One down, two to go

We had Christmas at FIL's this weekend. They really are wonderful people, but good-golly, retirement makes FIL a little overbearing. I ate too much, but at least didn't drink too much. My favorite new gift? A Teavana Perfect Tea Maker:

You put the loose tea in the cup, pour boiling water over it, steep, set the maker over your coffee cup and it drops down. No bits (*waves at MC*) in my cup and no drips. Chris remembered how much I coveted it when we went to Mall of America recently. Step-MIL was heading to Mall of America, so Chris slipped her a gift tip for me. Voila! Can you even believe he remembered!?

I have a pumpkin scone to eat this a.m. Mmmmm.

I sent 75% of my holiday cards this a.m. I'll finish the rest tonight. I also sent out cookies to my bloggy peep today!

Watched The Proposal. One of those cute, silly movies. And you get a nice, long look at shirtless Ryan Reynolds. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Ever seen There Will be Blood? Thinking of taking that to Christmas with MIL, but not sure if it's one of those with lots of uncomfortable scenes for family viewing.

ETA: Funny thing at the doctor's office Friday (annual exam). The nurse says, "Have you recently had a large fluctuation in weight????" My answer was no. Apparetly they had me down at a completely random 123 last time (add 70 to that and it was probably accurate). We had a good laugh. Another interesting thing from my visit. I started getting mammograms last year because of family history, but my doctor said, "I'm concerned that you are so young and that's a lot of radiation to be exposing you to in your lifetime. Let's send you to a specialist to see if a baseline MRI would be best, and then less frequent mammograms." I think that makes a lot of sense. We are in agreement about self-exams still being important and we reviewed propper technique. I was happy about that.

Salad

Let's suppose you were having a very small dinner party (just a few couples) and people have asked what they can bring. You decide to ask someone to bring a salad. Would you tell them what kind of salad to bring? I might ask them to bring a lettuce salad, but I'd go no further than that. Or I'd tell them what else we were having and assume they'd bring something complementary.

I was asked to bring "a spinach or arugula winter salad with cranberries, walnuts and a citrus dressing." Not even "something like" that. It was very specific. I am bringing a baby greens salad with dried cranberries, fresh raspberries, pecans and a cranberry vinegarette. Do you think I'll be turned away?

Am I the only one that thinks this is a bit odd to be this specific?

Ouch!

I've been having neck pain and headaches for about a week now. I rarely have headaches, so it's a bit disconcerting. I frequently have neck pain, though, so no surprise there.

I could be a hypochondriac and assume it's meningitis. Just to feel better, I should take my temperature and see if it's running high.

More likely it's just either snow shoveling or bad posture catching up with me.

I see the doc on Friday for my annual exam. I am afraid to mention it, lest she think it worthy of testing for meningitis (spinal tap!). Let's hope I feel better by then. I've been doing stretches, but should be strengthening my core a little more.

Looking forward to vacation

After this winter wollop, I have our January mini-cruise on my mind. We weren't going to do one, but decided it is worth our mental health. We just needed to do it super-duper cheap. And if there's one thing I can do, it's finding and inexpensive cruise (still working on the "spend less money while on cruise" thing).

So, for $199/pp we booked an inside room on the NCL Sky, for a quick 4 nighter to the Bahamas. We are flying into Miami on Saturday, and leave for the cruise Monday afternoon. I know, it's the Bahamas and not too exciting, but it's warm. We talked my sister and her hubby into joining us.

Well, the price dropped even more last week, so I called the cruiseline to see if they'd sport me an upgrade (NCL is stingy about giving credit when there is a price drop, which is fine). Some people on cruisecritic.com said they've had varying degrees of success, so I figured it never hurts to ask. Me and my sister were both upgraded. Yay-bigger rooms and now we have a window.

I also scored a dress on clearance at JCP this morning. $15 and it will be good for the cruise for dinner, and even nice to wear to work with a black lightweight sweater.

Creative gifting

I am kind of fed up with holiday consumerism for some reason this year. Buying a bunch of expensive things for grown adults bothers me.

So, I'm trying to be more creative this year.

FIL
He needs a new desktop computer. Our old one just needs a new chip, so we are giving him the computer and BIL is having it fixed.

In addition, he wanted a Thai cookbook. Instead, I am printing him my favorite Thai recipes and filling a basket with ingredients he'll need, but might have a hard time finding in his small town.

I also made him and his wife some homemade Kaluha and Irish Creme.

MIL
I've typed up a book of some recipes I enjoy, that I know she'd enjoy and that have ingredients she uses. She's been talking about how she checks out cookbooks from the library, so I thought this was a good idea.

I need to get her something else, but haven't decided yet.

My dad
He lives by himself, but stays with his GF a lot. They both work full time, and tend to eat the same things over and over. We are smoking a pork butt, shredding it, and vacuum sealing it in smaller servings for the freezer. We'll include homemade bbq sauce.

My oldest sister
In addition to some stuff from B&BW, I'm giving her my homemade pepper jelly with a super cute little spoon from World Market, some mascarpone cheese and fancy crackers.

Forecast

TUESDAY:
Mostly cloudy and turning windy with snow developing; heavy snow and blowing and drifting snow overnight.
High: 29
Wind: NE 15-25 MPH

WEDNESDAY:
Cloudy, windy, and turning colder with snow. Blowing and drifting snow likely. Total accumulation: 8-12".
Low: 28
High: 28; temperatures falling throughout the day

THURSDAY:
Variably cloudy, breezy, and very cold.
Low: 4
High: 14

FRIDAY:
Partly sunny and continued cold.
Low: 4
High: 18

SATURDAY:
Partly sunny and cold.
Low: 4
High: 20


*cries*
After almost three hours of futzing, the snowblower attachment was installed yesterday. Sigh.

Lack of Creativity

So my boss likes to "jazz up" reports ocassionally. Our final reports for grants are often strict about plain jane formatting, so we only jazz them up if they are going to outsiders on a fairly frequent basis, or going to someone important.

Well, one report done in March is now going to somewhere important. She wanted to jazz it up. I offered to do it, as our student workers are tied up, and frankly I kind of enjoy this stuff. She says she doesn't want to waste my time and runs off to find someone else to do it. She asked a young secretary who is very competent. I thought it was probably a great choice.

Wrong o. Barb asked her to make the report look nice. Her response? She put a border on the cover page and used arched Word Art for the title and make the author names bigger. All in black & white.

Seriously.

In twenty minutes I downloaded a good Word template and fixed up the formatting intricacies. I'm not exactly a creative genius, but I can at least think to use a template that looks pretty.

Oh, and in unrelated chatter, I am going to be racist and say I hate listening to many Japanese women talk on the phone in their native language. The rhythm is so grating to my ears. They often drag out the end of the last word in their sentence. It's like a roller coaster that keeps going quickly up, then slowly down.

Blu-Ray

We bought a new blu-ray player on Sunday from Amazon. Free super saver shipping, and it's expected to arrive here tomorrow. Yay!

Our old DVD player (pretty basic model, 9 years old) has crappy picture and even worse sound. I mean really, really horrible sound. So we had to decide between a regular upconvert DVD player, a blu-ray player, or a PS3. We do not have a gaming system, but Chris wants one (ok, we have an old Nintendo and Atari, but that doesn't count). However, we'd both rather have a Wii.

Chris tried to trick me into the BUY A TV, GET A FREE PS3 OR BLU RAY deals at several retailers. No way, no how. He's so sneaky. He tried to say this would solve my issue that the living room tv would become "Chris is constantly playing games" tv and I'd be irritated. I also said he'd be bothered if I wanted to do the Wii Fit in the living room while he wanted to watch tv. We have a tv in our bedroom, but it's a pretty old one. So, he claimed, by getting another nice tv, we could turn the four season room into a gaming room. *eye roll* Nice try. I mean it's not a terrible idea, but it's also an $800 idea when frankly, all we NEED right now is a new DVD player.

So I knew I wanted a blu-ray player, as it's where movie technology is going, and you can still play regular dvds. I also like the option to beam in movies from Netflix, though doing so is an extra cost. I like the option, though.

And that is my long, convoluted story of our new blu-ray player. Terribly exciting, I know.