(197). Postponed

After a long morning (I first logged in to work at 5AM), my meeting tomorrow was postponed, and relief set in as I knew I could work from home the entire day.   Woot woot.

After work, we set off for more adventures in sledding and attempted a trip to CVS – wow, people are terrible in driving in this stuff!  Myself included – so beware of me on the roads tomorrow as I actually make the trip in to work.  People are actually blocking off their parking spots with bins and chairs so that they will hopefully still be there upon the return home, and that will be me tomorrow.  For how long, we shall see – now we are forecasted for another 10+ inches Tues PM through Weds?  WOW.

Herding sleds makes Pinot one tired puppy. And Cashew - she gets tired just watching all the action from the window above.

(196). SnoOMG part 2 – day 3 (digging out)… & Superbowl!

Nick's almost completely untouched car

Today, we woke up and reality loomed – we had to get our cars out.  While UMD and the federal government are closed tomorrow, I may need to go into work (a looming customer meeting, if uncanceled, means a trip in for me both Monday and Tuesday).  So – we set off to clear out our cars, which were conveniently parked next to each other.  The entire experience was rather fun as (I think) our shovel is in Melanie’s trunk or my moms house in NY – and the stores had sold out of shovels by the time we got there last week, which left us to our own devices.

My snow removal weapon of choice - a plastic bin from Costco

My plastic bin, if the snow was allowed to set – would make for some killer ‘ice cubes’ for a future igloo.  Or something.

Digging both cars out was quite a process, despite our awesome neighbor lending Nick his shovel and our tag teaming all of the white stuff.

My mostly uncovered car behind Nick's not really uncovered car - someday we'll have a 2 car garage.

The worst part was by far the 4-5′ of untouched snow that needed to be moved from behind both vehicles before we could even attempt to back out.  But  – we got both cars out (hopefully it remains that way tomorrow), and to celebrate, we took Pinot out back for another afternoon adventure in sledding!  Our tube was a bit more deflated today though, just enough so that when Pinot would chase it and ‘attempt’ to bite it, the attack actually worked and she got her tooth in it.  So our sledding was cut a bit short so we could come back inside and patch up the River Rat.  Hopefully it will hold and see another day tomorrow.

After a relaxing afternoon of reading, Dead Place on X-box, lifting weights, we sat down to cheer on New Orleans (Who DAt?!)  – assuming that we burned massive amounts of calories during the snow removal excursion, we didn’t feel at all guilty about downing some Doritos with salsa con queso as a precursor to our spicy black bean veggie chili topped with avocados.  (yum).

Superbowl Snacks

So excited the Saints won – and excited that we’ll be down in New Orleans in a couple of weeks (a first for both of us).  It was actually a good game to watch, and the commercials – the commercials made up for a couple of years of lackluster game breaks.  We were both loving them this year.  Good stuff for a Sunday night.

(195). SnoOMG part 2, day 2 – Adventures in Sledding

Today, I woke up and took Pinot outside.  This is what we saw.

Poor Pinot - this is her usual 'potty' spot.

After a morning of (me = lifting weights, running on the treadmill; nick = playing dead space), we set out in our snow gear to go sledding in our back yard.  I should first start by saying that Nick bought us a blow up sled yesterday afternoon when we unsuccessfully tried to buy a shovel at the local hardware store.  But he didn’t just buy any blow up sled.  He bought a River Rat – the tube that I first got at about 12, used it extensively in our pool and at the cottage until it finally gave up when I was 18, only to quickly be replaced – there is a River Rat at the cottage right now, just waiting for me to come back for it.  Oh yes.  Nick bought a River Rat, without knowing all that back story.  I thought it was awesome

Normally, I’m not a big sledder.  I harbor a dislike for sledding from childhood when we would go to my old elementary school, and would almost run someone over each and every time.  I actually have a memory of my mom going off on some random lady after she yelled us for almost running into her after she had decided it was a great idea to walk horizontally across the middle of the hill (my mom was totally justified – the lady started it, it was just odd because usually my mom is so quiet/non-confrontational.)  Anyway – today, in the quiet of our backyard, with Nick and Pinot – today, sledding was fun!  So fun in fact that I’d do it again in a heartbeat – and actually, am counting down the hours till we get to go out and do it again tomorrow.

This is Nick after his first 'fast' run down the hill. He's the love of my life, he is.

He is also the love of Pinot's life - she was VERY concerned about what the heck he was doing on that contraption.

Pinot and I - these are my new snowpants that I am completely enamoured with.

Yes, all 3 of us did go sledding on the same tube. It was fantastic, and probably insanely funny to witness in person!

Follow up – Power

Amazingly, our power went back on last night around midnight.  Looking forward to fun times in the snow with Nick, Pinot, and my plaid snowpants today!

(194). SnoOMG part 2

As of 7:02 PM, our power is out… And we aren’t expecting to see it again until Sun or Mon. Thank goodness for gas stoves that allow us to cook, and that we just stocked up on candles at iKea. Silly that we made it through the entire December storm without so much as a blip, and this one has barely started and we are already dark. We have already mastered stovetop gourmet pizzas – and are now channeling old Abe Lincoln and reading by (candle) fire light. (Am I the only one that sang a song about that in gradeschool?)

Gourmet pizza cooked on a stovetop by candlelight - how romantic!

Reading Lights

(193). Traffic and Work Centered Day

It took me 2 hours to get to work this morning.  A little excessive compared to normal.  Part of that was due to my finally taking Pinot to doggie daycare this morning – I figured that she deserved to romp around with the puppies all day since

1. I was going to be at work later than normal
2. She’s been cooped up indoors for much of the past week
3. There is a snowy weekend ahead

Normally dropping her off doesn’t take too long, but this morning it was compounded with an accident on the beltway that slowed my speed down to a (lucky) 5mph.  Aaah well.  The drop off this morning wasn’t great either – but I must becoming more immune to it -Pinot did NOT want to go to daycare.  Not wanting to go meaning sitting down next to the car, refusing to walk towards the door, shaking and trying to run away.  In the beginning, she’d do this and I was lucky that Nick was there to get me to walk away.  I’m now learning that she actually has fun once she gets inside, and am much more willing to pick her up and walk her to the door, only to check in on her on the webcam an hour later and see her grinning and running around like the morning had never happened.  It’s all about the separation anxiety I guess – she doesn’t want to be away from us.

Anyway – I did finally make it in to work, and I did end up working late.  I’m assuming you can guess that leaving late and picking Pinot up meant that my commute home was 2 hours too.  Being reunited with Pinot was much more happy than the drop off this morning, which is always nice.  But really -  4 hours on the road today?  Yikes.  It took a lot out of me, and rolling into the house after 6PM found me snoozing on the couch for an hour, rallying to have Annie’s mac and cheese for dinner with Nick, and then proceeding to go right back to bed when he left for the late volleyball game that I was missing due to another early morning (complete with another early meeting) tomorrow.

But onto the picture for the day.  As some of you may know, I have never considered myself to be a good coder.  I don’t enjoy doing it, I tend to oversimplify things – or do them in the most inefficient way possible.  I’m continually astounded at people like my husband, who just ‘get’ it and can do it without much thought.  With all of that said, a few (7!) years ago now at work, I was a code monkey.  Specifically, I was a code monkey who was coding for an embedded system to talk USB.  It was a rough journey.  USB was newer back then.  I had one specific task and it took me months and months, but I did finally get it to work – it took quite a few posts to Linux mailing lists, but I got it to work.  And for that reason, I’m always floored when, now, years later, someone random emails me about it.  Today it was a professor from an embedded computing department in Vienna, Austria.  Wow – call me silly, but that is exciting.  Now, if only I could remember exactly what I had to do to get it to work….

I've had people ask me how I did this in the past, but I've never been told I could be one of the heroes - neat

In other news, we’re apparently heading for another snow storm that is just as big as the one we had in December.  Doesn’t the weather realize that I moved “south” to avoid this sort of thing?  Is it a coincidence that we’re at exactly the same point in our training that we were the last time this happened due to the re-shuffle with which race we were planning for?  Aaaarrrrrrgg – I despise treadmill running, and it seems that is what awaits me, all weekend long.

(192). Snowy Morning

Views from my office chair this morning

Woke up today to a few inches of snow – gorgeous.  My immediate thought was “dammit, if I didn’t have an executive review all morning today, I would totally work from home to avoid driving in this.”  But then, the roads were pretty good once you left our complex, and all was well.

Busy like a bee after work today – got home around 4 and was going nonstop till bed:

• Took Pinot out
• Ate a late late lunch
• Went grocery shopping
• Put away groceries
• Ran 6 miles inside on the treadmill (treadmill running feels like it takes FOREVER!)
• Made dinner and got it in the oven to bake for an hour – a yummy cauliflower pot pie type thing with a kalamata olive crust – it was really good, but took a bit of prep time
• Lifted weights
• Had dinner with Nick at about, oh, 9:45PM when he got home – good thing for the late lunch
• Fell asleep on the couch

So, it seems we’re going to have a snowy weekend once again….hrmmm….  is it a coincidence that this year I’m actually trying to run outside during the winter (long runs at that), and it seems to keep coming down by the foot just in time for the weekend run?  Hrmmmmm…..

(191). Happy Groundhog Day

Doesn't Phil know that we *just* left a PA ski lodge?

Bright and early this morning I got a text message from Phil the groundhog saying that he was heading back underground because more winter was coming.  Good stuff.  (And – nice marketing plan, Pennsylvania!)

Today felt like a Monday, probably because it was my first day in the office this week.  Nick’s meetings were canceled and he was able to recoop a bit at home again today – he seems to be a bit better, but nowhere near fully better yet.  After work, my last piece of 2009 stuff came in the mail and we finished and filed both sets of tax returns (yeah, we really are those people that do them on February 1.)  So it’s nice to have that out of the way.  Otherwise, looking forward to the season premiere of Lost tonight!

And  – my taste buds, they are a changing – I always used to despise Brussels sprouts.  Passionately.  But – I’ve heard a lot about them recently, namely that roasting them was the way to go.  Tonight we experimented and made a roasted Brussels sprouts pasta with a light sauce of diced tomatoes, diced zucchini, onions and veggie broth.  It was pretty good – but good enough for the sprouts to maybe enter the rotation?  I think we need another couple of taste tests to find out….

(190). Bullet Dodged

I worked a half day or so remotely today and Nick was at home completely out of it with a fever and all.  I think come the end of the day we were both feeling a bit better, or, at least, I was.  M’hunny is still needing the chicken soup treatment.

My big adventure for the day was my appointment with the Apple Genius Bar for my phone, which seemed to have survived the hazards from last week with the exception of…. randomly shutting off and having the battery charging circuit blown.  Luckily for me, I dodged a bullet and it was still under warranty – my top water sensor hadn’t gone off but the bottom one had, and the case was cracked and I didn’t even realize it.  Free replacement?  Yes please.  And I invested in a hard shell case instead of my soft one to boot.  Isn’t it pretty?

My new, hard, blue patterned iPhone case

Other fun for the blanket covered today included starting our taxes and ordering Chinese food.  Good times.

(189). On the road again

One last look out towards the slopes before heading home. Contrary to popular belief, that is in fact a table and not a hot tub.

Up early this morning, we were on the road before noon after yummy breakfast burritos (thanks Mehul) and coffee (thanks Liz)!  I got a bit nauseous on the way back and we both had quite a headache (must have been too many caffeine free diet cokes last night) – felt bad, but Nick drove the entire way back.  Not feeling well, we did nothing tonight except hang with the pets and watched a movie.