Month of January, 2007

Long Distance Relationships

A few weeks ago, I was reading Arnie and Sarah's sites. They're in a long distance relationship. He's in Chicago and she's in Boston. It made me think about long distance relationships, the fact that I'm in one now, and have been in a lot of long distance relationships in the past. I am the queen of long distance relationships. In fact, when I'm feeling superstitious, I think that maybe I was born this way. I was born so that the only good relationships I'll ever be in are with men that live in another place.

Jim - Texas to Ohio
(My First Kiss)
Jim and I met during a summer service project. He was from Ohio, I was from Texas, and we were in Tennessee. The romance was only a couple days long (maybe less than that), but the kiss lingered forever. My first kiss was just like the movies - tons of romance and tenderness. I think I was very lucky that way. We wrote letters and talked on the phone for years. My parents even took me to visit him in Ohio once! I think it was the start to a life full of long distance relationships.

Graham - Arlington to north Dallas
OK, Graham wasn't really a long distance relationship, but almost. He lived in north Dallas and I lived in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas. It was a good hour's drive between us (though if Ky was driving it was only 45 minutes). We made the drive a LOT, especially considering our parents were paying for our cars and gas. I'm pretty sure that if I were a parent, I wouldn't be quite so generous.

Rob - Colorado to Texas
My first year away from home I lived in Estes Park, Colorado. During that year, I came back to Texas to visit Karen at college. I hit it off with one of her friends (though now I have no idea why...we were in TOTALLY different places in our lives). Rob and I must have spent a small fortune on long distance phone calls. We probably only saw each other half a dozen times in person and the rest of our relationship was on the phone. I have no recollection what we used to talk about for hours on end.

John S - Lubbock to Austin
I'll never forget the first time I saw John - at The Hole in the Wall, a dive bar in Austin. It was totally love at first sight. That was a period of time that Autumn and I made the trek from Lubbock to Austin on a regular basis - almost monthly. John and I didn't spend as much time on the phone in comparison to my other long distance relationships. But we always kept in touch and saw each other regularly for awhile. I was always a little disappointed he never came to Lubbock to visit me.

John D - Houston to Lubbock then later Houston to Wisconsin
It didn't start out serious or long distance but I moved away. I think I was really lonely and latched on. It's funny how when you're unhappy you look for someone else to make you happy. But it doesn't work that way...you're the only person with the power to make yourself happy. We tried to make it work between Houston and Wisconsin but it simply wasn't meant to be. I think I swore off long distance relationships after this one was over.

Kevin - Texas to New York
Kevin has a history of long distance relationships too. Maybe that's why it worked so well for us. It lasted two years. TWO YEARS. That's a long time. I wish I had kept count of how many nights I fell asleep on the phone with him. He was so patient with me when I was in grad school and working full time and so completely sleep deprived. It was probably best that the relationship was long distance because I didn't have much time to give to other people. Though, Kevin always got the last hour or two I was awake. I definitely swore off long distance relationships after we stopped dating.

Ryan - Texas to Calgary, Canada
We met at a conference and spent tons of time on the phone after that. I made one visit to Calgary, but he never visited Texas.

Chris - Arizona to Texas
So after Kevin, I vowed to never be in a long distance relationship again. I decided that they're very difficult to make work. If things do go well and you decided to get serious, it's often too hard to change locations for another person, for a relationship. Yet here I am dating a man that lives 1,047 miles away.

While I can't help but think I'm repeating past mistakes, my relationship with Chris is really good. We're happy. We are a good fit in so many ways. I love him and he loves me. All the right components are there for a long term relationship except for the distance. To mitigate it, we see each other every two to three weeks. That frequency is very helpful in keeping a sense of normalcy.

I know that someday soon we're going to be faced with the decision about location. One of us is going to have to change locations for us to be together. We've talked about it and have both spent a lot of time thinking about it. It's hard and nothing is going to make it easier. Part of me wants it resolved so we can get to all the other relationship stuff. But part of me wants to never address the distance for fear its the thing that ruins us. My feelings about this change daily.

It's a good thing that Chris is coming to visit this weekend because when we're together I don't worry so much. I just get to sit back and enjoy. Life has a way of always working itself out and I'm confident it will work out this distance thing out in the right time.

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Kristen's Big Belly

Kristen will be full term on Monday! I'm SO ready for my new nephew to arrive!

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Traveling

I've been traveling for work this week. I head back home tonight. It will be so nice to sleep in my own bed. It's been a very busy week but an enjoyable one!

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Barrett-Jackson

On Tuesday last week, Jennifer and I went to the Barrett-Jackson classic car auction in Scottsdale. I won free tickets so we spent the afternoon looking at really cool cars. The weather was gorgeous and the cars were too. We didn't see any of the high dollar auction action, but there was beer at 2 in the afternoon!

View my pictures from the show.

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Riding Bikes Downtown

The other night Kimbro asked me where Jennifer and I rode bikes in downtown. He used to live in downtown so we chatted about that part of town. I thought it would be fun to look at a map and plot out our path. Thanks to gmap-pedometer.com, I was able to do so easily.

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Burnout

Can't Get No Satisfaction
A great article from New York Magazine about burnout.

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Kristen's Belly

Kristen is quickly approaching her due date - February 20th. (Though I'm insisting he'll come on February 14th since that's Dad's birthday.) This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago and she said she's even bigger now. It's pretty darn exciting that we're about to have a new member of the family!

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New Coat

I miss living with my sisters. Tonight I miss living with my sisters because I came home with a new purchase, and I had no one to share it with. I was really excited about this new coat because I think it's beautiful. Typically coats don't excite me. This one did. Plus, I had been to every department store in the mall and their selection of coats were atrocious. I was just about to give up and order one on the Internet (and pay for overnight shipping so I could have it before my trip). Dillard's saved the day! Yet there's no one here to squeal with me about how pretty this coat is. Maybe someday Karen, Kristen, and I will live in the same city again. There's nothing like coming home to sisters.

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Iraq Troop Increase

The headline on NPR reads, "Congress Can't Stop Troop Increase, Bush Says." It makes me angry. Has the president forgotten this government is made up of checks and balances? (Or is the media sensationalizing it?)

Tell your Senators how you feel about the situation and encourage them to vote the people's voice. Don't know who to contact? Go to Senate contacts to see who represents you.

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Jennifer

Jennifer is my closest friend in Phoenix. She's the girlfriend every girl needs. Without Jennifer, I would be very, very lonely. This weekend Jennifer and I got to hang out a lot. We had dinner and drinks Saturday night. A night out on the town was exactly what I needed. Then Saturday, despite the cold, we rode bikes around downtown Phoenix. I finally got my bearings for that part of town AND I learned that Phoenix has a federal courthouse. You know, in case I need it someday.

Jennifer is beautiful but she's really, really smart too. She's working on her PhD from ASU. I'm so impressed with the extent of her knowledge and her work ethic. Recently, Jennifer was published for the first time. I know it's the first of a long career in publishing!

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Ice in Dallas

Chris sent me this photo of his car in Dallas today. Brrr.

Distracted

Maybe I'm a little distracted. I managed to leave the house this morning without putting makeup on. I was halfway to work when I realized. I missed a whole step in my morning routine and I didn't even notice. Yeah, I have a few things on my mind.

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Amazon Web Services

Monday night at the Phoenix Ruby Users Group meeting, James Britt talked about Amazon Web Services, showed how he is using Ruby with Amazon's Simple Storage (S3), and discussed the basics of Elastic Cloud
Computing (EC2).

For me, this was the first time Amazon Web Services were fully explained to me. I was vaguely aware that Amazon had set up some web services, but I hadn't looked into it. James did a great job of explaining it and I'm sure I won't get it all right but here's my understanding. Amazon has a tons and tons of servers they use to run their core business (selling stuff). There's a lot of unused storage space and processing power in their data center so they went about finding a way to sell it. S3 is where you can store things. EC2 is where you can process things. The cool part is they work together and both are affordable / competitively priced.

There's huge potential for this business and I'm anxious to find out more about how people are using it. I could see how beneficial it could be for quality assurance. The ability to create multiple environments in EC2 and run them when you want. Since you only get charged when you run them, you don't have all the cost of purchasing your own hardware. It could also be helpful if your website suddenly gets insanely popular and you need additional hosting. You can add processing as you need it then take it away when you don't any longer.

While I'm probably not going to use Amazon Web Services in my current endeavors, it will definitely be something to keep my eye on for the future.

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Social Media Club Phoenix

I attended my first Social Media Club meeting tonight. It's a networking group as well as a group to discuss social media. Wikipedia defines social media as "Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. " Some of the tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, etc.

Francine Hardawaystarted this group and talked tonight about Social Media Press Release. Basically, its a format to include social media (links to other content, video, etc) in a press release. I didn't learn anything new about social media, but throughout the discussion realized how much I already know. Admittedly, I take all this knowledge for granted. It just seems like stuff people know. Except that I have to remember that most of the people I know are certified geeks.

Tonight I did learn something new about traditional media. I got to hear about the press release process. Rex shared the process from his experience at a traditional PR wire company. Basically, press releases come across the wire, editors check them and correct as necessary, then they're passed to media outlets (like newspapers), newspapers look for interesting content that will sell papers, newspaper person reads a tiny part of the press release then calls the contact on the press release to get details to write their own story. Interesting process because I've never thought about it before. Most of my exposure to press releases has been reading the ones my company sends out.

Anyhow, the meeting was interesting enough. I think that as the group of people attending begin to know each other better, the discussion will improve greatly, is by having more people involved.

After the discussion, I stuck around a little while to network, but didn't stay too long because it was a LONG day at work. Some people/things that caught my attention...
Hello World - Vanessa Garcia
TerriMiller.com - photographer
Sprayblog.net
Jan Jacobson
Notes from the Toolshed - Matt Moran

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Good Morning!

Up early and feeling perky. Life is good. Off to all day team meetings.

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Quote of the Day

"So...green pajamas."

Ray, as we were sitting down for dinner after Phoenix Ruby Users Group

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New Years Eve Party

On New Years Eve, after the lovely dinner with his parents, Chris and I went to a party at Katy & Jimmy's house. It was a "Pajama Jammie Jam." So Chris and I showed up in matching pj's. Most of the evening was chill, just socializing and drinking. Then Katy put in a dance CD with hits from the 90's and everyone hit the dance floor.

The best part of the night was counting down to the new year. Everyone cheered and popped champagne like many other parties I've attended in years past. But this party was different because after all the lovers finished kissing, everyone (really EVERYONE) went around hugging each other and wishing each other a happy new year. There was so much love in that room it was overwhelming. Chris has a very special group of friends and I'm lucky that they've thrown their arms open wide and accepted me.

Oh, yeah. And this picture? The $3.49 bottle of champagne made me do it.

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A Very Busy Saturday

I spent my Saturday doing stuff around the house. Most of my effort was spent painting my backyard wall. I have a concrete block wall around my backyard. Since I'm on a corner, the west side of my wall faces the street. It's stucco-ed to it looks nice. About a month ago, I noticed some of the paint was flaking off so I scraped that area and painted it. I used paint that was left by the previous owner and since it was exterior paint, I was sure it would match. It turned out that the exterior paint matches the outside of the house, but not this wall because the wall wasn't painted at the same time as the house. So, I now had a spot that was obviously not matching the rest of the wall. I debated what to do and ultimately decided to just paint the whole wall.

It's difficult to tell from the pictures, but the wall was a mixture of gray and white, making it look dirty. Now that it's pure white to match the house, its a huge improvement. People were walking by all day today (because the weather here was absolutely fantastic) and saying how nice it looked. It makes me feel bad that it looked so bad for so long.

After painting, Bentley and I went to the dog park. There's one not far from the house but this was the first time I've visited. Bentley is always a little weird around other dogs but he did fairly well on this outing. It was a gorgeous day and I enjoyed soaking up the sun. After the park, we came home and crashed for a nap. I woke up around 5:30pm because Bentley was whining for his dinner.

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I spent the rest of the evening sewing. The sculpture in the living room above the fireplace needed a face lift.

I made it in college and it's called "Critter." The reason it's named that was an encounter with a complete stranger who asked me "what kind of critter" I was working on. Can you tell I went to school in Texas? At the time I was working on a number of pieces of art that focused on distinct differences between inside and outside. The idea stemmed from containers that hold precious objects to an investigation of things people have inside them (metaphorically of course) to simple objects with contrasting interiors and exteriors. Critter doesn't mean anything, it was strictly a study in design. I suppose you could apply this to a person if you wanted - hard, spiky exterior and soft, squishy interior. At times I've thought of it that way.

Critter is made out of an adobe-like substance (concrete, clay, and sand) on top of a wood frame with wire fencing. Inside are cloth balls. Ever since I moved, I've been meaning to change the color of the cloth balls to compliment the living room a little better. Tonight I didn't have anything better to do so I sewed up some new insides for Critter. Even though I haven't seen it in the daylight yet, I'm quite pleased with the new look.

Friday Night
Last night I had dinner with my neighbors, Christy and Matt, at Bahama Breeze. Then I headed off to Homme for some dancing. It ended up being a great night for me. It started slow since I wasn't digging the main DJ (Rick Ramirez). But before the night was over, one of the upstairs DJ's (Chuck?) rocked my socks off. Good stuff. And I ran into Jason, a new friend from Refresh Phoenix. That was a pleasant surprise! Chatting with Jason made the perfect end to a very fun evening.

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New Years Eve Dinner

On New Years eve, Chris and I had dinner with his parents at Cacharel, a very fine French restaurant in Arlington, Texas. (Where Karen and Jason also happened to have their wedding reception.)

I always enjoy fancy restaurants and good food. But I've realized recently that I also really, really enjoy reading the menu. When I was younger, I found these types of menus hard to decipher, but as I've gotten more experienced with food, I enjoy them. I can imagine the way a dish would taste based on the description, which of course makes it difficult to ultimately choose just one!

While we poured over the menu, a discussion occurred that made me realize I wasn't the only one having a problem reading the menu. It wasn't indented quite where I thought it should be. I found that it wasn't always clear where a new item started or when the item simply ran onto the next line. Chris didn't seem to have the problem so I peeked at his menu. Turns out his menu had numbers which made the indenting correct! I quickly realized that the numbers were prices and that because I was a woman, I didn't get a menu with pricing. We were all a little shocked at this old fashioned procedure, but it was Steve who said it best, "That's sexist!" I wholeheartedly agree.

But I didn't let the sexism take away from the experience. Everything was perfect! The food at Cacharel is exquisite. My menu...

• Belgian Endive and Watercress Salad served with Apple Slices, Walnuts and Wisconsin Blue Cheese

• Grilled Filet of "Texas Ostrich"
• Grand Marnier Souffle

Chris had the buffalo steak which was incredible too.

Conversation that evening was every bit as good as the meal. We talked about our predictions for 2007 specifically in the social and political arenas. We talked about the war, the federal government, immigration, the stock market, and the economy in general. I really enjoy talking with Chris's parents who are intelligent and like engaging in thoughtful conversations. I had such a wonderful time I'm so glad to be included in this family tradition.

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New Year

Happy New Year! I just made it back to Phoenix after almost two entire weeks in Texas. It was a fabulous trip. Chris and I spent a ton of time together and enjoyed every minute of it. I got to see friends and did lots of relaxing. The only downer was the cold I picked up halfway through the trip. It's still hanging on a tiny bit, but I can tell I'm through the worst of it.

Tomorrow I have to get back into the swing of normal life. But it's a new year so I've been thinking about resolutions. Have you?

For 2007, this is what I'm resolving to accomplish.
• Career improvements - intentionally vague here because its work
• Wisdom teeth pulled - I've been told since I was 16 that I needed my wisdom teeth removed. I've put it off and put it off. It's time to bite the bullet and just do it. The best part is that I only grew two wisdom teeth instead of the normal four. Theoretically, this means the removal should be easier, right?
• Cyst removal - In the medical category again. I have a couple moles or cysts on my face that I'd like removed. They're small and people really don't notice them, but I do. And since they annoy me on a daily basis, I'm going to get them taken off.

It's a short list and completely achievable. Exciting! Some of the other things I'm thinking about for the year aren't resolutions as much as events that will be taking place.

• February - Kristen will give birth to a baby boy!

• March - South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, visit Kristen, Chris and the new baby
• April - visit Prague with Karen (my big vacation for the year)

I'd like to take more photos this year...or maybe just better photos. I'd like to continue exploring more of Phoenix and the entire state of Arizona. I'd like to be healthier specially by eating at home rather than eating out so often. I'd like to listen more.

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