No 'mas, no more

As in, no Christmas, no more. 'Tis over. Oh wait, I have one more gathering this weekend, so I guess it's not quite over. Christmas weekend was very good. Incredibly busy and I'm incredibly tired still from late nights (ranging from 1:30-4 a.m.) basically every night for six nights with only one sleep-in morning. This old gal just can't take it anymore. It was a good time for seeing friends I don't get to see very often and lots of family too. Santa was generous too, and I am now well supplied with (among other things) The Office, Animaniacs (vol. 2), a chicken cooker thing that is both a good companion to my new meat thermometer and a beautiful stoneware, a dove bucket, and some new Palm games, written for me.

This week at the office has been fairly boring because I see almost no one all day; it's so empty here. Mostly I'm just trying to stay unfrozen enough for my fingers to work. Tuesday and yesterday it was so cold in here, so today I just gave up and wore a hooded sweatshirt. I figure it's not like anyone's going to see me anyway...

Happy New Year!

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This is the state in which I've been spending most of my day—the face/neck warmer sweatshirt and the space heater at my back combo. I tell you, it is cold in here. B's trying to get me to instate a "Bring Your Cat to Work" day. It would be sort of nice to have a little warm cat body on my lap, but there are too many plants and nooks and crannies and probably other things that could go wrong, so I think I'll leave little Nibbert out of it.

Overheard in the North Newton post office

The conversation of two elderly women behind me:

#1: Let’s see, I need to choose my stamps, but which ones do they have?
#2: It looks like they have snowflakes and virgins.

Ah, yes, the old popular series of stamps: virgins!

Some funny signs around town

This one was actually just taken down. Now it says, "If your not first your last. Ricky Bobby." Love the grammar on that one.















Ok, even despite the missing "B," this is just weird. Is this something parents actually want their kids to get excited about? Think about it: If the sign read "Come swim with a half-naked old dude," would you really want to take your 5-year-old?

The recent sign I'm most disappointed about not documenting was a genuine winner from Long John Silver's. It was at the time that McDonald's (how do you make an already-possessive name possessive??) advertising was centered around the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and had signs up like, "Arrrrr, Pirates be ye here" and such. LJS is located across the street from McDonald's here and totally won the advertising war by putting up a marquee advertising simply, "Real Pirates Eat Here." Hilarious.

I bought a meat thermometer!

I cooked my first whole bird last night (well, once I crockpotted a pheasant; I didn't use a meat thermometer, but I probably should have). Is it strange to view this as some sort of life milestone? I made one of those beer butt chicken things, and it was tasty. I should perhaps get one of those stand things for the future. The little guy stood up for quite a while, but I guess he got a little tired after an hour and 45 minutes. I'm just glad not enough of him was hanging over the edge of the dish to start a grease fire or something. Especially since I left it unattended for a while to go do some Amnesty International holiday card action.

Life in the recent past has been sweet. This past extended weekend was spent in Colorado visiting Tine and skiing at Loveland. It was much fun. An interesting and yummy highlight was eating at Abyssinia, an Ethiopian restaurant (my first time to eat Ethiopian). Even though we were told that some of the things "you cannot eat!" I'd say we still had very delicious fitfit.

This weekend begins family Christmas get-togethers for me, and I am indeed looking forward to that.

Brrrrrrr

Yesterday when it was snowing, snow came into my office on either side of my window air conditioner. I noticed it at about 10:30 a.m. The picture below was taken at 4 p.m. One would think that snow inside should melt, but it didn't all day. Also please notice the proximity of the snow to the heat register, which was definitely operational. So much cold air was coming in around the air conditioner that it kept the snow despite the heat rising from the register. After 2 1/2 years, I finally got tired enough of this cold air on my back that I rotated my desk away from the windows.