February, 1998: This is me and Digger Phelps, legendary basketball coach. When I worked at Borders, sometimes authors would come in and do an event for the corporate employees to hype their book. Digger wrote Basketball for Dummies, and he came in to tell us how to do a March Madness tournament. I got to meet him before the event, and get my picture taken, and get a signed book for my dad. Now I see him on TV once in a while. He looks good for his age. And he likes to flirt with the ladies. I like my hair style here, although it doesn't look great in this picture since I had just finished setting up like a hundred chairs. But I liked the cut. Just thought I'd throw that in. Check out my double chin. Sweet!
Spring, 1998: This is me and my little girl, Mia. Aw, she loves me. I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out what book I'm reading, because I'm that geeky. I still don't know. It definitely has a chart of some sort. Maybe Jurassic Park? I have no idea. And clearly, it's not important.
Sometime in 1998: I really have no idea when this picture was taken. I know it's after we moved to Michigan, and before Jim cut his hair in summer, 1999. Other than that, no clue. Anyway, it's Jim and I at my aunt's house. I just put it in because giving someone the bunny ears is always funny. You can tell how funny it is by how hard I'm laughing in the picture. See, Jim has no idea! And I'm giving him the bunny ears! Isn't that funny? Hey, I tried. I need to learn that pulling my hair back doesn't make my head look any smaller.
July, 1999: Contrast this one with the last one. Whew! This was on our Adirondack vacation two summers ago. Jim had just cut his hair short and was still letting me try to style it, thus the flat top look. Eventually, he gave up and shaving it himself. I think he's better off. And look how blonde my hair is! This was just after the great hair coloring debacle of that spring, where I looked like Kitty Bartholomew. I like my hair lighter though. I kind of wish it was still this blonde.
December, 2000: I took this picture today, just to give you a point of comparison. Have I mentioned that I've started wearing my hair curly? That's all natural curl, baby. Who knew? All I do is blow it dry with a diffuser and it turns out that curly. I wasted so much money on perms in my youth. Anyway, I dig it. I probably should have put on makeup or something before taking the picture, but this is me au naturel. Okay, maybe I Photoshopped out a few zits here and there. Can you blame me? Also, my hair is going really gray at the top. Good thing I have an appointment to get it colored after Christmas.
If you made it this far, congratulations! I'm impressed.
August, 1997:This was the first year of our Adirondack vacation, and pictured is Jim's niece, Zoe, at the age of 2 or so. In the background, you can see Jim with his long hair and, as he put it, "pasty white body". We had such great weather that year -- warm and sunny the whole time, just about. Actually, this vacation was part of the reason that Jim and I decided to move back. We really missed being closer to our families, and it was so beautiful there. And we had both been working really hard, and that vacation was so relaxing, and such a blessing.
August, 1997: Again, Adirondack vacation. Jim's brother Tom is holding his nephew, Noah, who was only a few months old at the time. In the foreground is the back of Patti's head -- she's Jim's sister (could you tell by the hair?) and Noah's mom. I felt bad for Patti that year -- she had tiny Noah and Zoe to take care of, and her husband couldn't make it up with her. She must have been exhausted. Luckily, she had no shortage of people willing to hold the baby. I think I spent a whole afternoon with Noah at one point, and I was so scared that I was going to drop him or something.
Thanksgiving, 1997: Stacey, Eric, Jim and I couldn't go home for Thanksgiving this year, so we made our own Thanksgiving dinner. It was so fun! Eric and Stacey are vegetarians, so Stacey made some bizarre turkey substitute (not Tofurkey, something else) and I made this disgusting turkey loaf. But the rest of the food was good. I told them to look like they were excited to eat dinner, but Eric did not comply. He just looks bored. Again, Jim with the long hair.
December, 1997: This is the reason we no longer have a full-sized Christmas tree. Mia used to not only climb it, and knock it over, but she would make a little nest up near the top and hang out there. We had this angel that went on top, and any time we put it up there, within a matter of minutes Mia would race up the tree and knock it off. She hated that angel! Because she is the devil. Part of the problem was the ledge that ran around the room -- the cats would get up on the ledge and climb into the tree from there. We tried that "Cat Away" spray, but all it did was make our basement smell like chemicals.
December, 1997: This was the fireplace in our house in Ann Arbor. I loved this house. I loved this fireplace. We used to make s'mores and stuff. The stockings belong to (left to right): Jim, me, Grendel, Mia, Stacey, Eric. Stacey's mom made a stocking for her that had bees on it, because she likes bees. Eric's stocking was made out of Star Wars material. Then we put all of our Christmas cards on the mantel. I miss having a fireplace.
Christmas, 1997: Jim and I weren't able to go home for Christmas this year, because our company decided in November that no one would be allowed to take vacation between Thanksgiving and New Year's. That's common in the retail stores, and it makes sense, because in the stores you need all hands on deck. At the corporate offices, on the other hand, it's so slow. Since we supported the stores, and all the people in the stores were too busy helping customers to call us, we didn't have much to do. And yet, we couldn't take time off. So we celebrated Christmas in Ann Arbor with Stacey, who was modeling every single gift she got in this picture -- the running tights, two sweaters, and some other items.
Spring, 1998: Just wanted to give you a gander at how long Jim's hair was. This was just before we moved back to New York. He very rarely wore it down, and in fact I think this is the only picture I have of him without his hair pulled back. He did have beautiful hair, but it was such a pain to keep up with, and it got really hot in the summer, so he cut it all off a year after this picture was taken.
Spring, 1995:We now enter what I like to call "The Jim Years". This is Jim and his niece, Andrea (who is in kindergarten now). Wasn't she like the cutest baby ever? Look at that! Jim and I think this is when we took a trip out to Boston his senior year of college, but we're not entirely sure. It's around there anyway. So, he was still living with his parents and I was living with Ter and working at Borders. I remember we thought it was a big deal because his sister Mary let us share a bed. Scandale! Plus, every little kid in Jim's family has worn those pajamas at some point, I think. Look how big Jim's glasses are!
Fall, 1995: So Jim and I moved in together after he graduated (in an apartment upstairs from Ter and Stimp), and we got a kitten. Jim named her Grendel. She likes to eat plants. Jim had a couple of large plants (including the one shown) and Grendel liked to eat them. So, we put the big plant on top of the refrigerator, because tiny kitten Grendel couldn't get to the top of the refrigerator. Or so we thought. Until one night at about 2 AM, when we were sleeping peacefully, and we heard a giant crash and Grendel running away. That little kitten had knocked a huge plant from the top of the fridge to the floor. Dirt everywhere. We haven't owned a plant since.
Fall, 1995: I really don't have a story to go with this picture. I just think it's cute. Look at tiny little Grendel! Look at the spots on her belly! I'm sorry. All of the cat-haters out there are like, "Good God. Is she insane? It's a CAT!" I don't care. When Grendel was a kitten, she used to run back and forth in our apartment from about 11 PM until 1 AM every night. So we used to shut our bedroom door. But then she would cry. So we'd open the door. And then she would come in and attack our feet through the blankets. I'm glad she's not a kitten anymore.
Fall, 1995: Okay, I swear this is the last Grendel kitten picture. This was after Jim let me cut his hair and I practically gave him a bob. Grendel also loved hair. I remember sitting in that apartment, at our computer, and Grendel would run by and jump up, sinking her claws into my shoulders, to try to attack my hair. Now that I think about it, I'm surprised we didn't kill her in the first few months. I guess that's why kittens are made so cute -- otherwise, you would kill them for the way they act. Kind of like babies. Anyway, one way in which we resolved Grendel's craziness was that we adopted another cat, so she had a playmate.
Christmas, 1995: And here is the other cat we adopted -- little, baby Mia. It's hard to see her in this picture, but long-time readers of my journal know that it's hard to get pictures of Mia anyway because she doesn't sit still, and she's mostly black. But you can see her in comparison to Jim's head, and see how tiny she was. I guess she was about 4 months in this picture. She didn't climb the tree that year. Oh no, that came later. She and Grendel contented themselves with destroying all the presents under the tree instead.
Christmas, 1995: This is my brother, my mom, and me on Christmas Eve. I have no idea where my dad is. I have a vague recollection that one of my elderly relatives got sick and had to go to the hospital that night, but I might be making that up. Anyway, this was the first Christmas where Jim and I were living together, and he stayed in Syracuse to see his own family. I wanted to go back to Syracuse that night because it was our first Christmas waking up together and stuff, but unfortunately, I think I got food poisoning. So, you can't really tell, but I was deathly ill in this picture, and throwing up in my aunt's bathroom, but trying to hide it because I knew my mom wouldn't let me drive back to Syracuse if I was sick. I did end up driving back, and I had a bag in the car, and I had to pull over and throw up once. But I made it back in one piece. Looking back, driving back was a mistake. As was that dress. It certainly didn't do me any favors. Note: I have started gaining back all the weight I lost in college.
May, 1996: This happened right before we moved to Michigan. I booked Ter and Stimp to play at Borders, and I got up and sang with them. It was weird, because I hadn't really performed in front of my co-workers ever. Afterwards, a bunch of them came up to me and were like, "Was that you singing the other night? You're good!" It was like the collision of two worlds. You can really see the evolution of my weight gain in these pictures. This was what I call the "denial" phase. I had gained a lot of weight, but I was pretending I hadn't, and still wearing my old clothes. The saddest stage of any weight gain is denial. Could my hips look any wider?
July, 1996: This was Molly's wedding (duh, since she's the one in the wedding gown). From left to right, it's me, Molly, Gretchen, and Brenda. I was surprised by how young Gretchen looks to me! This was my second time being a bridesmaid -- in the month of July. Pam got married two weeks earlier, and we had just moved to Michigan. So I had to come back to NY twice in July. It was crazy, but fun. I really don't remember much about Molly's wedding. Oh, except that when she was goign to toss the bouquet, I hid under the head table (pretended to be looking in my purse) and didn't have to participate. Score!
September, 1996: This is me and my sister-in-law (to be, at the time, since she had not yet married my brother). The funniest part of this picture is that I look like her MOM! I'm leaning forward, and she's leaning back, and I look about four times the size of her. What is up with that? This was taken at Chris Davison's wedding reception (brother to Gretchen). I think I had come to terms with the weight gain at this point, as I dressed all in black for a slimming effect. No more denial for me!
Spring, 1997: Our first apartment in Ann Arbor. I don't know why, but I really like this picture. Those were the best pajama pants, ever. EVER! I wore those out. Anyway, this apartment was in a complex, but we had those nice sliding glass doors right outside. They were really helpful when it came to getting furniture into the apartment! And it made me feel better about having one other window in the entire apartment, and it was in the bedroom. I don't know if you can tell, but I hate apartment complexe, and I hated that apartment. Thank God we only lived there for a year.
One year ago: I post a picture of my cousin's baby (and I have some newer ones that I should post at some point) and claim he looks like me. I met him in person last Christmas and he looks nothing like me. Oh well.
So, welcome to the special end-of-the-year edition of Fresh Hell. Okay, so it's not quite the end of the year. I'm jumping the gun a bit. But I got a new printer, which also has a scanner, so I've been scanning in old pictures. And I thought I would use them to provide you with a retrospective of my life. The thing is, it's not a very good scanner (because it's also a printer/fax/copier), but I fixed up the pictures in Photoshop the best I could. So, here we go. Click on the little picture to see a larger version. And make sure to click on "Next page" in the bottom right corner.
March, 1976: I was three and a half in this picture. Every year on my birthday, my Aunt Joyce stuffs a bunch of old pictures in my birthday card, and this is one that I got this year. I don't know what my mom was doing with my hair at this point. And could my head be any fatter? Some things never change. Also not sure about the basket I'm holding. Why do kids' photos always include cheesy props? Is it to keep the kid focused? I have no idea. Anyway, when I was this age (and not wearing a dress), people often thought that I was a boy.
1979:I believe this was in the summer (note the sundress!) so I'm guessing that I was 6, but almost 7 in this picture. My brother was 10. We like to call this one the "Bucky Beaver" shot, because it was clearly before we both got braces. Look at those teeth! We look like a couple of chipmunks! This picture was on top of my parents' television for the longest time, until it was finally replaced by our high school senior pictures, and then our college senior pictures. Thank God. Also, I should have learned from this incident that I can't pull off short hair. As you will see, that's a mistake I would repeat.
Fall, 1984: Ugh. You know how everyone has that moment in their lives where you have just hit puberty and your skin is a mess, and your hair is a mess, and you are trying so hard to be stylish, but your mom still picks out your clothes at JC Penney. Yeah, that's this picture. 7th Grade. Acne. Oily hair. Braces. The worst I think I have ever looked in my life. And I'm sharing it all with you. It seriously pains me to look at this picture. After this, I didn't wear turtlenecks for like ten years because I thought THAT was the problem. Yeah, it definitely wasn't me. It was the clothes.
Halloween, 1991: Sophomore year of college. That's me on the left, Ter in the middle and Pam on the right. Right before sophomore year, I cut my hair. As mentioned earlier, I cannot pull off short hair. And yet, I didn't learn. What was I thinking with this haircut? What was Terry thinking with the green underwear. The funny thing is that this picture was taken in Mary's apartment, yet Mary and Terry won't going out yet, and I barely knew her. Who knew that 8 years later, we would be such great friends? It probably should be mentioned that I was really drunk when this picture was taken.
February, 1992: I'm estimating this one, but it could have actually been after the next picture. Anyway, that's me and Molly at St. Bonaventure. I went down to visit Molly over some break. Molly has stick straight hair, and she had gotten a spiral perm (remember those?) and I don't think her hair has yet recovered. The saddest thing to me in looking at these pictures is how fat I thought I was, and how much I covered up my body. I was twenty years old and I was wearing a tunic? Jesus, Reed, show some skin! I look like a nun or something. And that purple crystal necklace. What is that about?
Spring, 1992: This was the Screw Your Roommate Dance my sophomore year. Did you all have those? Basically, you set your roommate and/or friends up with someone, and the two people don't know who they are going with. I got set up with this guy Jay, who had dated my friend Pam for like a week, but he had a "girlfriend from home", so it didn't work out. Well, he still wanted to date them both, and Pam was having none of it. So we got set up. And I fell for him. Looking at the picture, you're probably like, "Why?" I don't know. I thought he was romantic or something. I wasted so much time on him. He had no interest in me. Well, he liked me having a crush on him, but he wasn't interested in anything more. So he would ignore me until I started ignoring him, then he would write me a letter telling me how special I was. You know the type. Anyway, I thought that dress was so hot. Too bad my bra is showing. Sexy. Oh, what happened to Jay? He's married with a kid and lives in Canton, NY. I think he's a high school teacher.
Summer, 1992: Again, this is an estimate, based on the hair and that necklace. I remember that I thought bead necklaces were the coolest and spent a lot of time making them that summer. I was at a party, and Scott Blamphin was there (you may remember seeing his picture in my entry about Brenda's wedding). We decided to go to Molly's house and pick her up for the party, where she snapped this picture. I was eating salt and vinegar potato chips. You can see one in my hand. I remember that so clearly, and I remember where the party was, but I can't remember if Molly ended up going or what happened. I think she did.
Summer, 1993: This was the summer I lived up at LeMoyne instead of going home, and worked at the library. And lost like 25 pounds in 2 months, because I was too poor to buy much food. Best diet ever. I might be able to fit one leg in those shorts now. Anway, the picture is Randy, Stimp (doing a Kramer impersonation), me and Ter. The quality of this picture is terrible, but it's the skinniest I've ever been in my life, so I had to include it. That is the summer I really became good friends with those guys (well, Ter and I were already friends, but the rest of them). It was so much fun.
Summer, 1993: I think this was Labor Day weekend. It's a party at Molly's parents' house. It might actually be later than that. Anyway, it was the first time I smoked in front of my friends. I had been smoking since my freshman year of college, but for some reason I thought I needed to hide it from my friends at home. I still don't know why. Anyway, once Gretchen started smoking, I busted out too, but I pretended it was only because I was drinking. And Molly took this picture of Gretchen and me. Also note: still thin. Wearing bodysuit.
May, 1994: This is the Brave Utensils, Ter and Stimp's college band. They played at a picnic we had for Senior Week, the week before we graduated from college. I really miss the Brave Utensils sometimes. Not because they were a particularly good band, but because their shows were always so much fun. I remember after one of their first shows, the next day I could barely move my head from all the head banging. I'm such a rebel. P.S. Check out Terry's bowl cut.
Jim and I made gingerbread cookies this weekend! My family always used to make sugar cookies every Christmas, but for some reason I wanted to make little gingerbread men this year. And so we did. We were a bit concerned about the consistency of the dough, so I called my mom while Jim mixed it by hand. It was too thick for my poor little hand mixer. While I was on the phone with my mom, Jim yelled out, "This looks like a big ball of poo!" And I took this picture to show that he was right. Everything worked out okay, though. Jim did all the rolling and cutting. I made the icing. It was too sticky -- I couldn't get it to stick to the cookies. So I added some water, but then it was too thin. So Jim came up with the brilliant "drizzle" concept, and it worked out great. He is a cookie genius. They ended up tasting great! I'm glad our first attempt at gingerbread cookies was such a success. I hope to make it an annual tradition. We just played Christmas music and baked up a storm.
Saturday, I went out with Molly and Mary. We decided instead of buying each other gifts this year, we would just spend a day together. We went to a Tree Festival at the local museum. Various businesses decorate trees (or wreaths) for display, and then they are sold or auctioned off to benefit the museum. Some of them were okay, but some were pretty lame. Then, we went to a different museum (the Erie Canal Museum) where they had a big gingerbread house display. It's amazing what some people can do with the gingerbread. Mary tried on a bonnet so that she could live out her fantasy of being on Little House, and I took a picture. She told us that when she was younger, she thought "Half-Pint" was "Apple Pie", until her brother set her straight. Then, we went out to dinner at The Mission (a Mexican restaurant). We got there at about ten to five, and they don't open until five, and the doors were locked. It was cold out! After we got in, the waitress told us that they all thought the doors were open and couldn't figure out why people were waiting outside. There was a whole family, kids included, waiting with us. They tried to seat us right next to the kids' table, but we asked for different placement. Nothing against kids, but we wanted to have a nice meal and conversation. After that, we went to a local coffeehouse for dessert and drinks. We sat there for hours, and it was a great time.
Friday night was Jim's office Christmas party. They did a murder mystery thing. I was a bit apprehensive, because I thought we would all have to act it out, and I'm just not big on that sort of thing. But it turns out that they hired a company to act the whole thing out. It was interactive, in that they gave random people lines to shout out, but it wasn't like we carried the brunt of the performance. It was funny. Jim got a line, and he managed to incorporate the phrase, "Sweet sassy molassey!" which made everyone laugh. At the end of the dinner, we had to guess who the murderer was, and Jim got it right! He got a big certificate. I hope they give him a raise at work for that one. Okay, so it has nothing to do with his job, but come on! The organizers had bought a bunch of board games, and they raffled them off at the end of the night. Jim and I won Yahtzee! That was also pretty exciting. The food was good, and no one embarrassed him or herself. I guess that's all you can ask of a holiday party. When I worked at Borders, our holiday parties were always geared towards families, so they would like rent out a theater and show A Muppet Christmas Carol and have Clifford, the Big Red Dog there. Nothing against those movies, but for those of us without kids, it wasn't too enticing. I would have rather had a bonus of some sort. Now that I'm self-employed, I don't really have an office Christmas party, I guess. I'm glad. Too much pressure to wear the right thing and schmooze the right people. Jim's was pretty low-key, but I've heard tell of others that were a lot worse. Molly's husband works for one of the Big Six accounting firms, and his holiday party is like a formal gala. No, thank you!
One year ago: Musings on Medusa. Now that I have some layers in the bottom of my hair, I don't have the Medusa thing so much. I think my stylist cut too many layers last time though -- I notice that I'm kind of sporting the 1996 Rachel 'do lately. Oh well, it'll grow out. Last week when she cut my hair, we noticed that it was really curly, so she blew it dry with a diffuser and suddenly it looked like I had a perm or something. Who knew my hair was so naturally curly?
Here's my ceramic tree surrounded by all my winter-themed snowglobes. Since I haven't been doing much that is interesting lately (and I'm sure you are all bored with reading about how I sat around, wrote some stuff, and surfed the web), I thought I would write about some movies that I watched recently. I'm too lazy to do a full-fledged review for that (dusty, long abandoned) section of my own site, so I'll just write a paragraph or so about them here. Enjoy!
Chasing Amy: Jim and I rented this on DVD this past weekend. We have both seen the movie, and enjoy Kevin Smith's work a great deal, so we were looking forward to checking out the DVD extras. We watched the movie with the commentary track on. Providing commentary were Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Jay Mewes and some other guys who didn't say much. It was mostly Ben ripping on Kevin's directorial style, and Kevin ripping on Ben's acting "skills", which was pretty amusing. I didn't learn much about film making (as some other commentary tracks do) but Ben Affleck is pretty funny. The movie itself was made better by the commentary, I think, because some of my doubts about the directions the film took were dispelled by Kevin Smith's comments. Also included in the extras were some deleted scenes and some outtakes, each with a seperate introduction by some of the people involved in the commentary. If you are a fan of Smith's films, this one is worth checking out.
This picture is my ever-growing Dickens Village collection. My mom started the collection by buying the house on the far right of the picture for Christmas last year. Mary bought me the house on the far left (Grapes Inn) for my birthday. The others I bought for myself. I wish I could make a whole scene with the fake snow, but right now I don't have anywhere to put it where the cats can't get at it and track it all over. Plus, I'm afraid they'd try to eat it.
Southie: This movie was on one of the five HBO channels I get with my digital cable. It stars Donny Wahlberg (yes, the NKOTB/Sixth Sense Wahlberg), Rose McGowan, and Anne Meara. Well, those are the people you would probably know. Donny plays Danny Quinn, a kid from South Boston, who left the city when he started to get in over his head in terms of drinking and criminal activity. He comes home for a friend's wedding, and tries to save his two brothers and sister Kathy (Rose McGowan), and take care of his mother (Anne Meara). This was actually a decent movie. I started watching out of sheer boredom, but ended up getting sucked in. Except, the whole time I kept thinking about David from Real World: Seattle, because of the accents. Anyway, it was kind of a low-rent Sopranos in a way. There are worse things to watch when it's 1 AM and you can't sleep.
Mallrats: Continuing the Kevin Smith theme, Jim and I rented this DVD from Netflix, an online DVD rental service we are testing out. Again, we watched it with the audio commentary on. It wasn't as funny as Chasing Amy, but I think that's because the movie is not as good. Kevin Smith spends a lot of time ripping on himself about how poorly the movie did at the box office. It has some funny moments, though. Jay Mewes manages to stay awake throughout, which is more than he did in any of the other commentary tracks I've heard. The movie itself is basically a star vehicle for Jason Lee, if you haven't seen it. Anytime he's not on screen, it just drags. I mean, Jeremy London? Please. He's terrible. It's also kind of interesting to watch the deleted scenes and see how the movie was originally planned, what was changed and why. Basically, they had a whole different opening for the film, and then were forced to scrap it. This meant they had to go through and change a bunch of scenes throughout the film which referred to events from the scrapped opening. I definitely think this is the worst of Smith's films that I've seen, but it's still amusing. I love when Jay yells to Silent Bob, "Fly, fatass! Fly!" I think that's my personal motto now.
God, I'm so behind. Okay, the weekend after Thanksgiving consisted of Jim and I spending time with his sister Mary, her partner Chris (he's a man, but they're not married, and they've had two kids together and been together like 20 years so it seems a little silly to call him her boyfriend. I don't know why I get hung up on semantics) and their two kids Steven and Andrea. We went over to Jim's parents' house and ate turkey sandwiches. Jim brought the PS2 over and the kids played SSX. They don't have a video gaming console, but Steven has apparently played a little over at a friend's house, and he picked it up really quickly. Jim's mom didn't like the game because she thought it would teach the kids that they can ski recklessly with no consequences. It's a snowboarding game, but even if you crash, you don't die or anything. You just start over in the middle of the track. She didn't make them stop playing or anything. Andrea tried to play, but she had a little trouble grasping the concept of the track and what it was for. She preferred to go off the course, exploring. So every one of her runs took about three times as long as normal.
That picture is Jim and the kids playing on the PS2. Then, after the kids went to bed, we watched Dark City, which Jim has on DVD. Mary kept saying she had never seen it, but after watching the beginning, she thought she had. Chris didn't think they had. Finally about halfway through, he remembered that they had watched it. It was...interesting. Roger Ebert does a commentary track, and I'd like to listen to it with that on sometime. I think I would get more out of the movie that way. The next day, we all went over to Jim's brother's house. It's kind of a small house for the amount of people we had in it, so we didn't stay too long. It's a nice house though. They bought it really cheap and practically gutted and rebuilt it.
This picture is Jim's brother Tom (making a goofy face) and his nephew Steven. Isn't he a cutie with the missing front teeth? Tom and Jim kind of have the same haircut. It's the DIY with clippers style. That night, Mary and Chris and the kids came over to see our apartment, and of course there was more PS2 playing. Jim and I cleaned the apartment top to bottom earlier in November when Glark and Wing Chun were coming to visit, and we've managed to keep the place looking decent. This is a nice change for us! Usually I'm too embarrassed of the state of our apartment to have spur of the moment visitors. But we've made a concerted effort to stay on top of things and it seems to be working out thus far. Although the rugs could use a good vacuuming, but that's par for the course when you own two cats.
Andrea is fascinated with both my digital camera and our cats. I printed out some pictures for her to take home -- that one of Tom and Steven, and the one below of Andrea standing on a toy truck. They print out really well if you use the glossy photo paper, I think.
Mary and Chris and the kids left to go back to Boston the next morning. I decided that it was time to put up the Christmas decorations. I relocated some of my snowglobes to our now empty bookcases. When we cleaned the place, we finally sorted through our books and boxed up the ones we no longer want or need. We ended up with nine boxes! Jim has been taking each box into work and telling people to take them. If they want to give him money, they can, but if they want to take them for free, that's fine too. Some of them are hardcover books that I might have read once, so it's a pretty good deal. I generally take pretty good care of my books. One of Jim's co-workers refused to believe that I had read some of the books because they were in such good condition. Anyway, we haven't made a ton of money, but enough to make it worthwhile. Frankly, just getting rid of the books in one fell swoop is enough for me.
So I put up the Christmas decorations. I'm not happy with my little tree. I'm happy with the tree, but not how it's decorated. I went to the craft store to see if I could come up with anything, but all of the ornaments there were way too big for my tiny tree. I did see some miniature ornaments at the mall, so I'll probably brave the crowds sometime this week.
Since then, I have gotten my haircut and eyebrows waxed again, gotten the oil changed in the car, straightened out an issue at my credit union, had a McDonald's eggnog milkshake, and spent too much time online but not enough updating this journal. So now you are all caught up.
Oh yeah, the class I am teaching started. I promise that you don't want to hear about how the bookstore ordered the wrong book (even though I gave them the ISBN), but suffice to say I was really mad last week. Other than that, things seem to be going well with both sections. They call me Professor Reed! How funny is that? I'll be sure to give you more news on that issue this month.