Yay. Winter's here. :P They're predicting a "parfait of precipitation" today and tomorrow. So far, we've had some ice, then a layer of snow. Later, we're going to get sleet, then freezing rain. Tomorrow, we'll top it off with slush and more freezing rain. Fun! I was amazed when I woke up to our local school being closed (the school is easy walking distance from our house) when there was only maybe a half-inch of snow on the ground. By the time we left the house about an hour later, at least another inch had fallen, and it was coming down faster. I'm not sure how we'll get in the driveway later... Well, at least it's nearly February. Only about four more months before spring arrives. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:40 AM -

Sleepy!
I'm very sleepy today - I didn't sleep very well last night. I've been feeling kind of guilty because the other night I woke up at 3AM to find Molly curled up in a ball outside our bedroom door (we have a baby gate across it to keep her out). She looked so miserable, like she was trying to be as close to us as she could. So, last night I put everything she could get into away, cleaned the stray bits of stuff off the floor (I was much too tired to vacuum) and took the gate away. She was so happy, tail wagging, sniffing everything in the room, just hanging out. But when Denis turned the lights out, she went down to the family room. So, I spent the whole night listening for the jingle-jangle of the tags on her collar, hoping she'd come back upstairs...and worried that if she did she'd find something I hadn't put away to get into trouble with! Of course, she also picked last night to bark at random things just about every 20 minutes, so even if we hadn't opened up the gate I probably would've been up half the night. I used to be a very heavy sleeper, until I got a dog. I would imagine it's much worse when you have children to listen for in the middle of the night!
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:36 PM -

The "Digital" Generation
My "little" brother, who just turned 17 yesterday, doesn't know what shrinky dinks are. I mean, I realize there's a nine-year difference in our ages (yes, if you do the math you can figure out how old I am) but I never knew he led such a deprived childhood! I'm going to have to buy him a shrinky dink set on my way home tonight. Thankfully, he does know what an easy-bake oven is and has seen (and possibly used) a lite-brite. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:30 AM -

No Internet!
Ack! I've been without the internet all weekend... Actually, considering how lovely it was outside, it really wasn't that big a problem. Except that I'm running out of chai, and had to wait until today to order it. Priorities, of course. :)

But, since Denis destroyed the internet (well, really, all he did was take down our router/firewall, and I probably could have managed to alter my settings so I could get out, but that would have taken some degree of effort - and besides, I've been sick of looking at a computer screen for many days now) we got lots done this weekend. The rest of my bulbs are in the ground, impatiently waiting for the real spring weather to appear. We patched the hole in the kitchen ceiling - another round of sanding and one more layer of spackle, and it might be ready for painting! I took two really long walks with Molly. And all the laundry and grocery shopping are done. (So much for getting tons of stuff done on my master's project this weekend!)
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:30 AM -

I have a temporary fix for my images... This weekend I'll have to do something better...
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:25 AM -

Waah! My image hosting service (RoadRunner) has suddenly been denied access through my firewall at work!!! Now none of my images show up... (Of course, anyone reading this who doesn't work here should have no problems at all.)
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:24 AM -

Have you ever gotten to the end of a book and been disappointed because it's over? I finally finished the entire Lord of the Rings series last night... Without giving anything away, it didn't end the way I wanted it to. And one subplot that I was really interested in wasn't quite wrapped up the way I'd hoped. But I suppose all of life is like that - things don't always come out the way you want them to, but it usually works out that they come out the way they should. (And this blog is getting way too deep on just one cup of coffee...)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:48 AM -

Programming Marathon
Between work and my master's project, I have not stopped looking at a computer monitor for three weeks now. Last night I couldn't take it anymore, so I picked up Lord of the Rings again. I read until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, and I only have 75 pages left. If I could've just stayed up a little longer... Tonight I'll allow another evening off from my project to finish the book, but then it's back to non-stop coding until May.
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:59 AM -

How can it possibly be Monday already? I spent almost the entire weekend working on my master's project. As a result, I have absolutely no desire to be looking at a computer screen today, but unfortunately, that's my job. :P At least I got a lot done. I'm planning on doing a demo for my advisor tomorrow, so I wanted to have it as polished as possible by then. There's still a lot of work to do, but what's there is really starting to look great!

In between bouts of frantic coding, we played a couple of games of Iron Dragon. It's this really fun railroad game where you draw with crayons on a laminated board and go from city to city picking up and dropping off stuff. I lost both times, but it was still fun. Crayons are definitely a great break from the keyboard! Maybe I should buy a box for the office so I can color for a bit when I get tired of staring at the monitor...
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:31 AM -

TGIF!
Today is Denis' birthday! We're going out to a Japanese restaurant later for something I can't spell. It sounds like "shabu-shabu", but I'm sure that's wrong - it really looks silly! Anyway, he had it in Japan, and has been dying to get it again ever since, so we found a place that actually serves it. We'll see if it's authentic or not.

I'm just so glad it's Friday. I have been in a miserably crabby mood all week and I'm really happy that it's almost over! Hopefully I'll get lots more done on my master's project this weekend, and be in a better mood on Monday. Well, Tuesday, since Monday is just not a good day to count on being in a good mood (especially with an 8am meeting!)
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:11 PM -

Missing!
I have totally lost a fleece vest. This morning as I was getting dressed I realized that I haven't seen it in at least 2 months. I searched the entire house, top-to-bottom, to find it this morning. I even had Denis look in the trunks of the cars. Unless it ended up in the crawl-space attic, it's gone. I can only hope I left it at someone's house and they'll read this and figure out that I left my vest there! It's orange and brown and green, kind of a muted plaid. And it's fleecy. With a hood. :( And it's probably lost and lonely and wondering why it took me so long to figure out it was missing...
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:55 AM -

Cookiepalooza
I won best tasting cookie with my Chocolate Intrigues yesterday! Which is really cool. Except, I've gotten a number of snide comments from some people because last year I also won the chili cookoff. It was a blind vote both times, and I guess I really can't help the fact that people like what I make. It kind of makes me not want to enter the next contest, because I don't like to feel like I've done something wrong when I haven't. It didn't help that I was tied with someone else and the tie-breaking vote picked my cookies. I guess I'm just in a frumpy mood today. I think I'll go home and walk it off with Molly...
posted by Sarah Reilly 4:50 PM -

Somebody found my blog with the search "final fantasy 8" +"wallpaper" +"spaceship"... Are they really looking for wallpaper of the spaceship in final fantasy 8? Is there actually a spaceship in final fantasy 8? (And who would put up wallpaper of final fantasy 8, anyway?)
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:56 AM -

Watery Revelations
I think I should be paid for the time I spend in the shower. After all, my best ideas and solutions to problems occur to me there. Somewhere between rinsing the shampoo out of my hair and working in the conditioner this morning, I figured out how to solve something at work. Now I just have to find time between meetings to implement it. :P It's definitely Monday!
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:42 AM -

You Can't Always Get What You Want
...well at least according to the Rolling Stones. But the fortune in my fortune cookie asks you to suppose you can...

So what exactly does this mean? Where do you place the emphasis? If you read it "Suppose you can get what you want..." it means something different that "Suppose you can get what you want...". And let's not even get into the "...in bed" thing. Any ideas?
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:22 PM -

Spring is in the Air...
I just planted 62 bulbs. In an hour. That's a bulb a minute! Of course, it's January, so I'm not sure whether these bulbs will actually grow or not, but I figured I'd give it a try... The hyacinth bulbs looked a little off, though. It could be scary - I might end up with mutant hyacinths from outer space. (More likely though, they were rotting and won't even come up, but we won't know until spring...)

Why, exactly, am I planting bulbs in January? Well, we'll leave the procrastination bit out of it, but it just happened that it was an absolutely balmy spring day today. It was bright and sunny and mild, and I just felt the need to go out and do something! Now I only have 50 tulip bulbs left from the rather ambitious number I bought in November...but those will have to wait for another day...it's getting cold and dark again, and I've just remembered it's winter. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 4:53 PM -

The Ultimate Color
Incredible! The true color of the universe looks like it's the same as the color of our wagon! I need to ponder what this means...
posted by Sarah Reilly 4:18 PM -

Home Improvement III
(coming soon to a theater near you)
Ahhh. The joys of home ownership... Lisa just put an offer in on a house; Jenny has a closing date this month... They have no idea what they're in for. :) It seems like every year about this time we start calling contractors for some major work we need to do on our house. Roofing, siding, painting, driveways... The list apparently never ends. It's amazing what you learn to live with (i.e. orange carpeting in the master bedroom) in order to spend the money where everyone else sees it - like siding. That's this year's project. Last year we hired people to paint the house - unfortunately, after they'd already scraped and sanded a good part of the house, we found out that the cardboard siding (ok, it's probably not cardboard, but it really looks like it) was totally water damaged - even though the house was painted less than three years before. How? Who knows. Long story short, we decided that we're taking a "vinyl siding vacation" this year. But first, we need to find a contractor. That is the absolute least fun part of any home improvement effort. You're calling someone and offering them money to come to your home and make a mess. You would think that they would be prompt about calling back, right? Never. At most, we've had two contractors call us back ever for any type of job. So much for the "get three estimates" rule! Maybe this job will be better...or maybe I'll need to be checked into an insane asylum by the end of it. Anyone out there get their house resided recently in the Rochester, NY area? I'm accepting references!
posted by Sarah Reilly 11:24 AM -

Yeah..... well, what Sarah doesn't tell you is that now, Molly wants to be on the couch all the time! At least she tries to go on the couch near her... I'll have none of it! -- Denis
(This is what happens when you edit your blog on my computer and don't log out! heh. I hope it remembers you! (or, at least your cookie! Mmmm.... cookies.))
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:48 PM -

Molly thinks she's a lap-dog. Last night I was sitting on the couch and she put her head in my lap. So far, so good. Then she put her front paws in my lap, and was kind of standing on her back legs with the whole front half of her body in my lap. I'm ok with that, too. Then, somehow, in a feat of amazing agility for a dog with bad hips, she slid her back legs up onto the couch - in such a sneaky manner that it took several moments for me to notice. Actually, I didn't really notice until I saw her tail thumping on the couch out of the corner of my eye. So, all of a sudden, this 60-pound golden retriever "puppy" was half in my lap, half on the couch. Denis' exact quote: "No good things can come of this..."

But she was being so sweet and cuddly, I couldn't just shove her off my lap. And, of course, she realizes it's only something she'll be allowed to do once in a while, I'm sure. Really. Honest. ;)
posted by Sarah Reilly 2:15 PM -

Eureka!
There's something wonderful about having enough vacation to just take a day off because you need to get stuff done around the house and it doesn't fit into a weekend. This year I got an extra week of vacation (I'll have been working here for five years June 16th). So, yesterday, in a fit of "i-have-to-get-something-done-on-my-master's-project", I took the day off. And I got it! I finally understand how to program for Mac OSX. If I'd just understood this way back in August, I would be done with my degree by now! It was an epiphany of sorts...very appropriate, seeing as it was the day after Epiphany. :)

We also managed to get most of the Christmas stuff down (somehow my collection of decorations has grown in the past 6 weeks - I need two more storage boxes...how does that happen?!?) and put away. The upstairs toilet which has been out of comission for a year now finally got fixed (we broke down and called a plumber). And I found really fantastic wallpaper for the kitchen at Home Depot for something like $8 a roll (since we need to fix a hole in the ceiling - from the plumber - which is painted the same color as the walls, which will be impossible to match and I never liked anyway). Amazing what two people can do in a day of vacation, isn't it? Now if today at work can be half as productive...nah - it will never happen!
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:03 AM -

Kettle Corn
My cousin brought over some microwave kettle corn - not nearly as tasty as Jenny's kettle corn, but still pretty yummy. Unfortunately, I think Molly has become a kettle corn junkie! She's always liked popcorn, and as far as we can tell she has a major sweet tooth, so it looks like kettle corn has become her absolute favorite food. This could be a problem - it's hard enough to share a bag in the first place, now it looks like we'll have to split it three ways!
posted by Sarah Reilly 2:19 PM -

Our fridge arrived this morning at 8 AM - it's a good thing we get up early on Saturdays! Unfortunately, they didn't leave a refrigerator box. That's the best thing about getting a new fridge, the gigantic box... My dreams of building a fort in the backyard or a spaceship in the basement have been shattered. I guess I'll have to find other things to do with my free time instead! :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 5:53 PM -

The one bad thing about wearing contacts is when they start to bother you and you have to pop them out and switch back to glasses. All I can see right now is rims. Funny how you never notice the rims on your glasses until you don't see them for a couple of weeks.

Maybe some chocolate chai will make me feel better...
posted by Sarah Reilly 2:30 PM -

Hooray! It's Friday!
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:56 AM -

Getting back on the wagon is really, really hard when there are all sorts of yummy leftovers in the fridge. Sigh. I really need to unlearn the "waste not, want not" bad eating habit. By the time the food got to starving children in whatever country, it would be spoiled anyway, right? The good thing is, the fridge needs to be empty by Saturday because we're getting a new fridge - our current one is small and dying. Once it's all set up, I'm going to fill all 23.7 cubic feet with fruits and veggies! (Well, maybe milk would be a good thing to have, too.)
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:59 PM -

Happy New Year!
I'm no good at keeping new years resolutions. Every year they last about, oh, three minutes before I break them. This year, if I make them public, maybe I'll stick to them longer. Probably not. :)

My new years resolutions:

• lose some weight - very unoriginal, I know!
• work out more - ditto!
• finish some of the half-finished projects in my craft room (I'm starting to run out of room for new crafts)
• finish my master's degree
• other stuff I know I'm forgetting...

Hmmm. Maybe I'm being a little too optimistic. But if new years resolutions were easy to keep, nobody would break them, would they?
posted by Sarah Reilly 12:12 PM -