James's Blog

May 11th 2006

Well I guess I will write a little bit. I know that you all get so sick of my frequent writings that you don't even notice them any more! It has been over three months since I have last written but I have to say that we/I have been really busy. I know that it isn't really an excuse but hey, it is all I have at this point.

Carolyn went out tonight with a friend to see a movie in the BIG CITY. So that leaves me here with my next three favorite things to do. I cut the grass again today, I watched some TV, and I had a little BBQ for myself. I have to say that I made great burgers and while I was out my next door neighbor popped over to say thank you (for cutting their grass) and that the grass in the front looks the nicest in the entire sub-division. I felt proud about it. A kind of pride that keeps me going on those cold winter days when I cannot cut the grass out front as there is too much snow. Proud indeed!

As you will probably notice the website is back up and running with some new added bonus's that I hope everyone uses. I am sure that the website was down a little bit as I was making changes that I was not familiar with, but I promise that the hosting company also made a mistake too which took them even longer to figure out after my mistake was cleared up. So, I cannot take all of the credit for the craziness.

But the exciting new part is a forum so people like my parents and Carolyn's parents can post messages to us. Hopefully it will keep us better in touch with family and friends. Only time will tell I guess.

School is going well. But hey, you can read that on the forum and post back so I won't bore you with details here.

Carolyn and I are planning on going to Prague in a few days and I am so excited about that. I think that it will be a fun place and super cheap to visit. Because it is in Eastern Europe and there has been little development there everything is so cheap. I don't drink much but I guess you can get a pint of beer for .50 pence which is about 1 American Dollar. Crazy when you think that in England that same pint of beer will cost you about 2 British Pounds!

Carolyn just got home so I am going to end for now...

February 13th 2006

Happy Valentine Day to everyone out there. Carolyn and I are getting ready to go to Italy for our Valentine celebration. It should be interesting as the Olympics are going on right now. Hopefully it isn't too busy but we will have to wait and see. Carolyn is getting super excited and I am getting really worried as I have three papers due coming quickly.

Carolyn and I watched the British Curling team win over Denmark today and WOW was it a boring sport. The commentators were at a loss of things to say as well. They were talking about nothing while the teams were playing. They were talking about the weather during the night when I first turned it on as they were slowly pushing the ball or puck down the ice. This process took forever.

Nothing really to say other than it is rainy and cold here. Also very gloomy around here.

Carolyn just booked our tickets to Prague so I guess we are going there. Barcelona technically won but we decided that we should really go during the summer instead of the winter or spring. Hope no one is really upset. Well getting ready to go to town.

January 30th 2006

Today is a good day. We woke up and I went to school and did that for several hours. Learned a few interesting things and need to talk through them with Carolyn to make sure that I fully understand them. But other than that it was great. We then both met up at the gym where I proceeded to get my self whipped into shape by a 19 year old trainer named Aimee! First of all, I have contentions about dealing with someone whose name is Amy but spells it Aimee and second of all she makes me work out really too hard. But I guess it is good for me and Carolyn doesn't seem to mind so I have to put up with it.

But the fun part is that Adriana and Carlos, our friends from Mexico dropped off their little kid Adrian to spend the night! He is jumping around playing with Mattie and it is all kinds of crazy around here. But I guess it is good. Mattie seems to enjoy it and Carolyn says that everything is under control. I guess I better get back to helping out.

Talk to you all later. On another note Scott is showing some students some photos from our web site which is cool.

January 26th 2006

I got some flack from a few people about my ability to let some time past in between my writings so I thought that I would write down a few words to appease everyone. If you did not know we joined a gym here so I can get back into shape. But to say that you must have an imagination to think that I ever was really in shape. Oh well. I decided that I needed to lose some weight and so I have been getting about 30-35 minutes of cardio every time I go to the gym which works out to be about every other day with my schedule. I started doing some light lifting as well but scared to jump into that because I do not really have anyone to spot me on my weights. But I do use the equipment there that simulates that movements and resistance of the free-weight section. Needless to say I am starting to feel more and more energy after I work out instead of feeling lazy and tired all of the time.

Tomorrow is Friday and I have class all day. I need to study a bit tonight and read some material for class which I have not done yet but it is only two articles so I should be okay. Class today was an entire joke. I woke up early to get the bus and then walked the mile or two up the hill to the business school and the professor did not even show up. He no called and no showed on his very own class. I hope that everything is okay but he had about 30 very upset and tired people there waiting for him. I guess he shouldn't eat any apples he gets from the class for a while. I am learning lots from this course and think that I should be in a better position when I get done for interviews and such but time will only tell. They have an interviewing workshop which I am going to go to before I finish this semester up.

My friend Staci is reading this in South Carolina right now so I thought that I would give her a SHOUT OUT. Good times with her and her husband Jeff. Good times. They have a child now named Dillon which I have not had the pleasure of meeting him yet but would love to sometime. I guess things completely change when you leave home. People get married, gain/lose weight, have kids, grow up, and all around become who they are supposed to be. It is hard because you were there before and living it. Now the best you can do is to get a glimpse of it from an email or post card that you get around the holiday season. Thinking about this objectively, maybe it isn't the other people that change but rather myself and my habits and rituals. Either way you look at it the situation is sad with so many miles between friends. All that to say, "Hello Staci, Jeff, Dillon, and Socs!"

Getting cold here tonight so I am going to turn on the heat.

January 14th 2006

Well I am here to tell you Happy New Years. I am glad that everyone is doing well that we have heard from lately over the holiday season.

I have a confession to make. I have fallen in love with something. Something wonderful. Something pleasing. Something firm. Something that takes me laying on it and then bounces right back to its normal shape. Yep, that is right. I have fallen in love with my Memory Foam that we bought for the horrible bed here! It is an extra mattress that you place on top of the normal mattress that is a little more comfortable and keeps its shape. I love it dearly and cannot imagine my bed without it more. Carolyn thinks that I am crazy saying that I love it but I honestly do.

Enough about the new love of my life. Carolyn is knitting a lot lately. She has several projects going and is almost done with most of them which is nice. I know she wants to send these items to her friends in America in time for babies and birthdays and such. I love her too. Lots.

Not sure if Carolyn has written about this or not but last month we were in Newcastle and we were walking around the city center. Now in the city center there are these wonderful statues of a man in different poses. I am not sure what it is supposed to mean or what it symbolizes ( I will leave that to Carolyn) but there is one specifically that has this man holding is hand against his hip (making a triangle between his arm and his body). Nothing special except the entire statue is balanced on that triangle with his entire body horizontal to the ground. So literally the statue is even with the ground balancing on his elbow. Carolyn and I have seen this several times and enjoy looking at it. This specific day we are walking by it and notice that a man is standing looking at it which is not an abnormal site. As we draw closer we start to hear that the man is yelling at the statue and as we draw even closer we notice that he is drunk and mad as heck. Now, it was about 10:30 in the morning and this man was already very drunk. As we walk past him not making eye contact we both started to laugh as we hear what he is saying. "What are you doing? You cannot just do that. Knock it off! Who do you think you are, you just cannot do it!" he drunk yells. We will need to get some photos of this statue for you to see.

Well I am done working nights with the pub. I will only be working day shifts which is nice. Now I can be with Carolyn during the night and be normal during the day. At last! Hopefully Carolyn will be happy with that decision. See you all later.

December 28th 2005

Today was the first decent snow of the year. When I woke up the entire place was covered from house to house and in every nook and cranny. Carolyn will be excited when she wakes up as she loves the snow. As for Mattie, she has been outside and ran around in the backyard and loved every minute of it. When I finally woke up at 9:30am she was standing at the back door just waiting to get outside.

I am really sick right now. I got a cold and it has kept me up and has me sleeping in strange patterns. Last night I was up at 12, 1, 5 and then again at 9:30. Of course Carolyn was a great wife and tended to me every time I got up out of bed. The last time I tried to move downstairs to keep from waking her again but she got up and moved besides me on the bed downstairs that we had blown up to watch some movies yesterday. I couldn't ask for a more caring wife. She also brought me medicine and such. My nose is getting raw from the constant blowing I have to do. I honestly think that Mattie can smell the exposed layer of skin and blood soaking through it as she keeps looking at me and licking her chops. Kind of scary!

Once again I have a paper to write that is due in the second week of January and I have only just begun to write it. I hope that my next few papers come back with better grades than my other ones. I was working on the notion that the more time I spent on a paper the better the quality of writing would be but as Carolyn reviewed my last paper that took me a few days to write instead of the normal week to two weeks she said that it was the most coherent paper that I had written. I guess sometimes I stumble on the stupidest stuff. Now only if the professors will agree with her and give me a good grade. Also in the school arena I received my final grade back on my last exam! And I passed with flying colors so unless I decided to get my PhD in a country that has testing on their PhD students then I have completed my final exam of my LIFE. Wow, I am excited about that part of it.

I have been stuck in the house for two days now and wishing to get out before another one passes. We will have to see what Carolyn says about that but even a walk with Mattie would be good enough. My back hurts from laying on the beds that we have. I did see a good movie yesterday called Million Dollar Baby. Clint Eastwood directed and produced it or directed and wrote it (one of the two) and it was excellent. He really has come a long way from Dirty Harry Movies and the Old Western movies that he used to be in.

Well I think that I hear Carolyn roaming around the house downstairs so I will close for now.

December 19th 2005

Well the kids coming to the door and singing has begun. It wouldn't be so bad if they wouldn't ask for money afterwards and they did not show up twice a night. You might be saying twice a night isn't that bad but when they are the same kids and they deny just doing it three minutes prior it gets old pretty quickly. But Carolyn has suffered the brunt of it more than I have so I guess that is good and bad in different ways.

Something else fun that has happened or more precisely something that I realized is that I only have three more classes for my MBA. Then I also have to complete my dissertation. I am a little confused on what exactly I want to study or what I want to look at with my dissertation but I am thinking something within the sports world but still up in the air. Only time will tell.

I am going to see a movie on Tuesday. I am going to see King Kong. Not sure how I feel about that but it will be fun to hang out with Simon either way. While I am writing this there is a TV show on about this guy that escapes from dangerous and embarrassing situations. So his last escape of the night was to be 11 stories high in a building and be strapped to a dolly (used for moving boxes and such) NAKED in an elevator. He had to get out of the restraints and then get his clothes on before the ground floor! More importantly his family was on the ground floor waiting for him (they thought that there was a party for him on the top floor). And low and behold he did NOT make it. So his entire family, girlfriends family, and a few other people waiting for the elevator saw him naked. Okay not that big of a deal right? Well I thought that it was kind of weird that channel 4 here in the UK showed the man completely naked without any little black box or fuzziness over his private parts! Strange. Carolyn got a laugh out of it too.

Mattie is snoring now so I think that I am going to hit the sack now. Email us for Christmas if you get a chance.

December 13th 2005

Blogging hasn't been the my best quality lately, but at least I can say that I have showered numerous times since I last blogged. At least Carolyn is happy with my decision to shower instead of blogging. But I can show you a score of emails that prove that most people would rather me blog than shower.

Honestly with John (my old boss) here in the UK I had spent more time with him than doing school work or blogging and prior to that I had been busy with school work and such. But John and I (Carolyn too) had a great time here in the UK and around Europe. He left yesterday morning and got in last night late and I still have not heard from him so I am assuming that he is sleeping off his jet lag. Only time will tell.

While he was here I did manage to write a paper that was due the day he left. I am a little worried about it but Carolyn said that it wasn't that bad when she edited it. Again, only time will be able to tell.

As you could tell from Carolyn's blog as well as the snow photos it is a little colder this year than last. Mattie doesn't seem to mind yet but she hasn't really been stuck inside for that long at once yet.

Carolyn is slowly getting ready for Christmas by getting small gifts and wrapping them and all of a sudden I noticed that I had a present under the tree and I did not even start to think about her gift yet. So I racked my head for a few days and got on line to order a few small gifts for her. They should arrive a day or two before Christmas but I still need to go into town and get a few small items. I think I have one idea that will make her cry but you will have to wait until after Christmas to find out what that is (she reads every blog of mine). But the house is looking as festive as it can here. Carolyn bought a couch cover so we don't get the landlord's couch too dirty in the next year. It just so happens to be really red and looks like a giant wrapped present so it fits in next to the Christmas tree pretty well. Funny thing is that we have had a few people over and they have not mentioned how funny it looks. Maybe it is just Carolyn and I that think it is really ridiculous. I don't know.

I hope that everyone is having a good holiday season and that they are not too hectic with shopping around town to enjoy themselves. I promise to blog in a few more days.

I have an amazing wife who loves me unconditionally and cares for me more than I could ever imagine. I only hope that I can show her as much love as she has shown me in the past few days the rest of my life.