In which Eddy is a Total Dude

I didn't realize when I married Eddy what a dude he is.  I thought I was marrying a SNAG.  This year for Xmas, Eddy asked me for a power saw.  And he basically got it.

He tackled a project with it right away and I thought the enthusiasm might wear off, but he loves that power saw. Guess I'll have to make sure to buy him some more snagly gifts to make up for this macho one.  Go, manly Eddy, go!

Happy Holidays!

Animaliversary

Without realizing it, we basically spent our whole anniversary weekend staring at animals. The first priority was the penguin exhibit at the fabulous St. Louis Zoo.

We probably saw some other animals as well, but I mean. Come on. Penguins.

Day two was ostensibly animal free. We went to the City Museum, a menagerie of rusty metal and dangerously tight spaces.

But we had to break up that long day of climbing around with a trip to the aquarium that lives on the second floor of the City Museum. This place has fish. I swear it does. But it also has an amazing array of non-fish, most of which you can pet.

The most awesome thing we saw was the sloth feeding. I <3 sloths. In a serious way. Sloths are the new penguins.

So, apparently, we go on a lot of trips where we spend our time staring at animals. Who knew?

Our Favorite STL Haunts

Recently, I whisked Eddy away to St. Louis to celebrate our anniversary. While there, we went to the same ole places. Well, the same ole places that we loved when we lived there. Here's our old apartment.

When we visit STL, we always stay about a block away from our old place, so we always swing by. Speaking of our old hood, we hung out in the loop of course.

We ate at Blueberry Hill not once,

but twice.

Even though it was freaking freezing, we also made it out to Ted Drewes.

And we couldn't call it a trip to St. Lou unless without a trip to Mangia, where we were married.

Stay tuned because we did actually do more than just eat things on this trip.

Let the Xmas Begin

I told myself we would have 100% of our Xmas shopping finished by Thanksgiving this year.  If I had to venture an estimate, I would say we are finished with about 0% to date.  Nevertheless, we did find time to decorate our house for Xmas.  Now, I am generally opposed to all holiday decorations.  Eddy calls me a scrooge.  I prefer to think of myself as clutter averse.  However, this year, I consented to two things.  A brand new Xmas tree that the Cobbs gave us for our birthdays.

and two paper stars we picked up in Chinatown in SF.

Hope you are getting in the holiday spirit. I swear, we will start our holiday shopping. Soon. One of these days.

This is what I look like when I blog

In case you were wondering.

freeEEeeEeEEEEedom

We were pretty excited about Thanksgiving break this year.

Right after work on Wednesday, we headed out to our favorite Tex Mex joint in the hood.

When we got home, we cracked a bottle of champagne to kick off the weekend.

For Thanksgiving proper we enjoyed a wonderful meal with Eddy's post-doc advisor, Vivek and his friends and family. Then we headed over to Valerie and Kim's place for a champagne after party. The rest of the weekend, we pretty much lazed around the house.

It was a much relaxing break.

Nicci's (Pretend) First Digital Collection

What I do at work is publish digital collections. While I have been working on digital collections for approximately one gozillion years, I published my first ever collection as a project leader back in early November!  So I guess it's not technically my first digital collection, but me and my work pals are still pretty excited about it.  It is called the Alonso S. Perales Photographs and you can click here to see the entire collection. It is a small collection, but it has some really lovely photos of this important leader.

We are in the process of a comprehensive digital library redesign, so the splash pages will change eventually, but for now, you can visit at will.

Old Doc Westbrook is Greater Than 30

You know how I am less than 30? Well, Eddy is definitely not. This year for his birthday, I planned a variety of things he loves to do. They will take the form of a before and after blog post here.

First, I surprised Eddy by making him a Japanese breakfast. He loves surprises. Before:

After:

Next, we went on a bike ride.

Along the way we stopped at a church bazaar.

It was an adventure. Eddy loves adventures. There are some after shots of the bike ride, but they mostly entail sweaty Eddy, so I will spare you. After the bike ride, I took Eddy on a super secret surprise adventure to drink bloody Mary beverages at Leon's Lounge. Before:

After:

Did I mention that Eddy loves bloody Marys?  Then we hung out with our neighbors and played Wii. Later I took Eddy out to a nice dinner at Benjy's. Before:

After:

Hope Old Doc Westbrook had the best birthday ever!

Cobb Extravaganza

My parents came to visit us! It was beyond awesome.

In addition to eating lots of yummy things (which we totally did) we also showed them some of the Houston sights. For instance:

The aquarium

I mean, they have some fish there, but also they have these tigers...

The biggest surprise hit, though was the Texas Renaissance Festival which we thoroughly enjoyed last year as well.

See if you can spot mom photo bombing above.

They also got to come by and see our new house and pet the cats' butts and all of that good stuff.

Thanks for visiting, mom and dad! See you in STL!

All Hallows Eve

Remember Halloween? We had a really good one this year! First we went to my friend Rachel's house for her Halloween Birthday shindig.

We played this awesome game called Shadows Over Camelot.

Let's just say it is now a thing in our household to say whether or not a real life event should be considered a "despair card." Afterwards, we bundled up and headed to Discovery Green for their Halloween showing of the Addams Family and the Nightmare Before Xmas.

It was cold that night.  Please do not mock me!  On Halloween proper, we spotted this amazing decoration in our neighborhood.

Sadly, it was only up one day. We also had our very first ever Trick-or-Treaters, thanks to our new house! Days after the Halloween excitement fizzled out, we saw this crazy dude in the parking lot of our grocery store.

Just goes to show that weirdos in costumes are welcome all year round.