the fun never ends around here

Thursday night ScootKing called to see if we wanted to have an early weekend beer, so we said yes, of course.

We ended up at this crazy place with "Dick" in it's name, which I was always a little curious about, but was a little frightened to go in, based on its name and it's rather dive-like facade. ScootKing said they played jazz there sometimes, so I was comforted. We get there and they have 2.50 Bass and little tiny bottles of red wine for Johnny. We play some pool, people arrive and the band warms up. I want to mention, at this point, there were 2 strange things happening at once, the synchronous nature of which were quite the highlight of the evening.

First, a guy in the band was doing a sound check for his jazz flute. Second, Leo was drinking chocolate pudding through a straw. Here's another dark bar photo of that.

[For the record, I tried to record the yazz flute, but he quit playing before I laid down a good track.]

Today we helped my sister-in-law (hereafter known as Sil) cater a wedding. No, I didn't know she was a caterer either. She made some cakes for some people at her church, and so they asked her to cater ths wedding. She said yes, but there really was a lot involved. We pitched in, and everything went fine, except the cream cheese mints. I will get a photo of the georgeous wedding cake and post it sometime soon.

Tonight Johnny is working on a project where she is drawing a cuckoo clock scene. She was looking for a photo of a person making the third-grade face you make at people when you think they are crazy (or in this case, cuckoo). She couldn't find one, so we tried some photos of our own.

Please excuse the hair in the towel.

And then this one.

Here's Johnny's first effort:

But this is certainly the one that really, truly masters the action and the feeling, all in one.


You should try it. It's harder than you think.

works is busy

My new job is busy. I have been tossing around the idea of getting a Treo Palm to deal with the calendar. It is very exciting, in a office/paperwork/non-Hollywood kind of way, and I am so glad. I just can't believe how lucky I am to have gotten out of The Cataloging Factory relatively unscathed.

Today is my "Research Day" when I am supposed to take time to do research to work toward tenure. It's hard. I came in and actually worked half of the day on this giganto problem with the accounting unit and now I have to figure out when to re-allocate my research time.

In the meantime, I will think about planning for our trip to Chicago! We are taking my brother and sister-in-law for their xmas present at the end of next month. So far, we know we are going to Second City and to some steakhouse or something where they got a gift certificate, and maybe to Millenium Park.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for fun things to do while we are there?

Rock on Ohio!

So after the movie Friday, we went to The Surly Girl Saloon for dinner and then to our neighborhood kareoke bar. We ran into some old friends there, played some pool and sang some songs, as expected. I even tried to get a photo of the awesome sign above the table, in the shape of the state of Ohio, telling us Ohioans to Rock On. Here's a super dark photo in case you just need to see it for yourself.

The best part, by far, was after I completed a rousing rendition of Van Halen's You Really Got Me and a friendly drunken stranger approached me and said "We think you totally have the voice to sing 'Baby got Back'."

The voice?

There's no voice involved there. I just have to be able to say Honda, Fonda and Anaconda, all in a hurry.

I told her I was sorry, but thought I was done singing for the night. Maybe next time.

Saturday we finally went to see Walk the Line at our walking distance movie theater/pub.
Sunday was filled with playoff dreams fulfilled and shattered. Two weeks to the Super Bowl! (I mean, the big game)

oh, those bangs.

update to house problem: no update really, just to say that it was much warmer in the house last night, hopefully that can't be completely attributed to the fact that it is 56 degrees today.

Tonight, i am psyched to say, we are going to see the Ohio premiere screening of The notorious Bettie Page. I feel pretty sure that I won't be worried about insulation as I watch.

House of Horrors

So it has been cold. In the house. Like, really really cold. I can see my breath sometimes when i wake up.

Our last gas bill was $470. As soon as I opened it, I called Johnny and she turned the thermostat down to 50. We got another space heater and began making good use of the wonderful electric throws that Johnny's mom got us for xmas. But it is still really cold. We started troubleshooting and it became clear that the house didn't have any insulation. there is 6 inches in the area between the upstairs and the attic and a little in the basement, but that pretty much covers it. We started calling contractors.

We found one and my lovely new co-worker offered to look themup on Angie's List for us, since she had a membership. They had all A's except a recent B in punctuality (which was an issue for me because I had a 9 am meeting). We agreed they'd come early and I was all worried about it. They came 10 minutes after 8, which was perfect. I signed the papers and left.

I got this cute message at 3:30 saying that they were all done and had cleaned up and everything had gone really well.

Johnny called at 4 saying that it was a disaster. She came home to broken asbestos siding patched with SPACKLING. Mud on the floors and insulation (kinda like those little peanuts) all over our stuff in storage in the attic.

WTF.

I called to complain and after much rigamaroll they offered us this: a $500 check or they'd replace the siding. The problem is that you can't really buy asbestos siding anymore. The people who lived here before moved the door, apparently, and replaced the siding area with wood siding in the same shape. So what do we do? We are going to talk about it and call them tomorrow. What jerks. I read that it is okay to seal the siding yourself to keep the harmful fibers from getting into the air. Then maybe we could paint it.

If you live in the area and are thinking of getting insulation, don't use these guys.

After all this, it better be warmer in here, dammit.

coffee anyone?

To return to the topic of work.

I pointed out my window, but I haven't talked much about the rest of my environment. basically, my office is inside a coffee shop. No, really, it is. Like, if I stand at the door, there is a table with a student studying RIGHT THERE. When I approach my office door, people think I am walking up to their tables to talk to them. It's really weird, actually. Johnny brought me some much-appreciated office decor Thursday and it seemed even more ridiculous when she was walking with me.

Another side-effect of this is that all day my door is shut to help silence some of the chatter. It does not, however, drown out the calls for "Asiago bagel with cream cheese" or "Double vanilla latte" or the popular "Mocha Java with a shot of banana". Yes, someone actually ordered that. ew.

It's not that bad really, I appreciate the background noise. So while I can get a good sense of popular student culture by having this particular office location, I might actually appreciate it when the library starts renovating and I move to a distant warehouse filled with library staff and books that no one will come that far to check out.

To add some photo-glamour to this post, here is a photo of the south half of my office, post- Johnny's recent visit:



Note the fancy IKEA artwork. [Disclaimer: Johnny has provided me with some very cool artwork that is strategically placed in other locations in this very same office, but unfortunately, most of them are not in this photo.]

I want some.

you would never know it by reading, but i actually do have other things to do than talk about my job (which is still good, thanks).

My sister-in-law has some kind of sweet hook up with Whole Foods where she has become a part of the almost-ready-to-go-bad food pipeline and we get to reap the benefits. We got "a shipment" Tuesday night and as I type, I am eating a delicious piece of pecan pie. This morning I had an organic mixed berry harvest muffin and some yummy bean and rice thing for lunch. Whenever we pick up food, we always get some for our pals and so we dropped some off at ScootKing's house while they were out seeing Eve Ensler's show, The Good Body. The next day she emailed me to say thanks and we were talking about the show and all. Our email conversation went a little something like this:

Me: Yeah, I wanted to go to that, but I never got around to getting tickets or whatever.

ScootKing: You should do it. It is so great!! We really loved it [and etc.].

4 to 7 minutes pass...

[Phone rings.]

Me: Hello?

SK: Hey. I just won tickets to see The Good Body tonight, do you want them?

Me: huh? won? what?

SK: Yeah, I was just sitting here surrounded by dips and salsa and good bread and the radio said it was giving away tickets. I thought "I've got to win these!" so I called and I won!

Such is the way with ScootKing. This woman has the most uncanny ability to win stuff. Johnny says she also always gets really good parking spots.

We went to the show, obviously, and it was really great. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go.

Woo for new!

Yesterday was my first day at the new job. Woo!

I never thought I would be happy to go to meetings, but I really feel this immense sense of relief. The walk takes approximately 27 minutes and goes quite nicely. This morning my ipod treated me with a tremendous shuffle sample, which pretty much had me skipping here. Aaah...such relief! Can I say it again? Relief.

Here's a picture of my new building.



If you look at the bottom left hand side of the photo, there is a green tree there. On the other side of that tree (but out of the photo, obviously) is my office window.

before and after

In the spirit of the New Year, I thought I would give a little presentation of some things that have changed recently.

I never did post before photos of the house, so I will start there.

Here is what our bedroom looked like when we moved in:


And here is what it looks like now:


Another change, as you know, is the new job. Today is my last day of Old Job and New Job starts Monday. I am very excited about riding the bus or walking to work. I am considering getting a bike, even though I am fairly afraid of them.

Old Job:


New Job:


Next, we have visual (and possibly disturbing) evidence of Johnny's knee surgery. here is her cute lil' knee before:


And here is the franken-knee:


Her staples came out today and she said she kept them. They are probably in a baggie.

Here is the post-staple-removal photo:


And finally, this is a photo of The Agent and Johnny after a refreshing taste of hot candied nuts from a stand in Manhattan:

mmm.

I think they looked like this before: