LeahAndMark.com

1. Nepal
2. Tibet
3. India
4. Japan
5. Peru
6. Thailand
7. Laos
8. Turkey
9. Phillipines
10. Italy
11. France
12. New Zealand
13. Australia
14. South Korea
15. Cambodia
16. Malaysia
17. Indonesia
18. Singapore
19. Vietnam
20. Switzerland
21. Fiji
22. Greece
23. Morocco
24. Tunisia
25. Mongolia
26. Spain
27. Iceland
28. Argentina
29. Cuba
30. Denmark
31. Belize
32. Ireland

This is the immediate list of countries that we want are going to visit. Although not in the exact order, I think we’d mostly be okay with this order (of course we haven’t plotted out a logistical plan so you could probably group most of South East Asia all on the same trip, or at least two trips.

Still. We both figured that we needed to at least ‘put it out there’ so that just in case ya know, if someone all powerful (well, with money) sees our list and is like wow these two really enjoy their travels and they don’t just eat at the local equivalent of f*cken AppleBees. I think I should fund one of their trips. Now we just need a paypal button and ummm.. ha. Still. You don’t get what you don’t ask for right? Not that we’re asking. However, the intention must be put out there or else it will never ever ever ever have a chance at becoming reality. This photo set up above is literally One Photo from Each Day we were in China and in order - 24 in all.

Tonight’s episode of No Reservations (with Anthony Bourdain!) covered Japan (well, Tokyo and Kyoto.) I enjoyed this episode a bit. While it’s easy for me to say that his best shows are anything in Asia (true) that’s not always the case. He has some really awesome shows that aren’t in Asia at all. Off the top of my head, San Paolo, Peru, Sicily, Puerto Rico, Mexico/US Border, India, Uzbekistan, French Polynesia, South Carolina, Tuscany, and Loas. That’s my general list of good episodes that take place outside of China/Southeast Asia.

Most of western Europe was pretty boring (London/Edinburgh, Berlin, Iceland, Ireland) - and I generally feel that it’s only a 50/50 chance that any episode in America will be anything more than some contrived setup full of skits that only work by the thinnest of margins - check episodes Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and the latest U.S. Southwest as examples of shows you can skip and not really miss out on anything.

I should write an episode guide. I should. I will. Just watch.

Have any places to add to the list? Tell us!

Aw, our kitties love getting Reiki sessions!  They purrrrr and purrrrrrrr and soak it up.  Happy.

So, today, Mark and I are braving a Wedding Thing with my mom.  It is some event where there are lots of vendors selling Wedding Stuff.  And you can win free things and eat free cake and drink free cocktails, which is the main reason I decided to go.  I’m trying to keep a safe distance from the crazy Wedding People/Industry/Insanity.  But today we might be diving right into the middle of it…  which could be interesting.  So I asked Mark to bring the camera.  Of course.

The people we’ve booked already have been awesome.  But there have been lots of other vendors who… well, let’s just say they cater to a different kind of couple.  Or basically just the bride.  Or the bride’s mom.  And it’s all about “Oh, we can make your dream day come true, and you are going to feel so special and pretty and everyone will love you forever because you will have the BEST wedding day in the history of all time!”

Now, I’m a happy and enthusiastic person.  Most of the time.  But that’s because I’m sincerely happy and enthusiastic about lots of things.  And unless you’re someone I know and love, I don’t get all that jazzed about the minute details of your wedding.  So these uber-excited vendors sort of scare me.  Especially when they e-mail me 3 times in one day and call me at work and try to convince me that my “Special Day” should be entrusted to their loving care.

We have a totally great photographer.  We have laid-back yet very professional DJs.  We have a nice, helpful, chill coordinator.  My dress is being made by a super cool Seattle designer gal, Chrissy Wai-Ching.  (Oh, and I went without the bodice stitching, in case you were wondering.  Now- if y’all know of some really awesome jewelry-makers, let me know.  Preferably independent crafty peoples.)

Everything else… except maybe the cake… is basically up to my mom.  Of course we’ll give input, but I’m letting her gather info/ideas for the decor, invites, flowers, etc.  Cuz she’s good at that stuff - much better than I am at decorating and whatnot.  And because I really don’t want to deal with anymore Flowery Happy Princess-Making Vendors.  Our wedding will be meaningful, special, awesome, fun, memorable… but not a Princess Fairyland $100,000 affair.

And so today, we head off to Wedding CrazyLand.  I hope we emerge alive and intact.  Wish us luck.

P.S.  Nope, it didn’t hurt to get my tragus pierced!  It just hurts a little if I forget about it and poke my ear.  But there aren’t really nerves in that part - try pinching yours really hard, and you’ll see what I mean.

Weekends always seem to blurrrrr. The work week ends, Friday night arrives and on Monday mornings I struggle to remember anything that went on over the past two days. I try to go over it all in my head, trying to follow the time line and put it back into chronological order, but much like our flickr account the photos aren’t organized into sets, they’re not labeled, and they appear at random.

While I am firmly grounded in this agreed upon reality, I fully understand and accept the part where our subconscious struggles to tell the difference (if it knows any at all) and the only divider between our real life and our dreams is that our dreams don’t reoccur as often as our everyday.

Leah and I have different views concerning the weekend. For her, weekends are a chance to do everything else you couldn’t do during the week. For me - they’re a chance to eventually get around to doing those things - if you want to - but if not - they’ll just have to be scheduled in during the work week - just like everything else from everyone else who demands your time (job) - but the weekends are mine. I do not feel guilty about my afternoon naps. I rarely struggle with having not done something on a Saturday afternoon. Errands are not going to fill up my weekend and steal the free time I have to do everything and nothing all at once.

And although worrying thoughts and anxiousness over things let undone do creep in from time to time, I usually fail at beating them back. Because beating them back means that I’m holding onto them and for the most part, I’ve stopped holding onto those types of feelings that sink deep into your core and steal your breath. We didn’t get too much done this past weekend - unpacking/apartment fixup-wise but I think we had a good time. Good food, no real pressures, no real deadlines for anything at all.

We helped run auditions for a talent show - one with a real celebrity comedian emcee’ing (meaning it’s not ANY of the comedians from VH1’s Best Week Ever or I love the [insert decade]) - I just took photos and Leah helped with the registration desk - that was fun, watching all of the awesome and not so awesome acts.

On our way to get Gelato we ran into two of our friends from Yelp! - Eric & Laura. Then it started raining so we all ran away from each other.

Leah and I have been seriously craving gelato practically the entire time we’ve lived here in Atlanta. In Phoenix we lived down the street from one on the corner of 32nd St. & Camelback - here… we just didn’t know where one was. So finally, this weekend we found one and it’s an awesome stamp size shop delivering an overload of ‘italian’ type sweets & decor - but not in the fake-chinese-replica-of-Italy-vomit that Bucca Di Beppo chooses to fill their restaurant with.

We received a great little tea set from one of our regular benefactors. It was a generous gift - a Japanese made cast - iron teapot set. A dragonfly design on the outside, hand crafted blah blah blah marketing description - but this really isn’t some generic little teapot.  It’s quite awesome and impressive. Tetsubin.

I have to get the emissions test done on my car today. This whole process of getting a Georgia license and registering my car in this state is really much more time consuming than I’d like for it to be. ESPECIALLY since I could feasibly just go online, click click click and register my car again in Arizona - and be done. That’s what I did last year and I don’t really see why I should register here in Georgia. Although I did order another copy of my AZ drivers license just before I went down and got my Georgia license last Thursday (they take your old license when you get a new one here.) My AZ license expires in 2044. Georgia? 2013. But I like my picture on the AZ license MUCH better so I’ll keep my two extra copies of that one.

Yelp event this week. Lots of work and school. Unpacking the Apartment and generally just holding on and going forward. It’s all quite awesome.

Ready for the onslaught? I love our kitties!

Haha - We stuck a dangle-feather-toy on the window with a suction cup and the ferocious OneTwo ripped it down in a matter of seconds. Rawrrrrrr! What a tough lil Mama’s Boy he is.

Hmm, I just realized that most of these photos are of OneTwo. ThreeFour, we need more pics of you! He’s a bit more independent than OneTwo, but he still needs his lovins, and he can be quite photogenic. Let me dig up an old photo…

Aw, there’s my handsome little man. He loves looking out the window so much that if we don’t keep at least one of the blinds raised slightly, he will climb through them so he can have an unobstructed view. At our old place, we had plastic taped over most of the windows, and he would chew/claw a corner open so that he could hop behind it and sit on the window sill, happy as a clam.

Okay, sorry to those of you out there who don’t like cats. Maybe now you do! Honestly, I was NOT a cat person until I moved in with these guys. They’ve certainly won me over. More than that, really. I just love them to pieces and I can’t imagine our little family without them.

Even though this is only a four day work week - it’s still Monday - so we’ll begin with something that makes us happy - Baklava! Honestly, I hadn’t ever eaten ANY baklava until… about 3 years ago when Leah’s grandparents? sent her some in the mail (well, you know, ordered it and had it delivered so it was still relatively fresh - and absolutely awesome.) Baklava has got to be in my top 10 ummm… dessert/pastry/type things ever. Seriously. Unfortunately, I could eat it for days. If by some unfortunate circumstance you’ve lived without ever having eaten any baklava - go and get some right now. Like RIGHT NOW.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we made our way to Ikea this past weekend. We bought a new sofa and a new bed/mattress. In the picture below, Leah’s pushing the Sofa and I’m pushing the bed frame parts. It was a good thing I had so much practice pushing our other sofa/bed combo to the curb the other day because I had to pull this down from the shelving and onto the cart since there were no Ikea reps around in sight. (On a completely side-note, I wasn’t sore or hurting at all after any of the furniture moving and hauling - and I normally would be all screwed up someplace, probably my back and shoulders area - except I’ve been doing workouts that mostly consist of running a lot, and using heavy kettlebells that they have my gym now. Ummmmmmm. Offtrack.)

These are Leah’s vegetarian Chiknuggets - which we ate at around 2am on Saturday night because she couldn’t sleep and was watching the 2nd season of Dexter (you have GOT to see this show) and I was attempting to work on some homework. Which brings me to another subject - how we don’t really have much actual FOOD inside of our fridge. It’s that weird situation where our fridge is FULL of stuff… but nothing to eat. We do have a large collection of condiments and parts - oh yeah, and of course Eggs… but not much real food.

Sunday morning? Belly of course! But I’ll spare you the latest pictures of the latest Nutella & Banana Panino sandwich. We also bought two Sunday papers for packing paper (and then realized that I could’ve just grabbed 4 or 5 of those ‘free’ papers like Creative Loafing or… Sunday Paper.

Looking back - it was a really, really long weekend - partly because we had the moving/packing/boxing job looming over us the whole time. We did get a whole lot done - about 3/4ths of the stuff and we even did yard work. Part of the problem is that I feel the need to box EVERYTHING. I mean almost EVERYTHING - and anything that’s not in a box… well, then it’s in a bag that we’re taking over and not having the movers bring over.

I just have this whole thing about having movers move anything that’s not big enough to be considered furniture, and stuff that’s not in a proper box that’s been taped closed. So that means I want to pack EVERYTHING in a proper box that can be taped shut and stacked. Other wise I feel it’s like… handing them a rolling cart full of loose items. I don’t know. Plus, we’re also trying to cut down on the time that the movers have to be there so the more ‘packed’ we are, the less ‘packing’ that actually has to go on when they get there - saving us money.

We ate a spot called ‘Tin Drum’ over in Sandy Springs this weekend and it was a good choice - not anything adventurous, but after our relatively terrible lunch at Saigon Cafe in Decatur… yeah, Tin Drum was awesome in comparison.

Penang chicken up above. Seriously. Lately I’ve been on this big um, ‘penang’ kick. It’s such a good flavor!… and I’m sure the coconut milk has relatively few calories right? I mean, like none. And fat? zero. Definitely. Well. Um. I guess I’ll take comfort in that it’s not ‘breaded and fried’ chicken right?

So. Work today. Homework. Yeah. Like every class, this latest one is really a bit of a struggle only because of the timing - but about half the time it’s really inconvenient anyways. I can’t not do the paper this week because it’s worth double the number of points of last week’s paper (which I did not due after the cost/benefit analysis of time vs. paper) so… this week’s paper, a MUST do. Hopefully I can knock it out relatively easy. Sometimes… it’s a real battle. Tonight? It’s the battle of me against the clothes.

No More Photos on this blog!

No just kidding. I do have questions though.

Well, mainly just one. Are you generally confused as to who writes each entry (is it Leah? is it Mark?) or can you generally get the gist of things from reading the text? Either way, how much does it really matter to you? - since the writing is done at about a 9/1 ratio. Okay. I guess that’s two questions.

In an attempt to figure out how I met MelMaples and how long I/we’ve known her, I went through my LJ account and realized that I used to make blog entries with no photos. Entire paragraphs with nothing in between them except space. Who knew I could get so wordy? Maybe I had more to say back then. Oh yeah, we also didn’t have cameras that work as well as the current ones.

Is it bad when you have to move in 12 days and you haven’t packed ANYTHING? Seriously. Is that bad? Because it’s true. True enough that I could feasibly stress out about the whole thing except I take solace in the fact that I could technically throw everything into boxes and sort it all out later - as long as I had enough boxes - which I do not. It’s just that collecting/buying all these boxes so that we can pack everything and move 6 miles down the road seems like a big hassle. Sure, we’re hiring movers and that’ll make EVERYTHING easier, but we still have to pack it all up so that they can just carry the boxes over with the furniture. Pack. Pack. Pack.

Actually. It’s going to come down to a simple matter of throwing out everything we don’t need and throwing everything else into boxes. Which again, is simple enough as long as we have enough boxes. And ‘collecting’ enough of them could feasibly cost as much in time as it does to just BUY them. So. Um. The end of that thought.

Tonight we’re stopping by Dresscodes - the clothing boutique in Downtown Decatur that our friends Karen & Brett own/operate. They’re having another gallery showing for an artist who is showing art in their store (they rotate them on a regular basis.) So ya know, if you’re bored around 6pm and happen to be in Decatur, stop in and let me take a picture with you! Oh. I suppose you should also check out all of the clothes and art and stuff that’s there too. I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Okay. Just one photo. Have a great day.

One-Two! Three-Four!

***Edit***

Ah nevermind. Following Melissa’s instructions, ‘Posted by’ is clearly added at the bottom AND I even finally got around to updating the Wordpress version we’re using here.

***Edit*Edit***

Now I wanna do more coding edits! and throw more junk on this place! (I regularly try out different widgets/plugins on the sidebar - to see how they look/usefulness/interesting and stuff like that. That’s why some things appear and disappear every now and then. PLUS - obviously if it’s too wide then it can’t go in the sidebar no matter what. And every now and then, I even think about changing themes! But then I look around and there’s just nothing else compelling/looks good enough to change it up - besides, we’ve only existed four months. Ah. I guess I’ll leave it alone.

My life would be lacking in:

Gnomes

Lumpia

Bling

Panda Bears

Asian Warrior Men

Road Trips

Kitties!

I love you, I love you, I love you!

Happy Anniversary!

First of all, I would like to say that I am Awesome. And that Superman Dean Cain is really just the less asian version of ME.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s run down the events of this morning. First we woke up, then went down to the BofA and got our traveler’s checks and some cash. That was pretty easy and painless - swipe your bank card, sign here, and there and everywhere else and here ya go!

So we had some time to kill before we went to check out our potential living space and we decided to stop by Dancing Goats Coffee for a second. They have great coffee and the space is big and open and OMG. They have some of the most best (yes I know) plain sugar donuts.

And then after that we went to go check out our possible new apartment. It’s located deep in the historic Inman Park district and deep in the area where the Inman Park Festival occurs. Like literally right in front of our house. These are some of the houses next door to where we’re gonna live:

Apparently this is the house they used for the fortune teller’s house in that um, awesome movie Love Potion #9. But Yeah.

Below is the view through the dirty kitchen window into the neighbor’s back yard - apparently this was one of the primary Woodruff homes for a long time. (Inman Park has a lot of history that I have no clue about - but if you’re not from Atlanta, just know that the Woodruff family are like the Carnegies - except for Atlanta.)

Oh yes. Here’s our apartment! Isn’t it $&$(*#*# Awesome!

…no just kidding - it’s that apartment in the back over there. hahaha. We live behind this house. Here’s our actual place.

We basically live above a three-car garage - but we get one of the car spaces so that’s cool. And even then, if I have to park on the street - no big deal. It’s a one bedroom with washer/drier, central heat/ac, a dishwasher, AND they’re repainting everything, installing new bathroom fixtures/sink, two walk-in bedroom closets, AND they’re putting down all new WOOD FLOORING. It’s insanely awesome.

How does that compare to our current place? Well. Take away the washer/drier, central heat/ac, dishwasher, insulation, painted walls, a vanity sink in the bathroom, walk-in closets, did I mention insulation? and add rotting wood frames around the windows and you basically have the current place we live in now.

So yeah. Big upgrade and seriously for only $150 more a month. INSANELY good fortune.

We’ll be moving in July - two months after we get back from China. So look at all of these happy occurrences. If I was a less confident and deliriously positive/stubborn person, I would think that something bad is bound to happen now - except this ride that Leah and I have been on together ever since we met has never stopped and although many ups and downs have occurred, nothing can possibly stop us.

Even during the hard times or the worst moments, when brought down to a realistic perspective - we’re way better off than many - but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t worked insanely hard - and will be forced to continue working even harder - because obviously life, the universe and everything else that moves you will keep raising the bar and Leah and I definitely don’t have time to think about anything other than how to beat those expectations.

Ah, and now a cat picture - hey, I’m not gonna see my cats for a month, don’t make fun of me!

Oh yeah, one more thing. I caught these two people taking photos as we were passing through L5P - which by the way if I may brag just a little more - is less than a quarter of a mile from our new house. Okay I’m done.