Mishaps and other haps

Now that the holidays are over and PhysOrg seems to be finished with work travel for the moment, I am starting to use our kitchen more during the week.

Dinner at home seems to be a much better plan than skipping dinner or eating take-out every night.

I have decided that some planning needs to happen on the weekend so that shopping can be done if necessary. During the week, I can decide when and what (from the list of pre-arranged options) should be cooked. More complicated recipes will be saved for the weekend.

This involves a few compromises. For one, I am not the only person using the kitchen in the evening and although we have a good-sized kitchen, there is not a lot of counter space for cooking prep in our kitchen.

Second, I am keen on legumes and grains and PhysOrg is not. Moreover, he is a meat eater and I am not. So planning a menu around those conditions can be tricky. We share similar tastes on a lot of other foods and are willing to try some new things, which is good because having a dinner comprised mainly of cheese, chocolate, and wine doesn’t seem to be very balanced.

Fortunately, we can work in some vegetables and maybe not have dairy every night.

It’s nice to have a routine most nights, though, and to know that some amount of snack food, fast food, and soda is being replaced with something nutritious at dinner.

Any suggestions or epiphanies?

We are spending today with our roommate, Inle, who heads out West at the end of the week.

Seven of us headed to Arbat, the newish Russian restaurant in Fitchburg, for lunch. I think we were pleased with our meals, overall. Mlitiagrl and I would especially like to return. Good food, my stomach is feeling happy, and I have a little more energy overall than I did yesterday.

Arkham Horror is being played upstairs and we’re planning to head out as a group to see Smokin’ Aces in a bit.

I’m feeling a little subpar today. I think I’ve caught the cold that has been making its way through various members of the household.

I was hoping the flu shot I had back in November would make me impervious to all viruses, but maybe that was too much to ask for. I guess it’s possible that the flu virus antibodies I have generated could decrease the virulence of the colds I do catch. I’m hoping.

In the meantime, I had vegetable soup for lunch and am working my way through a cup of ginseng-honey tea.

Thanks for the card, Liz and Matt. It made us smile.

I went downstairs to say goodbye to PhysOrg before leaving this morning. He wasn’t too sleepy to notice that my hair was damp and he mumbled “Don’t go outside without a hat.”

That post about no snow a week or so ago?

We’ve had snow now, quite a bit of it. There was a decent snowfall at the beginning of last week. I came home from work and shoveled. Since I’m not all that good at shoveling, PhysOrg turned my hack job of driveway clearing into a masterpiece when he got home.

It snowed overnight again last night, several more inches, so that work is now ruined and we again have a driveway full of snow.

We dug out one car this morning and headed to Best Buy to obtain a Nintendo Wii, since we’d heard a rumor that stores would have new shipments in on Sunday morning. We were not anticipating that the store would open an hour earlier than their website indicates, or that people would start standing in line two hours earlier than that. So we missed out again. We’re just pathetic, Wii-less slobs. But we got to sleep in and after a week of getting about four hours of sleep per night, that rocks.

In other news, it sounds like our house will be emptying out, at least for a little while. One of my roommates has decided to move to Salt Lake City to attend flight school. Our houseguest is still in the midst of job searching, but plans to be out of Madison sometime in the next month or two. We have some thoughts and plans in the works, but we’ll see what happens. It may be a little quiet for a while with only three of us around.

I think the plan is to play some Arkham Horror this afternoon. If that fails, there is always WoW. Also, there are snow-coated cars in the snow-coated driveway and it never hurts to deal with that sort of thing before 6:30 AM on a workday.

Today I get to run home (well, not immediately– I have a couple of errands first) and install the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft on my iMac.

I’ve had a copy since a little after midnight and I was awake a little after midnight, but I figured I really needed to sleep at some point and not play WoW until time to go to work. So I did not install it last night.

Like about 6 million other people, I will be making a unique female Blood Elf paladin of my very own … and probably some other new characters.

I may play the new content with Montanni tonight, or I may go to battlegrounds with Minni. I am itching to go heal Alterac Valley right now. Or I may be tired enough to fall over and nap for a while. There’s also the possibility that I may spend most of the evening awake, but not in front of a computer.

My guy is about to step on a plane and won’t be back until Friday, so I won’t do any serious power leveling (at least not with Minni) unless he is available.

There’s plenty of time to think when you’re out shoveling snow.

I think that home ownership has rewired my brain a little bit. I know a lot of people feel some opposition or resistance to the kind of traditional lifestyle that involves settling into a decent-paying job, buying a house, and having kids. Some generations have even called it a cop-out.

I am starting to understand why these experiences are the norm, though. They absolutely transition people into the “Responsible Citizen” mode of adult life. If you are not used to working hard and being responsible, any or all of these experiences are likely to kick you in the ass. In the process, they might also kick your saggy citizen booty into shape.

When you buy a house, you start thinking about things like lawn maintenance, snow control, home repair costs and fix-ups. You learn when to put the garbage and recycling out at the curb because the city won’t schedule around you or send their truck by at your whim. You think you might clean a bit and perhaps paint or replace the carpet because this house you own is an investment. Draperies sound like an excellent idea and you think a cover for the water heater might really save some money.

You discover that trimming the grass has more to do with your neighborhood’s expectations than your own. You’re part of a community and the more you contribute to it and abide by its general rules, the better standing you have with your neighbors. Actions have consequences in every social environment and breaking the law is not the only way to isolate yourself.

It can be a hard lesson at times, but it’s not really a bad lesson to learn. It’s not the *only* lesson to learn (and these are not the only ways to learn the lesson), but it does make you think about things other than yourself and your own desires. I don’t think it’s a rote pledge to conformity– not entirely, at least. It’s part of growing up and being a social, adult human.

I hadn’t hit the battlegrounds in WoW at all since a couple of unsuccessful matches with my warrior, Montanni, when he was still relatively low-level. Warriors tend to get stomped by other classes unless they are decked out in the best armor and weapons in the game and you have to be 60 and put in a huge number of gameplay hours to obtain these items.

(This current fact is going to be a toss-up again as of Tuesday, when the max player level rises to 70 and tons of new items will be available.)

Last night, I took Minni (now 57, resto druid) to Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley with Outgrabe (53, insane moonkin druid) and we had a lot of fun. Teqnoq (57, feral druid) showed up a little later and joined us. We had some great matches– won some, lost some. I was happy about taking first in healing in a couple of matches. It doesn’t really count for anything (no extra honor, no cool rewards), but it gives me the sense that I was contributing something helpful to my team.

I’ve had less time to post this week, but here are some of the things that happened:

1) We have been expecting snow from about Wednesday on. There has been no snow. It has been a snowless January so far. The forecast is still predicting that we might get a little snow tonight and some Saturday night, so we’ll see.

2) PhysOrg has been out of town here and there on business trips lately. Today, he’s waking up somewhere in the north part of the state and heading into Minnesota before the end of the day. Next week, he flies to Texas for three days. He’s good about spending time when he’s not traveling, though. We had an impromptu dinner out together on Wednesday night and are planning to do something special (not sure what yet) toward the end of the month.

3) Work has picked up this week. Part of it is just planning. We’ve had all sorts of meetings. There have been additional projects, as well. It has been busy. Tuesdays still drag, regardless, but the rest of the week has been moving right along.

4) Evenings have been spent watching Scrubs (an “old” favorite show of mine- PhysOrg has picked it up recently, so we’re both catching up on the latest seasons). I am still adjusting to the awesome cable that allows us to fit in about four episodes a night if we time it right.

5) We have also been playing WoW in the evening, although I find it hard to spend more than a few extra hours in front of a computer after work (Scrubs helps to break it up). The Burning Crusade expansion comes out next week and the whole household has been looking forward to that for months.

6) I finished Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys (good book– maybe not quite as good as American Gods) over the weekend and started Good Omens. My impression so far is that Good Omens is more Terry Pratchett than Neil Gaiman– and I really like Gaiman’s writing better. But we’ll see. Also, it was written over a decade and a half ago, so I imagine that both of their writing styles have changed a bit since then.

7) Other than that, I had a minor traffic shouting match after work yesterday (not my fault, but it turned into something ugly when I used my horn to express my disapproval). No accident. Lots of irritation. Commuting is the pits and being tired because you have been working all week on too little sleep makes every problem seem ten times bigger than it really is. But also, there are just some very rude people out there who do things that are dangerous and/or aggravating. And some of it is also just ridiculous when you think about it afterwards.

EDIT (2:45 PM): Reports are that the roads and sidewalks are becoming very slippery, so be careful out there, local people.