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Mondays can go jump off a cliff. Especially the ones that follow a long weekend.
Today's misery aside, I had a pretty awesome Christmas. I totaled up $330 in cash and gift cards toward my new camera - the one thing I wanted this year. I went Saturday and got a Canon Powershot SD980. It's a sweet little camera. It's a member of Canon's "Digital ELPH" series, super compact for what it does, but not too small for me like many of these cameras tend to be. 12.1 megapixels, touch widescreen, and shoots HD video.
One of the main reasons I wanted a new camera was so I could use a gift I got last Christmas from my sister Dana: my 2GB Eye-Fi SD memory card. This thing is awesome. It's wi-fi enabled, and uploads your photos to your computer wirelessly as soon as you power your camera on within range of your wireless home network (or wherever you choose to set up the software). For a $10/year subscription, it will also automatically upload to any photo sharing web sites you choose out of the thirty or so that are available (this is a free feature with the more expensive versions of the card). With Eye-Fi I will almost never need to fiddle with manually connecting the camera to my computer, unless I need to upload video (something else the more expensive cards do but this one does not).
Apart from the camera, Santa also brought me some clothes, the "World Adventures" expansion for The Sims 3, and Wii Fit Plus (just the software as I already own a balance board). Chris got a TomTom GPS and a Griffin PowerDock 2 (a dual charging dock for both of our iPhones), clothes, cologne, and lots of underwear. His parents gave us some money to put toward a new couch at some point in 2010, and our crazy friends Joe and Sandra got us a toaster oven.
Even Brooskey and Vixen made out. Brooskey got a new bed from us, and two new toys from Auntie Dana and Nana (Chris' mom). We got Vixen a soft, plush blanket to cuddle up in, Dana sent her a pretty pink coat/harness, and Nana got her a rawhide bone almost as big as she is - just the size she likes them.
I hope Santa was as good to you as he was to us! What was the best gift you received this year?
(FTC Disclosure: Product links are affiliate links which will generate a commission payment to me if purchases are made through them. My opinions on these products are not influenced by this compensation.)
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Drama of the Week: I woke up Monday morning to find a gray stripe down the left side of my iPhone screen, along with some squiggly gray lines at the top. I rebooted and reset it, but the rogue pixels would not go away. It had been just fine when I had used it before going to bed Sunday night, and now it was not.
A friend who works for Apple told me it was likely my LCD was torn and I just needed the screen replaced. The problem: this was a first generation (2G) iPhone, and they don't do screen replacements for them. I've been avoiding buying a newer model, even though I could get a refurbished 3G for just $49, because I want to be able to buy next year's model at upgrade pricing when it comes out. Buying an upgrade now would lock me out of doing so again for eighteen months (unless I want to pay full price - i.e. my first born).
Big sister Dana to the rescue! It seems my timing could not have been better. She had passed her original 2G along to my brother-in-law when she got her 3G last Christmas, and it just so happens that he just upgraded himself... so now that phone is in the hands of its third owner - me! I found it on my doorstep when I got home last night, and promptly began the activation and data transfer process. Now I'm back in business; everything transferred perfectly and it's like the same phone, except the screen isn't borked. Here's to keeping our fingers crossed that this one holds out until the 2010 iPhone release!
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It took me long enough, but the photos from my trip to Oregon are finally ready. They are captioned, selectively, because I wasn't about to write eighty-one captions. Some of my favorites are this extreme closeup of my impossibly cute two-year-old nephew Dylan, this one of me with all three of my sister's kids, this cute shot of my brother Rick looking thoughtful, this one of me and my sister on her ATV, and the last two of me with my brother-in-law, and then my sister, the morning of my flight back to Rhode Island.
There's also a bunch of photos of my sister's Chihuahuas, starting here with Vixen's daddy, Jax. Her mother, Cella, appears here and here, and there are two more of Jax here and here.
I'm still playing catchup at work - it didn't help that I got sick last week - so it still may be a few more days before I get back to a regular blogging schedule. Plus, I will openly and shamelessly admit that any and all free time at home has been spent playing The Sims 3 - more on that later!
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I have so much to blog about but still so little time! For now, here's the rundown of what I got for Christmas (in roughly the order I opened them)...
From my Secret Santa, a $25 iTunes card and a sugarplum fairy ornament.
From Joe and Sandra, a vanilla bath set and an All Stars gift certificate.
From my mom, two Cabin Cuddlers, a wind chime, and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.
From Dana, a pretty purple sweater, and a nifty Wi-Fi memory card for my camera.
She also sent Vixen a purple leopard print harness.
From Chris, another $50 to iTunes, and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader for the Wii.
From Chris' parents, a silver chain to wear my "Sisters" ring on (several years ago I bought myself and my sisters matching rings with all four of our birthstones on them), a green turtleneck and fleece pullover, and an alarm clock with a dock for my iPhone.
We also got a few gift cards from them for restaurants and several stores.
And from his grandparents, $50 to spend wherever I choose. I haven't decided what to do with it yet.
What about you? Did you get everything you wanted?
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Sorry to bore you with another meme (yeah right, according to my stats you love them!). Angela at mommy bytes combined an e-mail meme with similar questions she found on four other blogs into a massive four things meme.
Four Jobs I've Had (not including your current job): This is going to be a stretch because I haven't had four real paying jobs, even counting my current one. For actual paying jobs, there's data entry clerk for the hometown school department, and temporary/seasonal sales associate at Electronics Boutique (now known as GameStop). Quasi-jobs include March of Dimes poster child (ick), and student aide for a couple of teachers in high school. I wasn't a kiss-up, I only did this for the cool teachers. One of them was a typing class, and it's where I was inspired to teach myself touch typing in a way that works for me (something the school didn't want to attempt because they thought it was impossible). I memorized the keyboard along with the class, and then spent tedious hours learning just the right distance to move my arms to make the three usable fingers reach all of the keys. The result: three-fingered touch typing speed that rivals those using all ten. Anyway, getting a little sidetracked here...
Four Movies I Can Watch Many Times: A Christmas Story, The Land Before Time, The Matrix, and Flight of the Navigator.
Four Places I've Lived: The only four: Los Angeles, CA; Eugene, OR; Hood River, OR; and Warwick, RI.
Four Places I've Vacationed: Canby, OR (where I used to go to summer camp); Rhode Island before I lived here; New Hampshire; and Orlando, FL (Disney World).
Four TV Shows I Love(d): I agree with Angela on Providence and Ally McBeal, but will try to come up with four more. Or rather, trying to limit it to four seems to be the bigger challenge. Okay, we'll start with the series return I'm most anticipating right now: Lost. Most unfair cancellation (twice): Jericho. Long time favorite I'll be sad to see go: ER. Favorite semi-new show: Eli Stone.
Four Novels (or Series) I've Enjoyed Re-Reading: Afraid I can't answer this one... don't think I've ever re-read anything.
Keep reading...
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Since I can't afford to buy gifts for everyone in my family this Christmas, I've decided I will at least send a Christmas bouquet or centerpiece to my Mom's house. Or maybe a Christmas gift basket from 1-800-Flowers. I've bought some inexpensive toys for my niece and nephews, and still need to find something special for my sister Dana, to whom I feel so indebted for giving me my little Vixen last year.
On Chris' side of the family, we will each buy something for our Secret Santa "victim", and we'll get something for his parents and possibly his grandparents. His niece and nephews are old enough now that they don't need toys, and they should probably even be participating in the Secret Santa drawing, but they're not yet.
Apart from gift-giving, the rest of our holiday celebrations are getting underway. My company Christmas party is this Saturday. Due to unfortunate cutbacks this year, there won't be as many coworkers to celebrate with, but it will still be a good time. This is one of the few times a year I get to see all of my fellow employees in one place, and I always look forward to it.
I discovered I don't have as many non-tree decorations for Christmas as I thought I did... at least not Brooskey-proof ones. So we borrowed a tiny little 18" artificial tree from Chris' parents which we're going to buy a miniature ornament set and a string of lights for. We also have a wreath to hang on the living room wall, snowmen for the top of the movie and video game racks, and a Santa plaque which is already hanging on the front door. We still haven't decided whether we're going to put lights up, but in the interest of keeping the electric bill down we probably won't. I'm hoping to get the decorating done this weekend.
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Sorry for two contest posts in a week, but I had to enter this one. John Chow is hosting a $6,000 cash giveaway sponsored by tiny URL service XR.com! $5,000 goes to your favorite charity, and the other $1,000 is yours to keep. All you have to do to enter is try out XR.com for yourself and post a review on your blog. (The post should also include a link back to the contest, which charity you would donate the $5,000 to and what you would do with the remaining $1,000.)
My test of XR.com was to shorten the URL to the ElfYourself dance I made last week. I've been using a competing URL-shortening service for a long time, so I'm comparing this experience to those I've had with the other service. Right off the bat there was a rather inconvenient difference. The service I've been using works through a button on my bookmarks toolbar. Anytime I'm on a page I want to create a short link for, all I have to do is click that button and a short URL is instantly created (I then have the option to replace the random string of characters in the link with a custom word, if I so choose). To use XR.com, one has to navigate to their site and paste in the URL they want shortened. They do offer the same option of creating a custom URL instead of a random one. After your tiny link is created, they offer a one-click button to copy the new URL to the clipboard, which only works in Internet Explorer. This restriction is completely unnecessary, as it is entirely possible to script this function for other browsers as well. The next big difference between XR.com and their competitor is that they mask the original URL and trap the redirected page in an ugly frame for self-promotion purposes. Not to sound too harsh, but... yuck. They do allow the visitor to break out of the frame, but still this is going to be confusing to visitors who don't understand what URL redirection and forwarding is all about. The bottom line: the more URL-shortening services, the merrier, but for convenience's sake I'll be sticking with my old service.
If I should win this awesome contest, my $5,000 would go to the American Cancer Society. So many people in my life have been affected by various types of cancer. I lost my Grandma Cheryl to lung cancer four years ago. My former neighbor and dear friend Muriel lost her husband to the same. Our friend's mother, Mrs. Ping, was taken by liver/colon cancer last year, and our next door neighbor by pancreatic cancer this past summer. My sister-in-law and mother-in-law are survivors of skin and breast cancer, respectively. And there are so many more. I can't stand this ugly disease and don't want to see another single loved one struck down by it.
The sensible thing to do with the other $1,000 would be to pay off some bills. But that's not what I'm going to do with it if I win. Except for the few hours I got to see Dana when she brought Vixen here in February, I haven't seen anyone in my family in over a year and a half. The $1,000 would go toward a trip home, or alternatively I would use it to bring some of my family here for a visit.
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Today is Vixen's first birthday! It's hard to believe she's a year old already, especially since she's only been with us for eight months. Here's a video of her playing with her litter mates while she still lived in Oregon with Dana.
We tried to get a video of her playing last night, but she wasn't interested. I wanted to show you this cute thing we had her doing the other day with Brooskey's new squeaky football toy. Chris was squeaking it at her and she would make this noise that started out as a growl and would morph into a whiny yelp. It's impossible to describe; we really have to catch it on video one of these days. She makes the same kinds of noises when she and I play: I'll get her riled up by tickling her or blowing raspberries on her belly, or by playing peekaboo behind the loveseat, and she'll start jumping back and forth at me with that same growl. If you've ever seen the movie Puppet Master, think of the cowboy puppet and the little sinister laugh he had - it sounds just like it. And as she gets more and more wound up, those growls turn into high pitched screeches like you'd expect from a little monkey. It really is the funniest thing in the world. I promise I will keep trying to get it on video!
We've done a lot less training with her than we have with Brooskey, but she still is much better behaved. In fact, when Brooskey takes off with something he's not supposed to have, Vixen goes right after him, growling and barking at him as if telling him to drop it! We're still struggling with housebreaking, mainly because she just doesn't know to tell us when she needs to go. When we take her out, she goes, because she knows that's where she's supposed to do it. But if she has to go again later on, she just finds a spot out of sight and goes. But we keep trying, and keep taking her out as often as we can, and I know she'll get it eventually. She does know how to sit, what "off" means, "come here", "come up" (to get her to jump up on the couch or loveseat so I can pick her up or put her harness on), "get back" (away from the door when someone is coming in or out)... and goes to her crate when we say "bed time" or "go to bed". She knows what "leave it" and "drop it" mean as well; she just doesn't always feel like listening!
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DisabilityNation recently reported that according to a survey, one in five gamers is disabled. You can count me as one of them. My biggest and longest lasting gaming obsession has been Maxis/EA's The Sims series, but I have played all kinds of games for about as long as I can remember. In fact, the earliest game I remember playing is Space Invaders on a Texas Instruments console (was it called TI-87, possibly?) we had when I was just a toddler.
The TI was just a big, clunky keyboard with cartridge slots that connected to a television, and I honestly don't remember how I played or if I had difficulty doing so. But ever since we got our first original Nintendo several years later, game accessibility has been a constant issue. So I was thrilled to find, through the article linked above, a site just for people facing the same issues: AbleGamers. The aim of the site is to help gamers with all different types of disabilities find games that suit their interests and abilities.
The ironic thing is that for me at least, the earlier systems were far more accessible than today's modern systems are. For the NES, Dana found the NES Advantage arcade stick controller, which I quickly discovered I could operate with my feet while sitting in a chair with it on the floor, and play just as well if not better than my siblings using the regular handheld controllers. Some years later, early in my relationship with Chris, he and I had an original Playstation, then a Nintendo 64 and a Sega Dreamcast, all of which had similar arcade-style controllers, and all of which I played rather well.
Keep reading...
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Well here we are. I'm twenty-nine now. No, really. I really am twenty-nine, and next year I'll be thirty, not twenty-nine again. You can rest assured that I will never be one of those women who lies about her age. I will always be exactly the age I say I am, unless of course I get senile and lose count. I'm too proud of each and every year I've survived this life to ever lie about it.
Our friends Joe and Sandra hosted my birthday party again, just like last year, except it wasn't a surprise this time. It was going to be... it was in planning for a month before I found out about it. But between my attempts to make other plans for the same night, and Chris' realization that he'd never be able to sneak off and buy food with me home on vacation, he decided to tell me. The party was Thursday night. It was small, but we partied into the wee hours of the morning just the same. Good food, good friends (who are far too generous), and Rock Band are the makings of one great party.
Friday, the Fourth of July and my actual birthday, started out gray and drizzly. This always depresses me, but it was actually okay, because we needed to just lounge around and recover from our three hours of sleep while giving Brooskey and Vixen some time to be out of their crates and play with each other. They had been cooped up for a long time. Friday evening we met up with Joe and Sandra again and we all joined Joe's dad on his boat to watch the fireworks in Newport. We had a perfect view, and I wish we had taken the real camera, but all we had was Chris' iPhone (I left mine safely locked in the trunk of Sandra's car just in case we ended up in the drink while attempting transfer from the dinghy onto the actual boat). We haven't transferred the pictures to a PC yet to see how they came out, but there are a couple that look promising. I will post them here when they do get uploaded. It was another late night, and although we got home earlier than the night before, we were up just as late letting the dogs do their thing.
Keep reading...
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I knew I didn't forget to do the June masthead. Apparently my browser was being stupid... it still had the May image cached for whatever reason, so while I was seeing that and thinking I'd had a brain fart, you all were seeing the June image and thinking I was really having a brain fart.
Yesterday when I posted the quiz scores, I didn't mention anything about prizes because I had a dilemma: two first place winners, and only one prize to give away. So I needed more time to figure out what to do about that. Then, this morning, while washing my hair, I had an a-ha moment. There must be something about extra blood flow to the brain when bent over with one's head in the sink... 
Anyway, I'm sending Alejandra the original prize: a Soyo FreeStyler 500 Bluetooth headset with included USB Bluetooth adapter allowing use of the headset and other Bluetooth devices with a PC. (I know Alejandra uses a Mac, and it's unclear whether the adapter works with Macs, though the included software doesn't. But if it doesn't work for her, maybe she can pass the adapter on to a PC user.) And Dana, you get your choice of scents from Happy Thoughts Candles. These candles are handmade by Rae of What Lies Within The Mirror, another Rhode Island blog I've recently started reading. Head over and pick your scent, and leave me a comment letting me know what you've chosen. I'll order it along with one for myself (I'm thinking Monkey Farts!), and send it to you when it's ready.
It's funny that Dana joked in her comment last night that having me as a sister is prize enough, because that's exactly what I almost wrote yesterday when I couldn't come up with a second prize... but nah, that's not cool. 
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I am so ready for a vacation. The problem is, while we're raising and training two puppies, we can't really venture far from home. I hate to just take a vacation with no plans of any type, because we'll just end up wasting the vacation days sitting at home doing nothing. So what I'd really like is to have someone come visit me. The past visits of my sisters Dana and Rose were so much fun. I love playing hostess, and showing off where I live - for even though I sometimes complain about things, I really do love it here.
I'm long overdue for a wage and vacation time negotiation with my employer, and with business not so great I'm trying to find an appropriate time to bring it up. But I have at least one full week, plus a couple of days which I will probably just use to extend a couple of long holiday weekends. So, is anyone interested in a tour of Rhode Island and the surrounding areas?
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Here are some more of my recent favorites from the rest of the web...
Quick Search Tip: Booking Flights Online
from Peter at Google Tutor
A Google search feature I did not know about, but which could be very useful. Type in two cities or airport codes, and Google goes out and retrieves the lowest airfares between those two cities from all of the popular travel booking sites. The only thing that would make this better in my opinion would be if it included fares directly from the airlines which are unavailable through these sites - especially my favorite, Southwest.
The M Word.
from Jen at Spaghetti Harvest
Jen has been losing weight with SparkPeople, the same wonderful program that helped me to reach my goal weight early this year. In this post she humorously describes the dramatic increase in her self-esteem as a result.
No Country for Lonely Men
from Lincoln at Canucklehead
Lincoln talks about doing what you love in life, and I just couldn't help laughing out loud at this one segment: "On will turn my attention at this point to my son, who is currently foremost in my thoughts. He recently announced that he would like to be a firetruck when he grows up. While I understand I am a little biased, I would say that at this point he would make a fantastic one. The obvious point here is that no matter how long and hard he practices, he is never going to be able to reach his current ambition as a career firetruck."
The Cactus Cuties
from Mel's Video Of The Day!
A group of five young girls sing the national anthem in bone chilling harmony. I only wish I had been this good at that age. Thanks to my sister Dana for pointing it out!
Dolphin Rescues Stranded Whales
from Discovery News
Just one of many examples why I think dolphins are this planet's most perfect creatures. A dolphin rescued two stranded whales off the coast of New Zealand by apparently communicating with them and guiding them back out to sea. Found this via Gmail's "Web Clips"...
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![[Vixen in her pink and purple sweater]](http://www.confoozled.com/confoozion/archives/VixenSweater3-thumb.jpg) I've hinted about the possibility of yet another addition to the family. Yes, it's true... Brooskey is getting a baby sister! Her name is Vixen, and she's a four-month old fawn and white Chihuahua. She will be flying in on Friday, along with my sister Dana, all the way from Oregon.
People have told us we're crazy for thinking we can raise two puppies at one time, and they may be right. But we're going to do it, and even though you might see some wildly incoherent ramblings from me over the next few months as I slowly lose my mind, we will eventually get through it. And I know that in the end it will all be worth it. Brooskey is maturing more every day and we look forward to all the fun we're going to have with him when he's full grown. And I'm already madly in love with this little girl, even before ever seeing her in person.
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Christmas is now twelve days away, and despite my getting such a head start by doing most of my shopping in Florida, I think I'm more behind than I've ever been.
![[gift icon]](http://www.confoozled.com/smilies/icon-o-matic/christmas/xmas_gift_4.png) Gifts are all bought, with exception of my gift for Chris' family's Secret Santa exchange. I hit a snag, though, when the coordinated gift wrap set I ordered ended up on backorder. It just finally came on Monday, so I started wrapping things right away so I could get things shipped out to my family on time. And that's when I discovered that it is extremely difficult to wrap gifts with a puppy running around. At first we tried putting him in the crate, but since I was standing right there at the dining room table and making all sorts of fun paper-crinkling sounds, all he did was scream his head off the whole time. So we let him out, and somehow I ended up wrapping gifts by myself and supervising Brooskey while Chris played Call of Duty 4 on his Xbox 360. I got three whole gifts wrapped that night. Tuesday night was poker night, so I was on my own again... but this time I worked in the bedroom with Brooskey crated in the dining room with the lights off, so he stayed nice and quiet. Still, bending over to wrap gifts on a bed isn't exactly easy. I got three more done, and a nice knotted up spine the next day. Last night, we were blessed with a calm, tuckered out Brooskey who was unbelievably well-behaved while Chris helped me with the one gift that was too big for me to handle by myself, and I finished up the rest on my own. By the time I was finished, Brooskey was actually asleep under the coffee table! So now I have two boxes shipping out today to my mom and my sister Dana, and hopefully two more shipping tomorrow: one to my sister Rose, and the big one to my dad, sister Lacey, brothers Evan and Rick, and my niece and nephews.
Keep reading...
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This blog has been fairly low-traffic since its inception just over five years ago. The regular readers include my mom, my dad (sometimes), my sister Dana, a few of my friends, and possibly a handful I don't know about (hey, if you're one of them, de-lurk and say hi!). I've always been accepting of my small group of followers, even though I would still love to have more traffic.
Last week I had an idea which I honestly don't know why I didn't have much sooner. Okay, I'm slow. I've been a user of the StumbleUpon Toolbar for quite a while. The toolbar allows you to rate and review web pages you visit, and also has a button to take you randomly to pages others have rated which fit your interests. Last week I started giving each of my blog entries a thumbs-up rating after publishing them. Incredibly, it has increased my traffic twenty-fold. How many of those visitors will become regular readers is anybody's guess. But at least people who are interested in the topics I'm writing about are seeing those entries. What more can I ask for?
So in light of this discovery, I'm going to start submitting others' deserving blog posts to StumbleUpon, asking only that you return the favor and submit, or "thumbs-up", any of my entries that you like and think deserve to be seen by more people (the more people who positively rate a page, the more often it is served up to other Stumblers). I've even added a handy button up by the post title to make it easy to do even if you don't have the toolbar. While you're at it, you can use the del.icio.us and Facebook buttons to share an entry on those sites if you're so inclined.
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As you may remember, for my birthday gift, Chris added another stop to our Florida itinerary: an evening at Discovery Cove, Sea World's sister park where you get to go in the water with the animals. Our reservation came with complimentary admission to Sea World, which we used Friday morning before going over to Discovery Cove.
Despite my madness for all things marine, Sea World really wasn't as thrilling for me as I'd expected. There were a few neat things to do, but I honestly find Mystic Aquarium over in Connecticut to be more entertaining.
We went to the dolphin feeding, where we bought a tray of fish to hand feed to the dolphins. It's awfully clever of them to charge guests, who've already paid for admission, for fish that are going to be fed to their dolphins... I wish I could come up with a racket like that! It was really cool to be so close to the dolphins, and to watch Chris and the other guests get to feed and pet them, but I was disappointed that the wall you have to reach over was too wide for me. It was the same thing at the stingray pool, where you get to pet the stingrays... I couldn't reach them.  My only solace was knowing that I would be getting much closer to more of the same animals later that evening.
The Shamu show was really cool, too (literally!). We sat in the fourth row back, right at the center of the tank - the heart of the "soak zone". It was actually fortunate that the batteries in the camera died right at the beginning of the show, prompting us to put it away, because no warning is given before the soaking begins. That surprised me, really. I was sure there would be some kind of warning, considering how many people would be there with cameras and other electronic gadgets. And we did indeed get very soaked, and it felt wonderful. I had tolerated the Florida heat pretty well up to that day, mostly because I'd been sitting in my wheelchair and not really exerting myself. But we left the chair in the hotel room on this day, mostly because we knew it would be useless at Discovery Cove (which is almost all sand).
Keep reading...
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I can't believe another month has gone by already. We are now down to three months until the Disney trip. One month until the final payment is due.  Well, at least the money got to sit in the savings account for a few months and collect a few pennies of interest.
So let's take a look at the pre-trip to-do list...
buy new camerabuy airline ticketsmake restaurant reservationsfind/get wheelchair cup holders - Thanks, Dana!- lose those last stubborn 15 lbs.
- find/get new bathing suit
- find/get new adult size arm floaties
- find/get new sneakers
That's all I can think of right now. But it's a work in progress.
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It's been a couple of weeks since I got back from my trip to Oregon, and I wanted to write sooner, but they were a hectic couple of weeks. I'm happy to report that as of this morning, I am completely caught up with the backlog of work I'd accumulated for literally the last six months - between the trip, my February plague, and an unusually busy winter season for the company. So now I have the rest of the day to take it a little easier before more work begins to pile up on Monday.
The trip was great, but way too short. I only got to spend two days at my parents' house with them, my sister Lacey, and her three munchkins... and about the same amount of time with my older sister Dana. The kids are amazing. Brendan (8) has become quite the character, with a goofy sense of humor and endless knowledge of subjects such as dinosaurs, Pokemon and Spider-Man. Breana was just a two-month old butterball the last time I saw her, and now at 3 she's a tea party throwing princess and Gwen Stefani's biggest fan. And baby Dylan... I have never been more content than the time I spent on my parents' couch with that warm, soft and snuggly little bundle in my arms.
Photos from the trip are up in the gallery. A few of them are from Mom's and Dana's cameras, as mine decided to give up the ghost halfway through the weekend. Fortunately, we bought a new camera just a couple of months ago in preparation for the upcoming Disney vacation. Not so fortunately, the older and now dead one was going to remain mine, as I'm not able to use the new one due to its larger size.
Only four months left until Disney World! We changed our trip by one day in order to take advantage of free dining season and upgrade to a higher level resort for the same price. Instead of the Pop Century, we'll be staying at the Port Orleans Riverside resort August 26 to September 1. We bought our airline tickets on Tuesday for $99 each way (per person). It was a bit more than we'd hoped to pay, but the flights were selling out fast, so we couldn't wait for a lower price. And last night we made all our restaurant reservations. It seems insane that we have to make reservations now for meals in the last week of August... but one of the restaurants was already booked solid for dinner for the whole week, so we had to settle for eating lunch there instead.
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It's so nice to hear my almost real voice coming out of my mouth, and not to be awakened by my burning throat at 3am. Today especially, I'm feeling a big difference, although I still have a ways to go before I'm no longer constantly clearing my throat, and waking up in the morning coughing, wetting myself, and bursting a nasal blood vessel all at the same time. (Imagery provided especially for my sister Dana, who expressed such appreciation for it... ![[giggling smiley]](http://www.confoozled.com/smilies/icon-o-matic/comments/02-giggle.png) )
What's also nice is to have a brand new water heater, which we can reasonably trust not to give out and flood the condo anytime in the near future. And to find out in the process, that the old one was not far from doing so, which makes it a Good Thing that we decided to go ahead and spend the money.
And speaking of things that are nice, tonight we get free dinner at a fancy restaurant on Federal Hill (the ritzy authentic Italian section of Providence). Thanks, Brad!
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