Thirty-three

I'm a day behind...yesterday my man Noah turned 33.

it's been a crazy year, but here we are--we've finally made it. Happy birthday!

Really Noah, You Shouldn't Have

Not to make you feel bad or anything, but my Thanksgiving holiday makes your Thanksgiving holiday look like a really long, boring business meeting. For example--did you see the Parthenon? Well, we did (and not the crappy ruined one either).

This is me with the Parthenon (below). But wait--it gets better!
Noah drove me to this really dumpy part of Nashville, Tennessee to show me something.

That's right readers--it's the Noah Liff Opera Center (always thrifty, Noah didn't want to fork out the extra money to finish spelling our last name, so he abbreviated with "Liff") For me??? Oh really Noah you shouldn't have!

So did your husband build you an opera house for Thanksgiving? I didn't think so.

I'll let you all know when I do my solo debut there but I'm afraid you'll have to pay your own way, we're a little short on funds right now after building an opera house and all...

P.S. Thanks to the Tennessee Lifferths who let us crash at their place and eat their food--we had so much fun! I wish I had pictures of Thanksgiving day with the cousins, but Noah didn't realize the camera was on manual so all those pictures look like they were taken in a cave.

Happy Father's Day

Noah, you've surpassed my expectations in every way, particularly as a father.

Noah and Gabrielle Noah and Alex Noah and Oliver

If only every child was as lucky as ours are.

P.S. your youngest son had a diaper blow out today and got stuff all over the carpet. Happy father's day, I cleaned it up.

New York - By guest blogger Noah

Hi everyone. I spent last week in New York! This blog post details my many adventures.

I'll bet when I said 'New York' everyone thought sky scrapers, the statue of liberty, the empire state building, times square... Well I didn't see any of those things because New York is actually just a city in the state of New York! The place I went is called Jamestown, New York. It's in the bottom left hand corner of the state, some might call it the dodgy end.

I always heard that the Hamptons are the best places to stay in New York. Here is the Hampton I stayed in:

I had a nice view of the local cemetery from my room.

Jamestown was the home of Lucille Ball, Mitch Anderson (a fellow Dr. to Doogie Howser), and Natalie Merchant and 10,000 maniacs, I now know where they got the name for the band. If you forget that Lucille Ball was from Jamestown, there is a helpful sign on every corner that will remind you. From the late 1800's to early 1900's the town boomed, then it hasn't done much since. Jamestown used to be the 'Furniture Capital of the World', Sadam Hussein had several fancy chairs that were made in Jamestown, so were most of the doors and windows in Bill Gates' house.

The guy I went to Jamestown with, Bob, actually lived there for twenty years so he took me on a tour. Bob showed me Lucy's house and where Sadam's chairs were likely made. He also talked a lot about the architechture.

I'll get back to that in a minute. Back in my early teen years, I was a lot like other boys my age when I started noticing the ladies. We used to get really nervous around them and in a short time, girls went from being stuck up cooty farms to, well, something nice to look at. My father had a large collection of art books at home, I never took much interest in them until once during those days I noticed a book called "Painted Ladies". That sly dog, I thought, my dad hiding a book filled with paintings of ladies among his other art books. I looked around and made sure nobody was watching when I pulled the book off the shelf...

Back to the Jamestown tour: So Bob said "these houses are called - ". I cut him off, "They're called Painted Ladies" I sighed, then continued "They were popular in the late 1800's to about 1910. They're named Painted Ladies because they have fancy wood working that is highlighted with several different paint colors. They're a type of Victorian era house." Needless to say Bob was quite impressed with my thorough knowledge of Victorian architechture. Check out this painted lady:

I decided not to tell him how I came to know so much about painted ladies, let's just say I had an interest in them at one time. Here are a few more pictures of Jamestown:

Not sure why people aren't flocking to Jamestown, you can pick up any one of those houses for under $50,000.