jesser

Currently, it's -6 out. With a windchill of -25. And Matt still holds hopes of going skiing in this frigid climate. Ha! Taking the dog out 3x/day has become really really hard. Especially since Ms. Puppy clearly does not feel the cold like we do. Yesterday she had me outside in the wind for a good 10 minutes while she did her business. Usually it's closer to 5. But who can be mad at the puppy?

And of course, I must wish you a happy Chinese New Year. It's the year of the monkey! Just like it was when Matt and I were born. In honor, Google has decorated their banner with a couple of monkeys.

Happy New Year!

It's awful. We totally managed to trash this apartment over the weekend. So congratulations to us. I guess it was a successful weekend. I will, of course, be cleaning up today. But not that much … our vacuum is in the shop for its yearly checkup. Hopefully it will come back tomorrow and I can rid our floor of all the dog hair that has accumulated. It's quite gross.

It's absolutely freezing here … still. We got up early this morning to go visit a travel agent. She was not very nice and absolutely no help (quoted us about $300 worse than what we could do!) and we had to get up way early. Anyhow, when we were in Matt's car, the thermometer was reading 5 degrees. Brrr!

Without getting into specifics (I just don't feel like typing that much) Matt and I have been dealing with govenment agencies at all levels for the past two days. It's been exhausting. The most frustrating individual who we had to deal with was the Dane County Clerk. She's supposed to handle name changes, yet when I called to ask her how Matt would legally change his name, she said, “I don't know. Call a laywer.” But today, I think it's mostly over with. Thank goodness. I can't handle any more completely pointless phone calls.

I've been really into starting some new crafts lately and I've come across two or three on Craftster, in the latest issue of ReadyMade, and various other sources that I would like to try out:

+ Tyvek Bag
+ Shrinky-Dink Pushpins
+ woven paint chip wallets (sounds out there, no?)
+ a more girly version of the duct tape wallet
+ some sort of bag (I just got my sewing machine back!)

I think I'm in project mode. But I've also made myself promise that I won't start anything new before I reorganize my craft/art supplies. They're consuming lots of space and they're very un-tidy.

I just did probably one of the hardest workouts I've ever done. In about 45 minutes, I managed to burn 500 calories. As some old dude was on my treadmill, I went to the other workout room and used the elliptical machine. Man! That thing kicks your butt. So now, post shower, I'm actually feeling very good. I have that feeling of being tired but in a satisfying way.

And as usual, I'm looking at Amazon. They give me the most ridiculous suggestions. Half of them are something I've already bought in another form (VHS instead of DVD) and half of them are stuff I'd never buy in the first place. For instance, today, they have a biography of Pete Rose listed. What the hell? I hate baseball. Amazon: Why would you put this on my suggestions list?? Just stop trying. You could do better with random suggestions.

For fun, some things I wonder about:
+ Ladies, if you put lipstick on in the morning and then carry some with you in your purse, is it the same color or a different one?
+ There's tons of 1800 numbers with letters behind them where there's way more than 7 letters (1.800.ONLYCABLECAN for example). How does that work?
+ If you could get in someone else's head, would something you normally see as say … yellow (a banana for example) look like what you tink of as blue instead?
+ If you go back in time and spend a year there, and then go forward in time to the same day you left, are you a year older or the same age?