Spain

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a good Valentine's Day. Ours was slightly marred by Jason developing a nice case of pinkeye. :( Not a great way to celebrate our first Valentine's Day as a married couple!

Today is the blog about our trip to Spain in September ('07). Jason had the opportunity to present his master's thesis at the SAE Aircraft and Engine Icing International Conference in Seville (and I had the opportunity to go with him!). Jason's days consisted of attending presentations and lectures at the hotel while my days consisted of sleeping in til noon, then sightseeing on my own until dinner when I would meet up with Jason and we would eat and then sightsee some more until bedtime. Seville is a very touristy but amazing place and full of buildings and structures that, as Jason pointed out, were built well before the birth of our own country! During the week we were fortunate to enjoy two flamenco dancing performances, the first a formalized program for which we bought tickets, and several nights after that, an impromptu (free) performance at a lively local bar. We also visited museums, cathedrals and castles, ate paella -the national dish - twice, listened to street musicians, and walked about a thousand miles before the week was done. Here are a few of the 400+ pics we took :). Descriptions are below the pictures. Enjoy!

P.S. What's up with all that space between the text and the images??? Still becoming familiar with this whole blogging thing...

1. Plaza de Espana (where some footage was shot for one of the later Star Wars films)	2. Typical street in old part of the city
3. Bullfighting ring	4. View of the city (bullfighting ring visible) from top of the Cathedral
5. Catherdral	6.Sweaty flamenco dancers/musicians
7. A Smart Car! One of the many awesome European cars we saw.	8. Spain's a great place to be a biker as evidenced by the generous bike lanes along many of the sidewalks
9. Paella - notice the large shrimp with everything (legs, antennae, eyes) still attached	10. Taking a tour of the city on a double decker bus
11. Street musicians drawing a large crowd. This group had an eclectic mix of instruments: upright basses (3 of them!), accordion, saxophone, guitar, clarinet, trumpet, and probably more	12. The countryside of Spain - olive trees
	13. Indoor courtyard at the Alcazar castle. We actually stood in the room where Christopher Columbus was commissioned by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to go find the New World!

More about Juno

As you can see, we have finally named our dog! Inspiration came from two sources: 1) The recent movie by the same name that we thoroughly enjoyed and 2) Roman mythology - in ancient Rome, Juno was the goddess of matrimony and queen of the gods. At any rate, it's a vast improvement over Hot Dog!

Juno came to us supposedly already house-trained but yesterday was the first accident-free day since we got her on Saturday. We figure she was just kind of thrown for a loop with adjusting to a new environment and all and is just now getting back on her game. She certainly isn't as shy now as she was the first day we got her. When we leave during the day we put her on her leash and attach the other end to the washing machine, which is in the kitchen. This has worked pretty well the last couple days (once we realized we should remove everything on the outside of the fridge that is in her reach!). At night she sleeps on a blanket beside our bed. She really has adapted wonderfully to living with us and we couldn't be more pleased. She sure makes us feel loved - if I get up and walk five feet away to retrieve something she follows me the whole way. Last night was pretty amusing - I went to bed before Jason and she had a hard time choosing who to be with. She kept running up the stairs into the bedroom to say hi to me and then she'd turn around and go back downstairs where Jason was. Five minutes later she'd be back up to see me again and then downstairs again to Jason.

In other news, I have an interview for a job this afternoon that I think I would enjoy. I'm not going to say anything else about it right now because I don't want to psych myself out :)

It seems as though winter is ending here...temps have been in 60s and 70s. Our winter really only consisted of maybe a handful of days of 40-degree weather. It just boggles the mind...we're half-expecting a call from up north asking us to come help dig our families out of the snow :).

Hopefully later this week I'll post a blog about our trip to Spain (just for you, Tina!).

Take care, everyone,
-Mel

PUPPY!

I am happy to annouce that Jason and I are proud owners of a new puppy :) We adopted her this weekend from a local animal rescue organization. She is a 10-month-old black lab mixed with bull terrier (the Target dog) and she is the sweetest dog ever....we've had her three days now and we still haven't ever heard her bark! Of course, I am just over the moon with this new acquisition since I have had dogs my whole life and I have been wanting to get one ever since we moved here. Jason took a little convincing but I believe he is happy as well. It's nice that I don't have a job and can stay home with her during the day. Oh, and she is currently nameless as the name she came with was Hot Dog and we absolutely refuse to call her that. We will have to decide on a name soon, though, since it's getting old calling her "puppy" all the time.

One interesting thing we discovered last night is that she becomes very agitated when Jason plays his guitar. Maybe she just didn't enjoy his choice of song...

Enjoy the pictures of our new gal!
-Mel

Blog Post Numero Uno

Howdy ya'll!

Haha, couldn't resist. We really don't talk like that. Yet....

Anyway...hi and welcome to the Schmuck(er) blog! Jason and I have enjoyed reading the blogs of friends and have found it to be a good way to keep up with what's going on in their lives, especially since we aren't always good at maintaining regluar contact. Thus, we decided we might give it a go ourselves. I'm not too good at this computer stuff, that's really Jason's department, so we'll see how this goes...

Here's a rapid summary of the last 9-ish months.....about a month after our June wedding, we moved here to College Station, deep in the heart of Texas, so Jason could pursue a doctorate at Texas A&M University. We have had quite an interesting time adjusting to married life and Texas culture (more on that to come later).

Right now Jason's in his second semester at A&M while I am still trying to figure out what I want to do. I worked at a case manager at a mental health facility for a few months but it turned out not to be a good match for me. I am currently doing temp jobs through a temp agency until I find something that matches my skills/interests better. We are fortunate to be in a good enough financial position that we can afford for me to not have a full-time job for a couple months.

Some highlights of the last 9 months have been spending a week in Spain (I'll try and do a blog on that - with pictures - later) and going home to Goshen and Toledo for 2 weeks at Christmas. In our spare time we enjoy attempting to play tennis, watching movies and playing Scrabble. Well, we don't so much play Scrabble anymore now that I've beaten Jason 10 times in a row....

I think that'll be all for now. I'm gonna go see if I can figure out how to post pictures too...

Thanks for reading!
-mel