Inane Chatter

…(’cause it sure feels like that sometimes)…I’ll write about something else.   Like how disgustingly good it feels to run when you’re in the third or fourth or fifth mile and you’ve gotten past the REALLY tight calves and you’re running slightly downhill and “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie starts to play and you’re singing along (through the panting) and you know you’re  hungry, but it’s not that long before John will be home and you can hug him (I can hug him – nobody gave you permission), but maybe not until after the shower ’cause no one appreciates a sweaty hug (and did I mention that my fifth mile is mostly downhill and I was flying?), and then we’ll grill hot dogs for dinner.  ‘Cause it’s spring!  Close enough, anyway.  It was 63 degrees out when I left the house to run this evening.

I finished The Road the other day (Sunday, I think).  I know Mom and Dad thought it was the most depressing thing they’ve ever read, but I liked it.  Yes, it was a bit (a lot) depressing, but that doesn’t make it a bad book.  I definitely want to see the movie.  And now I’m re-reading Bel Canto.  I love it.  It’s beautiful, it’s lyrical, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a Frank Sinatra song (“You’re much to much, and just too very very to ever be in Webster’s dictionary”).  Anyway, I love it.

It’s Oscar Night, so I might as well talk about it, right?  But first, I have to see who’s nominated and find out if I even saw any of these movies.  Last year, I hadn’t seen a single Oscar-nominated movie by the time the awards rolled around.

Okay, I’ve checked.  Of movies that were either nominated for themselves or had an actor nominated, I’ve seen Avatar (liked it, but for a technical category, not Best Picture.  I mean, come on, it was a 3D remake of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest!), Julie & Julia, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Soooo, none of the really good ones.

We’ll watch the beginning for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but that’s about it.  I’ll check out the highlights online tomorrow.  We’re going to spend our evening finishing Batman Begins (we got too sleepy to finish it last night) with pizza (and maybe wine – classy, I know).

Oh, we caught up on Lost this morning over breakfast, so Mom, Dad, Mindy, call me tomorrow and we’ll chat.

SPRING!  I know it’s not spring yet, but it’s starting to look like it.  It’s sunny, it got up to 50 degrees, we ran a race, the dogs spent the day outside, and I almost opened some windows.  More progress on that tomorrow, hopefully, since the high is supposed to be 55 (!).  It’s been a very cold winter, and I am SO ready for it to be over.

For the last two and a half weeks, ever since John coaxed/supported/shamed me into registering with him for the 5-mile race, I’ve been dreading today.  I wasn’t at ALL prepared to run 5 miles (high winds, snow and ice on the sidewalks, and being forced to run in the neighborhood streets are my main excuses), so my plan was to run as much as I could, counting on adrenaline to help a little, keep a steady pace, and then if I need to walk, try to walk only for one minute and then jog for at least three minutes before walking again.  So I had a plan.  I also took a peek at last year’s race results and I knew that at least a handful of people took between 70 and 85 minutes to complete the race, so I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be last.  But you never know.  Maybe those people decided never to run 5 miles again so they didn’t bother registering this year.  I told John (who wasn’t feeling all that great about it, either) to look for me around 60-67 minutes.  Closer to 67.

It was a beautiful morning (and it’s been a beautiful day), but pretty breezy, so it was still plenty cold (wind chill in the upper 20s, I think).  We joined the crowd at the starting line and John asked me where I wanted to fit in: front, middle, or back?  Definitely not the front (I’ll get trampled, plus I’ll just be in the way of all those super-serious, super-fast runners), and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be in the back (why start there?  I’ll get there eventually on my own), but in the middle, there’d be all the psychological pressure of watching all those runners pass me along the way.  I said something to that effect to John as we threaded our way to the back of the first third of the crowd, and he said, “Well, you know what it’s like.”  I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that I should be used to watching runners pass me.  Pretty sure. 

The course took us through neighborhoods in Ashburn John and I don’t typically see, and there were a few people out cheering us on.  There was a big hill near the end of the first mile, and just after it, a woman shouted from her front porch, “It’s all downhill from here!”  She was mostly right.  There were a couple of times the course doubled back on itself, so I could see that I wasn’t actually last, or even that close to last (definitely in the last third, last fourth, maybe even last fifth – I’ll post numbers when the results are up).  One of the times we doubled back, though, I saw a guy juggling.  While running.  He had 5 (maybe 4, but I think five) red balls in the air at once while he jogged up the hill.  Pretty cool, very weird.

Just after the 3-mile mark, I realized I was doing better than expected, averaging about an 11-minute mile, and I started daydreaming about finishing in under an hour.  I wondered if John would even be looking at the finish line that early.  (Of course he would.  There isn’t much else to look at.)  Any walking I did was for less than a minute and not all that often (4 or 5 times total), and I was still on track at the 4th mile, so I ran the entire 5th mile and managed to pick up the pace at the very end, enough to feel like I was going to throw up as I crossed the finish line.  That’s the way to do it.    It passed, quickly, and John was there, and my time on the clock was just under 55 minutes.  I don’t remember exactly what, but my official time should be lower since it didn’t start until I crossed the starting line.  My watch said 54:24.  You know that means?  That I can do that without training for it?  It means I can do better.  And it was fun and I liked it and I won’t be afraid to do it again.  Another side effect: my fear of 10Ks disappeared.  I can DO this.

I just checked.  Results have been posted.  My official time (matches my watch exactly, for once) is 54:24.  Out of 280 women, I finished 241st.  John finished 197th out of 316 men with an 8:45 pace.  My pace was 10:53.

I can do better than that.

Anyway, we got home, had breakfast, cleaned up (ourselves, not anything silly like the house), and then John had to stay close to his computer since he’s on call to work today.  I talked to Jess (we’re making lots of plans), and then we filed our taxes.  John wants to buy an external hard drive today (and I need a new Scalzi book) AND I really want sushi for dinner, so we’re heading out soon to do all (at least some) of that.  The big decision for the evening is whether we eat out or bring sushi home (and snuggle in for TV or a movie).  Tough call.

Oh my head.  Not a bad headache, just a mildly annoying one.  Have I taken anything to get rid of it (besides a glass of wine)?  No.  I’d have to put the laptop down and get off the couch for that.  Today felt really long.  It started with a visit to our financial guy (early at our request so we could get to work close to on time), then work.  Work started out okay, but then we got news that means our next two weeks are going to be more tedious than expected.  Faces fell, moods darkened.  And on my way out the door, I remembered that I had planned on stopping at Wegman’s on my way home to pick up salmon for dinner.  Last thing I wanted to do, but the only other food in the house was the ravioli we’re having tomorrow night (before the race (I’m SO not ready for a 5-mile race)).  So I stopped at Wegman’s and got out of there pretty quickly (and cheaply) since for once I only bought what I went in there for.  No browsing, no impulse buying.  I’m home, I’m comfortable (aside from the headache), and I think I’m going to read my book for the 15 minutes I have left before I need to start dinner.

Update: I love these pictures.  I want this house.

Complete and utter failure.  Worst ponytail EVER.  I took the dogs for a short jog this afternoon, and for the first time in months, I put my hair into a normal ponytail instead of the double-decker thing I’ve been doing (which has been working just fine).  Because the ponytail wasn’t tight enough, it slid down the back of my head, freeing all the shorter hair in front to flop around in my face.  I couldn’t just tuck it behind my ears (over and over and over) like I usually would because I was wearing my ear grips to keep my wittle ears warm, so I didn’t have ears behind which to tuck the hair.  Behind which.

John has been in the driveway all morning replacing the rear brakes on the mustang.  It’s not supposed to be this hard.  That’s true of EVerything he does to this car.  Except when he replaced the drive belt a couple of weeks ago.  That one went pretty well.  He got the driver’s side done, but he’s having trouble compressing the piston back into the caliper on the passenger side.  I’ve been googling the problem, but he’s got the right tool and he seems to be doing all the right things.  He’s not ready to assume the caliper has seized yet, but if he can’t fit the new brake pad in, he may have to replace the caliper.  And that will mean he won’t be going to his cousin’s new baby’s christening.  Because it will take the rest of the weekend (bleeding brake lines, replacing parts, adding fluid, etc) and he won’t have a car to drive until it’s done.  So we’ll see.  But if he does go, he’ll leave for PA tonight to spend the evening with his family and then drive to Long Island with them Sunday morning for the christening.  He’ll stay with his parents in PA Sunday night and go to work from their house Monday morning.  So I won’t see him again until after work on Monday.  On the plus side, I’ll have Indian for dinner and watch movies he’s not interested in.  But that’s only fun for one night, not two.  Oh!  Speaking of movies, we watched 500 Days of Summer last night.  We both really liked it.  Joseph Gordan-Levitt was fantastic, and while we didn’t like Zooey Deschanel’s character as much, she was really good.  John couldn’t decide if he thought she was really attractive or not.  He said he wasn’t sure if he’d call her beautiful, or even pretty, but he wants to keep looking at her.  So at least he thinks she’s interesting.  I think she’s very pretty.  She’s got that blue eyes with dark hair thing I’ve always liked.  Like Liesl in The Sound of Music.    And I will watch the musical number (from 500 Days) at least three more times before I put the movie back in the mail.

Things I Like (in no particular order):

• Reading fiction, anywhere, anytime
• my dogs
• all dogs
• PUPPIES!
• And kittens
• And cats that actually like people
• chocolate
• milk chocolate
• white chocolate
• Paul Reiser
• Mad About You
• Saturday mornings
• sunny days (“sweeping the…”)
• summer days
• trees
• books (and their smell)
• big band music
• lists
• flowers
• BIG bathtubs
• showers with real water pressure
• manicured lawns
• manicured nails (my own, anyway – don’t much care for anyone else’s nails)
• clean sheets
• John’s clean, just-out-the-shower smell (much better than his just-came-back-from-a-long-run-sweaty smell)
• John (duh)
• everyone else I like (but won’t list here for fear I’ll leave someone I like off the list and that person (let’s call this person “H” for “hypothetical”)  will notice and be mad at me for leaving her (or him) off (even though it was an accident and I really do like H) and she will stop visiting my site, assuming  she was visiting and reading anyway, but if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t know I left her off and she wouldn’t get mad and stop reading, so I guess H was reading, which means, again, that I shouldn’t list anyone because I might leave someone off and she’ll get mad and stop reading)
• decorating with books
• my pretty new dining room table
• Ellen DeGeneres
• working from home
• that relaxed feeling as you drift off to sleep

Speaking of that last one, it’s getting close to my bedtime.  More accurately, it’s getting close to that time when I should be in bed reading.

I don’t care all that much about the actual Cadbury creme egg (John loves them – my favorites are the hard-shell mini eggs), but I always laugh at the Cadbury bunny commercials.  I love the tryouts (particularly the lion in the bow), but you can’t beat a clucking bunny.  I know, I’m easy.  But it’s funny!

My camera isn’t taking good pictures for some reason (grainy with no flash, and there are glare or dirty lens marks all over the picture when I use the flash), and I can’t find John’s camera (he’s in class, so I can’t ask), so there aren’t any good pictures of the dining room.  When I manage to take one I’m willing to let everybody see, I’ll post it.  I really want you guys to see it, ’cause it looks GREAT.  Like a whole different room.  Again.    The wall where the couch used to be has four dark, very tall bookshelves on it now.  Turns out the floor is uneven along the wall right in the center of the room, so we have two shelves coming from the wall by the fireplace.  The other two are right up against the light switch by the basement door.  Eventually, I want to put a shelf or narrow table or cabinet or something in the space in between with a mirror on the wall above it.  The buffet (blond wood) is still on the opposite wall, between the windows, but I think we’re going to get two more of the dark bookshelves and put them there instead.  We’ll add doors to the bottom halves of the bookshelves so we can use them for storage space and maybe use the upper shelves for wine glass or something.  Ooh, we put glass doors on the upper shelves…  Yeah, I want to do that.  But that can wait for the next trip to Ikea.  I finished rearranging the books last night, and once again (maybe for the first time in this house), all of the fiction fits on shelves on the first floor.  With room for more!  We have a whole bookshelf free.  That won’t last long.  One new book and we’re on the last one.   And of course I’m not counting the books we have in bags and boxes in the basement (that’s our store inventory), and I haven’t even begun counting the books in Mom and Dad’s basement.  Someday I’ll get around to organizing the non-fiction upstairs.  I LOVE how the dining room looks with all those books on the shelves.

Enough about me.  Except not, because I’m posting this link to The Bloggess because I love the way she tells a story and I laughed at this post.  A couple of times.  Loudly.  And Riley came over to check on me.  Apparently, he doesn’t get why she’s so funny.  But he’s a dog.  What does he know?

My day didn’t quite live up to its promising start, but how could it have?  I had to go to work.  Not that work is a bad place.  But it’s work, so it can’t compete with anything that’s not work.  No, that’s too big of a generalization.  There are lots of things not-work that are worse than work.  LOTS of things.

It rained today!  That’s the first non-snow precipitation we’ve had since early December.  Well, maybe not, but it’s the first I’ve noticed, and it made a big difference in the amount of snow left on the ground.  I’m SO glad.

I finished The Pillars of the Earth a few days ago.  The last third was much better than the rest, starting just before the (very quick – really, I was surprised)  grand tour of France and Spain.  But I’m not in a hurry to pick up the sequel.  I started a Stuart Woods mystery/thriller instead.  Actually, I read the first Dresden Files novel first (it was okay).  Almost forgot about it.

I haven’t mentioned yet how nicely John planned my birthday.  We got up early to go to Ikea for the shelves, but not before waiting half an hour or so for this woman who answered the craiglist ad to show up to take the old dining room table.  She didn’t show, so we left.  In the car, John said, “I got you this for the ride to Ikea,” and handed me a card and the new Michael Buble CD.  At least half of the songs are standards, with a couple of new originals, and another couple of covers.  I really like it.  We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (yay bagels and boo coffee), and then we shopped at Ikea, which is always fun.  When we got home, John put all the shelves together, and sometime in the middle of that, the other woman who answered the craigslist ad showed up for the dining room table.  So it’s gone.  We went out to dinner at the  Woo Lae Oak in Tysons Corner (it was really good), and as we were leaving, John said, “I didn’t bake you a cake, but we can’t let your birthday go by without dessert, so what do you want?”  I decided we should go to Wegman’s and visit the bakery ’cause they were likely to have chocolate-covered strawberries.  They actually didn’t, but when I asked them if they knew where else I might find some, they said they’d make some for me.    They did, and they were yummy.  So we got home (with the chocolate-covered strawberries and some peanut butter fudge for John) and I found another card and another present on the coffee table.  John planned our evening, too, and bought me a copy of the movie Clue, which neither of us had seen in I don’t know how long.  So we sat on the couch with our chocolate-covered strawberries and fudge, opened a bottle of the dessert wine we bought in Charlottesville when we were there for Jess and Chuck’s wedding, and watched Clue.  Pretty much until we fell asleep.  I couldn’t have been happier.  And that’s why my birthday was so wonderful.  John planned it.

Sometimes.  This one does.  I didn’t want to get out of bed at first, but I convinced myself it was the right thing to do, mostly by reminding myself how good I feel after I run.  It worked, and I do!  The sun is rising earlier and earlier every day, so I didn’t have to run in the dark.  I did have to negotiate the ice in the ex-Bloom parking lot, but there wasn’t that much of it.  It added variety.  Anyway, I ran, the sun is up, the sky is blue, and I feel great.  And I’m hungry, so I’m off to Frosted Flakes and a banana.  I hope you all have a wonderful day.

(Is this too full of sparkles and sunshine for you?)

After I got home from work today and found Roxy totally okay in her crate (no more seizures today as far as I can tell), I went back out to the store to pick up a few things I’d left off the grocery list Monday morning.  Can’t go to Bloom anymore ’cause the one nearest us closed.  I didn’t feel like braving route 7 in rush hour to go to Wegman’s, and Safeway was just that much too far away, so I went to the next closest store to the house: Giant.  Not my favorite place.  I only needed to get four things, so I didn’t write them down, but since I have this habit of forgetting even short lists, I went with my second-best method of remembering them: repetition.  (Second use of the colon in as many sentences: overdone already.  Third!)  I started repeating “Grated cheese, feta cheese, cereal, Oust.  Grated cheese, feta cheese, cereal, Oust.” to myself.  By the time I got to Claiborne, it was a chant with the emphasis on the first syllable of each item.  By the time I got to the parking lot, I was slurring the words a little (yes, I was chanting out loud) so it sounded like “Graded cheese, fetid cheese, cereal, Oust.” Who wants to eat graded cheese and fetid cheese?  That’s how you make your groceries sound disgusting.  End of lesson.

Does anyone know how to make the house stop smelling like scallops?  I sauteed scallops for dinner Monday night, and ever since then, the whole first floor has reeked of raw fish.  That’s why I bought Oust.  I figured I could try this odor-eliminator thing.  So far, not so good.  I can still smell scallops underneath the Fresh Linen scent.  And that’s almost worse.  I’m not sure what to do, since it’s WAY too cold to open the windows and let the kitchen air out.  I’ve cleaned the counters, run the disposal, thrown out the…hm.  The plastic container the scallops came in might still be in the trash can.  But the smell doesn’t get stronger when I open the door to the basement (where we hide the trash can from the dogs).  Still, it’s worth a try.

Wondering what my first-best method for remembering things is?  I bet you can guess.  I’ll tell you anyway.  If I really want to remember something I WRITE IT DOWN.

The snow just stopped.  Maybe 15 minutes ago.  And the sun is out.  Our total is somewhere around 30 inches, maybe a little more in places.  Definitely more in the corners of our yard.  When we were shoveling this morning, the sidewalks (which were a little lower than the yard) had 24″ of snow.  We spent a couple of hours shoveling the driveway and part of the sidewalk, mostly to make sure we could get the car out if we really had to.  Tomorrow we’ll tackle what fell after we quit, the rest of the sidewalk, and we’ll try to dig John’s car out.  If he can swing it, I really think he should work from home on Monday.  The roads will be terrible.  We had a plow come through sometime last night, maybe early this morning, but none since then.  Our street has at least a foot of snow.  Snow snow-snow, snow-snow-snow.  I’m tired of it.  And it’s way too deep for the dogs.  The first thing we did today was clear a path on the deck, clear the deck stairs, and shovel out an area in the yard so they could get around.  They can blaze their own paths from there, although they really haven’t this time.  They’ve stayed under the deck overhang, where the snow isn’t as deep.  Mark asked for pictures (apparently, he needs proof – Hi, Mark!), so here they are.  Maybe it’ll all disappear overnight.  I’m ready for spring!

Snow depth on the bench around 9:30 last night:

Snow depth on the bench as of about 9:30 this morning (through the sliding glass door with snow on it):

Snow depth on the bench around 4:45 this afternoon:

The back corner of the yard yesterday afternoon (3-ish, I think):

The back corner of the yard around 4:45 today:

My flower bed, buried:

An evergreen in the neighbor’s yard, yesterday:

Same evergreen, after the snow stopped today:

Out the front door this morning:

The driveway, before shoveling:

John shoveling the driveway:

The house, after shoveling (and the buried mailbox):

The neighbors, also shoveling:

And Roxy, peeing in the clearing we shoveled for her:

You’re welcome. 

So yeah, we have lots of snow.  We came in from shoveling around 11:30 or so, showered, and then had breakfast even though it was after noon.  Hot chocolate (of course), cereal (Wegman’s version of Lucky Charms), and muffins.  And we watched a little TV.  Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet, and John has been stealing cars and beating people up.  Seriously.  Oh, yeah, and we’re drinking champagne that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s.  It’s better aged. 

So…apparently a giant storm is headed our way (meaning home, not San Francisco) and is expected to dump a ton of snow (possibly more than in December) on us on Friday and Saturday.  Margot got our tickets changed to tomorrow, so we should be home not too long after midnight tomorrow night.  I’m kind of relieved.  I think I would really like San Francisco, but I’m not on vacation and I haven’t really had time to enjoy myself.  Marjorie and I were talking about this yesterday.  Most of the time, we can’t even tell we’re in California.  We could be in any city in the country.  So since there hasn’t been any time to really sight-see, I’m just as happy to be going home early (thereby ensuring I’ll actually get home, as opposed to be stranded somewhere because of the weather).  And I’m really tired today.  This class, even though it hasn’t been stressful, is really taking a lot out of me.  I’m standing ALL day, and I just want to rest, maybe take a bath, and go to bed.  After we finished with the class today, we did a little work to prep for tomorrow, and then we had an early dinner.  We went to an Italian place we could see from the window of the classroom and split a pizza.  Good pizza, and it was just enough food.  We asked the waiter if there was an ice cream place or something like that nearby, and he directed us to a gelato place around the corner.  SO good.  I had butter pecan.  Delicious.

So tomorrow, we’re going to check out of the hotel before class and leave our stuff with them, and then when class is over, run back to the hotel, change into travel clothes, and hop in a cab to the airport.  We should have plenty of time to make our flight.  And we’re already checked in (online check-in FTW!), so we don’t have to worry about losing our seats.  AND we’re in economy plus!  Still middle seats, though.  Oh well.  I’m seated right behind Mavis, so I told her she’d better keep me entertained or else I’ll kick her seat the whole flight back.

Anyway, I really really really want to come back here on vacation and do all the touristy sightseeing stuff and eat at all the fantastic restaurants and just hang out.  But right now, I can’t wait to get home.  I’d much rather be snowed in with John (and the dogs) than stranded away from them.

I am SO full.  We got out with daylight to spare today (and the rain held off for the evening), so we decided to head to Ghirardelli Square and the surrounding areas while we could still see some stuff.  We made definite dessert plans (hello, hot fudge sundae at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop) and just needed to find a place for dinner.  Again.  We headed for the water (less than a block away) and walked along Jefferson Street and eventually (okay, it didn’t take that long – there were signs) figured out we were at Fisherman’s Wharf.  So naturally, we had seafood.  We basically picked a restaurant at random and ended up at Tarantino’s, which was very good.  We were early (6-ish, maybe a little before), so there was no wait, and we got a table overlooking the boats in the marina.  I had prawns and scallops sauteed in all the delicious stuff (wine, garlic, butter, etc) with vegetables and rice.  SO good.  I called Mom and Dad during our walk back to Ghirardelli Square (and listened to the everyday drama of finding the other phone so they can both be on the line (I know I make fun of you, but I love that you do it that way.  I just wish you’d have the phone handy!)), but was, you know, forced to hang up on them because the banana hot fudge sundae was twisting my arm and marching me through the door.  Man, that was good.  But huge.  And I couldn’t finish it.  Madeline couldn’t finish hers, either.  She got the one with peanut butter topping AND hot fudge – they brought her three spoons.  Hm.  Maybe she could have finished it if she’d used all three.

I did well today, in class.  If I may say so myself.  No major screwups, no belligerent students (unlike yesterday, but I didn’t have to deal with them.  Myrtle did.), and when I misspoke (happened a couple of times), Mona was there to rescue me.  I wasn’t nervous at all, though, so that’s pretty cool.    I don’t think tomorrow will be much different.  Hope I didn’t just jinx myself.

I remembered why I don’t like to exercise at the gym.  Hotel gyms, anyway.  They’re HOT.  Freakishly hot and humid.  But I’m not about to go for a run by myself, in the dark, in a city I don’t know, so a treadmill in the rainforest it is.  We did go for a quite a nice walk last night, though.  Martha’s phone died Sunday night, so we walked to a nearby Verizon store and figured we’d look for a place to eat near there or on the way back to the hotel.  We saw surprisingly few restaurants at first, but we kept walking.  Ended up at Union Square (I think), found a sketchy street, turned around and headed east (I think – no, it was north) for a while, found ourselves in Chinatown, dismissed one restaurant because it was empty and smelled weird, found a really steep hill (the first one we’d seen!  very exciting), and tried to find our way back to Market Street.  We did, eventually, and we turned east again, but within about three blocks we realized we’d gone too far east on California Street (maybe in Chinatown?  nope.  Again, that was north.), so we turned around on Market and found our way back to 2nd Street.  California was the hilly street.  We had dinner at a Thai place less than 2 blocks from our hotel (it was really good and we were really hungry) and then crashed for the night.

I think tonight we’re either going to find one of the French restaurants Evelyn recommended or head somewhere famous and touristy.

Today is my first teaching day, so I have to hurry up and get ready.

I was attacked by my sweater today.  I wore the new beige/ecru/other neutral color one I got for Christmas (Thanks, Pat!) – it’s really soft, and it fits nicely – and I realized about halfway through the day that my pants and my coat (which I have to wear most of the day ’cause we’re spending a lot of time in the freezing cold training room) were getting fuzzy.  By the end of the day, I looked like I’d been attacked by a lint trap.  So now I have to find my lint brush/tape thing and clean up.  But it’s okay.  You know why?  ‘Cause I’m having kimchi for dinner.  Ooh, I think the rice is done.

I hope John’s day got better.  He had an appointment this morning, but when he got to the doctor’s office, he found out that they canceled the appointment because the doctor had a death in the family.  They left us a message yesterday (or maybe the day before).  Neither of us has been checking messages, mostly because we’re lazy, so we totally missed that.  John checked this morning and found something like FIVE messages.  We had one from the doctor’s office, two recordings from CVS telling me to pick up a prescription, one from a recruiter, and one spam recording message.  So he was a little annoyed.  He has to reschedule (two weeks away!) AND he wasted a morning and was late to work when he didn’t have to be.  So his day didn’t start well, and he has class tonight, so unless something good happened at work, he doesn’t have something like kimchi for dinner to cheer him up.  Poor guy.

I spent several  hours today setting up 6 new versions of my website.  You’re looking at version #1 right now.  And I’m including a screen shot of it at the bottom of this post so we can all still see it when I switch to the next one.  I’m not even really tired of the original version, but I thought I’d test a few new ones and see if I (or we – you have some input) like them better.

So this is what I’ve been doing for the last 5 hours or so.  We slept in (’til about 10:30) ’cause we stayed up late.  We watched Adaptation and then had to follow it with Modern Family ’cause the movie was so weird we needed to cleanse our mental palates with something light and funny.  And easily understandable.  It was after one before we went to bed.  We got up late, watched the first two-hour episode of Caprica while eating breakfast, and then we set up on the dining room table with our laptops again.

I was supposed to go to the grocery store today, and when I have to stop there on my way home from work tomorrow, I’m going to be really annoyed I didn’t do it this afternoon.  But right now, I’m very happy I didn’t go.  All we have to have before dinner tomorrow is stuff for breakfast (we have plenty for lunch), so when I go out to pick up dinner for tonight (yeah, we don’t have tonight’s dinner here, either, so I guess what we really have to have is breakfast AND dinner), I’ll swing by the Giant right next to the Indian place (’cause we’re having Indian for dinner – yay!) and pick up some cereal.

Then we’re in for the night.  And I’m getting pretty hungry, so all of that is happening very soon.  After I shower.  We did one of those lazy Sunday things and rolled from bed to couch and breakfast, and from there to the dining room and our laptops.  Didn’t shower, didn’t get dressed.

And Roxy just threw herself at the sliding glass door, so I should go let her in.  Enjoy the new site (and let me know if something doesn’t work)!  I’ll leave it this way for a day or two and then switch to the next one.

I’m so conflicted!  I’m home, with probably at least an hour before John gets home, and I can’t decide how I want to spend my time.  I want to curl up in the papasan chair in my new cozy library and read my book (it’s really good, but sometimes a little dry), but I also want to mess around on the internet and visit all my sites and blogs.  Wait!  I might be able to do both.  Read now, surf later.  After dinner, John will probably want to play his guitar or work on the book database he’s building for us, so while he’s doing that, I can climb into bed with my laptop.  Problem solved!  I’m off to read.

One side note, totally unrelated: we’re out of broccoli and I want to have a salad with ravioli tomorrow night, so I went to Bloom after I got home.  They’re closing!  Everything is on sale, and they’re not restocking the shelves.  And apparently this has been going on for a while, because the store is half-empty.  Meaning no produce.  So I couldn’t get broccoli or lettuce or anything like that.  But I found this Green Giant potatoes and green beans steamer thing, so we’ll try that with salmon tonight.  I’ll have to get my salad stuff from Wegman’s tomorrow evening.  I know, fascinating.  I’m done with you people.  All critical and stuff.  Good day!

My day started with a broken nail.  Is that not the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?  No?  Fair enough.  The day improved after that inauspicious beginning.  It wasn’t a great day, but it was okay.  With very little stress.  I seem to be having a string of okay days.  Actually, my day started at the doctor’s office with blood work.  I drank a ton of water this morning just to make sure blood would actually come out of my veins this time (even though I know I did that last time), and sure enough, no problems today.  Even with a new person wielding the needle.  It was quick, it was easy, I chatted with my doctor for a little, and I was at work by 8am.  Then I broke my nail.  And I spent much of the rest of the day sprinting to the bathroom (three full glasses of water in about 45 minutes will do that, and I drank some coffee this morning, AND I drank more water after that), which is at the other end of the building from me.  But I left work just after 4, so it was all worth it.

Dinner tonight: stir-fry with broccoli, mushrooms, and chicken, sauteed in olive oil, a little soy sauce, and minced garlic.  SO hungry.

Some things I meant to talk about and kept forgetting about:

1. I finished Pope Joan a couple of days ago.  Really liked it.  It was one of those books Mom sent me.  She usually sends good ones (there have only been a couple bad ones), but for some reason, I resisted this one.  I’ve had it for several years, but never wanted to read it.  Never had a reason not to read it.  I wasn’t being rational.  It’s good historical fiction.
2. I started reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson.  This is another one I was putting off.  Partly because it’s huge and in hardcover.  Huge is never a turn-off for me, but huge and hardcover makes it hard to carry around (and I do tend to carry my books wherever I go).  Now that I have a short commute and absolutely no possibility of reading at work (not that I ever did that…), I won’t be as tempted to carry it around and I can just read it at home.  I’ve really liked everything else Neal Stephenson has written, and I’m enjoying this one, too.  Except for one small thing.  It really is a small thing, ’cause it’s not keeping me from enjoying the book.  It’s just a minor annoyance.  Science fiction and fantasy authors, fantasy in particular, have a tendency to make up words.  They think it’ll help the reader immerse herself in this alien/fantasy world.  Sometimes they’re right.  When it’s done well.  Often, they’re wrong.  Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, in their introduction to the novel Nightfall (a book I LOVE), addressed this directly.  They pointed out that this story takes place on an alien world, and while they could make up terms in an alien language to use when referring to hands, shoes, dogs, etc, they’d rather just write hands, shoes, dogs, etc and save the reader the confusion.  That’s the way I prefer it be done.  Make up a word (or merge a couple of words to make a new one) when you need to refer to something that doesn’t have an equivalent in the real world, but otherwise, stick to English.  Makes sense.  And it makes for some really good writing.  (I wish I could have met Isaac Asimov.)  Neal Stephenson, in Anathem, seems to be going too far the other way.  He seems to have made up words where it’s not really necessary to make them up.  It makes me work harder to figure out what’s going on.  I shouldn’t be confused.  I’m sure (really, I am) that once I get past the learning curve here, I won’t notice it, and I’m equally sure that the payoff for all this work will be worth it ’cause I’ve read his other books and they’re always good.  But generally, don’t make me work so hard to decipher what should be English!  Last I checked, English is my first (and only, but I’m working on that) language, and I’m pretty good at it.  Carol Berg, in the two books I just read by her (Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone) is in the middle.  She made up a few words where necessary, and they worked in the story, but then she’d make something up completely when referring to units of measurement.  Why?  I don’t know.  But I’d be reading along, everything’s fine, and I’d stumble across “quellae” when she mean inch or mile or something.  (Yes, I’m aware there’s a big difference between an inch and a mile, and in context, there was no confusion.)  Why would she do that?  She said horse when she meant horse, wagon when she meant wagon, monk when she meant monk.  Why not mile when she meant mile?  Or league?  Why those words and not other basic words?  But again, I really liked those books.  The stories and characterization were well worth the occasional stumble.  But it could have been better!
3. Apparently, I was just itching to talk about that.
4. We watched Grace is Gone Saturday night.  What a depressing movie.  John Cusack is in it, which is why I DVR’ed it in the first place, without really looking to see what it was about.  John (my John) warned me that it was sad, but Saturday was kind of a sad day for me anyway (no particular reason – I was just blue), so I figured it was better to watch a sad movie when I’m already sad rather than make myself sad on a happy day.  Oh, I cried.  And then I cried some more.  And then I was like, “Why are you doing that, John Cusack?”  And then I cried some more.  And then I made John (my John) promise he wouldn’t die.  Did I just give something away?  Nah.  That’s in the description of the movie.  Stupid movie.

Salmon tonight, with horseradish cream sauce (courtesy of Wegman’s, naturally), broccoli, and mashed potatoes.  Apple noodle kugel for dessert.  Unless I have a banana nut muffin instead.  Tough choices.

I’m in the middle of cleaning out the fridge and cleaning up the kitchen, dining room, and family room.  I pulled the gewurztraminer out of the fridge and put it on the counter, planning to pour it out.  This is the one from New Year’s Eve that we didn’t like.  Had an odd finish.  Aftertaste.  Something.  Whatever it was, no one liked it.  Anyway, a couple of minutes ago, the bottle was sitting on the stove, and I was in the dining room.  I heard a small POP, and then I saw the rubber Rabbit wine stopper (try saying that five times fast) fly through the doorway into the dining room.  I assume it heard that I was planning on pouring it out and decided to strike first.  I don’t want to find out what its second plan of attack is, so down the sink it goes.  For future reference, this was the Fetzer gewurztraminer.  I don’t recommend it.

The band is practicing in the basement (so I get to sing along to “Drive” (originally by Incubus) and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (Green Day)), and I want to have the island cleared off and the kitchen clean (at least) before they come upstairs, so I gotta go.