interaction

you may have noticed that this month boasts more posts than any other month this year thus far. moreover, if you glance at the blog archives you will notice this month also has more posts than any month in 2004 or 2006! however, all this posting and so little commenting is very discouraging!! you guys suck!

just kidding. but seriously. come on. the video was funny. and impressive. so help me out.

identity theft

so ross and i had made up a budget in excel for the summer and we had set up quicken accounts. yesterday afternoon i spent some time transferring our budget information into quicken so we could better track how we are doing. it was while i was going back and re-categorizing expenditures into our budget categories that i noticed 2 charges to avis car rental. because neither ross nor i have rented a car from avis, this was rather disturbing. it was even more disturbing because we had recently lost a debit card and had to call the bank to cancel it and request a replacement. after talking with ross (actually we were IM'ing...we have a hi-tech marriage ;)) we were both up in arms ready to call usaa and demand justice. i decided to check the transactions online on the banks website so i would have it handy. funny thing was i couldn't find it anywhere. the only transactions with matching dollar amounts was to ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT...our water bill. accidentally we had accepted quicken's suggested memorized payee as avis car rental(ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT). oops! too bad...we had our hopes set on being on the next citibank commercial.

lost and found

i have returned from my vacation to portland to visit friends...i trust ross has kept you well entertained in my absence! i had a great week of sightseeing and catching up with friends. also i had my first experience drinking bubble tea...its rather interesting. i'd never heard of it but its apparently a phenomenon. i also got to play in a softball game, go to saturday market in downtown portland, see a play, go to church and youth group at ggbc, see a 10ft sturgeon and feed rainbow trout, count fish at bonneville dam, hang out with friends, have a picnic and 2 barbeques, share pictures, and eat lots of ice cream from DQ. it was most fun, but i'm definitely glad to be back with ross! he was at the airport to pick me up with flowers and then we went and got a drink and watched the spurs beat the suns. we are going to have a repeat evening tonite minus the flowers and airport.

today in the office closet i found something that had been frustratingly missing for the past couple months. yes, we managed to misplace this important document after only days of having it. there aren't many uses for the actual document it seems, but of course we managed to misplace it before i'd used it at the DMV, etc. thankfully, now i can officially become mrs. hytnen.

Creepy and Funny and Tragically True

The Creepy and Funny ...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2457332

The Tragedy ...
http://www.amazon.com/Latawnya-Naughty-Horse-Learns-Drugs/dp/0533091020/ref=sr_1_2/103-7583323-5108611?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179437744&sr=8-2

Double click the above link to highlight it for copy / paste.


Ross

What I do to Sharon's things when she's away...

Sorry Sharon - they had to come off so I could wire it for the trailer.
I think it still runs though but keep your fingers crossed anyway.


Ross

A call for recipes ...

Living in Austin has been great fun for me thus far. Typically, early Saturday morning, Charles and I set out on Lake Travis for a long morning of fishing ( I'm not sure Sharon enjoys the early wake up call though ). Having Charles as a fishing partner is especially useful for me because he doesn't actually eat fish. What I catch ... I keep. What Charles catches ... I keep.

By the way, being able to do this is exciting in and of itself because in San Antonio the only place available for fishing was on USAA grounds. I'm not making that up.

I've brought home fish 3 weekends running with each weekend being more fruitful than the last. Today we caught 18 fish. After throwing seven of them back after running out of space to keep them and giving four away to a neighbor, my personal stash looks like this:


If memory servers that's 3 white bass, 2 black bass, a crappie (the small fella on top) and a striper (the bigun taking up the length of the pan). Unfortunately for them, they have been turned into this ( spoon added for size reference ):


And have a destiny with this:


Thus, we need lots of fish recipes! So if you have a good one feel free to post it :)

Ross

Sail Day Photoblog ...

Here is a brief photographic addendum to the previous post.

Hoisting the mast in "dry dock". When fully extended the sail reaches the top of the mast. If you look closely, our other sail boat is under the awning of the shed in the background.

Sharon and I finally under way ... so far so good.
Uh Sharon.. the pulley just snapped...
Stranded at sea - making the best of things.
(The problem is the red rope in this photo...its broken off the travelers block and I am holding it by hand now.)

Slowly arriving at our destination ...
Ugh, finally back. I was exhuasted from holding the sail and fighting the rudder on a choppy lake. Sharon seemed quite rested however ...

C'mon pull this trailer out already!

Stolen Accounts and Finicky Cats...

I have sneakily guessed Sharon's password to this blog and can therefore post without her knowledge... So I thought I'd update you with a brief tale of our first sail on our very own finicky catamaran.

I'll leave it to Sharon to post pictures soon.

I spent Friday and part of today figuring out how to actually rig the cat correctly. It's tougher than you might imagine due to the awkwardness of maneuvering the very tall mast.

Oops, Sharon just walked in and caught me. So to continue...

We found a sail sport friendly park from which no motorized vehicles may be launched and decided it looked like a good place to put in. Rigging was a fairly routine event as was the launch itself. Actually the entire sailing experience was going relatively well until...

The sail suddenly burst from it rigging and flew out 90 degress to the boat at about mach 3. The hardware that holds my main sheet to the super-traveler had just snapped, fell into the water and plummeted about 200 feet into the deep channel of the river. Don't worry though - we do end up surviving this ordeal.

It turns out that holding a sail by hand on a sunfish and holding the sail of a catamaran by hand are night and day. There is just so much more sail for a catamaran that the amount of wind you need to hold onto is very much more formidable. We did manage to limp the boat back to the dock, unrig and pack up. Unfortunately in the process I fell off the trailer and cut my lower back and thigh on various metallic protrusions.

Over all, a very strong learning experience; next time will be much smoother.

For a video of our model boat in action see: http://www.sailingtexas.com/cboats99hobie14.html
Video is in upper right corner.

PS
Sharon finally got a working dishwasher - I had two spare dishwashers for some reason.

PPS
Sharon bought me a nice gas grill for my birthday. It's a little early but we have freshly caught fish (21" bass + 3x14" bass) to cook so I get to play with it already!

Goodbye for now. Sharon will probably be changing her password so who knows when you'll hear from me again.

Ross.

pillow talk? (v2)

every once in awhile when ross is sleeping on his back and head propped up on the pillow, then he will start to snore. if he turns over, this problem is quickly resolved. this weekend while camping, i was awakened from my not so deep and not so comfortable slumber by VERY loud snoring. i tried to turn him over to no avail. so he had to be awakened. this was not an easy task.

sharon:ross
sharon: rosss
sharon: ROSS
sharon: ROOOSSSS
ross: what
sharon: you need to turn over
ross: huh?
sharon: you're snoring
ross: i wasn't asleep
sharon: you weren't?
ross: no. i've just been laying here with my eyes closed.
sharon: you were? well you were snoring very loudly. it woke me up!
ross: it must have been someone else
sharon: you're right next to me.
ross: i'm just saying....i'm not the source.
sharon: ok.

i'm in trouble!

hopefully ross won't buy one of these:

The SnuzNLuz alarm clock connects to your online bank account via WiFi and donates your real money to an organization you hate every time you push the snooze button. Best you get out of bed when it tells ya to.

visitors!

i was a little worried that with no test to study for and the house clean and no thank you notes to write that i'd be a little bored this week. not so! for starters we were terrorized by this wolf that you can see ross had to fend off. just kidding. thats the neighbors german shepherd, and when he stands up ...he's taller than ross! he's an ocassional unwanted visitor (at least by me) on our porch. i guess he was a little excited that my mom and rachel came to visit for a few days, because he came to visit those days too! we checked out the texas history museum downtown and the hamilton greenbelt while they were here and had a really good time. the star of the show however was minnie the cat. i do believe she agrees with me that J-Jo the dog was unwelcome, as she spent about 2 days hiding under the bed after he surprised her one morning.this weekend evelyn and daniel came up and we all went camping at pace bend park, on the north side of lake travis. we had a really good time.




of course we took the texan obligatory bluebonnet pics.


one last visitor we had was a bunny rabbit! it was waiting for us the other night in the driveway. good thing we drove up and startled it because i'm pretty sure minnie was stalking it! and now we are preparing for one more set of visitors! ross' parents are coming in tonight to see us.