A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sodding festive season.
(Can anyone say Bah, Humbug!!)

Is there a way to engage in retail therapy minus people?

Now as the last match is played in the NCL Bg Bronze game, NCL 2009 is now officially over!

Medal winners of NCL Bg 2009:

GOLD – Team riiiv – hjerterNio

SILVER – Team Simon (DK) – Landskrona

BRONZE – Team marrubou – Katjziska

Congrats to all the medal winners!! And big thanks to everyone that participated in this tournament!

I think it has been fun to play in a team, in a official tournament like this.. I and Katjziska had a little trouble to have our “up"s” at the same time in the beginning.. when the other one won games, the other won lost.. over and over again.. hehe.

But it all worked out OK in the end! And we are now proud bronze winners. (of both BG and couronne this year!)

How do you think the tournament was?

marrubou

So last night I bought a Classic Lotto ticket. The jackpot last night was $9.2 million and tickets are only a buck so I thought what the heck. You can’t win if you don’t play, right?

This touched off an all night game of  ”What Would You Buy” between myself and Mr. Oaks. It was decided that a 9 million dollar jackpot would pay out about $5 mil after taxes, so we played with that number. It went pretty much like this:

• Two million would go straight into stocks. I’d get a nice little trust fund/nest egg going.
• $500k would go into a CD or bonds or some safe investment, where it would slowly grow and be waiting for when I needed it.
• I would take half a million and pay off my mom’s house and car, pay off my grandparents medical bills, and do other nice things for family members.
• I would give Mr. Oaks and Mr. Garee $50k each to buy a car or whatever they want. I would pay off Ms. Reitz‘ college.
• After those things are taken care of, the fun starts. First thing I’d do is go buy a car. Either an Audi S6, a Subaru Legacy GT, or a Volvo V50R. And I’d pay cash, just for the fun of it.
• Then, and I do mean immediately, I’d drive that new car to Easton to the Apple Store and do my best to spend 10 large.  I’m talking about a 13″ MacBook Pro (for carrying with me) and an 8-core Mac Pro with a 30″ HD Cinema Display. And a new iPod touch and whatever other toys I thought I might need.
• While I’m at Easton I’d probably spend a few hours just shopping around. I know I could spend some time in Bang & Olufsen, and it wouldn’t be hard to drop some coin at Nordstrom. I’d drive that new whip to Polaris, too. There’s a Finish Line there where I can grab some new kicks, not to mention Brooks Brothers (for those of you that know me well, you know why I want to walk into that store more than any other dressed in old jeans, a nasty t-shirt, and my steel-toes).
• Next would be a new place to live. I’m not sure if I would buy a house or a condo, but you can be sure it would be wicked cool – lots of mod furniture and super cool touches. An awesome foos table is a must, as is a monster (80″) TV and stereo system.
• The boys’ (and maybe a couple girls) and I would go to the World Cup,Champions League Final, and maybe Euro 2012. Also, there is not a single Crew game that I would not attend – home or away, foriegn or domestic.  We’d probably take in a few EPL matches too. I know for sure that I want to go to St. James Park and the boys would want to visit The Emirates.
• I’d see a Sox/Yanks weekend at Fenway. There is only one person in the world I would take with me.
• College would be paid for. For myself, my mom, and that one other person (you know who you are).

I’m sure there’s more. I’d buy a digital camera and a point and shoot, I’d get a lot of new clothes and shoes, I’d buy a new watch or two.  I’d get my teeth whitened. I’d probably spend a cool million in the first month.

It would be no problem, really, if you knew there was more where that came from to spend a lot of money in a short time. After the car and the house and the travel, the little things all add up pretty quick. Especially when “little things” are $5,000 – $10,000 apiece. The challenge would be making the money last.

I don’t think I’d stop working altogether. I’d certainly finish my degree, cause $5 million won’t last forever and I’d have to get a job at some point out of boredom. But I would certainly take some time to travel.

So what about y’all: If you suddenly had a check for $5 million what would you do? That’s life changing money, but how would your life change? I know there’s a lot of things we all have in common (houses, cars, etc.) but what would you do differently with your windfall than I would with mine?

wow! a lot has happened.

school has been hard this year, but somehow i pulled off 4 A’s [Band, Debate, Spanish III, ALAC]
and 3 A-’s [Trig&Pre-Calc, APUSH, Chemistry]

i feel like a million bucks! i’m halfway done!

i have lost some friends this year
well for the most part, one
but it was the big one – my best friend

class difficulties start to separate out
it just hasn’t worked too well for us
but on the bright side, i fell in love with a new best friend!
someone who was there all along before,
but i never realized how great she is!

i turned 17 on monday, and i got a new camera! hooray!

umm, the love life is still lacking
(what a lovely alliteration)

well, i guess you could say it was something for a while
a long while, actually
but i just couldn’t do it anymore

NOW, someone who i let go of has come around
but they are acknowledging the fact that they have someone else
i know if it’s meant to be, it will be,
but i don’t want this right now.

but i think i decided i have a teeeeny crush on someone???

gahh i hope so. this would be nice if it worked out for some reason??
they seem like a really nice person. and they’re a cutie.
big time!

but would this even be right?
because the friend i lost, well,
(she liked this person, big time)
so, would this be okay?
we don’t talk anymore, but what is the protocol here?
ay ay ay. let’s worry about it if it ever happens
[i hope so]

that’s all for  now!!

While Tabi wraps Christmas presents of varying sizes, I’ll update you on what has been going on since her last post on our weekend in Cardiff.

After many hours of work, Tabi finally completed all of her various University assignments, managed to get them printed, attached ‘pink slips’ and handed them in all in. This left her a few hours to pack her suitcases before we had to drive to Glasgow to see the musical “Beauty and the Beast” live on stage at the Clyde Auditorium. The trip was organized by my theatre group, Centrestage, as we are mounting our own production of it in March. We came away having enjoyed the performance but confident that we can do even better ourselves.

The very next morning (Thursday) we were up early and back to Glasgow to catch our plane to Denmark. When we arrived at Kastrup Airport we found the ground was thick with snow. The runway where our plane would normally have landed was one of those reserved for bringing world leaders to the Climate Change Summit (COP15). This meant that we had to land at the other end of the airport and taxi, then finally take a bus, to the terminal building. It was lovely to see Tabi’s family again and I know that she enjoyed having a proper Danish lunch: rye bread and warm liver paté.

On Friday, we ventured into Copenhagen to visit the Climate Change Exhibition which showed the various ways people are trying to save energy and preserve the planet for future generations. I contributed by pedaling a bicycle for a few minutes to help power the Christmas tree lights. Tabi, in tourist mode, took a photograph of me doing it.

Today, we went with Bodil and Rob (Tabi’s parents) on the train to snowy Sweden to visit the Julmarknad (Christmas Market) in Malmö. We took a ride on the Wheel of Malmö which gave us lovely views of the city from high above it. It snowed all day and it was very cold but it was good fun to walk around the Christmas Market and town looking at the various festive things on sale while drinking our hot chocolate. Our favourite tourist attraction would have to be the bike stand which an exercise bike was chained to!

 Tabi and I recorded the trip on a mini digital video camera my parents gave us for Christmas so some of you may be fortunate enough to see the edited highlights of our trip, if we ever find the time to select the highlights and edit them into some sort of coherent narrative with high production values, naturally.

Martin

Congrats to Team riiiv – hjerterNio, they won NCL Bg 2009!!

Team Simon (DK) – Landskrona won silver.

Now we are waiting on to see how the bronze game turns out, will then publish a longer post

marrubou

At Red Bricks Photography we hope everyone has a joyful holiday season!

Eric is part has been coming to us for a year now, as he is finishing up being part of our “My First Year” Collection.  We saw his sister Leah a few years ago.  So as we did with her Ohio State football portraits we had to with Eric too!  But the question I ask, is he a number 1 fan?  The Anderson family has been a joy to work with and we look forward to seeing them in the future!

NCL 2009 är nu slut. Jag väljer att utelämna de tråkiga detaljerna och hylla vinnarlaget och även framföra att jag är nöjd med NCL som helhet.

Det har varit en ära att deltaga och administrera NCL, jag gillar spelidén, jag gillar att det blev shockplays första officiella lagturnering.

Den har pågått länge, det har varit intensivt, många lag har kämpat så de fått kramp nästan. Ibland ger det utdelning att kämpa och slita.

Givetvis ett stort grattis till Guldgossarna hjerterNio-Iznogoud-Playshocker. Fin insats och väl förtjänta vinnare av NCL.

Grattis även till Simon (DK)-North Star-In The-Emi som fick en silvermedalj.

Sen ett stort grattis även till de ända kvinnliga medaljörerna marrubou & Katjziska som spelade tillsammans med tuggummi! och spöade skiten ur lag Mr Daydreamer i bronsmatchen.

Det är synd att NCL är slut (Couronnedelen). Men vi kommer tillbaka nästa år så ladda bössorna till dess!

Här kommer prispallen!

Ikväll är det dags!

3e och sista finalmatchen i NCL couronne!

Det står 1-1 i matcher mellan lag Simon (DK) & lag hjerterNio.
Lag hjerterNio visade sist att dom blir att räkna med i denna final, trots att dom fick matchen till skänks då North Star inte dök upp och fick wo.

Ikväll klockan 19.00 smäller det, det stora avgörandet i shockplays första officiella lagtävling!

Lycka till!

Saturday morning Martin’s dad drove us to Glasgow Airport so we could catch our flight to Cardiff. T’was massively foggy on the way up there and it seemed the road was just placed in the middle of a great big grey and white cloud. Fortunately it was quite as bad at the airport so when the plane was delayed half an hour that was not why. It had some sort of tech fault but they fixed it and not very long after we were in Wales. We got the bus to the train station and got on a train to Cardiff City Centre. With the help of a city map and a friendly Welsh woman we made it to our hotel.

We dropped off our bags at the hotel and walked down to the Bay to find the Doctor Who exhibition. It was hidden in some huge building somewhere so we spent a while trying to find it. This wasn’t really a problem though as we’d planned to go check out the Millennium Centre and surroundings anyway. (Torchwood location!)

After the exhibition we got the bus back to the city centre and went for a walk in the streets with Christmas lights (Doctor Who locations, yay!) (geek) and stopped at a pub to have fish and chips.

When we’d finished our meal we managed to find the right way to the New Theatre to see the panto. John Barrowman was Robin Hood and it was absolutely fantastic (and hilarious!). Afterwards we walked through town back to the hotel which turned out to be quite near to the theatre when walking the right way.

Sunday morning we checked out but left our bags at the reception so we didn’t have to carry them around all day. We had breakfast at a nice little place in town and then got the bus to Cardiff Bay and went to see the Welsh Assembly. Very fascinating building with a wavy roof and interesting glass walls. Has to be seen. One of the people there gave us a guided tour in a lovely Welsh accent. Later we went for a walk at the Bay, looking at little shops, cafés and people. Apparently Cardiff Bay is the capital of hand-holding couples, which was very interesting.

We also popped into the Millennium Centre to check it out on the inside and found a fascinating sign on the door when leaving. Welsh is such a complicated language, especially when written down.

When we’d looked at everything we got the bus back into town and walked up to a tiny German Christmas market. We got yummy French pancakes from a grumpy English lady and sat down to eat them on a very cold Welsh bench and then went back to the hotel to get our bags, after which we went to get a train to the airport. We were quite early so we sat about eating an apple for a bit before checking in our suitcase. Very small airport which meant everything before the security check was closed, not very interesting. However, everything after security was open (when I say everything I mean about five shops and a café place) so we browsed around a bit and got some delicious soup while waiting for the gate to open.

When we arrived in Glasgow, there was more fog than on Saturday. Didn’t think that was possible. Still wondering how the pilot knew where to land because it was so bad you couldn’t even see the top of the car park building when standing right next to it. And it wasn’t even a very tall one! We got home safely anyway, had another bowl of soup and watching Strictly till late. Great weekend!

A few more pictures:

In other news, I’ve been working hard to get all my uni stuff ready for hand in tomorrow and I’m almost done with all of it. Fortunately I have tomorrow morning to get the last couple of things printed and mounted but it seems I’m actually going to manage so that’s good. Will be nice not to have to worry about it over Christmas. Tomorrow night I’m going with Martin to see Beauty and the Beast in Glasgow (quite busy few weeks we’re having) and Thursday morning we’re flying to Copenhagen.

Oh oh, and a random unrelated bit of information: This morning I sold a Ninja Chicken t-shirt, such a nice way to start the day.

By the way, Wednesday is the last day to vote for my picture in the See Me competition.

Congrats to Team riiiv – hjerterNio, they won their NCL Bg semifinal against my Team (marrubou – Katjziska) with 2-0 in team matches and one tie.

Well done guys!

And good luck in the final game!

marrubou

Congrats to Team Simon (DK) – Landskrona, they won their NCL Bg semifinal against Team peachystew – ervadolfi with 2-0 in team matches.

Well done guys!

Now we’re waiting on to see how the other (our) semifinal in the ncl bg tournament ends.

marrubou