Category Archives: News

Married

its official…after 20 years of togetherness, we have officially tied the knot.

we met back in 1993–moved in together after a month and bought a house within a year of that. got dog (katie) to go with the cat (delilah). got two more cats (kricket and kleo). bought a condo. got another dog (truffles) after the other pets had passed.

when new york passed the marriage equality act in 2011, we knew we had to get married in new york. we had thought we could make it happen on our 20th anniversary (april 2013), but things just wouldn’t come together.

just about a month ago, some friends wanted to visit new york and we decided it would be a fun trip to go along. while planning the trip, we said to each other that we needed to take advantage of the trip and get married.

friday, we waited two hours for our marriage license. we held our ceremony in central park’s strawberry fields at 4:30pm today, Saturday, September 21, 2013. a crowd of people gathered and then cheered for us when it was done. I cried. it was awesome.

a gay couple from Britain congratulated us and said they couldn’t wait for marriage to be legal in Britain.

a straight couple from California said this was the best event they have seen in new york.

a woman sitting on a bench gave me two thumbs up as we left.

so happy. so proud.

Click here for gift registry information

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Time for a change

I’ve been running the same theme on this site for a long time. So, I’m going to mix it up a bit. This theme is a WordPress built-in theme. I’m going to use it for a while and see how well I like it.

While I play with it, some pages may not appear correctly…please ignore for now as I get things just right. 🙂

A nice feature I’m looking for is mobile device support…so, there’s another reason for a change.

Laterz!

Taste of Atlanta, 2012

I think this is year 5 of Taste of Atlanta that we’ve been to. And our fourth year with VIP tickets.

If you haven’t been to Taste of Atlanta, it’s a large food festival with booths from many Atlanta area restaurants providing samples of their menu. With your ticket purchase to the festival, you get a set of “taste coupons” that you can redeem for the tasty samples being offered.

The VIP tickets get you additional food coupons and exclusive access to the tasting tent where you can sample wine and beer. As many wine and beer samples as you want. This usually makes for a fun time. 🙂

The first two VIP experiences we went to were really cool. Murphy’s Wine Shop was a major sponsor, if not the only sponsor, and provided a list of wines that were available for tasting. As you made your rounds tasting the different varieties, you could reference the list, which also provided pricing information. Try a wine variety, and if you liked it, make a note. Once through the tent, you were given the opportunity to place an order for the favorites that you indicated. After a week or so, you would then be able to stop by Murphy’s and pick up your order.

That was awesome. We ordered two cases on those occasions.

But things changed. A new sponsor appeared and the tasting tent seemed to become less about sampling and more about drinking. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy drinking! And, as much as I enjoyed sampling the offerings of the various restaurants and plan to visit a few in the coming months, I don’t have that same feeling for any of the wines. Yes, there were some fine tasting wines, but there wasn’t a one-stop-shop atmosphere as there used to be when Murphy’s was part of the deal.

Yes, I still enjoyed the festival and plan to return next year, most likely with a set of VIP tickets in hand again. I expect we’ll still have a great time, although we probably will not make any wine purchases based on our tastings.

Icky Dog Food

We’re fostering a doggie, Theo. He came with two bags of Kibbles ‘n Bits dog food.

Already having decided to feed him the same type of food (Natural Balance, Duck and Potato) that we feed to our dog, Truffles, we looked at the ingredients list.

Kibbles ‘n bits’ main ingredient was corn, as I suspected. But then there was also corn syrup. Really? Why?

Later there was animal digest for chicken flavor. First I thought this might be chicken guts…but then I read a wikipedia entry. Gross!

Propylene glycol. Salt. And hydrochloric acid!

Plus caramel color and several other food colorings. I guess that’s what makes it pretty enough to entice people to want to feed to their pets.

We then double-checked the ingredient list of what Truffles gets. None of that icky stuff.

Kibbles ‘n bits (Original):
http://kibblesnbits.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_digest
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/toxsubstance.asp?toxid=240

Natural Balance (Limited Ingredients- Duck and Potato):
http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com