Spring!

It smells good here. When we go running at night georgeous flower smells waft past us and they somehow make me hungry. Maybe anything would make me hungry when I'm already hungry. I think it's mostly the flowering trees that smell so good.

A friend at work is trying to convince us to go to Vancouver to run a half-marathon in May. It's only 7 weeks away! that's 13 miles! We're still deciding whether to go. We were going to try some cross-country skiing this weekend but found out that you have to buy some bogus "trail pass" here that costs $16/person/day, or if you wait until the beginning of the season you can buy a year pass for much cheaper. So we are going to go to REI instead and hit their end-of-season ski sale and then do some skiing next year instead. But I conned another co-worker into going to REI with us and then going out for some green beer afterwards so I'm feeling very social this week. We also went out for a happy hour last night although had to leave early because I had to get to book club. For book club this month we read the 2007 Seattle Reads book, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I wasn't particularly fond of it but liked it more after discussing it at book club. This was the second month in a row that I was still reading the book on the way to book club, but they are very forgiving at the book club and still let me eat their cookies.

Celedon Green

With the upcoming season of visitors planning a stay at the Hotel J&D Rock, the Studly Hubby and I decided to finally put new furniture at the top of our priority list. For the past six or so years we've been putting up with a futon for a couch (it is a nice futon, and did get a new mattress a few years ago, but it's a futon nonetheless and is therefore not so comfortable).

We've never been in the market for furniture, so didn't really know where to start. We went to a few used furniture stores, but the selection was pretty limited. We next ventured on to a new mega-furniture place, and discovered that the prices were not too much higher and the selection much better. We found a couch we both liked, went home to think about it, and discovered on the internet that the place had gotten all bad reviews so decided to keep looking. Some friends of ours who had recently bought furniture went to a place called Dania, so we found one of those and spent Sunday afternoon there. My Studly Hubby, a longtime fan of seafoam green, fell in love with the "celedon" (seafoam) green version of the leather couch pictured at right (the 'Rocco'). It's under $1000 and really comfortable. I had told him from the very beginning that I hate seafoam green and won't get a couch that color (I prefer blue) but the only other color is taupe which I think is worse (especially in a white-walled, cream-carpeted apt). By the end of the afternoon I was becoming swayed towards the celedon green couch. But we are very slow deciders, so again we went home to think about it. I am also a worrier so I worry about things like quality (can a leather couch under $1000 really be any good?) and other stuff (with the leather freeze my tushy off in the winter?) and the Studly Hubby is a nice understanding guy so suggested we look at a few more places, and maybe go visit the celedon green couch again, before we decide for sure. I am kind of disappointed to find myself wasting so much energy on a couch, I never thought I was that type of gal. Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end.

Netflix and Me

Are any of you wondering why I haven't been posting much lately? Well, I blame it on Netflix. We have become addicted. There's something surreal about watching a whole television series without any commercials, two or three episodes a night. It makes many shows tolerable which I could never watch before and it sucks you right in. I have been known to almost cry when we get to the end of of a show.

Here's what we have been watching these days:

1. Entourage. This is an HBO show about a big movie star (in the center of the picture) and his three buddies. He also has an interesting agent, an adorably bitchy press agent, and various hot women that pop in and out. Because it's a show about a big movie star in modern times, other stars sometimes show up playing themselves, like James Cameron, Mandy Moore, etc. The thing we really like though is the awesome cast of characters. They are all very well done and make for a highly entertaining bit of television. Also the shows are each only about 20 minutes which make them great for low-commitment Netflixing.

2. Grey's Anatomy. I'm not totally in love with this show - e.g. I would never tolerate it with commercials - but now that we've watched a few, I'm getting into it. I find the main character hopelessly annoying though.

3. Big Love. This is another HBO show about a polygamist (Bill Paxton) and his three crazy wives. We really liked it at first, but then about midway through the first season we had to stop watching it because it was stressing us out too much. His wives are crazy! And his family is crazy too! I guess it really speaks to the quality of the show that we got so wrapped up in it.

COMPUTER DOWN...

We finally got the car fixed, and now the computer is off to the shop. My motherboard is on the fritz, they say. My Studly Hubby sacrificed an entire morning to find out for sure and ship it off to Dell where they will fix it for free and ship it back. Fortunately it died a slow death so I was able to get everything backed up (except my EndNote libraries, which I forgot about - argh). Also in my lab we have 3 (THREE!) backup laptop computers available. One of them is sort of a floating computer with extra graphics software on it so it gets used pretty frequently, but the other two are useless macs that nobody wants to use so I grabbed one and set it up at my desk. It's actually kinda nice not to have to haul my laptop back and forth to school. I really miss my computer though. The macintosh argues with me about everything, the mouse is weird and different, and I miss some of my old programs, like EndNote and Photoshop.

So for this week when I want to post blogs I have to either use the pain-in-the-butt mac at work or come home and vie for my Studly Hubby's computer. But I consider myself very lucky - at least I have other computers to use and mine will be fixed soon.

Portland!

We're back from a weekend visit to Portland OR this weekend, where it was actually sunny and our friends managed to have a well-kept house and yard despite total chaos (mainly stemming from having a 6-month-old baby). I was impressed with the whole trip and really enjoyed the good weather and clear views of Mount Hood. I even made an omelette for everybody but grew weary of the heinous amount of time it cooked. I think I'm becoming more impatient as I get older - maybe I'm growing fearful that I'm running out of time. Portland is a nice city and they live in an especially nice neighborhood although housing prices there are skyrocketing about like they are here in Seattle. Their kid is incredibly cute and is now one of the growing list of babies that very weakly stir the "mom" call that I've buried deep down inside somewhere. Our friends in Portland have "gone green" about as much as one can handle in a modern city; they sold their car and bought a scooter that they use for most things, then when they need something more they rent a car through a neat program called FlexCar that is mostly free through their work. I was intrigued but not tempted. I don't think I'd survive long on a scooter. Walking is the safest thing for me.

Playing with my friend's Wii

On Saturday night we went out to party with some of my Studly Hubby's friends from school and from his internship. Two of them have a Wii, so at the end of the night, after trying to figure out where we could go bowling, we ended up going over to one of their houses to go bowling on their Nintendo Wii.

First of all, let me tell you, there are about a thousand ways to incorporate "Wii" into dirty sentences, both accidentally and otherwise. For example, "I like playing with your Wii" or "It's hard to control your Wii" or "Can your Wii really talk to other people's Wiis?" are all things that were said on Saturday night without at first realizing how dirty it sounded. I think our friend's roommate laughed so hard he peed his pants by the end of the night.

The Wii was pretty fun. Bowling was surprisingly realistic, and really good for me because I have weak wrists so normally it's hard to steer those heavy bowling balls - but with the light Wii controller I could actually make some things happen. Tennis was less realistic and I felt like boxing was just a matter of swinging my arms faster than the other guy - although the two Wii players in the room that were experienced actually looked like they were doing something when they boxed so maybe you get used to it.

By the end of the night I was having junior high school flashbacks - imagining I would be the most popular girl if I could get a Wii and invite everyone over to play with it (this is NOT penis envy, it is video game envy - they are very different). Except that it might take away from my precious blog-posting time. I can't have that, so maybe we should hold off on the Wii.

University of Minnesota CANCELED CLASS!!

On Thursday, the University of Minnesota CANCELED CLASS for the afternoon. This is MAJOR news. When a Big 10 University cancels class, you know it must be bad. And when that Big 10 university is in Minneapolis, where they know how to handle a crapload of snow, you REALLY know it must be bad.

It was so bad that some students made some very beautiful snow-art in front of the Memorial Union Thursday morning:


(normally I wouldn't show a pic like this because I wouldn't want to traumatize all my innocent readers, but this is in the name of art so I think it's ok)

I wish I was there (in Minnesota)! I haven't had a real "snow day" since high school and I miss it. Here in Seattle, people stay home whenever it snows at all. I wouldn't consider that a real snow day (although it is definitely cause to stay home - with the hills and lack of salt and absence of snow plows, any snow is dangerous snow).