My best friend from junior high just joined Facebook and found me. This is really cool! Her family moved to Vermont, not far away, when I was in 8th grade and we kept in touch via letters and an occasional visit throughout high school. She got married soon after graduation, though, and our lives became so different that we lost touch. Now she's online and I'm so excited to catch up!

( Just for fun )

We have a funny charts section of our monthly analytics newsletter. My boss just suggested I include a link to this. It might be funny, but I'm pretty sure it's not appropriate.

Can I have a new job please?

Tonight I had the privilege of attending a lecture at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences thanks to a kind and generous (and lucky, she won the tickets) former co-worker. The museum is running a many month long exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is huge for this area. I haven't yet been to the exhibit, but tonight's lecture was awesome.

The speaker was a very animated professor Lawrence Schiffman, from NYU. He was great! I couldn't possibly replicate here the many wonderful points he made, but I learned so much about the history of Judaism at the time of the scrolls -- a subject I've been more and more wanting to study.

There are many more lectures coming up as part of this exhibit, and I'm hoping to make it to a couple more (though I might have to pay for the next ones).

From: The Psychology of Happiness: 13 Steps to a Better Life at Get Rich Slowly

I took Chris out to see these people and this thing tonight. In the process we wandered through the new downtown Marriott and found the pristine new underground parking deck. I don't think I'd ever walked around in a parking deck that hadn't yet been opened to cars -- it smelled so clean. It was weird.

We thought we'd find some dessert in City Market, but there was one of those chaotic free concerts going on and we fought our way out of the crowd without stopping.

Certainly the highlight of the night was running into Rich and Ty, but I stopped before begging them to buy back their coffee shop. I miss them.

Happy Friday.

I'd leave this job in a heartbeat if we didn't have so much debt to pay off. Stupid debt. Stupid bad decisions. Stupid boss redoing my work because he asked the wrong question in the first place and would rather do it himself than trust it to me again.

I miss museums. Someone pay me a lot of money to go work at one.

Paul and Arielle
Originally uploaded by ambermae

Chris and I are off to Seattle in a few hours for ariellejuliana's wedding. I'm looking forward to the wedding, of course, but also to seeing my parents and playing tourist in Seattle with Chris, who has never been there. It has been long enough since I lived there that I don't really remember many details about the city, just a few places that really stand out from my 11 months as a resident. I think we'll go on the underground tour, go up into the Space Needle, wander around the Seattle Center, take the monorail, and meander through Pike Place Market. Mostly we're just hoping to have one leisurely day to soak up Seattle before it's time to go home.

My ipod is loaded up with music, podcasts, and even a movie for the long plane ride tonight. Can't wait to be on the other coast!

Good thing I got that raise on the day other people got laid off back in June, because this effects me: N&O parent company to freeze wages for one year

It looks like I now have 3% less incentive to stay here for the next year.

From my company wiki:

"The new iPhone connection software uses Microsoft Active-Sync technology (almost as amazing as Luke 23:12)..."

Proud Godfather
Originally uploaded by ambermae

Once a month my job is to track down stories that may have caused traffic spikes at our 30+ different newspapers. Today I found this: Adam Bender

A few strategic Iron Chef challenges would probably help clean out my overstuffed pantry. Tonight's theme ingredients: rye flour and garlic olive oil. Allez cuisine!

If anyone ever wants to come over and cook with our stuff you're more than welcome. Just be open minded.

I think word about the success of the North Hills farmer's market must be getting out because it seems every week there are new vendors. Sadly, a couple of my favorite vendors have been missing the past couple of weeks. Both the grass fed beef and pork people haven't been there, but the selection had gotten kind of slim toward the end so I wonder if they're just between seasons. The chicken/goat milk lady has been there, though. Last week I bought three whole chickens from her, which should keep me in chicken for a couple of weeks. I hate thawing meat so I don't do it often.

Three weeks ago we picked up a new bakery vendor with the best bread I've had in a while. So far we've bought his french rolls, marble rye, oatmeal sandwich bread, and cinnamon swirl. The cinnamon swirl is so good. This week I forced myself not to buy it because I've been eating it almost every day for the last two weeks. I'll probably turn the last slice into french toast later today. I might replace it with a garlic asiago focaccia habit, but not this week. This morning there was a new cupcake vendor but I avoided her entirely. It's bad enough that I bought a currant cream scone, an almond lavender scone (ate it in the car for breakfast), and a slice of lime coconut buttermilk pie from my usual dessert vendor. I'm hoping the pie lasts til evening so Chris can get a taste, but you never know what might happen between now and then.

This morning there was also a roasted nuts vendor. I dream about chopping up sweet roasted nuts and putting them on salad, but lettuce is scarce these days. I might have to supplement from the grocery store. Because of the general lack of meat at the market I did swing by the Whole Foods and get a small grass fed roast, some ground turkey (they were out of pork), and some fish. Maybe this week I'll be more inspired to cook dinner.

That's the news from here. Emily should be having her baby at any moment, if she hasn't already. In a couple of months I'll be a step godmother.

Many thanks to our friends who relieved us of 26 bottles of booze last night. Your livers and your conversation were most welcome in our home. We'll have to do it again soon!

I wonder if my husband would agree. It probably helped that they didn't have any questions about wanting to knock out walls.

78 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Poll #1224641 Drink all of our beer and liquor
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I was serious about that having people over to drink our liquor and beer thing. Who's in, and what day works best for you?

For my own future reference and for the benefit of anyone else who needs to find Time Warner cable's customer service telephone number: (866) 489-2669. It really shouldn't be this difficult to find information on the internet.