LOST!

We are hosting a "LOST" season premiere party tonight. I wanted to do something theme related so I searched for Dharma Initiative labels to put on things for the party. I found this site that had PDF's of all different types of food but alas, they had been taken down due to copyright infringement. Anyway, I searched the interwebs near and far and found one of the PDF's hidden on some long forgotten web server. Dharma Beer Labels

Hello Scientology, We Are Anonymous...

I don't know why I am so amused by Scientology. I think it is a combination of the story of Xenu and the crazy Tom Cruise interviews but anyway... A group calling themselves Anonymous posted a video this week promising to dismantle the cult church. Apparently they have already brought down the website repeatedly as well as spam faxing the main office.

Into The Wild

I finished reading "Into The Wild" last night. What a tragic story... I'm not sure what to make of it though. I'm torn between the similarities between he and myself and the selfishness that he demonstrated on so many levels. I definitely recommend reading it though. Has anyone seen the movie? I really like the soundtrack by Eddie Vedder. Here's one of the songs: Guaranteed.mp3

My New Role Model

Well Dad, aren't you glad none of us turned out like this! Check out this youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2EDtxEumFI

Snow!

While this probably isn't newsworthy to the northerners in the group, we found it pretty exciting. We got about an inch or so of snow on Wednesday evening. Tallulah seemed quite amused with the little white cold thingies. I would tilt her head back and let the snow hit her face and she would close her eyes and open her mouth. It was like some sort of weird reflex. It was very cute. Our neighbors were outside playing and taking pictures. They snapped this shot of us.

www.myrecipes.com

Suzanne and I have recently been having fun cooking and trying new recipes. We've found some really good recipes on this site. They have a huge catalog of recipes from publications like Southern Living, Cooking Light, Real Simple, Food & Wine, etc... You can search for recipes, view ratings and reviews, and save your favorites. Check it out and let us know if you find something yummy. :-)

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipes/

Happy Birthday Chris!

Chris celebrated a birthday on Saturday. I won't say "how many" he is because we stop counting after 30, right? Anyway, I hope you had a great day and it involved cake of some sort.

Tax The Doctors

I had an interesting hypothetical today in Tax Class that made me think of the doctors in the family.

Here’s the scenario: Doctor saves a woman’s life. Out of appreciation, she gives him and his family an all expensed paid vacation to Vail Ski Resort.

Background Law: Generally, gifts are excluded from your Gross Income, and therefore not taxed. There is an important exception: Gifts given to an employee by his employer are not excluded from your Gross Income, and so they are taxed.

The Question: Should the Doctor have to pay income tax on the value of the trip? Should this fall under the employer-employee exception? If not, why should gifts to me from my firm be taxable, but not CHOCOLATE CAKES given to Jacob by his patients?

Given my bitterness over Jacob's chocolate cakes, I think you all probably know how I'd answer the question. Any thoughts?

Chicago!

Suzanne and I purchased flights to Chicago last night. We are very excited about spending almost 6 days there (Feb. 14th-19th). Hopefully we can get some babysitting time out of Laura and Jeff (hint, hint...) since we will be there for both Valentine's Day and our 2 year anniversary.

Christmas Pictures

I have some pictures posted from Christmas on my Picassa Web Album. They are marked as private so you have to use this URL to get to them. Enjoy!

Happy Anniversary!

Congratulations Chris and Erin! Ever notice how the number eight sort of looks like the symbol for infinity? :-) I hope you guys have a wonderful evening.

iRoomba

I've been wanting one of these things for a while now and recently Buy.com had an offer I couldn't refuse so we made the purchase. We set it up Sunday evening and scheduled it to clean at 1:00 AM. It is pretty loud so it woke me up and I listened to it do its thing for about an hour until it finally finished. It did a pretty good job of cleaning but it seemed to have a problem finding the base. It ended up stranded by the front door. I think it was trying to escape... I guess I'll reprogram it to clean early in the morning so it doesn't wake me. I'll let you guys know more after we have a few more days with it. I can't wait to see what Tallulah thinks of it.

Happy 30th!!!

You don't look 30 at all... :-)

Once

A few months ago I ran across an article about this little independent film called "Once". It is about a struggling street musician in Dublin who meets a girl who inspires him to face his fears and chase his dreams. It was recently released to DVD and Suzanne and I watched it last night. Wow... It was really powerful. It is very different (think low budget, musicians - not actors) but the music and story are fantastic. Let me know what you think!

Here it is on IMDB

Launch!

I was sitting at the computer getting really frustrated about all of the fun blog names being taken when Suzanne suggested "The Ruby Tuesday Club". We laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes and I decided to go with it for now.