I must have fooled Santa again this year, because instead of a lump of coal and some switches, I got a brand new bicycle!

I have to admit, I’m pretty bad about getting into these expensive hobbies, and I have been known to spend money on things I didn’t use as much as I promised I would, however, this time, I had it all planned out. A few months ago, I decided I wanted a bike, so one day soon after that, walking down the street with my Dad, Francis, and my lovely wife, we happened upon a garage sale, where an old mountain bike was on sale for 25 bucks. My Dad quickly plomped down $20 for it (what a barterer he is), and I had myself a bike. This proved ideal, because the bike was pretty cool, and despite a first gear that was hard to get out of, it worked and was fun. I was using it every day, to go to coffee shops, cafes, the grocery store, to take my dog for runs, and to run any errands. It was so much fun, that I even nabbed Jodi a bike that I spotted in another garage sale (from outside my window!) for $12.

The bike lasted a good while, until one day it just gave out. It couldn’t possibly have been those speed bumps and curb hopping that I was doing — this is the fun part about having a $20 bike, you’ll jump anything. Regardless, it became unusable, the chain consistently falling off, and finally just giving out completely. I began using Jodi’s bike, and realized I could use a nice one.

So, off to REI to check out the bikes. I found some cool ones, and debated getting another mountain bike for a road bike. I was impressed also by the urban/hybrid bikes, essentially they are lightweight mountain bike frames with 700cc (road) tires with treads. I then hopped on craigslist, and after cruising for a while, found one of the REI bikes I liked so much. It was for sale from a guy moving to Florida who already had an REI mountain bike, and an REI road bike, and was given the hybrid as a gift. He had ridden it all of about 5 times, and it was in perfect condition. I loved it, and I was sold. Christmas come early, I bought it right there, 2 weeks before Christmas.

I use it every day, and my dog loves it. We go on long rides through the parks and trails that run by our place in Midtown Atlanta. She runs along side on the leash, and with the new bike, I am braking most of the time to make sure she can keep up!

Jodi and I had a great Christmas, we traveled up to Charlotte, NC to see my family, and also traveled down to Columbus, GA to see her relatives during the weeks before and leading up to Christmas. We also drove up to see mamma’er’en’em on Christmas day. We even threw a holiday party the week before, where we played the “white elephant” game — a sure fire hit when the gifts ranged from an iTunes gift card (with 10 of the songs already picked out), to a mini-keg of beer, to a Starbucks gift-bag, to, a $3.50 bottle of Arbor Mist Strawberry wine (ewww).

We’re going across the street to a nice dinner with my good pal Omar and his fiance for New Year’s — it probably won’t be as good as the New Year’s Eve dinner Jodi and I somehow found ourselves in Milan, Italy at a tiny little family restaurant a few years back, but alas, that’s another story.

Jameson and Paris and I attended the Dog Frisbee (Flying Disc) World Championships a few weekends back at Piedmont Park here in Atlanta sponsored by SkyHoundz. There were some amazing dogs (and owners) competing. We’re talking, flips, huge jumps (off the owner’s bodies), and crazy antics. We had a blast.

Needless to say, we’ve started training for next year’s championship. I snapped some photos in between the grueling practice sessions:

Dog Frisbee Championship Practice

We take a momentary break from all the shameless self-promotion, to bring you this special update.

Things are going pretty well for me right now. I was just remarking to my beautiful, talented, and brilliant wife, Jodi Bell-Quinn, about how really good things are in general for us.

To be completely honest, Jodi Bell-Quinn and I are flat broke, and loving it. We immediately plonked down a big chunk of change a few days after our wedding on an amazing loft condo in midtown Atlanta where we’ve been sinking some more change into some pretty hefty renovations (warranting another blog post). Couple that with the fact that Jodi Bell-Quinn (do I have to buy her a new domain now) is now back in school getting her Masters in Architecture, and technically “retired” as she and Wes put it — but still working all the time. And, the fact that I’ve dropped down my full-time client’s hours considerably to focus on other stuff, well, “we ain’t got no money!”

Man, has it been fun, though. We’ve become kings of coupons, and leftover champions. I’ve even stopped showering and shaving just to cut down on the water bill (hah, that’s my excuse). I actually can’t say that it’s made me feel any less secure, or less happy. To put it quite cheesily: it’s hard to be broke when your life is so rich.

Heck, even my friends are doing well, some of ‘em even getting engaged without even telling everyone (no links there, but I could)!

Even little Jameson is doing quite well. I guess all those Dog Whisperer episodes that I’ve been getting really into have started to pay off.

Thanks to Rez and Omar for their sheer l33tness in having a mythtv-recorded, transcoded, ipod video ready format movie of the entire episode including all 15 minutes of Jodi, Jameson, and my fame ready for bittorrent downloading.

All that nonsense above means that you can watch it here. Thanks guys!

Welp, Jodi and I finally tied the knot!

We were married on June 3, 2006 — the ceremony and reception were just awesome, and yes, I’m biased, but everything was just perfect:  perfect weather, the perfect guests, perfect music, perfect food, and oh, yes, the perfect bride.

Pictures are coming soon, I’ll be gallery-izing them so anyone can order prints.  We have already gathered some from friends and family and will be including those.

Stay Tuned for pics!

Jodi and I had dinner with our good friends Colin and Jennifer, at their new house. Unfortunately, Alana and Craig showed up too. This is just my excuse to post some pictures on my site, really.

Yes, I’m a dork. Our wedding invitations (btw, Jodi and I are getting married), have a link to RSVP to a Ruby on Rails app I wrote in about 8 hours total time. That includes getting it up as an apache proxy to lighttpd (2 fcgi instances).

I still like Rails. A lot.

It’s true I don’t post too many pictures… or updates about things in my life — besides all that techno-babble. So here’s a picture for you to enjoy. My doggy, Jameson, climbing over her sister, Paris:

And I’m doing well, myself.

Also: I’m proud of Jodi, having just finished project managing another major renovation and doing a superb job. She’s got a knack for the details, and is super efficient. She’s got an update on her blog, along with some photos.

Jodi and I have been asked to feature our home on HGTV’s What You Get For The Money! We are super excited, and quite a bit nervous. The film crew arrives Tuesday and are filming all day — to be completely honest, we were literally just notified on Friday evening that we “made the cut” and will be in an upcoming episode!

This is just huge news for us — Jodi’s natural talent shines through: her hard work, design, and attention to detail is evident in everything she does. Our condo is just simply amazing. To be completely honest, our place couldn’t be any more fabulous (see my previous blog entries for more raving about our place)….

The show itself is actually very cool — each episode is a themed around a certain ball-park dollar amount, for example, $500,000. They then feature a few homes (usually 3) in a 30 minute episode, each one in a different city in the U.S. So that $500,000 space in New York is a studio, just shy of 600 square feet, while the $500,000 space in Dallas suburbs is a 3000 square feet, 4 Bedroom 3 Bath house on a 2 acres near a golf course, and maybe the $500,000 Los Angeles space is a swanky little modern pad on the hillside.

The show also focuses a lot more on the people and lifestyles, as well as the homes and spaces they live — so there is a lot more for us to be nervous about!

Here’s to our upcoming 15 minutes! Set your Tivos, MythTV boxes, and PVRs to record (I’ll post when the episode airs) — super-stardom here we come!

I got an e-mail just a second ago:

This is why I love her!

In other news, Jameson (and Paris) made the news.