Monday night, while I was cooking butter chicekn, we heard a weird noise that turned out to be this three houses down:
The owner’s little girls were running around, and they said that they landed there because it got too dark (they also said that they get to ride in the balloon all the time OF COURSE).
Sunday, we had to check on poor Sonny because Kim and family had to go to a Thanksgiving dinner all day. Poor old Sonny just lost his companion dog, Max. Super sad. They have to give him Valium, and Brian still had to clean up a ton of dog pee while I tried to give poor Sonny some attention. It’s so sad. Sad panda.
This past weekend, my dad offered Brian and I some Walleye tickets that he got from his work.
I hadn’t been to a Walleye game in a long time. They got two cool inflatable Spikes:
1. Spike that spits out hockey players…here it is getting less squinty-eyed as it gets inflated:
Here it is fully-inflated:
There is also a radio-controlled Spike who flies around and also drops prize envelopes:
The game itself was a blowout – Lots of goals and hockey fights and other things that people who like hockey like:
It was my week to work nights (boo!) but I had today off since I worked last weekend (yay!)
I noticed this on the gas pump when I stopped to get gas on my way to work one night (Go Rockets!):
On Tuesday, our furnace at home was a little wonky…but some creative power switch turning off and back on seemed to fix it. When I got to work that night, the furnace wasn’t working there. It only got down to 64, but I thought I was dying. I basically make no heat anyway, and your body gets extra cold around 5AM because of a circadian rhythm (when you sleep at night your body shuts down your internal furnace when you don’t need it to conserve energy…it happens when you’re awake at that time too). Here’s a dark picture I took of myself (to make Chiara feel bad for me) with 52 layers, a winter hat, and Bennett’s polar fleece blanket snuggled on the loveseat:
Wednesday morning, while I was getting scolded for not trying new batteries in the thermostat (really?) and not checking the breakers (I just now learned where the breaker box is), Brian texted me that our furnace at home wasn’t working again. I was so glad he took care of it – I was so tired of thinking about furnaces and also thinking about being cold, I just came home and took a hot shower and went to sleep.
They called the furnace repairman before I even left on Wednesday, but I asked Bossman to let me know if it wasn’t fixed before he left so that I could bring more layers Wednesday night. Of course it wasn’t fixed, but someone (I bet Dave) left me this:
It was 61 during the early morning yesterday. I was so glad to leave that place (and have last night off, just in case) and that our furnace at home was fixed. Hooray for warmth!
Here’s a picture of everyone but Harvey taking a nap yesterday:
Today, I bought a bunch of Thanksgiving-related groceries for our 3 person Thanksgiving. I am going to try spatchcocking the turkey, and mostly we are going to be eating (canned!) pumpkins as desert just to make Chiara angry.
In other news that will keep me from enjoying delicious delicious crusty Stove Top stuffing, I started another Whole30 on Wednesday. I think that’s why I’ve been sleeping better the second half of this week. I had a headache late Wednesday and all day yesterday, but things seem much better today. The Whole 30 people are big on not weighing yourself during the 30 days, and last time I didn’t always follow that rule, and I think I ended up kind of sabotaging myself because of it, so I’m trying to follow it this time. It continues to be weird and disconcerting to eat fat on purpose.
First, let’s just get this work-related silliness out of the way. Â Change starts now….or is it now? Â Maybe now? Â Were you lying before when you said change started then? Â Do I have to wear at least one of these bracelets at all times?
This past weekend was my weekend to work.
Friday was the first real Lady Rockets game and the first time we sat in our new fancy (though far from being the fanciest) seats. Even my dad liked them. Here’s a picture from our seats:
The Ladies beat Arkansas State.
Toledo Fan-dom Innovation: Toledo gnome and the website where he can be purchased (http://www.utoledogear.com/product113.html):
Other than that, the big excitement was getting my new iPhone 5. Behold its giant screen:
Equally excited was Bennett’s daughter Madison, who picked up my iPhone 4 (she was NOT equally excited when Bennett started taking pictures of her with my new phone) from me at work Saturday morning:
After work, Brian had some freelance photography work taking pictures of Kim’s family. He took some in their backyard, and then we all walked to the Harbour for some pictures. It turns out that ten people is a lot, especially when 2 of them are under 2 and 8 of them are male. This is one of my favorites that Brian took:
This is what the kids mostly did:
Here’s an example of my new phone’s panoramic photo feature:
When we got back to Kim’s house, Travis perked up:
Last week, some people from one of the hotels near my work brought over some small bags of Halloween candy. Â Bossman gave the bags to Greg for his daughters, but because I am awesome, I demanded one of the spider rings from the bags. Â Bossman and Dave each got a spider ring too, because we had to take ALL the spider rings off the bags because children are greedy assholes. Â Anyway, it was very fortunate that we got the spider rings, because we needed them for this picture:
(Ring on the right, REAL SPIDER on the left…we escorted the spider outside.)
I knitted Jean and her baby some hats last week, and while I had the looms and yarn out, I worked on a more appropriately-sized hat for one of my favorite mini-humans, Landon. I also knitted myself a hat and successfully used up all of that kind of yarn that I had on hand (I had to make a hat ball for Landon’s hat to make it work out right, but that yarn is gone!)
First, here’s baby cat doing some knitting:
Second, here’s Landon being super cute in his new hat:
When I drive to work, I pass 2 polling locations – mine at the weird non-denomination church nearby, and the one I used to go to at the Sheriff substation. I had to be at work at 8 on Tuesday, so I left around 7:40…the lines to vote were long at both. The parking lots were full, and people were parked along the road. The line was so long people were standing outside. I’m sure they were almost all republicans because that’s just how Springfield township rolls, but whatever…it’s still cool to see people bothering to bother.
I voted after work, mostly to get my sticker and send a picture of it to Chiara:
Later that night, Toledo played Ball State, and my dad and I went with his friend Cody to watch the Rockets get beaten right on out of their rankings. It was cold (34 degrees!) and we stayed the whole game.
They were honoring military and local heroes. Flag:
Bando pictures:
Bandos lined up waiting for the team to come out:
Obviously, I didn’t get to watch the election results stuff on TV, but I could occasionally get 3G to check how things were going. Sometime in the sad panda 4th quarter, they called the election for Obama. After the game, we walked to the car with all sorts of old white dudes who were silent and mopey…not sure if it was more because of the election or the Rockets’ loss. There were two girls leaning out of their dorm windows, screaming, “TOLEDO LOST BUT OBAMA FUCKING WON, WOOOOHOOOOOO!” This was met with little reaction. I spent the whole ride home liking posts of people who were happy about the outcome and being annoyed by the super stupid stuff that THE OTHERS were saying about the country being dead and how stupid and ignorant the rest of us are. Um, OK. “Planned Parenthood? We’re gonna cut that.” Um, not so much. Be reasonable.
SPEAKING OF LADY ROCKET FUNTIMES…
Sunday was the exhibition game versus Wayne State. Brian couldn’t go because he had an NFL Red Zone Date with Nathan. Exhibition or no, my Rocket Fever was dangerously high.
Yolanda was out with a groin injury (gross), so Kyle JUMP, JUMP!ed:
(Notice my spicy Spanish girlfriend Inma looking so svelte.)
Naama is back!!! This is the best thing. Here’s a photo of her first point since 2011 (Shut up, I know it’s in an exhibition game):
Before she got hurt last year, I know that I always was surprised she had never had any real injuries because she is a crazy flopper and also because people go at her hard. She took some spills, but got up like she always did, plus she did a couple crazy awesome Naama things to remind us all how lucky we are that she came back and that we get to watch the first Orthodox Division 1 athlete. YAY JEWIE!
I like to take short walks during the game:
New this year, Rocky has an iPhone:
Speaking of iPhones, I’m getting an iPhone 5 tomorrow, as long as the FedEx man comes when somebody is home. This is kind of exciting.
