Gingerbread time...

Ty's was hard at work this morning making his gingerbread house. Very impressed with his candy trayscaping skills. :)

Cook, cooking, and the Revolution...

...and in that order.

So, Friday night was the Dane Cook gig. It was funny, as expected. That Dane Cook, he is one silly...boy. Headed up to MD to say hello and wish my dad and Denise an early happy birthday (btw, everyone say happy birthday to my dad....Happy Birthday, Dad!!).

Saturday night was the much anticipated Iron Chef America BBQ Smackdown Royale!! I was one of the 3 panel judges. The results were unanimous...Scotty Boy Manson stole the show with his pork chops and veggie boat. (Victory speech??) Wang came in strong at second place with his chicken, potatoes, and judge fav - Lay's Kettle Cooked BBQ chips. Chairman Frost finished last with his smorgasbord of food smothered in green stuff. Pics coming soon!!

The band got a last minute booking for Sunday evening. I don't watch soccer, but apparently the 'super bowl' of soccer happened that day and we were playing the post party for the New England Revolution, one of the teams playing. Unfortunately, they lost so believe it or not, they weren't in a dancing kinda mood. Well, at least I can check "Singing for a professional soccer team" off my life's to-do list...

Scotty Boy Manson - Tragically Misunderstood, Beautifully Wounded

I think... caption contest! So far we've got:

"A Passage to Bangkok - How a Belly Dancer Broke my Four Hearts"

"Hi, this is my boyfriend, Scott"

"I'm getting sleepy, very sleepy."

"I am a cyclop mutant, son of Uranus and Gaia from the dark pit of Tartarus."

Enjoy.

Scenes from da farm...

Took the Grant Man and Ty's to Cox Farms over the weekend. They had a blast! By far, Grant has been the best of the Stables when taken out for a fun day with Aunt Mandy. :) It was the perfect day to go, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't too crowded. I believe the trick is to go while the Redskins are playing.

An interesting approach and a standard wedding...

Yet another wedding this past weekend (yes, it's officially Friday and I'm just now updating the blog now...good lawrd, it's past my bedtime!). It went off without a hitch, except me missing my cue on 'Everlasting Love'... I had the Howard Jones version stuck in my head which was the wrong one. No harm done, it was their first dance, no one noticed.

So, off to go climb on Sunday... Always good times, but way too short. Not that I didn't have enough time but after the first two climbs, my arms decided to quit. And part of my proof of this is the 'interesting approach' shown below. We needed to basically traverse across the bottom of the cliff to get to our rope. The good news is that the water was real shallow and my buddy traversed on the rock just fine. The bad news...my arms were spaghetti and just as I'm ready to come off the cliff, my buddy tried to help and in the process got a nice foot bath. And yes, I stayed dry by a nice shoulder ride to the other side. :-D

The weekend: I survived but $10 short....

Finally....back to FNP this weekend. Nothing in terms of progress to report. As far as regressing goes, definitely. Lost $10. Now I could've stopped at my standard -$5 donation, but figured I'd lose money to make up for the missed weeks.

We had a gig Saturday night which went well. As for the folks who haven't seen the new (ahem, controversial) Swiftkick line-up, here goes...

Drop everything you are doing....

Which way is this chic spinning for you, clockwise or counter-clockwise?

I've almost perfected the art of making her spin both ways on command, another 20 minutes (added on to the 10 minutes I've already spent) and I'll have it down pat. I will not be beaten by this...

The mumbo-jumbo behind this...

NC weekend wrap up....

So, the band had a wedding gig in Durham, NC over the weekend. My attempted to make a weekend of it was thwarted by the 4pm start time. Bums.... What fun is an afternoon reception?! As expected, crowd was dead until it got to be night time. After that, twas fun. Check out the sweet wedding favors.... GENIUS :-D

Brandi belts it, foul-mouthed brides, and Ty's first baseball game....

This must be the catchiest song I've heard in a while. Love it. Enjoy! Anyhow, went to see Brandi again last Friday night with the Fat Kid. Although I preferred the Birchmere performance, I was not disappointed. Great show, awesome new songs. And I must mention the heist that occured beforehand. Just to give you an idea, there was running in the middle of a DC street involved. There supposedly will be a follow up in regards to that....

So, Saturday night was a gig up in Maryland. Now, our wedding gigs have become routine enough to the point where I don't usually mention them...but this absolutely deserves a paragraph on the bloggings. So, the bride is about to toss her bouquet and she notices that a friend is not participating. She stomps up to the mic and says "Katie, get you p*ssy out here!". Yes, folks...in front of friends and family. She tried to play it off by quickly saying "pushy, pushy". But we all knew...


Took the lil one to his first baseball game on Sunday. The O's, um...yea, didn't do too well. Ty's was having loyalty issues during the game. He started off routing for his Yankee's but he came around later and proudly wore the O's hat. He enjoyed the game although he was a bit antsy. Couldn't have been that bucket of coke I got him... ;-)

Welcome to the world, Skyler!!!!....

I'm now the proud aunt of lil' Skyler Dawn Stables. 8.2 lb, 20.5 in. Hope she enjoys the quiet of the hospital now before getting home to her 3 bro's! That will be interesting... :-D Congrats and GOOD LUCK Meagan and Scott!

In other good news happening tonight...I'm happy to announce that Tulip got her job in AZ!! While I'm sad to be losing a neighbor, buddy for Tyler, and climbing partner; very happy that now I have an excuse to go and climb in AZ. jk :-) Congrats Tulip!

Let's see how country I can get...

Just learned it last night so be gentle. I'm still trying to find a good upbeat acoustic song for me to play. Till then, depressing songs it is!

Welcome to McCullough-hood....

Good luck with Dad!! hahahaha ;-D

Loved the cake toppers, loved the cake, loved the tropical theme (executed quite well), but the toast needed work. Very nice wedding. Congrats, dad and Denise!

Getting back to norm, well sorta...

My faithful readers, again, please excuse the lack of posts. The Rainier trip, band shtuff, baby showers, bachlorette parties, weddings, Ty's starting school, the drama that ensued from Ty's starting school, Ty's little league, freelancing, and oh yea... regular work; the past few weeks have been a bit busy.

And now that things have died down a bit...let's add swimming lessons. Hey, why not? He was so excited about starting. So much so that he couldn't float on his back because he kept laughing. Nonetheless, the boy is definitely a born athlete.

Lil' bug update...

Tyler's first day of school was yesterday and so far, so good! His teacher is "a boy"....which leads me to believe he'll do well in school this year. And he loves being able walk with Parker (and the rest of the Stables crew) to school.



And this season (his first season of coach pitch) will be with the Yankees. He did really well at practice yesterday. And one of his team mates is in his class, so that'll be cool. They can come up with plays during recess....

He got to play catcher yesterday, he was funny about it though. I think he thought his purpose was to stand there and let the ball hit him.

The Rainier Expedition...

Well, the much anticipated Mt. Rainier is over. And although I didn't bag the summit, it was quite the adventure.

There were 8 clients (including me) in my group and 4 guides. The group dynamic was pretty good. Two of the guys were buddies from Seattle and in their mid 30's, another two were in their late 40's and were doctors, there was a guy probably around my age from Louisiana, and the babies of the group were Alaina and Kevin who were in their early 20's (they both worked for the guide service and got a free trip due to cancellations).

Day One

We drove up to an area on Rainier called "Paradise" (5,000 ft) and started our hike there. The start of the hike was actually pretty tough. It had me really wishing I would've spent more quality time on the Stairmaster. Our destination was Camp Muir which was at 10,000 ft. I did okay for the first 4,000 ft., but that last 1,000 ft was me basically running on fumes.

Below was a gorgeous spot on the hike to Camp Muir, that's Mt. Adams on the left and Mt. St. Helens on the right (in the way back). You could actually just barely see Mt. Hood from there as well but, unfortunately, didn't come thru in the pic.



We rested up for a while once we got to Camp Muir, had dinner, then slept in one of the huts.

Scenes from Camp Muir...





Day Two

Started off with a nice blueberry pancake breakfast (which would've been great had I been hungry...appetite and altitude don't play well together). Then we put on our crampons (spikes you attach to the bottom of the boots) and learned all about self rescue. I have to admit, the best part...sliding down the mountain head first trying to catch myself with my ice axe. I'll take that over sipping daiquiries on the beach any day. :-D

At around 2pm, we started off our relatively short (1,000 ft) hike to high camp. And here's where I thought I was going to lose it...



That rocky terrain you see there on the right? Yea, that wasn't so fun. We got to that point and not only was it steep and extremely windy, but in some parts it felt like walking in quicksand and it didn't get any easier as we went up and around that area to find more rocky terrain that I found nearly impossible to navigate through with crampons and a heavy pack.

But alas, High Camp...





We rested up for a bit and had dinner. The head guide then informed us that we would be making our summit attempt that night at 10:30pm. So, it was off to sleep right after dinner...not that anyone really slept...

10:30pm rolls around and we get all geared up, have 'breakfast', and clip into the ropes. We hike through a steep downhill and uphill portion then continue to hike a steep uphill portion for what seemed like forever. We finally get to a stopping point and the guide who was on my rope asked me how I was doing. I told her I was tired but doing alright. She then comments on how tired I look and that I wasn't moving too quickly. I then realize that she wants me to turn around. The disappointment hit me pretty hard since I felt I had worked my tail off to get to that point. So, I told them my preference was to keep going but that I'd go back to camp if they felt that was the best for me and the group. They appreciated my good attitude, which was little consolation for me, and had me head back down.

I have mixed feelings on that decision. On the one hand, I think I would've had an easier time if one of the guides would have stayed with me and climbed more at a pace that was manageable for me (instead of having to keep up with the guys). Had all 8 clients gone for the summit, I wouldn't have expected them to do this but the guy from Louisiana bailed and Alaina got altitude sickness. So, there were 4 guides and 6 clients. But to be fair, they are the ones who climb mountains for a living. Not much I can argue with there...

Day 3

I got back to High Camp around 1:30am and slept like a log until the others got back. Four clients wound up reaching the summit. We packed up and started descending at around 11am. The descent was a bigger pain than I had expected. At that point, my boots were killing me, I was still a bit peeved about not reaching the summit, and my guides were bolting down the snow slopes while I struggling just to keep on my feet. But all that went away when we got to the point where we passed the snow fields and I was able to finally put my sneakers on again...it was a beautiful moment. ;)

And that's my Rainier adventure... I do want to go back and climb it, especially now that I know better what to expect. Maybe in a few years. My co-worker was telling me today about some cool mountain climbs in Canada....hmmm.....

Stay tuned....

Don't believe the rumours... I do not have bloggers block. The psychic did not recommend that I was never again to post on my blog. And I did not lose all my money at poker to which I was too depressed to write.

Just insanely busy at work...will post all sorts of good stuff about Parker's newfound popularity, Ty's favorite new channels, and the quickly approaching Rainier trip soon!

Why I love "A List Apart"...

If a website could stalk a person, I think this one has my number.

So, just last week I scolded a now ex-client for not writing good content for his website. And as I'm perusing my bookmark list, I see that A List Apart decided that this issue, dedicated to web writing, was solely dedicated to lil ol' me...how nice of them!

Now, as I dabble with freelancing, I realize I'm not making high-traffic websites whose owners have deep pockets to pay for copywriters, design, and maintenance. And, in this specific case of my aforementioned ex-client, I didn't expect content that would knock my socks off. But with the little content I received, there was no mention of what areas the business serviced and a requested site navigation of seven pages/sections all with little to no content. It was plainly obvious that the 'content' was pretty much fluff that he felt he needed to have to get a website up. Not content that was written with the end user in mind.

What I do expect and have grown to require out of clients is more effort and research on their part. My frustration stems out of clients that want a website just to have a website and want me to conjure something outta thin air. I'm a big fan of the internet and of the potential it could bring a start-up business, charity, etc. And while I can provide design and development, I'm not a writer. And the problem is, I think writing/content, in many cases, is the most important part of the website.

Just to give you an example, the Philippine Children's Foundation. Much to my mother's chagrin, I did this website for free. Why did I do this free and not her charity website? Because the owner did his homework. He gave me content for every page on day one. He supplied me with good photos I could work with. Now, he was pain with settling on a logo...but he was generally enthusiastic about the project, and that made all the difference in the world.

But, to be fair, maybe I'm just a grouchy web dummie who has nothing better to do with my time than rant on clients and dream up terms like 'web sins'...

Have you the wing?...

So, let me just get this straight. Derek has his degree and is now married? I'm still trying to comprehend this chain of events and I'm still confoozed! Next thing you know, my dad will get married...oh wait... ;-O

It was a really fun wedding. The boys did a superb job with their ringbearer duties, although Parker just about passed out on my lap from the heat. They were so adorable in their tuxes!! The preacher, with his stuck-in-adolescence voice, was kinda funny. I don't know how Meagan kept a straight face. In fact, I would've paid good money to hear him to start off with 'Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday....' Plus, it would've been all too fitting with the heat.

Best wishes to those two little love birds (along with their new supah cool wine bucket)!

'And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva...'

Awww, my first EB web baby...

My first web launch with the new company. Look at that code, isn't it gorgeous?

"To the beach, to the beach, to the beach beach beach beach"....

Is it just our family, or does everyone have their own little beach march?

So, the boys enjoyed a day of beaching and fishing (well, fishing was mostly Tyler) on Saturday. It was the perfect beach day, although it was a bit rough. Grant-man enjoyed making belly molds in the sand and occasionally giving it a little taste. Colin-bear spent most the time watching the water...his highlight, I'm sure, was wrecking his Aunt Mandy's sand castle! Parker was just Parker and enjoyed bossing around the big giant waves. And Tyler, well...there's the beach and his cousins, he was a happy camper.

My bug, Grant-Man, Colin-Bear, and Parker PiBS...


Uncle Scott, Ty's, and his big giant fish...