Quality

Not Quality: The previous owners of my house
It's not difficult to not suck at fixing up a house. I'm not professional grade, but I don't suck at it. And I don't really have to try very hard not to suck. I don't understand why you would cover holes in the floor and walls with poorly affixed tile. Not only did he just stick glue on the back of the tile without prepping the walls first, he didn't even get white tile. He bought the cheap, ugly, gold tile, and then painted it. Painted the tile. Because that won't scrape right off. So, we've been fixing up the bathroom this weekend. We're doing things a lot simpler, which means less expensive, but somehow it's turning out to be better quality. I spackled and textured the wall tonight. I have high hopes for the finished product. Anything will be better than white tile that isn't really white.

Quality: Adelaide
1. She doesn't like when people watch her do her business. So, she only does it in the back of the yard behind the bushes. We call her a perimeter-pooper. Which also means we don't have to clean up the yard after her.
2. Thursday, when Josh was on call, I left the door between our room and Adelaide's room open when I went to bed. She saw what I'd done, picked up her bed, brought it into my room, set it next to my bed, and went to sleep there. I like her.

Dude, Google It.

My grocery checker and bagger were having an interesting conversation while taking care of my groceries this week. I tried to stay out of it because it was so darned entertaining that I didn't want to get in the way. They were arguing about whether or not marijuana causes cancer and kills your brain cells. The checker was saying that yes, it does those things, while the bagger was defending what turns out to be his favorite hobby. His best defense was as follows:
"Dude, I do it all the time, and it hasn't made me any less smarter."

That very well could be true, we don't know how dumb he was to begin with.

Home for Christmas

We get a new power cord while we're in Oregon, so regular blogging may resume when we get back to Oklahoma. But I wanted to blog our journey to Portland. Since we're still computerless, I couldn't check flights or weather. We got to the airport in Tulsa and discovered our flight out was delayed and would cause us to miss our connecting flight. It was looking impossible to get another flight to Portland since travelers are so backed up because of the weather.
There was a man in front of us making the same journey, and they told him the best they could do was a flight tomorrow afternoon. Josh was determined that would not be an option for us, so when it was our turn, we asked the lady, "How close can you get us tonight?" We were ready to accept Boise, or even Salt Lake City and a rental car to get us home.
She found one ticket getting into Eugene at midnight and had one opening getting into Portland at midnight. We were going to split up and meet at my parents'. As she was about to book them, she said, "I have two to Eugene, do you want them together?" We decided that would be better, so she printed our tickets, and I called my parents to update them. We were turning to walk away when the lady said, "Oh! I have a bunch of openings on the evening flight to Portland suddenly - do you want them?" Yeah, we want them! We rushed back to her, I told her she was a whiz. Josh was so excited he said, "This is better than the casino!" I think she got a kick out of us.
We had an extended layover in Denver, but we made it to Portland in one day. I'm so excited to see Portland under so much snow! I'm pretty sure this will be my first ever white Christmas.

Hap-Happiest Season of All

So, blogging at work is not a productive use of my paid time. However, I am doing it this morning to tell you a few things:
*Adelaide ate our laptop's power cable, thus the necessity to blog at work. I hope this is a sufficient excuse for my recent blogging silence.
*I pass a bread factory every morning on my way to work. I hope every day that I get stopped by the light on its corner so I can sit there and smell the deliciousness.
*Since we have abnormally tall ceilings at home, we got a 9 foot Christmas tree. We finished decorating it last night and it looks b-e-a-utiful. Again, the lack of home computing may delay any picture posting.
*Lastly, I want to blog all the delicious things we made/are making for the holidays because I have been so excited about them. We made Thanksgiving dinner for Josh's resident team that had to work Thanksgiving night. We made the whole shebang from scratch and dropped it off for them to discover in their break room. I hear it went over well. For Josh's family, we made homemade spinach dip (which we will repeat for Joe & Meg's party tomorrow), pumpkin cinnamon rolls, and the traditional green bean casserole (love it!). I made two different soups with the leftovers, both delicious, one creamy and the other tomato-y. Tonight I'm making apple flautas for my fiesta-themed work Christmas party and tomorrow I'm whipping together dinner rolls, a pumpkin pie, and that dip again for the Ibanez's party. I think I'm happiest in the kitchen.
*I know I said "lastly" already, but this is horrificly hilarious. The Red Cross is collecting Christmas cards to send overseas to soldiers. One of them read as follows, "Dear soldier, thank you for giving your life for our country. And if you don't die, I'm happy for you. You are very brave. Love, Susie. P.S. Merry Christmas!"

A Night In

This week, Josh will be gone every night on call for labor and delivery. I need to find some projects to keep me busy. Some ideas -
I finished Lindsey's quilt last week, so I think I want a break from sewing projects. I do have a coat pattern that I want to make, though.
I miss writing songs, though they were never very good, I wish I could get back into the groove.
Maybe I'll start by keeping a journal again.
We bought a stair step today, I'll probably start training for next summer's trip up the three 14ers.

It's been a nice homey week. We've had lots of tea, spent time with family, and planned house projects. We got our tickets to Portland for Christmas. We leave 12/23 and we get to spend a solid week and a half. We'll be there for at least part of my mom's birthday, we'll leave the afternoon of the 4th. Hurray!

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. We're having Josh's four teenage girl cousins stay over for a night. I anticipate lots of giggling.

Lili Marleen

Last Thursday on the 60th floor of the CitiPlex Towers (Thanks, Oral!), I got to play for the Red Cross Volunteer Recognition Dinner. I played old jazz songs mostly, and threw in a little James Taylor of course. But the coolest part of the gig was the uniform that I mentioned before. The 93 year old woman to whom the uniform belonged during WWII came to the dinner. I got to sit at a table with her, and she looked so proud. We honored her during the presentation and I sang her favorite WWII song, Lili Marleen. She had her little handkerchief and was dabbing her eyes. It was so neat to be able to do that for her! The whole night was just wonderful!

That quilt I'm making wasn't done on Saturday, but I took it to the baby shower anyway so I didn't have to show up empty handed. After she opened it, I told Lindsey, "I'm gonna need that back." She got a big kick out of that, and I left with my present. I'll finish it in time for her baby, she's still got a month to go.

I'm working on altering an actual prom dress to be an eighties prom dress for a friend for Halloween. So, I have to finish it by Friday to take to work (along with a pot of minestrone soup - unrelated, but worth mentioning because it's delicious). I'm turning it into a bubble dress with netting sticking out from the bottom. It's gonna be real.

Tonight, after I eat homemade zucchini bread and homemade vegetable soup (I love fall!), I'm going to buy pumpkins so we can carve 'em tomorrow. I'm pumped! (Get it?!?)

And finally, Adelaide learned to dig this week. Flower gardens beware!

One of the Cutest Things I've Ever Seen

And I didn't have a camera! So imagine if you will...

Josh walking through our neighborhood holding Adelaide's leash by the middle so she learns to stay close. And following closely behind is our 19 mo. old niece holding the leash's end "walking Josh and Ada." I know. It's adorable.

Adelaide is pretty sharp. We've had her for just over a week, and she's already learned the command, "sit." Now we're working on, "I know it's exciting, but you don't have to pee everytime Josh comes into the room." She just loves him so much she can't hold it in.

Otherwise, I've just been quilting trying to get ready for a baby shower on Saturday. So far, I have just two squares sewn together. Will I make it? Oh, this one's a nail-biter!