waking up is hard to do

i'm the first one to admit that i'm lazy. i love sleep, and sunday nights are generally dedicated to the cause of getting to bed early. for some reason, last night, i flouted my own rules. there was an oscar party out in red hook, and i couldn't help but attend... despite the knowledge that the oscars never end before 11:30pm et. so here i am, monday morning, utilizing every ounce of self-restraint to keep my eyes open and my head off of my desk. this doesn't leave much cognitive-control left to actually accomplish any work, but it does at least allow for the appearance of industriousness.

this morning i woke up to this. i guess "nurse with wound" came after "carol king" on my ipod. i don't know, but i was convinced that i had been transported onto the scene of a car crash where roland -- the adorable, psycho kitty from the party the night before -- was hissing his disapproval. i generally like nurse with wound, but waking up to this particular song was the audio equivalent to a bucket of ice-water.

so, as you can see, i finally uploaded my colorado photos. i don't love the exposure on these, but at least you can see how pretty and snowy it was...

eco-travel

so, you may have gathered that i travel a lot. this is not because i am a jet-setting kind of woman... since most of the trips are back and forth between houston and new york, but it seems too be the nature of my life. after the guilt of playing the eco-game i mentioned back in november, i decided to pay the $7.32 it cost me to off-set my plane travel to vail this weekend. given the price of airline tickets, $7.32 seems like a small price to pay to ease my eco-guilt.

german mosquitos

after one week in germany, i can tell you, with great certainty, that germany has a lot of mosquitos. i thought houston had a lot of mosquitos, but those puny houston mosqitos have nothing on the larger, darker, german variety. five days later, i can still point out every bite i received as i attempted to sleep inside of my cozy featherbed. my dad even went so far as to buy bug spray for us to wear at night because they also don't seem to have air conditioning in germany. it is therefore necessary to sleep with the window open to avoid melting underneath your featherbed.

despite the nighttime air attacks, we had a wonderful time in germany -- marred only by mil's absence. the moosk clan (sans mil) boarded a evening plane to germany last week in order to witness the nuptials of our german cowboy cousin. the wedding was a 10-hour affair replete with log-cutting, plate-smashing, butterfly-releasing, horseback-riding, disco dancing, and of course plenty of drinking -- these are germans. the highlight was the midnight balloon release (trying not to think of all the red balloon carcasses that would be littering the hilly countryside the next morning), accompanied by sparklers and a hot air balloon release (a mere kilometer from the local nuclear powerplant). unfortunately, i had already put my camera to bed by that point, so i didn't get any photos... it's unfortunate.

the rest of the week was spent visiting relatives and eating... lots of eating. i figure i can recreate the entire trip for mil by taking him to hallo berlin and feeding him meat and spatzle until he explodes. for your non-gustatory enjoyment, i have made a little flickr slideshow of the trip here.

i love my new banner

yesterday, i discovered these brushes through dooce that can do magical things with photoshop (which is magical to begin with). i managed to waste approximately an hour and a half of good work time playing with various photoshop filters and brushes. it's dangerous. i know only a couple of folks still come by here with any degree of regularity, but if either of you want a new banner, let me know. i'd love to make one for you.

in other news, i'm going to houston tomorrow. i'm excited because it means that the temperature will have to be more than 30 degrees. i don't even care if it rains the whole time... wait, scratch that. i do care, but it would still be preferable to this past week of "feels like 2."

yesterday, i was on the subway, and i saw something, and i thought... now this would be a really funny thing to write about on my blog... or at least somewhat funny thing to write about, and by the time i finished thinking all that, the original thought was gone. just like that. amazing.

there and back again

airplanes
Originally uploaded by atb20.

once again, i have allowed for a long stretch of nothingness between posts. to my few remaining loyal readers, i apologize. i had, in fact, thought of you while mil and i waited patiently for our 8am flight to greenville on christmas eve day. i was equipped with my handy-dandy little mo-phone and had typed my tired little thumbs out writing a post about the joys of traveling to newark at 6 in the morning, but alas, i had not yet figured out the intricacies of mo-blogging and the post was lost to the dark recesses of my phone's memory. i think i might have been a bit scarred from that experience and therefore refused to greet my blog for the rest of our travels. overall they were quite lovely... we got to spend time with seldom seen friends and relatives and even share some quality time with one another. i forget how little mil and i see eachother during the school year until we have a nice break like this. i'm afraid i might be getting a bit spoiled.

we're going to hawaii!

we just booked our tickets and condo in kauaii for next summer. woohoo! now if only i could find the job, so we can afford it...