Today Allison and I headed up to New Hampshire to visit with Dan and Marcia for the weekend. We rode into work together and Allison dropped me off at work and then picked me up after she was done work. I stayed a little later than usual but got some blogging done.

Today I entered a competition for the chance to (Get paid to) Blog for a Year. I am going to campaign very hard for votes to have people help me achieve that goal. At this point I have been blogging for 4 years and the thought of getting paid to be a blogger even if it is just for one year is fantastic. It is a dream but I am working hard to get there.

On our ride up to New Hampshire I introduced Allison to some of my favorite podcasts. We listened to The Pop Candy Podcast, Mr. Manners’ Quick and Dirty Tips for a more Polite Life, Money Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life and Grammar Girl’s Tips for a Better Writing. Allison liked those as well as 60 Second Science but she felt that The Onion Radio News stole minutes of her life.

We made it to New Hampshire in good time. When we got there we hung out and chatted with Dan and Marcia and waited for Ken and Alicia to arrive with dinner. They were coming over and offered to pick up pizza. When they arrived we had dinner and sat at the table and talked.

After Dinner we played a game of Farkle. Allison bought me some sets of dice games for my birthday including a Wolf Dice Game, A Jumping Frog Dice Game, A Jolly Roger Dice Game (Pirate Themed Dice) and she also got a set of six die to play Farkle with and they have cats on them where the 1 should be.

Explaining a new game to Ken and Alicia is similar to shoveling the ocean back into itself. It is tough, unforgiving, pointless and leaves you utterly spent. But eventually they caught on and we played a couple rounds. James arrived halfway through the first round of play and he jumped right into the second round and gave us a run but Allison pulled off a whopping win over all of us.

After we played that Dan and Marcia gave us an ice cream cake for my birthday. It is on Monday and will also mark the beginning of year three of Photo-A-Day. I am very excited.

Today’s photo is of Clyde and I used the color Accent feature. Next Week I will look into another feature to highlight with the camera.

Self Portrait, Ken wanted me to blow out the electric candle. Ken is weird.

Ken and with the Cake.

I also took one picture of myself because nobody could figure out the camera, I should have used my QuikPod but it was upstairs.

It was very nice to spend an evening catching up with old friends and laughing. I may look like I am not having fun all the time but I love my friends and family no matter how much they drive me nuts. I wonder if Ken will finally read this blog.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, check out My Bio page, I added a neat map that shows all the states I have been to. I have 7 left to go.