Tuesday, March 15, 2005

March Madness

Gabriel gets curious

Gabriel is getting more and more curious. While Patty was walking around the apartment doing something or other, she heard a noise that sounded like the cell phone vibrating. The phone was set to ring, so she went to investigate. She walked in on the scene above. Our little Curious George got bored with his toy keys, walked from the living room to the kitchen where he stopped to pull the towels off the stove handle, which you can see being dragged by his walker along with the keys, and play with a chain hanging off the refrigerator door. He then proceeded to the bathroom, where he learned how to open a drawer. Now, when his mommy was his age, her parents put a yardstick in the cabinet handles. We're not so sure that would work here. We're just going to have to step up the vigilance another notch.

Today was our second annual March Madness Starbucks party. This entails getting a drink at Starbucks and sitting down with articles about the NCAA basketball tournament regions and filling out our brackets. We both ended up with North Carolina winning. We have Oakland University making it to number 64 and Michigan State going out in the second round. Georgia Tech should put up a good fight but go out in the second round. We wouldn't mind being wrong on that one, though, since they are across the street and all. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, Michigan will not be included in the tournament this year.

While we were at Starbucks, Erica called. She said that she and Raul are doing well in Quebec and that she's getting more work as a tutor. Raul is working on his PhD and should be done in a couple of years. We've been thinking of them, since Raul's native Peru has been featured on "The Amazing Race" the past two weeks.

We bought our tickets to DC for April 13-19. We are going to try to get tickets to the first Washington Nationals home game ever for Patty's birthday. It's a birthday tradition for us every April. If we don't get tickets for that, we'll just go to the second game. Independence Air, with which we had a great experience the last time we went to Virginia, is having a sale right now. The tickets were $29 each way! It will be nice to see the family and explore DC a little more than we did last time.

AR7 Watch

Warning: spoilers ahead!

No, really - if you don't want to know what happened, look away right now!

This is your last warning...

Okay, so we were happy to see those two girls go. They will undoubtedly be much happier sitting somewhere adoring each other, without having to worry about pesky Roadblocks and Detours. We are really liking Rob and Amber more and more. They are playing the game well, and Rob is turning out to be really funny. How smart were they to convince other teams to give up the challenge? That was brilliant! Speaking of funny, the two brothers are great fun, and we hope that they stay in the game for a while, even though they're dumb as rocks and will probably be eliminated very soon. Has anyone else noticed that Ron really doesn't like Kelly very much? We like him, but she isn't a very good teammate and seems pretty annoying to boot. Argentina is one of the places on our "must visit" list, and today's show just reinforced its place there. What a beautiful country.

We came up with a few more rules today: when choosing between two tasks, never choose the one that involves searching for something or counting something, and always choose the one in which you have helpers, especially if they're professionals; also, Patty automatically does any task that involves eating.

Note: As of yesterday, our photos are now "clickable," so you can now click on them for a larger version.

Some Photos

Here are some great photos that Snapfish put online today from film.

Gabe at Onslow Beach
Gabriel's first trip to the beach - Onslow Beach

Gabe and Jack at the lodge
Gabe-Luke and Uncle Jack bonding at Camp Lejeune

Laura at the lodge
Laura at the lodge

Gabriel on Grandpa's shoulder
Grandpa gives Gabe a bird's-eye view

Grammie, Gabe, and Aunt Laura on the beach
Gabriel, Grammie, and Aunt Laura on Onslow Beach

Icy branch outside our apartment
A tree outside our apartment the day after an ice storm closed down Atlanta