Things are fine here in St. Louis as the summer begins to set in. I think we last checked in here after our trip to Hawaii for Carl & Joanne's wedding in October. Since then, we went to Tulsa to see Courtney's dad for Thanksgiving, and split Christmas between Maryland and North Carolina, catching up with a large chunk of Courtney's family as well as mine.
There was a rough start to 2009, especially within Courtney's family, with some injuries and some really terrible situations, and our thoughts are with all of them as recoveries and healing continues.
We're approaching our first anniversary - the year has definitely flown by. Courtney is through two years of a projected five-year PhD program at St. Louis University, and I'm happy to still be employed in the marketing department of commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis (I survived a layoff where two of the five in our department got laid off).
Courtney's project is coming along, and she'll spend the summer studying for her the oral portion of her qualification exams, or prelims (I may or may not have that right) and beginning to gather some data that will hopefully go into her dissertation. I don't think it's much secret that we hope to get back to the East Coast somewhere once she finishes up, but we'll see where the job market takes us at that point.
We moved a couple of blocks in late January to a new apartment that's working out pretty well for us. Softball season has now started up again, and with two wins out of three games, I think we've already doubled last season's win total.
We've got a "Pujols Pack" of tickets to seven Cardinals games throughout the season, with another one coming up this week. We made it to Las Vegas in March, where we hung out with the Sleeps, Geometry and J-Bo and even saw my parents, who were there for their anniversary. I'm headed to Southport, NC, for Father's Day weekend to play in a golf tournament with my dad, and Courtney's heading back to Maryland for Fourth of July weekend, and we're hoping to make a trip down to Oklahoma to see Courtney's dad soon too. And we're headed back to Winston-Salem for the first time in a long while in October for Homecoming, which is my 10th out of college (crazy). Thankfully, airfares have been pretty decent for a few of the trips we've planned.
Here's a picture from Vegas - I'm a big fan of this one. Props to J-Bo for taking it. Quit the IT biz and become a photographer. It's much less lucrative.
Oh, and how could I forget - at the end of June, Sleepy is coming out to St. Louis - something that all of you are welcome to do as well, by the way. Even though we want to get back to the East Coast, St. Louis is a pretty nice place to come for a visit and there's plenty to keep you busy. I think we'll probably take in a Cards game, hit up one of the casinos, maybe tour the Anheuser-Busch ... er... InBev plant, check out the Arch, etc. Mom and Dad, I promise you it's nicer here in the summer - way better than at the end of January.
I'll try to keep this up to date a little better, so I can talk about much more worthless stuff, like the fact that we saw Angels & Demons, or that we're halfway through the second season of "The Wire" on Netflix. You know, the stuff everyone really cares about.
