Some fun

How spoiled am I??
You Are 24% Spoiled
You're barely spoiled. You may have some nice things, but you never let them go to your head.You appreciate each gift you're given - and you don't dwell on what you "deserve" to have.
Ok, I have to agree with that....


Where does your inner Californian belong??
You Belong in San Francisco
You crave an eclectic, urban environment. You're half California, half NYC.You're open minded, tolerant, and secretly think you're the best.People may dismiss you as a hippie, but you're also progressive, interesting, and rich!
All right!! Apparently I'm rich but no one wanted to tell me!! I agree - I'd move to San Fran the same day I win the Powerball jackpot.... I was just there last week. It is beautiful... but not for $1M+ real estate...

Smoggy Shanghi

Well, David said he was going to post on my blog. Sorry to get you all excited about China.... Although here's an email and pics he sent me:

Take a look at these that I took on our walk during lunch on Thursday. And the haze you see doesn't go away. They even have smog over here, although in a city of roughly 20 million people, are you surprised?

In the first picture we are looking northwest down Century Avenue,
and you can see the famous Orient Pearl tower. This serves as a television
transmitter as well as a tourist attraction. You can go to the top and take a
tour for 100 RMB. The conversion is roughly 8 RMB to $1, so it costs about $13.

The second picture shows the view looking the other way down Century Avenue. You can just barely see our office building (called the Pufa Tower) all the way to the right. It is not the big tall one, but a smaller 34 story
building right next to it.

The building being constructed in the picture is called
the Shanghai World Financial Center and will be the second tallest building in the world when it is complete in 2008 at roughly 492 meters (1614 feet). See this website to see what it will look like:
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=7609. It will be shorter only to Taipei 101 (located in Taipei, Taiwan) which is 16 meters taller at 508 meters (1667 feet). Oh, and the other building you can see in this picture creeping in on the right is the famous Jin Mao Tower, which is right across the street and happens to currently be the fifth tallest building in the world at 421 meters (1381 feet). They like their buildings big over here.

We can see this construction from our office window, although when I took the picture I was on the sidewalk out in front of the construction site. And there are 6 other buildings under construction here in Pudong that will be over 75 stories tall when done. Yes, I said 6. The joke is that the construction tower crane is the national bird of China.

DC

Don't be alarmed!

The hubby finally made it to China safely. There is the chance that he may hijack my blog in order to easily chronicle his exploits while in Asia. Don't be alarmed. I'm not in Shanghi - but David is!

Well, it finally snowed. If you've been following the news/ weather you'll know that we've had the most mild December on record! Not anymore!

David was up and plowing the driveway early this morning. Conditions were almost whiteout on my communte into town. Days like this I'm glad I didn't get rid fo the Explorer....

Here are some pictures from my office window. Great view, eh?

Nĭnhăo!

Did I mention the hubby is going to China? He leaves this weekend and will be going to Shanghi for 2 weeks. This is his first official trip out of the country. (Ok, he's been to Canada a million times - but who really counts that as leaving the US??) He's going to train their new Shanghi office people on how to use the engineering portion of their design software.

Passport - check
Chinese visa - check
Shanghi travel guide (x-mas present from wifey) - check
Quick Chinese language guide (another gift from wifey) - check (I know - Mandarin or Cantonese - but they only had "Chinese")

Up until now he's been focusing on getting his training ready. Apparently he's now going through and giving a few spare minutes in his day to reviewing the language. I have now been IM'd a few times with these weird, phonetic spellings of chinese words. or so he says....

Nĭ hăo ma? "How are you?"

Năr yŏu cèsuŏ? "Where's the bathroom?" David thinks this will be his most used phrase the 2 weeks he's there... that and...

Wŏ bù dŏng Zhngwén. "I don't speak Chinese..."

You know how much Chinese I spoke when I went to Hong Kong? None.
This is why the French hate Americans....

No holiday pictures

I am officially NOT the family photo taker. Because if so, then we'll have no pictures. I just read Tif's blog and saw all the cute pictures she posted so I was inclined to finally go on and blog and post some of my holiday pictures - except I have none.

Well, I have this one of dad scratching Ries' butt. That's it. Dad took a picture at the in-laws house in Christmas day of him, David and me - but he's still on the 35mm film trend and therefore I'm sure I will never get a copy of it. So that's it. No pictures. Sorry. By the way - the little christmas tree in the background is NOT our main tree. We actually did have a full sized decorated tree in the living room. Except it's a faker. I got sick of cleaning up cat puke with little fallen pine needles in it.