My Dining Room

One thing I really like about our condo is the fact that we now have a dining room. In the ten years we have been married, this is the first place we have lived with this luxury. I still remember going to Crate & Barrel to pick out dining room furniture. This was a big deal and I had saved for months for the purchase. Matt and I spent over an hour going from table to table before we found just the right set.

But no matter how much I prepared him, he still was a little shocked at the price. The table wasn't the problem, it was the six chairs we were going to purchase. Considering they were nice hardwood chairs, I thought the price was pretty average. We weren't getting super expensive furniture, but we also weren't buying the set at Target. So Matt complained for a while, but he soon got over it.

In my last post I mentioned going to get Matt's new bike. It is fancy and special and now sits in my dining room along with the furniture pictured above. The bike costs more than the entire dining room set...

I'm sorry, I have no excuse

I recently received an email from my Aunt Polly asking if Matt and I were okay because I had not posted anything in over a month. No problems or accidents to report, we just seem to be unusually busy lately.

I spent most of February knitting a sweater-tank for my sister Michelle, and since I had the deadline of her birthday on the 19th, when I wasn't working or sleeping, I was knitting. I will post a picture of the sweater soon. I have to crop the picture; I promised I would remove her head (sounds pleasant, right?).

I have also been participating in a mystery sock group where every month we meet and get a new sock pattern one row at a time during the evening and then we have the rest of the month to finish the socks. This has been harder than I thought. So with a new sock coming up on the 31st, I am working whenever I get the chance to finish February's pair.

The snow storm we had at the beginning of the month proved to have some benefits. Matt and I actually spent an entire Saturday together just puttering around the house. We also learned how to rent movies online since we had no cable, not from the storm, but due to a hard-drive malfunction with our box.

Days before the storm hit, we had to go down to Cincinnati to pick up Matt's new bicycle. So the three of us hopped in the car after work and listened to old podcasts of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on my iPod. The drive took only about 90 minutes in each direction, but the bike fitting, test drive, computer installation, blah, blah, blah took almost 3 hours. Goliath and I took a walk that lasted about an hour. We then sat in the store for another hour, and spent the last part of the wait sitting in the car in the dark listening to a book about the Supreme Court. Goliath should now be able to tell you the names of the nine justices.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, Matt and I will be off to Washington, DC for about a week in the beginning of April. I have a library conference and he is going to bum around town. I know he is planning on renting a bike and riding down to Mount Vernon. He made the suggestion that we go together, but the trip is 18 miles one-way, and I don't think my weak little legs could handle that. For him, this is hardly even training distance, so I have wished him luck. I'm hoping to get enough free-time to visit the National Gallery and try my hand at getting into the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress. I know, I'm a library geek.

I'll post again soon with pictures.

Have a happy Easter.

Man, is it cold outside

Good thing I made these socks for myself.
It's okay, you can say it. You're impressed.
I can hardly believe it myself.

My monthly update

I was hoping that after Christmas I would have more time to devote to updating this blog, but things have not let up that much.

Matt has begun two-a-day training during the week and extended training on the weekends. Next weekend he travels down to the hills of southern Ohio for a team training retreat. He told me that he was asked to reserve a cabin for the event and since he put down the fee, he gets the king-sized bed all to himself. He sees this as a good/bad situation. It's good because everyone else in the cabin will have to be in bunk beds, but he is afraid when he comes home he'll crowd Goliath and I out. I hate to break it to him, but he already does that from time to time.

While he is off training, I have been busying myself with committee meetings and knitting groups. I am the chair of our church facilities committee, so I have been immersing myself in all things related to building maintenance. I ask Matt a lot of questions, but after 10 minutes of his detailed replies, I get a headache. This must be what he feels like when he asks me about library stuff. Note to self, keep my big yap shut. So, most of my Thursdays are taken up with meetings and every Wednesday I go to my local yarn shop for my knitting group. I don't talk much but I get a lot of work done and pick up several tips and tricks. I think it helps when you are not trying to balance a dog on your lap while avoiding stabbing him with needles. I have managed to finish the Christmas sweater for Brendan, a scarf for my sister's beau, and a pair of socks for myself (a first for me). I am in the process of knitting a test sample of another sweater vest for Matt, tweaking a pattern for a pair of thick wool socks for myself to wear around the house, and waiting for Matt to give me specific team colors for a toque. So be warned people to which I give birthday and Christmas presents, I have a stash of yarn that I want to use up this year, and I am on a mission.

In other news, Matt and I are slowly getting sucked into the Wii cult. We went over to Michelle's this weekend and had a play date with Connor, Cole, and Brendan. Matt seems to pick up what to do pretty fast. I still suck at it, but I showed improvement in the five hours that we were there. It is scary how fast the time went. Cole even created an avatar for me, complete with glasses, so I have to play so that she isn't shamed in front of the other avatars. But before we can think about getting one of our very own, we have to figure out how to get the video on my iPod to work through the television. So far, I only have sound, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

And on a final note, the ducks might take me out tonight when I get home. At lunch they were all having a feast around the patio and when I opened the door to let Goliath out, they started to charge me. I am pretty sure they were expecting some type of food. They wouldn't back off no matter how much I yelled and clapped my hands. So I let lose the hound and watched him chase off every last duck (over 40). I assume they have been plotting their revenge ever since.