Happy birthday, therealjae!

You know, it's really hard to take pictures of yourself, especially when you're holding a baby.

Here's my front room (kitchen and sitting room) taken from the middle room (landing at top of stair). All the walls are yellow except for the one on the right, which is blue.

Mystery Hunt pics here! You need to be a "friend" and have an account on Flickr to view these photos. It's free, go ahead!

I am still writing in my journal, frequently. All my recent entries are friends-locked. If you cannot see my entries, you are either not in my friends list or not logged in. Drop me an email if you would like to be added to my friends list (friend me, yourself, first). Thanks!

This is the dog who is living in our apartment for a few weeks. She is five months old and is pretty calm for such a big dog. She barks suspiciously at anything she doesn't know for about five minutes, and then she's anxious for a while after that. She seems to like the violin music I'm playing on the computer -- she keeps coming over to lick the screen.

We had a great night enjoying the next few episodes of Twin Peaks at my folks' house. Ari was sick and couldn't make it, sadly, but the five of us (plus my dad) that were there had a smashing time. We also enjoyed Hope's beautiful new C melody sax (visit my Flickr page to see more pics).

This is a cute picture of Cocco.

This is Seneca, the calico who lives in this apartment. She is currently creeping into my lap, purring, trying to sit on my typing hand. It is both cute and annoying. It's been a while since I had a lap kitty, and I'm not sure what to do with her. She really loves Tom.

This is Isis, the little black kitty who lives in this apartment. She is so sad that her toy broke. You can watch a little video (okay, 8MB) of her meeping about her broken toy. It is heartwrenching.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Since soundcraft can't be there until 9, let's wait until 8pm to start showing Twin Peaks. You are still welcome to come by at 7; we can watch Monty Python or Black Adder or some such (or, hey, Buffy!) to pass the time. (wendigovegan, if you feel like coming by when you get home from class, we'll still be there.) shadowriderhope will be coming up too!

Come one, come all! Bring friends!

TWIN PEAKS NIGHT
Wednesday, February 23
7pm - ??? (Dell won't be there until 9, so at least until 10:30)
at my folks' house in Haslett (email for directions)
RSVP!
Bring foods and drinks to share (or for yourself)

We're about four episodes into first season, so if you missed the first one, we can catch you up.

Did you know that you can file all your taxes online for $6 if you go through the IRS FreeFile web site? If you don't, you will probably pay about $15 more.

Go here:
http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp

It lists lots of web sites that will allow you to file online for free. I chose to spend $6 extra so I could file my state tax online too. It took me about an hour to go through the whole thing, and that's with itemizing deductions.

Very handy. I'm getting $1500 back this year, less than last year because we only owned the house for the first 3 months of the year, but I also donated my car (worth $1900 according to the Kelley Blue Book). It's all going to pay off credit cards, so no fun for me. Oh well.

Which one is better? Discuss.

I came home with a fever on Thursday. I was late at work, dreading having to take the bus home, and my coworker Alice took pity on me and dropped me off at my apartment. I spent the rest of the evening shivering on the couch, wrapped up in many blankets. When I checked my temp, it was 103.7. Yikes. Coughing, sniffling, chills and swollen lymph glands.

I had just one more day of work until vacation, so I went on Friday; I even took the bus. Fever receded throughout the day. Coffee sustained me. Now it is Sunday and I am still full of yucky fluids, and coughing more, but no fever to speak of. Things are looking up. Plus: vacation.

We attended a dessert party last night at my friend and co-worker Rachel's house. It was her birthday and she decided this would be our joint birthday party. Everyone brought a dessert. We got key lime pie and fresh limes to squeeze upon it, plus some Whole Foods organic truffles and chocolate-covered espresso beans. Everything was very tasty. We all sat around talking and playing with Rachel's collection of finger puppets. I fixed Rachel's spam filter and promised to help another teacher with hers. I like being the Mac guru. =)

We slept in late this morning. There was about eight inches of snow on the ground when we finally emerged from the apartment this afternoon. The roads were incredibly bad, and we saw several cars off the road on the way back to Okemos. My little Civic is not so great in the snow, but I suspect this has less to do with the car and more to do with the factory-installed tires.

The Circuit City in East Lansing is closing, so we went by to see what was left. It was nearly picked over, but I bought a digital camera (no pics yet, but I'll work on it), my first, and Tom got a new laptop! His old one has been having power issues, as in it will boot up, run for a few minutes and then inexplicably shuts down. This makes it difficult to work. So he's having fun playing with his new toy. Mine is charging its batteries as we speak.

I am really loving my new laptop (15" iBook 1.33 GHz), by the way. The screen is much brighter and bigger than the old 12". I thought it might be too bulky and heavy at first, but I am getting used to it. The plastic case is cooler to the touch than the metal one. So now rohdebarb has my 12". Good thing, too, since the Snow iMac seems to have decided to stop working.

Anyone else having technological or mechanical problems? I wonder if some astrological event is happening.

Tom and I went to the Michigan Theater for Valentine's Day. We are members, and they were showing a free movie (Gene Kelly's An American in Paris) for us, complete with chocolates, champagne and gift drawings. There were about four hundred people there.

I won something! A Michigan Theater sweatshirt, a booklet of eight free tickets, and a little light keychain thingie. I used one of my teachers' special paper folding techniques to make my paper stand out, and it worked! Neat.

The movie was really funny. I recommend it. Gershwin and Kelly. Gosh.

Then we walked over to Zanzibar and had dinner. It was late enough that they were able to let us in. I had an excellent duck pizza and rare tuna steak. Tom wasn't so happy with his lamb, but we still had a nice time.

I was exhausted, but I needed to go shopping, and Tom has my car until he can buy a new one, so we went to Meijer. I was stumbling around semi-coherently until we got home and I crashed in bed.

Child from another school walks in the library, plays with the globe, doesn't see me.

Other child steps in. "Wrong way, Brianna. See, isn't their library cool?"

First child: "I wish my library were like this."

Preen.

Ann Arbor Public Schools is just about the only school in the whole world that hasn't jumped on the school-closing bandwagon. Yes, it's NAAPID. I don't care! It's clearly icy and unsafe today!

Arrrgh.

Tom went home to work, I'm at work to work. It feels so incredibly good to be at work and not have any pressure to do anything in particular. This means I can look around my very messy office and actually do anything that seems appropriate at the moment. Woohoo!

I am easily amused.