5 miles? Not so bad.

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.

A bunch of links and a song

You go, Roger EbertThis article moves along really quickly (short, to-the-point sentences, unlike most of mine), and the pictures of scary weather patterns add to the sense of urgency.  I flew through this article and it set my pulse a-pounding.  A little bit.

I love these drawings/paintings by Rob Gonsalves.  They’re all optical illusions and they all hold up after multiple viewings.  I like the theme of the third one (of course I do), but some of the ones further down the page are amazing.

If you have ever watched a major dog show in TV (or Best In Show on DVD), you will probably find this as funny as I did.

Not a video this time, just pictures, but check out some of these rooms!  I’m not crazy about the antlers hanging from the ceiling, but check out the kitchen at the bottom of the post!  Love it.

John’s midterm was tonight.  He didn’t feel all that confident about it this morning, but he just called and, except for one question that everyone in the class seemed to have issues with, he thinks he did okay.  (That looks oddly punctuated.  I’m leaving it.)    And he’s on his way home early.  I said something to that effect last night, that he might be able to come early, but I totally meant that he takes tests quickly.  Not that it wouldn’t take him very long to write down everything he knows.  🙂  But that’s how it sounded.

Okay, one more link and then I’m done for the night.  I’m watching West Side Story on TCM.  I love everything about “America” (the opening lines get stuck in my head for days), but my favorite favorite part is at 3:52 in the video here when Anita and her friend sort of flounce over to the guys to sing the next part.  The flouncing cracks me up.

Not inspired

I hate when this happens, but I’m just not inspired to write much tonight.  John is in the basement with the band, auditioning a bass player (who, based on an introduction and about 15 seconds of eavesdropping while they got stuff out of his car, seems like a perfectly nice, normal person), so it’s hard to concentrate.  I’ve been trying to read through a few blogs I’ve bookmarked to see if I want to keep reading them, but it’s hard to tell when all I can hear is Lloyd singing “I used to love her, but I had to kill her”.  Kind of distracting.  And the dogs are demanding attention in ways that make it difficult to type.  Roxy keeps licking my hands and Riley was pawing at me.  I played with them a little, but that wasn’t enough, apparently.  They’re outside now.

Oh, I gave up on Bodily Harm.  Nothing was happening.  I need plot.  This is not to say I’m giving up on Margaret Atwood.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood, or maybe I’d like another one better.  I refuse to believe The Handmaid’s Tale was a fluke.  ‘Cause that’s just not fair.  When I really like a book by an author, I want to read everything they’ve written.  And I expect to like it.  So I’m a little disappointed.  But speaking of reading everything an author has written, my fallback  once I decided to give up the Atwood book was to read a new(ish) Orson Scott Card book.  So I’m very happy.  🙂

From what I can hear, the (possibly) new bass player sounds really good.  We’ll have to see what the guys think about how he fits in.  That’s my favorite part.  I love gossip.

Mmm. Wine.

I love wineries.  Not just because you can get wine there.  I love the atmosphere, I love the tastings, I love the big rooms and the (almost always) friendly people.  I went to Hidden Brook Winery today to get more of the sweet rosé John loves, and even though I was only there for five minutes, it was such a nice five minutes.  And in an odd coincidence (considering the comments from the other day’s post), NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” played the Sesame Street theme song right after making George Stephanopoulos answer questions about Snuffleupagus.  But it sounded like Elmo was singing it.  Didn’t it used to be a bunch of kids singing?  Did they really change it to just Elmo?  ‘Cause I’m not okay with Elmo being the star of Sesame Street.

Failure of a ponytail

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.

A list

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.

Hooray for Easter? I mean candy….

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?

Should a post have just one subject?

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.

Alphabetical decisions

My birthday present yesterday was a trip to Ikea so we could buy more bookshelves.  We’ve been in desperate need of more bookshelves for a long time now, and we made a big dent in that need yesterday.  We came home with four tall ones, and John spent a few hours putting them together for me.  The best part of making this my birthday present was that it meant I got to reorganize our books.  I love that.  I spent a few hours today re-shelving and moving the overflow from the library onto the new shelves in the dining room.  I’m not done with that yet, but when I am, I’ll post pictures.  The biggest decision I had to make today was whether to start the alphabet in the library or in the dining room.  Hard stuff.

The ayes have it

The #6’s, rather.  I’ll mess around with version #1 and shades of green later.

I ran this morning.  Okay, it was more like a shuffle that sometimes looked like a slow jog, but it was more than walking, and more than I’ve done in weeks.  I ran twice on a treadmill in San Francisco, but not for very long either time.   It suddenly became very important that we both get out and run, mostly because I signed John up for a 5-miler in two and a half weeks and he coaxed/supported/shamed me into registering myself, too.  Five miles.  In two and a half weeks.  I’m an idiot.  Especially since we don’t really have anywhere to run.  Today we ran in the streets of our neighborhood, and that’s what we’ll have to keep doing until the county clears the sidewalks and paths along the major roads.  We can run laps around the Bloom parking lot, too, since no one is in it early in the morning (nothing is open).  It felt good to get out again, though.

Then we had breakfast, watched Heroes, and I went to the grocery store.  It was supposed to be a short trip, but I was gone forever because I got in the line with the slowest checkout clerk ever.  EVER.  I waited 15 minutes before she was done with the lady in front of me (who didn’t have THAT many groceries), and I got all excited for a minute because a new cashier was waiting behind the slow one and they even went so far as to lift the tray out of the register, but then I looked away for a second and when I looked back, the new cashier was nowhere to be seen and the slow one was starting to ring me up.  Frustrating.  She was using my cloth bags instead of plastic bags, and she got to the last five items and opened a new bag.  No problem with that.  She put the bananas and the grapes in the bottom of the new bag.  I got ready to object if it seemed like she was going to put the lotion and soap on top of the grapes, but instead she reached for a new bag.  Really?  These bags are big.  Just put the grapes on top of that stuff!  Why load up another bag?  I don’t get baggers.

Back to work tomorrow.  Yay.

Brunch is for babies

We met Baby Alex today at brunch with Greg, Amanda, Erik, and Margaret.  He’s SO cute.  See?

And he was on his best behavior.  He only fussed a little, and only right before we left the restaurant.  Margaret and I are in love.  With the baby.  🙂  (It was good to see Greg and Amanda, too.)

After we left our friends to head home, we stopped at Hole in the Wall Books, our favorite local used bookstore in Falls Church.  It was supposed to be a quick stop (John’s looking for something in particular), but of course that didn’t happen.  We chatted with the owner for a while about the snow, then we browsed (I found about 12 books right off the bat), and then we chatted some more while the owner rang us up.  And since we were chatting, we took our time, and I found three more books.  I love used bookstores.

We got back to the house much later than we originally expected (and yet, not at all annoyed  by that because, come on, books and babies (and friends, right, can’t forget about them)), but the sun was still shining, so John disappeared into the basement to play his guitar and I took the dogs on a short walk (really cold).  Walking the dogs is only noteworthy because of what I overheard.  There were three girls playing on top of a mountain of snow in someone’s yard, and one of them said:

“I’m a 12-year-old girl, but my mom keeps telling me I have to be proper.  I mean, I’m twelve.

For a second, I thought she had to quoting from a movie or something.  What mom would say that?

Moving toward a decision

Two things:

  1. The band is practicing tonight, so I spent about 20 minutes picking up downstairs.  The island is totally clear, the kitchen counters are mostly clear, I only left John’s stuff on the dining room table (laptop, camera, PSP), and I mostly cleared off the things that were sitting on the steps waiting to go upstairs.  The house looks nicer, and I feel A TON better.
  2. We bought the dining room table!  We went out this afternoon and just bought it.  Table and six chairs.  We got the 10% discount for the holiday weekend and we convinced them to give us free delivery since that was last weekend’s deal and we TOTALLY would have bought last weekend except for the snow.  Not our fault.  🙂
  3. Okay, three things.  You may have noticed that I switched the site back to the original template.  This isn’t necessarily permanent.  I just don’t know which one is my favorite.  And I may switch between a couple templates regularly.  We’ll see.  Anyway, I’m going to post screen shots of each version.  You tell me if you had a favorite or if there were things you liked about some of them that I can incorporate into another one.  I NEED INPUT, PEOPLE.

#1 – I liked this one, but if I go with it, I’ll probably mess with the colors.  If I’m going to use a fading color theme, I’ll do it with something not boring.  Maybe shades of green.

#2 – This one is a little too big, I think.  Reminds me (and Dad, I think) of a newspaper.  I did like the width of the columns, though.  I like how it takes up the whole page.

#3 – I think we all agreed to not like this one.

#4 – This one is, well, it’s very much like my original template, but blue instead of red.  Maybe I’ll switch to this one when my mood is blue….

#5 – Here we have the same TOO BIG problem.  Too stark, too, I think.  But again, maybe if I messed with the color, this would be better.

#6 – I like this one a lot.  The banner picture across the top makes it SO different from the others.  Do I like it more than the simpler templates?  I don’t know.  Do you?

Back to work

I tried to get to work yesterday, but as I left my neighborhood, I slid out onto the semi-major road.  It’s usually pretty clear and much safer than the neighborhood roads, or at least it has been after all our other storms and weather events.  Yesterday, I couldn’t see pavement at all.  It felt like one big sheet of ice, so, after I caught my breath, I went back home.  John didn’t even make the attempt (not in the mustang, no way), so we had another pleasant day of working from home together.  We took a walk around the neighborhood (almost completely in the streets, since most sidewalks aren’t clear) with the dogs before it got dark, and then I started working on our taxes before dinner (I’m not quite done, but how do we owe again?  What’s going on?).

Back to the office today.  I really really really want things to go back to normal.  Normal = NO SNOW.  Go away now.  Melt faster!

My computer hates me

Today was very frustrating.  We were both working from home (and the working part provided half the frustration, but that’s all I’m going to say about that), and when I booted my laptop this morning (my personal laptop, not my work laptop), I discovered a virus.  And not just any virus.  This was a monster virus that hijacked every program I tried to run.  I couldn’t open a browser, I couldn’t run any .exe files, I couldn’t do anything.  With John’s help (and the help of the internet via my work laptop and John’s computer), we were able to use the system restore feature to go back to last night, before the virus, and then get rid of it.  But it took HOURS.  John took the opportunity to blame Windows for this security failure and has me seriously considering installing the easiest version of Linux.  As long as I can open most documents and get to the internet, I don’t really care what operating system I use, so I’ll probably at least try it.  If I actually make it to the office tomorrow and the next day, though, it’ll have to wait for the weekend.

WTF?!?

More snow.  The Post is calling this one Snoverkill, which makes me laugh a little every time I see it.  We’re in the band on the accumulation map that says 8-14″ between now and tomorrow evening.  The National Weather Service says our county should get between 8 and 12 inches by the tomorrow evening.

John and I will both be working from home tomorrow, but since the snow isn’t supposed to stop until evening, I don’t know if we’ll be able to dig ourselves out before Thursday morning.  My normal after-work evening is out of whack today, too.  John normally has class Tuesday nights, but it was canceled because of snow last week, and this week, the professor decided to have class via webinar.  So since just before 7, John has been glued to his laptop with headphones and a microphone so he can listen to the lecture and participate.  On the plus side, the professor apparently said he was going to try to get through the material quickly.  AND he’s home.  Also a plus.

I’m afraid I might be over The Pillars of the Earth.  I used to really like it, and I’m still enjoying it, but as I’m reading it, I catch myself 1) getting really annoyed with Tom (like REALLY annoyed), and 2) wishing they’d just hurry up and get to the good stuff already.  What good stuff?  I don’t really know.  Maybe I’ll remember why I liked it so much when we actually get to the cathedral-building sections.  Those are the parts that stuck with me.  That and the mini-tour through Europe near the end.

I might cry

They’re talking about another 10 to 20 inches of snow tomorrow and Wednesday.  I don’t know where we’re going to put it.  Did you SEE the five-foot-tall piles of snow on either side of our driveway?

The roads were pretty bad this morning, so John and I both worked from home.  It was wonderful.  We set up in the dining room with a fire in the fireplace, sat in on conference calls, drank hot chocolate, and got a lot of work done.  I ventured out early this afternoon to go to the pharmacy and check out the roads.  They’re not terrible, but they’re not totally clear, either.   And we will both be heading to our offices tomorrow.

This snow, she is unnatural

Now I have everything I want (for today).  We have a fire blazing in the dining room, and John and I are set up on our laptops across the table from each other.  Riley is on a towel on the floor to my right, and Roxy is on the dog bed in front of the fire.  I have a glass of wine, classical music is coming from the family room, I’m wearing my pretty new shawl from Jess, and if I really want to, I can watch the Super Bowl ads on hulu.com.  I may even turn the TV on at some point during the game (John has expressed an interest in seeing The Who during the half-time show).

We did a lot more shoveling today and managed to get both cars out of and back in to the driveway, so we know we can get out tomorrow.  Then I was done shoveling, but John decided to be a good neighbor and help the downhill neighbors clear their driveway and sidewalk.  I played with the dogs in the backyard.  Then I made John come out with the camera and see it, ’cause it’s really funny to see them try to stay on top of 3 feet of snow.  Which they wouldn’t even try until I jumped in first.

Here’s John shoveling the sidewalk:

And here I made him pose:

And here’s the neighbor with the snowblower who could make a TON of money if he wanted to rent that thing out to his neighbors (or a ton of friends if he wanted to clear everyone’s sidewalks for free):

The poor buried mailbox again:

And the path I dug to it so the mailperson can deliver the mail:

The view down the street:

The view up the street:

The house, with a clear driveway, clear cars, and a TON of snow piled in the yard:

Here’s a short series of Riley in the backyard.  First, sitting nicely but not looking at me:

Second, getting WAY too close to the camera.  That’s his nose in the top right corner.

Third, Riley singing “STOP in the name of love!”:

Me and Riley swimming through the snow:

Roxy coming over to see what’s up:

And here she is, glad to get away before the wrestling and the hand-chewing started:

The hand-chewing started when I grabbed Riley’s lower jaw:

Riley, trying to crouch in the snow and failing miserably:

And here, apparently, he’s trying to fly, but his little ears just aren’t big enough:

Riley and I are sitting on top of 3 feet of snow and..yelling at each other?

And here’s a series of Roxy going “Okay.  Enough with the yelling and playing.  Can we go inside where it’s warm now?  What is WRONG with you people?”

Riley’s sneak attack…

…Ended with kisses:

Then he went back to my hands (coated in bacon maybe?):

Apparently, my hair was coated in bacon, too:

Riley officially won, though, by STANDING on me as I tried to get up:

Okay, enough pictures.  Really.  And it may look like I was having fun in the snow, but don’t believe everything you see on the internet.  That smile was photoshopped.  I had a dream last night that the snow had melted away overnight and I was so happy.  Then I woke up.  Snow snucks.

Snowmygod

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.  🙂

New, but familiar

You know, I’m really not even a little bit (okay, maybe just a little bit) interested in doing all of the coding for my website (or any website), but I LOVE that I understand it enough to be able to tweak what already exists.  I think that’s really cool.  Here’s version #3, which I like better than both 1 and 2.  Not necessarily better than the original, but if I go back to that version, I make take some things about this one with me.  Here’s the screen shot for future review:

I don’t have much else going on tonight.  John got home a little bit ago, and if I can get him to stop playing his guitar, we can eat dinner.

Here he is!

Update (during the State of the Union address): I love Joe Biden’s tie!  See?