Ashley is being great. She is enjoying finally being completely done with her semester. She just completed an 8.5 page paper to wrap up the last little untied end from Innsbruck. Yahoo to Ashley.

As for me? I’m struggling with the interviews. I love the actual process of interviewing, but I detest the part that makes it actually a legible, pleasant experience for readers. You know, transcribing it from audio to written…

I’m going to try to get back to work now.

This is to Ashley:

Hi Ashley –

I can’t work right now. I’m having a very difficult time focusing on transcribing 47 minutes of interview while you watch The Truth About Cats And Dogs right next to me.

Do you think that you might possibly be able to watch another movie, preferably one that I’ve seen before? I think Indiana Jones would work well.

Thanks!

Jered

I didn’t realize that it had been so long since our last post – two weeks. My apologies. It has been a hectic two weeks – complete with two gigantic drives: 24 hours and 17 hours, some skiing, some ice skating, some hiking, a lot of laughing, a lot of work, a few pictures taken, and two Christmases.

After Ashley finished up her final final on the 16th of December, we packed up our little world and our little big bird, Narc, into the Norris Suburban and started our journey. First stop was Monroe. We got in around 4 in the morning, headed straight to bed, woke up a good long while later, switched cars, then started the BIG drive to Colorado. 16 hours later, we arrived at my family’s abode in Conifer.

We spent the next ten days in Colorado. It was a great time. It was really nice to get a chance to hang out with my family for the first significant amount of time in a long while. We really like Colorado. It’s a great place. We’re really happy with the trip and thankful for everything. I haven’t laughed that much in a good long while. My little brother and sister are at the bare minimum amusing. Vati, Mom, Oma, and Opa are pretty entertaining as well. I think we’re semi-planning another little trip sometime this Summer.

We left Colorado at midnight to close out our Christmas Day in style. The Midwest had been pounded by one of the biggest blizzards on record, so we opted to head south to New Mexico, then over. It was the right choice – we found out later that I70 had been shut down. We did get a solid dose of winter horror near and in Oklahoma City. The roads were littered with wrecked cars – LITTERED. In a ten minute period, I think I saw close to 100 cars in varying states of wrecked. It was frightening.

After a lot of teeth gnashing, sweaty palms, and nervous humming, we made it through and another 7 or so hours later, we made it to Monroe. Phew. We were instantly greeted by a full Norris house, and it was great. It was fun to go from one happy family to another.

We went to bed early that evening – around 730 I think. We woke up 14 hours later. I needed that. I think Ashley wasn’t too upset about it either.

We celebrated Christmas yesterday. It was good fun – great food, lots of laughs, big smiles, good feelings.

I think that gets us caught up. We’ll be here in Monroe for the next almost two weeks, then things start to get busy again. We’ll deal with that later though.

Back to work…

We are having issues at the moment, important, difficult ones.

No, not like Tiger and Elin, much more important and difficult than even that: how do you apportion all of our yummy, scrumptious treats?

I am of the opinion that since I weigh more and do more, I should be entitled to a little bit more than Ashley. 

Ashley responds: A LITTLE BIT? A LITTLE BIT?!?!

She’s referring to my latest culprit. We made a coffee cake. There were nine pieces. I ate seven of them.

Ashley rudely interrupts: BEFORE I EVEN GOT HOME!!!

That seems fair, right? I don’t see what the big deal is.

Now she’s fussing that I eat all of her cereal. It had been sitting there for at least three days. I didn’t want it to spoil or go stale, you know? I’m just trying to help our little family out. I shoulder the immense burden of making sure nothing ever goes bad. It’s hard work.

Seriously, I am a bit, er, greedy, when it comes to treats. I will do better. I promise. I won’t ride my bike again until I get better. 

Ok, I’m better now. Phew, that was tough.

Hahahaha. We’re sitting in bed doing absolutely nothing, getting ready to do absolutely lots. Ashley has a paper and one more final to study for, and I have a house to pack, articles to write, pictures to edit, oh my!

We’re leaving on our 26 hour foray into endurance driving tomorrow. Gosh, we can’t wait.

My new computer came in the mail today. It’s everything I imagined. I’m pretty much done getting all of my programs loaded and running on it, so all that’s left to do is to get back to work I guess. Getting my array of ‘borrowed’ programs running is quite the undertaking, but I haven’t had a single hitch…yet. Very nice.

The computer is small (but not too small), light (but not flimsy), and fast fast fast. I couldn’t ask for much else. I’m going to do a lot of work on this thing over the next couple years. I’m excited about what I’ll create on this machine… I hope the pictures and words will get better and better.

Okey doke, back to work.

Ashley and I are both on Twitter right now. Ashley did it awhile ago, but I just did it. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with it just yet, but it seemed like a good idea-ish.

Anyhow, Ashley is here and I’m here.

In other news, we got the new camera stuff. It was a special moment for me. I’ve been dreaming about the D90 for at least six months. It was a wonderful thing to come home from a great bike ride and see the two boxes stacked up: one with the camera, the other with my 10-20 wide angle lens. I’m pretty over the moon right now.

We have a whole bunch more coming in the mail as well including my new computer. I can’t wait to have a fully functional, powerful, small laptop. It’s going to really change how I do things and how long it takes me to do things.

Bike practice is going really well right now. I’ve been having a lot of fun, riding some great roads, and riding with some great people. Can’t ask for much more than that. I’m busy with a bunch of different writing projects as well. All good news.

Ashley is working hard as the semester winds down. Finals are next week, so she’s enjoying that special time of the semester where things get a bit stressful. She’s celebrating at the moment with a lengthy nap after an all-nighter.

That’s all I’ve got, thanks for reading.

…honorable mention at UGA’s photo contest! Click HERE to see. 

When talking to Dr. Bill Norris, you’re never going to get a simple front or back, or left or right. You will commonly hear terms from the chart below. It would behoove you to know these. We’re not making fun, we love it. We realized we had better learn the terms or we’d always be slightly off when translating directions.