Easter

Our first Easter went well. The bells did ok for the most part. It was a good thing the two pieces we tended to fall apart on were done before the service so hopefully no one was listening anyway. I got home around one and had time to eat lunch, start laundry, and clean up a little before it was time to put the ham in the oven. I was keeping everything simple. I didn’t do anything fancy. I just covered the ham with foil and stuck it in the oven for four hours. I took it out half an hour before it was done and put a honey-mustard glaze over it. That’s it. It turned out just fine.



I also made some “Green Goddess” dip ripped off from the Melting Pot to dip some veggies in.



I used up our remaining boxes of Stove Top from Thanksgiving, baked off some Crusty French rolls,



and called it a day.

Sarah made an awesome cake for dessert



and Katie brought a potato dish (with bacon!) I thought about throwing some beans in the microwave but didn’t end up doing that. It worked out fine. Everyone had enough to eat and we’ve got plenty of leftovers even after sending half the ham home with Sarah. I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work. We ate, cleaned up, had dessert, and spent some time socializing and everyone was out of the house by a little after 7. We are efficient. I’ve still got some dishes in the sink to take care of but that should be a quick task for tonight.

Since there’s no bell practice tonight we’re going to go back up to Menards to possibly complete our window shopping. Measurements were taken last night before dinner so we should be ready to price things out and make a decision. We also hope to get a new faucet for the kitchen. The one we have is not only leaky, but the handles turn the wrong direction. We plan to get a single handle model so I can just use my arm to bump it on rather than having to use my hands. Fun, fun.

In addition to all the Easter stuff and all the normal weekend shopping stuff we also made a trip to Simon’s for the first time in quite a while. Our regular grocery list was pretty short so we figured we’d have some money leftover for some cheese. We also watched a few movies. I think I forgot to mention the one we rented during the week – Sydney White. This was totally my idea as I think Amanda Bynes is wonderful. It had plenty of funny moments while updating the classic fairy tale and is pretty much in line with the movies she’s been doing lately. It’s a classic revenge of the nerds plot. As a nerd, I can appreciate that.

The second movie was another from the Oscar list – Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Not having seen the first Elizabeth didn’t seem to affect the viewing of this film. It covers the time of conflict between Spain and England leading to and including the Spanish Armada debacle. There are a few subplots: Mary Stewart’s plotting and eventual death, Sir Raleigh’s adventures Elizabeth’s attraction to him, Bess’ betrayal, etc. Since this is historically based the ending wasn’t really suspenseful. It’s not like Spain would all of the sudden end up winning. Generally interesting to watch, I was distracting by two main things. First, what is up with the hair? Seriously, it was bad. There were a few wigs that looked like they’d wrapped a Frisbee in hair and strapped it to her head. Secondly, the director/cinematographer seemed to have some obsession with shooting through blurry windows or small cracks that got really annoying. I suppose this has some artistic value but it just bugged me.

The third movie was yet another Oscar list film! I’m on a roll - nine down so far. This one was American Gangster. As seems to be a trend with this years’ movies, this is also based on actual events. It’s the story of Frank Lucas, a black druglord in New York City in the late 60’s. He uses his large family and connections to smuggle in heroin from Bangkok through military vehicles coming from the Vietnam War. Richie Roberts is a detective who is assigned to the Drug Enforcement Agency to try and catch the big drug suppliers at the beginning of the “War on Drugs.” As expected the paths of the two men cross. Considering the title of the movie has the word “gangster” in it, there was a lot less violence and blood and guts than I’d expected. This movie is long and almost 2 ½ hours, but I guess it wasn’t torture to watch it.

On Politics

Will all the strange stuff going on in the political arena, I figured a post about politics might be relevant. I’ve never really kept my political viewpoints a secret. It should be pretty obvious I stand to the left of the line on most issues. I’ve not been very active in the political arena though. I voted in all the presidential elections (all two of them!) since I came of age in 2000. I also voted in the primaries and one incidental election last year that had the gay marriage issue on the ballot. Other than that I don’t care about local/state election for the most part. I did work the polls during “Kids Vote '92.” I was in 5th grade and we held a mock election in my elementary school for the race between Bill Clinton and George Bush (the older.)



Ignore the Pippy Longstocking getup. It was Halloween… Bush won. Ha. I also voted in about half of the OSA (Oshkosh Student Association – the student branch of government) elections when I was in college. I also sat in the assembly for the French Club before it imploded. (Although it looks like it’s back up and running. Good job guys!) That’s pretty much the extent of my political involvement.

On Ballet...

We went to the ballet last night. Saw some swans and a prince. As planned, we stopped at Sal’s for pizza beforehand. It was pretty busy and Adam got in line as I snagged the only open table. I had forgotten how good the pizza is there. And how enormous it is. The slices are huge! I’d say they’re the equivalent of a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza all in one slice. It’s a thin crust, but not saltine cracker thin. The bottom is crunchy but the top is still gooey. Delicious. They changed from breadsticks to a garlic roll but it’s still a great deal. Huge pizza, rolls, and drinks for under $5 per person. Yum. After dinner we walked across the street to the PAC. We were still a bit early and they hadn’t opened the doors to the theater yet. We hung out in the loveseat like we usually do. We are totally creatures of habit. We got seated in our third floor box seats and read the program to pass the time.

I was suspicious of the prima ballerina’s bio. It says she graduated from their ballet school in 1982. Even assuming she took the fast track and graduated at 16, that still makes her over 40! She didn’t look that old. I’m thinking it had to be a typo, right? In any case, it was a delightful evening of good music and sparkly costumes. If I remember correctly the Youth Symphony played something from “Swan Lake” at some point, but the music is pretty well known even for those without a background in music. For the most part the male dancers were not too distracting. But the principal who played the Prince. Man. He wore white tights that left pretty much nothing to the imagination. Hella muscular legs. Yes, his legs are what attracted my attention. Ahem.

It’s been a while since I watched (or participated in) a dance performance. Considering I spent a decent portion of my younger years taking dance classes you’d think maybe I’d long to get back on the stage. No way. I got tired just watching them hop around. But I figured perhaps I could take this opportunity to look back at my varied dance career:

I’m pretty sure my mom enrolled me in ballet classes so I’d stop “stomping around the house like an elephant.” I admit I wasn’t the lightest person on my feet. While I wasn’t too excited about the tights and leotard thing, I enjoyed the classes. I definitely preferred tap to ballet, but one had to learn the basics of ballet before one could move on to the noise and chaos of tap.

I had many embarrassing costumes.



Many.



And I marched in parades in them.



I had my picture in the paper in them (with my mom!)



I matched my sister in them (and look! I was taller than she was at some point!)



Argh.

I don’t quite remember at what point I stopped taking classes. I think it may have had to do with becoming too busy or getting a job. I really can’t recall. But I hung up my tap shoes and stowed away the crazy costumes. Most of them anyway. Did I ever tell you about the time I wore a cow costume to school? But that’s a story for another time…

Oscar Update

I’ve watched two of the Oscar movies thus far. The first was In the Valley of Elah. Reading the description I was fearful it might turn into another Cinderella Man or Blood Diamond. Luckily this was not the case. The movie is long, but isn’t slow. It’s kind of like an episode of "Law and Order" actually. A man’s soldier son is killed soon after he returns from overseas deployment. When the military doesn’t seem to be trying very hard to solve the crime, the father takes it upon himself to find out what happened. With the help of a detective he collects evidence and figures out who dunnit. It’s at times violent, there’s some blood and guts, but mostly it’s just sad and disturbing because it’s based on real events.

The second one down was Gone Baby Gone. While Evan sympathized with me for having to watch this movie, it wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever seen. Or tried to see. I found it predictable yet still confusing at times. There was entirely too much profanity just for the sake of using profanity. The story itself was interesting enough – a little girl is kidnapped and some private detectives are hired by her aunt to find her after. Similar to the last one really – the victim’s family thinks the cops in charge aren’t doing their best so they outsource. Hmm. Anywho, add in a child molester, a druglord, and some dirty cops and you’ve got some good plot potential. I did what I could to ignore the fact that Casey Affleck is funny-looking. Ed Harris was good as a badass cop, I will say that. Generally an non-extraordinary cop thriller.

Next up is Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I didn’t see the original Elizabeth. Will this affect my viewing of the sequel or will general knowledge of English history see me through?

Easter... and windows

Dinner last night was enjoyable. I’d never been to Beefeaters so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s owned by the same people who own Good Company and Pullman’s so chances were I’d like it. I ordered the chicken wrap. It was great. The tortilla was nice and thick so there was no leakage. The fries had an unexpected sour cream and onion-like taste, but we’re fine. The menu was interesting to study because it used all kinds of British slang. Fortunately it also included a glossary of terms on the back page.

We discussed Easter and it was decided that we’d invite everyone over to our house for the big ham we bought. Alrighty. So this year I got to do a turkey for Thanksgiving and now I’ll be doing a ham for Easter. Progress… We’ll be doing dinner since the handbells play at the 11:30 service. It should all go well.

After dinner we headed over to Menards to look at replacement windows (and like Adam’s mom said, it seems like I live there lately.) When we bought the house we knew we’d need to replace the windows in the two back bedrooms sooner rather than later. The weather-stripping is peeling off and the window in the cat room is especially drafty. So with the weather appearing to turn a corner we decided to start looking at our options and price some stuff out so we can get the benefits of both keeping the heat out during summer and heat in during next winter. I think we’ve decided on the brand and model we want. We just need to get proper measurements and choose a wood type. I honestly don’t really care too much. Adam and his dad plan to do some measuring when he’s over here on Sunday night. We’ll see where it goes from there.

Keeping Busy

This week is shaping up to be an easy one from a menu planning perspective. Monday I had handbells and that always turns into a leftover night. Last night I had IMA so Adam was on his own while I had Chicken Cordon Bleu at the Bridgewood Conference Center. Tonight Adam’s parents are taking us out to dinner at Beefeaters for his birthday. Tomorrow night is our next PAC event, Swan Lake, and we plan to pick up dinner at Sal’s Pizza which is right across the street from the PAC. Friday I’ll be making popcorn shrimp. We’re not sure about Easter plans yet (that’s one of the topics for dinner tonight) but one of the meals this weekend will be taken care of by that. We also got a ham last week so I have that to make for our own Easter meal.

In other aspects, not such an easy week. As you can see, we’ve got a lot going on. Add to that a sinus something or other on my part and some random nausea on both our parts and it’s been lots of fun. I took yesterday off and spent most of my afternoon at the walk-in clinic. I’m not sure why it takes so long to get to the doctor when there’s no one else in the waiting room, but whatever. I got some nose spray stuff that is supposed to break up whatever doom and gloom is occupying my sinuses. We’ll see. I can’t explain the pukey feeling that Adam had last night and I seem to have this afternoon. Bad luck, I suppose. Hopefully it’s nothing too serious because, like I said before, this is a busy week.

The handbells play at the 11:30 mass on Sunday. It will be interesting. The adult choir will be there as well so the balcony will be packed. Well, the whole church will be packed and probably the chapel and community room as well (all those Christmas and Easter Catholics making their appearance.) But we’ll be especially cozy up in the choir loft. During our practices it seems as though there are a few members who are very inconsistent. There are times that everything goes great. Then the next time through the piece it falls apart. I don’t know why this is, but it’s frustrating. Hopefully everyone brings the good versions of themselves on Sunday. After Easter things kind of wind down church-wise. I think we play a few more times since Easter is so early, but things wrap up in mid-May.

There’s nothing else of any significance on the calendar for the next few weeks so hopefully the weather will keep improving and we can start doing outdoor things. The lawn has started peeking through in the front yard but the back yard is still completely covered. The few times I’ve opened the patio door up, JC beelines for it and seems to enjoy the outside noise. Conner creeps toward it but tends to get spooked by something before he actually gets to the door. I haven’t seen Ted over by it, but then again I never see him go into my bathroom but always catch him coming out, so who knows. For such a big cat, he’s surprisingly stealthy.

We’ve still had no luck trying to pet Conner and Ted. They seem to have gotten used to my presence and generally ignore me until I reach out to touch them. They still run away from Adam for some reason. JC has his moods: sometimes very cuddly, sometimes untouchable. He looks very crabby when he’s awakened from his naps. They all still get along for the most part. No one has been noticeably scarred either physically or mentally. I don’t want to give up on the notion of being able to pet the two older cats, but it’s not looking good. We also need to get them to the vet at some point and that might take a miracle. *Sigh*

On the rodent front, everyone is still alive and kicking. We’re somewhat amazed that Howie has lasted this long. And he is as spritely and energetic as ever. He continues to burrow, run in his wheel, gnaw on his log, and be generally psychotic at times. He also still nibbles on fingers. Grr. Gus and Barry just kind of hang out. They both chew on their respective items (Barry’s house is edible and Gus goes through TP rolls like you wouldn’t believe) and run nightly. Gus’ wheel has become pretty squeaky lately so I might have to look into that. Einstein is his same old scaredy-cat guinea pig self. Mo is going through another one of his “you shaved me, I refuse to eat now” phases. But seriously, when he couldn’t even get in and out of his house without flipping it over because his hair was so big, it was time to cut it. He’ll get over it. Guinea pig PMS I tell you…

Well, this has turned out to be longer than I planned. I’ll cut it off here before it gets out of hand.

What's Been Happening Here...

So Adam’s birthday was this past Tuesday. He’s officially older than me for another 11 months. He took the day off, but since I still had to work he spent it alone. He ended up having to go in to work for two hours for some training anyway. Then he went up to Green Bay to help Dave out with some stuff. I left work a little early and we went to dinner at The Melting Pot. We’re getting to be pros there. We know which kinds of cheese and chocolate fondues we prefer and we can order easily. We are also members of the Supple Restaurant VIP club so we got a bottle of wine half price. Adam had a coupon for free chocolate fondue as well. This helped ease the pricey-ness of the place a little. After dinner we stopped at Fleet Farm where I (finally) bought a new mop. I’d been looking for one for a while now but whenever we ended up at Fleet Farm we never had any money. But this time I bought it while Adam got a different mop for the basement. I hope to try mine out this weekend.

Other than that the week was pretty boring. At handbells we continue to work toward Easter on our drastically shortened (by horrible weather) practice time. It should be ok regardless. Nothing we’re playing is too complicated. Although Nancy did pull out the one piece I dislike and actually (unsuccessfully) tried to get voted off the playlist last year. Gah. Wednesday and Thursday were business as usual. Adam fired up the grill Wednesday night and grilled out some chicken. Yesterday was a beautiful day. It got up to 50 degrees and I wasted no time in turning off the heat and opening the deck door when I got home. I even drove home with the car window down. The snow is melting and last night the puddle at the end of the driveway didn’t even freeze back over. We’ve still got a ways to go before we see the grass again, but it’s a relief to see that perhaps spring is on its way. We’re keeping an eye on the basement though. With so much snow left to melt and the ground already pretty much saturated, everyone will run the risk of some kind of flooding trouble. On the bright side, it looks as though something came through and cleared the storm drain on the corner so the water doesn’t sit in one spot anymore.

This weekend should be pretty boring as well. Adam plans to paint downstairs and my plans are nothing special: shopping, cleaning, maybe some baking experimentation. Adam’s parents should be coming back from their cruise and hopefully we can get the Easter plans worked out. I’ve watched only one of the Oscar films thus far (In the Valley of Elah) but Gone Baby Gone is on its way according to Blockbuster.

Remembering France

I found it a little strange when I checked out the UNO “Glories of France” website and discovered they still use the picture of the group I went with back in 2003 on their main page. See if you can spot me (click on the link to see the full-size picture)!



At times I reminisce about the experience. In truth it wasn’t ALL horrible. It was only about 70% horrible. But this year marks the ten-year anniversary of my first foray overseas (as a high school junior in 1998) and the five-year anniversary of the second (the aforementioned UNO study abroad debacle.) I thought for a while perhaps I’d make it a trend, going to France every five years. I know now that won’t be happening, but it’s fun to think about my next trip overseas.

In case you need some help:

Ode to My Car

My intention was to go to the Toyota Financial Services website, log into my account, and post a screen capture of the zero balance on my car loan. This dream was crushed when I discovered that apparently when an account is paid off it gets deleted from the site. I checked yesterday and everything was still there. But today, this is what I get:



Boo.

In any case, the final payment went through Wednesday and the car is all mine. Ah, the things that happen in three years…

Here we are the day I got the car:



As you can tell, I still lived in my (second) apartment in Oshkosh. Adam and I had just reconnected and he actually helped me pick out the car and negotiate the deal. I went into the dealership with my heart set on an Echo. Unfortunately as cute as they were, the Echo wasn’t selling well and was being discontinued. The selection was slim and the wait for a new one was long. So I had to immediately rethink things. The Corolla is the next step up and they had plenty of those. I could even get a purply-blue color. I took a test drive with Adam and Dana, our salesman. He encouraged me to floor it during the acceleration onto the highway. I was delighted by the 5-disc CD changed and outside temperature gauge on the dash. And power locks and windows. Those rocked too.

After we got back to the dealership we talked numbers a little. I had the recent graduate credit going for me as well as a special they had at the time for 0% for three years. I decided to take the weekend to think about it. Adam and I drove down to the Toyota dealership in Oshkosh that Sunday to check out their pricing and selection. Kolosso was definitely the better deal. So I went back and told Dana I’d take the car. He then informed me that although he had placed a hold on the car since I was interested in it, someone else had sold it already. BUT! They looked in their computer system and found another one from Janesville. They went down and got it and that’s the one I got. It had 200-some miles on it when I drove it off the lot on February 28, 2005.

This car was my first major purchase after graduating from college and starting my full-time employment gig at Bemis. It was definitely worth the investment. My previous cars, while generally getting me to where I needed to go (with the exception of that month when I was carless because of a combination of naivete on my part and incompetence on the mechanic/Saturn’s part), were nothing but headaches. I had no hesitation in making a fairly substantial commitment in order to get a brand new car with no sketchy history and an intact warranty. I considered it an investment in my peace of mind. Plus, according to Kelly Blue Book, even in “Fair” condition, the car has a trade-in value of $9,310.

So, here we are today:



I’m now married and own a house in Neenah. Lots has changed, but the car has been completely dependable and a wonderful departure from my usual car troubles. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve got people with some knowledge about cars around to look at things if something sounds funny. (Also doesn’t hurt that Adam’s dad works at Kolosso!) And Adam tells me he’ll do my oil changes going forward.

In conclusion,

It’s been nice to have a car that didn’t spontaneously combust on the highway (good times):



Or freak out and require me to keep a foot on the gas pedal at all times or it would die (that’s a ton of fun on a backed-up highway):



Or cause months and months of stress, thousands of dollars, and way too much of my time because of an inherent defective in Saturn’s manufacturing process and the complete incompetence of the mechanic recommended to me (no, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?):

And now, a PF Post

It’s not that I’ve purposely been slacking off on posting. It’s just not much has been going on here. I don’t want to make boring observations on how the weather is or how I wish people would move on from the whole Brett Favre thing. But with month-end just about past me once again, I find myself with some free time and brain space that I can dedicate to something other than inventory valuations. I also find myself trying to sort out the mess the computer area becomes at the end of the month when I really have neither the time nor the inclination to file things or update the MS Money files.

In strictly financial terms, February was a relatively good month. Not only was it a short month that had 3 pay periods for Adam, we also got both our federal and state refunds along with Adam’s bonus from his previous quarter’s accomplishments. This resulted in income of 175% of our normal (budgeted) salaries. Woo. This allowed for a generous credit card payment and a good chunk was also funneled into our ING account. The rest became some padding our checking account pretty much for my own peace of mind.

I was updating my net worth numbers earlier this afternoon (I can almost wipe out the car loan! Three days!) and out of curiosity (and partially because Bank of American upped our credit limit again) I calculated my utilization rate. Not only was I a little surprised by my total available credit (which includes my personal cards and our joint cards which are really in my name with Adam as an authorized user,) but I was relieved that my overall utilization is just over 30%. This is still kind of crappy, as “They” recommend that you hover in the 10-15% range, but I can deal with it for now. It’s a little uneven in its distribution in that two of my six cards hold 95% of the debt and have utilization percentages of 41% and 74%. I wonder if that makes a difference in my credit score calculations or if they just look at the big picture… Not that it really matters too much right now. I don’t plan any large purchases in the foreseeable future. My next move might be to find a better joint credit card since our Bank of America one, while having an appealing interest rate, sucks in the rewards department. Plus once we pay off the outstanding balances, I don’t plan to carry balances on cards that will accrue interest, so the interest rate doesn’t really matter too much. My Chase Rewards card has decent cash-back rebates but the APR is something ridiculous like 21.99%.

Anywho, for the personal finance junkies among you, some insight into our finances. For everyone else, you’re snoring and you drooled on your keyboard.

So I Guess Something Important Happened Today...

Let the insanity begin.

The Oscars

This year I actually watched the Oscar ceremony. The whole thing. All three hours and twenty minutes of it. Not too bad in the overall scheme of things. I was impressed by the winners’ ability to give short and sweet versions of acceptance speeches. I only remember two or three people who ended up getting played off by the orchestra. I was also impressed that every winner was in attendance. And, as far as I could tell, every nominee (with, perhaps, the exception of categories like sound editing) was there as well. This is a far cry from some years where the presenter would pause for a second and then accept the statue in place of the winner. I don’t know if this means the Oscar has taken on a renewed importance or if everyone was just so happy to be having the ceremony at all that they went all out.

The show itself was surprisingly quite watchable. There weren’t long stretches of boring filler and it moved at a good pace with no obvious blunders or distractions. Jon Stewart was quirky and used his time well, dividing his wit among various celebrities in attendance (and some who were not) and the required political satire he is known for. Speaking of which, given that pretty much all of the documentary nominees were politically motivated, I was pleased to see that the winner went with the gracious route rather than the spewing of political opinions as has happened in the past. Iraq was definitely mentioned, but the point was not belabored. It was nice to see the community of movie making professionals get together and celebrate what the awards show was meant to celebrate.

I didn’t really have any vested interest in most of the categories. This year’s nominees all tended to swing toward the serious, depressing, and violent genres which I am likely to avoid watching. I did have high hopes for Juno, but those were dashed pretty early on. I found it interesting that although Alan Menken had snatched up three of the five song nominations he still lost to the virtually unknown independent film musicians. Let’s hear it for the little guys. I enjoyed the ridiculous production numbers for Enchanted’s songs though. I love Kristin Chenowith and could watch her all day.

I question some wardrobe choices and was surprised at how nervous and robotic some of the presenters were. I wonder what the deal is with Miley Cyrus. I just don’t get it. Nicole Kidman is pregnant? Really? I wish the Italian lady who won for set design would have shaved her pits before waving her arms in the air onstage. Anyway, it was a late night, I’m kind of tired this morning, but I think it was worth it.

On Finances...

Both our federal and state refunds were directly deposited this morning. Yay for e-filing! This will allow us to pay down a bit on the credit cards. Adam expects to be getting his bonus from the previous quarter within the next two paychecks so that will help as well. With so many variables I don’t know if it’s realistic, but it looks as though perhaps we can have everything paid off by next June. And that’s without including any additional bonuses Adam might get for the rest of the year. Taking that possibility into account might allow us to be done with it all by the end of the year. We’ll see. Aah, to be debt-free…

Then it will be time to start building up our savings both as emergency funds and home improvement funds. Adam’s already got a list of things he wants to do to the house and while we will have the Lowe’s card available, I’d rather accumulate the money before-hand this time. Jumping into home ownership a year earlier than anticipated kind of threw my financial planning all out of whack, but it’s starting to right itself again. And in my mind there’s a number. It’s the number I’d need to see us have in savings before I’d even consider diving into other life-changing events, if you get my drift. I know if it came down to it, there are a lot of areas where we could slash spending to come up with extra money. But I’d rather take the logical approach and try to prepare for the financial havoc that comes with LCEs. We’re in no hurry. Or at least I’m not. Plus, I need to work on my physical self a little before I get to that. And on a more morbid note, we also have to kind of wait for some rodent friends to start kicking it so we have more room… Heh.

Back on the bright side, in 19 days I will make my final car payment and the Toyota will be mine! Yay! Three years seemed to fly by and it still runs just fine. I did have to replace the battery a few weeks ago but I think that the cold weather may have had something to do with it. Other than routine maintenance and a serpentine belt replacement, it’s been a hassle-free car. Here’s to at least another 3 hassle-free years!

Anyway, enough of that. I’m off to hunt for a decent M&M cookie recipe that I can try this weekend. The one on the M&Ms site totally sucked so I need to find something else.

Another Vote Experienced

I performed my civic duty on Tuesday morning, stopping at the polls at 7am to cast my vote in the increasingly important Wisconsin primary. Once again, both Adam and I had to register in our new ward. It seems that every time I vote, I’m re-registering because I’ve moved. This time I would have had to register again regardless since I’ve had a name change. I still managed to make it to work (almost) on time. I would have been early if the election volunteer filling out the voter registration change forms wasn’t deaf as a doornail. Now everyone in Ward 15 knows how to spell “Dodds”. Yes, they’re all Ds. *sigh* Anywho, it was a pretty short ballot – just the two party presidential primaries and a school board position (that I didn’t vote on since I knew nothing about any of the people on the ballot. Yay for informed voting!) I forgot to pick up my “I voted” sticker though. :(

On the weather front, it’s not pretty. Monday night I arrived home to find that the plows had completely blocked our driveway. I pulled to the side of the road, called Adam to inform him that I couldn’t get into the house, and asked him what I should do. He told me he was leaving work and would come home to dig us out. So I drove to Copps and sat in the parking lot for 45 minutes while Adam navigated his way home on the messy highway and blew the snow out of the way. I’m glad I didn’t try to just pummel my way into the driveway. Adam tells me he tried that and got stuck. That would have sucked. In any case, a good 4 or 5 more inches Monday, more overnight, and now we’re stuck with sub-zero temperatures again (15 below this morning! without the windchill!) Handbells was cancelled again this week and luckily things stayed relatively calm for IMA on Tuesday. The weekend looks to be a bit nicer. It might even get up to 30 degrees on Sunday! Woo! That's almost swimsuit weather! You know it's bad when 15 degrees ABOVE zero sounds pretty good.

If we get much more snow I don’t know where we’re going to put it. The snowblower can only shoot it so high and it’s also not safe to not be able to see over the piles while backing out of the driveway. I know Adam hacked some of it down over the weekend, but it seems like it just piled right back up. How many more days until spring?

On Snow...

Yesterday was bright and sunny. From indoors it looked like it was a nice day. And I suppose it was. But then you’d get outside and realize it was 2 degrees out. Stupid clear blue skies… I much prefer cloudy, dreary, comfortable 25 degree weather to the bright, sunny, freakin’ cold weather. Grrr. This whole winter thing is getting old. It’s been an especially rough season this year. Heaps of snow (that never seems to melt so it just keeps piling up), unnecessarily cold temperatures, harsh winds. Oh yeah, and there was even some tornados back a month or two ago. If that’s not the recipe for fun I don’t know what is. Enjoy some more fun-filled pictures:



And even though we get snow every single year (it’s not like this is Florida or something) people still haven’t figured out how to drive in it. It starts to snow and suddenly everyone turns into a 15-year-old punk. I don’t drive like a grandma. I drive cautiously, but not to the point of overdoing it. Sometimes I think it’s more dangerous to be driving too slowly than it is to be driving too fast. I try to drive so I use my brakes as little as possible, thereby eliminating the risk of skidding into another car or off the road. So I get peeved when some idiot drives erratically, varying speeds constantly. It’s terribly hard to follow a car like that and not want to send “drive into the ditch” vibes their way. But I’m also annoyed when the big pickup truck rushes up behind me and drives too closely for even the best of roadway conditions.

In an ideal world, everyone would drive like me. My driving history should support this stance. I’ve only been in one accident (and that was actually before I had my license, so perhaps that doesn’t even count) and it wasn’t even my fault. A guy ran a red light. The only times I’ve been pulled over (and I’ve only been pulled over three times) have been for burned out lights (two headlights, well, one headlight, two pullings-over two days in a row, and one taillight.) I did drive into a ditch on 23 once on my way back to school about five or six years ago but it was really shitty out and I probably should have stayed in Sheboygan. Plus I was able to drive back up onto the road and get back to Oshkosh. So, in conclusion, I am a good driver. Everyone else is not.

I'll end this post with a random cute and cuddly cat picture:

So, about those bagpipes...

Ok, perhaps our brains weren’t totally functioning when we saw the random bagpipers last Saturday while out at dinner. Why do I think this, you might ask. Well, last night we went to see the Band of the Coldstream Guards along with the pipes, drums, and dancers of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard at the PAC. And guess what? The pipes of the Scots Dragoon Guard are bagpipes. Duh… It was an entertaining evening. Since these are military musicians, it was no surprise to see how disciplined they were. The conductor would turn toward the audience after each selection and salute. The band members remained motionless behind him until he put his hand down. Then as he turned back toward them, everyone would scurry to change their music. I also found it interesting that the bagpipers all stood in perfect 1st position form throughout their entire performance (well, when they weren’t marching back and forth across the stage, anyway.) They also kept their mouthpiece in their mouth the whole time. I am a little fuzzy on how the bagpipe thing works, but perhaps it’s like a reed they need to keep wet? It was a little thrilling to hear bagpipes play in harmony.

The band and bagpipers marched back and forth, up and down, and it was neat to hear the acoustics of the hall change the sound depending on which direction the instruments were going. They did some interesting formations and even did a figure eight during a march. There were a few times I was afraid someone was going to crash or get harpooned by the director’s huge baton, but, of course, everyone made it out just fine. The cymbalist did cut it close once and a trombone had to haul ass a little to make it through his allotted space. And while I suppose ones choices are kind of limited by the bagpipe’s range and base drone, it was still a good variety of music. Although, is it wrong of me that when they played their final piece (the one that everyone probably associates with bagpipes), I immediately thought of Charlotte’s (first) wedding in season three of “Sex in the City”? I mean, it’s what is played as she walks down the aisle with her father, right after she announces Trey’s impotence, and right before Carrie and Aiden break up. Hmm, maybe I need to not watch that show so much…

A little bit of everything

As birthdays go, this one was pretty uneventful. As previously mentioned, Adam’s mother and sisters took me out for dinner last Friday night. It was a good time and we all agreed we should ditch the men more often. Saturday morning I did the grocery shopping and picked up some bedding so I could clean the various critter cages. Then I tried to do some cleaning but managed to clog the vacuum cleaner. I looked in the hose, flipped it upside down, but I couldn’t figure out what its problem was so I just gave up. I continued going through the closet in the cat room and I’d say I’m about 2/3rds of the way done. I also watched a few episodes of “Dawson’s Creek” to pass the time. Adam’s flights were all on time going this direction and I picked him up at the airport around 4pm. We went home where he proceeded to unpack. He picked up a few things for me while at the Universal Studios gift shop. They included a replica of an Oscar for “Best Accountant”. He also got me a huge Spongebob mug. Both these items are currently on my desk at work. We caught up on this week’s “Project Runway” and then headed out to dinner. We had a good time over at The Ground Round and were even treated to some bagpipe serenading (if that’s not a strange concept, I don’t know what is…) from a troupe of bagpipers who were staying at the hotel. Then we went back home where we proceeded to fall asleep. So sad.

Anywho, Sunday morning I spent some more time cleaning, took care of all the cage cleaning, did some laundry. Adam went into work for a while and then stopped to get some wood for our bed. Yeah, so the cats had started climbing up into the boxspring and tearing out the lining between the springs. Since Ted had previously gotten himself stuck in it and we’d had to tear the fabric off in order to get him out it was readily accessible to them all. They were making a huge mess and there were little poofs of gray all over the floor. The solution? Staple wood to the bottom of the boxspring to keep them out of it. Works for me. So Adam borrowed his dad’s staple gun and air compressor and got it done. I supervised. After lunch we caught up on some more DVR shows. Adam figured out what was wrong with the vacuum and I finished up the cleaning I had started the day before while he vacuumed the rest of the house with the other vacuum cleaner. Then he mopped the floor. He mopped me into the bedroom area and he ended up out in the living room to catch up on some wrestling. Luckily the floor dried fast enough that I could feed the cats on time. They had been shut in their room whilst Adam mopped and were quick to express their displeasure. I made dinner, we both had some homemade frozen custard, and then headed to bed to watch some TV.

I find it interesting that while Adam was gone, JC completely ignored me at night. The first night I left the bedroom door open and he was nowhere to be found all night. The other nights he annoyed me so much with playing with cords and attacking things under the bed that I had to shut him out. Saturday night things were back to normal. He slept on the foot of the bed, crawled up in between us, chewed on my arm, bit me, and was generally obnoxious. I wonder why he was completely uninterested in chomping on me when Adam wasn’t here.

Anyway, another bit of nasty weather headed our direction and we got a good 6-8 inches of snow today. Woo. We all know how much I like snow.



No, seriously. It can stop now.

So today is Valentine's Day. We kind of did our celebration yesterday. We went to dinner before our PAC show. Tonight I made a carbonara frittata that was pretty good. I managed to burn my arm though... Speaking of Valentine’s Day and all things lovey and mushy, I got an email yesterday from Catherine (my former college roommate and the maid of honor at my wedding, not the sister) telling me that Tony and she are (finally!) engaged. Congratulations guys!

And with another abrupt non sequituresque subject change I bring you the news that Adam and I filed our federal taxes last night. I originally filled everything out on H&R Block’s taxcut software. I know the IRS has all these free file partners and they say the limits are $54,000 for individuals. I figured the limits would be higher for married filing jointly. Nope. So I got everything done and was told I couldn’t free file. (Apparently we make too much money. Our AGI surprised me, but also made me wonder where the hell it all went…) I could pay $14.95 and then they’d file it for me. Grrr. So I printed out the forms and had just finished re-doing our taxes by hand when Adam found a discount through his employer to file through Turbo Tax for free. So, after doing our taxes for a third time (luckily we got the same result each time. Yay!) we finally submitted them to the IRS. Geesh. I finished up our state return last night as well but I want to check it over once more before I submit it. That’s on my list for tomorrow night. We should be able to use the state’s free file service so that will be nice. Total refunds from both federal and state came out to just over $2,000. Add to that the $1,200 rebate we’ll supposedly have in a few months and we should be able to make some decent payments towards the lingering house-buying bills. Yes, I’m aware this is exactly the opposite of what this “economic stimulus package” is meant to do. Mr. Bush will just have to deal with it.

Martha, the Poet?

So, as promised, I was going through all the stuff my mom had brought over that had ended up in the closet. There's an entire bag full of papers and what looks like school-related stuff and I came across a notebook. "Martha's Notebook" to be exact. In it are all kinds of poems written by yours truly. While I'm definitely not destined to win any awards, perhaps I'll share one from time to time because they're hilarious.

Most of them are untitled, but if I had to name this one I'd call it, "Will Make You Laugh Hysterically For No Apparent Reason." Enjoy the genius that was me at what I'm guessing to be age 7 or so...

Oh the poor little apple,
It was going to be in Snapple.
It had to get out
but apples can't shout,
so it simply rolled away.

It rolled through jungles,
it rolled through forests,
it rolled through weevily wheat.
It rolled and rolled and
rolled and rolled because
it had no feet.

Finally its fate caught it.
It caused the apple to sit.
To sit on the ground
turning brown
'cause someone had stomped on it.

Staying Alive

Aaagh! Falling behind on blogging again. I’m getting really bad at this. Perhaps it’s because I spend my whole day working at a computer so by the time I get home I really don’t want to sit in front of one again to post blog entries. Or it could be that every time I open my laptop JC decides it’s time to play and walks back and forth on top of the keyboard, hitting function keys, and batting at the mouse movement on the screen. No matter what he was doing previously if he sees me sit down at the computer he scampers over to be obnoxious. And it’s not as though I can shut him out of the room. The computer is in the cat room. Grr.

Anyway, despite the unnecessarily lengthy lull in activity here, not much has been going on. The weather has been ridiculously crappy with snow, more snow, and, oh yeah, a couple days of -40 degree thrown in for fun. Gah. This has hampered my going out and about a little perhaps. It seems that every weekend it snows and is generally icky outside so I do my best to get my shopping done and over with as fast as I can. During the week I have my Monday handbell practice (which has been cancelled two of the last three weeks) and that’s about it.

This week was a little abnormal since Adam is out in California (on business, the lucky guy) until tomorrow afternoon. It’s weird being alone in the house and, if it’s possible, the cats seem to be even more obnoxious than usual. I’ve been keeping myself busy by watching the stupid stuff on TV that I can’t watch when Adam’s around - mostly a lot of E! and VH1. And I get a reprieve from all the men in spandex groping at each other (aka – the various forms of wrestling and ultimate fighting that seem to be on every single night) that Adam likes to watch. Of course I also have constant worst case scenarios running through my head of all the stuff that could go wrong while he’s not here. I think my favorite was the mental picture of me pulling too hard on the shower knob and pulling it out of the wall completely. Nothing like flooding the house in the middle of winter… I figure the solution to that would be to turn the water off, but I have to admit I’m not quite sure where that is. In the basement somewhere, right?

Aside from picturing the groundless household catastrophes, I’ve been intending to do some cleaning. Way back in August my mom brought a trunkful (as in “car trunkful”) of my stuff along with her on her cross-country road trip for our wedding. I kind of threw it all in the cat room closet and haven’t dealt with it yet. Yeah, it’s in there with my wedding dress, my dried bouquet, and a host of other stuff I’m not sure what to do with yet. So with Adam out of town I figure this is my opportunity to make a huge mess of the house with the intention of actually making it cleaner. Right. I also still have some items on my Dodds to Paalman transformation that I haven’t gotten around to. I just haven’t had the motivation to sit on hold for half an hour to talk to someone at the electric company. And they’re still getting paid, so does it really even matter? *sigh* I mean, Adam finally got his butt to the DMV to change his address (ahem, 8 months post-move…) so do I get some extra time to finish up my name-change stuff too?

Tonight I had dinner with the in-laws (Adam’s mom and sisters invited me out) so that was fun. Tomorrow I plan to sleep late, although I’m pretty sure that plan will be foiled by something with four paws and a tail. I don’t remember when Adam’s plane gets in but I think it’s sometime early afternoon and he should give me a call when they land anyway. I’m not sure what the plans are after he gets back. Grocery shopping and laundry will probably get pushed to Sunday, but we’ll see.

The rest of the month has some points of interest, I suppose. We have tickets at the PAC next Wednesday for the Scots Dragoon Guards. We’ll go out to Good Company beforehand thanks to my Dad and Cheryl’s Christmas gift. This will also probably be our Valentine’s Day celebration. The next Tuesday is this month’s IMA meeting. The topic is Fraud and Identity Theft so it could be a good time. This year, of course, is a leap year so all my month-end schedules will be thrown off. Gah. But it also means I get an extra day to prepare for inventory.

I plan to do some updating over at my cooking blog this weekend as well so maybe keep an eye out for that. Other than that I'm just trying to keep warm and not go stir crazy with cabin fever.

Life Insurance?

I don’t remember whether it was on one of the shows I watch or something I read online, but I recall reading recently that if you’re married and you live off both incomes, you should have life insurance in case something happens. Now, I hadn’t anticipated looking into life insurance until we decided to start having kids. But with the new year comes my yearly review and raise at work. Once again, apparently raises are stuck at 3% company-wide so that’s what I got. Not really what I was looking for since I took on so much in the past year. Oh well. Add to that the fact that Adam recently became salaried and his pay structure is totally screwed up right now. We really don't have a good idea what his actual pay will be until they get everything worked out.

So while I put together a budget for the year, it was full of lots of wild guesses. I know our escrow payments will increase in March when they rebalance the tax account since our tax bill was about $250 more than we had in the account. My calculations tell me it will go up about $50 a month. Fine. Our auto insurance may also change in both April and October since we’re on a 6-month policy. Everything else I’ve got a pretty good idea of where it will end up for the year.

Taking a look at our numbers, it appears we’re spending 37% of our take-home income on housing costs. This includes mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities. But take away Adam’s pay and it’s eating up 60% of my net income. Scary. This might be a little skewed since I don’t include any bonuses in Adam’s income and he tends to bring home something nice every quarter. But still. Wow. Houses are expensive.

Anyway, back to the original point of this post. Perhaps it’s worthwhile to take a look at life insurance before I had intended to do so. Both Adam and I have life insurance options through work but they're nothing significant. No one wants to think about dying or losing someone. But as we know too well, and with people too close to us experiencing this in the recent past, it’s a reality some have to face. I know we also have to get some other legalities out of the way eventually – power of attorney, living wills, etc. Meh.

And just to get it out there so there’s no big hoopla if this should ever happen: if I become a vegetable, just pull the damn plug and let someone else get to use my organs, ok? Thanks.

Oscars!!!

Today the Oscar nominations are out for the 2008 ceremony (if there ends up being one.) In any case, I figured I could get a head start this year and I might be able to actually finish the list. Once again I’ve excluded a few categories: foreign, short, and documentary. Here’s the list for everything else:

3:10 to Yuma
Across the Universe
American Gangster
Assassination of Jesse James, The
Atonement
August Rush
Away From Her
Bourne Ultimatum, The
Charlie Wilson's War
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
Eastern Promises
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Enchanted
Golden Compass, The
Gone Baby Gone
I'm Not There
In the Valley of Elah
Into the Wild
Juno
Kite Runner, The
La Vie en Rose
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
Norbit
Once
Persepolis
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Ratatouille
Savages, The
Surf's Up
Sweeney Tood
There Will Be Blood
Transformers

Not too bad. A total of 34, 5 of which I’ve already seen (in red). There seems to be a nice variety too - some westerns, action, drama, and a musical or two. Granted there are a few I’ve never heard of, but I’ll do my best with the help of Blockbuster Total Access to get through the list this year.

Another week gone without a trace...

Seriously, it’s Wednesday and I’ve already pretty much forgotten what we did this past weekend. I don’t know if it’s the combination of the onset of yet another cold and the ridiculous amount of stuff that they keep throwing my way at work, or if I just need to start taking an Omega 3 supplement or something to help with my memory. Anyway, as far as I can remember, Friday night was uneventful. We ate dinner, watched some TV.

Saturday morning we got some shopping in before heading back home for basketball and football. I had the great idea of doing some additional shopping of my own during the Packer game since I figured the stores would be kind of quiet. In case you didn’t happen to catch the game, it was snowing the entire time. Hard. On my way up to Appleton I saw three cars in the ditch on the northbound side and there was a nine car accident on the southbound side. Yikes. So, not the best idea I’ve had lately. Anyway, I went where I needed to go and went home via CB rather than the highway. Thankfully I made it home unscathed. Adam grilled out some brats for dinner and the rest of the evening was more football and DVR catch-up.

On Sunday Adam went up to Menards and got fiberglass insulation for the basement. I helped a little with cutting it but he was on his own to staple it up. I watched some more “Dawson’s Creek” while he was downstairs. Luckily the staple gun is nowhere near as loud as those gunshots from last weekend! When he was done down there he came upstairs to watch the Dallas game. I went into the bedroom to watch Fat Girl, the movie that had been sitting in its Blockbuster Total Access package for about a week. Strange, strange movie. I made the chicken that we both like so much for dinner along with these new Green Giant bites. Then we watched "Family Guy" and fell asleep pretty early.

Monday was back to work. Handbell practice resumed after a little break during the New Year’s time period. Easter is pretty early this year so we have to jump in feet first on that music. We also did a great car swap so that I could get my car in for its 30,000 mile check-up. Since Adam’s dad works over at Kolosso Toyota I took Adam’s car, he took his dad’s and his dad drove mine to work for my afternoon appointment. It worked out nicely. They replaced my squealing serpentine belt, took a screw out of my tire and patched the hole it left (ack!) and made sure everything else was peachy keen. I wanted to get this in before my warranty lapsed, and that’s coming up pretty soon. It will be three years at the end of February and the car will be my, fair and square, by mid-March. Woo!

Last night was IMA. It was a pretty small crowd. We had some trouble with our newsletter this month so I think I’ll attribute the poor attendance to that. And, well, the meeting was out in Winneconne. Not the most central of locations. It was a great meal though and the staff at the Fin-n-Feather is always super easy to work with. The speakers were good and I got lots of good information about potential energy saving ideas.

Tonight the county assessor should be stopping at the house to take a tour. Hopefully. I haven’t gotten a call cancelling it yet, but we’ll see. After that apparently Adam and his dad are going to make their second trip to haul drywall (their first happened last night while I was at IMA.) Unfortunately it’s supposed to snow tonight and not stop until next week so they’ll have to hustle. I’m not sure when they plan to hang it all, but the room in the basement is slowly taking shape.

Oh yeah. I just remembered I totally forgot to elaborate on that “more on that later” from the last post. Whoops. Anyway, a few weeks ago Adam decided he wanted to start framing in his workshop down in the basement. So his dad came over and they took measurements. He made a blueprint-looking drawing of his plan, calculated how much of each material he’d need, and called around for pricing. They went and got all the wood a couple weekends ago. Then they framed the walls with that obscenely loud hammer gun thing. During the week Adam finished up the wiring and installed all kinds of lights. This past weekend he put up the insulation on the inside walls. Looks like this coming weekend will be drywall. After that, I’m not sure what the plan is. I know he’s still looking around for the best deal for doors. He just plans to paint it a “builder beige” and I don’t know what else he has planned. It’s totally his thing. I’ve tried to just stay out of the way, coming downstairs with a camera when he yells up at me to do so. Speaking of which, pictures can be found here. After he’s done he’ll just have to get some tools to put in it. :)

My plans for the rest of the week mostly involve cleaning (many things), cuddling (with whomever will cuddle with me), and taking naps. It’s 9am and I could definitely use one right now.

I'm Back from the Evil Land of The Year-End Close

I kind of got slammed by year-end at work so perhaps that can explain my dropping off the face of the earth for the last two weeks or so. I was finally able to move on to January yesterday. Ah, to be back at Presto with the 8-hour close… *sigh*

Anywho, given that I’ve spent most of my waking hours contemplating inventory valuations, it’s a good thing that not much else has been going on. New Year’s Eve I had planned to work late and try to get a leg up on the day two estimate. That plan was shot when HR told everyone to go home at 3:30. Oh well. So I went home. We didn’t have any plans for celebrating the beginning of 2008 so that’s what we did - nothing. We were both asleep by 10. New Year’s Day was a holiday and aside from a fruitful shopping trip to Walmart (we got our twinkling icicle lights for next year really cheap!) I don’t remember doing much.

Then it was back to work with a few “going in early” days and even one “staying late” day (I try to avoid those – I’m much more a morning person.) I also worked about 5 hours last Saturday. The thrills of accountancy at year-end… The bells played at the 4:30 mass on Saturday night and then we had a wedding reception to go to. Except we didn’t make it out there. Adam and his dad spent all day Saturday down in the basement framing walls for Adam’s workshop (more on that later) so by the time 7:30 came around all Adam wanted to do was sit on the couch with his massaging seat cushion. Which was just fine with me. My brain hurt. Sunday was another day of them working in the basement, setting off gunshots to get nails into the concrete. I did what I could to get out of the house with shopping and the like. I eventually ended up trying to watch some of my “Dawson’s Creek” over the racket and had to resort to putting the captions on. They called it a night earlier than the day before and after his dad left we spent the rest of the evening catching up on some DVR shows.

Monday was the handbells Christmas party. I ended up not going for the dinner part, but I did meet them at the theater to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. As a side note, the reason this was our chosen activity is because we played “The Chipmunk Song” last year at our various programs and it’s a favorite of many of the ladies. Anyway, under normal circumstances I would have probably found this movie to be kind of stupid. But I guess I was with the right crowd to appreciate the stupidity of it. It’s a cute film, but nothing special.

Tuesday was pretty boring. On Wednesday someone from the county assessor’s office was supposed to stop by the house to look it over but she kept changing her mind on me. As of now she’s supposed to come next Wednesday but we’ll see. Adam made dinner – mini hamburgers on the grill – and not much else happened.

Last night was another uneventful evening. Once again we’re trying to play catch-up with the DVR. I’m just looking forward to being able to use Excel’s great “default to the current year” feature again. It’s so obnoxious having to type 12/31/2007 all the time so it doesn’t make it 2008.

As boring as things seem, it appears as though it might remain like this for awhile. Even though with the new year comes a whole new batch of vacation days, I don’t really have any planned use for them except for two Fridays for our annual camping trips in the Dells/Door County. Adam will be off in California the first week of February but I’ll be left behind for that. After last year’s ridiculous amount of hullabaloo for various reasons this year seems kind of dull. But I think I’ll be ok with it. It will give us time to do some much needed cleaning around the house and the like. Throughout the wedding and aftermath I just kind of shoved things into the closets in the two pet rooms and now I fear opening them back up to see what kind of evil lurks within. That might be my task for when Adam’s out of town. I still haven’t decided what to do with my wedding dress. *sigh*

Anywho, the weekend is completely blank on my calendar and my to-do list is mostly little things. I don’t know what Adam plans to do in the basement, if anything, so that might determine how my time is spent as well. I’m looking forward to making the second batch of ice cream either tonight or tomorrow. This one will be raspberry ice cream. Yum. Hopefully it’s not as rich as my first try. Otherwise I might have to start looking into the frozen yogurts (or ice milk… whatever happened to ice milk?) instead.

Christmas Recap

Overall the Christmas weekend was pretty painless. The Van Rooy party was a smaller gathering than usual although I didn’t really notice since even a fraction of Adam’s extended family far outpaces my entire extended family. Without Santa or any little ones we all basically sat around talking and eating pizza. There were some gifts exchanged and then people got ready to leave. Adam’s grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin were leaving for Florida later in the afternoon and everyone knew his grandma was anxious to get on the road. They drove down in a huge RV. Must have been an interesting trip. Anyway, when we got back home and I went to work baking about 10 dozen cookies while Adam tinkered with his car and had a ridiculous amount of firewood delivered. Good thing he went out and bought a wood rack the previous evening because it wouldn’t have fit otherwise.

Sunday was the day of our party. It was also the day of blizzard-like conditions. As the hours of blowing snow went on we got the feeling that we might be stuck with a ton of leftovers. We got a couple phone calls from people cancelling on us. We ended up with a pretty small turnout – basically our parents and Adam’s aunt, uncle, and grandmother, and cousin (not the ones going to Florida, obviously.) It was still a good time. I got to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol and eat some good snacky foods. That said, we’ll be eating those snacky foods for the next week or so. Especially those cookies. I think we can handle that though. (I didn't take any pictures of the food - the camera was in the cat room and I didn't want to risk having to corral them inside there again if they got out...)

I put the tree back up around noon after confining the cats to their room through the duration of the party. After everyone left we let the cats out and they beelined for the tree. We decided to have our Christmas right then and take down the tree to avoid additional damage. By far the most popular gift was a little pouch of catnip given to the cats by my mom. We opened the box when it arrived and we initially put the gifts in the rodent room with the rest of them. But the cats just wouldn’t leave their gift alone so we had to hide it from them. Now we know why.



They chew on it, rub their heads on it, throw it around, fight over it, carry it around in their mouths. It’s seriously kitty crack. JC is generally pretty easy to get all crazy-like and hyper but the other two are pretty calm. Give them a little catnip though, and they turn into maniacs. Conner especially enjoys rolling around on the pouch, aggressively defending his position whenever JC or Ted try to join in his romp. Now we know what to get them when we want to have three wound-up cats randomly stampeding through the house with abandon.

Monday was Christmas Eve and we didn’t really have much planned. We headed up to Menards for their 48% off all Christmas stuff sale. We found some good items: a pre-lit Christmas tree for next year, shatterproof (and hopefully therefore kitty-proof) ornaments, Christmas cards. What we didn’t find were lights for outside. They didn’t have the clear twinkling ones we wanted so we’ll have to keep an eye out for those next year. We didn’t do much the remainder of the day. We headed up to church around 8:30. The bells played in the concert before the 10PM mass as well as during communion. Then we packed up, wished everyone a Merry Christmas, and headed home to bed. Way past my bedtime!

Christmas Day we slept in kind of late. Well, we woke up at 7 with the alarm but then both of us fell back asleep until almost 9. We went over to Adam’s parent’s house at 2 for their Christmas gathering. Adam’s mom was my Secret Santa and she got me a gravy boat (a reaction to the drooling cow at Thanksgiving, I’m guessing) and a huge wooden cutting board. After finishing up a late lunch there we headed over to his uncle Rich’s house. Adam started working on his uncle’s computer while we waited for his parents to show up. It took a lot longer over there than I had anticipated. We didn’t end up leaving until after 7PM. And I had the ham sitting in the sink defrosting all afternoon and anticipated a 1 ½ hour cooking time when we got home. I was pretty close too. We ended up eating dinner around 9. The ham turned out very well although the probe thermometer I borrowed from Adam’s mom didn’t go off so I think I might have set it wrong. Oh well. It all turned out ok and we have more leftovers. Woo! Makes Adam’s night to make dinner pretty easy!

Then Monday morning it was back to work. There weren’t a whole lot of people there and it remained pretty light for the rest of the week. Of course I was there for the long haul, having no vacation remaining and being kind of busy anyway.

Gift-wise, it wasn’t really a big year for getting things and that’s just fine. I’ve got a lot of junk all over the house already. My most anticipated gift was the ice-cream maker that Adam got me. I don’t remember what prompted the thought but I noticed that the KitchenAid stand mixer I have has an ice-cream maker attachment you can buy. I looked at that but figured it was too expensive and not really what I had in mind. But when we were at Lowe’s for something a few weeks back I took a look at their small appliances section and found this Cuisinart one.



Totally simple, only takes 20 minutes, and there’s no salt or cranking to worry about. I made my first batch - Peanut Butter Cup - last night.



Yum. Adam also got me a gift card to BBB (which I can always find something to use on. Heh.) and I got a cookbook from my mom. I sense a theme… I got Adam a couple of fun office desk toys from Office Playground along with a Mr. Beer “make your own beer” kit. My dad and Cheryl gave us some giftcards for PetSmart and Good Company, both of which we’ll obviously have no trouble using either. Oh - and an absolutely delicious raspberry cheesecake that we smartly decided to hide from the rest of the party attendees.



I think I totally forgot to mention this when we got it, but Adam’s parents gave us their gift a little early. His dad took the design of the IKEA headboard set we liked when we were out there last summer and built us a headboard/footboard/bed frame. It’s got “secret” compartments in the headboard and keeps the mattress pad from shifting all over the place.


So, a pretty good Christmas week although it's alway a little weird when the holiday ends up on a Monday or Tuesday. No plans for tomorrow night that I know of. I expect to be working late and we'll have to see where things go from there.

Holidays In Full Swing

It has been a pretty busy week around here. Thankfully the weather seems to be holding so far but we’ll see how things end up for our party on Sunday. I heard the terrible phrase “Winter Storm Warning” on the radio at lunch so it might be messy.

Monday was our last handbell practice before the Christmas Eve mini-concert and mass. It’s definitely a lot easier doing five pieces up in the choir loft than it was doing 14 down in front of the church. But knowing how worried we all were going into the concert makes the more than decent results so appreciated.

Tuesday was the annual IMA Christmas meeting. Our original speaker, an FBI agent from Washington, DC, was lost at the last minute because the government pulled their approval. Go figure. So instead of money laundering and terrorism we had a speaker about loss prevention instead. Not quite as flashy, but still interesting and eye-opening. We had an ok turnout – right around 30 people – and the gifts and raffle prizes were great this year. We didn’t win any of the raffle drawings but I got the cutest dip bowl and spreader that looks like one of those round striped mints. (Look for a picture of that after our party this weekend.) Adam got some kitchen towels that were nice, but that he regifted to his secret Santa at work since we didn’t really have use for them.

Wednesday we headed to Skyline with his parents to see some stand-up comedy. They had won free tickets in the drawing the club holds so all we had to cover were drinks (there’s a two drink minimum.) The host wasn’t too good and the headliner was ok. The opening act, Mike Merryfield, was undoubtedly the best of the three. He’s apparently a local although I’d never heard of him. All in all, a good time was had.

Today we’re apparently having a load of firewood dropped off. We (and by “we” I mean Adam and his dad. But I supervised!) had previously re-stacked the wood we already had to organize it when Chris and Katie cut down all kind of trees in their yard and gave us some of the results. So now we get to do it again to make room for this additional lumber. I doubt we’ll have any problem burning through it since we seem to have a fire going pretty much all weekend, every weekend.

Tomorrow is Adam’s grandma’s party up in De Pere. I suspect it will be very different from last year’s since there will be a drastic reduction in the number of babies in attendance. Adam was even told to forego his Santa routine. It should still be a good time – his relatives are fun. After we’re done there it’ll be time to come home and bake an obscene amount of cookies. Mmmm, cookies. I admit I’m cheating a little and most of them will be of the pre-fab persuasion. We got four boxes of frozen cookie dough to support the Catholic Central cookie drive at church a couple weeks ago. Aside from some Snickerdoodles, I plan to just arrange and bake the dough.

Sunday is our party. I have this feeling that between the possibility of heinous weather and the dismal RSVP results we’ve gotten, we might end up sitting there staring at each other for three hours. Luckily I realized this early enough that I had time to go find The Muppet Christmas Carol to have playing on the TV in case we get bored and lonely. Sunday morning will be some prep work (like putting up the tree… again…) and crockpot meatballs and then early afternoon I’ll kick into Martha Stewart high gear with the two mini appetizers and the dip I have planned. Nothing too difficult or showy. Just yummy. At this point I think I’m just short one serving bowl and I might end up using my African animals one. Or maybe I should bring back the Halloween bowl from the basement. In any case, everything appears to be under control. For now.

Monday is Christmas Eve, obviously. I’m not sure we have anything planned except for the aforementioned 9pm handbell commitment. I’m all done with my shopping. I just have a few things to wrap. Christmas Day we have a ham to contend with and we’re doing the Paalman Christmas thing in the early afternoon. Wednesday it’s back to work and since I’m all out of vacation I’m in it for the long haul. I’m generally ok with that. I should be able to keep myself busy with year-end stuff. I hope. We’re doing inventory on the 31st and I was pretty impressed with the decent number of volunteers I got to help count. I was fearing the worst, anticipating counting the whole plant by myself, so that’s a relief. Plans for New Year’s Eve are up in the air right now and it’s totally possible that we’ll end up sitting at home, falling asleep way before the ball drops. Wouldn’t be the first time…

And then it’s the new year. It looks as though the first two weeks of January will be insanely busy for me at work. It also looks as though I’ll be working at least 3 or 4 hours on Saturday the 5th. I’m hoping that by Friday I can get enough of my stuff done that I can get out of it but that seems unlikely. Boo for stupid accounting schedules.

That seems like a thorough enough recap for now. Merry Christmas everyone.

Kitty Rampage

Ok, not really. But they de-tailed their mouse. Bwahahahaha. That just cracks me up. Almost as much as when my dad asked me how Jean De-Claude was on Sunday. How did I not think of that one?

JC is doing fine. Being more obnoxious than ever since we have to confine him in the rodent room for most of the day. He's taken to doing "the Ted" which involves stopping dead in his tracks and flopping onto his side for no apparent reason:



But he's just so adorable, it's almost ok that he follows you around like a dog trying to trip you at every step. Almost.

Staying Alive

How did it get to be Wednesday already? Wow.

Anyway, the weekend that is now so far in the past was more interesting than some others have been. On Friday night we decided to go out for dinner since I didn’t feel like cooking and Adam didn’t either. We went to The Ground Round at the golf course for the first time in quite a while. The last time we were there was during the scary karoke night. This time we got there right in time for Happy Hour Trivia. Woo. And they’ve added little flat screen TVs by all the tables. And you can change the channel so you can watch something other than sports. Double woo. Anyway, we ordered food, had fun watching “How It’s Made” on the Discovery Channel. At the end of the 6 questions (most of which I totally guessed about) we handed in our answer cards and waited for the results. The winner would get a $50 gift card.

Of course, why would I be telling you this whole thing if something significant didn’t happen? Turns out I’m a pretty good wild guesser. I got all 6 answers correct. Although one other person got them all right too so they split the prize in half. Still, $25 for random guessing isn’t shabby. It will fund our next “don’t feel like cooking” night out.

On Saturday we did a whole bunch of shopping and running around. I think we were gone from around 9am to almost 4pm. We started by heading up to Green Bay. We visited with Dave and Adam’s grandmother for a while. We were lucky enough to have the planes that were doing the flyover for the Packer game the next day fly right over us. Now, her house is on the flight path for the airport so this is not unusual. But these planes were flying veeeeery low. I’m talking brushing the treetops low. So they were veeeeeery loud. But hey, Adam got to see a warbird something or other close up so he was happy. Who needs their hearing? It’s over-rated. We stopped by PetSmart (since we were in the neighborhood) for some pet stuff (duh) and then headed back to Simon’s to get some cheese. Then we made stops at a few other places (Walgreens, Blockbuster, Walmart, Petco, probably others but I kind of lost track.) We also stopped by his parents’ house somewhere in there I think. When we got home we unloaded everything and I went back out to do the grocery shopping. I made dinner, we watched TV. That’s about it.

Until 1am Sunday morning when I awoke to the unpleasantness of the “stomach flu.” I spent most of the morning either sleeping or in the bathroom. Adam was nice enough to go get some Coke and flatten it for me to try and calm my stomach down. It didn’t work too well. Then he was even nicer when I asked him to go to Walgreens for me right before the football game started. I still felt pretty crappy at 3pm when I had to leave to go to church for the handbell concert. I brought some Gatorade with me and managed to spill it on my white shirt. I was having a bad day. All things considered the bell concert went very well. There was a decent crowd and we even got a standing ovation. I ducked out before everything was cleaned up and bailed on the dinner out with my dad and Cheryl. I just went home and crawled into bed. I think I probably fell asleep for a few hours before Adam came to bed for the night.

Monday morning I felt a lot better than I had the previous morning. I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner on Saturday (which had so spectacularly re-introduced itself Sunday morning) so I was kind of worried what I might happen if I tried to eat breakfast. It’s that whole “I’m so hungry, but my body will rebel” situation. So I told work I might be late if things didn’t work out. I made some plain rice but chickened out after about three tiny bites. I gave up and just went to work with a bottle of Gatorade. I only made it about four hours before I felt like I wanted to throw up again so I left early to go home and take a nap before bell practice. Things were still a little uncomfortable during practice and when I came home I went to lay down.

Yesterday morning I was pretty much back to normal. I worked all day, came home last night and cleaned up the mess created by me ignoring the house for two days. I even mopped the floor. Well, ok, I had to mop the floor because when I was home for lunch I was on my way to put my glass of flat Coke back in the fridge and JC tripped me. He meowed AFTER he was already under my feet. Grrrr. He yelped, I flew, the Coke splattered all over. So yeah, the floor was a little sticky. Anyway, I tried to take care of some of the things I had anticipated doing on Sunday.

Today I’m doing fine. A little tired perhaps, but fine. Tonight is the first “Adam’s in charge of dinner” night and he plans on grilling steaks. Yes, I understand that there’s a good 6 or 8 inches of snow on the deck but luckily the grill is scooted up right next to the patio door. I’ve made Wednesday his night to make dinner with an “it can’t always be frozen pizza” clause. It might be a bit tricky since he works later than I do, but we’ll see how it goes. Other than that tonight will be full of more catch-up and normal Wednesday activities (laundry, garbage.) I also need to get my butt moving on the Lowe’s 0% balance transfer I’m working on since the first payment is due the first week of January… Speaking of finances, I’m also currently working on our 2008 budget. It’s not pretty, although I’m fudging some numbers until we find out how things shake out with Adam moving to a salaried position. Is it unreasonable to ask for a 10% raise? :)

UDPATE: Adam didn't make dinner. He stayed late at work, came home for an hour, and then went back to work. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow...

The Big S-N-I-P

Today was a big day for JC.

He was dropped off at the vet this morning, got the "all clear" from the vet regarding the FIP scare, and was then put under for surgery. He's no longer a "he", he's an "it." And for good measure we had him front paw declawed and gave him a few shots (round two of distemper and rabies) while we were at it. Poor guy. But apparently he was up and about soon after waking up. He'll be staying overnight at the cat clinic for observation (and, to a certain extent, to keep the other two cats from beating him up too much.) When we bring him home tomorrow afternoon we'll be keeping him alone in the other room for a few days since he'll need special litter and some time away from the other guys and their rough-housing. I'm hoping his personality doesn't change too much as a result of this operation but you never know until it happens.

For now, we can all enjoy this cool action shot of him attacking some paper towel this past weekend:



Next we have to figure out how to trick the other two into the carriers so we can take them for their well-cat checkups. Hmmm. Any ideas?

Dumped On

I'd say we got pretty close to the 6-7 inches the weathermen predicted. It started yesterday around 11:30 and didn't stop until late evening. We've already shoveled three times. We're reconsidering our decision to forego a snowblower.

Enjoy this one, Mom. It's probably headed in your direction...

The End of an Era

I closed my PO Box in Oshkosh this afternoon. Going forward please send all correspondence (letters, gifts, generous cash donations) to the house. If you need that address please email me and I’ll give it to you.

Critter Interaction

We recently decided to try leaving the guinea pig room open to see what would happen. JC was already acquainted with Mo since I had him out in the living room to cuddle a few weeks back. JC was curious, of course, and hopped up on the couch next to me to investigate. He was fine until Mo moved. This apparently scared the bejeezus out of JC, who took off at break-neck speed into the kitchen. Round one: Mo.

When we opened the doors we had the foresight to get a top for Howie’s cage. Good thing, since JC took an immediate shining to him. It may just be that his cage is the most convenient to stalk since he can sit on the windowsill to do it. Or it may be that Howie baits him by burying himself and then popping up unexpectedly all over his cage. In any case, JC bats at the glass, sits on top of the cage peering down, and generally has a grand time trying to catch Howie.




He’s a little more wary of the guinea pigs. Their cages are larger, lower to the ground, and he can stick his paws into them. Mo and Einstein have always been skittish but they seem to like the attention they get from the cat when they squeal. I was feeding them a few days ago and they were in the middle of their guinea pig chorus when JC wandering into the room. It took him a minute to figure out where the racket was coming from. Then he put his front paws up onto Mo’s cage to take a look. Mo had his back to him, eating. JC tentatively pawed at Mo and when Mo turned around JC jumped back. This was before we gave Mo his haircut so I can imagine he might have been scary-looking. Einstein stays in his house more than Mo so JC sits on top of his cage to wait for an appearance.

So far the interaction between JC and the other two hamsters has been limited. I think this is mostly due to the fact that he can’t get to their cages very easily. This morning he was perched on the bookshelf on top of their food container, pawing at Gus who was nonchalantly eating, ignoring the threat that loomed outside his cage. JC got overzealous, leaned over too far, and fell forward. He stuck his paws out in an attempt to catch himself and flipped the cover off Gus’ cage in the process. This is when I decided to shut the door when we’re not home. It just makes me too nervous to think of what may happen if he would do that when I’m not around to hear the crash and put things back in order.

Ted and Conner have made treks into the new room but haven’t made attempts toward the rodents yet (that I’ve seen, anyway.) Ted likes hanging out on top of Einstein’s cage while Conner typically paces back and forth between the two guinea pigs. They scatter immediately when I come into the room. I think they aren’t used to being allowed in there yet. It has been a “no kitty zone” since they arrived so it’s something new.

In other news, we had to get a different tree skirt since the one we had had snowmen on it that were pieces of felt glued on and the cats decided to rip their faces off. Literally. So we replaced it with something flat. This doesn't stop them from frolicking in it and messing it up on a daily basis. They also pick off a couple ornaments each day and throw them around the living room. Never a dull moment...

(this is the old tree skirt)


(this is the new one)

We’re on a movie roll!

Last night we got Mean Girls in the mail so we decided to watch it instead of going shopping since Adam worked a little later than anticipated. This movie has been out for a while now but I’d never seen it. It’s not an Oscar grade movie by any stretch of the imagination but it’s smartly written (not surprising since Tina Fey is responsible for that) and depicts what everyone goes through in high school. There are many snicker-worthy moments throughout the movie and each time I laughed I jiggled the kitten (he was sleeping on my arm) so I’m sure he hates this movie. Not exactly a Clueless, but along the same target audience line and humor type.

More Movies

We saw a few more movies over the long weekend.

The first was The Notebook from our Blockbuster queue. Guess it got in front of the rest of the Oscar movies. I knew this was a girly, sappy romance going into it but in all fairness it wasn’t really that bad. Transparent and totally predicable, yes. But still entertaining enough. The two lead actors were easy to watch and while the story is as old as time, the ending is still sweet each time. But I’m not sure it’s one I’d want for our personal collection as I don’t think I’d really watch it over and over (à la Clueless or Sliding Doors, each of which I’ve watched 20+ times, easily. And Benny and Joon is probably up there too.)

Second movie of the weekend was Enchanted. We went to the first show on Saturday and managed to avoid big crowds, excessive amounts of children, and the higher non-matinee ticket prices. Of course we blew all our savings on the tickets by visiting the concession stand. Oh well, what are you going to do? Anyway, I had heard great things about this film and Amy Adams had been on "Rachael Ray" earlier in the week so I was excited to see this movie. My sister categorizes it as unforgettable. I don’t know about that. I’ve had those songs stuck in my head ever since. It’s classic Disney in some aspects, but it seems to be making fun of itself for most of the film. Which I think is great. Anyway, an innocent romp with a princess through New York complete with a mass stage production in what I assume was Central Park. This is one I may consider purchasing when it comes out on DVD.

The third movie of the weekend was Deck the Halls. Once again Blockbuster was out of Ocean’s Thirteen so we had to pick something else. We had intended to see this one in the theaters last year but never quite got around to it. Adam fell asleep about 2/3rds of the way through but I don’t think he really missed that much. It’s a cute holiday-themed movie without a lot of substance. Typical feuding neighbor story with a hug and kisses ending. I can’t get enough of Kristin Chenoweth though. I’d watch just about any movie she’s in. Or musical either, as the case may be. She was on "Conan" a while back and just blew me away.

The fourth (and final) movie of the weekend was the elusive Ocean’s Thirteen. But Martha, you might say, you just said Blockbuster was fresh out of copies of this DVD. True, I’d say, but we have digital cable with Movies on Demand. So rather than spend the next few weeks in the seemingly futile chase for a DVD copy we decided to push a few buttons on the remote and watch it that way. It’s a little more annoying than a hard copy because when you pause the movie and then hit play again it rewinds itself by like five minutes, but it works. The third in this series is as quirky and smart as the first two. There’s a definite lack of female star power in this one though, Ellen Barkin being the only female role I can recall. And she spends the whole film in a skin-tight, cleavage-bearing, red dress running after Al Pacino. Not too women’s lib there. Wonder who the target audience could be? Anyway, the whole gang sets out for revenge when Pacino’s character, Willie Bank, dupes their pal Reuben into losing pretty much everything - including consciousness when he has a heart attack and winds up catatonic in the hospital. They plan to ruin the opening of Bank’s latest hotel, having a little fun along the way. There are digs at France, plenty of stupid jokes, and the continued barrage of insults toward Matt Damon’s Linus. It’s easy to see why the guys have so much fun making these films. It’s a good group of actors and they make entertaining films.

Dad's 25th Anniversary Concert

Adam and I attended the concert in honor of my dad's 25th Anniversary as Music Director at Ebenezer UCC in Sheboygan this afternoon. Here's the program if you're interested (PDF file).