Happy Birthday Charley!!!

Our little guy Charley is 3 years old today! The little winter solstice kitten was born December 21, 2004 to Dad, Catara Remington Steel of Lawrence and Mom, Catara Blizzard's Little Snowflake of Phillipsburg, PA. He is a Chocolate point Siamese.

In his 3 years, Charley has enjoyed things such as:

• Being the main subject of his mom's photography hobby
• Being the star of the Peck's 2007 Christmas card
• An addition to the table centerpiece luminaries at the wedding
• Playing with milk caps and wristbands
• Knocking over trash cans to chew on Q-tips
• Carrying around stuffed animals and socks
• Tearing around the house at full speeds
• Laying in the sun
• Sitting on the vents when the heat comes on
• Burrowing and sleeping under the covers
• Making his mom and dad laugh every day
• Being the most loyal cat his mom has ever seen.

Here are some pictures from when we first got Charley (in March 2005) and through the years!

^He was so little when he came home - look at that collar, it was the smallest available!

^He was also very light, the coloring on his face and extremities, like all Siamese, didn't really come in until later on

^For the first few months he was so little we had to keep him in a spare room during the day

^He played from the minute we brought him home

^He was so little he fit in Duane's hand when he curled up!

^He enjoys a good acoustic guitar solo by Duane

^Sometimes he doesn't want his picture taken

^Our wedding reception luminary centerpieces starring Charley (and us and the table numbers on the other sides)

^2007 Christmas card

^Our naked boy. (The back of the 2007 Christmas card)

P.S. - We know we seem like crazy cat people, but we just can't help it! Charley is the best and most loved cat ever!

10 monthiverssary was Monday!

It's been 10 months of marriage - 2 more and we've made it a year! To celebrate we're going on a trip to St. Kitts! We've booked everything and are just counting down the days now!

We'll be staying at the St. Kitts Marriott from February 23rd to March 1st! Now to get into bathing suit shape again!

Weekend Recap

It's been a busy few weeks for us with traveling for work and classes winding down. By the end of this coming week, Duane and I will be done classes until January and I don't have any more trips scheduled for 2007. Two more weeks of work then the holidays! I have the last week of December off and can't wait!

We had Duane's Christmas party at the Commonwealth Manor House on Friday. It was nice because it wasn't the normal sit down format and the band was great - a 10 piece band!

^Here we are ready to go out on Saturday

Saturday night was my work Christmas party. It was at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. On our drive down we were reminded that Hanuka is going on with this menorah on top of a car on the Schuylkill:


The party was really nice but a little overwhelming. I never thought about how many people are at Shire until my manager put it in perspective - three buildings each have three floors of people...makes up about 600 people at this party! Sadly I knew more people at the Nextgen party than mine but hopefully that will change soon! We didn't get to see too many exhibits but we did meet a few of the signers of the Constitution...

^Here's Duane and George Washington! Who knew George was such a big guy!

We left early to make our way up to Tammy's 30th surprise birthday party. When we left, all the cars parked on the street in the area had menorahs again! It was just so crazy!

Tammy's party was kind of winding down by the time we got there. She was definitely surprised and happy to have everyone there though! Good thing we weren't there all night - we had a bit of a fashion fopa...check this out (Great minds really do think alike!)

Happy Birthday Tammy (a little early)!

Finally, some sad news, we lost my Uncle Barry this Friday. I'm sure he's in a better place now with no pain, probably fishing for catfish and finding great deals.

Happy *Belated* Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving! We hosted our parents for Thanksgiving this year and I cooked (hard to believe, I know!)! Everything turned out a lot better than I expected it to but all that cooking was a lot more exhausting than I thought!

Our menu included Beer bread (made with delicious Leinenkeugels Sunset Wheat beer), garlic dip, cheese and crackers for appetizers, two types of turkey breast (one brined in a citrusy broth with a cranberry glaze, one regular), corn casserol, asparagus, stuffing from the slow-cooker mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, biscuts and turkey shaped butter! We had mixed berries with whipped cream and cheesecase for dessert.

Anyway, here are a few snapshots of the day...

9 Monthiverssary!

Unlike 9 months ago, as we were getting married in the humid Mexican afternoon, today we were not sweating. We went down to Lincoln Financial Field for the Temple vs. PSU football game. It was a lot of fun (and I wasn't even that cold)!

When we woke up to find it raining we were less than enthused to get out of bed and make our way to a parking lot to drink beers. We slept in a little longer than started our adventure on the SEPTA railways. We took the Route 100 line from Norristown Transportation center to 69th Street station. From there we took the Market-Frankford El train to 15th Street. The only catch with this phase of the trip was that the El is under construction so we had to take shuttles from 69th to 40th Streets. That kind of slowed down our trip. Once on the actual El, we got off at 15th Street and got on the Broad Street Line to Pattison. Overall our trip was about an hour and twenty minutes...not much more than if we took the R6 Regional rail and full of way more characters.

We met up with the tailgaters about 11:30, had a few quick beers and made our way into the game. They had a great tailgate spot, right across the street from the Linc. Before making our way to our seats on the club level we visited Sharky in the Command center booth (All the way at the top of the stadium!)

It was a fun trip and Penn State kicked Temples butt, 31-0. Being that Duane and I are both Temple students we had a hard choice of who to route for (Just kidding!). Here are a few snapshots of our day.

^Some tailgating clowns

^View from outside the Command Post door

^View of Philadelphia's Center city from the top of the Linc on a cold and cloudy day

^View from our seats, Section C36

^PSU Blue Band (Check out their formation on the field and the big screen - cool, huh?!)

^Us, 9 months post-matrimony

Halloween 2007 (a.k.a Peckfest)!!

The Peck Halloween party was a hit again this year! The circus theme was carried out in a bunch of the costumes. There was everything from condiments, pooper-scoopers, lion tamers, clowns (of course!), cotton candy (me and Duane) to even another form of the circus - Britney and Kevin Federline!

This year the party was packed with entertainment along with the carnival type games and abundant prizes. There was a balloon twister, a magician and the special guest was Louie the chimp! Louie was by far my favorite thing about the night! He thought my costume was funny and was punching my belly of stuffing. I was amazed when he was drinking a can of Pepsi. I wanted to take him home, he was just too cute!


I'm still tired from the weekend and being completely lazy...here is a link to the album of pictures I have so far: Album

Making use of my Volunteer Day

Shire allows employees to take a day to participate in a volunteer event. I was lucky enough to get a spot on the Habitat for Humanity build that occurred this past Wednesday. It was with the Montgomery County group located in the heart of Norristown. About 11 of us went from Shire and there were about 6 from Rhom & Haas, a major sponsor of the build. The build sight was a blighted mansion that they tore down and now are using the lot to build 5 townhouses from scratch. The families that benefit from the houses need to put in 200 hours and come to closing with $500. They are then required to pay a mortgage of $600/month of a non-profit, no interest mortgage.

I worked with my coworker Becky and an Americorps volunteer, Leah. There were 3 or 4 AmeriCorps girls there. They are in college or just finishing up, and enroll for 11 months in a sort of Peace Corp that only works in the depressed areas of the US. They get paid less than minimum wage so that they can experience the poverty that they are helping to improve. Two of the girls working that day need to utilize food stamps to live. Pretty amazing that these girls sign up for this, huh?

I got to do some work on the exterior of the second story - window caulking, stapling some Tyvek house wrap and nailing some trim work before the siding gets installed. The scaffolding was a little shaky but better than I expected. Actually, one of the Rhom & Haas people told me that when they found out their employees were working on the previous scaffolds with zero safety features, they bought the top of the line product for Habitat! We ended up putting a piece of trim that was the border between the houses on completely crooked and really pissing off one of the site managers...but it wasn't our fault, the level we used wasn't level! He took it out on me by later making me and a couple others move the scaffolding to the other side of the house! That was not a very easy task, one that my body is still feeling!

Anyway, it was a fun and exhausting day. Below are some pictures from the day that Becky took. I was only given the one's that had me in them but you get the idea!

^Hanging out on the scaffold

^Trying to figure out how to get all the nails out of the trim we just ripped off the house

^Holding the scaffolding while the site manager secures it to the roof

^Moving said scaffolding pole (Note: This is not the safest way to perform this task but it was quicker than completely unassembling. There is a guy on the roof guiding the top of the pole.)

^The Shire Crew

SpiderWebs!

It seems that our front porch is the "it" place for spiders. No matter how many times I spray horrible chemicals at them and knock down their webs with a broom, they inevitably return with a vengeance! Today though, I didn't mind because the morning fog left their death traps looking like beautiful beads or strings of pearls. I got to use the camera on manual focus which was a first for me. Here are some of the better pics...enjoy!

Lots of updates

I've been super busy lately so here are some updates!


September 19th was my last day at Centocor. I had two days off of some shopping and relaxing and some minor construction. I decided to put a cat door into the basement door for Charley. I'd always wanted to keep the door closed but Charley's litter is down there. I got a door and did all the cutting and installation myself! One problem though - Charley hated it! I stuck him down there to learn how it worked, thinking he'd come right through. He didn't. He hated pushing the thing with his face. Now this is a cat that digs, burrows and plows his nose into my sides if I'm not in a good position for him to lay against me and will climb into anything! For the last week we've now had the door ghetto taped open so he can at least get used to going in and out of the opening for a while. I'll wean him into the door opening later down the road. Here are a few funny snapshots!

^A shot of the ghetto tape job and wild eyes Charley thinking about coming through

^Again, thinking about coming through to the basement side...

^Gingerly coming back up from the basement...

^Here's one just for fun. He loves sitting in empty water cases. I think he thinks we can't see him!

I started my new job at Shire pharmaceuticals on Monday, September 24th! My first day started off by arriving 5 minutes late, forgetting proper identification and not having my paperwork completed but after all that got worked out everything went great! I picked a good time to leave...they did the lay-offs at Centocor on September 25th as expected. A bunch of my friends were let go and it was a very sad day in Malvern. I wish them all the best.

I've really enjoyed Shire so far and have already learned a lot. Friday I got to go to the Owings Mills, Maryland facility with my manager and see some capsule and tablet manufacturing going on! It was very different than biologic manufacturing, that's for sure!



GO PHILLIES! We went to the last Friday regular season game last night! It was such a fun game, the energy in the stadium was nuts and the fans were out of control! When the rally towels were spinning it looked so alive! There were cheers not only for the Phillies but as people watched the scoreboards from around the league and the Mets were losing! They won it 6-0 on Friday! Here are a few snapshots from the night.

^Last out of the night!

^Phillies WIN!!!