I made you a mixtape.

The mixtape is alive and well at Muxtape.

Wired: “The mixtape is gone for most intents and purposes, but the idea of assembling a few tunes for one’s friends is very much a thing of the present. Muxtape is the latest service we’ve seen that lets users assemble mixtape-like playlists online, and it might be our favorite.”

I have one, wanna hear it? Here it go. http://triangleman.muxtape.com/

My brother is an uncle....almost!

Exciting news....Linde's sister and brother in-law (Abbe and Michael) had a baby on Monday night. Avery Blake Womble came into the world almost a month early but both mom and baby are healthy. My mom and I got to visit on Wednesday night and he is so cute. He is a little thing weighing in at 5 lbs 10 oz!

Jeff looking all too natural holding a baby!

The proud aunt and creator of the nursery!

In heavy rotation.

Just kidding - I am strongly opposed to snobbery in music. And while I am definitely am not as up on new bands as I used to be, every once in a while I'll stumble upon something interesting that I feel I've got to share.

Vampire Weekend - I've been wearing this album out since I saw them on SNL. They look like prep school kids and sound like a mix of the Kinks, Elvis Costello, and the other name that gets dropped by the critics, Paul Simon.

With verbose lyrics about pin-stripes, madras, and Cape Cod, Vampire Weekend sounds like a J. Crew catalog come to life.

Bonus points for taking their name from a short film the lead singer made as a freshman in college. Watch the trailer.

My Nintendo still works & is hooked up in my garage.

Here are the two trailers we just did, one of which my honey already mentioned (thanks, babe).

These are two old-school games that some might remember back when Nintendo was the entertainment system, video game controllers only had two buttons, and everybody knew what up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-b-a meant.

1942 and Commando - updated with new graphics and music, but with the same style of gameplay as the classics.

1942: Joint Strike


Commando 3: Wolf of the Battlefield

Something very cool...

Hope everyone is having a good week. I want to use this blog to brag on my hubby. He did this trailer for this new video game and I don't really like video games but I would totally play this one!

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31862.html

My favorite part is that he put a Ronald Reagan quote at the beginning on the preview. And, read the comments people wrote about the trailer and the game...I am so proud!

$25 Bucks...I'll take it

So, as many of you know PayPal is really annoying and has continued to add fees, etc. So, enter the competition. www.revolutionmoneyexchange.com is the new way to pay a friend back for your half of dinner, send money to your family and get paid for whatever is owed you (i.e. half of dad's gift we gave him last Christmas, Jeff).

Here is the cool thing (and the reason I am blogging about this). If you sign up by March 31, they will put $25 in your account, which you can send straight to your checking account. Free $25, pretty cool. I did it and it worked.

Here is an even cooler thing. For every friend you refer, you get an additional $10. So I did it, referred Jason and we made a cool $60.

If you want me to refer you, let me know and I will give you $5 of my $10 referral reward back to you (I just need your email address). Go to their website and read about the company, it's legit and pretty cool. Have a good Monday!

Done.

Piece of cake. I was like a crazy cross between Matt Lauer & Santa Clause - just blowing into countries long enough to paint'em red then moving on.

Notice I went ahead and decided to visit Canada. I had to see for myself whether their bacon was worth all the hype. Turns out their Canadian bacon is just like our Canadian bacon, except it's just called "bacon" there. No one could tell me what they called regular bacon. You'd think with two official languages they could have come up with something, eh?

Finally, there's one little country still unvisited on the map. That would be Guatemala. Because Leeanne and I are saving it for July.

We've started working towards going on a mission trip to Guatemala. We've been praying for an opportunity like this, and as you can tell from previous blogs, it's been on our hearts for a while. We're in the process of filling out the application and we hope to know soon whether or not we will be going!

My new favorite thing...

Since we have gotten married, one of the things I've hated most is having to come up with ideas of what to cook and shopping lists of what to buy.

So, I was so excited to be introduced to e-mealz.com. Every week they send you a menu list and shopping list, you can pick your lists based on what stores you shop at, diets you're on, etc. It is wonderful and cheap and saves me SO much time. And so far, Jason has loved everything I have cooked from it.

Oh, the places you'll go.

This is so sad. These are all the countries - outside of the US - I have visited.
I vow to change this. Mark my words, by the end of this weekend, I'll have been to every country in the world - with the exception of Canada because it's like the Delaware of foreign countries.
Impossible, you say? No. Implausible? Slightly more yes than no.

Make your own map here, but please don't go trying to send them to me afterwards with your all-red map to rub it in. You're better than that.

p.s. Thanks, Jeff, for the link.

What a weird job.

I'm not sure why I never thought of a career as a living statue.
Just lazy, I guess.
(Also from the Arboretum.)

Spring is here...maybe

So Sunday was beautiful, so Jason's mom came down and took us to lunch and to the Arboretum. It is one of the most beautiful places ever; so anyone who lives or visits Dallas needs to go. It will make you want to work on your yard. Here are some pics from our visit....I think it will be even prettier in a couple more weeks when everything is bloomed.

The new extremely personal info-tainment blog.

For my wife and all her friends who can't get enough celebrity gossip, I've started my own celebrity dirt blog. Eat your heart out, Perez Hilton! Seriously.


Brad Pitt is reportedly getting irritated by a sound Angelina Jolie sometimes makes when she chews food ... Cuba Gooding Jr. has stopped following college basketball ... Lucy Liu is lukewarm about this season's Tuesday-night prime-time offerings ... My friend Tony isn't a fan of calamari, it was revealed on Saturday at our local Olive Garden ... Tobey Maguire still occasionally thinks about his second-grade tormentor Jason Higgins ... Sarah Jessica Parker prefers October weather to September weather ... John Goodman can do that thing where you whistle by putting your fingers in your mouth ... Ryan Seacrest suspects he may have mild lactose intolerance ... Lara Flynn Boyle recently Googled "Boyle Irish ancestry" ... Robert De Niro's iPod Classic is freezing every few days ... Patrick Dempsey has a hankering for PB&J with the crusts cut off, just like his mom, Amanda, used to do—paging Dr. Freud! ... Sally Field really, really likes Origins Oatmeal Facial Scrub ... Joy Behar used to be able to do a great Nixon impression, can't really anymore ... Leonardo DiCaprio has been having nightmares about a three-headed dragon that breathes pink flames ... Laurence Fishburne prefers one of his goldfish over the other two ... Craig Kilborn just got his car washed ... Eva Longoria Parker is having trouble with her upgrade to Windows Vista ... You will die a hollow, friendless death ... Pete Sampras can't wait for this weekend ...

From “Page Six’ Gets Extremely Personal” by Teddy Wayne
McSweeney's Internet Tendency
"Hilarious" photo-manip by Jason.

My Mocha and Me...

Our small group has been taking turns showing our rehearsal dinner slide shows (Cathy, I need to get ours from you). Anyway, when Jason came to bed the other night, I put together a little slide show for him. It consisted of me physically flipping through some pics every five seconds and humming a song. I thought I would share a couple of my favorites.
I am really running out of blog topics.

I love this pic because we were so young and had no idea that we would ever get married. We were both working at Houston's and just having a lot of fun getting to know each other.This was at a Dodger's game.

This was a picture from Mexico, the summer after we got married. We always have such a relaxing, fun time there and the sunsets are really pretty.

This is also in Mexico. Jason had smacked into this kid in the ocean and split his eyebrow (very Dylan McKay of him) and had to get Mexican stitches!

Below is us in California. J loves to drive me crazy by purposely closing his eyes. I seriously get really frustrated when he does that.This is us at our friend's Brad and Stephanie's wedding. It was a really hot day in Oklahoma and we had a really fun time seeing friends and celebrating their marriage.

Good-bye Vince...

Today I sold my sweet Volvo to a really cute couple who I know will take great care of it and even said I can come see him and drive him if I want. The Volvo was Jason's and my first big purchase as a married couple and I'm sad to see him go...but it is just a car.

Here is a pic of J and me the day we bought the car. For some reason, Jason wears that shirt every time we take a picture.

Buyer's Remorse

I consider myself a good shopper, I prefer to shop sales and really don't buy things I don't need (that last statement is really not accurate). My biggest problem is getting up late at night when I can't sleep, watching infomercials and actually calling in or getting online to buy the product.

In the past few years I have purchased Hip Hob Abs, Gunnar Peterson's Core Workout, Windsor Pilates, Youthful Essence (a micro-dermabrasion kit that Susan Lucci swears by) and most expensively NutriSystem. I thought Jason and I could stand to lose a few pounds and the food looked SO good (not the case).

So last year, I signed Jason and myself up to receive delicious canned meat and boxed veggies for a month. Jason lasted about 3 weeks and I made it through up until 5 p.m. on my first day. We probably could have returned everything but I think we thought we would eventually get disciplined and try again.

So fast forward to the happy ending of this story....Last Saturday, I had the brilliant idea to itemize all the food and put it on eBay. I pulled out everything that had expired, took a picture of it and believe it or not, it sold for $222.50 last night. Not exactly the purchase price, but it is something and I cleared out about half our pantry.

Brrrrrrr.........

Ok, I make an attempt to blog everyday for a month and I missed the second day. So I will post twice today.

This is what we woke up to this morning. Jason didn't get home until midnight last night from work and fortunately didn't have to drive through sleet and ice.

I really thought that snow in March in Texas wouldn't be a possibility, I also didn't think Hillary winning the primary Texas would be a possibility either, I don't know which one is colder or flakier. I guess I have been proven wrong twice this week.

Freegans and Starving Children

Much to Jason's chagrin, I Tivo Oprah and sometimes catch up on them at night. Two shows in the last week have really convicted me on some things and I thought I would share.

The first show was a report done by Lisa Ling on Freeganism. Freegans are folks that are pretty much anti-consumerism. They are sick of how wasteful Americans are and as a result, live simply and spend their money on helping others. (Some are pretty extreme, going through grocery store dumpsters to salvage food that was thrown out prematurely..no thanks). And yes, Oprah was showing off her pair of Christian Louboutins the entire time.

The second show was this week and had Drew Barrymore talking about the hunger problem in Africa. I know we see these images quite often but this time it really bothered me. I was amazed to learn that unless these kids have food on their stomachs, the medicines so many of them take for AIDS and HIV are useless and go unabsorbed.

I really feel like so much of my life is wasted on thinking about things that really don't matter. I have had my eye on this watch for about 3 years and hint to Jason how bad I want it every holiday but in the scheme of things, it is just a watch and the cost of it could probably really help some one else more than the joy of me getting to look at it every day.

So please know I am not getting on a soapbox. I realize we all work really hard for what we have and most of my friends and family are very philanthropic and civic minded. I just wanted you to know what is on my mind. Here are some of my short term goals to work at this:

1. Try to utilize all the food in my fridge and get out of the habit of throwing things out before they have really gone bad. I will also try to cook more and eat at home more.
2. I am not going to buy any new clothes for as long as I can. I realized while doing laundry that I wear the same things all the time anyway. This was really hard after seeing the cute new swimsuits in this week's Target ad.
3. We are in the process of selling our beloved Vince (the Volvo). Jason and I were blessed not to ever have car payments until Vince came into our lives. As much as I love him, I am sick of writing a check every month and realize that I can live with something that doesn't require monthly payments.
4. Clean out and give away. I really want to focus some time in the next few weeks to just get rid of stuff that is cluttering our house. My friend Micahl and I are going to have a garage sale too!
5. Jason and I are really wanting to go on some kind of mission/service oriented trip in the next year. No definite plans yet, but I will keep you posted.

That is all for today, something to think about. Hope everyone has a great Wednesday!

March Madness

Folks, the drought is over. After several months of being incommunicado and only blogging when pressured by Jason, I am ready to take it to the next level. A blog a day...can I do it? Does it cheapen the blog? Do I have that much to talk about? These are questions that will be answered over the course of the next month. Stay tuned...

It's Official! There's someone in the world willing to marry my brother!

I'm only kidding about the title of this blog. I love little Jeff and knew that whoever he ended up with would be a lucky gal. We just didn't know how lucky Jeff would get when he met Linde Browning!
So, on Feb. 15th, Jeff popped the question and completely surprised her. Family and friends were waiting back at a friend's house to celebrate. It was a really fun night and weekend. They are getting married in August and Jason and I are really hoping they will ask us to sing/sign at the wedding.