Happy Birthday to me!

What a fabulous birthday it was! I got emails, phone calls and cards, then came the best part. I got a handmade special dinner. Ms. FL made me coconut shrimp, avocado and cucumber soup, rice with asparagus, tasty salmon and a fabulous lemon meringue pie - my favorite! I am excited to go hang out with friends tonight. It was a great birthday. The only challenge was some house complications. That was remedied today as we bought all the paint for our new house and it is Non-VOC. Yay! Thank you Sherwin Williams for the 30% discount.

We are looking forward to closing next week, though it is scary to be owning our own house.

Will have to post pictures of the new place soon.

Being in the 30's is great. Oh and I heard the new Indiana Jones movie was good too.

Indiana Jones tidbit:

on Wednesday, for the midnight show, they sold over 4 million in tickets.

Nia is awesome

Nia is not a new religion, however, the teacher does kind of gives us a small buddhist mediation at the end of every class.

This class is a wonderful find. It is a combo of yoga, tae kwon do, dance and aerobics that kicks your butt everytime. I feel like I am getting rewarded for dancing and playing by getting healthy without the pain. I enjoy training for the marathon, but I don't complain about going to Nia. If you have a YMCA check it out.

We did tai kwon do with one of our friends in seminary. One of the great things about that was feeling empowered, so if you need that and to dance like a butterfly this is it.

If you can't find this check out: interplay - www.interplay.org. This is like therapy, but cheaper and more fun. You dance through your stuff. For an academic, like me, I needed this to get out of my head.

Friends and water - things for survival

We have had one of our friends from seminary visiting this week and it has been lovely! It is so nice to hang out with people who know you and talk about life outside of Atlanta. We have more and more friends here, but it really wasn't until she came to visit that we realized how much we miss our friends. Hey and it was a great excuse to enjoy eating out at some of our favorite places.

Surprisingly, we have actually had more friends visit us here in Atlanta than in SF. How that works I don't understand. Ahh...the beautiful bay.

Only a couple more months and we will be out of this land locked city and enjoying the smell of water wafting through the air and the sound of waves crashing. Even my vacation bible school takes place in the desert. Good thing our new house has a big tub. I can pretend that is my own private lake (after the drought is over).

All that said, we are thriving in atlanta with our new house, great jobs and friends. Life is good even without a big blue ocean out my window. However, Mrs. FL is well aware that our fishy bodies will need to live by water after awhile. Maybe that's what we need in our house - a big picture of the ocean.

All you out there with bodies of water nearby send us a picture and maybe yours will end up in our house?

Little known fact:

I didn't know this, but no wonder I can do so well in atlanta...
70% of our body is water.

Kenutcky Derby

What a traumatic ending to this famous race! Less than a minute after the race was over the second place finisher was already being euthanized. It just seemed awful that this amazing creature who gave everything she had couldn't even get her medal or walk to the paddock. I guess she did die doing what she loved, but it just seemed unfair. She had one the oaks, the race the day before, and now it was over.

I think Mrs. Fishy Lady and I were the only people in our neighborhood watching, so I thought I might post about this moment so that "Eight Belles" might be remembered.

I may not be from Kentucky, but how can you not appreciate a sport where in less than 3 minutes someone can win millions of dollars. Kids in Kentucky learn valuable math skills due to the derby. It may seem silly, but you know you want to wear that bedazzled hat that you have in your closet for such a special day.

And speaking of special days, let's enjoy a margarita! Happy Cinco de Mayo!

House Hunters makes it look easy

So if you are addicted to HGTV like Mrs. Fishy Lady and I you know what I am talking about when I say "House Hunters". It used to be one of our favorite shows, but as you know if you've bought a house before that buying a house just isn't as easy as picking house number 1, 2 or 3. It's not about whether you like the ranch style or not. The real question is can I fix all the repairs? Sure we can make the monthly payments (another trap of deception as there are many monthly payments within your monthly house payment, like PMI, taxes, etc), but you clear out another whole lot of trees and level the backyard? Sure, when we hit the lottery, but who really wants to pay rent when you can pay mortgage and (hopefully) make some money in 5-10 years?

I wish there was some class offered in college on buying a house, hey even in seminary. I know there are free-mortgage classes, but in our town those are only for folk who barely make enough money to buy a shack.

So hopefully my next post will be good news about the house, but now it seems like who wants all the headaches.