Saturday

Welcome to the Caribbean!

After hopping 3 planes, 2 delays, a treacherous taxi ride and a ferry; we finally made it to paradise! Cinnamon Bay, St John, US Virgin Islands. D and I never had a honeymoon, so after 7 1/2 years of wedded bliss, we decide it's our turn to to get away. 5 nights camping at Cinnamon Bay, 2 nights at the Marriott resort on St. Thomas. Not too shabby.


With water as clear as a picture window and as warm as a bath, how could you not enjoy yourself? Our first night we set up camp and played on the beach in the moonlight. The breeze envelopes my senses with sweet salt air and the sand is as soft as baker's sugar. No need for sleeping bags here, the air is my blanket. We spend our morning at the local open air cafe, watching the kitchen kitties run from table to table patiently waiting for their share of breakfast.


Snorkeling in this water is like swimming in a divine fish tank. Corals of all shapes and color, fish is bright blues and yellow flit past in their weightless dance. (underwater pictures to come) The ocean floor is teeming with life, even in the shallowest of bays.

The sun can be brutal here and my creamy skin quickly turned red, so... a t-shirt to protect my sizzled shoulders. Unfortunately it left my booty ripe for the suns rays. Ouch!



Kayaked up to our own private beach between Maho Point and Francis Bay. That's Mary Point in the background. Gorgeous and huge sea turtles munch on sea grass on the floor of the bay. Evening walk on the beach, full moon shadows on the white sand. Watching stars wink into existence as high tide washes away all proof of the day, preparing the shore for new discoveries tomorrow.

To be continued...




Tuesday

Finally

9:40pm and I'm leaving work. I guess that's the price you pay for vacation. It'll be worth it.

Almost there...

Sunshine entices me to abandon never-ending responsibilities and frolic through a grass field, picking wildflowers and playing with the breeze.

The taunt of soft waves lapping upon white sand shores, tickle my mind away from paper and electric leashes.

Running my hand along a smooth horse's coat, scents of alfalfa and new hay fill my senses and create visions of riding off into the sunset.

Comic of the Day

This is soo me!

Monday

Hmm...?

The past is just practice...

Comic of the Day


New Awesome Webcomics Here. Thanks Dan!

Sunday

Play Ball!

Saturday was double-header night at the Charlotte Knights stadium. Our new home team, the Knights, played the Toledo Mud Hens. Yes, the same Toledo Mud Hens that Klinger from M.A.S.H. always rooted for! The Knights won the first game and the Dirt Chickens won the second. Proceeds from tickets sales and a silent auction during the game went to Charlotte Radiology to fund breast cancer research, to the tune of over $12,000!
D played his well-earned role as token male
to the group of lovely ladies below.

Andrea, me, Darci and Kiki.
Yes, I am sporting my Padres jersey.
I have to represent, even in the South!

We each got free pink baseballs and ate way too many sweets!
Cotton Candy is a must at all baseball games!

The Knights wore pink jerseys in support of breast cancer research. The jerseys were auctioned during the game to raise additional funds.


Even the Knights mascot, Homer the Dragon, showed his support.

The national anthem was sung by the boys and girls choir from a local elementary school and the crowd sang along. The after game fireworks were awesome and D & I played frisbee in parking lot as we waited for the sea of brakelights to meander on down the road. It was a great night of friends, baseball, sugar-highs, home town hero's, home runs, cheering, hot dogs, booing and people-watching. We're already looking into season tickets. See you at the game!

Friday

Quote for the Day

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,
even though checked by failure...
than to rank those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Stay-at-Home Mom Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

Just for you Britt, From FOXNews...

If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.
That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study released Thursday by Salary.com, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that studies workplace compensation.
The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.
This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.
One stay-at-home mom said the six-figure salary sounds a little low.
"I think a lot of people think we sit and home and have a lot of fun and don't do a lot of work," said Samantha Russell, a Fremont, N.H., mother who left her job as pastry chef to raise two boys, ages 2 and 4. "But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them."
The biggest driver of a mom's theoretical salary is the amount of overtime pay she'd receive for working more than 40 hours a week. The 18,000 moms surveyed about their typical week reported working 94.4 hours — meaning they'd be spending more than half their working hours on overtime.
Working moms reported an average 54.6 hour "mom work week" besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.
Russell agreed her job as a stay-at-home mom is more than full-time. But she said her "job" brings intangible benefits she wouldn't enjoy in the workplace.
"The rewards aren't monetary, but it's a reward knowing that they're safe and happy," Russell said of her sons. "It's worth it all."

Tuesday

Right in My Own Backyard

As D and I enjoyed a peaceful Sunday afternoon in our backyard, I was struck by the lush and beautiful landscape surrounding me. Having spent most of my life in a chaparral desert, Spring growth is new to me. I am continually astounded by how quickly leaves sprout and flowers bloom in this rainforest-like place.

White roses climb, bringing life to an old trellis.

Wild red strawberries dot the green leaves.

New maple saplings reach toward the sun.

Irises and grapevines play with the breeze.

Clover buds shoot up from their lucky beds.

Our forest canopy.

Flowers everywhere!

Symmetry

Pale peach Irises seduce the buzzing bees.

Tiny white blooms peak out from dark green coverings

Queen Cleo reigns.

Princess P.B. commands
in her backyard kingdom.

Reading List

My unquenchable thirst for knowledge and short attention span lead me to devour books with an insatiable appetite. Recently I have had two main focus areas of reading, surrounded by various offshoots. The Classics and Nora Roberts. The Classics feed my needs for knowledge, language, literature, conversation and educational lapses. Nora Roberts fill in my female desires for romance, adventure, struggle and rescue. The steamy scenes certainly don't hurt either. Neither does the fact that I can read one of her books in about 2 days.

To focus on the Classics for a moment, I have been compiling a list that has grown faster than my actual reading has whittled down. I would love to know what your favorite books are, or any recommendations you might have.
Emily's Desired Reading List
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • Catcher in the Rye
  • Little Women
  • Atlas Shrugged
  • Slaughterhouse Five
  • On the Road
  • Moby Dick
  • Emma
  • Catch-22
  • Go Tell It On the Mountain
  • One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • The Bell Jar
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • The Time Machine
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • Dune
  • Beowulf
  • Count of Monte Cristo
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • Lady Chatterley's Lover
  • Women in Love
  • Robinson Crusoe
  • 1984
  • Frankenstein
  • Gone With the Wind
  • Canterbury Tales
  • The Three Musketeers
  • Narnia Series
  • Les Miserables
  • The Odyssey
  • Clash of the Titans
  • Tale of Two Cities
  • A Christmas Carol
  • The Sound and the Fury
  • Sons and Lovers
  • A thousand other books, waiting patiently on the shelf for me to discover.

Come spend some time in another time and place with me.

You never know what you will find.

Friday

Sonnet of the Day


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-William Shakespeare

Painting: "Summer Wind" by Vladimir Volegov