Love a Llama

I'm sorry, but this deserves another video post!!!! Holy hysterical. For those of you who've heard us call Bromallama the llama so many times that you do it now too...

Super-bow-whoa-whoal

Ecological Footprint

Care to join me in finding out your ecological footprint?

Thanks to Emily and her sustainable design class at the BAC! Click on the link and answer a very short list of questions.

http://www.earthday.net/footprint

I'll be honest, here's what I found:

My total footprint is 21 acres. 4.9 for food, 1.5 for transportation, 6.9 for shelter, and 7.7 for goods and services.

While I fall below the average person's footprint in the U.S., there would still need to be 4.7 planets if everyone lived like me.

Use the comments link below and let me know what you found!

All You Baby Fans

I'm kidding, I kid.... !!

I'm a fan of YOUR babies too. Check out this shopping site from my cousin Kate!

http://www.kateoconnell.babyonthegoathome.com/

January Thaw

Thunder, lightning and torrential rain! A good day to be working at home. Somehow, without fail, January always brings warm weather to these parts.

New happenings this week... I've revived my use of Twitter - check out my feed to the upper right or create your own. Easy to not understand the purpose at first, but I'm being convinced as I strive to master all things social media and marketing. You must be wondering how many things I log into every day... let's see (iGoogle, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, AIM, Flickr, now maybe Twitter, the weekly Blogger and WordPress, hardly ever MySpace, hate Hotmail but my junk's there, Outlook of course, and I won't even go into work-related database and news sites).

Moving on. Got new glasses - pretty funky frames. My prescription hasn't changed since I was 15, nor has my innate ability for always picking the most expensive model of anything I buy, ugh.

Did some work research on New Songdo City... holy wow. An entirely new $25 billion+ city being built on landfill. Free economic zone, world class education and hospitals, 7-mile bridge, entirely eco-friendly and entirely connected (like you will know if your kid is at the library).

One last thing, if you haven't explored my Flickr page, I just want to give a little nudge that you all could be using it to share your photos too. It's an awesome interface for sharing and comments. Flickr also links to the Picnik photo-editing tool if you want to make your photos black & white or add text and graphics for fun.

OK, that's it. Gary's off to the Patriots playoff game tomorrow - GO PATS!

Welcome '08

We hope everyone had a healthy and hearty new years celebration!

I had a shockingly long week and a half off of work (mostly), and Gary at least shortened up the days he did work. Can't say that we accomplished much other than R&R. Gary built a keg fridge and kegged his last batch of brewed beer from a couple of months ago. He also brewed another batch on Friday - vintage 2007.

We had a few friends in town for the weekend, including two dogs under the age of one! It's a good thing Porter & Atlas could entertain each other and Bromley could watch from the sidelines. Went to the boardwalk in Sandwich one day and ventured to Chatham the next. Both odd gray days, but we snapped a lot of photos. Our evenings were spent chatting and watching the Patriots clinch a buncha records!

Then of course was NEW YEARS! Had a lovely evening - limo to dinner at the Dolphin in Barnstable, a stop at Dowses Beach in Osterville, and back home for a looong evening of champagne and Guitar Hero. We went home at the end of the night, but Gary and I were back in our friends' hot tub at 10am the next morning as promised :-)

What else is new in life? Heather started a blog, so check the right-hand column for her Arizona happenins! And our new bathroom tub/sink/toilet arrive tomorrow - can't wait. This weekend is also Grandma McClarran's 90th birthday celebration!

...and so the year begins!

Merry Christmas!

We're wishing you a most wonderful and Merry Christmas today!

Not quite sure what the "traditional" celebration brings for each of you this year. There have been a couple of losses and hard times, and there have also been some births and joyous times. We are holding each of you in our thoughts as a new year begins!

In our own non-traditional way, we woke up here at home together this morning. No giddy children, no good-night reading of Silent Night last night... but we have each other, we have Bromley, and we had waffles! We also took a long walk on the beach, and we're closing out the day with Kevin& Danielle and their families.

This past Sunday was the grand Hedman/McClarran family Christmas in Connecticut! The kids were definitely building up their excitement, as adorable as ever, and the food and cookies were overflowing! Coming from a very small family myself, it's a wonderful feeling to have almost 20 close relatives laughing and sharing stories with each other in one home - even if only for a day at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is nice to look up in any direction and see someone you share that family bond with. Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful gifts and warm hugs!

More Opinions

It just occurred to me to turn the TV on while working from home. I tend to be busier on Fridays than any other day of the week because I'm home and can concentrate better. I hardly even think to turn music on, nevermind TV. But today is a quasi vacation day and I'm just needing to work on a couple of quick things.

So this led me to CNBC's Power Lunch segment. Of COURSE I tried TLC, E! and others first - including a cooking channel I'm researching for work. But somehow here I am back in business.

The point of my post... Best Buy is whopping Circuit City's toosh this holiday season. Now I was literally just at Best Buy this morning and I don't get it. I wanted to tap on the shoulders of everyone there. As you know, I've been working to build my new camera system, and I really wanted to snag an external flash before this weekend's holiday festivities. They're charging $50 more for one flash than Amazon is, and $150 more for another flash! I think I pretty much will never walk into Best Buy again... I give up. I heart Amazon.

And to keep in line with the power of blogging and the uber-transparent sharing of customer opinion... You MUST visit Siena (Italian Grill & Bar) in Mashpee Commons, Mashpee, MA. They have an amazing $25 four-course dinner menu Sunday through Thursday. Full portion apps, salads, soups, entrees, desserts... Fair wine prices, great ambiance. We had a wonderful time last night with friends.

Off to CT tomorrow - MERRY CHRISTMAS!