Weekly Roundup

I'm up way, way too early today. Couldn't sleep. Doug's got a bad cold, so he was breathing really funny last night and tossing and turning, poor guy. Kept me up a bit, but really my restlessness is mostly from the fact that I ate the rest of my Dean's Distinction award chocolate last night right before bed. It wasn't even all that good, either.

Here we are, in for another weekly roundup, though this might actually be a bi-weekly roundup, but whatever! Tomato, tomahto, you know what I mean.

These couple of weeks have been pretty productive. Doug got a lot of recording done. He did a fair bit with his band, and now that the drum tracks are laid down I don't have to flee the house during recording sessions, which is nice. I secretly like to listen to the recording (don't tell him!), at least this part of the recording, because I like hearing Doug be in charge and have his creativity represented in the music. He's got good ideas, and he's actually quite a good organizer of people and of sounds - direct, but pleasant and fair. I've always told him that he should open his own recording studio and be a producer, and I suppose he has, effectively. It's in our basement. Anyway, he also completed three pretty good tracks for this year's RPM Challenge. If I knew how to link to them here I would, but that bit of technological savvy is beyond me.

So what else. We finally - finally! - put a new light fixture into the dining room that actually throws off enough light in the room! Doug worked his electrician magic yet again. Here is the process in a series of photos, ending in the final product.

I threw in that second-to-last one in homage to all the ghost programming that we are still watching here at the Sheriko Inn, though far much less Ghost Hunters and far more Ghost Adventures. Grant's leaving Ghost Hunters; did you know that? Can't bode well for that show.

Okay, so now that we can see in the dining room, which breathes life into daily routines (seriously, good lighting is so important, which is why I have no idea why we waited so long to change out the fixture), we can focus on other things. Like...

- Seeing what we are eating for dinner, though these days it's usually all the same green color so we don't need to see it as much as taste it.

- Getting used to life without plastic frames, which is harder than you might think, since this means that the one little hipster bit of me is gone and I'm now just hip (if even).

- Winning awards of recognition for hard work and notable efforts to serve the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the larger Harvard community. What's really funny is that I nominated my team for this award, because I was feeling like we could all use a morale boost, but didn't tell them about it. They nominated me, but didn't tell me about it. I won, surprisingly, but I told them that they were the real winners, since (and I really do mean this) I wouldn't have any success if it weren't for their hard work and notable efforts.

And, finally, there's our first real snowfall of the winter 2011-2012 season. All of, what, a few inches? Hardly anything at all, but enough to make everything cold, raw, and slick. Enough to make me remember fondly our time in Florida. Enough to make me long for spring. But, enough to make everything rather pretty.

Okay, that's all I've got. The birds have finally started to chirp and the clock just struck 6am. Time to move on to the next!

The First "Snow."

Today we had our first "snow." I say "snow" because none of the flakes stuck to the ground and it stopped just about as soon as it started, but still, it was snowing! See? What gives with this weather? We've had hurricanes, tsumanis, tornadoes, droughts, unseasonably cold temperatures, unseasonably warm temperatures, extreme wet weather, record-breaking snowfalls... if one were a weather buff one would be loving these past few years. I have the book A World Without Ice on my goodreads list, but I may have to request it from the library sooner rather than later. Could be a timely read.

So today we were supposed to go to Old Sturbridge Village with my sister's family but in light of the heavy rain (and the "snow") we stayed home. This worked out well, because not only was I able to get the down comforter out of the attic and get it into its duvet cover (which takes forever, it seems), but I was able to finish my summer-to-winter clothes swap and Doug and I now have two more bags of apparel to give to the Goodwill. I itemized everything for tax purposes and am amazed with how much we're giving away again. And with how much we still have. Even Doug, who doesn't have nearly as many clothes as I do, could wear one shirt every day and not repeat wearings for a month at least. What good consumers we have been! Doing our part to save the American retail industry. Of course, most of the clothes we have in our closet right now were purchased years ago, but still, can't say we weren't part of the great consumer boom of the last ten years. My sister will be pleased - she'll get another bag of clothes from me, and even a new purse. It's so funny... I always wished I could get hand-me-down clothes from my sister, but by the time I was old enough to be able to wear her clothes I couldn't fit into them. Most of my clothes are way too big for my sister (the pants and skirts definitely so), but she's gotten quite a few shirts and sweaters from me these past few years. Thank god the super-baggy look of the mid-'90s is no longer in (for many reasons) - but she'd be way out of luck if I were still wearing all my shirts in size extra large.

Thankfully it wasn't snowing yesterday when Doug and I joined Marieke and Curt for the final Revs home game of the regular season, but it sure was cold. I wore a long-sleeve t-shirt, a wool sweater, another wool sweater, a soft-shell fleece, and a gore-tex winter coat, two pair of gloves, a scarf, a winter hat, a hood, and sat in the stands with a couple of blankets on my lap and I still managed to leave the game chilled to the bone. Here are some photos from the game: We never manage to go to games in the warm weather somehow, but the games are still fun. They are quick, and the fans are very amusing. Notice the streamers on the field... Revs fans throw them onto the field near the opposing goalie as a distraction. Revs employees work to get them untangled from the goal net, but still, the Chicago Fire's goalie on a couple occasions would sort-of kick at the streamers and gesture to the Revs staff to get the streamers out of his way. These distractions didn't cause the goalie to be so distracted that he let in a goal, though. The game ended in a tie. Another reason to like soccer - no long overtime! The game is short, sweet, and to-the-point, something I strive to be, too.