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By Amber, on September 25, 2011, at 10:00 pm My web host got hacked today and my site looked like this for a little while:
Fortunately, they fixed it. Not everyone was impressed by the hacker. I didn’t lose any data and I didn’t have to do anything to restore my site, but I’m making a mental note to back up my stuff more often. If I’d had to rely on my last manual backup, I’d have been in a world of hurt! Kudos to InMotion.
In unrelated news, I’m off to Chicago again tomorrow. Another going-to-Chicago-without-going-to-Chicago trip. My poor officemate, who just moved to Houston from Chicago, has to go there this week for the same seminar I’m attending, come back to Houston, and then go back the following week. I asked him, “Aren’t you glad you transferred to Houston so you don’t have to be in Chicago anymore?”
One of things about living in Houston is that, by September, you can’t really remember what temperatures below 90F feel like. It makes packing for other parts of the country tricky. I know I’ll be cold, so I should pack warm clothes. On the other hand, I know that 50s-60s aren’t really THAT cold. On the third hand, I know that what 50s-60s feels like to me is not what it feels like to most of the country. So after two days of a clothing merry-go-round, I finally made peace with the idea that I’ll be wearing a sweater and a jacket, and Chicagoans will be wearing shorts — and now my suitcase is ready to go.
Finally, I’m putting this here just so I can pull it up and enjoy it any time I need to this week:
I’ll probably be too busy to post this week — seminars all day, and then someone has to look out for the old guys who think they can out-drink the young bucks after dinner. Talk to you soon!
By Amber, on September 22, 2011, at 9:25 pm 
Tonight I had the opportunity to judge at another area’s humorous speech/table topics contest! The contestants were few, but excellent. It is always such fun to hear speakers from other clubs, because you never know when you are going to be blown away by somebody’s ability or perspective. I also find my social circle broadening a little with each event. Just tonight I got to talking with someone who is a member of a club that one of my fellow club members also belongs to (I’m sure she likes us best, of course!) and I seem to have invited him to come hear me speak in two weeks. Wait, did I really do that? See, Toastmasters will make you do crazy things.
This has been a rough but rewarding week. My boss has had me double- and triple-scheduled on several days in a row, and sometimes I wonder how I’ll get everything done, but the team is great and there is lots of support. Tonight on my way out of the building, I ran into someone from management who told me he liked something I had written about a new software tool that we’ll be using. I was confused because I had only sent it to my boss — I wanted him to review it so I could send it to the team. He told me that he had gotten it not from my boss, but from my boss’s boss, who wrote some very kind words about it. Let’s just say my last job wasn’t quite like that!
Oh, also, I feel like I am perpetually behind on posting my 365 Project photos, and according to the internet my photo count is behind by a day, AND I know for a fact that I missed yesterday, so right now I am really feeling the pain. For a couple months I have been casually mulling whether I will do this again next year, and I think the universe is trying to tell me no. Maybe the 52 Project would be better. I’m pretty sure I can remember to take a photo once a week. Failing that, I suppose I could move on to the 12 Project…
Have a great weekend! I know I’m ready for it. I think I can survive one more day in this whirlwind!
By Amber, on September 20, 2011, at 9:51 pm 
That would be Robert and Mario taking home the gold from both events at our Toastmasters area contest! (The rest of us are just hoping some of their success will rub off if we stand close enough.) This photo will go nicely on the new site and blog that we are launching!
I had forgotten how much fun contest season is (especially if you’re not competing!). I have another area contest to attend this week, and I haven’t decided whether I’ll attend the division contest, where Robert and Mario will vie for a spot at the district contest (it’s awfully early on a Saturday).
Do you have anything fun planned this week?
By Amber, on September 18, 2011, at 10:00 pm You know what we had this weekend? Rain! A drop in the bucket of this year’s terrible drought, to be sure — but good, hard rain nonetheless. We took the car through the carwash today and were rewarded with another little sprinkle of rain for our effort.
Oh, we also had these beautiful ribeyes:
 Our favorite butcher had tweeted about them on Thursday and although they sounded wonderful, I was awfully tired at the end of the day and figured they were probably gone anyway. When they were mentioned again on Friday morning, I started planning my day around them (following Revival’s tweets has made me hungry non-stop and may end up being very expensive). We didn’t have any sides, so while I was there I picked up some extremely long beans:
 And of course, the most important part of any meal:
 I needed some lunch anyway, so I also brought home one of these, which I immediately enjoyed with great gusto:
The dog is supposed to be served with relish, but I don’t like anything on my meat except cheese or more meat. Figured the house-made chicharrones were close enough to meat, so I allowed them. Oh, and if you’ve never have Zapp’s chips, you should rectify that.
How did your weekend taste?
By Amber, on September 15, 2011, at 10:00 pm A few snaps from last weekend out at my parents’ place, a final hurrah before the pool gets too cold for those of us who did not grow up swimming in the Puget Sound (that would be everyone but Mark). There were the usual sights:
The usual ridiculously good food — observe Mark, eating my sister’s homemade steak sauce:
And these buttery s’mores bars that my mom baked with dark chocolate and powdered chipotle (they didn’t last long):
And then there was the dove. Apparently it’s dove season, and those poor dumb birds keep flying into my parents’ windows and dying. One struck right after Saturday’s dinner, and my sister objected to our father’s intent to throw the carcass in the trash. I agreed to help her bury it out in the bone-dry dirt, but I told her that she would have to pick the bird up and I would do the digging. This was the gear she assembled for dove disposal duty:
Note the work gloves, paper plate, saran wrap and tissues. My mom asked, “What’s the beer for?” Heather’s reply: “For me.”
And of course, in a thread from a tale as old as time, Dad was the one who buried that dove.
By Amber, on September 13, 2011, at 10:35 pm My sister and I were sitting on chaise lounges by our parents’ pool this weekend, a small iron table between us. “There’s a spider under the table,” she observed. It was hanging beneath the corner closest to me, inches away but minding its own business. Spiders kind of freak me out for some reason, but this one was so uninterested in me that after I made a mental note to come back with a camera, I proceeded to read and doze for several more hours.
When I finally grabbed my camera at the end of the afternoon, this was the only shot I got before the spider tucked up tight beneath the table and hid from view:
The next day, the spider was back in its spot and I seized the opportunity to snap away. Hey, wait — does something about this spider seem funny to you?
Oh. Okay, then.
I have to say, I liked her company better than that of the scorpion I found in the guest room. Is my parents’ house dangerous, or what?
By Amber, on September 11, 2011, at 11:24 pm 
Forgive me for the lack of content tonight, but I’m finally home for the first time in almost a week! Last Monday I flew to Illinois, and on Thursday night I flew from Illinois into Austin. Mark picked me up at the Austin airport and we headed to my parents’ house. I have the usual flora, fauna, and general silliness to share with you, but it will have to wait while I unpack and give Sweet Pea some attention.
I hope you had a great weekend, too!
By Amber, on September 8, 2011, at 10:00 pm I didn’t really go to Chicago; I went to Cicero. But I could (barely) see Chicago from my hotel room:
I was short on time and energy so I didn’t make it into the city on this trip. Fortunately, Chicago pizza has reached Cicero, so I did get to enjoy that and a side of perfect early-autumn weather. By the time you read this, I will be somewhere over Texas. Have a great weekend!
By Amber, on September 6, 2011, at 7:38 pm I know I have mentioned that I am really bad at using up beauty products. The closer I get to the end of the container, the sloooower my consumption becomes. This weird tendency doesn’t just apply to beauty products, which is probably why, at 207 pages, it took me about four weeks to read what is undoubtedly the most exciting book I have read in years (btw, that is the author’s referral link, not mine). I raced through the first half and then savored the second, ever more slowly, until I had to take a plane to Chicago and decided I would use that time to close the deal.
Maybe you hate public speaking and think this topic has nothing to do with your life and that Toastmasters has finally sent me off the deep end (possible), but if you ever present information to groups of people — especially if any of them are strangers, and especially especially if you have ever sat through a horrendous presentation and wish not to be that speaker – you will benefit from this book. Even if you only buy it for the mini-chapters in the back (‘What to do if your talk sucks,’ ‘What to do when things go wrong,’ ‘You can’t do worse than this’), it will be $11-17 well-spent.
Or maybe you are already a Toastmaster or someone else who presents often, in which case you know how just a few speeches can make you think, ‘this stuff is easy,’ and you are always excited about your next speech and constantly thinking about what you’re going to do to make it terrific. If that’s you, this book will make you want to write five more speeches tout de suite, just so you can practice all of Berkun’s tips.
A word of warning to the people in the latter category, however: Berkun has a lengthy, ranked bibliography in the back, and you’re going to want at least a few of those titles. AND the rest of Berkun’s books. Might as well buy enough to get free shipping, right?
Read a sample chapter
Read Scott’s blog
If you do read it, let me know what you think!
By Amber, on September 4, 2011, at 10:17 pm Our walls are pretty bare. In the three years in this house, we have hung more decorations in our guest room than in the rest of the house combined. The total outside of that room amounts to one painting (a seashore scene by my grandmother’s friend) and one framed poster (a panoramic view of Washington, D.C., my sorta-hometown).
Mark suggested a while back that we decorate with some of the photos that I’ve taken, and I started to compile some of my favorite shots to choose from. I knew I wanted the simplicity and gallery feeling of stretched canvas prints, and we finally ordered some. We hung them in our bedroom this weekend, and we couldn’t be happier with the result:
They came out exactly as I had envisioned, and I can’t believe how much warmer they make the room. Plus they remind me of things we did together — the first and third were taken in Fredericksburg, TX, and the second and fourth were taken in Glacier National Park, MT.
Originally I wanted to use a Houston business to do the prints, but the one I had in mind answered my questions in a way that made me think attention to detail might be an issue, so I ended up using CanvasPress, which is just a few hours away in Round Rock. Their online tool is extremely user-friendly, and they run some great specials on their mailing list (like 20% off this weekend — I am trying to quickly decide what else I can submit for print under the deadline!). They have a first-time customer code (FF25) that gives you 25% off your entire order. I used it and essentially got one print for free. Shipping is pretty reasonable and they arrived very quickly, carefully packed and individually wrapped in plastic.
I’m just so psyched about how these turned out! I’ll have to be careful or pretty soon we may have no empty wall space left at all.
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