Olympics

I am pretty excited for the Olympics. There is something great about finally having sporting events where basically our entire nation is rooting for the same team/individual instead of our intra-national NBA, NFL, NCAA, etc. I'm a little bummed today because we are probably going to miss the Opening Ceremonies, which are usually pretty amazing.

I can't decide which sport I am looking forward to most. There are so many exciting sports in the Winter Olympics! For me, the coolest are snowboarding, figure skating and freestyle skiing. The racing events are less exciting to watch than the events involving artistic form and routines. The lamest is curling. Obviously. But what even is Nordic Combined? I have no idea.

Anyways, I can never remember what all the Winter Olympics includes so here is a reminder of the medal events:

Alpine skiing - 10 events incl. downhill and slalom

Biathlon - 10 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Bobsled - 3 events: 4 man, 2 man, 2 woman

Cross-country skiing - 12 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Curling - 2 events: men's and women's

Figure skating - 4 events: Men's and women's singles, pairs, and ice dancing

Freestyle skiing - 6 events incl. moguls, aerials, and skicross

Ice hockey - 2 events: men's and women's tournaments

Luge - 3 events: 2 man, 1 man, 1 woman

Nordic combined - 3 events all individual of different courses

Short track speed skating - 8 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Skeleton - 2 events: men's and women's

Ski jumping - 3 events: small hill, men's large hill, team large hill

Snowboarding - 6 events incl. slalom, half-pipe, and snowboard cross

Speed skating - 12 events of varying course lengths and team sizes

Also here is the TV schedule from NBC.

Go team USA!

I love reading

As one of my 2010 resolutions, I determined that this year I was going to read 24 books. I decided that they should be a great variety of lengths, genres, etc. without specifying how many of each and so far I think I am doing pretty well on both the variety and quantity.

In January, I read 4 books:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This novella was very short (50 pages) and different from the movie, which we saw a while ago. The book was interesting and was written more like "imagine this scenario" than an actual novel with a plot. Three stars.

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

Having read all of the other Ender series books, I decided to finish out the series (assuming he is done writing these finally!) I was familiar with the story and this complemented the rest of the books quite well. It was a good read. Four stars.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This is a very interesting book revolving around a girl in Germany during WWII. The beginning is somewhat confusing but once you stick with it for a little while, you figure out who the characters are. Five Stars

A Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds

This is about a woman who tends the graveyard in a small town and is shunned by many of the townspeople because her face was burned when she was young. This was a pretty good book that in some ways reminded me of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It was entertaining and thought-provoking, although it had some bad language. Four stars.

In February so far (I know, only 1/3 of the way through it yet) I have read:

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

A well-written book about a girl in 15th century Florence whose life doesn't turn out at all like she thought it would. There is some material in this book that would make me hesitant to recommend it to others but it was still thought-provoking and interesting. Four stars.

Roots by Alex Haley

An excellent book. It has been a while since I read anything about early American history or Africa. This book is really quite amazing and has caused me to think a lot about slavery and seeing things from a new perspective. It is amazing to read how Alex Haley hunted down the facts about his genealogy and heritage. It made me want to talk to my elder relatives and find out the real details of their lives and where I came from. I highly recommend this book - don't be daunted by it's hugeness! Five stars.

I believe next on my list of things to read is Atlas Shrugged but after just finishing Roots (today) I may need a short little easy read before I jump into that. If anyone has any book recommendations for this year I would love to hear them. Thank you!

♫ I've Got the Whole World...

on my floor. ♫

This was from quite a while back but I just now found the pictures on our less-used camera. I was laying on the floor and was somewhat bored or restless. I ended up creating artwork using the carpet by brushing the fibers in different directions. Here is the result:

Tada!

Toby-zilla!

This one is supposed to be Jeran.

Random Cat Pictures

All I can say for these pictures is that Toby is a weird cat. And also good old Diego, since he is in one of them.

Snow Days

We had a very fun and exciting weekend. Although we didn't get the 6"-12" of snow that was forecast, we did get a few inches followed by the right conditions to turn that snow into a hard shell on everything that wasn't immediately cleared off.

Church was canceled on Sunday and driving was discouraged (because a lot of the people here apparently are idiots when it comes to snow driving). We made lemons into lemonade and had a wonderful friends-, food- and fun-filled weekend.

We ate at Panda Express on Friday night and then played fun games at R&L's.

I didn't realize just how comprehensively I missed the snow until we were driving and fishtailed on a turn and the only thought I had was a wonderfully nostalgic thought along the lines of "Now this REALLY feels like home!"

Saturday morning, Jeran shoveled our sidewalk and then tackled our friends driveway and sidewalk with a square-mouth shovel. We had sausage egg sandwiches and muffins for breakfast at A&M's and then relaxed and played games.

We also got to play with the cutest baby ever (R&L's). She has learned lots of new things recently like crawling and grabbing anything that looks interesting. She had a hard time moving around on the hard floor though.

We also managed to fit in some homework, apparently unnecessary Sunday lesson planning, and a few other things around the house.

Saturday night we went to R&L's and ate delicious Hawaiian haystacks. We played Bananagrams, Pears in Pairs, Call of Duty (blagh), CatchPhrase, and Rock Band.

In CatchPhrase, the girls stomped the boys by being quick-witted and using ESP:

"Uh, This is something Michael Jordan did."

"Moonwalk!"

"Yes!"

"It's a baseball team."

"Orioles!"

"Yes!"

The boys lost. Example:

After having separately guessing the words "laser" and "beam",

"Now put the two words together!"

"Tractor beam!"

"No"

"Tractor light?"

"No no no! The other word!"

"Tractor beam?"

"NO! The word from before!"

"Uh.............."

BUZZ!

Sunday morning, I slept in since our 9:00 church was canceled. At 11:00, R&L and A&M came to our house for Sunday brunch (Biscuit cinnamon rolls, hash brown and sausage breakfast bake, and muffins). Then we relaxed, watched Johnny Lingo (two people had never seen it!) and one or two of the New Testament lesson supplement videos and played Risk. It was my first time playing Risk the real way and apparently it was a non-typical game, since it only took about an hour (with 6 players) with Mary dominating the world in a very small number of turns. I think I still prefer my made-up way.

Then A&M taught me and Jeran how to play Agricola. It was pretty awesome. And not just because I won. :) After wrapping your head around the complexities of the game and it's strategy, it is very fun and interesting and we had been wanting to learn how to play it for some time now.

So all in all, it was a very fabulous weekend. And the snow is still here on Monday - schools are canceled, garbage collection is delayed, etc. but it will probably almost all be melted after today. I can hear it drip, drip, dripping away outside right now...

All Aboard the "Adidas Express"

Jeran likes walking. Sometimes, he would rather spend a long time walking somewhere than bother to call any of the large number of people who would be willing to pick him up if he is stranded at school or some such thing.

In response to questions like, "How did you get here?", he has often been known to say things like, "I took the Adidas Express." Anyone who doesn't understand at this point will have their eyes directed to his shoes, which are almost always the Adidas SS2Gs. (At this point I usually throw in an eye roll or an exasperated, "Why didn't you call me?!")

Any time the current pair are looking pretty beat up, it is time to get a new pair and shift all the other shoes down a rank:

Nice shoes,

not-terrible-but-not-great-looking sport or work shoes,

dirty work shoes,

I-don't-really-care-if-these-shoes-get-ruined activity shoes.

In a way, it is really nice. If we find a good sale on them, we can buy multiple pairs at once. And he usually doesn't have to spend much time deciding what he wants when we go shoe shopping.

When this picture was taken, he had long ago thrown out some of his older pairs. I have to say, I had a pair of women's adidas shoes that were a similar style and they were my favorite ever and if I could ever find them again, I would buy them.

Long live the Adidas Express!

Farewell My Friend

So I have some bittersweet news to share. In a previous post I mentioned that our cat Diego wasn't doing too well. We took him to the vet for a follow up visit after a rocky week of ups and downs after our Sunday trip to the emergency vet.

The vet said he isn't looking good and it is a great concern that he hasn't wanted to eat for a whole week and such and such. Long story short, after a very hard morning, we decided to let Diego go because it was going to be very expensive to treat him and even if he recovered fine this time, it is something that could recur at any time and be so expensive throughout his lifetime. We said goodbye to our poor, sweet Diego. It was so sad. All I could think about after leaving him at the vet was how his little paw would reach up and touch your cheek every morning when you picked him up for the first time.

After we got home, we got a call from the vet. They said one of the veterinary technicians there wanted to adopt Diego and attempt treatment. Hooray! I hope he made it through it and is happy at his new home. It really softened the blow of losing our little kitty. Thank you, wonderful tech person.

Things I will miss about Diego:

• He's got such beautiful markings.
• He was a good lap cat and would sit and sleep on you.
• In the morning he would reach up and touch your face with his paw.
• Jeran "symbiosing" with Diego, (Toby sucks at it).
• He meows back when you meow at him.
• Finding him in closets - he opened doors and crawled in to sleep in peaceful darkness
• Sticking your head near where he is sleeping and he gives a startled but questioning "Meow?"
• Seeing him and Toby wrestle.
• Hearing him chatter at the birds and squirrels out the window.
• Having him patiently pose for pictures however we want.
• Having him roll like a rolling pin back and forth.
• Intellectual conversations about the complexity of the mobius strip.
• Watching him watch the birds of paradise on planet earth. What a hoot!

Things about Diego that didn't make the previous list:

• Worrying about him scratching up the carpet all over instead of the scratching pole.
• Waking up to him scratching the carpet under our door.
• His scratching the furniture so that we will pay attention to him.
• Having to watch for anything left on the ground that he might want to pee on (victims included a blanket, towels, Jeran's backpack, grocery bags, shoes, newspaper, disassembled cat carrier... he wasn't doing so well his last few months with us...)
• Having to close the door every night so that he wouldn't walk on us and wake us up at 2-3 in the morning.
• Getting a cold, wet nose on your face at night if you didn't close the cats out.
• Having to watch very carefully how much/when you feed the cats because Diego won't let you forget and will eat any and all food available.
• Paw-kneading on people.

Diego, we love you and miss having you in our family. Have a long and healthy life!