Happy Birthday Chlo-Schmo!

There are few things that make me as happy as this beautiful 4-year old.

Chloe is Lou’s niece. She is a lifetime member of the Rusty Fan Club, and I am a founding member of the Chloe Fan Club. I had just moved to Ohio when she was born. She soon learned to love me. I love that she screams my name every time she sees me. Pure heaven.

She turned four yesterday, and this evening, the major members of the above mentioned Chloe Fan Club gathered to eat birthday cake in her honor. It was the most rocking party I’ve been to in the last six months, at least. :)

Happy Birthday Chloe. I am honored to be a part of your life. Thank you thank you thank you.

Jazz-ma-taz!

This is Jazmin. She makes me smile almost as much as Chloe does.

Open Source Software

So I thought I’d shared some of my insider secrets with everybody out there that has/wants Microsoft Office. I’ve been using a suite of programs called OpenOffice recently for all office-like tasks.

Essentially, OpenOffice is almost the exact same set of programs as Microsoft Office, but they’re free. That’s right, free. Why have you not heard of them you ask? Well, the people that make OpenOffice don’t make profits from the software, so they can’t afford a lot of marketing. They choose to spend their time making the software the best it can be.

So, if you don’t feel like spending $300 on the Microsoft version, you can get almost the same thing for free. For what it’s worth, the software is developed by the good open-source community over at Sun Microsystems, developers of the Java language.

That’s my plug for OpenOffice. Go to their website and download the software here:

www.openoffice.org

That’s all for now.

RSS Feed is up

I’ve got the RSS feed working for the site, finally :) You may notice the new button over to the left there, if you want the RSS feed that’d be a great place to go ;)

If anybody that subscribes to the feed notices any funky behavior or errors, let me know and I’ll check ‘em out.

Ciao

No Dinner Party.

Alas, due to illness and work, our regularly scheduled dinner party was postponed.

Lou and Cola were sick; Jason and James had to work. Italian night has been pushed back to next week. It gives us all something to look forward to, really. I didn’t feel like eating much this week anyway.

For all my rabid fans

Since there are so many of you out there just sitting in front of your computer refreshing our blog to see a new post from me *wink*, I thought I’d give everyone a bit of an update on what’s going on in my life.

Busy wouldn’t even begin to describe my typical week as of late. I’ve got a couple big freelance projects I’m working on right now, and one of them (for the church we got married in ), is going to be a huge project. It’s going to be lots and lots and lots of programming (in PHP and MySQL, for those who are curious). Also, I’m finally re-designing my personal portfolio site, previously www.benjaminlacy.com, now www.benlacy.net. Check it out if you want, but there’s nothing there yet :) It’s definitely going to be my best site yet, but then I say that about every site until it’s been live for 10 minutes, then I want to completely redo it.

In other news, the greatest band ever, Rush, has a new album coming out on May 1st, and a world tour soon to follow. Jason and I will be there with bells on. The last time Rush toured was three years ago for their 30th Anniversary, and Rusty went with me. 3 and a half hours of nothing but Rush…it was amazing. Just ask Rusty, she’ll tell you how much she loved it.

I know everyone’s been dying to know what I’ve been reading lately too. Aside from the monthly subscriptions to Discover and Modern Drummer, I’ve recently re-read the Stand by Stephen King, just finished Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and am now starting on a book called a Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, which is supposedly some of the best modern fantasy in existence. If you didn’t know I was a dork before, now you have some pretty solid proof.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure I’ll have some more stuff to ramble about soon…

Ciao

Sisters

We look alike, no?

Thanks to my Aunt Gayle for this neat-o picture. Becca was a beautiful bridesmaid. Can’t wait to see her again someday. :P

Sleepyheads

Who is more worn out in this picture? It sure takes a lot of energy waiting for midnight and the chocolate bunnies that accompany it. :)

Moms

Lovely ladies. I am so lucky to have these two great ladies in my life. I am also lucky that Ben has these two ladies in his life. Where would we be with our our spectacular mothers. :) Love you both!

p.s. Muffin is in the bottom right corner of the picture. Good puppy.

mmmmeat.

Another week, another great meal.

We took a suggestion from our old pal James and decided to recreate an old time steakhouse! Everything from peanuts to baked potatoes to iceberg-lettuce salad. And the bread… I love bread. Lissa make some slightly sweet yeast rolls. They were beautiful and tasty. Oh yeah. The meat-eaters had Guinness-marinated sirloin. We had Black Forest Cupcakes after midnight. Happy Easter! Lent is over!

We had a few special guests at this dinner party. Both Moms came in for the festivities. Ben’s mom brought her teeny little dog, Muffin. Pictures will follow. We had a delightful time. Nothing makes food taste better than good company, and did we have some awesome company. :)

Thanks to our stunning Moms for the chocolate bunnies. I missed you chocolate.