Maui Wowie Update
Mood:  happy

aloha all! we're having a wonderful time in maui :) unfortunately the weather isn't all that it could be (lots of rain...that's what we get for coming at the rainy season), but it's always warm, which has been great. here's a little recap of what we've been up to.

saturday: after many long flights, we arrived on maui, waited in a long line for our rental car, drove around for an hour looking for the condo, then fell immediately to sleep after we found it.

sunday: woke up at 5:50 am to the sound of what seemed like birds being massacred outside our window. apparantly the birds need to scream at the top of their lungs as soon as the sun might be coming up sometime soon. after a strong cup of coffee...went for a walk by the ocean, which is just a hop skip jump from our condo, then for a nice brekky complete with feral chicken running around. then drove around for a bit and went shopping (b/c it was raining), then had delicious thai dinner.

monday: woke up to birds. drove up to haleakala, the not-currently erupting volcano, because we heard that the view was supposed to be amazing...sadly, we didn't get to find out b/c it was soooo foggy and rainy that we couldn't see a thing. we decided to chill in the car for awhile (we're trying to embrace hawaii time) and see if it cleared...sadly, it got worse. so we drove the 2 hours back to town without seeing the supposedly amazing view of the crater. spent the afternoon in lahaina - adorable town! we had drinks by the water and then yummy burgers (veggie for me) at a diner before heading home.

tuesday: woke up at the crack of dawn, to birds, again. e watched the weather and decided that we'd have better luck at the volcano today, so we headed back up to haleakala...today there was an awesome view! photo below. we didn't walk all the way down into the crater though b/c it was too foggy, but we did pass some horseback riders on their way down. next time we come to town i want to do that :) lots of people also bike down...we decided that two drives up was enough haleakala for us :) then we actually laid out by the beach while it was sunny for a couple hours, and we even took a dip in the ocean. it was wonderful! now it's raining, so e and i are enjoying some bevs out on the lanai and tomorrow we're going to do the drive to hana.

will write more soon.

aloha,
jwm

Forgive me!
Mood:  spacey
i heartily apologize for my absence from the blog. but if you're a frequent checker, you'll be pleased to see a new entry today :)

big news: i sold my first column (with the assistance of my agent, papa) to town & gown magazine in state college. it will appear in may, so keep your eyes out for it!

bigger news: e and i are now the proud parents of one charlie pace mastin - a 1 1/2 year old pomeranian. he is a lovely pup and we've been enjoying his company very much. we're going to miss him terribly when we're in hawaii next week, but he'll be staying with some of his puppy relatives while we're away, so i think he'll be pretty happy.

cheers,
jwm

Yikes
Mood:  a-ok
i realize that i've been a terrible blog-slacker. if you've been checking in daily, i apologize...now that i've been trying to get my freelance writing going, i've been writing other things everyday, and sometimes the blog falls off the list :( pout.

so that pretty much sums up all of what i did last week. on friday i went to see the dr and ask him about my many maladies. i told him that i'm only 26, so i shouldn't be falling apart. he agreed, but said that most of my aches and pains are just going to have to work themselves out. but he did refer me to the "foot guy" to have a look at my bunion, which he assures me i won't be able to do anything about either. i appreciated his honesty. we'll see what the foot guy says - i don't see him for another month.

friday night we took julie out for b-day dinner at figlio - delicious! and saturday night, went out with many ladies on marni and janine's party bus. quite the evening. i think i'll leave the rest of that one off the blog though...too much to tell and most of it embarrassing ;)

yesterday, since e and i were both feeling a bit exhausted from partying until the wee hours of the morning, we hunkered down, and thanks to the miracle of technology, watched all of the episodes from this season of "lost." we were going to wait until they came out on dvd...but we're just not that patient. so we downloaded them off of itunes. now we're all caught up. i'm sure that those of you who ever watch tv with me will be happy - now i won't cover my ears and go "nananana" loudly at every promo for the upcoming lost ep :)

cheers,
jwm

ps it's aids walk time again. i've sent out some emails, but if you're interested in walking with us, or making a donation, or you just want to learn more about it, check out my aids walk page.

http://register.mnaidsproject.org/site/TR?px=1038302&pg=personal&fr_id=1040&et=ZQKYtONFYM15znbtnW91ow..&s_tafId=2610

Cheap vodka + foot pain = bitch
Mood:  caffeinated
good morning all...so e and i have been wexler-sitting over the weekend. we WERE at our house with him until he had a full scale freak out lasting about a day and we decided that he needed to come home to sandy's, where he has been totally fine. i think he was afraid that we were some sort of puppy prison camp.

friday night i retrieved my broken (now fixed) fabulous ugg boot from the repair guy...ah, foot relief...and met marni and casey for drinks at the local, joined later by brother-in-law steve and some HS pals of marni's...unfortunately, in an effort to stay more alert, i had switched from stella to red bull/vodkas (shelf vodkas), and the results were less than pleasant. i quickly spiralled down the cranky staircase and plunged into the dungeon of bitchiness. i was removed from the venue, fed doritos, and sent straight to bed to think about what i did...or not really :) anywho: sorry monkey...next time i'll have sparkling wine...it makes my converstaion more sparkly :)

on saturday, we continued to unpack the many things that we still have in boxes at the house...it's a mess! and there are so many renovations that we want to do...ah, home ownership, such a wonderful pain in the ass. then last night, we watched two discs of "lost," since e hasn't seen them, and he's totally hooked now. he says that he can't wait for the netflix to bring the rest of the discs, so i guess that we may own them before too long...

today we'll be doing more unpacking at the house, and we're going to print me up some business cards. since i can't find any jobs that i like (or that seem to be interested in interveiwing me), i'm going to make more of an effort to get myself published...and in true me fashion, i believe that the best way to think of myself as a writer, is to have cards that say "hey mr. according to this card, i'm a writer." i hang out with too many business people. but i guess it's just like when i quit smoking...my dad said "the first step is to say 'i'm a non-smoker."

cheers,
jwm

Home again!
Mood:  happy
so e and i are officially back in our house! hooray! we've been settling in nicely...we got the cable hooked up today, which is not working so well, so now they need to come back tomorrow. ugh. but we have internet at the house now, so i am reachable again...i'm sure that you noticed that i was out of the computer loop for almost 24 hours! yikes! my lifeline! ;)

in other news...i finally got my drivers license. it only took 3 months. stupid minnesota. the pic isn't so cute, but at least i don't have to tote around my license with the hole in it and the little yellow paper that says that it's okay for me to be carrying a license with a hole in it.

i've been applying for work, but so far no luck. although i do have my resume on monster, and have a couple of interested companies...i'm just not interested in working for the army...but in the event that i job i want calls me, i have a new suit, which is being altered as we speak.

tomorrow, before the cable guy comes again, i'm headed downtown to get my ugg boots fixed...the zipper is coming loose :( which makes me very sad, since they are the comfiest things in the entire world! which i especially need now that i seem to have developed a large, hideous bunion on my right foot...it's fairly excruciating in tight shoes...i really need to see a paediatrist...maybe i'll call one tomorrow...

hope that you're all having nice valentine's days!

cheers,
jwm

Traveling
Mood:  caffeinated
today we set out for the wild, white yonder. we're almost all packed, and the car has very little room to spare, even with the cargo hold we got for the roof rack. we're setting out at noon today so that we don't hit chicago at rush hour, and then we'll stay somewhere for the night and get into mpls sometime tomorrow.

we'll be staying with sandy for a couple days until kirk can work out the kinks in his living sitch. we're really looking forward to getting back into the house! and getting a puppy! for those of you who knew that we were going to look at georgie, the jack russell terrier...we decided not to get him. there was another family interested, and we thought that it would be less traumatic for him to stay in town, rather than drive for 2 days with people he didn't know and then stay in different places. it's okay, he'll be well taken care of. and we'll find our own special friend sometime soon.

if you're bored in the next 2 days, give us a call...aside from a bill bryson book on cd, we'll have plenty of time to chat.

cheers and see some of you shortly,
jwm

Head Trauma
Mood:  caffeinated
we're back from wild, wonderful, west virginia...mostly the weekend was relaxing; hiking around in the unseasonably warm weather, and e didn't have all that much work to do. mostly he just had to check in on the crew twice a day. so we got to hang out together. i hear that some married people do that fairly often...strange.

the most eventful part of the trip was the first five minutes after arriving in west virginny. we stopped at a bp so that e could call ray and arrange to meet. while e was doing that, i figured that i would pop into the bp to use the ladies room and get some gum, since we would then be driving around the site for a couple hours...did i mention that it was pretty much a blizzard up there? it was sooo windy and the snow was blowing everywhere.

on my way back to the car, my boot slipped on the ice and i landed face first on the hard parking lot, broke my glasses, and was covered in blood. e, thinking that i'd just slipped and landed on my butt, hopped out of the car to help me up, only to find me shrieking and holding my bloody head. since i broke my glasses, and my eye was covered in blood, when e said "it's bad," i thought that perhaps my eye had popped out. luckily this wasn't the case. it hurt so badly and there was so much blood, i thought that i had some sort of severe head trauma and insisted on going to see a doctor. to which e calmly responded, was not all that easy to do in darkest west virginia. apparantly the nearest medical attention was 15 minutes away. after he assured me that there wasn't a gaping hole in my head, i agreed to the drive and held some tissues to my bloody head, feeling nausiated and refusing to look at the injury, all the way.

happily, e's memory was correct, there WAS a clinic in davis...but they didn't open until 11am, and it was now 930. luckily it was right next to a pharmacy, where we were able to purchase some band-aids, neosporin and tylenol...which i realized that i actually had some of in my purse already...stupid head injury! the people there were very nice and helped me find things, since e went outside to take a call from ray (reception is terribly out in the woods and they'd been trying to connect for over an hour), and my glasses were brokent, so i couldn't see anything. the girl was very nice to let me follow her around the store and hand things to me.

e thought that it might make me feel better to actually LOOK at what he now described as a tiny scratch, which was infuriating, since it hurt like a *&&^%, "how can it be that small?! it's bleeding like a bad bruce campbell movie over here!" but i gave in and looked in the mirror...he was right. the spurty, horror movie blood was coming out of a cut that was MAYBE a half inch long. amazing. terrifying. anywho...since we couldn't get in to see a doctor for awhile anyway, we went to meet ray and get a tour of the site...i was not thrilled about this, as my head was aching all the way and i was still a little slow and confused...oh, and the site is boring. but at least i had some pain killers and a band-aid. and e had cleaned me up with some water and napkins from our burger king brekky...later i would regret that, as the oil from the napkins caused me to break out a couple days later.

after an interminably long time, we were finally on our way to the condo, where i could put my contacts in, so that i could see. and then see the doctor. happily i was able to get in really quickly, even though i was assured that it would "be awhile." west virginia time is just different than regular time. and the doc said that i didn't need stitches. he shot me up with some lydacane, which was LOVELY (after the pain of the needles peircing the side of the owey subsided) and fixed me up with a compression bandage to help it heal nicely to minimalize scarring. he was most certainly a small town doctor - he had to run around all up and down the hall to get all the supplies he needed to fix me up. after i was all patched up, i felt much better, aside from my aching head, of course...the rest of the weekend, women would look at e as if to say "you bastard, why'd you hit the pretty little girl?" one girl even asked him...he didn't care for it.

i'm gonna knock you out,
jwm

This message will self-destruct if returned to sender
Mood:  caffeinated
happy wednesday, blog-reading people. i hope that you all checked out the pic of the jack russell that rach posted to the comments. we're going to meet him this evening to see if we'd make a compatible family. since we've both been around jack russells, we think that it should be a good fit...as long as he likes us...

in other news, i finally spoke to a real, live person at the minn. dmv...apparantly, since we were having our mail forwarded, it was returned to sender, b/c licenses can't be forwarded...i'm still not exactly clear on why it wasn't just delivered to the house then, but whatever. anyway, i asked if i could just pick it up, but they don't do that either. it has to be mailed to your address to make sure that you aren't lying about where you live. i was tempted to ask why anyone would lie about living in OUR neighborhood, but i digress. as soon as my face appeared back in their mailbox, it was destroyed. so now i have to ask them to reprint it and send it again. i'm going to wait until after we cancel our forwarding though...to make sure that i don't get destroyed all over again. after all this waiting, my picture had better rock!

cheers,
jwm

ps i'm off to west virginia with my husband tomorrow morning. he has to babysit the crew over the weekend while someone is out of town. so we're going to chill and drink cocoa in the ski lodge.

S-T-E-E-L-E-R-S Steelers are the very best!
Mood:  happy
go steelers! did everybody see the game yesterday?! we're going to the superbowl! finally, a superbowl that i actually care about...it's been years.

anywho...the commercial shooting went just fine yesterday, although we didn't actually do OUR wedding dance. the director mostly just wanted us to dance eighth grade stayle in a circle and smooch, which is fine. if you live in the state college area, look for the new hoag's ad coming out sometime in the near future.

today is gross and snowy. e headed back to finish the paperwork for his project, but they're finally done with the erection! hee hee. so we'll be heading back to mpls in the first few days of feb.

cheers,
jwm

Feeling better, and much much worse
Mood:  sad
well, i seem to have triumphed over the cold, but mort has triumphed over me...we lost our battle for maui. e will NOT be working on that project. so for everyone who wanted to come and visit us and stay in the extra room, i'm afraid that dream is over. so that we don't mutiny, mort has agreed to provide us with two plane tix and free use of the condo in march...although this sounds fantastic, the thought of february in mpls without having had a summer is weep-inducing, as is not being able to spend as much time there, of course. but this way it's a real vacay, which is nice. i don't often get my husband all to myself.

but i digress...off to mpls we go! on the fifth day, look to the east...

cheers,
jwm