General

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. :)

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…

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!

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!

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! :)

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…

Hooray! It’s Friday!

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.)

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?

Too lazy to blog…
It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say lately – I’ve just been too lazy to blog. Christmas was good, although busy – this year I really intended to simplify, but it somehow ended up more complicated and stressful than usual. Now I’m getting my house ready for the new year. It just feels better to start a new year with a clean house and all the laundry done.