really couldn’t help but take note of my own dogmatic approach to the conversation. Instead of being a team-player, looking for the positive in the work, and offering constructive reasoning, I shot down the designs using web-standards and efficiency as my weapon of choice. I think the words, “Well, you used to think that way.” were what really brought me back down to earth. Being a designer sometimes requires a willingness to go against the flow, but being an employee; and more importantly a husband, requires a willingness to set aside selfish egotistical ideals, and work as a unit. Besides, who wants to be known as a pompous asshat?

Editor’s Note: Apologies for the foul language, I’ve just been amused with that word since I saw if for the first time on airbag. I actually heard someone say it on TV last night…so that makes it ok to use in my blog, right? :)

Ames and I are surrounded by friends that are having babies these days. The latest addition to that list are Robby & Megan Fanelli, who just had Robby Jr. on February 27th (the day before my birthday!) We don’t plan on having kids anytime soon, but you have to admit that he is a cute one. …and he’s grown so much since the last time we saw him!

• A Public Display of Affection?
• In Poorly executed Monotype Corsiva?
• Using two gallons of paint?

How could I go wrong? So, what do you say Ames?

As Valentines Day approaches, I'm beginning to think a lot more about just how lucky a guy I am. There are so many reasons why I'm happy to be forever committed to my wife. Yea, Ames is insanely smart, she can cook just about anything, she has a memory like a trap, and she is the most beautiful person I've ever met...but those things really aren't the driving force behind my love for her. It's the little details about Amy that get me...like the fact that she can move her eyes around independently of one another. Yes, this is a little known Amy trick that is particularly useful when she wants to convey that the person she is imitating wasn't the brightest person in the world.

I always thought this trick was a genetic thing, like being double jointed or having a connected earlobe. I've tried to do it before always to be told, "Nope, both your eyes are looking to the left now". Well, after a few minutes of professional training from my wife I'm happy to report that I too can now move my eyes independently...if I can prevent myself from laughing.

She's the greatest!

Today, my wife Amy turns 23 but that’s not all she has to celebrate. She just took the GRE today (yes, on her birthday - it was the first available date for January) and scored a 770 out of 800 on the math. In order to get into the Chemical Engineering PhD programs at most schools you need a 700 or perhaps a 750 to be considered. She just graduated in December from UF’s ChemE Undergraduate Program and is currently applying to the graduate programs at North Carolina State, University of South Carolina, Rice University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Houston for the Fall of 2005. If anybody reading this works in the graduate admissions office of any of those schools, you should admit her. She’s the smartest person I ever knowed.

The following is an email from the VP of Accelerated Data Works, the company I work for. This is the kind of company policy that makes me wish I could stay here forever:

Kent Tambling, purveyor of truth and protector of the company gruntle.

OK, this trend of disgruntled former employees, band members or whatever showing up and rudely machine gunning ex-associates is out of control.

To insure the safety of our company, the following is to be considered company policy:

If you feel you are about to become disgruntled, please talk to me immediately. I will help keep your gruntle at an acceptable level. If you feel your gruntle is becoming lost, I'll help find it. If necessary, I will touch your gruntle and help you grow it back. Maybe share some of my gruntle with you. We should all share our gruntle. Gruntle is a special thing we often fail to cherish as much as we should. If some morning you are thinking, "I'm becoming disgruntled", you should stop, drop and roll in some regruntling fluid. I have plenty at home, safe from insurgents, in my garage. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you come to the office, or my home, while you are experiencing a gruntle deficit. STAY WHERE YOU ARE, we will come to you. Gruntle is a terrible thing to waste. Stay in school, drink your gruntle. Just say no to disgruntling. From here on out, think of me as the gruntle candy-man. I'm all about your gruntle. Make gruntle, not war. And in this holiday season, be thankful for family, and plentiful gruntle for all.

Its because we care.

She graduates on Friday the 17th, but today is quite possibly the most important day in my wife’s undergraduate ChemE degree. She and her group are turning in their report and giving their final presentation for Senior Design. The past few weeks have been non-stop for us (more so for her) with late nights and early mornings. She spent last night assembling most of her groups work into a final report and powerpoint presentation. At about 1am she decided to get to get some sleep and wake up at 6 to finalize everything and take the textbook-thick report in to work early to get it bound.

That probably would have worked out great but somehow, something didn’t work out between when I set the alarm last night and when it was supposed to go off. I’m usually the first one up if the alarm doesn’t go off, but this morning we were both in bed till Ames woke up at 7:45. She was supposed to be at work by 8…so as you can probably guess, it wasn’t the best of mornings. From what I’ve seen of the report and presentation so far, I know it’s going to go fine, but I still feel bad about whatever happened to the alarm.

In much the same style as Mike Davidson’s permanant Ten Things page, I thought today would be an appropriate time to list off a few of the things in life that I’m particularly thankful for. I really feel that I’ve been blessed beyond measure, so this is by no means a complete list, just a few of the things that are fresh on my mind right now.

1. My Wife - I proposed to Amy exactly 3 years ago on Thanksgiving. Some people casually throw out the “better-half” description when talking about their spouses, but Ames really is the glue that holds my life together. Although she has never been able to get me to use a dayplanner the way she does, or to stop biting my nails, I am the man I am because she loves me. …and she’s graduating next month with her bachelors in Chem-E!
2. The Bible - I try to avoid plastering my beliefs up on this blog, but since this is almost Thanksgiving, a holiday that was established to give thanks, I can’t help but acknowledge the things God has done in my life through one little book.
3. Photoshop CS - Where would I be without being able to nest sets of layers. What would I do without the ability to create layer comps? …And those are just the features I love that are new to CS. I could talk all day about brush sets, patterns, and vector shapes.
4. Slurpees - There’s nothing quite like a 7-11 slurpee on a hot summer day. Gainesville has to be the only town in Florida without a 7-11 gas station, and after over a year of living here, I still get Slurpee cravings. Slush-Puppys, and ICEEs just don’t cut it.
5. Health - Especially since we don’t have health insurance. Although I haven’t done as much of this as I should, it’s great be able to roll out of bed in the morning and go for a run through the UF campus.

One of my best friends and roommate for 3 years at UCF is now serving full time in the Army at Ft. Benning, GA. Sometime between playing with C4, Bangalore Torpedos, and 120mm mortars Jhon emailed the picture below to ORock1059.com (a radio station in Orlando, FL) to show his support for the station. They put it on the front page with the caption “O-ROCK 105.9 SUPPORTS THE TROOPS” and told him he could have any CD he wanted. Sweet deal!

This year, Ames and I went to 3 different halloween parties. You can see all of our crazy pictures at Amesnjas.com, but here are some of the best costume highlights.

• The best old couple ever! Justin, you're a dirty old man!
  
• The reason why cardboard boxes make the best costumes.
  
• The world's easiest carrot costume.
  
• Finally, Amy and I were extreme versions of ourselves, Van Gogh and a mad chemist.
  

Amy and I have begun the arduous process of packing all of our belongings into boxes for our move to Maguire Village. We're starting to realize that we have a lot of "stuff" lying around. You know what I mean - the decorative fountain/light that never gets turned on and doesn't have any water in it should we decided to turn it on, the "other" entertainment center that we had planned to sell but never really attempted to, and the things that live in the utility closet - Ay! The utility closet!

In a small attempt to reduce the mass that we must transport to our next home (and to reduce the cost of said transport), I have listed all of my Nintendo stuff on Ebay. Up for grabs are 26 Games, 1 Gray Zapper, and a Nintendo RF Switch.

It's on the ebay description, but For future reference, I'll post the list of games below:

Today's not a special day. In fact, it really is a typical one. Amy and I woke up this morning at 6:45am to my alarm, then at 6:47am to her alarm, then once more at 6:55 when we realized we were still in bed. We took a shower together and then made the bed together. She got ready for work as I made some bagels for breakfast and we talked about what has been going on at work for both of us.

I don't have to wake up so early, I could sleep in, and I have a few times. But starting my day without her is like starting a day without sunlight. I really need that time in the morning with her. It's not just me though. The other night I was feeling pretty sick, and she could have gone to hang out with her friends at the young married bible study we go to on Tuesdays, but instead she stayed home, waited on me hand & foot , and we watched a movie together.

We don't really go out as much as we could. We're working on setting a budget, trying to work exercise into our life, and trying to learn Italian together - all of which have had their ups and downs. Our life is really one big work in progress, but I wouldn't trade it for any other one. I'm happy, fulfilled, and still just as in love now as I was in that mallmachine-polaroid from the week before I asked her to marry me.

So... when I said in my last post that I had a lack of free time to play with the new blogger. It is really because I have chosen wisely how to allocate the time that I have. I love you Amy and the last 3 years, 9 months, and 3 days have been filled with the greatest moments of my life.

Just when I thought my days of working late into the night on projects I had procrastinated on were over, I get a rude awakening. I was in the office on Tuesday from 9am until 12:30 at night. Somehow, a million things came up at once and I wasn't able to START my demo for RTS until about 6:30pm... and we had our proposal meeting at 10am the next morning. I'll never say that I don't enjoy my job, but I definitely can't say it's an easy one.

I haven't had time to post lately - mainly because Amy and I have been dealing with the rigors of the auto insurance world. Amy was rear-ended last week (yes, a week after we replaced the transmission) and we've been on a rollercoaster ride of stress and turmoil ever since.

Luckily everybody was ok, but even though it was a minor accident for which Amy was not at fault, the other party's insurance is being a major pain. We had gotten an estimate before the claims adjuster came, so we were confident that it would be fixed. But the claims adjuster for Mercury insurance went WAY over the estimate (big surprise to us) and wanted to total our poor happy Honda. At this point Amy and I decided that this would be feasible...over our cold, dead bodies.

So, we talked to our insurance company (State Farm) and they are going to take our deductible, fix the car, and pay us back from the claim they make against Mercury. Lesson's learned from this fiasco: STAY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM MERCURY AUTO INSRANCE, State Farm has really great customer service, and never, never get rear-ended.