Memorial Day Weekend 2010

It's been while since we had a family get together so we invited everyone to our house so we could catch up with one another.

In attendance were: Ed, Cheryl, Mom, Chantal, Bailey, Drew, Mike, Amber, Dane, Juju & Pete. OH! and of course, me & John. Allen was out of town and Ryan wasn't feeling well. Instead of cooking, we catered from Babe's Fried Chicken. Can I just say...YUM! We over ordered, of course but it was great.

The celebration was May birthdays. John & Cheryl both had a birthday earlier this week.

John played soccer with the kids out in the back yard. It was pretty funny - Dane found his soccer ball and we egged him in to going to get John to play with him. So he walked into the den with this soccer ball chanting "john, john, john".
John, Drew & Bailey playing soccer out in the back yard.
Dane. He's so cute. When he first came in, he was kind of shy. He was wearing his shades and he wouldn't take them off.

After soccer, John came limping in and he was bleeding. He lost. He was fine - except that he did twist his knee a bit. We don't know where the blood came from but once we wiped it off, he was good. The knee sidelined him for the rest of the day, though.
We took the opportunity to present Mom & Dad with their 45th wedding anniversary present - a gift certificate to The Mansion. All three of the kids chipped in to treat Mom & Dad to a nice dinner. Since we weren't sure when we'd see them again before their anniversary month, we decided to give them the gift now.
John & his parents.
Later in the afternoon, we requested that Bailey give us a little song from Annie. Earlier this year, she played the lead in Annie for her school. Not all of us got to go but we heard how great she did and we wanted to see her sing. Here, Drew & Dane are getting comfortable to watch.




I'm so angry at myself for not turning on the light or something! You can't really see Bailey very well but you can hear her belt out the song.
Mom & Amber.
This was too funny. Dane got tired of hanging out with us so he went into the next room and slammed the door. This was the reaction of three of the moms. Just for the record, everything was fine.
Mom, Drew & Bailey.
Cheryl, Drew and Bailey.
Me & Ed.

We all really had a good time. We had one more show. This time it was Drew. He's got rhythm!

Cincinnati, Ohio/Covington, Kentucky

I'm on the road again. This time I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, technically, I'm in Covington, Kentucky. My client is across the Ohio river in Cincinnati. I've never been to this part of the country. When we were flying in, one thing that I noticed was that there were no fences around the houses. Being from Texas where everyone has at least a 6 foot fence around their property, I found that to be odd.

As I mentioned, I'm staying on the Kentucky side of the Ohio river. I'm right on the river and I've got a great view of the Cincinnati skyline. The Great American Ballpark, where the Reds play, is just across the river. So is Paul Brown Stadium (I always thought it was called Riverfront Stadium) where the Bengals play.
This is the view from my hotel room window. That bridge is the Robeson bridge. The guy that did this bridge also did the Brooklyn bridge. This bridge is closed to street traffic but I was able to walk across.

I got there early on Sunday afternoon with my boss. So we wandered around a bit. We walked over to Newport, Kentucky, which is kind of like a mini river walk and had a snack and then we walked across another bridge further up the river to Cincinnati.
Along the water on the Ohio side, they had this weird little display. When steam would come out of the pipe it would make a sound. All the pipes were going off making a kind of jungle noise. Pretty cool.
This is the Great American Ball Park where the Cincinnati Reds play. Apparently (and I found this out the hard way) when the Reds score a home run, a cannon goes off in the stadium. If you aren't ready, it will scare the crap out of you!
This is a view of the Kentucky side of the river. The second building from the right is my hotel. We walked around downtown Cincinnati a bit and it got kind of weird so we took a cab back to the hotel and turned in for the night.
A view of the Cincinnati skyline at night.

The next day we met with the client and then David left. I stayed behind to work on the presentation that was coming up on Thursday. One of the things that David was telling me about was an area called Mainstrasse. From what I could gather, this community was once a German settlement. Main street is a quaint little area where they have shops and restaurants.

I thought it would be cool to go over there and so I headed out of the hotel in what i THOUGHT was that direction.
In my wanderings, I came across this church. It's the Mother of God Church. It was organized in 1841. It was a German parish - the second in Covington. The actual church was built in 1871. Amazing. I finally got wise and pulled out my iphone so that I could figure out where the heck I was going. Once I got headed in the right direction, I came across these row houses that were on Main street. I thought they looked really cool.

I wish I could have a had a tour. I ended up finding where I was going and I was back at the hotel before dark.
Oh yeah! Apparently this town was on the Underground Railroad. They had a whole museum and everything but I never made it over there. They closed at 5:00
That night I found out that the Reds were in town when I heard this loud explosion. I looked out the window and the stadium was all lit up. That night, they had a lot of home runs.

The next day, I stepped out for lunch. I had every intention of going to the gym but I decided to head over to Cincinnati instead.
On the Kentucky side, they have these murals painted on the buildings along the river. This was my favorite.
Another view of downtown Cincinnati. In this one you can see Paul Brown stadium to the left.
Here's a view of Newport Kentucky from the Ohio side of the river. This is where they have a nice complex of restaurants and shops.
Luicius Quinctus Cincinnatus - I assume this is who the city was named for.
When you travel alone and you want to actually be in any of your pictures, you have to get creative. This is me with a view of Cincinnati across the river. I'm a fan of the Reds, at least while I'm in the city.

After that, it was back to my room and back to work. This is where I lived for the week I was here.
This was before the room got that 'lived in' look.

On the day before my presentation, about 5 pm, there was an announcement that we all needed to evacuate the building. The manager was very calm and he asked us to please leave in an orderly fashion. About 5 minutes later, he came on again and said there was a minor emergency, would we please evacuate the building. So I gathered up my stuff - laptop, backpack and purse - and started walking down the 11 flights of stairs with all the other guests.

As we came to the second floor, the manager came on again and was much more panicked this time and said, I need everyone out of the building. We all hustled out of there...across the street. We were all looking on trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The fire department pulled up and parked (no siren). The guys climbed out of the truck and the were all standing around talking. At some point they all went in dressed in full gear. About 45 minutes later, they came out and said we could all go in. The rumor was that it was a bomb threat.

I felt like a mother hen. Are you sure you checked everywhere? Did you look in all the closets? How were they so sure that it was safe when they were only in there an hour?!? Then I thought, I really don't want to make this presentation in my skanky shorts. So, I figured, you gotta go sometime and I went back in the building. Luckily, the firemen were right.

So on my last night there, I watched the sunset. It was really pretty to see on the water.

The month of 'Mom'

It's been an interesting month for my mom. First, she was selected to be "the one" at Children's Medical Center where she works. (see earlier post).

Mom accepting her award from Mr. Durovitch during the Vital signs meeting.

She got an award that was presented to her at the all hands meeting, they interviewed her and people that she worked with and showed those videos to the group.
Mom & her award.


Then, she was elected employee of the year at Children's Medical Center. This automatically nominated her to be Employee of the Year for the hospitals in the region. A luncheon was hosted and her whole team went in support.
Standing around my mom is Joyce, Pat, Jennifer, Lupe and Roy.
They had a slide show presentation of all the nominees. This was the slide for my mom. She didn't win for all the hospitals but she was honored to have been nominated at all. She saw one of her ex-chief residents that had been nominated for physician of the year.

April is her birthday month. This year we were actually able to take her out around her actual birthday. That's unusual due to our schedules. This year we went to Morton's of Chicago. It's located in downtown Dallas in this highrise building but it's in the basement. I think the floors above are apartments.
The lobby of the building where the restaurant is. You have to go down the stairs to get to Morton's. The food was pretty good. We got a very nice corner table where we had some privacy. The restaurant has all this dark wood - it's a very relaxing atmosphere.
Then, Dr. & Mrs. Steinberg invited the three of us to dinner. We went to Hibiscus. That was wonderful. You really can't go wrong at Hibiscus. We've (John & I) been there a few times and anything we've had has been delicious.

My mom has worked with Dr. Steinberg for longer than she was married to my dad! He and Mrs. Steinberg are very lovely people. We really enjoyed ourselves. They asked us back to their house because Mrs. Steinberg had made a cake. Who can turn down cake? Seriously?
And look at this cake! It was absolutely delicious.

We were all sitting in the library visiting and who walks in? Dr. Mihalic & her husband, Steven. What a great surprise! They came over to have cake with us. We were all chatting and then my mom jumps up because who should arrive? Joanie Loeb. She was a very good friend of my mom back when they all worked together at Children's. I haven't seen Joanie in years and wouldn't you know it? She looks exactly the same as she did when I last saw her.
I thought my mom would cry when she saw Joanie.

So, Dr. & Mrs. Steinberg planned this whole evening and they were sweet enough to include John & I. I wish I'd thought to bring my camera. As it is, I had to take these pictures with my phone.

It's been a wild ride for my mom this past month. There have been many celebrations. I hope she knows she is loved.

Below is a small video of us singing happy birthday to my mom while we're over at the Steinberg's. Dr. Steinberg is taking pictures, Dr. Mihalic is the young girl with the glasses, Joanie and then Milton (Joanie's husband) and then John. When I panned back, you see Mrs. Steinberg.

Mother's Day 2010

It's Mother's Day once again and we all got together for our annual brunch at the Worthington Hotel. Dad treats us all. One of the best parts, for me anyway, is that we get to spend Mother's Day with BOTH our moms.
Me & my mom.
John & his mom.

I think this is a day we all look forward to. The Worthington Hotel in Ft. Worth puts on a nice spread. This year was no different. They had breakfast items, including a breakfast casserole that had egg, bacon, cheese and I don't know what else. It was very tasty. They also had a hash brown casserole that was pretty good. On the lunch buffet, they had beef tenderloins in some sort of sauce. This was the best item on the buffet. There was also pork tenderloin, some sort of potatoes, roast beef and ham.

So the general plan is that we come in starving. We indulge in a little breakfast. They have an omelet station that will make you any kind of omelet that you want. If you want to try anything else, skip this station. It's also wise to skip all bread products. It takes up too much room.

After scarfing down a quick breakfast, we move on to lunch. This year, I followed John's lead and went to the salad bar. I should know better. I have limited room and have to plan for the good stuff. I left most of the salad and went for lunch. I skipped the veggies and the potatoes and went for the pork tenderloin that I wanted to try and the beef tenderloins. The pork was good but the beef was delicious. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't wasted space on any of the other stuff.

The last station to hit is dessert. They had key lime bites (my favorite), chocolate cupcakes (mini-size), a berry tart, sugar-free cheese cake, petite fours and chocolate mousse. I had a little bit of the first three items and skipped the last few. As always, the dessert was the best. I was stuffed and ready for a nap when we left.

Mom (Chaney) always wants a picture of all of us but it's always at the end of the meal when we're stuffed. It's kind of funny really. So here we are - the Chaney family after a full two hour meal at the Worthington Hotel.
In front, James (7), Brendan & John (10), Paul (14). In the back, me, dad, Mom, John, my mom, Michele and Mark.

Below are random pictures taken throughout the day.
My mom.
Brendan showing Grandpa what's on his ipod.
James in his own world playing with his nintendo. Paul & Brendan checking something out.
John listening to tunes.
The moms: Juju and Del.

iPad

John got an iPad this week. That thing is amazing! My initial thought was that it was just a big iPhone. I have one of those and I love it but I didn't see the point in having a bigger version of it. Then when John got it and I played with it, holy moly. It's so cool. You can watch movies on it, surf the internet, load your music, download books, read magazines, newspapers...the list goes on! It doesn't do as much as a laptop but it's not nearly as expensive either. Technology sure has come a long way.

That got me thinking. I got my first accounting job back in 1992. I was a Staff Accountant and I had a PC on my desktop. It had an ugly orange cursor. We did schedules in Lotus 123 but to format the schedules, we had to log into wysiwyg. It's an acronym "What you see is what you get". The formatting options were pretty slim. There was no internet and we had no network. What was on my machine was only on my machine. We had floppy disks that were huge! That was how I would copy files from one computer to another. Then they came out with "floppy disks" that were 3 1/2" hard disks that were more durable and portable. Not that this did me any good because I didn't have a PC at home. Nobody did.

A few years later, I decided that I "had" to have a PC so I bought one. It was a Compaq 486. Anyone remember those? It cost me about $3,000. It had windows but no other software. At this point, the internet was not something that a lot of people knew about. I also bought a Laserjet printer that only printed black & white. This was a huge deal. I kept a schedule of my bills and...OH yeah! I bought software so that I could make greeting cards.

At my next accounting job, all the accountants had PCs on their desks and they had windows. This company was cutting edge. We also had a small network in that from our PC, we could log into this software called GEAC. The accounts payable people had terminals that logged directly into the software. No PCs for them.

Around this time, the internet was all the rage. Over the phone line, you could log on to something called AOL (America on Line). It tied up your phone line and if you had call waiting, you'd sometimes get disconnected from the internet. I can't remember how much it cost per minute but it was pretty expensive. I got a free trial membership to AOL and I logged on. There were these things called chat rooms where you could talk to other people that were logged on as well. The chat rooms would be topic specific so all those logged into the chat rooms would have something in common. I thought the whole thing was kind of boring so I let my membership expire.

There was also this thing called "e-mail". You could send messages electronically. It was all the rage because people would send jokes and notes to one another and it was immediate. At FirstWorthing, we had one email address for the entire company. All the emails came into one location and our IT guy would distribute them. Seriously. Shortly after that, we all got email addresses. It was so cool!

Fast forward a few years. Right before John & I got married in 2000, we moved in together. Sounds worse than it is. It was really a timing issue. But we had internet access - dial up. He asked me what I thought about getting cable internet. The internet access was over the cable network. I just kind of pooh-poohed it because I never went on the internet. Basically what that meant was the internet was "on" all the time. We didn't have to use the phone line to surf the web. Interesting.

Once we got use to having it, we were crushed when the cable went out. When we moved to our new house, we weren't in an area that had cable internet so we had to go back to dial up. That was tragic! By this time, we had stopped using phone books, stopped just showing up at places in hopes that they were open, etc. We looked everything up online. Everything is online. Times have changed.

Now we have one PC, three laptops, two iPhones and an iPad. Last year I did all my Christmas shopping on line. I never left the house. Now, my whole job is done over the internet. My Sunday newspaper is half the size it used to be because all the news is online. I pay all my bills online. If I say "I wonder..", John says "google it". That means look it up on the web. The world has changed because of the internet. I can access the internet with my phone. John can sit on the couch, download a book, order a pizza and pay the phone bill all over the web. We've come a long way, baby!