Firecrackers, foil, and other bling...

Wow, this year has been flying by!

July has gone by in a whirlwind as much as any other month! We started it off by visiting family in Florida. Had a good time catching up, eating mum's cooking, playing with cats, and all that good stuff.

Then onto Atlanta, to watch AP in the Summer National Fencing Tournament! While I'm still not sure that I understand all the rules, it was quite interesting and entertaining to watch. While our stay in the Peach City was brief, we didn't miss out on a chance to get a few good meals in! Soul Vegetarian, World Peace Cafe, and Mellow Mushroom were the highlights here. Oh, and the fabulous breakfast buffet at our hotel!

Toward the end of the month, I went to the Silpada Designs National Conference in Kansas City. What a blast! The keynote speaker, Amanda Gore was not just hilarious, but insightful & inspiring. I will be picking up her book The Gospel of Joy, and am thrilled to find part of her prior speaking engagements on YouTube. This is a good one, which is similar to part of what she did for us.

This was also a great opportunity to learn more about Silpada, bond with Silpada ladies, learn about the new relationship with Avon, and experience that mania of New Jewelry Preview Night!

And already a week into August, time is not slowing down! More to come!

zootzootzoot!
-Moxie

Catching Up

As I mentioned in the last post, this year has still had a way with making time fly. It is practically half way through the year, which is a good milestone to check-in and reflect on progress & activities.

From a work perspective, I am really enjoying what I do (since I moved into a new role in January). However, I am spending many more hours at work (or doing work/thinking about work, outside of work) than I would like. Furthermore, I'm not sure that I'm as far along with the goals I set at the beginning of the year as I would like to be. Not that they've been derailed--it just is a glaring reminder to be more focused on these accomplishments for the second half of the year.


On a more fun note, I've been trying to find more fun & thrifty activities to do outside of the house. Since we're both homebodies, getting motivated to go out and do something can sometimes feel like herding cats. As you can imagine, one cat herding another cat isn't the most productive. But, as a result of this endeavor, we have gotten a membership to the Houston Zoo! Last week, we went to see the new baby elephant--Baylor. He is adorable!

You can read more about Baylor on his website here, and I highly recommend watching the video of Baylor playing in his kiddie pool at Trunk Tales, the Houston Zoo Elephant Blog.

Baylor helping his artist mama, Shanti, paint a picture:

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da...

A quarter of 2010 has already passed us by. This year seems to be passing at an unusually high rate of speed!

My secular mind associates holidays primarily with food. Living in the States, hot cross buns only come once a year. So much for fasting during Lent, I'm too busy gorging on hot cross buns that I had to wait 11 months to enjoy!

Speaking of Easter food, I thought these little Peep sushi guys were adorable! How creative, too! If for some reason I were throwing an Easter party, these would land on the menu, for sure. The Peeps pizza, however, would not make the cut.

Where do the weekends go?

It was another weekend that went by faster than I can remember. However, if the point of a weekend is to recuperate from the week & refresh in preparation for the next workweek, I think I succeeded.

The highlight of the weekend was attending the Bayou City Art Festival today. The weather was almost perfect (just a tad too windy, which made the shady areas a little cool for my liking) and it was an healthy way to be entertained while getting a breathe of fresh air at the same time. This was my second year attending the event, and I recognized a good number of artists from last time. My awesome loot from the Festival is a fantastic keyring made from an old fork. That's right, a fork! I am head over heels for my fork new keyring. While I can't afford, nor have room for, many of the lovely pieces I spied at the Art Festival, I can say that there is something for almost any budget, taste, and age at this event, and would highly recommend it to anyone.

This upcoming week will be a busy one at work.. LOTs of meetings, le sigh. I am already in eager anticipation of next weekend!

P.s. Here's one of my favorites from the art show:

Life on the other side...

This has been the week of retirement parties. After a large reoranization at work, a large group of people are retiring at the end of March. Some of them, I knew better than others, but all of these events were equally touching. It is incredible to see the relationships people have made and kept over the years. I am impressed of the stories about careers intertwined and friendships that have existed for longer than my total years on this planet.

I only hope that when it's my turn to retire, I can find half as many people to say such nice things about me.