Journal – Page 44 – commonplacebook.com

Photo Uploads – Thanksgiving and December 2006

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 26, 2006
Post category:Journal My Photos

I finally managed to upload all the pictures I’ve been taking the last two months. I had half of my Thanksgiving pictures uploaded, and finally managed to get the rest online four weeks later. Recent Photo Sets:

Frosting Donuts

All the Thanksgiving Photos

And after Thanksgiving, Stephanie and I took a carriage ride, where she asked me to marry her…

Our Carriage Ride Photos

And, finally, all my pictures from December, so far, including Christmas events, the night we got up in the middle of the night because our roof was leaking, and miscellaneous other photos.

If you have a few minutes…

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 26, 2006
Post category:Journal

My friend Jen had a baby a little over a week ago, and he had to have heart surgery on Dec. 22nd. Sam is recovering now at Riley Hospital, so please send some good thoughts or prayers or karma his direction.

At Home, Sitting Quietly

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 25, 2006
Post category:Journal

I was supposed to go to Valpo today with Stephanie to visit her family, but I’ve been having another bout of pleurisy, and after we got all packed up and got in the car, we realized it was probably a bad idea for me to go because I was having a lot of pain. We called the pulmonologist this time (he’s still doing some tests to figure out what this is, although we have an idea — more on that later) and he prescribed some medication.
So I’m at home hanging out with Spike, and Stephanie’s up in Valparaiso visiting her dad. I’m feeling better and this new medication seems to be doing the trick to knock this out. I’m watching some of the DVDs I haven’t had a chance to see yet – a couple of Hitchcock movies, and soon, Pride and Prejudice.

All Wrapped Up…

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 22, 2006
Post category:Journal

And just ready to have ribbons and bows put on before they go under the tree.

But these are just the presents for Stephanie. I still have to wrap the presents for other people. But we’ll work on that together tomorrow.
It’s funny, when I was writing out the tags for the presents, I had to think twice every time, because it’s strange to write my own name for someone else, and I was afraid I’d label the present to me from her. We go by Stephanie and Steph, so people can sort it out in their heads, but we hardly ever actually use our names when talking to each other. We call each other “honey” all the time. Unless I’m writing about her here on the blog, or I’m trying to get her attention in a store, when I’ll use her name. And when we’re talking to my pets, I call myself “mommy” and her “other mommy”, and she does the same except when we talk to Lucy, when she’s “mommy” and I’m “other mommy.” So we don’t actually use different names, ever, but we don’t use our actual names with each other. We are weird people. But it seems to work.

Wrapping Presents

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 22, 2006
Post category:Journal

I’m home today on vacation while Stephanie’s at work, so I’m wrapping her presents for Christmas. Of all the holiday events, I’m not a fan of this one. I’m not very good at wrapping, and I get frustrated easily. I have everything in gift boxes, finally, and I just need to wrap each of them. We seem to have a million gift boxes, but never one quite the right size for that oddly shaped gift. And I suppose it would be cheating to only buy stuff that fits neatly into a box, right? I gave up and put a few things like that in bags instead. That always feels like cheating, though. It’s a lot more fun to tear through paper on Christmas morning and leave a big pile of it for the dog to roll around in.

Middle of the Night Guest: Our Roofer

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 21, 2006
Post category:House and Home

As Stephanie noted on her blog – we got to have our roofer come over and visit our bedroom in the middle of the night last night. His team removed some of the gutters that they’re rebuilding from the front of the house above our room and the guest room, and water was pouring in and down the walls last night, enough to wake us and keep us awake.

We ended up calling the roofer, who came over in the middle of the night to fix the leak, but not before the wallpaper in the bedroom had completely come loose from the walls in one corner. This was one of those lovely “former lodgers painted over the wallpaper” jobs, but the color was pretty decent, so we had intended to leave it. Guess now we’re stripping the wallpaper and painting the bedroom. Fantastic. Or I could just be really grumpy from not enough sleep. If you find me dozing in the corner of my cube, don’t pick on me.

On the bright side, we did finish up our Christmas cards and got them popped in the mail finally.

we’ve been going non-stop

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 19, 2006
Post category:Journal

And I haven’t had a free moment to blog. Or perhaps I have, but I spent it trying to unwind instead. We’ve been to parties galore, but I haven’t got the pictures off my camera yet.

On Saturday morning we went to my company’s warehouse book sale and walked away with 91 books for about 40 bucks. Yeah, like I needed that. But I have a plan for streamlining my books in the coming months, and reading and then disposing off lots of books to free up space on my shelves.

Saturday night we went to Jennifer’s annual Christmas party, complete with pink flocked tree. And Sunday we went to Christmas at my Dad’s. I got new truck tires for Christmas! Yay!

Stephanie went to a Christmas party for our neighborhood association’s board last night, because she’s the treasurer now. Dunno if I blogged that or not. I stayed home because I was too tired to go, and read a bit instead.

Oh, and we canceled our HBO from cable (I haven’t watched anything on it in months anyway) and we signed up for Netflix instead. I watched the first disc of season 3 of Seinfeld and sent it back already. I’m really enjoying picking out movies – I added pretty much everything on my Movies I Need to Watch list.

span class=”hilightyellow”>2019 update: Yeah, we have never managed to streamline books for any length of time, or to free up space on shelves. We regularly purge, but books seem to magically appear.

Weekend Update 2006-12-11

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 11, 2006
Post category:Journal

Stephanie and I had our first real social event Saturday night, and things went really well. It’s always a challenge to figure out the logistics (have a peek here to find the solution) of socializing in a new place – what rooms will people hang out in? How do people move around the house? How do we greet people, grab their coats, offer them a drink, and make sure all the food is out and ready? What the heck are the cats doing?
We only a had a few minor mishaps – me pouring boiling punch on my hand while serving, I completely forgot to take pictures – but in all it was pretty comfortable. I don’t think we have a big enough living room to really host watching Christmas specials well, but not many people have a living room that big. Otherwise, though, I think our house really allows people to move around and socialize well, and we coordinated socializing with hostessing tasks pretty well. I learned a lot about what to do and what not to — I think I have some much better ideas about food prep for future parties that will allow us more time to socialize with guests. It always sucks when someone gets stuck in the kitchen.
In general, Stephanie and I have some smaller gatherings planned for the future, which will be great for really getting to talk to our friends. We want to have some people over for dinner, and we want to resume having regular game nights. And I can’t wait until we have a front porch/back deck party in the spring or summer — our house will really rock for that, because our front porch is huge.
Sunday we had a really casual, lazy day for the first time in months. I read a lot, Stephanie skated, we took the dog for a walk, and played with the cats. It was great, and very relaxing. I really love our house.

We Have Achieved Christmas Tree

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 6, 2006
Post category:Journal

Merry Christmas! I’m very excited – we have our tree up, and a few other decorations out. We still have to put ornaments on the tree, but that’s the really fun part. Other times, when we want to trim the branches, we consider Herford’s Tree Care, Inc. and get their services. We can put Christmas music on and bebop around the house, although we’ll do that Thursday night, because Stephanie’s teaching skating tonight. I think tonight I might try to concentrate on taking our donations to IYG for their wishlist, or hanging the coat bar in the dining room closet.

Merry Christmas! And we have a big chunk of organizing done, too – enough that we can have people over without our remaining moving chaos being a featured display in the house. It’s wonderful; my undiagnosed OCD thing is no longer screaming at me. And for the remaining stuff we have to organize, there’s a decent process in place for sorting through it all, so for our post-Christmas free time we can do some fun stuff, like selling things on ebay. Happy happy, joy joy.

Christmas Decora… er, Organizing

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 4, 2006
Post category:Journal

We’re having people over to watch Christmas specials on Saturday, so Stephanie and I spent the whole weekend trying to get the house ready. We didn’t get around to starting the Christmas decor yet; we spent hours making a significant dent in the boxes we still haven’t unpacked and sorted out after the move. I’d say we sorted through about 2/3rds of it, including getting all the office supplies sorted out, separating much of the craft projects and storing them, and making a significant dent in the piles of paperwork and files. We also got the office/spare bedroom in excellent shape, and we pretty much know what’s in the boxes that are left.
Tonight we’re going to square the rest of that away so we can concentrate on cleaning, recycling and decorating. We both have vacation days on Friday, so we think we can get everything done in time. I hope. If not, those of you coming over – well, don’t peek in the closets.