Google Ski Trip

The Google ski trip was a lot of fun, just like last year! Here are a few pictures (with some captions that Chris objects to, but oh well). I always wish in retrospect that I would have taken more pictures of actual skiing, but it never seems like such a good idea when I'm actually on the mountain wearing two layers of gloves and falling over my skiis. :-P

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/GoogleSkiTrip2007

Cat Walk

In January, we took Caprice to the park for a walk for the first time. She seemed to have a good time, although having lived her whole life in small enclosed places, she was very afraid to roam out into the open space and instead stayed very close to the various walls and trees she could find. Sadly, Honey stayed home because she still freaks out really easily.

During this outing, we also found that her camouflage works much better outdoors than it does against our white carpet and white couches. (Okay fine, both the carpet and couches are really more like off-white now, but you get the point.)

Mary(land) Christmas! (And Other Marey Puns)

For Christmas, we visited Chris's parents in Maryland, which was very nice and not really much colder than the Bay Area. Here's a picture of me on the trails in the backyard, notably wearing flip flops because a.) it really wasn't that cold, honest! and b.) well, I guess I *always* wear flip flops.

I am once again blanking out a little on what all happened over Christmas break, especially since family members don't tend to e-mail me about what we just did together so I can have a record of it in my inbox. Silly family members. But here's some highlights that I do remember!

• We played lots of Wii.
• We ate lots of Jessica's delicious Christmas cookies.
  
• We played a game called Winerd, which is a wine-tasting / wine trivia board game. The three wines we chose were made from totally different grapes, in totally different years, and on totally different continents, because we thought we'd make it easy on ourselves. Surprisingly, we got better and better as the game progressed. (Not enough "tasting" squares on the board, if you ask me.)
• We watched Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit and sampled some Wensleydale cheese, which is really tasty!
• We watched SO many DVDs, including new favorite shows, Arrested Development and House.

Lastly, Andrew got me an awesome gift (yes, despite no longer being 12 years old, I still love model horses):

I think the set is called "Arabian Mare and Foal" or something like that. So someone asked, what are you going to name them? They're Arabian, so they should have beautiful Arabian names. I was like, um, can you think of any notable Arab women? I'm thinking to myself, "Uh Golda Meir? D'oh! She's not Arab at all... AND that's a ridiculously terrible pun on Golden Mare". So someone else says "Princess Jasmine! That's all I can think of." So that's her name now, because in our ignorance, we can't think of any other Arabian female names. <sigh>

But the worst is still to come. So what should the foal's name be? Chris chortled and said "IED". So there we have it. Our well-intentioned attempt to give a couple Arabian horses Arabian names, and came up with "Princess Jasmine" and "IED". How terrible are we?

Joining a New Team

Ack, how terrible is this?! Today is July 1, 2007, and my most recent post was about the wedding, which was on July 15, 2006 -- almost a full year ago! Of course, that makes me sound a little more terrible than I actually was, because I do have some post-wedding posts about the kitties and our trip to Kauai. What's *actually* terrible is that I also haven't gotten Chris an anniversary present yet...but that's another story. Maybe I'll have more ideas about that after I finish going through all this history.

So where to start? I left off in September, so I guess I'll start in October?

Well October was a super-exciting and super-refreshing month, because I joined a super-amazing, super-brilliant, and super-funny team (with the super-oxymoronic name, "Local Universal"). One advantage of writing this post eight months late is that, well, we're *launched* now, so it's easy to show you what we did:

Or try this link to see it in action for reals: http://www.google.com/search?q=pizza+palo+alto

Nifty yeah? The total bummer is that now we've launched, one of my rockstar teammates is moving on to another exciting team. It's almost like Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox! (Except the new team doesn't SUCK like the Yankees.) But I guess I remember how thrilled I was to work on new challenges and meet new people, so I can understand. <sniffles regardless>

I think that just about does it for October -- and probably also November and December too, since I have no memory of what happened during those months. I think I just...worked a whole lot?

No that's not totally true. Looking back through my emails, I also:

• Got lots of friend requests on Facebook, apparently.
• Went to Mel's birthday party! (Mel, I still owe you your birthday present! D'oh!)
• Visited SCV for Thanksgiving, where I discovered how fun DDR is (and also how mortifyingly bad I am at it --> hence no pictures).
• Got Chris a Wii for his birthday. (On time, yay!)

This is a picture of him playing Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. Poor original NES, lying by the wayside.

My Favorite Wedding Pictures

It's been three months since my last post, and more appallingly, NINE months since the wedding -- but I finally have a set of my favorite wedding pictures to share! Thank you SO much to all the people who took these wonderful pics and shared them with us (especially Mom, Dad, and Jessica). Our official photographer took some beautiful pictures too, but unfortunately, we're not allowed to post those online.

Anyways, here's my favorite set from family and friends:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/FavoriteWeddingPics

I can't wait to see everyone at the weddings coming up this summer! You know who you are. :-)