jewel December 7th, 2010
For the past 15 months, I have been a happy Palm Pre owner. WebOS is a pretty good OS and showed much promise. I loved that it was Linux and open. Sadly, WebOS didn’t take off at all and even though HP has picked up the torch from Palm, it still doesn’t seem to be gaining any momentum. Being a Sprint customer – since they are not interested in keeping the Pre – this means that when I upgrade I need to go to an Android phone, or a Windows phone since I want to have a smartphone and I’m not interested in switching carriers. Well, that’s a no-brainer…Android it is.
The biggest reason I decided to shop for another phone is that I wanted Mobile Hotspot functionality. The Pre Plus on Verizon has it; the Pre on Sprint doesn’t. Currently, Sprint has 3 phones that offer that capability. The HTC Evo, the Samsung Epic and the LG Opitmus S. Continue Reading »
jewel November 25th, 2010
Around my house, we don’t really celebrate holidays. We’re not curmudgeonly or anything like that, we just don’t. Both of our families live quite a ways away anyway, with mine scattered all over the US and we don’t have kids, so we pretty much treat the holidays as extra days off. I’m good with that.
As today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and even though we aren’t gorging on turkey and pumpkin pie (my waistline is ever thankful for that), I thought I would take a few moments and write about some of the things I am thankful for. Continue Reading »
jewel January 1st, 2010
Wow, so here we are in 2010 already! Seems like yesterday we were still in the 1990′s watching people freak out about Y2K and yet here we are 10 years later. Still here, still going about our daily lives, still watching people freak out about nothing in particular.
Looking back on 2009, it was pretty quiet for the most part. We didn’t get to travel all that much, which is one of my favorite things ever to do and the year just kind of sped by. It was actually a pretty good year in its quietness and I’m happy to have traveled it.
Some highlights for me include:
Continue Reading »
jewel December 19th, 2009
We just got back from vacation last night. We spent 8 days in sunny, warm Cancun, Mexico. It was fantastic! I’ll blog about it and post some pictures once I settle in here at home for a bit and have a chance to go through my pictures. But, I wanted to show the contrast of the weather between Cancun and where I live, in Northern Virginia.
Yesterday morning, we enjoyed our last few hours in the warm sunshine, wearing shorts, tshirts and sandals and then we came home to a blizzard:
Continue Reading »
jewel September 29th, 2009
This past weekend, I traveled to Minneapolis, MN and I got to spend some much overdue time with my mom and all my siblings. It was a fantastic time and I cannot express just how glad I am that all of us finally worked seeing one another into our busy schedules (all at the same time!). We talked and ate and ate and ate and played some pool and some Rock Band and even some Wii Bowling (which our mom kicked our collective butts in, I might add – Go Mom!).
We found that even though we are pretty different from one another and have been apart for many many years, we have many similarities with each other. For instance, our sense of humor – we are all absolute smart asses. Also, we are all basically introverts and tend to be shy in unfamiliar situations. Continue Reading »
jewel March 19th, 2009
So a couple days ago, we finally got around to depositing our tax refund checks into my checking account. We’re using it for our next trip to Mexico later this year.
Exciting, isn’t it. I know we’re excited.
Well. We made the deposit 2 days ago. I logged into my bank account this morning and the deposit wasn’t there. I looked in the “Deposit Holds” section. Not there either. Very strange. I didn’t have my receipt with me this morning, so I waited until we got home, I located the receipt (just for piece of mind) and I sent a message to Wachovia Customer Service through their online portal, since our branch was already closed. I fully expected them to either tell me there was a glitch and I should see the deposit tomorrow – or – tell me I should contact my branch directly. Bzzzzt. Nope. Continue Reading »
jewel March 16th, 2009
I just realized today that it has been more than a month since I blogged. It wasn’t intentional, I’ve just been really busy with small patches of lazy to counter it. Also, I haven’t gotten out of the house much yet this spring, so rather than droll on and on about what I wish I were doing, I haven’t been writing much at all.
I have been busy, though. On top of working full time and keeping up with the domestic (read boring) stuff, I’ve been working out 5 days a week and also been attempting, once again, to learn Spanish. I’m more optimistic about the Spanish thing this time around. Continue Reading »
jewel February 8th, 2009
It’s been a long winter. Not much in the way of snow so far, but it’s been miserably cold; not exactly conducive for me getting out of the house much. This weekend, however, it has been GORGEOUS! Temps in the mid 60′s, sunny. A nice break. So, we decided to get out of the house and enjoy our day!
I figured that living up here for 8 1/2 years without seeing the Lincoln Memorial was long enough, so with that in mind we jumped in the car, drove to the Vienna Metro station and took the metro into DC. Getting off the metro at the Smithsonian was familiar enough; we’ve done that many times to visit the musuems. Strangely, this is the first time we’ve done so with no intention of visiting any of the museums. It was too nice a day to spend it indoors anyway.
Continue Reading »
jewel February 7th, 2009
Not to worry, I’m not fooled by this reprieve from the cold temps of February. It actually got up into the mid-60′s today! Very exciting, if you ask me.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to go out and enjoy the weather all that much, but I did spend a bit of time on the porch enjoying it. And we grilled a couple steaks for dinner — not something we get to do all that often in the winter.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll get out of the house and enjoy the day a bit. It’s suppose to be warm again. If only it would stay.
jewel January 21st, 2009
Yesterday (you may have heard) the United States of America swore in a new president. We took the day off work – not to fight the crowds and the cold to be there in person, as close as we live to DC, but so that we could watch everything from the comfort of our climate controlled livingroom. We invited a friend over, made some light snacks, had champaign at the ready and we celebrated. It was an amazing day. I did not write about the inauguration yesterday because I wanted to just enjoy the moment and let everything sink in a bit. Continue Reading »