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Hello time traveler. You've found the REALLY old stuff.
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What? No friday video? I admit it's pretty pathetic to start a "weekly" trend and fail to keep it up after only two weeks. Oh well, I was sick yesterday. Believe it or not, both Laura and I have been sick since we got back from Tampa, Florida. It's OK, we're in good spirits with a few Christmas pictures to post! Here is the train set that I built with my brother-in-law Mark (he did most of the work):
It took my nephews a matter of seconds to destroy my meticulous urban planning. Needless to say the track had to be reworked into a more durable shape --- i.e. no loops or above ground portions.
The above picture was taken on Christmas morning... and below are a few more so you can see what Laura's side of the family looks like: Here's my brother-in-law Mark:
And here's my sister-in-law Eileen (aka Leenie Time USA) with Glen:
And I'm sure you recongize these two. I'm not sure what kind of smile I'm trying to perform there, I think the camera caught me off guard.
All in all we had a good time and enjoyed Christmas with all the Perrys. Am I dissappointed that I have my second cold in a month? Sure. But if you told us we were going to get sick we wouldn't have changed our plans -- family is very important to me and Laura, especially since we see them only once a year. Laura is napping, and I'm off of to make an bacon egg and cheese bagel. Delicious!
Does anyone remember American Gladiators? "The American Gladiators are primed and ready, they know today is a day for champions only!" What an awesome show -- and a true representation of "Pre-terror" America. I'm sorry but American Gladiators sound like an eerie premonition of our current (and historic) diplomacy. By now my friends know that I love this phrase "Pre-terror," which I coined with Sam. He and I also invented a line of leather shoes which resemble sports-cars. Since then I have come up with more great ideas, like the Nascar fan Christmas stocking, which has a gas pedal attached to the toe. People... this is gold. Right now I'm working on more selfish interests like speeding up my home computer. So far I've found two things that noticably accelerate my internet enabled home pc: setting up my wireless router with Open DNS, and following this guy's instructions.
Holla blast from the past:
That's my brother Peter on the left, and me on the right. The tie belongs to "the man," who was known as Dad at the time. This past weekend Peter and his wife Katie visited our home in Pineville and it was great. I was proud to show Peter our house, and even more proud to see what wonderful parents he and Katie are for their newborn son William. Our dog-son, Oreo, wanted to smell (and possibly eat) William, so he had to be in his crate most of the weekend. Oh well, that didn't stop us from going out and doing fun things like hanging out with Amy and Jim Barber, and their two sons James and Sam. Here's a picture of them with Sam.
In other international news, I received worthwhile communication from my cousin Mark's wife, Ashley Younger, and my college friend Carl allen.. They are both excellent writers, so I like to include parts of their emails here (with permission), so everyone can enjoy them. I copy and pasted a story from Carl earlier this month. His story later came with pictures that were hosted on Snapfish... here's a good one including Carl enjoying a Ghanian BBQ
Ashley also had a humorous story to share, she is in Nepal, teaching young adults with her husband Mark. In her email entitled "Class Questions" she had this to say: Andrew- I thought you would think this was funny, I wrote the topics we will cover on the board and asked the kids to write 1 question about what they want to learn. Here is the top 10, I will copy them exactly as they came: 1. What will happen if some one is suffering from Anatomy? Wow, it's amazing what my friends are encountering around the world these days. It makes me wonder if I should broaden my interests...
In the video below, Matt Damon does a Matthew Mcconaughey impression on David Letterman. I thought this video was timely because I'm having a heck of a time selling Failure to Launch on DVD, a mistake of a purchase that stars Laura's aforementioned man-crush. Why is it so hard to sell? It's an awful movie. I wrote "Great Gift" on the auction because I am in marketing, not because I am a Matthew Mcconaughey fan.
We have been ambushed. Chupponline.com launched a guerilla marketing campaign earlier this week, buying the keyword "Artemenko" on Google. This means that when people type "Artemenko" into Google, you would see the following advertisement on the right-hand side of the screen: "Artemenko.org Alternative I should preface my reaction with the fact that I work only a few cubicles away from Brian Chupp... I was blown away that someone would actually try to steal the modest amount of traffic we get from search engines... but mostly I thought it was hilarious, and hence added his site to our Links section. I also added the blog of Dan Sigrist. Dan is one of my business partners, and told me about his website over the phone today. This Christmas Dan and his wife will be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In all likelihood, I will be watching television when this occurs. This past weekend we painted another room and narrowly slid a couch into it (thankfully the legs unscrewed neatly so we didn't have to saw off the legs of our non-returnable furniture). It was supposed to be a manly room, but it's just not happening. Anyways, I'm throwing up a picture of my Grandfather's map of Europe so he can see I've actually taken pretty good care of it, since brining it form Wisconsin, to Chicago and now to Charlotte.
The battle may not be completely lost for my squash-colored man den. If I can get a fish tank in there I'd be pretty happy.
I'm going to keep this short... Today I bought some new "old" end tables for the living room since Andrew is taking our current ones and using them in his man room, which should come together this week. His couch comes tomorrow and the painter should come later in the week. I must admit that I tried out the Wii this morning -- the focal point of his room -- and had a really good time playing it. I actually broke a sweat playing the boxing game -- it was also a great way to rid myself of any extra tension. Back to the point at hand, below is the living room with the new end tables.
And here is a closeup.
While I was taking these pictures, Andrew managed to slip in some decorating of his own. He took the silver candy dish that Phee (our Grandmother) gave us for our wedding and filled it with the new candle that he purchased at the grocery store. We actually tried out a new supermarket today that Andrew's supervisor's wife recommended and it was wonderful. I think everything we purchased was either organic or all natural -- don't ask me the difference between the two, I have no idea!
Ok, all for now, hope everyone had a great weekend.
December is clipping right along, with our corporate holiday parties over (last year at this time we were in Las Vegas with Travelzoo), we still have lots of things to look forward to before end of month, like my brother Peter visiting and going to Tampa for Christmas. Laura looked great as usual last night, as we played ping pong between our employers' parties in uptown Charlotte:
While we were at my company party, complete with pinguins and ice sculptures -- we bumped into Eric and Robin. These two were the first people who showed me around Charlotte when I got here in April. Eric hooked us up with a realtor, and is a wealth of Charlotte knowledge.
I'm sure they're both wondering, what happend to Andrew and Laura? They disappeared fast (as usual). Well my dear friends, we escaped into the night so that I could be writing this at 7:30am -- more importantly, so Laura could awake at 6am to launch a fleet of brownies into the oven. For better or worse, my wife has turned this old night owl into an early morning square! Our new sofa comes tomorrow... which measures 40 inches on its shortest side. If we take the door of the hinges in the room it will (hopefully) occupy, we get about 29 inches of width. This means I might have to saw off the legs and gorilla glue them back on! I got another great email from my college buddy Carl, who is in Ghana, Africa. Here is a snippet: One day about two weeks ago I was standing in front of a class delivering another stellar lecture on 3D Geometry, wowing students with cardboard shapes I had constructed - when I paused mid-sentence. A low rumble began to crecendo from the classroom next door, desks creaked and slid against concrete floor, 100 feet stomped and shuffled, papers flew and books hit the floor, voices began to rise. In that split second, my ears perked and seeing 50 pairs of eyes glazed with peaked readiness - I sensed the impending student stampede. I thought maybe fire, but I sensed something scarier - and faster. Then, like I could have never done, even when facing the iminent surging tide of a Minnetonka defensive line, I literally shot out of the classroom - MAYBE needing two steps before I sailed out onto the sand below, the tin can cylinder I was holding left tumbling on the floor. Right on my heels, I heard the students following, and as I turned saw them flying out of windows, jumping out the door as I had done, and mercillessly trampling one another. I waited for the explosion. None came. There was a snake in the classroom. Yes, there was...a snake. What does one do when there's a snake in one's classroom...err...sorry...I mean the classroom next to yours? Get the heck out of there and wait for the students who kill snakes to take care of it, obviously. Those things are fast, see. Granted, it wasn't exactly in MY classroom...but how was I to know? You would have ran too, if you'd seen the look on these kids' faces. I did the right thing, I think, although perhaps my students are more used to a teacher who also happens to kill snakes regularly. It wasn't poisonous - or at least it didn't get a chance to show us one way or the other. My boys killed it, they did - they killed it good...a big-old 4 foot lime-green fast sucker. Then they took it out and burned it in a pile of dead grass, right outisde the window where I was teaching. All this of course took place over the course of about 15 seconds. whew..."ok, so what's the cross-section of a cylinder?...Well...ok, for instance...Kwame, take a look at the cut-up snake burning out your window. What shape do you see? Not the side, but see where the cut...? Yes! A circle..." Safe travels Carl!
So tonight we have company christmas parties part deaux -- I'm sure we'll have a few pictures to share. And speaking of sharing, Adam posted in his blog about a cool site called Kiva. It is a way to give money to entrepenuers in developing nations -- I bet my cousin Mark would appreciate this type of thing. In fact, my whole extended family is quite into giving. Take my grandparents as yet another example: The picture below was sent to me with the subject line "Salvation Army Experience," which I believe occurred earlier this week.
--Shifting gears now -- It's always fun for me to find new websites that hold real value (read: the opposite of my websites, i.e. Viralvids.com). I think a new site called Blue Chip Expert is gaining traction (It's like Linkedin, only you get paid for referrals who land jobs). I'm sending out invites to people this morning via email. If you don't get one, the link below contains my referral code: Why I am I so gung-ho about networking? Because two months ago I bumped into a retired executive recruiter named Burt, on a giant sailboat half way around the world. In an effort to escape conversation with actual family members (also trapped on said boat), I asked Burt the number one quality he looked for in executives he successfully recruited, and he said this. "Be visible."
I'd say my number one favorite movie is Rushmore. It has so many of my favorite things I look for in movies. It reminds me of my first job out of college, because all of the people who worked there loved Wes Anderson movies. Anyways, I was skipping through the DVD tonight on my laptop and grabbed a screenshot of my favorite scene (courtesy of Windows Media Player Classic):
If you've seen the movie, you know the feeling that Bill Murray's character brings to the screen... apathy, discontent, old money, and above all else: I'm wearing my Budweiser swim trunks, and I'm going to jump into my pool with a cigarette in my mouth and fish golf balls out of the deep end. I guess for anyone who doesn't know me too well, it seems like a grim scene to randomly select out of American cinema. For me, it's a special scene that portrays the persistent child in all adults, and the excitement in having small adventures, even if adulthood forces you to embark upon them in the middle of a small crowd. I believe in Internet speak, it equates to WTF. In other news, I beat Gears of War for Xbox, defeating General Raam and it was wholly satisfying. If anybody out there in Interweb land wants to borrow it, just email me. If no one writes, I'll assume that Benjy wants it. P.S. I fixed the link to the video of my dad landing his plane in Bridgeport, CT.
It has been a relatively uneventful weekend thus far. Last night Laura and I went to my company Christmas party and she was really impressed by my colleagues -- I found it very validating that she appreciates the people I work with, because I certainly do. In lieu of attending an actual church sermon this Sunday morning, I found the podcast for Calvary Church on iTunes and am listening to it now. To me this is a mult-tasking win because I enjoy balancing the family budget and shredding old mail on Sunday mornings. Obsessive compulsive = fun. On to the point: as I entered in November's final balances I decided to make a new column for charities to document our response to a recent challenge from my grandparents. You see, we received a note in the mail from "Papa" and "Phee" which stated: "Hello to Our Grandchildren and Spouses, and a Happy Thanksgiving a few days late. Many years ago Phee's father, your great grandfather, Clarence Leverenz, began a tradition with our family that we want to renew. It consisted of his giving each of us some money at Thanksgiving with the understanding that we would invest in some worthy cause or person. ... Of course, at or before Christmas we would expect you to give us an 'accounting' of your investment.'"
Laura and I decided to invest in The Boston Terrier Rescue of North Carolina, Levine Children's Hospital of North Carolina and "Operation Phone Home" provided by the USO and The American Alzheimers Foundation. Hopefully I can convince the rest of the family to share their donations (sans monetary specifics) so we can see a comprehensive list resulting from the "Leverenz Letter." In closing, here is a really cool video my dad sent me via Youtube: "A beautiful sunset and Christmas lights on runway 29 made for a fun afternoon." Flashback -- Dad flys over the house in Connecticut last December...
Today we're hunting for couches, not exciting by any stretch of the imagination. Although we did get a chance to see Gail in Matthews when we took my car to the dealership for a 2.5 hr oil change. As we walked away from our conversation with Gail, we both remarked the woman is a ray of sunshine -- there simply aren't enough people out there like her! Looking for old stuff down here? Other places you can find traces of our Netizenship: Myspace
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Update 12/30/06
Friday Video! 12/21/06
Update 12/10/06
