Postcards

Since we started letting Spiff outside a while back, he's been trying his best to earn his keep. There was the gopher head that he brought back first, the lizard he caught half a dozen times, various birds... But when even bringing back a fully grown, live squirrel got him yelled at, he decided to put forth the extra effort to find something he was sure we'd like. As I opened the door yesterday to take out some garbage, I found a half-eaten burrito on the door mat. He even got one with pinto beans, just the way I like.

So I've been wondering if I should just start updating this thing again like it hasn't been seven months since I last posted, or if I should let it die a quiet death, or wait for some sufficiently big news worth writing about. Door number three it is!

Today is Jenny's and my two-year anniversary. I bought her an orchid. There was also a package from Amazon on the porch when she got home, containing some books she had ordered and a lovely diamond ring which I hid inside with my awesome ninja skills. Not the most romantic proposal ever, but she said yes. The date has not yet been determined, so don't even ask.

Yay Christmas! The last few days have been insanely busy. I finished most of my Christmas shopping ahead of time and got presents mailed off early enough, but I had to get something for Jenny's dad for a gift exchange with her family, and we hadn't decided what I should get him until this past weekend. So I went out to buy his present over the weekend and got to deal with the holiday crowds. I got him a digital picture frame, which involved driving to four different stores because the first three were either completely sold out of everything or just had very ugly looking frames.

We had Jenny's entire family over yesterday, so we had to unpack some of her stuff and do a lot of cleaning. Jenny's been out of commission with pneumonia for the last week or two, though. I managed to get the house in pretty good shape, though. I also chopped off the bottom of our Christmas tree and got it set up in the living room over the weekend. We'd bought the tree a couple of weeks ago while I was still sick, so it's been sitting on the patio in a bucket of water since then. I got it trimmed to the perfect height for the living room, and Jenny helped put lights and ornaments on it.

Some of Jenny's family showed up on Monday and spent the night, the rest came over yesterday just for Christmas. Things are finally settling down today. Last night during dinner, I would clean off the counters in the kitchen and load up the dishwasher, and by the time the dishwasher was finished, there'd be another pile of dishes needing to be washed. It was a good time, though. Jenny got me Rock Band for the XBox, and her sister got me Guitar Hero 3 as part of the gift exchange. Those should keep me busy for a while.

A couple of weekends ago, Ice Oasis had a little Winter Wonderland thing going, where they put up some Christmas trees on the ice, surrounded by piles of snow and benches. That was a lot of fun, and gave me a chance to practice some skating without the pressure of a game. Our regular games for that night were actually canceled because of it and rescheduled for this past Saturday morning. We still had our regular games in the evening, too, for the possibility of four games in one day.

I skipped the first game, because it was just too early, but got there early enough for my team's game. We lost the game, but I scored my third goal. I came home and got some rest, then went back up for the two evening games. I subbed for one of the other teams in the first game. We lost that one, in large part because our goalie didn't seem to care too much about keeping the puck out of the net. Fortunately, that goalie was playing for the other team during the second game, which made it pretty easy for me to score two goals during the first period and an assist later in the game. We won that one 4-2.

The other interesting thing about that game was that our entire team was there, and we didn't play with any subs. That left us without two full shifts, and with one fewer man on the bench than the other team (which had four or five subs), but at the same time we were all much more invested in winning the game. All too often, we have subs that end up playing defense, taking long shifts, and not really putting much effort into the game, which results in the other team getting to the net more often than they really should. Playing with just my teammates was a lot more fun.

There are cats in my house! So I finally got everything unpacked and was settling into my new house, and then Jenny moved in. Now there are boxes and stuff everywhere again. Today we brought the cats over. Kitties! They're locked up in the bedroom with us now. Pixel's exploring the bathroom, and Spiff was camped out by the door waiting to check out the rest of the house.

The new house is pretty awesome. Jenny's painting one of the bedrooms because she couldn't stand the color. I've got two of the pinball machines home, but there's still one at work and one at a friend's house. Other than that, I'm pretty settled in, and soon Jenny will be, too. I've got some pictures up, but the house was still pretty disorganized when I took them.

We flew to South Carolina for Thanksgiving with Jenny's sister and dad. We stayed at her uncle Moe's house for a couple of days, and I got to meet a bit of her extended family. They were all fun people, and they had a couple of dachshunds running around the house. Our stay there was great, but we had flight delays going both ways. On the way back, we spent about six hours in DC and didn't get home until 3 in the morning.

Work is work. One of our publishers, SAGE Publications, ran a hugely successful free trial during the month of November, which generated a bit more traffic than usual. Dealing with that kept me pretty busy and not working on the stuff I wanted to get done. I finally got some time to start working on that, and then I got sick for a week. Still getting over that.

I'll be missing my ice hockey game tonight. My skating has improved a bit, but I still need to work on handling the puck. Most of the time I end up passing it almost as soon as I get it, which isn't so good. Last week I scored my second goal. Woo!

Escrow closed on the condo and the new house on Friday without any problems. I picked up a U-Haul that morning for the move. While I was waiting for the guy to bring the truck around, my realtor showed up to give me the keys to the new house. (Wow, service!) Keith and Alex from pinball and Harold from work came over to help load the truck. It took two trips to get everything moved, but that went pretty smoothly. After we finished unloading everything, we went to the nearby Sushi Factory for all-you-can-eat sushi. Yum! I took the truck back with Jenny, and we went back to the condo to finish cleaning things up. The rain that had been forecast for that day started just as we were finishing around 9:30.

Yesterday we put together all the furniture and unpacked some stuff. We still need to get the dryer hooked up, and there's no TV or internet access yet, but it's getting there. I took a bunch of pictures of room full of boxes, but haven't been able to upload them yet.

I skipped ice hockey this weekend, but last weekend I scored my first ice hockey goal. Woo!