Catching up

Sorry I've been a slacker, and this'll probably be short. Let's see.

We picked up the Xterra on the 18th. I LOVE IT!

Christmas was good. Saturday we spent the day with Marc's dad's family up in Lacey. Sunday we went to Marc's brother's. There wasn't a ton of gift-exchanging this year, but that's not what the season it about. It was nice just spending time with family.

Monday night and into Tuesday, I got really sick. Fever, sore throat, body aches. So I got a 4 day weekend out of it, but it wasn't the most pleasant way to spend it.

Tomorrow we're heading up to the Seattle area for some skiing and spending time with friends. Have a safe and happy New Year celebration this weekend!

More Hawaii pictures posted

In addition to the slideshows I put on my MySpace page, a bunch more Hawaii pics are now available on Imagestation. We still haven't pulled pics off the big camera, so the sunsets aren't up yet. Enjoy!

Color decision

We're going with White for the Xterra. It looks good. It'll hide scratches well. We can still call it a whale like we did the Rover.

The Rover is SOLD

Our Land Rover sold. A dude from Arizona who's currently in England put a deposit down. He's flying back to AZ from the UK tomorrow, then he flies to Portland Monday morning to complete the transaction and drive the truck back home to AZ. Talk about a lot of travel in a few days...

We didn't really want to, ideally, but we're probably gonna take out a loan for the difference to go ahead and get an Xterra next week. Whenever the Scion sells, we'll be able to pay it off again. Now the big debate is on the color of the X. Silver or White. Decisions, decisions...

Star Wars Exhibit

Since today was my unscheduled/on-call day at work, Marc and I decided to head over to OMSI to check out the Star Wars exhibit. We got in for free (score!) with the corporate membership that my company has and spent a couple hours wandering around the costumes, props, and information about the movie. I got a big kick out of the guy whose job it was to record sounds to reuse as sounds in the movie. He recorded a broken A/C unit in one of his hotel rooms to get a rumble for some of the ships. He recorded L.A. freeway traffic at 2 a.m. through a steel pipe to get the whine of lasers or something. There were tons of things like this that just blew my mind. I was never a big fan of the movies--I can never keep straight who's who or what the heck is going on. But seeing all this stuff was pretty cool.

Coming soon... yet another new vehicle

Last week I came home to a surprise from Marc. He'd put our Land Rover up for sale. As we always expected, we're gonna take a huge hit on it. No one except for another serious wheeler will appreciate the true value of all the modifications. It's sad to think of it going away; it has taken us a lot of places and been a big part of our lives these past five years. The sale of the Rover also led to the sale of the (hindsight is 20/20) Scion we just got over the summer. We've had several bites on the Rover, including a few guys from out of state that are willing, possibly, to fly in, buy it, and drive it home. We also have interest in the Scion.

You might be thinking, "But, wait. If you sell those, you'll only have one car. And you won't have anything for wheeling and camping!" Rest assured. Our initial list of possible replacements included the new four door Wrangler, FJ Cruiser, and a new Xterra. It didn't take long before we ruled out the Wrangler, mostly due to the fact that it's a Jeep. Let me just say that I LOVE the FJ Cruiser. I think it sparks something like I felt when the Xterras were new. They look kinda funky, are still pretty rare, and garner a sense of community with other owners. We test drove one. I liked it. Marc liked it. But it didn't reach out and grab us.

Today we drove a 2007 Xterra. We've been in new model Xterras and even driven them before, but this was somehow different. When we got out, Marc had a perma-grin plastered on his face. I liked it a lot, too. So... we've found our next vehicle. Now if at least one of the others would sell, we could go ahead and get it.

Spider monkey

One morning in Hawaii, Marc and I were at the beach when a family with a thick southern accent (I'm guessing Alabama or Georgia) showed up. Their kids were running around and one little boy in particular was being pretty ornery. My attempt at a paraphrase:
Boy: Why do I have to carry this towel? I don't want to carry the towel. Why can't dad carry the towel?
Mom: Boy, you can carry your own towel. Be a man!
Boy: (Runs around like little boys do making some noise)
Mom: Boy, quit that! You're being a spider monkey!

Two interesting things came from this tidbit of conversation we overheard:
1. The mom calling the boy a spider monkey. I'm not sure why, but this was hilarious to us. We're now using that phrase for anything or anyone that's acting silly or crazy. We call Max a spider monkey quite often.
2. The amazing ability of southerners to turn one syllable words into multiple syllable words. Watching My Name Is Earl tonight reminded me of this when Joy did the same thing. Examples: man = ma-yan (like mayo but "an" at the end instead of "o") and boy = bo-woy.

We're easily amused.

A new sister for Oatmeal

Two years ago, we got two rat sisters. Since Cookie's unfortunate passing last week, Oatmeal was acting unusual. She stopped eating and wasn't too active. We figured that she was probably lonely since her sister was gone. So we got her a new sister. Obviously, the new rat isn't her real blood sister like Cookie was, but Oatmeal seems to appreciate the company. The new baby's name is Raisin. :)

Today Marc did something really nice. He put up Christmas lights outside. The first year we lived in the house, we bought lights and put them up. The next couple of years, we just never got around to it. There are actually quite a few houses decorated in our neighborhood this year, and it's nice to join them.

The other good news today was confirmation that we're receiving bonuses at work. Score! Gotta pay off the credit card for our first-class ticket upgrades somehow!

Home from paradise

We are home from Maui. Coming home from a nice vacation like this is always bittersweet. We had a great time in Hawaii, though by most standards we might have seemed pretty boring. When Marc and I vacation, we generally do it for relaxation, and we don't concern ourselves with packing every day and night full of activities. There's a lot of "going with the flow" and doing whatever we feel like doing when we feel like doing it. We spent most mornings at the Kamaole beaches right across from our condo. Snorkeling was great at Ulua the first couple days we were there, but then it got pretty murky after that. We ate at the condo pretty often to save money, but we did go out for dinner most of the time. Lulu's became our new favorite restaurant for this trip--if you're ever there, try the Magnum P.I. burger. When we weren't snorkeling or playing in the waves, we were ususally basking in the sun. With the exception of my chest, which ALWAYS burns no matter what I do, I didn't get burnt this trip. Amazing.

We did a little shopping, but didn't really buy many souveniers for ourselves or others. We spent most of our time in Kihei, where we lived for the 11 days. One day we flew over to Oahu to visit Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri. I hadn't been there before. It was really neat to see the memorial, but we didn't have enough time to really explore the Missouri before we had to get back to airport. We also spent a morning up in Lahaina--though I wish we could have made a day out of that trip (about 45 minute drive from Kihei) spending a morning at a different beach, eating lunch up there, doing some shopping, and maybe catching dinner there, too. Instead we just window shopped and went back home. We went to the Maui Ocean Center and aquarium, where they have tons of local aquatic life, including a big tiger shark. That's another place I hadn't been to, so that was cool.

And the cherry on top of the sundae: flying first class. No, we didn't shell out the big bucks to buy first class tickets when we made reservations, but when all the first class seats don't sell, you can upgrade to them cheaper. So we splurged on the way down and on the way back. It was NICE. And it will be hard not to do that in the future. Now we can plan ahead and budget for such things before next year's trip.

So, to recap: we flew in style, I read three books, we got nice tans, we completely relaxed, we ate well, we had fun. All in all, it was a good trip. Unfortunately, we came home to some bad news. While we were away, one of our rats, Cookie, died. Her sister Oatmeal is okay; we're not sure what happened to Cookie. Our friend who was checking in on all our animals while we were away found her and kindly wrapped her up and preserved her in the freezer so that we can have a proper burial. This is the first pet Marc and I have lost together, and even though I ended up being allergic to the rats and can't really hold or play with them, it was very sad to lose our sweet little girl. We'll miss you and the funny little clicking noises you made, Cookie!