Birds of Kruger

Our first day in Africa we were groggy and tired of plane flights. Our flight into Johannesburg (Joburg) from JFK was 14.5 hours, the headset wasn’t working very well and CP has a hard time sleeping on planes. I tried to pull the “we are on our honeymoon- are there better seats you could put us into?” ploy, but the South African airline employees weren’t having it.

After a three hour layover in Joburg, we hopped on a prop plane for the short flight to Nelspruit. Our lodge outside of Kruger National Park was beautiful. We stayed in one of the bush chalets- a two-story cottage with a queen bed on the bottom floor, two twin beds on the top floor and two bathrooms. The Lodge even left a bottle of champagne as a congratulations gift!

Kruger National Park is known for being the best place to see the “Big Five” animals: elephants, lions, rhinoceros, leopards, and buffalo. These animals were named the “Big Five” because they were the most dangerous animals for hunters and poachers to kill. The gates open at 5:30am in the Spring and it is best to get there early to try to catch some of the nocturnal animals before they head to bed under a tree for the day.

On to what you REALLY want to see- pictures!* Today's post will focus on the many birds we saw in Kruger- there are over 500 different species in the park!

Cape Glossy Starling

Cape Glossy Starling in flight

Weaver

Weaver in flight

Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill

This guy especially loved to mug for the camera....despite his old-looking face.

Pearl-spotted owl

The smallest owl in Kruger.

Lilac-breasted Roller




Lilac-breasted roller in flight (and food in his mouth)

Kingfisher

Guinea fowl

Grey go-away birds

Goliath Heron

Egyptian Geese (one in flight) with hippos in the water

Crowned Eagle

Crested Barbet

African Hawk Eagle


*All pictures were taken by CP. He has a natural eye for photography (I admit, I am a bit biased). The videos that I shot will be in a later post. :-)

Getting back into a workout routine

I thought that it was going to be hard to get back into a workout routine after the honeymoon, but so far it has been pretty easy. I took off the week we got back and figuring that I was a bit jetlagged anyway….. Since then, I have been working out almost every weekday either at lunch or after work. One of my friends here at work convinced her personal trainer to come into our work gym and hold group classes, so twice a week I have been doing that. His services also include eating plans and nutrition counseling so I am hoping to continue my weight loss. I did not gain ANY weight on the honeymoon, so at least I am starting at my wedding weight. :-)

I told the trainer about my running intervals (5 minutes running, 1 minute walking) in order to get my endurance back up to what it was before the wedding (one month off does a number on your endurance!), and he suggested that for weight loss, I should do quicker intervals. So last week I went on the elliptical and after a two minute warmup, I did a 24 minute workout of 60 seconds at a really hard resistance, 30 seconds at a moderately hard resistance (still trying to go as fast as possible), and then 30 seconds of “rest” at a slightly easier resistance. I did 12 intervals of this and it was a pretty good workout! I will still continue my running as I would like to do a Thanksgiving 5K if I can find one near my house, but I will definitely incorporate this interval workout into my routine.

My weight loss nemesis will be the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment. I have already made this recipe for Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (delicious! We were even able to use mint from our garden!) and then this past weekend, I made Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream from Our Best Bites website (also delicious! Note: I didn’t have time to make the cookies ). In addition, I tried the same website’s recipe for dinner rolls and they were a huge hit! Of course, having all of these things in the house is not part of the eating plan NOR super healthy, but I can’t let them go to waste, right? :-)

The start of the honeymoon posts to come tomorrow…..I PROMISE.

Quite the Quandary

Recently I have been put in a weird position. CP and I have a few events that we have to fly to in January and we have been purchasing airline tickets. My quandary was whether I should use my new last name (which isn’t official with any federal, state or local government agency) or my old last name. I would think that I wouldn’t hit any snags when changing my name, but I also am trying to just add CP’s last name onto my current name (for an annoying total of 4 names) instead of dropping my current last name.

I have heard that this can cause a nightmare, so I have to hope that the local Social Security office doesn’t have a problem with this…. Otherwise, I have heard that it sometimes takes a court order to change your name, and boy does that sound annoying!

Anyway, I ended up buying the plane tickets using my future last name. I sent off my request for our marriage certificate today and hope to make a trip down to the Social Security office during lunch one day in the near future. I hope that this is all figured out before mid-January, or else I see the airlines charging a bunch of fees to change the name on my ticket (grumble grumble).

In other news, CP has finally finished editing our pictures so expect to see a lot of animals on this blog in the coming days!!

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In a totally different topic, I recently came across a cooking blog called Our Best Bites. These people sure can make food look delicious! Despite the fact that CP and I want to continue losing weight, I am going to have to try to make their roll recipe this weekend to see if they are tasty and if I can make it without screwing it up. I’ll let you know if the results are good- and I will probably use the recipe for Thanksgiving dinner too!

I’m also thinking about making their pumpkin spice ice cream as CP and I received an ice cream maker attachment for the Kitchen Aid as a wedding gift….. :-)

Marriage shockers

Right before CP and I left for our honeymoon, we spent a quick weekend in NYC with friends. Our flight left from JFK Sunday morning anyway and we had a free hotel room for two nights, so why not get out of MA and start the honeymoon early?

After dinner on Saturday night, my friend CS met up with us at a bar that looks up at the Empire State Building.*

Anyway, we started drinking a bunch of wine and randomly, CS came out with two sad pieces of news about two of our friends.

The first? Our college friend, married two months after graduation to a guy that she dated throughout school, who became pregnant six months later. She and her husband have been together for 9 years and have three sons together. For me, they have been the "gold standard" for a marriage. Unfortunately, the news was that the husband cheated on my friend WITH A HOOKER. Not with a random woman at a bar, but a HOOKER. I can't decide which is worse. He could have developed feelings for the random woman, but the whole act of PAYING someone to have sex with them makes me feel ill too.

My friend is obviously devastated, but has decided to try to forgive her husband. I am not privy to her thoughts because this came out during my weekend wedding and we haven't had a chance to talk about it (I'm going to wait until she says something to me), but I can see why she is staying with him. They have three kids. She hasn't worked since taking maternity leave in 2001. She has become accustomed to the "lifestyle" that she leads as he has a good job. And according to CS, she still loves him.

I'm not sure that it would be my choice, but I also don't have kids with CP and I am in a different situation. However, how can you fully trust someone after that?

The other shocking news? Our other mutual friend's husband is gay. HUH???? According to CS, our friend knew about it BEFORE they got married. I'm not sure whether she thought that she could change him or what, but they have been married for probably 5 or 6 years now. They no longer have sex, but I guess that he does go outside their marriage at times. WHAT?!?

This news makes me sad as I don't understand why my friend would want to put herself in that position. She loves him dearly and I understand that....but then why not be best friends? Marriage is hard enough.....why add to the difficulty? Is she no longer interested in having kids?

Hearing these two pieces of news a week after my own marriage and as I was about to embark on my honeymoon was shocking. I had just been thinking about how lucky I was to not have any friends divorce when there is such a high divorce rate in this country. I still am trying to wrap my head around it.....


*By the way, if you live in New York City and haven't been to the La Quinta Inn rooftop bar (17 West 32nd Street)? It's got a great view and the drinks are cheap!

Halloween

How was everyone's Halloween? CP and I had an interesting day. Since we just got back from Africa we ran errands, edited pictures, and cleaned the house. Sounds like fun, huh? Around 4pm the trick-or-treaters started to ring the doorbell and I felt old. Why wasn't I wearing a fun costume and out drinking? I was home with all of the old people in my neighborhood, handing out candy. *sigh*

For the most part, the night went well. Most kids came up and said "trick-or-treat" and thanked us for the candy. Some tried to grab a whole bunch of candy and when I told them "just one," they audibly groaned. Brats! We are not here to solely fuel your sugar highs and stomach aches!*

Two teenage girls were dressed up in emo-like clothes, but I'm pretty sure that they were just their everyday clothes and didn't put forth an ounce of effort. The weirdest thing we saw? A man, probably about 45 years old or so, in a cat costume, that said "meow" as I opened the door. It was just.....odd. Turns out they have our wedding congratulations card from the Obamas too! I told them to just put it in our mailbox as we would really like it, but he seemed to want to drop it off himself. No need weirdo.

With 45 minutes left to go, CP and I were worried that we were going to run out of candy. We weren't around last year so we weren't sure how many kids to expect, but thankfully we had leftover candy from our out-of-town wedding bags! Red hots, Tootsie Pops and gum went into the candy bowl (remember CP was the one to buy everything for those oddly-packed bags). To our surprise, the kids were ecstatic to get GUM. Not Bubble Yum or something fun like that, but sugar free gum. Huh? Ummmm okay. We also stuck honey candy that we bought from a local store in the bowl just in case. I said that any kid that picked it up would probably end up egging our house- I mean ORGANIC candy on Halloween? Luckily, I think that only one or two kids picked them up. One kid's response? "What is this??" Exactly my little friend.

In the end, we had just enough candy.

It was a nice, relaxing weekend, coupled with an Eagles blowout against the Giants. Woo hoo!

What was your costume for Halloween?


*Writing this makes me feel old.

Day of questions

Today I am full of questions. I think that it is partly because I am still EXHAUSTED from a day of sheet rocking yesterday at a Habitat for Humanity home with coworkers. 8 hours of that can make a girl pretty tired! I think that it also because CP and I put off thinking about future stuff until after the hump of the wedding and honeymoon. Now that they are behind us, there is uncertainty in our lives once more. Or rather self-imposed uncertainty. We both have jobs that we could stay at and a landlord that loves us. However, I am unhappy with my job and we both are unhappy with where we live (me more so than CP).

I just don’t know where to even start. Do I look for jobs in CO? Boston? Abroad? Who wants someone like me with my experience? What am I qualified for? A JD is a general degree and I don’t know that the experiences that I am getting at my current job will be that marketable. What kind of job do I think will make me happy? Is CP going to take the GMATs? With CP thinking that his boss is going to pull him off his current job to have him work from home/ travel, is that going to make CP happy and thus ensure that he wants to stay in MA? Or will he still want to get his MBA? What do our future plans hold for having kids?

I was half expecting to have some of these conversations while on our honeymoon, but CP really didn’t want to talk about them. Which I understand (not wanting to think about real life while on our honeymoon), but it also would have been a nice time to flesh out some plans. Of which we have none.

I get excited for change, but only when I have concrete plans. Uncertainty (especially in a crappy job market) is not my cup of tea.

We are back!

Afternoon folks! CP and I are back from our African honeymoon with a crap load of pictures and videos. I am not allowed to release said pictures or videos until CP is done making them “perfect,” so you might have to wait a few more days. He’s so silly.

Needless to say, we had an AMAZING TIME and I can’t wait to tell you guys all about it! Now do I start to write my recaps or go through the 400+ blog posts you all wrote while I was gone??? :-)