EngelFish.Net

It appears that my alumni association (UVa) is having some technical issues with the email forwarding system.  I’m not sure when it went down, but it looks like it was sometime on Friday.  What does this mean for you?  Well, if you’ve tried to email me in the past few days, and you’re sending email to my alumni association address (it ends “@alumni.virginia.edu”), then I’m not getting it.  I have several email accounts, but this has been my primary one for years now, so most likely that’s where you’re currently sending emails.  They assure me that it will be up and running in the next day, but in the meantime, please email me at this address:  chrisHAT@chrisengel.com (remove the HAT).

I’d like you to meet the two newest Engels!  Originally named Stuffing (the rottie) & Pecan Pie (the tan), as they were born on Thanksgiving, the renaming process is under way.  Taryn has settled on Xavier (t.p.f.k.a.* Stuffing) and I’m still mulling over names for Pecan Pie.  My current favorites being Jake & Alex.  We adopted these litter brothers from the Wake County SPCA yesterday.  I didn’t know until recently that pups born in one litter can have different fathers, but these two make that pretty obvious. In spite of our expectations, they slept soundly through their first night, crying only twice to be let out for a quick constitutional.  The cats seem to be adjusting well to them.  Oscar & Felix learned to pretty much ignore them within half an hour of being introduced, and Casey… well, he’s been in hiding for the past 24 hours.  It may take a while to convince him that these guys really are his little brothers.

*the puppy formerly known as

The past few weeks have been pretty busy, so I’ll try to hit the highlights. Mom has retired, is selling her house, and is moving out to live near Robin on the west coast. It’s not the way I’d have liked things to work out, but I think it’ll be great for Robin and the kids. 

More “home front” news, we bought that house. We closed on the 20th, so now my bank owns a really nice house. :)  It’s much quieter out there than it was downtown, but that’s not a bad thing!  While we did celebrate Thanksgiving with dinner at Brasa, we spent Thanksgiving week moving into the new place.  I didn’t have it in me to move all the heavy stuff, so I called Aperitive, and he and his guys took care of it.  If you ever need movers, I recommend him. It was one of the easiest moves I’ve had. 

The down side of this move, outside of the “work”, was that both of us have been sick for the past two weeks. It culminated in a trip to the Urgent Care center Saturday morning, and the PA looking down my throat and saying, “Yuck. That can’t feel good.” After two days, a great deal of Tylenol, and starting on antibiotics, I feel much better. Taryn, unfortunately, still can’t stop her coughing. We’re hoping to fix that today with her own trip to Urgent Care.

This past Friday had us hosting a housewarming / going-away party.  Our Flickr gang came over to have a send off for Deep. He boarded a plane today to return to India. He’s a great guy, and we were all sorry to see him go. I’m sure that he’ll keep posting to our group, and if any of us make it to the subcontinent, we’ll be sure to visit.  Overally, the party was fun, and I ended the night with Beebo giving me a mohawk haircut that looked more like a pompadour.   In addition to the styling services, we had a fire in the fireplace (a first), a fire in the kitchen (the last time we take cooking tips from an ex-Marine), and a fire on the grill (with Beebo and Grant playing caveman). 

Feeling sickly and cranky, we decided to go see a movie Saturday night.  The Buck-Fifty theater is always an adventure, so we caught the movie Invincible.  If you haven’t seen this Mark Wahlburg vehicle, you should. It’s a grown up version of Rudy, and even had Taryn saying that she enjoyed it and that it was a good movie.  It helps, however, to not have a group of annoying teenagers sitting behind you.

Before I sign off, I’d like to thank Maria for sending me over to Line Rider.  Yet another simple game that is a great way to waste time! (for extreme examples, check this out).

So, it looks like we’re buying a house.  We’re scheduled to go to closing on Monday for the house we bid on while in NYC.  With a little luck, some planning, and a few late night trips, I think we’ll be able to have Thanksgiving Dinner in our new home.  Nifty!  Check out Taryn’s blog to see a few pics of the place.

The weather in Raleigh is all dark clouds and rain today.  Not the most uplifting of atmospheres.  That being said, I’m in a pretty good mood, knowing it’s the last we’ll spend in our apartment.  I’ve lived here for several years, and as much as I have enjoyed that time, it is definately time to move on. 

I’ve not been up to much of anything photographically.  I’ve run out of storage on my PC, so I have to finish up some projects & move them off into archives before I’ll have room to do anything new.  I also have promised that I’d finish all my outstanding projects before I take on anything new.  That includes the long overdue wedding images I still have to process, a few albums to make, a portrait book to design & print, and a large box of family pictures to scan.  It may be a while before I have new work to show.

IMAGE:  This is Meghan, who was an organizer of the CAM Exposure Time fundraiser.  It was a great time, and Nicole and Meghan deserve a lot of credit for making things go as well as they did.

Along with Lance Armstrong, David successfully ran this year’s marathon! Follow the link to see all 140 pictures from our four day trip to the big city to cheer David on!  (Here is just a few select images posted to my Flickr stream)