New things

There isn't much to say... I've been fairly busy with real estate and have also been able to make some money on some films too (thank goodness!!). I got a used Subaru Forester, that burgundy/red color - and I love it! I feel much better meeting clients in that!

Yesterday I took Maddie to my friend Lisa's house - she used to have her own very successful dog grooming business in Ohio. She was shaving her dog for the spring and so I brought Maddie and we did her. She stood there like no big deal, occasionally licking Lisa. Sheared like a sheep. She's very happy, very good-looking, and is allowed back in the living room now! And we pet her more. And my dark clothes are wearable again. We are thrilled!!

Here's Maddie and Tim (she's so huggable now!) and just Maddie - notice her cute pink collar with flowers for spring? :)

More cute neice

I am actually busy with real estate lately!! Two purchase offers this week!! Yay! Otherwise, again, I just have my cute little neice, Rachel Mae. Here she is...

This is Rachel after I left, about 3 weeks? I think? :) My sis calls this photo "chubby cheeks" because the good little girl gained so much weight during her first few weeks!!

And here is me and my little neice when she was only a few days old...

The most exciting thing in my life

... is still just that I'm an Aunt. Fortunately, nothing 'big' is going on otherwise! Yea! I've been having a real spurt of creativity lately, painting a new headboard, paint/decoupaging coasters and candles, SEWING. Yes, I'm learning (again) to sew from a local sewing club. I made an awesome antique-looking table cover yesterday. I rock.
So, regarding the aunt thing, here are some photos. :)

Oh my God she's cute, eh? I love her. :)

I'M AN AUNT!!

Yea! My new neice, Rachel Mae, was born 12/31/06 at 12:31pm! She and mother are healthy. She is 20" long and 7 lbs 8oz and she's perfect. :)

Can't get pic to download right now, but I'm heading to MN Wed morning for a week to help out! :)

please don't ask me to change diapers
please don't ask me to change diapers
please don't ask me to change diapers

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow...

Me at the coffee shop this morning... Tim coming into our driveway yesterday...
(Tim knows the difference between the possessive form of your and "you're" - he just forgot and didn't want to change it.) :)

This is Maddie in the Suburban on the way to Silver City for Christmas, with her "little bone".

In Silver City at Tim's Grandma's, with the 'fam.'
My little Santa is so cute!!
Holy Cow! This stuff isn't stopping! We have gotten two snowstorms, one after the other, about a week apart. This last one has dumped about three feet and it's still going. Since Tim fixed the 4 wheel-drive on our huge truck, we're able to get out. Some of the roads are plowed; (plowing in NM is TOTALLY different than in places where it snows all the time! You're on your own here! No sand or salt even in most places, and many, many roads go totally unplowed!) the Interstate has been closed and probably the other road into town is also closed. Who cares - we have our grocery store and coffee shop up here! We only made it out of our own driveway because of our high clearance and "super swamper" tires!

This morning we ventured out and lo and behold, one of our favorite coffee shops was open. There were a few other people, as well as a couple who were on their way up to the slopes (we have a nice ski area on the nearby mountain). We were highly entertained by a young man in a 4wd trying to make it home - up a steep hill with a switchback. He was so persistent! Up... and down. Up... and down. Up... and down. He stopped at the coffee shop briefly where the proprietor offered a free cuppa', just for his determination. We also suggested he weight down his bed and maybe get some kitty litter. I think he took our suggestion, because he left and awhile later - he made it up! Possibly weighted down his truck a bit?

So we're having fun. :) Maddie LOVES the snow and has to leap and bound through it at these depths. I'll play out there with her today again. Heard the snow will taper off today - then another storm system coming through Tuesday. We'll see! I'm dying for snowshoes!!

Life...

Life continues. I was urged to write a blog by an old friend in CL, and I thought, it has been awhile!

Well, I don't have the photos off the camera yet, but next time I'll send you photos of Maddie in our 12+ inches of snow here recently. It's already more than half melted and it was only the day before yesterday! I love that... Maddie and I played in the snow and it was fun. It's also funny to see her reaction (this is her first real snow) to 3+ft drifts! She bounds through pretty good. I love playing in the snow with dogs - they're so good natured, you can kick snow in their face in order to steal their ball from them, and they don't accuse you of playing dirty!! Ha ha!

Not much new, which is fine - I'm still plugging away in real estate. So far the people I've worked with really like me and appreciate my responsiveness, honesty, and hard work. Tim continues on with all his auto-related stuff and is doing good. I have been exercising at a gym up here almost daily (!) now - it helps to have a bunch of fun ladies to work out with and then go out for coffee with afterward! I lift weights MWF and do Jazzercise (so fun!) T/Th. So far the results are good for me, except that I still kind of eat like crap, which negates half my workout. But I think I have more energy, and I am lifting more serious weight with my upper body in particular. I think I'll see how big I can get. :) If I get big, I'll have Tim take photos.

We are going to Silver City for Christmas, which I love. It is the closest thing to Christmases as a child for me and I really love Tim's family there. Did I mention it's usually warm too? :) Although this year it may not be!
Well here are some photos...

When I went to Minneapolis in November, I hung out with my sister and brother a lot - here's a photos of my siblings and Joe, all wearing scarves I made for them! :)

This is Debbie messing with paint during our creation of the baby room. Her pregnancy has gone really well - doesn't she look great?

And here's Maddie in a little flurry awhile ago. She gets cold so easily! She must be a New Mexico dog. I think she really likes her coat.

Very Sad Day

Today is a very sad day - my lovely bird Sydney died last night. She was acting strangely for awhile, then yesterday started having spasms/convulsions... I spent a good part of last evening holding her and trying to feed her and give her water with a syringe. But we both knew she was dying, for reasons of which we will probably never know. She was about 13 or 14 (although I thought they were supposed to live up to 20). Last night I did not expect that I'd be quite as upset as I've been. I woke this morning to Tim making us breakfast and telling me she'd died. I held her for awhile, so beautiful! We buried her in a pretty place on our land. We both cried. So that is my sadness today. It's wonderful having pets, but sucks when they die. She used to greet me when I walked in the house, "Hello" "Hello" "Hello". She was a goof and a lot of fun and so gorgeous. I will miss her.

Long Time!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

How many ways can I find to humiliate my dog? Does she have a look of humiliation on her face? HA HA HA!!! She's so cute!! She also wears a nice courduroy coat in the mornings when it's cold out. Poor baby.

At the end of October we went hunting for a day with Tim's dad. It was muzzle-loading, which I'm not really into, but it was fun. We had a gorgeous drive as well, through some beautiful mountains. At one point Tim was very close to a buck and took a shot - was sure he had it, but come to find out his sight was nearly ready to fall off! That deer was very lucky! And so we missed out again this year on some great-tasting, healthy, drug-free, inexpensive meat! :( Oh well...

Next time I'm on I will put up pics of our trip, ages ago, to the western part of the state. Unbelievable scenery!!!!! Huge canyons, cool caves, massive lava flows... amazing. When are YOU going to visit?????

OOH! I almost forgot! When we were out hunting (the beginning of the day we started out in stuff like this picture, typical NM!), in the area of this photo, I found an arrowhead!!!!!! I found a real, primitive, little white arrowhead! All my life I'm looking on the ground for arrowheads and this day I happened upon one! YEA!!! I was SO excited!!! :)

News Flash!

No photos yet, sorry... still dealing with computer stuff. I just got a pocket pc phone (which is SO fun and cool) but I don't know about keeping the internet on it - slow...

Anyway, I got a job for a real estate company in Tijeras where I live! It's within walking distance. I'm psyched. To check out our website, go to www.albuquerque-fine-homes.com. I love the company - "A technology company that sells real estate". I begin training more this week and will begin in earnest within a couple weeks! Exciting, overwhelming, yea!

Also, I am finally making a legal name change. Yes, for those of you who've known me for 16 years as "Dia", it's finally for real now. My name will be Dia Julie Ann Cordova-Hahn. On my business cards it is Dia Cordova-Hahn (I thought it would be best in this area to combine our last names, given the variety of clientele). I like the sound of it. Plus Julie Ann is still in there.
Those are my biggest pieces of late breaking news. More to come (sometime!)...

Our computer guy and our amazing luck...

Even though Tim and I recently took an actual two-day vacation over labor day weekend, do not expect any photos on this blogspot for awhile. Our laptop took a dive about a week ago (took it to our computer guy who is referring it on to a "laptop specialist"). Our computer guy - I love having a "computer guy", by the way - this morning said that the situation with our laptop is "sad". He spoke of it in tender terms, the way he might speak of a dying dog. I knew it was a bad situation when I heard that tone of voice. He thinks the motherboard if fried. I don't totally get what a motherboard is, but I'm assuming it is what makes the computer run. It just makes me think of Star Trek or Star Wars for some reason.
But the REAL lucky part of this is that when I went on our desktop computer yesterday to make myself a resume for real estate, something was WRONG. Not just a little wrong, but wrong enough that I had to take the CPU to our computer guy, which is why I was there this morning. I hadn't seen our computer guy for well over a year, and although I like him thoroughly, I did not expect to see so much of him at this time.
And so, besides the potential of ALL of our data and photos and etc being lost forever (knock on wood), we are literally computer-less. Try that for a week or two. It's interesting. Maybe Tim and I just rely on ours too heavily. Our computer guy (his name is Tom and he wears a lot of tye-dye) pathetically lent us his seven-year-old daughter's old laptop (she has something better now and can't be bothered with the slowness of this one). We'll be trying that out tomorrow. For now it has been a lot of waiting in line at the library, unable to do business due to the throngs of kids (and adults!) who sit on-line at length playing video games! C'est la vie!

Boring Blog, no updates!

Whew! Following two weeks of working over 60 hours/week in the middle of nowhere on a thriller/horror/drama/scifi? film, and then one week of literally reviewing and studying for my real estate exam, I would say I'm pooped, but for some reason I'm just not! Oh yeah, all that caffeine today...
Well I'm pretty jazzed because today I passed my national and state real estate licensing exams "with flying colors". No more studying! I did it!!!
Not much else to say. That pretty much sums up my life anyway: work and studying. Now I'm (hopefully just temporarily) unemployed and have no homework. Yikes!! It's okay, I can handle it.

Living Memorial

This has been planned for a long time, and on Thursday the 3rd, I did it - I got a memorial tattoo for my mom and dad. Like all my tattoos, it has deep personal meaning and isn't in a very conspicious place on my body. (I'm running out of inconspicuous places!) Deb and Ken, I hope you like it too. :) The guy who did it said the shading will lighten up!






Yes, it hurt. I will admit it. For over 2 hours I sat in the same exact position, trying not to cringe or tense up from the ouch. My other ones, I did not think hurt much, but this one did. Dave Martinez from Addictive Ink did it - he has been featured in many national publications, won awards and etc. It took months to get a consultation and then months more to get the appointment.
Not being able to have a ritual like visiting and keeping up my parents' graves, having this tattoo means a lot to me.

Lately I have been crafting a lot more, like the 'old me'. I took a gawdy old brass lamp we got for free and painted it a hammered grey/tan color like hammered metal. Looks cool. I am getting more into decoupage and next will try a technique that is supposed to make any flat surface look like old stained leather. We'll see! HGTV has been great for ideas.

I will be working tomorrow through Thursday, all day, and then next week Sunday through Thursday again. Don't know anything about the film and never heard of any of the actors - but it's work!

I also finished my study course for real estate and now just need to study for and take the licensing exam. Yea!

Substitute Birthday

Ha ha ha ha ha! I love playing with pictures! You need to click on this to get the full effect...

My substitute birthday was good! I was not ill. Tim and I went out for breakfast and then drove to the peak of Sandia Mountain here and hiked a bit. It was cloudy, and there is nothing more mystifyingly beautiful in the mountains than the way that clouds linger and move like ghosts around the peaks, with the sun shining through at various times. It is breathtaking.

Ooh, I'm hanging over the cliff!!

Maddie did NOT want to go near the edge. Smart dog!

Just a cool shot...

That night I made myself a birthday cake and blew out 34 candles! Yikes! I think pretty soon I won't be able to use that many candles. It's difficult for one person to light so many, you know, and finish before the first candle is a glob of wax on the frosting.
Hey, I haven't figured out the links yet, but go see Tim's blog for his work at timskustoms.blogspot.com. Okay? Go now. :)

Violently Ill Birthday

Yes, lucky me. On the eve of my 34th birthday, I got food poisoning. Isn't that awesome?! It was something I ate from the deli part of the grocery store, as far as I can figure. No matter, on my birthday I was recovering from being ill. So I decided not to count yesterday as my birthday. Tomorrow can be my birthday. Or, I'll just kind of spread it out a little. Anyway, yesterday kind of sucked.
My days on the set were awesome. It was in a beautiful mountain/forest setting hanging out with J, T, M and WM (I decided I'd better be careful about using their names). I stayed in the same hotel as them, and what a funny sight walking out in the morning to a row of $50K+ cars parked alongside my 1990 Nissan with tape over the tail light. That made me laugh out loud the first morning - I thought of that song (was it Sesame Street?) "Which of these things is not like the other".
On the last night, T was walking toward me on some boards laid out as walkways (they were serving hot dogs and we were both going for them) and he nearly fell into me. Jokingly I said something about watching out for those bumps in the boards and he replied "Yeah, thanks, thanks for the warning there..." etc and we bantered a bit. He is pretty funny, I'll say that. But for niceness, I have to say that J gets my vote. He is so good with the kids and just so well-mannered and friendly.
It was a great few days and I got some nice 'crew gifts' with the movie title emblem on them, which I will wear and use closer to March (the timeframe I've heard for its release). A nice 'end of the road' movie for me as I prepare to step into the world of real estate...

"Away from office..."

"Dia will be away from email until next week. She will be out of touch by phone Wednesday through Saturday. If you have an emergency, please contact Tim."
I got invited to work on Wld Hgs in Los Alamos, NM, a ways north of here. They're puttin' me up in a hotel and I'll be there Wed-Sat. I'm not sure I have cell service there.
Not much going on - Tim's been working trying to keep our old cars running. We have serious issues with most of our regulars right now, but such is our life. We like the old ones, and he can fix 'em (it's just finding the time!).
Adios!