Italy:Austria :: Texas:New Mexico

Remember in elementary school you had to do those analogies, X is to Y as A is to B. And it would be something like big is to small as black is to white.

Well it's New Years Eve and that's what I'm (happily) doing. I was looking at a map and thought "wow, are Italy and Austria as close as we think? Rome and Vienna kinda look far away."

I did exactly what any other Gen X/Yer would do, I Google Map searched it. They are about 775 miles apart. That's pretty similar to driving from Austin to Los Alamos, New Mexico. And for those of you with shady southwestern US geography, New Mexico is a neighbor state of Texas.

Yup, what in Texas only takes you to the next state in Europe will result in another stamp on my passport.

While I was originally thinking I wouldn't have any 2012 new year's resolutions (other than to make less resolutions) I'm now thinking I might have one: see Italy and Austria. With any luck, that one's in the bag.

I was spammed. I think.

At work I deal with a lot of blog spam, especially when I first started and our filter system was pretty primitive. But that's just one of the casualties of having a popular blog, with SEO around terms that other people want to advertise to and being open to commentary. (Tangent: we changed to the Disqus commenting system that requires log-in and I would say our spam was reduced by about 80% plus our commenting system is now more interactive. But alas, I digress.)

Today though I got my first spam comment on here! Well, at least I think I did. Disqus email alerts me to comments and I woke up to this email.

Looks like spam to me. But get this - I can't find the comment anywhere but in my email. It's not showing on the post nor is it showing in the admin settings in Disqus. Strange right? Donde esta my spam?

Assuming though that I was spammed, I'm not sure if I should be irritated or pleased. On the one hand, nobody likes spam. On the other hand, does it mean this little blog is kinda a big deal now?

While I'm not totally convinced that this little blog is a big deal, I'm choosing to be pleased with my spam. I'm considering it a blogger milestone.

2011 Resolutions

At the beginning of the year I wrote out my short list of new year's resolutions. I achieved 2 out of 6 and partial credit on a few others. That's probably about 50% overall, or in school-terms, definitely an F. I also did no good at helping Lexi achieve her resolution.

Here's my performance review:

• Reading list: About 50%. I read more than this but I just forgot to reference my list.
• Work outs: I have no idea how much I worked out each week but what I do know is that October-December killed whatever average I had going. The good news though is that I actually weigh about 2 pounds less now than I did at this time last year. I think that's a win overall.
• Eye liner: WIN!
• Pictures: I don't think I took more (God knows I didn't take any of the friends I rendezvoused with on business trips.) I probably broke even with 2010.
• Save $$: We saved but I'm not sure we saved as much as we hoped. That said, we did have a LOT of fun and paid out-of-pocket for some important things like wisdom teeth removal. So a win-ish?
• Europe: WIN!

I'm not one to lower expectations usually but maybe I was a bit of an overachiever here. Who has SIX new year's resolutions plus one for the dog?

For 2012, my new year's resolution might just be to have less resolutions.

Holy $&*% I'm going to Europe!

I'll admit, this has been somewhat lost on me lately with the holidays, intern hiring, very early 2012 travels (see you next month Phoenix & NYC). But tonight, with my 2012 Italy calendar hanging next to me and European hotels and itineraries on my computer screen, holy guacamole it feels real! We'll be going to Europe in just a few months!

In Google Images, here are a few of the things I hope to see

Holy cow. I can't believe I'm going there. All of those theres.

Best of

At work this month we ran a 4 part series on the best of blog posts, culminating with today's best all-around post. It was very objective in nature - we just reported back on what Google Analytics told us.

So because I love Google Analytics and am a little bit of a nerd, here are the most popular posts from this blog, as objectively reported by Google Analytics.

1. And party we did
2. You can't have half
3. Ross wants to share
4. Who did what?
5. New truck!

PS Blogger has some crazy analytics thing now too. I'm not sure how or why it differs from Google Analytics (they are all Google products after all) but it says that this post on cheap wine was the most popular. Since everyone loves cheap wine, I can certainly see how that'd be true.

Christmas Part 3

Christmas morning I loaded the car with presents and cake balls, made the mandatory stop at Starbucks, doubled back to the house for my flat iron and then hit the road to Houston!

I arrived at about 11:30a which gave me plenty of time to change into my holiday clothes (complete with new jewelry from the hubs) and help Mom and Dad with a little set-up (though they really had it covered). It also gave us time to open the Christmas box from Kevin which he instructed us to open early. When I saw our gifts I knew just why - crystal drinkware engraved with "World's Best Sister" and Mom and Dad respectively. FANTASTIC. We drank from those all day.

We had 13 people at the Lowe Family Christmas this year and it must have been the year of the prime rib because that was a part of the menu just like at Nancy's.

I hung out with family, got the latest scoop from everyone and ate lots of good food. For our gift exchange this year, we traded photos, mostly old, which sparked a lot of fun conversations about different family stories. My Uncle Larry also brought an old home video of my third birthday party which was HILARIOUS. My favorite three parts in that video were...

• 5 year old Robin jumping out of the sandbox, running to her mom and yelling "A dime! I found a dime!" Ah, if only life were that simple today.
• Uncles pushing/throwing the cousins down the slip-and-slide. We got way more slide and did way less work.
• Mom, 8 months pregnant with Kevin and wearing her 1980s pregnant lady swimsuit, eating a piece of cake and telling the camera "getting fatter with every bite." Awesome.

After the whole clan left it was just three. We FaceTimed Ross in for some present opening, specifically when I opened the brand spankin' new Blu-Ray player from Mom and Dad and when they opened the Houston Symphony tickets we gifted them with. Other present highlights include many new pairs of shoes for me, some of our fav movies on Blu-Ray from Kev and one of my favs, Dad got Mom a book of bed-and-breakfasts from which she gets to pick their 2012 vacation. The book even came with a voucher for one night free at any B&B listed. So cool!

For a final Christmas highlight, here's a video of Lexi playing with the new puppy blankie Kevin and his girlfriend, Carley, sent her. We're not sure if she thinks its a chew toy or a blanket but either way, she loves it.