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!

Weekly Roundup

These days I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with titles to my posts, especially the ones where I have no real theme or topic and just regurgitate the week's happenings. Weekly Roundup seems like an apt title, if somewhat boring. But maybe that makes it that much more apt!

Anyway, we've been trucking along here at the Sheriko Inn. In an effort to get out of the house and explore our surroundings, we took a day trip to Newburyport. Newburyport is a bit of a swank town on the very tip of the North Shore, only about twenty miles from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's got a nice little town center and is very much a maritime town, so there's plenty of history and New England village style. It's home to a very welcoming (and well-funded) public library and, our main reason for trekking there, Plum Island. We like Plum Island, even in the winter. Don't you?

So that was a fun day. Cold, but fun. Naturally, we did some extensive searching of the Newburyport real estate market when we got back home, and Google Mapped our commutes to work, because we got Let's-Live-in-Newburyport! fever after our little jaunt. But those feelings have subsided (somewhat). I blame the distractions of life on these fleeting feelings.

Distractions like busy weekends filled with lots of driving and socializing with family. While Doug was hanging with the boys at his now annual Hotel Reunion, I spent my Saturday at work and then traveled down to CT to hang out a bit with my mother and brother. We saw The Woman in Black and had a very tasty dinner. I can't say enough good things about the food at Al Frescos in East Hartford (of all places!) but I have a limited number of good things to say about The Woman in Black, and most of them stop with these two words: Ciaran Hinds. And on Sunday it was more family fun with heading down to see my niece cheer at her last basketball game of the season.

Yes, you read that correctly. My niece, Maria, is a cheerleader. At first when I heard that she was going to be a cheerleader I was a little annoyed. I don't consider myself one who would willingly associate with the cheerleader type (and I do think that there is something of a cheerleader type), so I was having trouble reconciling these feelings with the fact that my niece was going to be, or become, this "type." But, really, who am I kidding. Maria is totally the cheerleader type, and in a good way. She's a performer, that Maria, and she loves the spotlight.

She makes a great cheerleader; in my biased opinion, she's one of the best on the squad. And she's darned cute, too. We'll keep her.

Although we had no cheering squad to help us celebrate a milestone this weekend (if only my niece didn't live so far away!), Doug and I managed to get in the festive spirit to acknowledge our fourth wedding anniversary. Four years! How does one celebrate four years of marriage? By going to Aquitaine and getting the most tender cut of spare rib you can imagine

and getting in some cuddle time with the fuzzy ones.

And by cuddle time I mean narrowly avoiding suffocation by the giant 15-pound beast who thinks that your head makes a very good resting place.

Lest you think that's not enough celebration, that four years is certainly a significant enough milestone in one's married life to warrant something a little bit more substantial, we finally got our new shower door installed at 8am on Saturday morning.

Honestly? I may have liked this activity better than our fancy dinner. I've been trying to get that door installed since early December and have been kept up at night with visions of water leaking through my living room ceiling (due to the water leaking out from the faulty door), but now I can sleep easier. The old door is gone, the bathroom is cleaner than it's been since we moved in, the possible leak in the skylight was investigated and found to be no issue, and now Doug doesn't have to listen to me whine about getting the bathroom fixed anymore. So life is good here now. Onto the next.

Candyfreak

It's probably fitting that as I type I am feeding myself Necco Wafers, once a favorite candy of mine. I bought two sleeves of these treats on my drive over to Ithaca last week; the first I ate on my way to Ithaca and the second I was saving for a special moment. That moment is now, because I am reading Candyfreak, a story of a man and his love of candy (and his quest for candies of his youth that have gone the way of the dinosaur). This is the second book that I have read on candy; the first being Emperors of Chocolate, which was more of a history of chocolate manufacturing than one man's love affair with corn syrup. I remember that after I read Emperors I treated myself to a bag of Hershey's Kisses. Now I'm treating myself to a whole lot of Necco Wafers. I really need to stop reading books about candy.

But how else would I fill my spare time? Maybe by hanging out with family and GETTING THINGS DONE. I love to get things done. What did I get done on Saturday? I got a trip to the American Girl store checked off my list. Won't have to go back there until Miss Maria's birthday, because, thankfully, she got her AG fix for now. I also got a new faucet installed, thanks to my dad and Doug, and scratched "kick old, broken kitchen faucet to the curb and spit on it as it goes" off of the to-do list. I hated that old faucet. The new one is much better in a functional kind of way (though it's a bit shiny. It's like having a mirror in front of me as I'm washing dishes. Very odd.) My mother and I also reupholstered the cushion to the rocking chair that we bought in Brimfield last month. My mother took an upholstery class years ago and she was finally able to put her skills to use once again. After purchasing a staple gun Sunday morning we set about attaching the new fabric (which felt so HGTV). I stapled and my mother stretched the fabric. Here's to a little bit of hard work, creativity, and teamwork: Because of her efforts, I gave my mother a short break before making her go outside with me, in the mist, to weed my side garden. I can actually be kind when I want to be.

But why all of this family time? Doug was away, so I thought it would be a good time to bond with them. Doug was in NYC with Hot Molasses playing a show at the Ding Dong Lounge. I wish I had gone, since Doug said that it was a really good show and a cool venue, but I thought that the band was going to do a roadtrip thing where they all pile into a van, travel to New York, and sleep on someone's floor post-show. I didn't want to be a third wheel. However, all band members drove separately to New York and went their separate ways after the show. What kind of band camaraderie is that? When I get my bluegrass band up and running there will be none of that going on, I promise. (I also promise that I won't start up a bluegrass band anytime soon. Audiences would never pay to hear the sounds that come out of my violin at this point, and, given that I haven't picked up my instrument in over a month, they may never have the chance.)

This happens every month.

Once a month I have a bout of insomnia. One night where I can't fall asleep, and then the next day I'm completely useless. Guess what. That's tonight, and that will be tomorrow. Lucky Doug and his mother and father. We're visiting the Siskos tomorrow and I'll be in fine form for them.

But, the good thing about insomnia is that I get a lot of Internetting done. I spent, oh, I don't know, three hours redesigning a blog from the past and thinking what its new theme could be (the old theme, complaining about work and how I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, seems somehow tiresome. I feel like I've been there and done that. Please remind me not to do it anymore.) I also have URLs at two new blog sites, Wordpress and Tumblr, in case I ever want to develop blogs there, too. One can never have too many blogs, I guess.

Except for me, who can't even keep up with one. I haven't posted in about ten days. Guess that means I'm having a really great time, right? Well, actually, yes. If I have time to blog that means I'm not spending my time doing other things. If I don't have time to blog, that means I'm spending my time doing other (hopefully more productive things). So let's recount how I've been spending my time.

Reading
As usual, I am reading. Reading lots of things. My magazines and a book. I have a book club to go to on June 3rd, and our book club read is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. All 613 pages of it. I'm on page 249. It's not a quick read, and there are parts that I am having trouble getting through (anything to do with war), but overall it's been a very productive and valuable use of my time.

As has Brimfield.
Doug, my mother, my brother, and I met up at Brimfield this past Saturday. Doug and I were in the market for some replacement dining room chairs. We figured that it was time to get rid of the IKEA ones. My mother and brother joined us for advice and also for the use of their mini-van so that we could transport anything we purchased back to our house. After we loaded the van with all of our finds we put the chairs around the table and moved the old IKEA ones up to the attic. All except the one that you see in the above photo. That's the last of the IKEA chairs. We looked at so many chairs at Brimfield, but we didn't find a 6th for the table. And that's fine, because this gives us an excuse to go back in September. We'll look for at least one more chair and whatever else strikes us. There's always something to find there. We are quickly becoming Brimfield addicts.

Exterior Work
Doug and I have decided on a company to paint our house. They will do the job in August. Now we have to figure out if we want to keep the same color scheme or change things up a bit. Maybe more of a greenish gray with off-white trim and red accents? Or maybe we do something warmer, like a soft green, with a gray trim and natural wood accents. I'm voting for changing things up a bit, but I'm also not good at making these kinds of decisions. How many times did I repaint my bedroom before I landed on the current color? I've painted the kitchen twice since living here (that's twice in three years) and have paint swatches all over the dining room walls because we're thinking about getting rid of the purple. If we don't like the color of the house after it's painted, we can't just change it. It will be like that for (I hope) eight years. I can't think in eight-year increments. This is too much pressure. I wish our house were sided and I didn't have to think about it.

Meg has joined me at the table here. She's purring. She's needing me. And, of course, it's right when this happens that I'm ready to go to bed. Poor Meg. I'll post this photo of her, taken from Doug's most recent cat photo essay, so that everyone can see what a lovable kitty she is. She's especially lovable at 3am when she's clawing at my head, so needy for attention. She can't ask for love at any other time of day, it seems. I guess that's her special charm, just like mine is neglecting my blog.

First day of spring.

It's the first day of spring! Who cares that it's snowing and wet and gross outside and that I'm wrapped in a wool blanket inside. It's spring and I'm happy about that. So happy that I've decided to break my (unintentional) blogging silence and catch you up on a few things.

First: This is how not to spend time with your friend Julie who comes down from Maine for a much-needed visit. Of course, she's doing it, too, because we're all of us addicted to those little electronic devices, aren't we, but still. We should have been talking or something. Or watching the belly dancer who was gyrating and wiggling directly in front of us. She was inspiring. Her hips made moves that most only dream about. Perhaps jealousy drove me to bury my head in my phone.

Second: We can see clearly now, the ropes are gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared... at least in our bedroom. And in the kitchen (so take your mind out of the gutter!). WE HAVE NEW WINDOWS! Man, oh man, oh man, do I love those new windows. I can raise them! I can lower them! They will stay open without needing a little piece of wood or some kind of prop for support! Oh, they are such things of beauty. And they soundproof so well. Who cares about all the cold air that's not rushing in from those old drafty windows - it's like we're living in a sound proof chamber. It's wonderful. We haven't heard the 11pm or 12am trains go by at all since we've had these windows. If we weren't so responsible in our old age, we'd finance new windows for the whole house. But we are, so I'll just rave about my three new ones. Have I mentioned yet how much I love them?

Three: If you are going to make one new meal this spring, try this Tomato Ricotta Tart. I'm sure it would be even better to make it in the summer with tomatoes from your own garden, but if you're like me and don't grow your own tomatoes or can't wait for summer for eating this kind of dinner, then try this. It's really, really good, and actually quite easy (obviously, since you don't see any photos of kitchen mishaps here).

Four: Finally, my bibs. My third bib project. Done! Sewed, snapped, washed, and sent on their way. It's a good thing that I am still working on my quilt. I need these kinds of crafty projects to occupy my mind and my hands. I can't just sit around with nothing to do (not that I ever really get that chance, so maybe I could just sit around with nothing to do. It might actually be nice to try that, now that I think about it...); I get antsy and I need something to entertain me, and not enough people I know are having babies. But once my quilt is done (which will be very soon... that's going to be the subject of my next post, I can feel it), I'll be left with what? Reading? More recipe-copying? Spring cleaning? Yes, it's time for spring cleaning again, and my yard, with all those sticks and twigs and clumps of leaves and schmutz, is calling to me. Screaming is more like it.

Five: My kitties! Look at them. Don't you just love them? My poor, beautiful brown bear, desperate for a place to sleep, and my fat, little Buddha bear, not lacking for any place to plop down. They are keeping me going these days. And to think, just a few days ago Doug and I were on the verge of adding a third to our nice, even-numbered collection. What were we thinking? Meg and Sasha, be glad that your mom and dad were distracted by chores and fighting and homework and work-work. Otherwise you would be terrorized right now by a cute tuxedo with green eyes and a boxy face. For once, all of us should be glad that life got in the way.

Just a few (!) things.

A few things. A few things! Since when have I ever had "just a few things" to say. But in the interest of time, I'll keep to my rule of three.

First up - the change in my employment, which really is more of a career re-set and not just a change in jobs. I haven't spent too much time on this blog talking about my job (hardly any, actually, at least not directly), and that's because I couldn't really speak of it. Bound to secrecy in a way (or more like signed away my life in a confidentiality agreement). Anyway, for the past five years I have worked at Bain Capital. I started as an information intern, working in the research library, worked my way into a full-time job as a research analyst in the research library, and spent my last two years as director of the research library. I could go on for days about that job, but let me be brief and say that it wasn't the best fit for me. I knew that the moment I walked in and saw the lobby on the top floor of the building, and heard Pat, the receptionist, answer the phone in that movie-star kind of way. But I plodded through, quite successfully, actually, probably because I thought it was easier to go through with it all then to stop and try to find something different. And now I have found something different. Something more suited to me - my personality, my interests, my goals (there will be another post on that soon, I'm sure), and I have left behind all of this: My name on glass, a corner office, and my little library. It's okay, though. It really is. I couldn't be more sure that it's my time to leave corporate libraries, and I happily wave goodbye to the past and hello to the future.

Okay, next up - Doug's mustache. Yes, Doug has a mustache. He's had it for a couple of weeks now. I'd like to think he changed things up in honor of my new job and all of our exciting adventures yet to come, or that he shaved the beard in honor of Movember and a good cause. While the push for the mustache - which came from me, by the way, and was met with every bit of resistance Doug could muster - was originally in honor of Movember, it turned into something else. It turned into a challenge. I wanted to see if Doug would alter his facial hair just because I was asking him to. And to my surprise he did. And to his surprise he actually likes his mustache and will keep it until he grows tired of having to shave around it on a bi-weekly/weekly basis. That works for me, since I was getting a little tired of the beard and actually like being able to see more of Doug's face. Plus, it's like waking up next to someone different - I still barely recognize him.

And lastly, at least for today - redecorating! One of the very first things that I did (after our trip to Sturbridge, which was the first thing) after leaving my job was redecorate the house. Definitely trying to start afresh. The first thing I did was move the cookbooks into the kitchen. I did that because I moved the bookcase from the living room into the sun room, and it didn't make sense for the cookbooks to be all the way out there. Along with the bookcase went the armchair, and now the sun room is its own little library, complete with guitars, cat, and man with mustache.

But you might be asking yourself about the table that was out there in the sun room. Where's that? Well, it's now where the bookcase was in the living room, behind the couch in the back corner. Like so: Now we can craft there, work on the computer there, or even eat at that table and watch TV instead of breaking our backs by trying to eat at the coffee table. The room is a great space for doing all the things we most love to do - all while watching TV.

And, we made a change to the dining room, too. New dining table! We ordered this table from the Darn Good Barn Wood guys in late September and didn't get it until the Monday before Thanksgiving. I almost forgot we had it coming. We saw the DGBW guys at Brimfield back on this trip and contacted them this past May to see if they were going to be at Brimfield again. The answer was no, so we thought all summer long about going to see them at the South End market that they were participating in to pick out a table. We took until the end of September to decide that indeed we did want one of their handmade-out-of-old-barn-wood tables for our dining room, in the spirit of saying goodbye to college and our youth and hello to more "adult" furniture, and so just called them up, gave them the dimensions we were looking for and the color stain we'd like, and here it is. And we can't wait to save up money for DGBW to start making us some more stuff out of barn wood. Benches for the table, maybe? Or maybe some chairs? A coffee table? A console table? A bookcase? We've got a lot more IKEA furniture to replace; our list is almost endless.

So. Those were my three things. There is so much more to write about, to tell you about, but I have to go and get the car inspected (Whoops! I noticed that our inspection sticker expired in November when I saw the ticket sitting on the window of the car this morning (can you believe that someone patrols the parking lot at Target looking for violations? That's where I got the ticket! In a parking spot at the Watertown Target while I was inside getting my niece Maria her birthday gift!)) and then pick Doug up from work, so I can't. I have to exercise restraint, and also save some of my stories for another time. Bet you can't wait! :)

Friday Night Lights?

It's Friday night and I'm contemplating folding a boatload of laundry. Or sleep. Or blogging. You can guess which one won out, though I have so little to share.

Doug and I are heading down to Connecticut this weekend, but I'm staying up in the Hartford area and he's heading down to Monroe. Not sure what he has planned, but I have an afternoon with my sister and mother planned - picking out material for the quilt I plan to make, getting my nephew a birthday gift (he turned 10 on Monday. Ten! I remember when my sister had us over to her house to tell us that she was pregnant. I was at UConn, living in Buckley, and Doug had tickets to go to a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert. He didn't want to go to the show, but thought I would want to go so he got tickets, hoping I'd go, too. I didn't. He did. He still holds a grudge about that.), going to dinner with my mom, dad and brother to celebrate my brother's birthday, and then heading to the Hartford Stage to see a play. Should be a good day, but packed with activity. Must leave the house early. Probably should go to bed instead of blog.

Got my haircut tonight and it's shorter. Shorter than I've had it in a year or so, but no one else but me would probably notice it. Again, I will not likely maintain this look, seeing how I don't blow dry my hair, but at least for one night it looks good!

Tonight Doug and I went to BJ's (this is what our Friday nights are like now - trips to BJ's and laundry!) and we got some books. I've become addicted to the book section at BJ's, as it's such a hodgepodge of titles and it's such fun to see what they'll actually have. Tonight we picked up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Mornings on Horseback, and Leading Men, a TCM film guide. Doug's pouring over the guide right now. He's on Harold Lloyd, a physical comedian from the silent era. Never heard of him.

Can I tell you how boring Toyota ads are? There is nothing in a Toyota ad that would make me want to buy one of their equally boring cars. Right now a Chrysler ad is on and at least it has good background music, nice scenery, and a good message - "Come see what we've built for you." The last Toyota ad I saw had some kind of keyboard soundtrack, a bunch of white people tossing around a beach ball, and then a shot of some giant Camry driving along a wooded road. Boring. Don't think I'd buy a Toyota if I were in the market for a new car, and this is certainly one of the reasons why.

Oh, yes - today our new storm door in the front was installed. Hallelujah! It's so nice to be able to close the door and have it actually fully close, and it's nice to be able to have the front door open to let in a little air without worrying about the cats busting out of the bottom of the door. It has a sliding window, too - one on the top half and one on the bottom half of the door, and the screen is permanently in it. This makes for easy access to breeze - no need to swap out windows and screens come each change of season - just slide down the top window and the screen is automatically there. We never knew we could get so excited about a door, but we love it.

What we don't love is now that the door looks nice and fresh, our front steps really show their need for help. There's this shamrock carved into the top step in the front and it's in need of a little filling around the edges. I bought the mortar stuff that we need to fill in the cracks, because we also need to re-attached several stones that have fallen out of our back steps, but between busy weekends, the weather, and just plain laziness neither of these projects have gotten done. The weekend of July 11th. That's my new goal for mixing the mortar (or is it cement? Haven't a clue, but I know I have to mix it in a big bucket) and doing my masonry work. I'm sure I'll have photos, so check back for that blog.

Okay, my eyes are closing. Definitely time to either go to bed or get up and do something. Have a good weekend!