Lauren as she heads out the door for her first day of work!

Tonight I had the exclusive rights to a candid one-on-one interview with my wife of 841 splendid days… Lauren!  She preferred to do the style of interview where she responds to the answers aloud and I attempt to type them in real-time, so hopefully I quoted her correctly. Let’s hear what this sassy little newly gainfully employed Texas citizen has on her mind!

1. Hello Lauren, how are you today?
LPG: “I’m good. I’m good. A little bit of acid reflux right now, but otherwise I’m doing great!”

2. I’m sure the biggest question on everyone’s minds is unanimous: how you are liking your new job?
LPG: “It’s really good! It’s hard to tell quite… I’ve only been there a week, I haven’t done all that much actual work just yet. It’s been a lot of training including two days in a store this week which I’m excited for. But it seems like a great company and a great team and I’m excited to be there.”

3. What was it like spending your days at home job hunting?
LPG: “It was… good… I had the beagle to keep me company and I kept him company. We kept each other busy and out of trouble for the most part. But I was very tired of job searching and I’m happy to have found a place that appears to be a good fit. Hopefully Baxter will come to agree with me that it’s for the best that I’m not home with him all day.”

4. Some locals here seem very baffled as to why you’d willingly take a bus to work over driving. What would you say to these people?
LPG: “I am baffled that they would think it is so unusual. I walk less than a block to the stop in the morning to take the bus for 45 minutes where I can stare off into space, read, play Sudoku on my phone, whatever I want to do. I then walk a few blocks to work. The only bad part is the walk back to the bus stop in the evening uphill, but that only increases my workout. Then I sit and do whatever I want for 45 minutes and walk home! Plus I dont have the stress of sitting in that terrible traffic on Mopac. But it will be challenging when that weather gets really hot. The locals should be thanking me for taking that one more car off the road. I think it will be a very positive experience for us.”

5. Your new job calls for up to 20% travel to a few southern states. Are you excited to hit the road for the first time as a career woman?
LPG: “I am excited! I will be going out to about half the new store openings in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma in this position. Each trip will be about a week long. I’m excited to see new parts of the country and bond with my team and have an adventure. I’m sure there will come a time when I will not look forward to the travel, but right now it seems very exciting and I’m happy for the adventure!”

6. How do you feel about 70s in January as we experienced today? Do you miss snow, ice, and cold at all?
LPG:  ”Right now I don’t miss the cold and snow. I’m sure if we continue to live in Texas I’ll miss picturesque winter mornings snuggling up in my house all nice and cozy, but I cannot complain about the amazing temperatures like we had today.”

7. Do you think getting a beagle was a good idea? Do you worry about Baxter being left at home all alone most every day?
LPG: “I do think it was a good idea, and yes, I do worry about him being home alone. There are times that I think ‘ugh, getting a dog was such an inconvenience,’ but he brings such joy to our lives. I just hope he gets over tearing up our carpet so we won’t be held responsible for all the damage.”

8. What are some of your favorite local Austin things to do, and what Austin things would you most like to show future out-of-town visitors?
LPG: “Hmmm… well number one has to be Torchy’s (a taco restaurant), you know how I love Torchy’s. There’s so much good food here and the weather is so perfect in the winter; I look forward to being able to walk around downtown and around the lake and taking future visitors to the world famous Salt Lick BBQ restaurant. There are lots of good hiking trails and great outdoorsy thing to do here. I’m sure we’ll have no problems finding things to do with out-of-town guests.”

9. Tonight is the grandest majesty in all of sport: the NFL Pro Bowl. Any thoughts on the game, or next week’s Super Bowl?
LPG: “I predict that various players will throw and catch the ball, others will run with the ball, and history will be made. As far as the Super Bowl, I always enjoy it no matter who’s playing. It’s a great time to get together with friends, eat junk food, drink a few beers, and mourn the end of the season for another year. But I’m not particularly pleased with the teams that made it to the championship this year.”

10. Some folks out there may have visited your new blog dedicated to your current cooking and knitting endeavors. Are there any interesting projects in the works right now?
LPG: “It’s not just for knitting and cooking! But I should finish a navy blue sweater for Baxter the beagle today, so expect to see photos up soon. I made it a little extra large for him as I expect him to get chunkier with age, so it may not be worn until the fall. Sometime this year I hope to knit [Ryan] a sweater; he just needs to tell me what pattern he wants and I’ll go pick out the yarn.”

11. What do you miss most about living in Minneapolis?
LPG: “I miss the location of our apartment, it was very central to so many fun things. I miss my family most of all though.”

12. Nick Sandbulte of Eden Prairie, Minnesota asks this question to you: Why would you go to college in Canada?
LPG: “I didn’t go to college in Canada, I went to university.”

13. Well thanks for joining us today Lauren. Last question: what is the best current show on TV these days?
LPG: “Breaking Bad. I really enjoyed watching [the first four seasons].”

Jason as Santa, Christmas '11

Over the years on RyanGlanzer.com, I conducted many interviews with dear friend Jason LaPlant, but we haven’t heard much from him lately. I can’t even write about his hijinks anymore. Luckily, I was able to land an exclusive one-time interview with Jason this week. Needless to say, Jason is a very busy man with amazingly interesting stories. Let’s see what this rapscallion is up to these days.

Three mornings this week I have taken Bax out for a morning run of about a mile, hoping to tire him out for the day, and it has been a massive success for both of us… for a few hours. I have come home over break every day to let him out, and every day so far he had been a perfect lil’ pup in the mornings… until today when I discovered a new pair of Lauren’s shoes destroyed and a steaming pile of crap in front of the TV. Here I thought I was being nice leaving the TV on so he could watch daytime soaps! So when I left to go back to work at 12:45 I boxed the little critter up in his crate and there he sat until 5:15. I was told by a neighbor that he heard crying constantly all day.

Friday he will finally get his big break; I am dropping him off at 7am at DogBoys, a giant 20-acre playland for pups. It’s $26 a day, so it will have to be a once-a-week kinda thing, but he desperately needs some dog-on-dog playtime. Jeez, who woulda thought taking care of a dog would be so much trouble!

Other Tidbits

• The Timberwolves seem really competitive and entertaining from the few highlights I’ve managed to catch. If there is a half-season NBA.tv package, I may have to consider. I’m sure Lauren would whole-heartedly agree.
• I stopped at Rudy’s BBQ to get some breakfast tacos this morning on the way to work. By the time I got to work and was carrying them to my desk, the delicious grease had soaked through the bag and it softly tore open, spilling my precious breakfast on the office carpet. Yes I still ate it.
• I am on a big Sammy Kershaw kick right now on Spotify. I can’t get enough of this video from 1996. Sammy is such a perv stalker at the airport, taking candid photos of fellow air travelers without their permission. But the song is fabulous. I may have to revise that stupid country countdown I did a few years ago!
• Lauren and I are still big Foursquare geeks, taking 20 seconds to “check in” every time we go anywhere, including home and work. I am still the Foursquare mayor of eight places including Microboards, Dick’s Garage, Great Hills Park, and Ray’s BBQ of Friday Night Lights fame.
• I swore I would never pick up another freelance website gig because they always end up being way more work than I envision, but Luke Katuin has hooked me up with the good folks of India Palace. Project TBD.
• Coincidence of all coincidences: Lauren’s new co-worker at WF is my old elementary school PE teacher Mrs. Meyer’s niece. How bizarre.
• Lastly, I know there are many big darts fans out there amongst my readers. I hope you all take a look at DartProLeague.com, a website operated by my UK Microboards pal Andrew Taylor, who I hear is a devil of a dart tosser.

We had been inching by on my paycheck alone, but had been unable to save any money or pay off any debt, so having that extra income is going to be the nicest part. I’m sure Lauren will be plenty relieved to get out of the apartment and stop tediously job-searching every day. Now that Lauren will be taking the bus and not driving, I will start taking the nicer car to work instead of leaving it at home for her to drive during her daily errands.

There are of course some minor downsides, like what we’ll do with poor little beagle. I sure don’t like the idea of him sitting in the house all alone from 7:30 to 5:30 every day. At the very least, I’ll have to start coming home over lunch break and taking him out, but I’m a 20-minute drive away so it’s not very convenient. Perhaps on occasion he can come to work with me, but I think the best short-term solution is to take him to a fun doggy daycare a couple times a week.

The other downside is I won’t get to come home to a delicious home-cooked meal every night.

Barring some unforeseen incident with either of our jobs, I think we can now declare the Austin relocation a total success!

While much of the trip was spent in a lab listening to an instructor and working along on the computer, we still had time for a wee bit o’ fun. Tuesday night we took in the Bulls game vs. the Suns. We were in literally the second-to-last row in the top level, but the tickets were free so we were happy. The next day after training we wandered around downtown and saw the artsy stuff including The Bean sculpture and an art museum, then ate at a nice restaurant for dinner and tipped back a few cocktails in one of the hotel rooms.

The last day after training, we got out a little early and the gang voted to go try an authentic Chicago pizzeria before flying out. It ended up taking us in the opposite direction of the airport and we sat in a cab in rush-hour traffic for 50 minutes afterwards. We arrived at Midway with about 45 minutes till out flight departed, and made it to the gate with mere minutes to spare. Considering that just four weeks ago I panicked when we weren’t at the airport four hours early for our flight back to Minneapolis, I am mighty impressed with myself. I may have turned a corner.

The CGI Marketing gang at Lou Malnati's in Chicago

Natalie at The Bean sculpture in Chicago

We are re-launching our Shop website with a new look any day now, so I have been busy changing over all the existing content to match the new look. We are also about to release all the new 2012 products, and I am responsible for getting them all up on the site. Plus my day-to-day activities of preparing e-mail blasts and such… not a minute of wasted time this past week. On top of that I am still trying to catch up on all my contract work that backlogged from December. I’m trying to get everything finished before three colleagues and I take off for Chicago on Tuesday afternoon for a 2-day training. It sounds like the Bulls-Suns game is a real possibility for Tuesday night!

Outside of work, it was a busy week as well. Monday night I went with Brian to the Drafthouse to see The Artist, the new silent film that is sure to be a hit at the Oscars. Don’t let the silent part scare you away–it was a great movie. The crowd stood and applauded at the end… kinda rare for a movie theater. Wednesday there was a company dinner at a popular seafood place downtown, Eddie V’s. Great food… pricey, but I wasn’t paying. Lauren and I also blazed through a bunch of Breaking Bad episodes and finished up Season 3 on Thursday night. I used to be so mad when Bryan Cranston beat out Michael C. Hall year after year at the Emmy’s, but now I know that his wins were well-deserved.

Nothing on the slate for this weekend. After cashing in our money for a new bed with my hookup in the mattress industry, we will be keeping things low-key for a while. I plan on taking Bax out for a hike early this afternoon, and we are invited to some friends’ housewarming party tonight. Will watch a little NFL playoffs, I suppose.

Live Music
Saturday night, a bunch of us got together for an evening downtown. Our new friends (also newcomers from Minneapolis) Chad and Jamie organized an outing to go out to dinner and then see a band as it was a special citywide “free band week.” All told there were ten of us for the evening. Before the show, we gathered at a bar downtown called Six Lounge and were literally the only ones there. We had the entire lower level to ourselves, complete with free shuffleboard and darts and comfy couches and the NFL playoffs on TV. After a while we made our way over to Antone’s for the band, where we were standing shoulder-to-shoulder amongst 700 other people in a sweaty, loud nook in the far back of the room by the soundboard. After two songs seven of us left and went back to the quiet Six Lounge.

I am quite the downer when it comes to seeing live bands, especially considering we now live in the Live Music Capital of the World. I really only enjoy seeing certain genres (country, blues, jazz) or bands that I have heard of, or know members of. But Austin is just brimming with thousands of undiscovered up-and-comers. I wish I could get into that scene more but I can’t. The shows are always late at night and at bars where I end up spending too much money and can’t converse with friends. I’ll pretty much take the quiet Six Lounge atmosphere over a band any day.

Other

• It sounds like plans are in full swing for a visit from the Glanzers in February!
• To make room for the parents on their visit, Lauren and I are moving our bed to the guest room and going bed shopping for ourselves. I know a guy in the biz from Simmons, and he’s scoring us a great deal on a new Beautyrest mattress!
• Saturday morning we took Baxter to the Beagle Brigade Howl-iday Party (the previous attempt was rained out in December.) Baxter ran and ran his little heart out amongst the 20+ beagles in attendance. We were the bad parents who didn’t bring a gift for him to exchange and he must have felt left out.
• Later Saturday we went for a long walk through the woods, then popped out the other side and walked back through residential streets. Baxter, for the first time I can remember, was lagging behind and not leading the charge. We successfully tired the little bastard out!
• Plans are in the works to get together with old Willow Lake teachers Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, who are staying just outside Austin for the winter.
• I’ll be in Chicago next week Tuesday through Thursday for work.
• Look for a new surprise interview on the blog soon from an old familiar name!

73 in Rapid City in early January? That’s madness! That was warmer than Florida and most of Texas and Arizona.

Lauren’s sister Kate and brother-in-law Tim were very generous in lending us a room to sleep and car to drive during our stay for the bulk of the trip. We celebrated Christmas Eve with Lauren’s family, and I tagged along with Tim and Kate to Oakdale for Tim’s family Christmas on Christmas Day. We ventured to Carpenter Wednesday through Friday for the Glanzer holiday celebration with a record 17 people in attendance.

The theme of the trip was certainly babies and kids. I met babies Annika, Colton, and Leah on the trip, while older nieces Peyton and Emerson battled furiously against each other for my attention while in South Dakota. I attempted to divide my time evenly, but Emmy won out in the end with her persistence. 

We got to see many friends–Jaime and Christian, Walsh and Sarah, Feeney, Liz and Curt, Jason and Patrick, to name a few. I visited my former co-workers at Microboards and my former dentist who installed a crown. I even caught up with animal friends Eli, Rufus, Fatsy Cline, Buster, Duane, El Gato, Roscoe, and Bobby. 

I received some super Christmas gifts–money, books, liquor, and gift cards, to name a few, and also gave out lots of awesome Callaway and Texas Longhorns gifts.

Overall, a good time seeing everyone and at the same time very refreshing to be away from the office for almost two whole weeks. I’ll probably post some photos to Facebook soon… in the mean time there’s always my Tumblr photo blog. Speaking of which, I successfully completed my goal of posting a new photo every day in 2011 and plan to continue this year. It was much easier than anticipated.

Baxter image given to us by Mom for Christmas!

It has undoubtedly been a whirlwind couple weeks for Baxter. In his short lifetime he has already has already lived at four different places, and just spent the last 10 days with our friends the Megos while we were back up north. He has behaved very strangely since we picked him up last night and brought him home. I imagine there is going to be an adjustment period getting used to the way things were, and I’m sure he’s afraid we’ll leave him again.

He seems to be very upset with Lauren and overly clingy with me, for some reason. I can’t sit down in a chair for five seconds without him climbing all over me licking me non-stop. If I get up to move, he’s right at my feet following every step. He hasn’t eaten much of anything unless we throw the food to him or make some sort of game out of it. He seems very hesitant at going down the apartment steps, maybe fearing we’re taking him away again. He’s had a couple accidents inside. I suppose all of this is to be expected for the poor pup who has been confused of late.

But then this happened.

Since Friday, I have been battling a terrible cold. Today I am trying to get some extra rest before heading back to work tomorrow. I just laid down for a quick nap in bed and of course Baxter came to join. Not more than three minutes later, and long before I even had a chance to fall asleep, Lauren came in the room was was like “Oh my God, what happened?!!” Apparently Baxter had peed all over the bed like I would have never thought possible, covering all of Lauren’s side of the bed, the wall behind the headboard, a pile of clothes on the bed, pillows, etc. and then he walked through it and got little pee-soaked paw-prints over the rest of the bed. And we had been outside with him just over an hour earlier and I didn’t see him even drink anything. And apparently this all happened right in front of me without me noticing because the bedroom door had been shut otherwise.

“Oh, that’s too much liquid to have come from Baxter,” I thought. But what else could it have been? Lauren guessed that since Baxter spends so much time with her during the week, he’s extra mad at her for disappearing and maybe was trying to mark all her stuff with his urine.

We have our doggy class at Petsmart with Bax in less than an hour, but today I fear it is going to be a waste of everyone’s time. We can’t possibly thank the Megos enough for putting up with him for so long!