gremanda

Hey grefandas! We’re in the Personal Tech section of this morning’s Globe & Mail newspaper and neither of us said anything too hopelessly embarrassing. w00t!

The piece is called ‘The Couple that Tweets Together Stays Together” and also features that other Twitter couple (Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler aka – ummm – greg? trowler?) and one of our best Twitter buds Paul McEnany.

Give it a read.

New posts coming soon: we got a kitten and we’re house hunting (ostensibly to get away from the kitten.) How riveting is that?

Happy Holidays!

We’re feeling festive with our poinsettias and stockings, reindeer and Christmas tree.  I get giddy just thinking about it.  Coziness and love are what it’s all about, and Chateau Verdineau’s got oodles.

Truth be told, I haven’t been so excited about Christmas since I was a little kid.  This is the first time in my life where I feel like I’m beginning new family traditions and making important memories as an adult in the holiday equation.  And it’s absolutely magical to me.  I know I’m the luckiest girl in the world.  I can’t wait for this and every Christmas to come with Greg.  He’s the best gift I could ever imagine.

I hope you’re having a beautiful holiday, too.  And since you might want to see, here are just a few photos of the gremanda holiday season so far…

It’s Thanksgiving eve and it’s mighty lonely around Chateau Verdineau. And it’s not even that Amanda has wandered off into a different wing and I just need to wait for her to return to the Great Room bearing a silver platter heaped with gourds, gizzards or some other kind of holiday crap. She left for Florida (friggin’ FLORIDA!) yesterday, to spend Thanksgiving with her family and won’t be back until next Tuesday.

I was invited (at least that’s what Amanda tells me) and all is good in Gremandaland. But the trip just wasn’t in the cards for me. I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving with my daughter and my parents here on Strong Island while Amanda spends hers lounging around in a bikini while roast turkeys float in little plastic boats atop the pool water (sorry grefandas, but that’s how I imagine they roll down in the Sunshine State.)

Don’t get me wrong – I am so happy to have my little girl for the holiday. I just wish Amanda could have been here to share the day with us. And I’m happy A gets some quality time with her family. I just wish I could have shared that with her. Sooo – um yeah – the crisp autumn air bears the ever so slight scent of bummer. Wicked different from last year…

One year ago, I met Amanda’s parents for the first time. Amanda finagled me an invite to their home for Thanksgiving dinner. If I remember her end of the phone conversation correctly, it went something like this: “Yeah, so mom, I’m like probably going to bring this weird old man with me… Uh huh… Right… Well no, not exactly… I’m kinda maybe dating him..? Yes…I think like 27 or something, so not like THAT much older…Um OK… New York… No, he’s not a Yankees fan… I promise he doesn’t smell too bad… K… Love you b… What…? Oh. I think it’s Craig or something like that…Toodles.”

My memory might be off with that “toodles” bit but I’m pretty sure the rest of it is right on.

I, of course, combined my considerable charm and even more considerable monster bankroll to hatch a master plan to win over Mama and Big Papa Gravel. We’re talking the whole nine yards — flowers, fine wine, a new shirt (for me, not for them – I have worn this same no-longer-new shirt in roughly 40% of all Gremanda photos since then. To my knowledge the Gravels all wore their own shirts that day; these shirts may or may not have been new.)

As you can tell from the photographic evidence, my plan was a resounding success.

At my first ThanksGraveling, I discovered that a meat pie is something you eat (not just something gross you read about on Urban Dictionary), Amanda crank called one of our favorite Twitter people David Niall Wilson, and then I looked on helplessly as Amanda spilled wine on her crotch and mopped it up with paper towels. (For the record I did offer to help, even suggested we could save on the paper towels ROWR – nobody seemed to think this was a particularly good idea.) Of course we ate a crapload of turkey and, if memory serves, I didn’t get yelled at for putting my feet on the dining room table.

Then we went back to Amanda’s Boston apartment for a weekend full of buying weird hats and kissing (while wearing said weird hats.)

A lot has happened in the year that has passed since then. Amanda decided that she liked “Craig” enough to take up residence in the Chateau. She met and fell in love with my daughter – and my daughter fell in love with her too. She finally met my parents who, so far, have not tried to drive her from their home with torches and pitchforks. (I have a few ideas as to why that might be. See: bikini photo above. See Also: my father.) We’ve had some adventures, visited some fun places, and have had lots of time to hang out together and just be nekkid us.

I’m thankful for everything we’ve had, done and been over this past year. I’m thankful for the opportunity to keep on having these things forever or until I die – probably somewhere around 3 years down the road at the rate I’m going.  Don’t get me wrong,  I’m thankful for lots of other things too (my daughter, my career, my co-workers, my more or less pretty decent health, etc.) — but right now, even though she’s far far away, I’m thankful most of all for Amanda.

I’m thankful that she lets me love her and that she loves me back. She’s my one, the honest-to-god-fer-real-this-time love of my life and I love everything about her: she’s thoughtful, loving, sweet, smart, almost funny, the most beautiful woman in the world, and pretty damn fun to squeeze. I’m thankful for every bit of her from the very top of her weird hat to the teeny tips of her weird toes. And I can’t wait to pick up her hat, toes and everything in between when she arrives back at JFK next Tuesday.

No. Not us. Well, yes of course us but every now and then we do think of other people. And for the purpose of this post, the other person is Tim Goggin. We don’t know him, but he’s using social media to find love — and that’s certainly something Gremanda knows a bit about. Besides, just because you can’t have the one man you’ve always dreamed of (me) that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a chance for social media love. Right? Riiiiight.

Anyway, here’s his story (straight from gregverdino.com.)

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Meet Tim Goggin. He’s a single 32-year old entrepreneur who is (if you believe his pitch) the “most interesting  man in San Diego.” He’s also pretty frustrated with the tried-and-true dating scene and thinks social media may be good for more than just a poke.

A couple of months ago, Tim created a mock-infomercial and posted it to YouTube, in hopes of attracting the woman of his dreams to a site where she might claim her “free date.” Now, I’m not all that interested in single guys in San Diego but I am interested in some of the creative, low cost ways individuals–and by association companies–can use social media and new marketing techniques to accomplish their objectives.

This is classic content marketing (not to mention micromarketing) and it will be interesting to see if it delivers. As I write this, Tim’s video has amassed more than 30,000 YouTube views and has landed Tim a handful of mainstream media hits.

But is it bringing the girls? Maybe. As Tim told me in an email late last month, “Results have been pretty good. I’ve been on a few dates. Still haven’t met the right woman but I expect to soon.”

I’ve embedded the video below for any interested ladies living in the San Diego area (or even just visiting for the PRSA conference this week.) Check it out.

This is a surprisingly good ad for gum, but it could just as well be a surprisingly accurate ad for Gremanda.

Gremanda’s been up to a lot this fall season.  We’ve picked apples, KISSed, hung out with tigers in Vegas, gotten lost in a corn maze, went to some shows, met new friends, worn birthday hats, eaten cake, and collapsed.  See?

Our “world famous* chicken tower”: chicken breast topped with layers of tomato, mozzarella, basil and roasted red pepper. Topped with balsamic vinaigrette. Green beans on the side. Guess who did the cooking tonight? (hint: Amanda is doing the dishes.)

<333

* May not actually be world famous.

It has been quite a while since we’ve posted here, so here’s a round-up of some of the things we’ve been doing this summer. What have you been up to?

Sushi…

Wineries…

A lighthouse…

The beach…

A hammock…

Ducks…

Dogs…

Drum corps…

And love…

“Barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves permanently to a hard substrate.”

I’m a barnacle.

photo by modomatic