ChrisMadeThis

Today is day 9 (-ish) and the moustache is growing fantastically.  Although not quite soft enough for Erica, it’s definately taking up significant real estate on my upper lip.  The donations are not growing quite as quickly, but I’m sure they’ll pick up as the ol’ soup strainer thickens in. 

The bar has been set at $500. That means if I don’t get $500 donated to AASK by the time of the wedding, I’ll have to keep the ‘stache for the special weekend and have it engrained in history permanently.

That’s all – $500 for this awesome organization that helps kids and really brings a good positive influence to some people that really need it.

For those of you wanting me to keep the ‘stache for the wedding: donate, and comment. If I get more donations that say “Keep the stache!!” I will keep it. Promise.

How’s that for a challenge!!

I’m growing a moustache.

The only way to stop me is to give money to this charity:

AID TO ADOPTION OF SPECIAL KIDS (aka AASK)

 Remember, I’m getting married in a month.  I’m hoping to have a serious ’stache.

Seriously though, I got turned on to this by Erica.  A few people at her company started FundAStache to generate money for charity.  I think it’s a great idea and am happy to participate to help (in my charity’s case) some special kids find good homes and positive people.  I encourage you to join in and donate to the cause, or grow a stache for the cause.  The stache might be hideous, but it will be good times, no doubt.

This is the hardest thing about leaving in the morning…..

Trying to convince them that you’ll be back is futile. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Erica and I cooked dinner the other night.  Yes, WE.  Together.  I really enjoy cooking together, we make a pretty good team.  We cooked some chicken tacos, but with a few twists.  First, they were in these little tortilla bowls instead of taco shells.  Also, they had a cool, mayo/veggie/paprika topping that we made together that really turned out well.  In all it was a huge success and I look forward to making more.  Possibly with a few more twists!

Today is Erica’s birthday!!!  31 and still geting carded at bars!  I hope you have a fantastic day and love every minute of it.  I love you!

The week has been good.  Well, really fairly non-eventful.  I have some stuff to do for work that just keeps me here behind my desk.  Don’t get me wrong, I like being behind my desk working on cool stuff, but sometimes I like to get out in the field and do some actual work.  Ah, in no time I’ll be wishing for the day I could just sit down at my desk and do stuff.  I’ve been doing a lot of graphic work lately that I really like, and I think I’m good at, but definately not formally trained.  I guess the proof will be if it all works and people like it. 

The other news in my life is my car.  For nearly 3 weeks now it has been out of commission.  A small gear driving the water pump failed and forced me to replace the whole supercharger.  The whole thing has been a mess.  I just received the supercharger today and am very excited to get it to my mechanic first thing tomorrow.  Hopefully it will be back in my driveway by the weekend.  With all that bad I have really enjoyed driving the Mercedes these three weeks.  There have been multiple occasions for top-down cruising that I have really been able to take advantage of - something that will be more and more prevalent over the next 4-5 months.  I know Erica will be supprised when I take it out every once-in-awhile just for fun. 

 Wedding planning is going well.  We feel like we’re ahead of the game - wich means we’re probably forgetting something catastrophic.  We’ll see.

 Stewie (our new dog from Kristen & Chris) is working out great.  He has proven himself a wonderful companion to us and Mac.  He really is a kind-hearted loveable pet we hope to have for a long time.  I’m sure Mac thinks so, too.

So, lately I’ve been thinking that I need to update this thing more.  I know there are only about 4 people that check it every month or so, but I’d like to change that.  So, I’m going to start doing this more.  I was scared that I would overlap Erica’s blog too much, but I’ve come to the conclusion that not enough people read this for it to matter.  For those that do read this, I’ll try to focus on my life.  I’m sure there will be some overlap, but hopefully I can shed a slightly different light on the “Chris and Erica” adventures. 

So it’s been a while since I posted.  Sorry about that.  I know I’m apologizing to about 3 people, but apologizing nontheless.  The last two months have been great for me and I really wish I had blogged more, but alas I didn’t.  So here’s a recap:

Erica and I (and Mac and Bentley) drove back to Arlington for Christmas.  It was absolutely fantastic!!  We got to spend a lot of time with family and some time with friends (kinda wish I had more time with friends, but oh well).  It was really wonderful to spend time with Erica’s new nephew Braydon.  He is a really happy kid and, of course, really enjoys the attention.  It was also great to spend time with my neice Emilee.  She is just a super cute girly-girl, a little shy at first, but really gets going after she warms up to everyone.  Christmas was great for all of us and I hope to see everyone sooner rather than later. 

We drove back the Sunday before New Years and made some pretty good time across the West Texas nothingness.  With both dogs in tow, there were a lot of stops, but we made it all work.  I had to work on New Years Day while Erica did her thing.  New Years Eve was quiet and comfy.  With both of us pretty tired, we downed a bottle of champaigne and just barely made it to 10:30.  I’m not going to say anything about our early slumber, just that it was a nice rest that we got and a wonderful non-hangover New Years Day for both of us.

 Most of January, for me, was filled with Barrett Jackson.  My company bought a booth there this year and we had to get everything ordered and set up.  We showed a new product from Savant called the “Coffee Table”.  It’s basically a giant touchpanel built into a coffee table.  The super cool part about it is the interface that Savant has developed.  Great graphics, smooth transitions, interfaces with anything, media managment is second-nature with it’s seamless integration with iTunes.  Really cool stuff. 

The biggest drawback about the show was the time away from Erica.  I worked from Sunday to Sunday from 6am to nearly midnight every day.  Only seeing her in the morning and at night - both while she was still asleep - was very stressful.  We normally have such a fantastic communication line that it felt like something had been stripped away from me for the week.  I just kept saying to myself “it’s only a week, we’ll pull through!!”.  And we did.  Having dinner with her on Sunday night really made me realize how much I love spending time with her and that we would not work well if that was taken away for any long period of time.  I know it sounds corny, but it’s true.

 Well, now that the stress and hours of the show are over with we’re getting back into the swing of things.  Breakfast and dinner together and waking up at reasonable hours has been great!

 So onward and upward with our lives as we plan a wedding, honeymoon, and trips to and fro.  The next few months promises to be busy, but at least we’ll be busy together.