Tidbits

I had big plans to be more consistent with my posting . . . you see how well that's going. :-/

I still plan to sort my pictures from WI and do at least one post before the week is out, but this afternoon I'm heading to South Pasadena to spend the night and tomorrow help paint some walls in Ben & Pei's new apartment!

But before I head off to start a batch of Gammy's fish chowder for dinner and get Erik's lunchbox filled, here are some fun tidbits:

Sporcle.com is a fun site I found while reading the blog of an old college friend. There are some fun word games under "language" and Erik and I have been trying to improve our geography with some of the country and capital quizzes (we've almost got European capitals and African countries down!); next up is the books of the Old Testament under "religion". And I have to catch up to Erik on U.S. Presidents!

Luminosity.com is another cool site, but after a trial run, they take away access to most of the cool games unless you pay to continue. However, you can still play the best game without becoming a member: Word Bubbles!

Mom & Kirsten, here's a picture of the new placemats being used! We love them--I should have gotten more!!
"Winter" in Bakersfield appears to be over. While I know many of you would deny we ever HAD a winter, we did have cold enough weather to have frost in the mornings for much of December & January. Lately it has been wet and overcast and often foggy. Erik tells me that we had more rain in the last month than we did all of last year! Perhaps the years of drought are coming to an end? I do know that it rained enough for the apparently misplaced tiles over our entryway to leak. Boooooo. :-(

In the last couple of weeks we've had a plumber, an electrician and an insurance adjuster all come to the house to look at separate issues. We're still waiting to hear back from the adjuster about the roof, but the electrical mess is mostly fixed (we need to replace a few things that weren't covered) and thankfully the plumbing issue turned out to be a seal issue instead of a plumbing issue (we need to Do It Ourselves, but in the meantime nothing is getting worse). So we've got lots of (unplanned) projects to keep us busy in the near future. To round out the joys of home ownership, we were excited to receive our supplemental tax bill for the house only hours after the electrician left. :-)

But to get back to the weather, the birds are singing like crazy and the nighttime temperatures are in the mid-40s. It's starting to feel like spring!! Wisconsin folks (and others!) starting to feel like winter will never end should plan a visit. ;-D

oxox
cmr