Congratulations to my friends Corey and Becky, who welcomed their new baby into the world last night at 10:57pm. Ethan measured in at 8.0 lb and 21 1/2″. Corey reports that Mom and baby are both doing well. Hooray!
Alright you three – the world is now awaiting pictures!
Today marks a very special day in my life. Ten years ago exactly, I sat down outside my first class of the Spring 1997 semester at ASU: CIS235, aka COBOL and C Programming. Early as always, I took a place in the hallway next to a handsome guy who I thought was *way* out of my league. He said hello. I said hi in return. We chatted briefly. Swarms of people started to accumulate, and when the doors opened, I decided to sit next to him.
A decade later, looking back on that fateful day, I could have never imagined where life would lead us. It turned out that Andrew wasn’t out of my league – we were meant to form a bond of friendship to last the rest of our lives! Five years later we were married, and now, five years after that, here we are.
Just for kicks, let’s compare:
Boy, we’ve come a long way since January 27, 1997! We’ve lived together in San Francisco, Boston and Phoenix. We’ve traveled to various parts of Hawaii, California, Nevada, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, Mexico, Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and many more places I can’t even think of. We’ve built a house, renevated our landscape, fixed all kinds of random things…
Above all, we’ve learned how to work together as one. We communicate extremely well, and have hobbies together as well as apart. We both love watching movies, television, traveling, playing games, gambling, food, technology and gadgets. I just love being with Andrew! He’s my best friend, my confidant, and I can’t imagine being without him.
Andrew, I’m so glad you took a chance on the scary idea of talking to me that fateful day in the Business building hallway. I knew there was a reason I decided to go to ASU – and now I know positively, that reason was you.
I love you, Andrew! Happy 10th Anniversary!
Andrew found us a Nintendo Wii on Thursday. It is TONS of fun! You have something called a “Wiimote” (remote) that’s wireless, and you attach a Nunchuck to it (second remote). Every game you play physically tracks where your remotes are to mimick you on the screen. That means when you’re playing any of the Wii Sports games (it comes with the console), such as Baseball, you literally swing the Wiimote just like a bat. You pitch just like you would a real baseball (without letting go) and the on-screen “Mii” character mimicks your actions exactly.
It’s sort of… scary! I never imagined I would have games in my own living room that allow such vivid virtual reality. My arms sure hurt from pitching, golfing, throwing a bowling ball, playing tennis and even from boxing Andrew! Two people stand in the living room, each with a wiimote and nunchuck, and literally box each other in thin air. It tracks the height and angle of your swing, the speed of the swing, and the height/orientation of your ducking and blocking. It takes ALL of your energy to play! A great workout!
The Wii’s are hard to find right now, but they are getting a little easier as time goes by. Andrew snagged the last one at Fry’s Electronics. They made us buy three additional games with it in a bundle, but at least we got to choose which games to buy. We picked up Zelda: Twilight Princess, Warioware and Monkey Ball. There aren’t a whole lot of titles out for it right now, but the Wii Sports is all I need to get hours and hours of game play! Like I said, it comes right in the box with the Wii, too.
Well, it’s 4:47am and I’m heading to work. I got a lot of frustration out this weekend around my working times playing that Wii, thank goodness. Back to the grind! I worked about 70 hours last week in emergency mode (note: Monday was a holiday, too!) and we’re just about halfway out of it. Hopefully by Wednesday things will be better.
We hit a major cold snap here in the Valley. Many of our plants have suffered severe frost damage, including our poor Sonoran Yellow Bells and our beautiful Ficus Natida trees. Our cactus seem to have come through it without too much of a problem, thankfully. We’ll have to see if there are any long term affects on them, since they are newly planted.
We went to the Arizona Golf Resort in Mesa today to look at a wedding location for Amy and Mason. On our way in we noticed the fountain had literally frozen over! Thus, giving solid proof that it’s not always over 100 degrees in Phoenix. The record low for tonight was 22 back in 1963! This is way below our average low of 39 degrees.
I moved here to get AWAY from the cold. I don’t even have a real coat!
Tonight, we went to Video Games Live at the Mesa Arts Center. The show was really cool! We got to hear a live orchestra and choir perform soundtracks from epic games like Final Fantasy VII, Halo 1, 2 and 3, Warcraft, Zelda, Civilization IV, Mario and more. They were split into two acts, between which was a hilarious “Loading Act II” screen, seen in this camera phone photo.
We also saw two unbelievable piano performances from Martin Leung (to which I gave standing ovations… I would have paid $55 just to see him!). At the Mesa showing we saw special guest Dragon’s Lair creator Don Bluth. He lives in the area and agreed to a short interview on stage and a promotional appearance.
Overall, the show was fantastic. I’m surprised we were finally able to see it, since the last two years in a row it got cancelled. It brings a greater awareness of orchestral music to a group who otherwise would be sitting at home on their butts, pressing buttons and screaming at a television. The choir was fantastic, as well!
I am so glad December is behind me. The rest of 2006 was great; we went to the United Kingdom and Ireland, multiple Snowboarding trips, camped at the Grand Canyon, and lots of other neat things. Work is great, we’ve both kept the same jobs for the entire year (hopefully taxes will be easier, thank goodness). We renovated the front yard. Can’t complain, in general… except for all those funerals in December. That sucked.
So let me officially welcome 2007, and hope it continues to be good like most of 2006. This year marks our 5th wedding anniversary (10 years together) so maybe we’ll do something fun for it. Now, we just have to agree on what we both consider “fun.” =) I’m sure we can think of something….
Happy New Year!
