geoTEXAS

It's a 2 for 1 post kind of night tonight, folks, aren't you lucky. So, last Saturday was cache-in-a-new-state day! (#16). I was in Dallas for a work conference, so this was the perfect opportunity to scratch Texas off of the list. As we were heading out of town back to Memphis, I made my boss, Christophe, do a cache with me that was around the corner from our hotel. It was his first one, so that made this double exciting. It was a pretty easy "park and grab" (or as us geeks like to say, PNG), but gratifying nonetheless.

Here's the "badge" I received for my efforts. I must say, I am honored.

The Frenchman getting a pen to sign the log


Could it be here?


Or maybe here?


You know I'm not telling. I ain't no muggle.

the pancake house

Yesterday, Brian and I had a lazy morning and went for brunch at The Pancake House. It's one of those dive breakfast places that's dingy and sticky, but you don't really notice because the character of the decor/people as well as the tantalizing smells steal your attention.

It's been on my places to eat list for awhile now (#100). It first caught my eye because it is right next door to my favorite place in town to get salsa, Taqueria la Guadalupana. Every time I'd stop to pick up una salsa grande after work, I would see people still coming and going from The P. House. I figured if the place was still busy even around dinner time, you knew it had to be good.

Fortunately, Brian and I like all the same foods (except mushrooms...gross), so we trade plates halfway through our meals all the time. This brunch was no exception, so I started with the western omelet (no cheese of course), crispy hashbrowns, and fluffy biscuits, and then finished with Brian's buttery pancakes. All of the above was delish, but I have to say, they really should change their name to The Biscuit House. Those biscuits were the bomb dizzle.

it's the first day of summer...

...which means that winter is a long ways off! Hence, nicole = happy girl. However, that also means that #50 on my list, donating spring clothes, is past due. I did the easy part, which was to pluck the clothes from the corners of my closet and drawers and put them in a pile (some from high school, yipe!-for you, tor.) The part that I can never seem to get around to doing though, is taking them to Goodwill. Now that I'm posting this and it's fresh on my mind, I don't think it should be long though now. Hooray for more closet space!

new title bar!

...that's all.

It's a cloudy day.

jk, there's a seriously blazing hot sun out today. By cloudy, I actually mean the digital cloud, that beautiful little storage system in the sky. Goal number 29 is "upload pics/music to the cloud," and here's the backstory:

I had the painful lesson not too long ago where I learned about the fragility of portable hard drives, especially crappy Western Digital! I lost some old photos/videos, so if you have one, be gentle. seriously. Try not to move it around too much. Thankfully, I'm finally getting over the loss and moving on to LaCie. This brand comes recommended by the IT guy at work (who also had 2 Western Digitals crap out on him. Apparently, they are known in the industry to not be very reliable.) If you're looking to get one, check out the Starck series. I recently picked up the TB version. It's freaking beautiful and am very pleased so far. But enough of this side rant, back to the cloud...

Even though I have a new portable hard drive, I'm still worried about losing my data. So, a week or two ago, I threw 20 bucks at Google for 80 gigs of extra space. It seems to take forever to upload, but I'm on my way! Here's proof of the progress:

Joenell

Brian and I had the distinct pleasure of dropping in on Joe and Jannell on our way up to Ohio and on our way back to Tennessee over Memorial Day weekend. For those of you who don't know, Joe and Jannell are our good friends that used to live here in Memphis and worked with me at Hunter. Last winter they moved up to Louisville and we have been mourning their departure ever since. Because they are such good friends, I want to make sure to keep in touch with them, so I added them to the list for extra good measure (#60- keep in touch/visit JnJ).

Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked, but the time we did spend was fabuloso... We got a tour of their new house(!), walked to the corner coffee shop, took the dogs to the park (started by walking, finished by driving, porque hace mucho calor), and got a tour of the city which included Old Louisville and strawberry lemonade slushes from McD's. This was a good teaser leaving us wanting to come back again soon!

look at those puppy dog eyes!

see the sweaters. on Friday, it was chilly...


...but on Monday, it was toasty! We had to stop walking the dogs because they were burning up.
Look at that ping pong paddle tongue!


pretty girls


Only picture I got of Joe. (Jannell you'll have to send me some of your pics!)
A very cool dog water fountain in the park. Turkey got to cool off a little bit.