I hate to update this space after so much time has passed with sad news but, sometimes that’s how life rolls.

It’s with a heavy heart (the heaviest really) that we had to let Cadence go. Her cancer had advanced to a point where she was starting to show signs of suffering and, put simply, it was time.

I (Tad) wrote a eulogy of sorts on my personal site if you care to read it. It can be found right here.

We’ll have more news soon. We are busy getting the house on the market as well as frantically getting ready for a trip to India!

So, not ALL sad news.

More soon,

Tad and Mel

Sorry it’s been so atrociously long since I last updated this space. We’ve been up to a lot and I (or Mel) simply haven’t had the time. The good news is that our time has been spent doing a lot of pretty amazing stuff!

Do you want to hear about it? Of course you do!

First up! The month of November was “National Novel Writing Month” and I (Tad here) participated and finished the challenge successfully! The challenge was to write a novel’s worth of words (50k to be exact) in the 30 days of the month. I finished the challenge in 25 and I have a pretty nice sci-fi gem that I’m really proud of. I was surprised at just how good it felt to write every night of the week and during the day on the weekends! Ironically though, after all of this, the story’s actually not done yet, but there are over 50,000 of my own words captured digitally and it’s looking like it will be completed at around 65k. I’m currently at 55k.

Anyways, that consumed my month of November and Melinda juggled everything else (dinners, cleaning, yoga teaching, endlessly supporting me, etc…) while I wrote. She’s incredible despite all of this, but if the non believers needed it, November is their proof!

On her end, Melinda’s yoga teaching has been picking up nicely. She now has her weekly Sunday time slot and is slowly building up a client base with her gentle class. I’m both humbled and amazed by what she’s done! We all look for “our thing” in life and I think she might’ve found hers. I wish you all could see her! So much grace and strength! It’ll take your breath away! She’s also continuing her journey with her own practice (We actually both attend sessions at our local studio, but she practices every day here at home), growing and discovering. All tremendously good stuff!

For Thanksgiving we went up to see Mel’s Dad, his wife Judy and her brother Marshall as well Tim, Martha and the kids! It was so good to head back north to our old stomping grounds and see everyone, though the trip was entirely too short. We hope to get back up there in the spring but we also have another trip in March! Brace yourselves! We are heading back overseas but this time to India! We’ve only JUST started planning this trip, but we’ve always wanted to go and are super excited about it!

More to come, promise!

Lastly, and this is a big one.  After 10 years of home ownership, we finally met with a realtor this last weekend to get our house ready to be put on the market.  There’s no sign out front yet as we have a lot of work to do on the premises, but the process has started and we glad for it.  It seems like forever since we bought this place and while it’s been a fine home, it’s high time we picked up our stakes and moved on.

So, HUGE things coming down the road in that area! We’ll try and keep you all looped, but please wish us luck with it all. It’s our first time selling a home and with market the way that it is, we’ll need all the luck we can get!

So, yeah, that’s about it from our end! It’s been one hell of a winter so far! We’ll be staying home for Christmas which, at the moment, is a total blessing.

Hope you and yours all are safe and warm during the holidays.

All the best,

Tad and Melinda

I will say this though. The trip was a beautiful experience! Filled with everything a proper adventure should have! Mystery, excitement, the unknown, possible danger, new experiences, joy, sadness, jazz, culture, ancient carvings, family history, wonderful family, crazy weather, smiles, laughter, Ganesh, new friends, various forms of transportation, whiskey, Baltic themed tiki bars, wild mushroom gathering, an anniversary, exhaustion, exhilaration… all these things and more.

And there were sad goodbyes abroad and when we got home.

So, I can’t write this post because there is simply too much that deserves equal attention and it’s just impossible for me to pull off.  But I’d rather write SOMETHING than nothing. So you get this instead of a 20 page scrollathon of me trying to articulate something that simply needs to be seen and experienced.

I will say that we can’t wait to return and that we returned home seeing everything a little differently than when we left.

I’ll leave you with pictures as they will definitely paint the story better than my lack of words. Here is a link to my Flickr collection where you’ll find my (Tad typing here…) pictures and some video I snapped.

I’ll also whet your appetite here, with some of my favorites. Click them to embiggen them .

This week we sadly had to let our dear old pet and friend, Midnight go.

For those that knew her, you know she was a pretty amazing cat! I wrote a eulogy of sorts on my personal site for those who wanted to pay their respects in the comments. Here’s the link:http://www.thaddeushunt.com/blog/2011/09/23/saying-goodbye-to-midnight/

She was with us for a really, really long time (years before Mel and I got married) and we loved her a lot. She’ll be missed but we’re really grateful for the time we had with her.

Hey all!

Just dropping a quick note to let you all know that we escaped unscathed as far as Irene was concerned.  We got a lot of gusty wind, a little bit of rain and no damage. We’re intensely grateful for that fact because a little farther east was a completely different story.

Glad to report we dodged that huge bullet, but our hearts go out to those that didn’t. I know there’s a lot of you out there.  The season’s just starting too.

I ran into this lovely creature while walking into work and was struck with it’s beauty (and size! The pole it’s on top of, is 6 inches wide!). I’ve run into a few of these in Durham, but not one this large. Pretty amazing!

On another note but somewhat related, no luck was needed with Mel and her surgery last month. She’s doing great! She’s still healing, but she is more than back on her feet and after a brief hiatus, is back to her yogic ways! We’re both grateful that her body bounced back so quickly and that we have/had such wonderful friends and family to help out and keep her spirits up.

From the bottom of our hearts! Thank you.

It hasn’t been all work and recovery this August! The heat would try to keep us trapped inside but there were some things that we could not ignore that got us out in it all. One was our badass banana tree! A good friend at work promised to bring me in a seedling months ago. In fact, it was so long ago, that I forgot about it entirely. Than one day he comes into the office, up to my cube with a HUGE pot and a six inch tall shoot coming out of it. He put it on the floor and said “Here you go!” with a big grin on his face.

Well, weeks later, with the abundant sun we got this summer and a good bit of water and compost, this tiny shoot has grown quite a bit! We love this thing and it really gave us a boost from the sadness of not doing our veggie beds this year! Here’s Dad standing next to it. Pretty big eh? It’s leaves are totally majestic!

There’s also been shows, one of which was Bon Iver. Of all the albums we own, this guy’s has probably spun the most at home, at work and on the go. He’s just makes music that speaks to us on such a calm and connected level. So when he announced he’d be coming to play the amphitheater in downtown Raleigh, there was no chance we’d miss him! After the Mumford and Sons show (bad sound from the venue), I was very trepidatious that the sound would get botched for this show too. I’m happy to report that it wasn’t and we honestly couldn’t have asked for a better show/performance! It was just amazing and, being on Friday night, it was an awesome way to head into a weekend!

As I stated in the last post, we are heading to Scandinavia in the very near future! But that didn’t stop us from making a really awesome trip out to see my brother Tuck and his girlfriend Brenna for the weekend. Tess was there with her boyfriend John and our amazing friends Jason and Randy were there as well, so it was a full house, but we all had a blast, ate great food and drink and just relaxed! It was so good to see everyone that even the Prius not starting when we got back home couldn’t spoil it! (not to worry though, everything turned out fine! AAA and the incredible generosity and kindness of friends to the rescue!)

So yeah, pretty busy month so far! But the summer is finally starting to wane, the days are getting visibly shorter and there is nothing but awesome stuff on the horizon!

Hope everything is good with you all!  Thanks for stopping by!

The plan is to spend half of it exploring Norway and then the other half visiting family and hopping around Sweden! We’ve definitely got some awesome stops and adventures planned, so stay tuned.

In other news, I am proud to announce that we finally met some pretty hefty financial goals this last month. The Prius is finally ours! That and another big payoff, puts us pretty behind our original schedule, but it feels really good nonetheless. Now we can start to seriously focus on getting the house “sell-ready” and see if we can move it quickly. The market is still pretty shoddy down here, but it IS better than it was a few months ago.

Anyways, here’s hoping that The next chapter in our lives happens quicker than it took for us to get here.

Last on the docket is this damn heat! Wit. The exception of the latter part of last week, the “dog days” of summer loped into our lives a few weeks early. Holy crap has it been hot! Highs in the 90′s and heat indices solidly in the 100′s have made this a barn burner of summer! Because of the heat,we have been cooped up inside any building that has A/C and outside activity has been woefully lacking. Which hasn’t been fun for this girl. (who is doing quite well… For now. )

That will all change soon though. The days are getting shorter and before you even know it, it will be September! Or at least that’s where my head and heart are at now. Pining for autumn we are!

That’s the latest from T&M-ville! Hope you all are well. Thanks for stopping by!

Tad and Melinda

So this last month has been filled with some pretty tremendous milestones, first of which was Mel getting certified.  After months of hard mental and physical work, she passed her final exam! This all means that she is a certified yoga instructor! I could gush about how full of pride I am for her and all that she’s accomplished, but it wouldn’t be remotely adequate. She’s strong, brave and lovely. I’ll leave it at that.

In the last post I referenced that I was planning on getting away for a self-imposed writing retreat. Well, one tipi, a lot of fresh air and a little over 6000 words later, I accomplished my task! Big thanks to Eden Lake Events for providing such a unique and inspiring experience. I’ll definitely be heading back. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I wrote more about the experience here on my personal blog. Feel free to check it out!

Finally, with all the hard work and busy schedule, Melinda and I decided we needed to get away together for a brief stint. So on Memorial day weekend we stole away to downtown D.C., stayed a night in a swanky hotel and caught one of our favorite bands on the planet in a club nearby. It was an incredible show and the weather that night was just perfect!  From the pics above (click to em-big-ify them), you’ll notice that the band has a live painter during the show.  He starts with a completely blank canvas believe it or not. They usually have two painters actually and at the end of the set they have two new original paintings. INSANE! Here’s a video of them playing live at KEXP studios in Seattle (great radio station by the way).  Just a great band with a TON of heart and a good message.

We then spent the next two days with good friends from the 3 Day walks we’ve done in years past. It was so good to hug old friends and meet new ones!  When Monday morning came, we didn’t want to leave.  But you gotta do what you gotta do.  Life doesn’t slow down, but it’s important that you do once in a while.

So yeah, minus the office, it was a pretty amazing month!

As I’ve mentioned off and on in these here pages, Melinda has been taking yoga teacher training classes since last October. She started off under the auspice of simply learning as much as she could about her new practice/passion but it has since morphed into so much more for her (and I for that matter) and she is now looking into teaching on her own. She recently taught her very first class at the studio she is training at and it went amazingly well. There were 12 students in attendance that evening including myself. One woman was 8 weeks away from her due date, some were old pros and others were fledgling beginners, one very nice guy was actually yoga teacher himself! Was she nervous? Of course. But in the end, I think I was way more nervous than she was. After she found her breath, her confidence followed and when she reached her stride, she absolutely owned that class. I was so filled with pride for her and all she’s accomplished. She taught with a strength and grace that I wish you all could’ve witnessed. Maybe you will someday!

We also had the pleasure of connecting with a branch of the Hunt family tree that we never had met before! They were from Sweden and though I go over the visit at length here on my site at thaddeushunt.com I will say that their stay was way too short, that may made permanent connections to Mel and I, and we simply can’t wait to see them again in September. So yeah, we’ve got a lot love in our hearts for that newly discovered branch in our tree. Just wonderful and lovely peeps!

Also in the news, and I mean this quite literally, we had some crazy violent weather sweep through the region and our state, this last weekend. It’s estimated that 25 tornadoes touched down in the state and one cut a swathe across the landscape a couple of miles away. It hit the city of Raleigh directly and caused tons of damage there. We’re all fine, no damage to report, but man, that was quite a scare!

Ending on a more upbeat note, I’ve planned my first ever writing retreat! Yep! I’ve always wanted to steal away for a weekend with just myself, my laptop and a head full of stories, and after years of talking about it, I’m finally doing it! I’ve rented a place and I’ll be heading out in few weeks!

Special thanks go to my partner in crime on this one. She has always pushed me to take creative breaks for myself and this instance was no exception. I’ll miss her so, but I’ve gotta do this. It’s long overdue!

Which brings me to the most important bit in our lives lately: SPRING!!!

We tend to get psyched when the weather changes here. The blossoms start to bloom, the crazy thunder storms roll in on mother nature’s whim, the temps get wonky (30′s at night 80′s during the day!?!) and we get outside more to play.

All good things.

There’s also been music (of course)!

So, no more hibernation.  We put away the winter jackets and sweaters and are bracing ourselves for this beautiful and all too brief period that we’ve really come to love since we moved down here.

I know this will be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow/read about for much of the nation, but, we can’t help but share what’s inevitably coming to you guys…

Sorry. Can’t help it.

We’re all doing great!!