NEW WEBSITE UPDATE

We have a new website. Please go to www.adventuresincinci.com.

Thanks,

Michael, Mariah and Brock

Finally, we have power

Hi All,

Mariah and I have had quite the week. Since the news media was dominated by Lehman Brothers, AIG, Morgan Stanley and Hurricane Ike in Texas this week, little ol' Cincinnati was forgotten. Hurricane Ike made its way to Cincinnati and last Sunday there was a massive wind storm that knocked out power across the majority of Cincinnati. Luckily there was no damage to our house but there were plenty of houses that weren't so lucky. The damage across the city was so bad that it took us 6-days until we got our power back. Here are some pictures of our house.

Salt Lake City Trip

Hi All,

Amber and I came to Utah for Omniture SiteCatalyst training. Since the training was on Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday we had the weekend to relax. On Saturday we visited Park City just north of Provo. Below are some pictures from our trip.

Search Engine Strategies Trip

Hi All,

I apologize for the late posting yet again. Mariah and I will have a new blog going live pretty soon that we think you'll like.

This week I went to San Francisco to attend the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. During the weekend I got to spend some time with my father and visit lots of new areas that I had never seen before. I finally got to see the Golden Gate bridge although it was so foggy and cold that I was not able to see the entire bridge all weekend. I spent lots of time at the ocean at Half Moon Bay and Pointe Reyes. Here are some great pictures taken during my trip.

Michael

Michael's Weekend in San Francisco

Barack recruits two new helpers

Hi All,

Sorry for the late posting. We've been very busy with guests visiting our house. Mariah's friend, Liz and her mother, aunt and grandmother came down to Cincinnati to visit us at our new house during the past few weeks.

This past weekend we went to St. Louis to visit our friends, the Budin's and their cute dog Riley, a GoldenDoodle. We went to the St. Louis Botanical gardens, the Arch and Forest Park. Brock and Riley got along incredibly well and enjoyed wrestling and hanging out together. Brock also swam for the first time, although I had to toss him into the deep end of the river to get him to swim.

Mariah also decided to get Riley a 'Bark for Barack' shirt to match Brock. Here are some cute pictures.

Here is a link to the rest of the photos.

Trip to St Louis

Brock has a backyard

Hi All,

I am very happy to report two big pieces of information for the Lamontagne's. First, Mariah and I officially closed on a house in Cincinnati. The house is in a great little neighborhood about 10-15 minutes away from my work. We have great neighbors and lots of dogs. Brock is very happy to have a big backyard to play around in.

The other good piece of news is that Mariah has officially become a permanent resident of the United States. After an agonizing 1.5 hour wait, the interview took 15-20 minutes and we were approved.

Below are some pictures of our new house.

San Francisco - More pictures

Hi All,

Mariah and I have been meaning to post some more pictures from San Francisco. We visited the Legion museum which is located right next to the Golden Gate bridge in an area called the Presidio. We traveled across the city by bus to see an Annie Liebowitz and Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. We also went to Alcatraz for a night tour. It was a great experience. We were on the island for 3 hours where great views of the city including during sunset. The prison was very very creepy at night. I would highly recommend taking the night tour and booking ahead.

We are happy to be back but we can't wait to go back to visit more of the city. For those of you who ask if we saw Haight and Ashbury, we did not but we are planning to next time :)

San Francisco - Final Days

Look up.... WAYYYY up!

Yes, if you're in San Francisco and you looked to the top of the highest building in the skyline yesterday around 430pm, you might have caught a glimpse of Michael and I staring right back at you. :) We took some good advice from Michael's father and spent a cocktail hour at the Carnelian Room in the Bank of America Building in the heart of the business district. All I have to say is "WOW". We couldn't have chosen a better day. The views all the way out to the Golden Gate Bridge and beyond were spectacular. In fact, we could even see the piers we had walked to the day before and managed to pick out the docks where the sea lions have made their home. Oh, and by the way, in his last post, Michael said there were about 100 but I would estimate it to be more like 300-400 sea lions soaking up the sun down there :) Like nothing I've ever seens.... And well, it was like nothing I'd ever hard or smelled before either. I stumbled upon the webcam (with surprisingly good quality) if you're interested... Here's the website. If you can't open the webcam from my link, you can get to it from clicking on the right hand side of the website. Anyhoo, our birds-eye-view was great. We could see people playing hockey on a rooftop, we spotted people chilling on high up balconies and spied on the streetcars as they moved through the city. It was pretty cool. We even saw a helicopter that was flying below us! The other wierd thing was that, despite the ridiculously steep hills here, we could hardly tell what was an uphill or downhill... so we certainly must have been up high. Oh, and we were also able to spot our apartment from our lookout point, which was only a few blocks away.

Earlier in the day, we spent a little bit of time wandering through Chinatown, which could be a destination in itself! According to its collective website, it is actually the largest Chinatown outside of China! Hmmm.... The Toronto Chinatown is pretty big but yes, I do think the one here is a little bigger. If anything, it's the best place to buy cheap, fresh veggies in the summer. We walked around to a couple of open air storefront markets where we bought five heads of garlic (packaged together - we're not trying to keep the vampires away), carrots, two bunches of green onions, chinese noodles, soy curd, oranges and about a pound of cherries - all for under 8 dollars. I coudn't believe it. We're going to have a great stirfry tomorrow with all that. :) We stopped in at a bakery and tried a couple of items we couldn't really identify. One was a potsticket (which was very yummy), then something the lady behind the counter simply called a 'shrimp' (although this could have just been reflecting her lack of English skills) and then something we had seen in another window called a 'Chinese doughnut'. Yeah, the shrimp thing was gross - all fishy tasting inside of what seemed like a potsticker. But not as tasty. The Chinese doughnut made me want to gag. Not so much because it tasted that bad but because, when I was expecting a doughy texture, I got more of a gellatin slash tasteless jujube texture. It seemed to have been rolled in sesame seeds, then fried. Oh, and there was some dark red, unidentifiable semi-sweet (maybe fig?) jelly in the centre. Wierd.... I'm sure a lot of people must like it (because we saw them in a number of shop windows) but certainly not to our taste. Oh well. I give us kudos for at least trying new things :) haha

Those were the big highlights from yesterday I think... Today, it seems we're going on a 'date' tonight but Michael has yet to tell me where to go. Must be some place nice though, because I'm getting a pedicure this morning and I get to dress up :) Will post more on that (and will add some pics to this post) tomorrow I suppose.

Mariah

Fisherman's Wharf

Hi All,

Compared to yesterday, Monday was very laid back. We decided to walk up through Chinatown to go to Fisherman's Wharf which is located at the north end of the city. Its only a 30 minute walk from where we are staying.

Fisherman's Wharf is a bit of a tourist trap but it has the famous Buena Vista bar which serves world famous Irish coffees, Ghiradelli's chocolate store, views of Alcatraz and the sea lions.

When we got there we toured around a bit, checked out the various shops and walked along the piers. I was looking forward to seeing the wild sea lions on Pier 39. When we got to Pier 39 we shocked to find 100+ sea lions just lounging around on some floating docks. They were nice and quiet until another sea lion moved or jumped onto the platform then they would bark at each other, then calm down and fall back asleep. This pattern kept going for the entire time that we were there. The entire scene reminded me Mariah and her two sisters.

After spending an hour with the sea lions we walked along the boardwalk and saw the funniest thing. We saw a homeless man hiding behind a few tree branches to make himself look like bush. When any girl were to walk by the "bush" he would drop the branches and scare the person. We saw quite a few people scream from this trick.

We also went to the famous Buena Vista bar for a $7 Irish coffee. Despite the high price it was well worth it. I even picked up a couple of tricks on how to make a great Irish coffee.

Finally we rode the cable car back to the hotel. It was a pretty good day.

Monday in San Francisco

San Francisco runs a 12k, well sort of

Hi All,

Sunday was our second day in San Francisco. On Thursday before we left we found out that there was going to be a 12k run in San Francisco that was supposed to be a big event and a San Fran tradition. The run is called Bay to Breakers because it starts at one side of the city and ends in the Golden Gate Park on the other side of the city. I knew this race was going to be different because there were a lot of warnings and disclosures on the website that said no nudity and alcohol was permitted in the race.

Mariah and I woke up early on Sunday morning to go find a nice spot on the route to watch the runners. It turns out that most of the city was there as well. Approximately 60K people were running in the event. I believe that number was based on registered runners although many people chose to join the run.

The first runners to start were the elite women and 10 minutes later the elite men started. In total there was maybe 15-20 people that were taking this race seriously. Then the rest came....

Almost everybody was dressed up from Elvis, ballerina's, vikings, star troopers, cows, Borat in a yellow thong and the list goes on. There were also quite a few nude men and far too few nude women.

One of the most impressive parts of the races was the number of "floats" that people made. Some people created a flintstone's car, DJ booth, toga party, racing pit crew etc. Some people even decided to tow their boat and raft in the race. Mariah and I would soon learn that these floats served a dual purpose. They also housed kegs for people to drink from. There was a lot of alcohol, many women drunk champagne straight out of the bottle, some floats offered "runners" the chance to funnel a beer. There were probably more kegs than serious runners.

We watched the race for about an hour and I must say it was the funnest races I've ever seen.

Check out the photo album by clicking on the image below.

San Francisco Bay to Breakers 2008 12K run

(a couple of guys jumped out from the crowd to sprint with the elite men runners)

(one of the many creative keg stands/floats)

Brock meets a cat

Hi All,

One of Mariah's friends, Sarah was having her apartment fumigated so she came over with her cat. Brock has never seen a cat before so Mariah and Sarah decided to film the interaction. When Sarah took the cat out of its cage it immediately went to hide behind the toilet. To surprise Brock they threw a tennis ball towards the cat. The result was hilarious. You can view the full 2 minute video here. The file is about 40mb so it might take a couple of minutes to download.

No animals were harmed filming this video. In fact I am not sure if Brock even knows what happened.

Enjoy.

Michael

San Francisco here we come

Hi All,

Mariah and I are officially in San Francisco. We left today from Dayton, Ohio at 12:40pm and connected in Dallas. By the time that we got to my father's apartment which is in the heart of downtown San Francisco it was 8pm PST (11am PST). Here are some photos that we took of the San Francisco airport and the views from the apartment.

Brock the sheep

Before

After

Poor Brock

Brock and Friends

Hi All,

Here are some relatively new pictures of Brock that we were finally able to download. In this set he is playing with his friends Bongo (white Lab-Beagle mix) and Napa (black Lab-Boxer mix). Brock looks more vicious than he actually is.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76456464@N00/sets/72157605000637003/

We should have some new pictures of him soon. He recently got a haircut that was a little too short.

Michael

Official: We have a house :)

Hi Everybody,

I have great news to report. Mariah and I officially have a house. Two weekends ago Mariah and I had a home inspection on the original house that we had an accepted offer. We had a great home inspector who was incredibly thorough. After 5-hours, we had a less than impressive home inspection report. There was mold everywhere, the separate garage needed a new room, there was a nest of baby raccoons that I happened to find accidentally. Instead of walking away, we decided to at least ask the owners to repair the major problems. The sellers decided to only offer us $500 for all repairs. At that point we decided to walk away. That same night we found a house in a completely different area of town that we liked a lot. We went to the house and fell in love with it immediately. The only problem was that when we were walking through the house, three other people came to visit during the same time. We decided that we would have to move very quickly so we placed a very fair offer that very night. The next day at 12pm our realtor Connie advised us that our offer was accepted. We booked another home inspection with the same inspector and braced ourselves for the result. After the inspection was done we found that there were very few issues that needed to be resolved. We asked the sellers to fix all of the probems and they agreed.

The house is located in an area called Pleasant Ridge.

We are very excited about this house. We close at the beginning of June.

Michael

House shopping

Hi All,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on our house hunting adventures. In the past 1-2 months Mariah and I have seen at least 25-30 houses in all areas of Cincinnati. We've visited some of the roughest neighborhoods where house bargains are readily available and we've visited some of the nicest areas where the houses have a premium attached to them. Since the housing market is really bad at the moment in the U.S. because of the sub-prime mortgage disaster it is a buyers market, especially if you are a first-time buyer.

After all of this searching we have found two beautiful houses that we really like. Last Monday we decided to place an offer on the following house: 1301 Bursal St. We placed a really low-ball offer just to see what the sellers would do, not surprisingly, the sellers rejected the offer and asked for a much higher price. At this point we decided to walk away for a few days. On Monday we are going to place another offer on this house at a higher price. If the sellers continue to be difficult we will walk away and go to our number 2 option.

This has been quite the adventure for us. We've learned a lot about buying a house during the past few weeks. We'll post our learnings shortly, although they would only apply to the U.S.

Stay tuned...

In other news, Brock is no longer sick... no more Costco food for him. We weighed him on Friday and he is 35lbs.

Michael

Being a bachelor isn't quite the same anymore

Hi All,

With Mariah going up to Lansing, Michigan with all of her knitting buddies, Brock and I were left alone to be bachelor's for the weekend. Unfortunately, this weekend wasn't as relaxing as I had hoped.

We recently changed Brock's food from a $30/large bag of Purina One to a $10/large bag of Costco brand dog food. We decided to make this change because the Costco food was supposed to be better for the dog. The fact that it only cost $10/bag didn't hurt either. Since making the switch Brock's poop's have been less than solid. He has also lost the ability to control when he needs to go #2. On Friday we woke up to find out that Brock had pooped in his cage and inadvertently rolled in it. Mariah and I had to give Brock a bath at 8am and clean-up his lovely mess. On Saturday Brock was fine until Mariah left for her trip, he became mopey and wouldn't eat any food. This wasn't completely unexpected since Brock is Mariah's dog.

On Sunday morning, I awoke to find Brock's cage full of poop again. After an hour clean-up I took him to go to the bathroom outside but Brock didn't go. I took him back inside and after 10 minutes I heard his bell ring and before 2 minutes went by I came to take him out found a nice present in the living room. Brock took a liquid crap all over the floor. It appeared that he was running when he took the crap because there was a long trail of it. Needless to say, I was not impressed. After cleaning up that mess I was finally able to get the day started.

I'll be very happy to have Mariah home again to deal with her dog!

Michael

Websites I Like

Hi All,

I thought I would share with you all of the websites that I've enjoyed in the last few months. When you work for an agency you find out about all sorts of interesting sites.

Dave and Adrienne's Blog, http://daveandadie.blogspot.com

Dave is an old friend from my year at UMASS. We've kept in touch over the years and I was very happy to attend his wedding last summer.

Attempting to Live a Sustainable Lifestyle in St. Louis, http://livegreenstlouis.wordpress.com/

One of my good friends and former colleague, Todd moved to St. Louis, MO and decided to build an eco-friendly house. This blog is a great resource for those who are interested in eco-friendly industry.

Lufthansa to Europe: Virtual Pilot!, http://www.lufthansa-usa.com/useugame2007/html/play.html

Very cool travel game that tests your knowledge of cities in Europe. It's a lot harder than you think.

Stuff White People Like, http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Probably one of the funniest blogs I've read in a long time.

Stuff Bitches Love, http://stuffbitcheslove.wordpress.com/

A spin-off of the Stuff White People Like, very funny from the mind of my current co-worker, Anna.

Bush's Perfect Pair Contest, http://www.perfectpaircontest.com/

This is a recent promotion that we recently launched at work. Its a pretty interesting contest. For all the people in the U.S. who love to grill, you should definitely enter.

Finally an update......

Hi All,

I apologize for the very late posting, I blame Mariah :) Since the beginning of March we have been incredibly busy. What's been keeping us busy? House hunting!! Mariah and I have decided to get a house to store all of her stuff... and Brock. I'll get to Brock later.

The Cincinnati housing market, like the rest of the U.S. has hit hard times so there are plenty of deals out there. We have been looking for a house with 2-3 bedrooms, 1.5-2 bathrooms and air conditioning of course. After 2-3 weeks of looking we've found one house that we really like a lot. The house is located in a small town called Fairfax which is about 10 minutes away from where we currently live. The house has been completely redone with all new everything. We'll see in the next few weeks if we get it.

Another big update, we finally were able to get our wedding photos, only 2 months later. After many phone calls, emails and personal visits we finally were given the photos. We will be posting them online shortly.

Michael

Mirror mirror on the wall, whose puppy is the most pathetic of them all?

So, after reading my most recent blog posting, Kiff claims that her Sadie (one of my favourite doggie friends, by the way) is actually more pathetic looking than Brock when it comes to getting baths... So I've decided to let you all vote for yourselves!

Here's a juxtaposition....

Brock, wimpering to be 'saved' from his bath.

Kiff canoodling sadie... Not sure what's more pathetic-looking: Sadie or your babushka?

FYI: That's not what you think... it's peanut butter smeared on the bathtub.

Aww, Sadie looks so sad! Must have been dirty though, or had an accident... That water doesn't look clear to me!

More puppy patheticness.... :)

Who do YOU think is the most pathetic water doggie???

Raining cats and dogs...

Hi everyone,

Not a lot to report today but I thought I'd right a quick update so those of you who have been checking this regularly aren't annoyed with me for another day of no posting. :)

Today is nice and warm in Cincinnati, however it's been raining pretty hard since yesterday evening. Our snow is all but gone and I have a feeling that we won't be seeing much more until next year *tear*. Ah well.

Brock enjoying what's likely to be his last snow this year... Poor thing is confused now - when we take him out to pee, he's not sure where to go because we had been taking him to the snow.

Brock is growing like a weed and is doing well. He is a lot of fun now as he's learning and discovering his little world at a very rapid pace. I suppose the most excited thing he's learned to do to this point is to ring his bell in order to be let out for a pee. It's actually very cute. Now that he's house trained and we're not needing to take him out every hour, it's a very handy trick. We just started by hanging a couple large 'jingle bells' that I purchased at Michael's from a chain of tie wraps (Dad, aren't you proud of me for being so handy?) as we didn't want him to chew through a string or ribbon or something. We would have him nudge the bells with his nose and then sit every time we took him out and now he's learning to do it on his own. Ah, we're such proud parents! We must give him credit though, he's been incredibly easy to train....

Michael's doing laundy...
oh wait, I knew it was too good to be true!

Tonight, we're off to our second puppy kindergarten class (last week's was canceled due to the big storm), which should be a lot of fun. Brock has made a little friend there, named Graham, who's an oatmeal-coloured poodle mix (his parents got him at a shelter and so they're not really sure what he's mixed with) who's a good match for Brock. Graham's only about five or so pounds heavier than Brock but he's full grown so he's a little less excitable, which is nice.. all the others in the class are fully grown large breed dogs - two labs and a boxer. And actually, those three are not very well behaved so we were glad that Brock and Graham became fast friends :)

Brock looking particularly pathetic and defeated by the end of his first bath a few weeks ago (this week's bath was thankfully much less eventful!). It's amazing how much he shrinks up when he doesn't have his big fluffy hair to hide inside!

So yeah, not a lot is going on here right now. I got a library card in the mail yesterday (which I ordered online) so I think I'll head over there this afternoon to activate it and see if I can find a good book to get me through the rainy weekend. Tomorrow, Michael and I are off to Ikea to pick up my knitting chair - see the last post about how I won a 100$ gift certificate there - which I'm also pretty excited about. Michael's not so much looking forward to it - he hates stores full of people - but I promised I'd get up early enough to miss the rush.

Brock's 'pounce' while playing at the tennis courts... too cute :)

Well, that's all for now. Must go as Brock's jingling his bell for me!

Take care,
Mariah

I heart IKEA

Well, I must say it's a beautiful day in our neighbourhood today :) The sun is shining, it's probably about 13 degrees and there's no sign of snow or rain... oh, and the 40 cm of snow that we got on Friday and Saturday is nearly gone. I must admit that it's much nicer to have a blizzard when you know that spring is just around the corner...

So, now for some local news: Today was the Grand Opening for the first Ikea in Ohio. Actually, it's the only one within about 7 hours of here, so it's quite new and exciting for many local people who don't really know what Ikea is all about. So anyways, they allowed people to start camping out for the Grand opening starting on Monday morning at 9am. A little crazy but I'm sure many people did it. Michael wouldn't take two days off work to wait in line with me, and having only one vehicle and not really knowing anyone else in the city crazy enough to do it, I missed out. (What gives, eh? haha).. No, just kidding. I wouldn't have anyways.

Instead of all that fuss, I decided to go this morning after dropping Michael off at work. (His parting words were 'please don't spend all our money there!') It was tough, but I managed not to. I spent 18.00$ on two laundry hampers and a large container with a flip lid for dog food... Wasn't looking for these things but they had been on my list of things I semi-need for a while and the prices were right. That's really not the most exciting part though. Although I didn't arrive until 9:20am, I was still within the first 2500 people to enter the store. I was sure I had missed out on the 'mystery envelopes' that were being given to these first visitors since, when I got there, the line-up went around three sides of the huge square building. The hype going into the building was pretty ridiculous. As we rounded the last corner to the entrance, suddenly there was music... Like a live band playing really upbeat music - like you would hear at a sports game. Then, the most shocking thing, as you walked in through the doors, I was handed a gold envelope (yay me for being one of the first 2500!) and then the line passed through a room of at least 100 Ikea employees, all dressed in yellow, clapping, hooting and banging these plastic Ikea signs together... like the ones you'd see at a hockey or football game. It was mayhem! (but oh-so-much fun :) So yeah, after walking through the throng of cheering employees, you go up an escalator and, I was finally in the store. You'd think this would be where the excitement would end, but NO! I decided to grab a quick breakfast.... 99cents for a plate of eggs, bacon and potatoes, you can't go wrong! Then, as I'm checking out, I'm given a free mug. "Sweet," I'm thinking... But it doesn't end there. It's a cup that entitles me to free coffee for life at the West Chester IKEA. (Not that I'll be stopping by there that often but, a) it's a free travel mug and b) it's a free coffee at least on the next few occasions that i'm there.)

Ok, so now you'd think the excitement would be over... but still not yet! I realized that I hadn't yet opened my little gold envelope... Inside was a 100$ gift card! I couldn't believe it! Mariah, who NEVER wins ANYTHING, won! So yes, that's the end of the big excitement of my day. I then trolled through the store, wondering what to purchase with my windfall... I had been telling Michael I would love a chair for knitting... I though I knew what I wanted but once I got there, I realized I had a couple choices... I want to make sure it's something that we'll be able to use when we move - we're hoping to buy a house once I get a job here - and that it's something he'll like as well. Plus, I wanted to think about it a little while. So I think we'll head back this weekend or next... as soon as I can drag Michael :)

Well, that's about all for now. I hope this post finds everyone well and happy.

Take care,
Mariah

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Hello everyone, from snow-covered Cincinnati!

We've just emerged from a two-day blizzard (yes, I would even say it was a fair bit of snow as a Northerner!) in the city. Although the city was basically on lockdown for the last 36 hours, we have still managed to have a lot of fun and a good weekend here.

We wanted to upload some pics for y'all (haha) but Blogger seems to be acting up tonight and won't let us add any more than that first one. Sooooo... check back tomorrow and we'll do our best to update asap!

Until then, have a great week!

Mariah, Michael and Brock

Obama-Rama

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been a while since my last post... As most of you know, Michael and I have been out of commission for quite some time due to the awful chest cold/flu that seemed to have found its way to our apartment a few weeks ago. Thankfully, Michael is now back to normal and I'm about 90% back (from the semi-dead) as well. Perhaps my sickness was lengthened somewhat by standing outside in the 0 degree Celsius weather for about five hours last week but it was all worth it :)

You're probably scratching your head wondering what the heck I'm talking about... Well, despite Michael's dismay, I met up with two ladies from my knitting group (no, they're not old grannies, they're both young women, one of whom is a student about my age - and yes, they're very cool!) and we went to the Barack Obama rally (AKA the Keeping America's Promise Rally with Barack Obama - the PR team who came up with that deserves a raise!). We arrived around 9am at the University of Cincinnati - not to be confused with Cincinnati State University, I found out! - where we got in line (about 50th, I'd say) and waited to be let into the gym. We brought our knitting, which we quickly found out would not be allowed 'because knitting needles are long and pointy and can be used as weapons' but it was really too cold to knit anyways. We had thought we would be allowed into the aigue, at least but no such luck.

Finally warm and toasty inside!

Our long wait outside was paid off with a "Golden Ticket" that was given to those of us close to the front. We got priority seating on the lower level.

I took advantage of the opportunity to walk back to the car to dump our stuff and warmed up enough for the next few hours in line to be tolerable. Note to self, Cinci weather is a lot like Niagara weather - damp and windy. It might have only been zero, but it cut through us. Unfortunately, we were not let into the building until a little after 1230pm. The wait was long, but the company was good, and the speech was great, so it was all worth it.

This first picture was taken from our spot in line (the entrance was behind me...) If you squint really hard, you can see the line off in the distance, on the other side of that fence and across a playing field. Below is the same view but magnified so you can see how far the line goes.



The view from inside the building - another LONG line-up... Apparently there were three lines all of which had thousands of people in them.

So anyways, once we got in and went through our security checkpoints, we (along with the 14,000 others in attendance) listened to a couple 'notable persons' give short talks about why they're supporting Obama. Among them was the Mayor of Cincinnati, who I learned is not only a 'VIP' but who is also a Super Delegate and who has decided to endorse Obama. Tres cool.

After the talks, they pumped up the crowd a fair bit with the token inspirational music (insert U2 here) and had fun picking out the most enthusiastic supporters on the jumbotron. Finally, Barack took the stage and, I must say, it was something I won't ever forget.



He was not only a good speaker but had a charisma about him that I've never seen in a speaker in person. Regardless of the politics, he certainly knows how to hold the attention of a stadium full of people. There are several points of his that I vehemently agree with, and on the other hand, there a couple things that I am a little skeptical about - his health care plan sounds good, but will it actually be do-able, for instance. Also, I was a little taken aback by both Obama's and Clinton's efforts to one-up each other in their condemnations of NAFTA...



As a Canadian, this obviously concerns me more than a little. (As a side note, see this story, which has certainly heightened my confusion...)



And then, there's this article.... Canada says TV Story on Obama NAFTA Deception is not true.

Bah, it is all politics, after all. But given the extreme excitement at the rally and in the media in general, I think some definite social change will inevitably follow this year's election, regardless of the election's outcome. About a year ago, I was not so sure about moving here from Canada, the land of free health care, bilingualism and cultural mosaics (I tried explaining the difference between a mosaic and melting pot to an American a few weeks ago, and that didn't really go well), mostly due to the political landscape; however, I'm now hoping this presidential race will bring out a more liberal transition and a political change of pace, regardless of how naive many republicans would say this viewpoint is.

For now, even though I can't vote and don't have a proper front lawn on which to erect a sign of support, I will wear my Obama button with hope.

PS sorry for the lack of photos and videos that I had promised some of you - turns out that I don't know how to use Michael's camera properly - should have grabbed my own, I guess - and not only is there no audio on the videos, but almost all the photos are blurry.... I had included a few though, and a few YouTube videos from others, so, enjoy!

Brock update

Hi All,

We've officially had Brock for one month now. Our lives have definitely changed since he's arrived. Here is a summary of the past 4 weeks.

Weeks 1 & 2: Brock comes home. We get the pleasure of waking up at 2-3am to take him out to pee. We take him to a vet to get his first checkup where we find out he is 8 pounds. It turns out the dog is an attention hog. Everybody who sees Brock has to stop to pet him. A woman who was driving stops her car to see Brock. We also give him his first bath which he doesn't like at all, luckily he likes peanut butter a lot. Mariah teaches him to sit and go up and down the stairs.

Weeks 3 & 4: Brock starts to teethe and enjoys chewing on everything including us. His teeth are especially sharp since they are new. Potty training progress is touch and go. He starts to learn how to let us know when he needs to go out, but if he gets excited he pees everywhere. Mariah takes him to get he second set of shots and a grooming. Again, this dog is an attention hog and I think he knows it. Brock also learns how to jump on the couch which is a pain. We figured he might be a jumping dog because his mother and father were extremely agile. Mariah teaches him to lie down and shake his paw. Finally, we took Brock to his first puppy training class. He met a lot of new friends including one poodle that was maybe 2-5 pounds heavier than Brock despite being 1-year old. Brock did very well and had a lot of fun. When we weighed him at PetSmart after our class he was 16.5 pounds. This puppy is going to be massive.

Here are some new pictures of our pup:

A Quote From Ted Kennedy

Not to be political but somebody sent me this and I found it hilarious given the person who is saying it.



See article for reference.

This week in Cincinnati

Hi All,

This week Mariah and I have been sick with chest cold so we haven't been up to much. Brock continues to grow larger and is now in the habit of nipping and chewing on things, mostly us. We are going to start taking him to puppy training classes in March. We will post new photos of him very soon.

I would like to talk about a couple of the projects that I've been working on since we now have a lot more free time after the wedding.

HearMeBuzz.com - Back in my former life at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, I worked with large automakers to tell them what online consumers are saying about their cars, advertising and brand. Since I've moved on to Empower, I've wanted to create a website that will give consumers who are interested in buying a car an easy way to find out what other online owners are saying about the vehicles that they own. Right now I am going to be focusing on online discussion about Toyota, Scion and Lexus vehicles.

As a side note, check out littledeviants.com and want2bsquare.com. These are two websites created by Scion to advertising its new vehicles. In my opinion, Scion is one of the most creative companies that I've had an opportunity to learn about.

DigitalAscend.com - One of my co-workers and I decided to create a blog that focuses on the areas that we specialize in; search engine marketing, website analytics and consumer-generated media.

Both projects focus on two different areas. They are very interesting and should keep me busy :)

On another note, we should have wedding photos available pretty soon. We will post them as soon as we get them.

Michael

Party in my pants

Yes, that's right. Last night I went to the Cincinnati ADDY's "Party in your pants" awards. Unfortunately the party was only in my pants because Mariah decided to stay home and watch the puppy (more on that later). The ADDY's were run by the Cincinnati Ad Club to honor the best in creative advertising. The event was held at Paul Brown Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals or "Bungles" play. It was my first time attending a creative awards show so I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into. Overall, it was a very cool event. I went with several of my co-workers from Empower. I was really surprised to see the quality and the number of creative agencies that Cincinnati has. Apart from the big New York ad agencies, Cincinnati is very close behind in quality and creativity.

Michael

Whoever said money can't buy happiness never bought a puppy...

So I'm guessing you've all now read about our wedding and how great it was and how happy Michael and I are to now have that behind us - not that we didn't enjoy it but we're glad to move on as newlyweds rather than keep living the stress of wedding planning, as it seems to have been for over two years now!

Today's post, then, is on a bit of a different note. I thought I would take a moment to introduce you all to Brock, our new Labradoodle. Yes, it is official, he is "the one" :)

Hangin' out with Mariah - Brock loves to give "kisses" so we're trying to harness this as his first trick - to "kiss" on command.

On the Monday after our wedding, Michael, Brianna, Bridget (my sisters) and I set out for Northern Ohio at 5am. Yes, you read that correctly: we left Cincinnati less than 36 hours after the wedding! I know what you're thinking as if Mariah actually got up that early, nevermind drove somewhere!? Believe it or not, I did.

So anyways, we drove up to Wauseon, Ohio (about 3.5 hours north of Cincinnati) where we arrived at Buckeye Kennels to a kitchen full of labradoodles! Sheryl, the breeder, was great. When we arrived, all five boys from the litter were frolicking around the kitchen with her son, who helped us get to know the pups. One little guy ran over to us right away, lunging at me. Although this was supercute, I was a little skeptical, as I remembered being warned by the authors of many a doggie book and website that have said you may think this puppy is "picking you" but beware as this is often the sign of an alpha dog. So, as adorable as he was, I managed to sit back a moment and convince myself that's not really what I wanted.

Brock, posing at Michael's parents' house in West Chester - a stop on the way home

By this time, Michael had really taken to another of the puppies - you could tell he had just melted. Brianna and Bridget, not wanting to make the decision for us, helped by keeping the other pups busy as we rubbed bellies and tugged on tails to see if we could get a better idea of their temperaments. Then, we realized that one of the puppies seemed a lot quieter than the others. He was also a lot curlier than the other guys. He had been sitting in Sheryl's son's lap the whole time but I just had to give him a cuddle. Sure enough, he slowly warmed to both Michael and I and his face, slightly different than all his littermates with beautiful grey eyes, won both Michael and I over. Luckily for me, he also happened to be the most "curly" of the group, which means he has a much lower chance of shedding and causing allergies!

So, a couple hours later, we packed up back into the car, put little Brock at my feet (who passed out about thirty seconds later) and we headed for the I-75 where we would soon be meeting up with my parents and gramma. As soon as we got there, of course, everyone was excited to see the new pooch. I would like to highlight this, however, my mother seemed to be the most excited of us all! For those who don't know, my mom generally hates dogs and has not been shy to vocalize that she thinks us getting a dog is a dumb idea. Oh well. I guess we got the last laugh afterall. Not only did she think he was adorable, the next sentence out of her mouth was can I hold him please?! I can't wait to get that picture from gramma. It's so going to be framed in our living room!

Michael and Brock, taking a pit stop on the way home

After the brief introductions, we all said our goodbyes, Brianna and Bridget piled into my parents vehicle and they drove north as Michael, Brock and I made our way back south to Cincinnati. The ride home was uneventful and we didn't have to clean up a single mess. The first night was not bad at all. After about 2 minutes of whining, Brock settled quickly in his kennel and only fussed to go out twice that night. As of last night, we were only down to one 3am walk; which Michael and I alternate. Of course, I could sleep through a tornado, so Michael wakes me up when it's my turn. haha...

Between his yawn and his hiccups, this doggie has kept us in stitches since he's been here!

Brock's been slowly adjusting to city life with us and every day we see a little bit more of his personality. Although he is fairly quiet, he doesn't like to be very far from us and likes to sit at our feet or cuddle up to us if we're sitting on the floor - in fact, our feet have seen him more often than his doggie bed. At the moment, he is curled up under the dining room table, where I'm sitting typing. He's always getting tangled up under the chairs and it's quite funny to see his navigate his way out as he's waking up.

Brock, hanging out in one of his favourite nap spots... He's still not super steady on his feet though, so it's rather entertaining for us to see him get out through all the chair legs.

Yesterday was pretty difficult, as Brock seemed to have turned into a moody little dog, refusing to walk on his leash and going in all the wrong places. This was magnified by the fact that, in my attempt to get him out to pee quickly, I locked myself out of the building in my birks and sweats in the rain. Thank god my neighbour was around to let me in and the maintenance guy had a master key! I have a feeling the moodiness might have been caused by his first bath; which he seemed to hate intensely. Oh well..

The squeaky carrot has quickly become one of his favourites

Today, though, has been a different story. Not only was he a star at the vet's office where everyone oooh'ed and ahhh'ed over him (they had never seen a fully brown chocolate doodle before), he seemed to have ten times his normal energy, is learning to "let's go" on the leash, to "sit" and has now twice run up the two steep flights of stairs inside our building. Next on the list: learn to go down stairs. This has not been much of an issue outside as he prefers to roll down the little hill beside the stairs outside our building but inside, it's a bit annoying.

Anyhoo, that's about all for now. As you can see, I'm loving our new pup so far.... but I wouldn't be surprised if most of you stopped reading paragraphs ago! haha... That's alright. Well, I hope all is well with all of you. I love reading the comments that everyone has been leaving on the blog and the emails I've gotten. They are very good motivators for me to keep up with the posting!

Take care!
Mariah


PS Here's a link to all the photos we've taken of Brock the last couple of days.... Enjoy!

The Wedding Weekend

Hi everyone,

Well, it sure has been a very busy month! First and foremost, Michael and I are finally married! We had a wonderful (but busy!) weekend. But I'm not going to lie, we're both feeling a lot less stressed now that it's all over. The wedding photographer has given us a timeline of 2-3 weeks before we receive our wedding photos so we'll post them then. For now, we'll just post a bunch of pre- and post-wedding shots that we and our guests took throughout the weekend. The ceremony was beautiful and the dinner we had afterward was great. The only thing that rivaled the food was the good company!

As I said, it was pretty ridiculous around here for the couple weeks that lead up to the wedding but I think it was all worth it. We had a lot of help from Michael's parents who organized a big open house slash dinner for Friday evening, as most people were arriving in Cincinnati that afternoon and they also held a brunch for everyone on Sunday as well. Hmm... there's so much to write about... so I guess I'll just go through it chronologically for you.

Kiff/Maid of Honour

On Wednesday evening, Kiff (my best friend/maid of honour/chief cook and bottle washer for the weekend) arrived at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport. So rather than picking her up and driving right back home, we thought we would let her savour her first taste of Kentucky by making a stop at Newport on the Levee (basically directly across the Ohio River - which serves as the state litne - from downtown Cincinnati). We had dinner at Hofbrauhaus, a German/Bavarian restaurant and brewery. Kiff felt at home as she was just in Germany last year haha. Oh, andhe fried sauerkraut and wienerschnitzel were awesome. Eventually we got home and after making list 1.0 (this was the first of many versions of the list of things we had to do over the next couple days) we hit the sack.

Thursday was probably our most productive day. After dropping Michael off at work, Kiff and I first went to an immigration appointment downtown, where I got all the details for the next stage of getting my US residency. I found out that in three months, I should have temporary work papers AND temporary travel papers (awesome news considering the consulate and border told me I couldn't leave the country for a whole year!) After that, we scoured pretty much every grocery store in the Greater Cincinnati area (ok, not really - probably every one in the Hyde Park area though) and after about 6 stops, finally found a ton of white flowers at a decent price. I had already put together cute little tins for the flowers at the ceremony but had yet to fill them with anything. We figured it would be cute to have a bunch of different types of flowers filling them as long as they were all white. I must say, the carnations, mums and fuji mums looked great in them. We finally ended up at Fresh Market where we found everything we needed at a very good price.

Our car after the flower run to Fresh Market

Our floral arranging progress on Friday

After that, it was off to Michael's where we got all the other necessities like floral wire, ribbons, extra scissors, etc. Oh, and we also dropped into Busken's, a famous local bakery for a batch of their signature sugar cookies to finish filling the guests' gift baskets. On a side note, I loved doing the baskets, because it really gave me an opportunity to taste a lot of so-called 'local fare'. We included things like the Busken cookies, Buckeye chocolate candies (because Ohio is the buckeye state), a Graeter's chocolate bar, Montgomery Inn BBQ sauce, etc. Oh, and Michael decided that his groomsmen should also get beer from a Microbrewery in Kentucky called Kentucky Horse Piss (click on the name to see their website - the label on the beer is as funny as the name!)

Cookies from Busken's

By noon, Kiff and I were back at the apartment, arranging flowers and figuring out some last minute decorating details.

The only things missing were Brenda and Lorraine!

Eventually, Brian (Michael's best man) arrived from the London/Sarnia area and hung around just long enough to keep both Kiff and I in stitches before we all piled into the car and went to pick up Michael. We all went for dinner across the street from our place at the Hyde Park Tavern (I highly recommend it, by the way), where we roughly figured out what we would be up to for the rest of the night and the next few days. I must say, it was great to have both Brian and Kiff down a couple days before the craziness of all the festivities began. There's no way we could have gotten everything done without them - plus, it was a lot of fun to have some new people to play Guitar Hero with late into the night! :)

Friday was just as busy as Thursday. Kiff and I headed over to the Chapel in Glendale to decorate and the boys had a couple of errands to run (and also brought us whatever we needed or forgotten).

Brian/Best Man, 'helping' us decorate at the Chapel :)

What we thought would have taken two hours, soon became six and with the help of my sisters, mom and gramma, who had arrived at the Sheraton (close by the Chapel, where they were staying) in mid-afternoon, we finished everything as fast as possible, drove the half hour back to my apartment, got dressed and made ourselves as presentable as possible, and then headed back up to West Chester (about half an hour away), where Michael's parents were hosting their party. The party was great. There was a band (and even bagpipes, which I know Brian just loved!) and it was so nice to meet all of Michael's family that I hadn't yet met. The food was amazing (and of course, there was too much) and I think everyone had a really good time.

Me, on a ladder in the Chapel, tangled in lights, thule and ivy... Not feeling stressed at all!

By Friday night, we were all exhausted, however, there was still a TON left to do on Saturday. Brianna, Bridget, Kiff and I all stayed at our apartment while Michael and Brian and Adam (another groomsmen) had their party on Friday night. The next morning, we were all up early with our list of things to do and the girls spent the better part of the day getting our hair done, buying roses, tying bouquets, making programs and, finally, getting dressed for the ceremony.

Bridgy looking for a picture of a hairdo at the hairdresser's

The paparazzi (aka Kiff) takes pics of me leaving the hairdresser's and walking next door, back to my apartment to arrange flowers on Saturday morning.Rockin' my rollers

Thank goodness, we all made it to the Church on time, and, despite the slight confusion and changes our officiant made at the last second, everything went very well and smoothly. Our decorations were very simple with white lights behind white thule and greenery and candles everywhere but, being that the sun had just set, it looked gorgeous! It's amazing how good our friends and family look when they're all dressed up! haha..

After the ceremony and about a half hour of photos, we all drove up to Monroe (about twenty minutes north) and had the most wonderful dinner. We had 5 courses, which culminated in the best Filet Mignon I have ever had. If you're in the mood for an amazing meal in Cincinnati, you must go to the Brandywine Inn! We were all so stuffed after the meal that, despite it's beauty, no one was very hungry, so we decided to wait until brunch at Michael's parents' house to cut it.

Our beautiful (and yummy!) White Chocolate Romance cake with raspberry filling

The Groom's cake (carrot)

For those that don't know, in the South, it is traditional to have a smaller cake for the Groom - either decorated as a theme or in his favourite flavour.

Kiff saved the day (again!) when we forgot the cake topper, she sprung into action, taking apart my mom's little bouquet and decorating our cake top and table for us. What would we have done without her?.....

The next morning, everyone met up at the Lamontagnes for more food (as if we needed it after the marathon dinner we had the night before!) and the cutting of the cake. We said goodbye to most of the guests at that point and my sisters and Kiff and I did some shopping while Michael, Carolyn and Brian stayed and entertained the little cousins.

Kiff tried on this dress at Macy's (we found it in the changeroom in the clearance section) and gave me her fiercest model look. Enjoy this while you can. When she sees this, she'll probably make me remove it! haha...

We had dinner Sunday night with my gramma and parents at a 'real southern BBQ' spot and then headed back to the apartment to back and get ready for Brock's arrival. Yes, we got our new puppy on Monday! We have many pictures to share but this post is getting rather long so I'm going to finish off this post by saying that I, for one, had a wonderful time at our *second* wedding. haha..

Everyone looked wonderful, I think we all had a good time and it was easily one of the best days of my life.