Definitely a wintery wonderland!

Snow is on everyone's mind these days, as it seems to be impossible to avoid. This last round of storms (hopefully the last for 2008!) began here in Boston around one o'clock in the afternoon on Friday the 19th and went straight through Sunday night. It never once stopped precipitating, though the snow let up for a little while on Sunday to make room for rain and freezing rain. What a joy. Actually, the snow was (and is still) quite pretty, but I imagine the beauty will soon wear off.

Day One - Friday, December 19th:
Doug and I started the weekend off at about 5:30 (after early release from work - yay snow!) by shoveling the driveway. We already had about 3-4 inches by this point. We did this to a) keep up with the snowfall so we weren't shoveling through 2 feet of it, and b) so that we could go to the mall and take advantage of the lack of crowds to get our Christmas shopping done. As you can see, it was really coming down.

We called the mall before we left to see if it was open, and we got a message saying yes, indeed, the mall was open. We made our way there, arriving at about 7:30, only to discover that most stores had already closed, and those that hadn't would be closing at 8. Great! Here are some shots of us driving to the mall, getting gas, and discovering that the mall was closing. I'll say this - if the mall had been open its regular hours, it would have been a great time to shop - no one was there!


Day Two - Saturday, December 20th:
After being rejected by the mall on Friday night, we decided to get up early on Saturday, shovel, and then head to the mall early in the day to avoid afternoon crowds. This was a good plan, too, but it took us a lot longer to shovel our driveway, steps, and walkways than planned. Luckily, Sasha was keeping an eye on us to make sure that we didn't keel over from shoveling-induced chest pains. Next item on Must Purchase list - snowblower! (You'll be happy to know, though, that even arriving at the mall at noon was early enough... we got a parking spot without any problem and were able to finish up our shopping.)


Day Three: Sunday, December 21st:
Okay, enough already. I woke up on Sunday only to find it STILL SNOWING. While my initial thought was, "Hey cool!", other thoughts quickly followed: "More shoveling?" "Where are we going to put all of this snow?" "Will we have to go to work tomorrow?" "Will our roof cave in from all of this snow weight?" "Do we have enough ice melt" "More shoveling??" Since it was Sunday and our shopping was done, we had no need to rush out and shovel. We hung around, did chores, tried to stay warm (baby, it was cold outside!), and watched the Patriots game before venturing out again to make our (hopefully) final attempt at shoveling. Our neighbor had kindly snowblowed some of our driveway early in the morning, but by the time we got out there in the evening there was another 5 or 6 inches of fresh snow, and now a layer of crusty ice... because yes, it was now raining/freezing rain. This weather was trying our patience, but being resilient New Englanders, we layered up and headed out to face the elements. We ended up making two huge piles of snow, one almost as tall as me. If we get any more snow, we won't have anywhere to put it!







Needless to say, we survived the storms, and we (thank you, thank you!) didn't lose power or heat or anything like that. If this snow can last just another couple of days (I hear there's rain in the forecast for Christmas Eve) we'll even be lucky enough to have a white Christmas - but would I be crazy to wish for a little fresh snow to fall on Christmas day?

Merry Birthday!

I realize that the snow that's being dumped on New England right now is the biggest news and I should probably be blogging about that, but I haven't yet blogged about Doug's Merry Birthday. In order of priority, Doug comes before snow, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the snow blog.

On December 16th, Cotton turned 29 (at some point we all get a little sensitive about our age, don't we?) and we threw a Merry Birthday party to celebrate the Saturday before the big day. To prepare we made a lot of food (note the chili to the left (a pre-cooking shot because it just didn't turn out very well post-cooking and I am too embarrassed to show the end result)), but I have to say that I am so out of practice with cooking that it was not my best job in that area. I still have trouble timing everything correctly - getting everything to be ready at the same time, and not letting things cook too long. Plus, I also have an incredibly sensitive smoke detector in my house, which was adding to the chaos in the already chaotic kitchen. It kept beeping and yelling, "Fire! Fire!", which I'm sure made our guests feel completely safe. Thanks to Curt for tending to the alarm while I opened windows and tried to air out the place.

The Merry Birthday was really a Wii party... who doesn't love to play Wii? And if you have never played, which some people hadn't, then it's quickly addicting. Doug had gotten Mario Kart as a gift from my parents, and that was a hit. Unfortunately, only two people can play at a time in this house, because we only have two wheels. If anyone ever wants to battle in 4-player Mario Kart, please bring it on (and bring your wheels...) because the game is loads of fun. You can't be Wario, though. I've claimed him as mine.

Boxing was another hit... ha! Anyway, besides Mario Kart, Wii boxing is my favorite Wii game. I love watching my Mii knock out another Mii, and I love dancing around and doing all the boxing moves. I feel energetic when I play Wii boxing. Here we have a photo of Chris and Arlene duking it out. Mad props to Arlene for her boxing abilities! I don't have any shots of anyone playing tennis, but that was really the only game with four players that night. I have not yet gotten the hang of Wii tennis. My Mii spends most of her time watching the ball sail past her, or flailing her racket around in hopes of somehow making contact with the ball. I'm not surprised at my poor showing at Wii tennis - it's not like my skills on the real court are any different.

Doug's Merry Birthday night ended with him enjoying some birthday apple pie (yes, I agree, dear - not my best pie). The highlight of the evening, though, came when all guests were gone, the mess cleared away, the dishes mostly washed - Doug donned his new pajamas (his "Wii-jays" - I love that!) for one last game of Mario Kart. There were quite a few of us who were hoping that this outfit would be worn the entire evening, but Doug is perhaps getting to the point in his life where he cares about what people think of him? I certainly hope not, because that's not the Doug I know and love, but at least I got a shot of him in his regalia and can now post it on the Internet for all to see.

On Sunday, the family went to see my youngest niece, Maria, make her artistic debut as a bon-bon in Albano's Nutcracker. This event was unfortunately held in the Mohegan Sun Arena. The arena usually hosts musical acts like Britney Spears, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton, Janet Jackson - big draw shows. It is also home to the Connecticut Sun, so you can imagine the type of place it is. Large, bleacher seating with metal floors, plastic seats with cupholders, a concrete slab for a main floor... All of this would have been great if we were, in fact, seeing a slightly has-been rock act, but for a ballet? It was just odd. Not to mention the fact that the concession stands were open, so throughout the performance I was hearing people munching on their nachos and fake orange cheese, or opening up another bag of BBQ potato chips. I am not trying to be snooty about the fine arts, but BBQ Lays and Tchaikovsky just don't really go well together for me.

Despite all of this, Miss Maria had a wonderful day and was a fantastic bon-bon. I see nothing but fame and fortune in her future as an artist. After all, if she grows tired of ballet at some point, which at this point she doubts she will, she can always turn to gymnastics. Either way, she'll certainly be a star on the stage for all the world to enjoy. I've posted a couple of photos of the event here for everyone to see Maria's debut. This first one is of the Mother Bon-Bon - Maria was one of the bon-bons who were hidden underneath this very large skirt, which opened and unleashed a sea of pink tu-tus. This next one is of Maria. She's slightly left of the center, with her eyes closed - concentrating on her routine, I have no doubt. This last one is of her with the Sugar Plum Fairy (who, I swear, weighted 70 pounds) and Prince Charming, the Nutcracker come to life in Candyland. Prince Charming agreed - Maria was a stellar bon-bon.

Finally (what's with these marathon posts?), let's move on to Doug's birthday dinner. On the 16th, Doug decided that for his special birthday dinner he wanted to go to Kikuyama, one of the only restaurants in Dedham Square. It was pretty good! I think the best part was the cooking of the food right at your little table. Doug did enjoy his sake, though. The raspberry flavor was a little sweet for me, but I think I could learn to like sake. Here we have Doug toasting to himself with some raspberry sake. And here we have a flaming onion. Once the onion was done burning, the chef chopped it up and added it to our meals.

So, that's that. In a few minutes Doug and I will venture outside to see if it's worth it to shovel again... it's still snowing rather heavily, and the Patriots are now on, so maybe we'll just wait until later. I do believe a snowblower will be on our Christmas lists next year!

A little Haggis in our future?

Christmas is such a hectic time of year. Each of the four or whatever weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas is packed with more activity than any other week of the year. This week is no exception. I have been home before 9pm only once so far this week, and that will continue until tomorrow. When does this leave me time to blog? When does this leave me time to write out Christmas cards (which, I promise, are coming)? When does this leave me time to do anything? I haven't listened to Christmas records in forever, haven't cooked in forever, haven't jumped over cheeseburgers in forever, haven't sat down to pet my cats in forever, and haven't drawn up my shades in the dining room in forever. What gives?

I'll tell you something that I have had time for... watching just enough of Cats 101 to decide that a Scottish Fold must be in our future. Doug wholeheartedly agrees, so much so that he contacted Brother Jean (a Franciscian monk, no joke) out of Salem, MA, who lovingly breeds these little critters. He's soon having three litters! How do we know this? Doug has emailed him. Yes, we are that serious. Everyone always wonders when we'll get a fourth cat and we always say that we never will. Four is too many. But really, when a cat looks like this and can sport the name of Haggis, why wouldn't we take the plunge?

Work awaits, but I'll be thinking of little Haggie all day long...

The Christmas Tree

Every year we get a real tree; we go to a tree farm and cut it down ourselves. We become very invested in our Christmas tree, and this means that our Christmas tree requires a blog posting unto itself. So this is it, finally.

This year we went to the Oakwood Christmas Tree Farm in Backwoods, CT, to get our tree with my mother, brother, sister, brother-in-law, the three kids, my sister's mother, father, sister-in-law, and my sister's niece. Three cars to get there - a tree caravan! Trees are less expensive in CT, and there are many indigenous varieties of Christmas trees in the northern portion of the state. The tree we got this year is some kind of hybrid tree, though. It's not a balsam fir, it's not a white pine, but it's something in between. It has the limp branches of a white pine but the thick needles of a balsam fir. It smells like an orange. We like it!

Picking out a tree is for some people very easy. Joanne, my sister's mother-in-law, always gets the first tree she sees. It's always on the very edge of the row, right near the parking area. It's always very small, too. That's fine; that method works for her. It doesn't work for anyone else in the family. The Sheridans are notoriously bad at making decisions, and picking out a tree is no exception. Doug gets very frustrated with all of us, but really all of our diligence pays off in the end, because we always get a great tree. Again, this year is no exception.

This is Doug and Brian at the tree farm, posing with one of the green beauties. We decided against this one in the end. Not special enough. Not the one.

This is Ma Soeur and my mother, posing in a sea of trees. This farm had a lot of trees. We spent a lot of time looking at each one. It was cold, but that didn't stop us from spending hours picking out trees.

Doug and I finally make a decision on a tree. This is the one! We are happy. Really.

Doug gets the honor this year of cutting down the tree while I man the camera. My mother acts as a tree helper. Doug, for whatever reason, tries to cut the tree one-handed. That doesn't last long.

And here's a NVNG first! A video! Watch and listen as we all discuss the felling of the tree... will it fall on Doug's head?

Here's Doug unwrapping the tree once it's finally in its stand in our front room, which means my mother was right - it didn't fall on Doug's head.

Doug puts the tree topper on and poses at this accomplishment. The tree sat like this, with just lights and garland, for a week before we actually finished decorating it. Apparently we don't like to rush things around here.

The Christmas tree, at night. Just lights. Very pretty. Probably could use more lights. I like lights.

The Christmas tree, in the morning. Finally decorated. Looks good!

Here's a close-up of the tree. We don't have a lot of ornaments so there aren't that many on the tree, but I think it looks good like this, actually. This way you can see each ornament and the tree doesn't look cluttered. We don't like clutter in this house. Clutter = bad.

And not only did we put up the tree and decorate it, we also put up some stockings and little Christmasy trinkets. This is our mantle decked out for the holidays, and also my mother's homemade nativity set on our dining table. She painted these in her ceramics class back in 1978, according to the bottom of pieces. I love this set (and so do Meg and Wyatt), and my mother has kindly given it to us. Thanks, Mom!


So that's Christmas so far in Dedham. We love sitting on the sofa and looking into the front room at the tree, and I love that you can see the lit tree from the road. Doug had it on tonight as I was walking up the street to the house from the train, and it made the house look so warm and cozy. Our house feels very much like home now that we have our first tree in it. We aren't going to want to take it down!

Fun with Photo Booth

This past week and weekend have been a whirlwind. Really, that's nothing new, but here it is already 11:30 on Sunday night. Wow.

I wanted to post a couple of new blog entries this weekend... one of our Christmas tree adventures this year, and then one of our fun weekend activities (Merry Birthday party and seeing my youngest niece as a Bon Bon in The Nutcracker), but that never happened. I can't do it all, I guess, but I do try. Just to say that I did in fact get a blog in, I'm posting this amusing photo that I took of myself while at Thanksgiving in Monroe. If you recall, Doug and I were showing Grandpa Doug's Mac, and we were all having a bit of fun with Photo Booth.
Here's another one. You gotta love those Photo Booth filters.
So now that some online Christmas shopping is done and I've posted a blog, it's time to call it a night. Good night!

I promise to do better this time.

So last post I said I'd try to not be so wordy. I don't know if it really worked. This time I'm going to try AGAIN not to be wordy, but I'm not posting any photos, so it will seem like I'm wordier than I really am.

I'm not off to a good start, am I?

Anyway, two important things happened today. One - my friend Jesica (Jipty to all who know me well) is in hard-core labor right now. On Saturday at 5:40pm, after taking castor oil to hopefully bring about some kind of labor, Jesica's water broke. She's been laboring on and off ever since, but today the contractions became regular, and according to her wife's Facebook page, they're now at the hospital. This means that baby should be here before too long! How many hours of labor is that? And how many hours of labor without drugs? Too many for me, and I'm sure too many for Jesica. I'm sure I'll get more details post-birth, but I almost don't want them. I'm on the fence enough as it is about having children, and hearing about prolonged labor won't make me lean toward the wanting children side, that's for sure. But I'm rooting for a healthy and quick labor from here on out! Good luck, Jesica and Chris. Your life will never be the same, but in a good way. I'm excited for you!

On to important event number two, though this one is not nearly as exciting. It's more annoying than anything else. Someone stole my credit card number! Yes, I've officially been a victim of credit card fraud. I was at Star Market on Sunday night buying our week's worth of groceries and I slid my card through the little card reader at the self-check out lane. Five seconds later I get a message that reads, "This card has been declined. Please use another card." Well, I don't have another card, not one that I use, anyway. That card was my credit/debit card, and I use it for EVERYTHING. I don't like to use real credit cards. Don't have good experiences with them. So Doug, who doesn't have his wallet with him, tells me to try to use it again. Maybe it didn't read right. So I do. And it's declined again. My immediate thought is, Great! Someone stole my card number and wiped out the money in our checking account (this is where our card is linked). And Doug had just gotten paid that Friday, too, so that would have been awful. Doug told me to not worry about it, that once at Panera his credit/debit card was declined and it was because the cashier ran it as a debit but didn't enter the pin or something like that. Anyway, I go home, put the groceries away, and then go online to check my bank account, and there were no suspicious charges. So I figure that Doug must be right, it must have been an issue with the card machine at Star. So then this morning I go to use the card to get Marieke a Christmas gift online, and I get a message saying, "Card declined. Please try ordering with a different card." This is weird! I am getting irritated now, so I call my bank and I tell them that my card is declining; I'm then told that there is a hold on my card because of suspicious activity. I am transferred to someone in the fraud department, and the nice lady asks me to confirm or deny some charges. December 2nd, $35 at Target in Watertown, MA. Yup, that's me. December 4th, $50 something dollars at some gas station in Georgia. NO! Not me. December 5th, $150 at a Target in Virgina, December 7th $250 at a Target in Virgina... she named some others, but by then I was not really hearing her. I denied all the charges I didn't make in our lovely southern states, and then learned that these charges will be deducted from my checking account, but I can contest them. I have to go to the bank and fill out some kind of fraud affidavit, which will take 10 days to process, but once it's processed the monies will be placed back in my checking account. Not to mention the fact that my credit/debit card is now useless, as it's been decommissioned, and I won't get my new one until next week sometime. Looks like I won't be doing any Christmas shopping this week! This is so inconvenient, and really annoying. A little scary, too. I mean, how did someone get my card number? I blame PayPal. I bought something for Doug on eBay for his birthday and paid with my credit/debit card via PayPal. That was the last purchase I made with the card before it was stolen. I am glad that my bank was smart enough to recognize that I probably wasn't buying a whole lot of gas and goods at Target in Georgia and Virginia last week, but still, why did they wait so long to put a hold on my card? This is just the wrong time of year to be out that kind of money, too. Good thing Doug had just gotten paid, otherwise I probably wouldn't have had the funds to cover this stupid fraud.

Anyway, I'm done venting. I should have written more about Jipty and her baby... that's such a good and happy event. Instead, I filled up a whole book about how my credit card number was stolen. Why is it that the bad always trumps the good? It's no fun being a Grinch. But by next post I'll have more news on Jesica and Chris's baby, so that will be good news at least. I want more good news.

Activities!

I am going to try something I haven't tried yet here on NVNG... I'm going to not write so much this time. More photos, fewer words. Letting the pictures tell the stories. I fear that I am using this blog as though it were a journal or diary, telling each little detail to preserve for posterity. That's bad. I'm bad. I'll try to be better, starting today.

This post will be of all that's gone on so far this week. Starting with the curtains that I made for the kitchen window last Sunday night. My mother found these really great dish towels and gave them to us so that I could make curtains out of them, because the roosters in the kitchen had become too floofy for our liking. I whipped out the sewing machine, got my own bobbin going, an within an hour or so I had these babies done! Maybe I could get used to sewing after all.

This photo is of our old curtains, the ones from the kitchen in our Newton apartment that we transferred to Dedham. They looked okay here, but were a little too... too much curtain.
This photo is posted specifically for my mother - look at those straight stitches! You're a great teacher - thank you!
And lastly... here's the finished product. There is no curtain or valance on the top part of the window so it does look a little bare, but I am thinking of maybe hanging a small plant or something. That or just waiting until I get used to the way the new window looks. Both Doug and I agree, though, that with the rooster curtains gone the yellow just isn't working in the kitchen. And neither is the light fixture. See below.
This is the lovely (!) light fixture in our kitchen. The people who lived here before us thought they lived in Italy. Stone sculptures of cherubs and angels were all over the house - that's right, inside - and so were all kinds of grapes and vines and faux-effects on the walls... This house is no Tuscan villa, so I'm not sure where they got this style idea. Did they have a strange love for the Olive Garden? Anyway, they were kind enough to leave us this fixture. Doug and I do not like this light fixture. So serious question here - do you know anyone who wants it?

Anyway, what else did we do this week. Tuesday I cooked a soup. A good soup - French Lentil Soup, the recipe for which I found on epicurious.com. I highly recommend it (both the soup and the site). It came out very tasty, though it does lack color. I've attached some photos of the cooking process, a sort-of photo play-by-play:

Soup, phase 1 - softening and browning the vegetables. We love carrots here, and this soup has them. Yay!
Soup, phase 2: (really, this is more like phase 3 or 4, but I skipped a couple of steps). Here the soup has been boiled and simmered and is almost ready to serve. It looks magical in this cloud of steam - but I am no magician in the kitchen.
And lastly, here is the soup, partially pureed, more vegetable stock added, and ready to eat. We ate some leftover chicken with it, too, which Wyatt seems to think is all for him and his glowing eyes (I used red-eye reduction on his eyes, but I think I preferred them red...).


Finally, the activity that we've been enjoying the most this week is listening to Christmas records. The scratchier the better for me. I "borrowed" my mother's Christmas records over Thanksgiving because on the Very Merry Christmas album that she and my father got free from the Mobil gas station one year a long, long, long time ago is my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time - Christmas in My Home Town, by Charley Pride. There's something about the string-bass beat on this song that is infectious, and Charley has a great voice. Plus, the song (and all of her records) bring back memories of my childhood Christmases. My mother always had the most lovely Christmas tree, and we would have so much fun cutting down our own tree, decorating it, decorating the house, having hot chocolate, listening to Christmas records. There's something about Christmas in your childhood home that never grows old. I love going to my parents' home for Christmas each year. But this year, with these records, I have a little bit of their home, my old home, here in my new home with me, and I'm loving it.

This is the record with the Charley Pride song. Charley's the one at three o'clock, between Arthur Fieldler and Morton Gould. This record also has Julie Andrews, Robert Shaw, and Perry Como. Mobil made a good record back in the day!
The Andy Williams Christmas Album is one of my favorite Christmas albums; I never tire of listening to this one all the way through. I have it on CD now, but it's not as good without all the scratchy static in the background.
And here's Perry Como. What a pure voice he had! My mother had excellent taste. How do I know that this record was my mother's? She wrote her name on the back of this and all of her records, just so anyone who wanted to take Perry home would know to back off - it's Ruth's property! No one gets between Ruth and her records, and I am glad of that because now I get to enjoy the sounds of Christmas on vinyl.