Oh dear Lord. They just announced on the news that it may be a little less damp this weekend, but that a ton of mosquitos are going to hatch because of it! They even said that our “mosquito alert” is going from medium to high.

Crap. The mosquitos are going to carry us all away. We are so screwed…

It is hard to believe that it has been a month since our wedding. I was startled on Sunday when I realized that the anniversary was coming up so soon. Normally, I don’t celebrate things like that, but this one seems special - so we are. I honestly could not have married a better man, and I am truly thankful for that. If you ask me, that is definitely worth celebrating!

Can we dance or what?!? Go Disco Mike! (Photo courtesy of Rannie.)

Last year, I wrote a post about The 9th of November, riding bikes, and Amy Legris, my best friend when I was young and lived in Kankakee, Illinois - whose birthday is November 9th.

I was looking through my sidebar tonight to double check my posts that were recently commented on. It is the little thing I do to try to catch the spam posts, and meanwhile to find the most recent comments. I see the post in the list, and I assume that it’s going to be spam.

But it isn’t.

It is a comment … from Amy. And I can assume it is from the real Amy, because she calls me “Chris” in the comment. I was Chris for many years, but when we moved to Houston I decided it was time to be Christine. Call me Chris now and I will go carnival freak crazy on you, unless you knew me prior to 1985.

Dude. She found my blog, and she left a comment. I have her e-mail address now, after all these years. Last time I located her was at least 15 years ago - and now, thanks to a blog post, I know how to find her.

Excuse me while I go freak out.

Yeah, I’ve had a lot to say, but I left the computer off for 4 days. Now I’ll just post a lot to make up for it.

Friday night was the Tiara Happy Hour to celebrate Sarah’s birthday. Most of the regulars had arrived when all the sudden this guy walks in. Sarah screams and gives him a hug. I think to myself, “Wow, Sarah’s friend really looks like Don from Plastic Fruit.” I ask Emily who the guy is. She says she doesn’t know. He then turns to me and congratulates me on my marriage. I then freaked out - it WAS Don from Plastic Fruit!

(Yes, when I talk about bloggers to people that read blogs, everyone has a URL tied to their name. Even Mike, who becomes Coffee Mike quite often. There are a lot of Mikes. But I do it to everyone else too.)

Don and Emily took a lot of photos throughout the evening. I did too, but mine are still on my camera. Heck, there are photos of Paris and London still on my camera. Soon, I promise.

The photo that amuses me the most? One that Don took. He was trying to be all stealth and get a candid photo. It has only been a month since our wedding, and I still have a very strong camera radar. Camera about to snap? I must immediately strike a pose. I am just too amused!

It has rained EVERY SINGLE DAY since we returned from our honeymoon. Daily since June 11th, and I think there were even 3-4 days of rain before that. Sure, sometimes there are moments of sunshine, like the day of Jason’s swim team divisionals. Fortunately, it waited until about 5:30 to rain that day. Other days, it just doesn’t let up.

Our back yard is turning in to a marsh. The mosquitos are getting thick. The mud sucks on your shoes as you try to walk across the grass. It’s just gross.

The forecast for the next 10 days? Scattered Thunderstorms for 7 of them. Partly cloudy for the other 3, including the 4th of July. Gah!

The only thing that gives me some peace of mind is knowing that we are going to Minnesota for a family reunion in just over a week, and Fiery Wench pointed out that it was in the 70s today there.

Then again, there was a day that it was hotter in Paris then it was in Houston while we were on our honeymoon. With my luck, that will happen when we go to Minnesota too. The forecast for July 7th is a high of 82 with isolated thunderstorms. Of course.

Please. I can’t take any more rain. Someone, make it stop!

“It was like a rhino in quicksand… I just couldn’t get away.”

It’s been nothing short of amusing, to say the least. And the cake turned out well, in spite of our sad decorating skills. (It looked cute when we were done with it!) Really, it’s all about how it tastes anyways, and it was mighty good!

I’m at Emily’s house. I baked a cake for Sarah’s birthday earlier today, and I brought it here to frost it. She just wrote “Happy Birthday” on it for me. It’s crooked, but it’s so obviously homemade, Sarah will just have to know how much we loooooove her. Now it’s time for the Tiara Happy Hour, and we’re going to celebrate!

This weekend, I promise … Disco Mike. For now, I have a tiara on my head and a party to attend!

Photo taken by Rannie, May 29, 2004

(It’s ok to laugh out loud, you know… just be sure to share the laughter with the rest of us here.)

Back in May, my parents came over for a day of trimming vines, cutting shrubs, removing the nasty Red Tips beside the house, and so forth. Hours and hours of yard work. Hard yard work.

Right before the wedding, we noticed a vine with rather large leaves growing among the jasmine along one side of our fence. Just a vine or two, no big deal. While we were gone on our honeymoon, my parents came over and took some of the vine down, including a hunk that had jumped from the fence to the crepe myrtle in the back yard.

Then it started to rain. It rained several times while we were gone. I think it has rained almost every day since we returned. Afternoon storms are not unusual this time of year. Rain, lots of rain.

And the vine grew. And grew. And grew.

When my parents were over yesterday, my Mom offered to come over this morning to help me clear out the vine. Remember, it’s HOT here in Houston. Right now it’s 89, and weather.com says it “feels like 97″. It’s even worse when the sun is beating down on you. Add to that the fact that there is Mexican Heather plants right in front of where the main clump of vine was growing - and the bees love that during the middle of the day.

I got out of bed this morning, got dressed, covered myself in mosquito repellant, got the fire ant killing stuff ready for when they attacked (and they did attack) and started hacking at the damn vines.

Freaking Air Potato Vines that weren’t there just a month ago. They almost grow right before your eyes.

I worked for about 2.5 hours. My Mom joined me for 2 hours. We cut down two FULL lawn & leaf bags worth of vines, plus another kitchen trash bag of them. Huge vines. Leaves as big as your head almost. Baby vines that were sprouting up all over. So many vines.

By the time we finished, our clothes were soaking wet. I wish I was kidding, but at 11 am we were just drenched from all the work.

If I see another air potato vine, I might break down and cry.

While standing on the step ladder, trying to pull more of the vine out of my tree, I made a horrid discovery. My neighbors have some of the vine on their fence too. I just hope they didn’t intentionally plant it there. There is just no escape!

Well said… Abigail Garner’s article about how on Father’s Day, she can celebrate gift of two dads.

“I’m not asking Bush to join my family at brunch or even to pretend to like us. His record shows he is no ally. But it’s mean-spirited to use his power to recruit more bullies for his playground of intolerance.”

I entertained my parents for Father’s Day by showing them approximately 500 photos of London, 800+ of Paris, and another 150 or so photos from our wedding. Thank goodness for TiVo’s Home Media Option and the free 1 month trial version, which made it easy to share them from the computer in the study. And as an added perk, Mike called me from work today to let me know that Home Media has gone FREE! YES! Rock on, TiVo!

Matt is the bomb. He hooked me up with a lovely little Gmail account to call my own.

In the process of signing up, my initial choice of usernames was not available. I knew “Christine” would be taken, but it is always worth a shot, right? Gmail is nice enough to offer you alternatives though. Here is what it offered me:

christine.tremoulet
ctremoulet
tremoulet
tremouletster

What?!?? Tremouletster? WTF? Uhm, yeah. I passed on that one. I went with bigpinkcookie, because it’s easy to remember. Get down with the BPC…

“Over the past couple weeks, we’ve read and listened to user feedback and have carefully considered the criticisms and suggestions that were made.” Six Apart Announces Pricing & Licensing Changes to Movable Type.

The key thing that the last update on this subject didn’t seem to fix? “Unlimited Personal Edition ($99.95): Allows for an unlimited number of authors and weblogs for personal use. This license is new, allowing unlimited authors and weblogs for personal use.” This was the biggest complaint I continued to hear, and as someone that once ran a group weblog, I’m glad to see the change.

The really cool new features are still coming; the latest version of MT 3.0 is a developer’s version. For developers to use to create new things. Not for the average user. If you don’t want to deal with potential bugs, keep on using MT 2.661. I am.

All of this is a great example of Six Apart being willing to take the feedback (even if it wasn’t positive) and allow for things like Trackback on their own site so that everyone could be heard. Mad props to the Six Apart team!

While reading through Manilow.com - Your Source For Barry Manilow, I was trying to convince Mike that we should go to Boston to see Barry Manilow perform in concert there on October 1st. I thought the shows were limited to Boston, New York, Chicago and Atlanta. (Ok, let’s be honest, I’ll use any excuse I can to get to Boston. But that’s not the point…) I finally scrolled further down the page, and guess what?!?

He’s coming to Houston! Barry Manilow is coming to Houston! November 4th! To Houston! Whooo hooooo!!!

I’m going to have to become a Fanilow just so I can get tickets. I don’t care. I’ve waited something like 25 years to see him live, and I can’t miss this chance!

I’m so excited! Barry is coming to town!

Almost no sleep our last night in London thanks to no air conditioning, open windows, and being just off of Piccadilly Circus with a ton of street noise. The garbage trucks picking up the glass bottles at 2 am didn’t help either.

Then we had to get up at 6 am (midnight back here in Houston) to head to the train station (Victoria) to get to the airport (Gatwick). Check in, security, breakfast, get on the plane that was supposed to take off at 8:30 or so, but didn’t leave until well after 9 am.

Then we had a 10 hour flight back home. 10 hours on a plane is a long time. Ugh. It was more fun flying over in Business First Class. Flying home in coach, after no sleep? Not so fun. And the meals suck compared to first class. And there was no free wine. But we did get the bonus crying baby for a good portion of the flight.

Arrived in Houston around 1:40 pm. (7:40 pm back in London.) Immigration, baggage claim, customs, and a trip to the other terminal so my Mom could pick us up easily - which involved me telling off some business men along the way - and we finally headed to her house.

We spent some time visiting with my parents and Jason, and then we finally headed for home. My parents were so wonderful - my Mom offered to let Jason spend one more night over there. I knew that by 8 pm last night we would be ready to crash, it had been a really long day. Really, really, really long day.

This morning, of course, I woke up at 4 am. I was confused because it was so dark outside. Then I realized it should still be dark that early. Also confusing was the fact that at 8:30 last night the sun was almost completely down. After two weeks further north overseas, it looked like about 10:30 at night outside; the sun sets so much later over there this time of year. It messed with me the whole time I was there - I could never just “tell” what time it was. Now that I’m home, I keep thinking that it’s later than it is in reality.

Jason had his last regular swim meet this morning, and it lasted much later than normal. Tonight, it’s the swim team’s Crawfish boil. Tomorrow, a flag ceremony for Scouts - the Boy Scouts help to man the fires for when they destroy the flags. (The correct, respectful way.) I’ve already unpacked our bags and started the laundry, and we are slowly returning to normal life.

Well, normal as we used to know it, with one exception. Now we are married. Just how cool is that?