Sunday, December 30, 2007

Holidays roll on

Kathy and I are back in Goshen. I'm watching the Colts who will hopefully pull out a win, despite resting a lot of their starters. A win for the Colts means the Browns are in the playoffs.

We spent the past week in Ohio, visiting family, celebrating Christmas. We spent a few days in Hartville and a few days in Millersburg. I also spent one day on the road. Kim flew into Atlanta and Bruce was going down to pick her up since tickets were expensive. I went along with him to help out driving. We left at 4:45 AM on Friday and arrived home with the peripatetic (they walked everywhere, up to 10 hours a day) at 6 AM Saturday morning. It was a long trip with poor weather.

Kathy and I are both working partial days tomorrow. I was going to have the day off, but a client needs some work done before the beginning of the year. So I'll do that project and then call it a day. Kathy wants to get an early jump on the work for the year so she will spend at least half the day working.

It's time for a snack and some serious rooting. The Titans just kicked a field goal to tie it...

-cgm

Friday, December 14, 2007

Friday Night Lights

Okay, it's not quite high school football--it's women's rec league volleyball. I came up to watch Kathy play in Mishawaka. Mostly she wants me as a chauffeur...especially against the team they're playing tonight. It's currently 7-3 and that's the closest it will be all night.

We're headed to South Bend to finish our Christmas shopping once we're done here. Probably Best Buy and Barnes & Noble.

Did I mention the other team only has four players, and their one fan is complaining because Kathy's team is talking strategy?

Only five more days of work until Christmas vacation! And it is looking to be a busy week. Hopefully the busy-ness won't be as obnoxious as today's. I went to a client's at 1:30, expecting to be done in a couple hours. Instead, I spent 3.5 hours installing a Quickbooks update. And I only finished four of the six computers. The install isn't particularly difficult--it just takes forever. Fun, fun.

Ooh, their fifth player just showed up. Right after one of the others twisted her ankle.

So this is one of those teams that yells "free free free" when there's no point. It's just short of a pet peeve of mine... Their offense is a get-it-over -the-net offense with no transition between offense and defense. Ergo, no real reason to yell free. Ah, well.

Kathy just called a lift on herself...

Well, the battery on my phone is getting low. I'll sign off for now. Have a great weekend!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

November's Over


In case you missed it, November is over. Which means that NaNoWriMo is over. Which means that I don't feel guilty for not working on my novel. Kathy and I actually didn't get very far into our novels--we decided to have a life instead. However, we both did get good starts and somewhat got into the habit of writing. We are going to try to keep it up and finish the things. Keep asking us about them!

We are now well into December, and I am just now getting to my first blog entry. That's the way it goes sometimes. Right now, Kathy is playing Ratchett and Clank on the PS3 and I am sitting by the fire with my laptop. It's nice and cozy with the sound of smashing boxes in the background...

The past week we had the Aptica Christmas. My boss Jason bought a pedicure and a massage for us. It was very relaxing and soothing. As you can sort of see from the not-so-great picture, I got my toes painted. My pedicurist--as well as everyone else, except maybe Kathy--were very surprised. She told me that she has never painted a guys toe nails before, except her dad's and he was asleep at the time.

Have a happy holidays!

Thursday, December 6, 2007

short

I win!

Snow already?

Craig & Lindsy, I lose the short post game.

Well, it's hardly December and it's already snowed multiple times. There's snow on the ground now, though it might be gone later in the day if the weather does what they say it's going to. Yesterday I walked to my bank and discovered that the city doesn't seem to plow all of the sidewalks, even in the downtown area.

Our fall/winter schedule has filled up again this year. We eat supper with my sister on Mondays, with Kevin & Katrina Graber on Tuesdays, small group on Wednesdays, and then I play in a co-ed volleyball league on Thursdays and in a women's volleyball league on Fridays. Technically I'm just a sub for the women's league, since it's in Mishawaka and I said I didn't really want to be on the team & commit to playing every week since it's a longish drive, but they asked if I'd be the regular sub and cover when the regular players were out and I agreed. Turns out someone's gone almost every week.

I do enjoy volleyball, but the knee I injured last summer and then re-injured a couple of months ago doesn't. The co-ed league with the higher net is especially vexing since I have to jump my highest to get a decent hit or a chance at a block. It does better if I warm up first, so I have to remember to leave myself plenty of time to stretch and jog and so on.

We had our Christmas party for Craig's work last night. Craig's boss dropped us off at a day spa and we got pedicures and massages, both of which were a first for me. It was fun and quite relaxing. I had indicated on the sheet they had us fill out that my knee had been injured, and the woman who did my massage talked a little with me when we were finished. She could obviously tell something was wrong - she asked how long ago I'd hurt it, and asked if the cartilage had been separated, and wasn't surprised to find out about the bone bruises. She also asked if I'd injured my ankle at the same time, mentioned that it was quite weak, and recommended that I wear shoes with good support, thus vindicating my decision to basically only wear Danskos (or tennis shoes) except for rare occasions when I really dress up. She also asked if I'd seen a physical therapist about my knee, which I have not. I might start thinking about it if it doesn't improve materially in the next year or so. So, to sum up, I have sparkly toenails. =)

Craig and I have both started writing a novel. Neither of has gotten very far, but we have started and are planning on sticking with it. We're trying to have regular writing nights when we go to a coffee shop and write without the distractions that abound at home.

Since the business that I work at moved earlier this year to the building that my boss and his business partner purchased and renovated, we realized that we didn't have any holiday decorations since we'd never needed them before. My boss let me buy decorations and put them up, which was a lot of fun. Last weekend was apparently the right time to buy them, since the only thing I bought that wasn't 25% - 40% off was the wreath hook for the door. I'm enjoying the festive atmosphere.

I've also been hit with the urge to bake cookies in the last couple of weeks. I've made two batches of sugar cookies and one of chocolate chip, which actually turned into chocolate-butterscotch chip since I didn't have enough chocolate chips and had to supplement them with the butterscotch. I finally have found a sugar cookie recipe that I really like. It's a mix of the one on a bag of flour and the chocolate chip recipe that usually use. They end up nice and chewy. I don't like dry cookies.

Since I don't like to publish a post without a picture, here's one of the little picture frames I have in one of my office windows. You can see our door with a wreath on it in the background. The picture frames usually have little pictures of a giraffe and an elephant in them, but for the holidays I made a little tree and a little star out of little garland wire. Hurrah!

Today's random quote:
"I turned somewhere!" (Craig talking on the phone to his boss who was trying to give him directions to the spa last night)