dear auburn,

i don't like you. puh.

jemma

on being southern

david has cultural day tomorrow at work, which is another one of Nationwide employee's excuses to have a pot-luck lunch every five minutes. at least it is on diversity though, which is worthwhile to teach people that just because they are white, it doesn't mean they have no culture.
to make it apply to white people on a level they can understand nationwide gave an example along the lines of lifestyle. however their example was pretty lame, "like if you're a single parent, you could bring in frozen dinners" as if all single parents don't cook or something. it's about diversity, not how everyone in a certain situation is the same. anyway, i'll get on with it.

so thinking about his lifestyle david thought it would be a good idea to cut up clif bars into small pieces to bring in, since he uses them for breakfast food. they are full of protein and fiber and actually taste good and can hold him over til lunch, therefore beating out cereal (david says he's allergic to milk) and waffles (he burned through 2 of them in like 6 months). but i thought that would be a waste of good clif bars since people probably wouldn't eat them and decided to go back to good old regular culture.

i called up david's mom and asked how to cook lima beans the southern way, which from my experience is cooked to mush consistency and tasting like meat. i went to publix and bought the beans and a smoked ham hock and went home and here's what it looked like.



i think i might be a little closer to being southern now.

job prayers & updated firsts gallery

so i saw a posting for a job as a substance abuse counselor on my counselor education list serv and decided to apply for it. it's a temporary job until next summer, starting soon, and after speaking with the person in charge of hiring, he seemed to think that if i were selected, they could work around my current schedule until i graduate, at which point i could resume full time. if i got this job it would mean a couple things:

1) bye bye free time and having a stress-free last semester
2) hello extra income
a) pay off debt quicker
b) save up money for house/move to colorado/camera lenses/bike for david

it'd be perfect because it is temporary and we want to move anytime after i graduate. this would really be more convenient since our lease goes til May 1. i'm sure we could extend it one month, it'd really be doing the landlord a favor, renting an extra summer month.

anyway, i really want this to be a God thing and not a forced thing on my part. so would you be praying for me that God would do what he does best and leave it up to him. the other prayer would be that if i were offered the job, they would allow me to work 20 hours a week until i graduate, and at that point switching up to 40. it isn't the highest paying job ever at 30K, but it definitely would be helpful where we are right now.

also, check out the gallery, i've updated the firsts album with more pics.

love, jemma

The Pink Car

bad part - boooooooooooooooo



good part - yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

So Stink came up and we worked on the Pink Car this weekend. It died on me on the way home a couple of weeks ago, an apparent ignition failure. About 4 years ago I had installed a MSD 6A w/ Blaster 3 coil when the stock igniter failed (stupid internal coil...great idea Mazda). So I assumed it was something with that system, and it seems like it was. Apparently now you don't have to use the $180 MSD box, you can use a $15 GM HEI module that does about the same thing. Ahh, the joys of progress.

So we installed that HEI module with the new wiring scheme and it starts and idles fine, and it will drive pretty well. Until you go wide open on it, at which point it misfires and chokes out (leaving a nice cloud of black smoke from the unburned fuel). So now we're thinking the coil might be bad too, and they didn't have MSD Blaster 3 coils at the local auto parts store. So I'm going to order one of those this week and we should be back at 100% sometime this week.

Good thing is we fixed the accessory belt that I had let squeak for the last year. Yeah, I'm lazy with the car maintenance but it's so stinking hard when you don't have a garage. Or a carport. Or a paved driveway. And we eliminated the MSD 6A box for an easily replaceable HEI module. And we eliminated alot of potential problems moving forward, which is cool. For more pics of our fun with Stink, click here.

-David

stinky is here & beach retreat

The Stink is here helping us figger out what is wrong with the pink car. He picked us up in Daytona on his way up to Gainesville which made for a better 2nd half of the trip up for him (so I like to think) and we got to hang out with him extra that we wouldn't normally get to :-) woot!

David and I were in Daytona Beach for the Beach Retreat with our church and a few other churches in our family of... churches... man that is a lot of church in one sentence!

We stayed overnight in a very juicy hotel called El Caribe right on the beach and spent some time in worship, which I helped to lead singing and playing my tambourine. No seriously, I play the tambourine. And the egg maracas. We also got to hear a few teachings from a visiting pastor in our network of churches throughout the nation and the world. This particular guy was from Denver, CO. David and I were particularly interested in that because we think we might like to move there sometime. We also got some quality time with our home groups which are smaller groups within our church who get together each week to hang out and study the bible. It was a good time.

Stink got there just in time for the baptisms and I took a few photos of that and of the cute children running around. Check out the photos from the beach retreat here. The beach retreat was lotsa fun and we're both really pooped. That didn't stop David and Stink from attacking the pink car's distributor cap with a soldering iron. They managed to get the car to start, but there seem to be other issues... hmmm... (maybe David can fill you in!).

So we hit Third Place Pub & Grille for dinner - tasty tasty and headed home. The boys are watching TV right now and I'm giving updates on the GA vs. BAMA game. I'm thinking about going to bed real quick like. Definitely check back for updates on the pink car and maybe some more photos!

new villoria baby!

our friends oleah & mark just had their third child and their first boy!

malachi ryan is a white boy with blonde hair and a little Filipino nose!!
i wonder how long that will last? the whiteness and hair i mean...

check out the gallery of new images of him and mommy and daddy.

UF vs UT

Well, it's Tennessee Gameday. So, in honor of this great day, we had to get our "head in the game" so to speak. And what better way to do it than go through the same gameday morning ritual as UT's Great Pumpkin of a Head Coach, Phil Fulmer:

Krispy Kreme

Of course, it's 8 hours before game time, and the Vol fans are already getting ready for the day.

Go Gators!

-David

Biking to work

So I've been biking to work the last couple of months, and it's been awesome. It's about 7.25 miles, mostly flatish both ways, good bike lanes or back neighborhood roads. It's generally a 26-28 minute ride in the morning, depending on what lights I catch and how hard I push. Since driving is about 15 minutes with all the school zones (which only teaches kids that they are special and the world will wait for them...lies), it's a 1o minute difference, except I get in my cardio for the day an all that.

I rode to campus throughout my undergrad, but biking to work is viewed differently. Some people think I'm crazy (I surely give them enough other reasons), but here's how I look at it:

• Gas is expensive. I save around 2-2.50 each day I ride in gas.
• Insurance is expensive. Since I'm driving the car less than the ~7000/year that I had been averaging, I get a break on the premium with a restricted use rating. That saves a few hundred a year.
  
• Free exercise that fits into my schedule nicely. If I were to go to the gym and work out for an hour, it'd take me a half an hour to get down there and back, and all that junk. This way, it just means I get up 10 minutes earlier and get home 10 minutes later.
  
• Gas funds terrorism, or something. Gas companies must be terrorists with the interest rates on those gas cards at any rate.
• One less trip probably saves the earth. At least it might keep Al Gore from telling another Inconvenient Lie or something.
  

So yeah, I'm definitely a proponent of commuting by bike. It's really good for me, it wasn't too hard to get started, and it's good for the environment and junk. Maybe I could take some pics of my commute each morning (the sunrise is pretty), or my bike (it's teal, which is sassy), or my helmet (it's orange and blue). There's a link on the right for a blog that has alot of information about commuting to work. Check it out, it's pretty cool.

-David

pam & jon

check out the gallery for some photos from pam & jon's wedding. these were taken on the old Kodak CX6330.

completely revamped!

check out our gallery over there to the left and right. it's the new viewing protocol i'm going to be using for our site to share photos. i'll probably still use flickr for me since it is a great tool, but in the meantime, please do have a look at the different albums i've got up.

love, jemma

Troy vs UF

Well, it's gameday! Second week of the season, and UF is playing Troy. We're sitting right behind the band, in like row 27, which is sweet. The band leader guy usually breaks it down with the drum corps, which is fairly entertaining.

Yeah, Troy is talking about UF being less physical than Arkansas and they're going to run a 4-2-5 on us to blanket our receivers. Yeah, go ahead and try to blanket CI, Bubba, Harvin, and Fayson. Rainey, Moore and Tebow will run over your LB's all day and slash you underneath in your soft zone. Please, please run a 4-2-5. Please.

My prediction: Close game at the half 24-21 with some errors by our young D. Adjustments at the half makes it 49-27 when the clock reads 0:00.

The Camera Is Here

Ok, so the new camera is here. Jemma's taking pictures of our laundry, that's how excited she is about the camera. The new f1.8 50mm lens is coming monday, so we'll have to make do with the lenses we used with the film rebel. That's kinda cool, that all the existing lenses and accessories will work with the new digital camera.

Anyways, we're off to the garden to take some pictures of plants we put in the ground and now they are growing like crazy. I'm still waiting on the hotdog tree to sprout...nothing yet.

-David

jemma's photography blog

so, you may have noticed a couple new links over there on the right side of the page. that's because i just created a photography blog! i love photography and was lucky enough to get to play around with our wedding photographers' canon 10d while i was working for them and they even let me keep it for a while afterward so I could take some photos in costa rica. so woot! to matt and krystal.

for my and david's birthdays, my mum gave us the flow toward an awesome digital slr! we have the canon eos digital rebel xti coming any day now and we're both really excited!

so since it seems my pursuit of art in photography will continue to grow, I scanned in some of my black and whites from my film canon rebel, posted those and some recent photos online in our gallery, and for my photoblog i'm uploading my more artistic shots, such as those from my costa rica and colorado trips into my flickr account, a much more user friendly and organizable system. eventually i'll be adding my family pics over there as well, but currently my free flickr capacity is full, so I'm saving up to upgrade it, unless someone is feeling frivolous...

so anywho, have a look at my new photoblog and feel free to make a comment, you don't even have to log in to do it, so let us know you stopped by!

<3 jemma

Found this great photo

I found this great photo, so I thought I'd give a shot at embedding one into the blog using photobucket for the source.

This was taken last July during birthday dinner that we had at Outback Steakhouse with all our friends. Mum and Jon came to Gainesville too, it was a great treat!


Man, those men are attractive, aren't they?

Our website has changed a bit...

Let me bring you up to speed. You may notice that our colors are different and that there are significantly fewer links posted on the left side of the page. We didn't think you needed our registry info anymore, you've probably read the engagement and honeymoon story as much as you'd like by now, and we are planning to use this blogging system to share our prayer requests with you!

So it streamlines things quite a bit. We'll probably be changing our photo page soon to reflect some more efficient manner of viewing photos. Not sure how or what yet, but we'll keep you updated. Let us know if you have any questions or if you're missing anything that we removed!

hey ya!

hey everyone, this is our new lovely blogging system and we hope you enjoy keeping up with us as much as we do. ;-) we'll be keeping you updated as to what is going on with our family of five: jemma, david, killian, coach, and vera as well as anything else significant going on with the rest of the family.

say something if you'd like to leave a comment (see below) and visit often, we're planning to keep up with our posting now that it will be a lot more user friendly. love to all of you and happy reading!