It's almost a Seinfeld moment

Made some brownies the other day and when Sam went to serve himself, he shows eats them with a pair of chopsticks...for real? All I could think of was the snickers with a fork and knife a-la-George Costanza.

Reverse Ugly Duckling of the Insect Kingdom

Donut, Molly, Mike and I were out for a walk the other day and noticed that there were caterpillars EVERYWHERE. We were trying to figure out what was going on for all these moths to be a birthing babies and also trying to figure out what these were. Donut was so engrossed in them saying "Mommy caterpillar!" and wondering if they were hungry a la The Very Hungry Caterpillar book. We also get a lot of caterpillars in our veggie garden...Donut and I pick them out and them move them onto the lawn. Those caterpillars are green so sometimes hard to find amongst the green lettuce leaves.

These little guys in the picture turned out to be Woolly Bear caterpillars.. totally cool looking, all hairy with the orange and black stripes but eventually turn out to be a pedestrian moth. I wonder what rule of the insect kingdom dictates the babies to be colorful and distinctive with the adult form looking rather plain.

So, um, where's the garden?

Recently I was in New Jersey and its tagline is "The Garden State" so I ask you... where is the garden?

PS - Yes I know I am not supposed to be using my phone while driving

Happy Halloween!

The Halloween cuteness ensues. This year I planned our neighborhood's Halloween party and even got into the spirit myself by dressing up in coordinating outfits with Donut. Scrooge (Forrest) did not join us and was a grumpy grump at even the planning phases of the costumes. But at least he helped setup for the party, put up decorations and carried over all the heavy stuff.

We had some friends join us...the Maturos dressed as Sesame Street, the Fontaines with one lobster (Edward) and the Soldos with their little pumpkin (Sophia). I think Donut is finally getting the swing of this Halloween thing and it was really cute to see her trick or treating with her friends. Cannot wait for more kids so we can dress as a team.

European Holiday 2011!

Hooray for Europe!

Work travel is not so great sometimes as it takes you away from your family and friends for sometimes extended periods of time. And it is not as glamorous as it may seem...most of the time you spend less than 24 hours in a city and every city looks the same because you only see the inside of a hotel and meeting room. But sometimes the opportunity arises to mix work travel and fun travel. I was able to participate again in our European conference as a speaker and this time the whole family went along for the ride. We extended the trip to a full 2 weeks and tacked on 2 additional countries for our perusing.

We started off in Stockholm Sweden and ended up staying in a posh neighborhood and spent a long weekend (~4 days ) walking around town and checking the sights.

Monday morning we hopped on a 6am train to spend the week in Copenhagen Denmark for my work conference. The timing was so that we were there for Tivoli Garden's halloween week! We were also lucky enough to tag along on a reservation to have lunch at Noma (YUM!!!) what is currently billed as the world's best restaurant.

Friday we hopped on an early plan to Berlin and spent the next 5 days trekking around Berlin Germany soaking in the culture, history and food. From currywurst to durum doners to yes even Korean food...we ate our way through the town. And pretzels...LOTS of pretzels...

So much to see and do and lots of time spent with my two favorite people. The full slideshow is below.

My new favorite thing - the Kindle

I have always loved to read and have a book rotation with Molly but my latest toy is the Amazon Kindle. I got Forrest one for Christmas last year and thought I would never switch...because I love the experience of turning pages in a book (I know...lame and I am a dinosaur) but I finally gave in as we were gearing up for our European vacation. There was no way I was going to lug around a ton of books for the two week trip... AND then I learned you get free international 3G and I was sold. Since the 6 weeks I have had this thing I have read 10 books...craziness. So with that, I bid you happy reading and everyone I know will be getting one of these for their birthday over the next year.

Stupid Computer Virus

I really should know better... but those worms finally got me. After all these years, over a decade of awesomeness of not getting caught by one of those worms... After all years of laughing at the misfortune of others...

I was stupid enough to click on the attachment in an unknown email.

It wiped out all my apps and some of my local data. I quickly unplugged the backup hard drive once I realized what was happening so it didn't get my most precious data... years of electronic tax returns and 7 years worth of photos. Panicking I tried shutting down my computer and rebooting...no dice...I started sweating at the thought of having to wake up Forrest at 6 in the morning to fix the computer...less dice...desperately I tried to navigate the computer as a series of pop up windows kept appearing in quick succession after another... Until I came upon the "backup utility"

I never thought I'd say this but "Thank You Microsoft Backup Restore Utility for saving my bacon. I restored to sometime a week before and was back online with all my apps and about 90% of my data."

Lesson learned...no more clicking on email attachments (even from the USPS - I know!) and keeping some Windows around just because :)