My little Tigerina!

I'm sorry, but I am giddy about my little Emily deciding that she wants to play golf. How cute are these photos.

Whew!!

Hello Bloggers-

What a proliflic bunch of writers you are! I love it! Sure seems like you're all doing so well! Mikey- I don't doubt for a second that you're very important! Good for you!!! Kudos! When're you going to come back and let me buy you a drink for your wonderful achievements? We'd love to have you back here again...

And the trip to Galveston seemed eventful! Go James! I can't eremeber a time when I didn't make it to bed, but I've sure seen it happen- just think how lucky you were that it was Robbie that found you-eh? It could have easily been some pranskter (read: Christian!) dropping a hermit crab in your ear- that would've gotten you up in a hurry! Robbie your carpentry and plumbing skills have improved it seems- you wouldn't have even tried that last year- good for you! Haha

Gosh well it's just been one giant whirlwind here since you all left, hence the title. My birthday was last Thursday, and we had a friend come into town for ACL that same day. Well it turned into a four day marathon-party! It was sooo fun! We went out to dinner Thursday, and a bunch of friends showed up for that, and my Mom, so that was great. Then I worked all day Friday (Enrique took the day to go to ACL with our friend, KJ), and met up with the boys at Zilker right after work. We saw some bands, none of which I really loved, but still it was just the first day, so that was ok, plus having KJ in town made it all so much more fun. So we got hung up in this traffic nightmare trying to get home and we were starving, but Enrique wouldn't stop. I thought, well, that's ok I guess, I'll eat at home... Yeah. Got home and at 10:22pm about thirty five of my closest friends shouted Surprise!!!!!!!!! Enrique had planned a giant party and tons of people showed up. It was so sweet of him to do that, I was totally blown away. So we did that until like 3:00 am, and then had to get up to go again Sat am. So we did, we took the girls to Zilker with us ( they got their hair painted like punk rock stars, awesome!) and we just saw tons of music, ate tons of food, and relaxed that night. Sunday same thing. ACL was great this year!

Oh man- I just looked at the clock, I need to run, but I'll get some photos uploaded so you can see, it has been a blast! WooHoo!

James I keep intending to get you that recipe, it's on the list, sorry for the delay!

Love to you all,

jenn

Not a Bubble Bath, a Bubble Butt Bath!

Gotta love these photo opps!

Recient updates

Hey everyone! CoopBro #4 in tha House! Its Thursday morning and the first one I'm not up and out the door before 6:30am, so I thought I would enlighten you all with my recent updates. Work is keeping me pretty dang busy right now. Last week I had my divisional manager ride with me on Wednesday and my Regional Manager the following day (my bosses boss). My DM, Jennifer rides with me every quarter, but this is the 1st time Rick (RD) has rode with me. This always creates a pretty stressful situation.

He's checking me out because I'm up to get promoted to Field Sales Trainer. Basically what that means is that when new reps get hired and go to training, I go up to NJ to co-teach sales training to the new reps. Also, I would have a new rep come and ride with me for 2 weeks at a time. Any how, I thought I would know if I was going to be promoted later on this year as the RD has the final say so. Rick asked me when I was riding with him if he could take Molly and I out to dinner that night. When we sat down, he ordered a bottle of champagne and congratulated me to the "trainer ranks"! So I'm going to trainer school in October. " I don't know how else to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal".

In case you were wondering, the job with Intuitive fell through. The rep that was leaving apparently decided to stay in Houston. I'm at least relieved now that I know that door for now is closed.

Thats all I know for now Coop Bros.. OUT

Delaney's First Birthday!

It's hard to believe my little one is one! Here are some pictures from the party we had at the hotel earlier today. The whole hotel staff is smitten with Delaney!

Some photos from last weekend

Sorry, guys. I just wasn't in much of a picture-taking mood. Still, here they are. The one of Rebekah and Aunt Dorothy is horribly back-lit, I know, but you can see them if you click and enlarge it.

Dodged another bullet!!!

Hello again guys and girl. Well, we dodged another storm in Galveston. As some of you may know, yesterday a hurricane formed in the gulf right off the coast of Texas. This is unusual because most tropical storms form in the southern Atlantic and move westward. Anyway, I thought that I was going to be in for another massive clean up (I've done it 3 times now), but we escaped unscathed.

I also had another adventure with home repair last week when I finally broke down and bought a new dishwasher. We've needed one for at least 5 years. I don't know why we put it off for so long other than neither of us get any enjoyment out of spending money on appliances. Anyway, back to the story. The salesperson at Sear's tells us that delivery is free, but it will cost $75 for installation. "Well, F that" I say. I'm capable of connecting a couple of hoses and a plug.

Four hours later and two trips to Home Depot to get the plug and hoses needed that should have been included, but I found out when I opened the box, weren't, the dishwasher was in. Hooray! I was feeling muey macho until the next morning when we woke up and went into the kitchen to find water was everywhere, including the carpet in the living room.

Come to find out that it's a good idea to use plumbers tape when screwing in hoses that are going to be transporting water. My AllState adjuster wrote me a claim for $2600 minus a $1000 deductable. He also assures me that he low-balled the estimate and that I should have a flooring contractor call him after they look at the problem and he will adjust the claim.

Needless to say, Rebekah hasn't thanked my yet for getting the insurance company to partially fund a new floor. My opinion is that we needed one anyway since it was already warping around the refridgerator and back door. But then again, I'm a glass half full type of guy.

Work is good I guess, the last weeks of a quarter are always stressful, this one is no different. I'm a little frustrated that my company seems to be severely lacking in supporting customers after they have purchased our software. This leads to some really pissed off people and I'm their designated neck to choke. That's sales though.

That's all for now. Mark, I hope that I was able to provide you with a small diversion to your day.

Observations from Mom's house

Okay, okay, dude. I’ll post something. Ahem . . .

“Something.”

Only kidding. Mark, you have by far the most fascinating life of all of us right now. I can’t speak for anyone else but me but my life, since I returned from Florida, has been nothing so much as just a lot of work. That’s not a bad thing but honestly, I don’t know how Mom and Joe handled this beast by themselves. Mom is definitely not bullshittin’ with the sauce when she says that she doesn’t run the company so much as it runs her. I am serious, dude, it’s not set-your-hair-on-fire stressful, but my consumption of Aleve has gone up measurably since I got here.

One good thing though about being back at home and working in this house has been that I am eating a lot better and exercising a lot more too. I decided to make a change from my crazy early 5:30 am workouts and pushed it to the other extreme, going to the gym around 10:00 pm on my weight-training days. The good thing about that is that you still have all of your calories in your system from the day and so you can really ramp up the intensity. Thus, I have really been able to jack up the weights on the iron and hopefully begin to whittle myself back down from my size 40 to 42 waist I currently lug around. The bad thing is that it is really hard to go to sleep when your body is aching from a 90-minute bomb session on the iron. You’d think otherwise, but that’s not the case.

But back to working with mom, it’s fine. I have been doing a little of everything except statements. During those hectic few days (her “monthly kidney stone” I call them) she would look at me as if to ask me to help her and Joe and I would scream out at the top of my lungs “AHH! Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson!” and run down the stairs. Today, she and I went to a new office party for the Coldwell Banker office in Memorial and I got a chance to meet a lot of the realtors who send work our way. It was nice but if you want to know the truth, the whole place was a Cougar’s den, with the average age of the attendees being around Mom’s age.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Mom! (in case you’re reading this)

I swear to God, guys, there was more botox in that room than a plastic surgeon’s medicine cabinet. But even though I would love to tell you that all the women there were looking at me with sly, lustful glances, the truth is that unless I was standing next to mom, I was invisible. I therefore spent most of the time hitting on a couple of cute young 20-somethings from a title company who looked like they felt as out of place as I felt. I kept plying them with wine and almost had them talked into a threesome when Mom walked up and said it was time to go.

I had a nice time this past weekend. On Friday, I drove to San Antonio for Megan’s 21st birthday. BTW, Mark, Meg really appreciated the email and photos you sent her. I took her, Court, Erica and Andrew to dinner at this local burger joint Megan chose and, despite the presence of the ex, had a nice time. I then drove to Austin, crashed at Aunt Gay’s house and went to Galveston the next morning. Aunt Dorothy looks good, a lot better than she did last Thanksgiving, for which I am very grateful. She seemed to be in higher spirits too, but that may simply be because she was around us, cutting up and drinking and cursing. We all spent a great evening on the deck just bullshittin’ and looking at the stars. Every time I turned around, Rebekah was pouring wine into my glass so I got really drunk, more so than I have been in a very long time. Thank God I didn’t have to drive anywhere, too, because I was no shape to anything like that. I was so drunk that at around 2 am, when I decided to go get my bag out of my truck, I was struck by the notion that it would be a simply marvelous idea if I just dropped and lay down right there on the deck. I think Rob woke me up about a half-hour later and sent me to bed.

And that’s about all that’s happening on my end. I will prod the lazier members of our troupe to post something. Until then, Coop brizzle one is out!

Indian Zoo

We took a trip to the Zoo today. It was quite an adventure! Right at the gate, they tried to pull me aside with Delaney and give her an oral Polio Vaccine. Hello!? No thank you. Not into Indian street vaccinations thank you very much!

It kind of freaked me out. I was thinking that there was some outbreak among the animals or something, but apparently it was a normal periodic public health event. They were pretty persistent about it but we assured them that she had all the vaccinations she needed at the moment.

Anyway, we went on in and had a good time. Here are some pictures. The kids in the group photo are Lillian's friends from the hotel. There are two expatriate families here with whom we have become fairly good acquaintances. The kid's names are Jake, Kirin, and Derek D'Souza; and Sophia and Jaden Pedersoli.

There was a big sign at the ticket counter that said "beware of pick-pocketers on the train". See those guys behind Natalie in the first picture? I was eye-balling them. In all seriousness though we are really warming up to the culture around here. For the most part, the Indian people are very mild-mannered and seem quite content in whatever circumstance of life they find themselves. I haven't been out of the hotel much, but of the teeming masses that I have seen I have yet to see a really sour disgruntled expression on anyone's face.

Nevertheless, we are still cautious (probably overly so) when we go out and we always pray before we go anywhere. We spray tons of "off" and we keep taking our weekly malaria medication.

Hey, post something for Pete's sake! I check the blog often (I got spare time). Look you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it "guaranteed" I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, you might want to buy a quality product from me.

That's the seecond time I've quoted Tommy Boy on the blog. Yes I brought that movie.

Indian Wedding

In the Indian Culture they go all out on weddings. Even not-so-prominent families will go to huge lengths to put on an extravagant show. So far since we've been here there have been two huge weddings in the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (attached to the hotel). After dinner earlier tonight we took some pictures of one that was going on.

Everyone was extremely friendly as well! They pretty much ushered us in and allowed us to take whatever pictures we wanted to. Natalie took Delaney up on stage where the bridegroom and the bride were sitting and "blessed" them. They were in some major Indian garb... I have video of that. I can share it with you Skype users.

Check out the pictures.

Hang On a Minute...

Delaney is doing this a lot now (with her little index finger) so I thought I would take a picture of it.

To Mark and Natalie

The rest of the photos can be seen here.