day 171

I think Rick has a man crush on Gary Lezak.

I couldn't believe my luck in finding a picture of Gary doing some weird hand gesture haha.  Gary is the local KC weather man and he is a big old weirdo.  Rick thinks he's hilarious and always tunes in to see what Gary has to say about the weather.  Rick is also slightly obsessed with weather.  He can recite the 10 day forecast in detail at any given time.

Anyway, Gary is fun to watch because he says everything with such excitement, "It's going to be forrrty-fiivvve degreeees here today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  He could be saying anything, "the suuuupermaaarket has apppppplesssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and it would sound exciting.   

Gary also likes to reference his dogs.  He has two and I think they are named Stormy and Cloudy, or something weather related.  He brings in pictures of his dogs in various weather and shows them off.  He must not have kids. (Sidenote: I once knew a family who had like 10 kids and they were all named weather/nature things: stormy, windy, sandy, dusty, tsunami... haha not really, I made that one up.)

So, we've been hanging out with Gary a lot trying to get the low down on this impending blizzard.  I suggested we make a Gary Lezak drinking game, but they haven't officially canceled school tomorrow, so we're holding off.

Day 170

So, today Rick's first batch of beer was finally ready to bottle.  Bottling was much different than brewing... there was a lot to be done and I got to help with everything!
First we had to clean and sterilize all the bottles we would need. It was a big project and we ended up with two ice chests of hot water with the bottles soaking in them.  Then we had to peel all the labels off and sterilize them in a special solution.

Once the bottles were ready, we had to get the beer ready.  First, we siphoned the beer out of the bucket it had been fermenting in and put it in a clean bucket that had a little tap on it.  We left the gross part of the beer in the fermenting bucket.  I didn't take a picture, but it was really gross looking in the bottom of that bucket.


Then we attached this special tool thing (I'm sure Rick would love my totally accurate and technical names for things haha) to the tap that fills the bottles. Beer only comes out of the tool when you press it against the bottom of the bottle.  It's very convenient for not making a big mess.  Then we filled all the bottles up, capped them and stored them away for another three weeks.  I got to try my hand at filling the bottles and capping them.  Shockingly, I don't have the upper body strength to be very good at capping, but I was an excellent filler.



I forgot to take a picture of the end product, but just picture 49 bottles of beer (on the wall...).  The picture above is a pretty good representation of what it looks like. We also put some sugar in there that the yeast will eat to make carbonation.  It smelled like apples to me and kind of like beer.  Rick said that is supposed to go away as it ages, but I kind of like the apple smell.

So that was our exciting Sunday project.  We finished off our evening with some delicious Beef Stroganoff that I made in the crock pot.  I love cooking in the crock pot... best invention ever.

Day 169

Jessie was out tonight with her dad so I was a FREE MAN!  This coincided beautifully with wonderful weather and a special beer night at 23rd Street Brewery.  I started my afternoon by heading out on a 35 mile ride with some friends who were in MUCH better shape than I am due to their keeping up with riding over the winter.  I managed to hang on but was exhausted by the end of it.  Great time for beer!

23rd Street had a special firkin keg on tap of Oatmeal Chocolate Brown which I've never had before, good times.  Here's a picture of the finished product.

The other cool thing about this beer was it was served in a special keg called a firkin which is a smaller keg that is served near room temperature.  It was quite the hit and I the waitresses were pouring it nonstop the whole time I was there.  It only lasted an hour and fifteen minutes!

During my tasting I made new "friend."  I decided to order some food and as I was waiting for it to show up a guy named Chris sat down next to me.  We chatted for a bit and I found out he was a "new age" writer for his brothers website and also invests in businesses on the side.  He was quite the character.  When my food came he decided to order something also and pointed at my plate and told the bartender "I'll have that."  He ended up ordered EXACTLY what I did....  Odd.

Oh well, in the end I got a free beer out of him, two glasses of the special beer and a story.  I retired back to our house and waited for Jessie and her dad to get home.  That was enough of the bachelor life for me.

Day 168

Tonight I went to this dinner to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Kansas District Court with my dad.  It was ... interesting.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was there because she is the Supreme Court Justice assigned to our Circuit.  (I didn't even know this was a common practice... law student fail.)  Anyway, I thought the evening would mostly be about her and we would get to hear her speak.  I was wrong.

The night started out great, with a cocktail hour and lots of lawyer schmoozing and then we had dinner, which was also very good.  After dinner, there was a 'fireside chat' with Justice Sotomayor.  Now generally (and I've only ever seen one other 'fireside chat'), a fireside chat consists of the important person for the night sitting on stage with someone else who asks them questions and they have a little 'chat'.  Well, for this fireside chat, Justice Brennan, who is the one U.S. Supreme Court Justice from Kansas (and dead), was a disembodied voice from the past who asked Justice Sotomayor the questions.  A little weird.  Disappointingly, Justice Brennan could only haunt us for about 3 questions, and then we had to move on to the other festivities.

After the fireside chat, Abraham Lincoln (or an impersonator of ol' Abe) made an appearance and orated for a full 45 minutes on the history of Kansas as a free state and its various, early politicians.  There may have been more, but I zoned out when my Contracts I professor started demanding, in not so quiet whispers, that he and his wife leave because he was bored.  It was all I could do not to giggle when his wife continued to shush him until he finally stomped his foot and walked out of the room.  She followed.

 
                 Fake                                                     Real

So, finally, honest Abe got to the end of his talk and we moved on to the final portion of the night.  A sing along.  Yep, that's right, the Kansas District Court commissioned someone to write them a theme song, which the judges of the court then performed. They then requested that we all join them in the singing of Home on the Range, the state song.  While singing Home on the Range the 10 or so judges from the District Court of Kansas linked arms and swayed.  Again, trying not to giggle.

day 167

Last night Rick and I made one of our favorite dishes... Bacon wrapped meatloaf. Amazing! Obviously not the healthiest dish, so I made it with ground turkey this time. I was worried it wouldn't be as good, but it was still delicious. And slightly healthier.

I was so excited to eat some that I didn't take a picture until Rick was putting it away. Oops.

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Day 166

Happy Birthday to Tristan!

I remember the day Tristan was born very distinctly.  I was in kindergarten and my very best friend, Levi, was moving away that day.  I was so sad that he was leaving.  We had been friends practically since the day we were born.  Instead of playing with Levi after school, I remember, we had to get in the car right away and go to our cousins' house so my aunt and uncle could watch us while my parents were at the hospital.

Even though, I was sad that Levi moved away, I was also very happy to have a new little baby to play with all the time.  Much to my sister's chagrin, I made her and Tristan play 'house' all the time.  I was the mom, Libby was the dad and Tristan was our baby.  We'd dress him up and haul him around all over the place, playing house together.  It was the best.

Now he's all grown up.  20 years old, today!

Day 165

Well, I finally broke down and went to the Dr. about my death sickness today.  I thought I could tough it out, but I felt terrible after a full day of work and school yesterday.  The Dr. poked and prodded, took my temperature, swabbed my throat, asked all about my symptoms and then diagnosed me with...

A cold!

And gave me no medicine.  So lame, what a waste of time.  Rick said, "Well, at least you know you aren't dying."  Thanks.  I still feel like I'm dying.  The Dr. did take the time to write out all the non-prescription over-the-counter drugs I should try taking on his prescription pad, but no miracle drugs for me.  He also asked me about my new year's resolutions and if we needed to talk about them.  Nope, think I'm all set.  It was probably one of the strangest Dr's appointments I've ever had.


This is a fairly accurate representation of how I look and feel.  

Day 164

Today is my last 'first day of school' ever!!!!

I cannot believe this day is finally here.  When I started law school the year 2011 seemed SO far away and like it would never come.  And now here it is, and I'm a little more than 100 days from graduation.

We got an email today telling us everything we need to do for graduation and I almost got a little teary.  Law school has been a long, hard journey and I'm just really proud of myself for making it this far.  I know I still have a semester left and then the bar exam this summer, but it feels so good to have the end in sight.

I can't wait to have a job, an income, a regular schedule! It's going to be great.  I'm really, really looking forward to the next stage in our life.

Day 163

Today was a sad day in the Riley household... the Bears lost in the play offs and all of our super bowl dreams were dashed.

They made a come back in the last quarter, but it wasn't enough.  Rick was very upset. During the game I was trying to rest on the couch, since I've been sick.   I was leaning on him, but he kept jumping up and screaming obscenities when things went wrong, so it was not very restful at all.

I've been told I have to cheer for the Steelers now.   But Jordy Nelson plays for the Packers, and not only did he play for K-state, but he was born in Manhattan, KS.  So, I might have to cheer for the Packers.  Just to keep things interesting around here.

Day 162

Today I woke up with what I thought was a terrible hangover.  About half way through the day I took my temperature and realized I had a terrible illness.  Aches. Chills. Fever. Vomiting. Sore Throat.

It was shortly after we ordered chinese food that I realized I might throw up, and shortly after that I realized I would probably not get to enjoy my recently ordered chinese food.  It was a sad realization.  When I made a dash for the toilet, things got worse... Rick followed me... awkward!   I do not need an audience to vomit and told him so between dry heaves.  Some things should always remain private!  (Although, I did throw up on/near his shoes once, after a few too many drinks, so I suppose it's nothing he hasn't seen before.)

So, anyway Rick tried to send me to bed, but I managed to keep down a few bites of chinese food first.  He took really good care of me and even made a midnight run for Nyquil, so I could sleep.  I think this has to be some sort of marriage milestone... "First snotty, vomit-y, highly unattractive moment"?

Day 161

Rick keeps a lot of things in his pockets.  And now that our laundry is combined, I have to remember to check his pockets before putting his jeans in the washer.  Once, I forgot and he somehow had like an entire notebook in his pocket, so for the next week I was finding crumpled up paper everywhere... in my socks, in my underwear, in my sweaters, in the towels... everywhere.

Things found in Rick's pockets:
- receipts
- string
- ziploc bags
- change
- screws
- nuts and bolts
- candy
- grocery lists
- wires, cables, fuses

The other day I noticed these meticulously arranged screws on Rick's dresser.  I can only assume they came from his pocket.

Day 160

This is probably the 2nd or 3rd big snow we've had this year.  After the first one, Rick decided we had to get a snow shovel so we weren't the jerky neighbors who never shoveled our driveway.  Our neighbor, who we share a driveway with, is crazy about shoveling snow.  I swear she must have a snow blower or something, because she is always out there bright and early and her driveway is always spotless.

Well this time I decided to tackle shoveling the driveway.  Rick shoveled it when we got home last night, but it snowed so much over night you could hardly tell.  I'm pretty proud of myself for the job I did.  Afterward, I almost dropped a glass of water because my arms were so weak and wobbly.

In the second picture you can see where the snow plow so kindly piled all the snow from our culdesac in our front yard.  There's just so. much. snow.

Day 159

Lawrence was hit with a crazy snow storm today.  It has snowed about 8 inches and is supposed to continue throughout the night.

I'm still taking my deposition skills class and was supposed to be there until 6pm tonight.  It started snowing at about 11 this morning and didn't let up all day, so by 4 the roads were looking bad and they sent us home for the night.  Or so they thought...

I left school thinking I would have no problem getting home and the worst part was going to be cleaning the snow off my car in a suit and heels.  I was wrong.  It took me an hour and 15 minutes to travel the 2 miles between school and our house.  The route I take home is really hilly and I got stopped going one way when a huge rv got stuck going up the hill.  So, I turned around and headed back towards school in hopes of finding and alternate route, but I was stopped again by cars stuck going up a hill back the other way.  So, I turned around again, hoping the bus had been moved, no luck.  A police office had arrived on the scene and was directing everyone off onto a side street to detour around the bus.  Immediately a car in front of me got stuck trying to go up a hill on the side street.  So the officer had to come down the side street and direct everyone to turn around back on to the main road that was now blocked on both ends.  At this point they had finally gotten some snow plows there to plow the hills (because none of the roads had been plowed despite the fact that it had been snowing for 5+ hours).  But in order for the plows to go to work they had to get all the stuck cars off the hills.  It was a disaster.  I've never been so happy to get home in my life.

I found this picture from the Lawrence Journal World.  This is one of the intersections everyone was getting stuck at.

Day 158

So, I guess this is part 2 to my post from yesterday.

Obviously the past month has been really hard for me... frustrating, emotional, tense, exhausting all come to mind.  I'm sure I haven't been easy to live with and I've had more than a fair share of baggage lately, but Rick has been absolutely amazing through all of it.

I never understood what people meant when they said someone was "their rock", but now I really get it.  I think Rick is the one thing keeping me sane in all of this craziness.  He always listens, he helps however he can and he always supports my thoughts and decisions.

Going through all of this with my brother has not been fun.  But, it has reminded me how lucky I am to have a partner in life to lean on when things are hard.  And I'm so thankful for that.

Love you.

Day 157

My blogging has been lacking in creativity and pizazz lately, so I thought I should give an explanation.  I debated for a long time about whether or not to discuss this on the blog because it is such a downer, but in the end I decided that I want this to be a true reflection of our first year of marriage and these events have had a major impact on our lives for the past month, so I think they deserve to be noted.

My brother has been involved with drugs and alcohol from a young age.  He's had several injuries and arrests along the way, and it all recently came to a head.  Before Christmas my family held an 'intervention' where we were able to convince him to go to rehab and try to get some help for what we thought was an addiction to marijuana or something more serious.  He spent two weeks in rehab and then transitioned to a sort of half-way house.  During his time in rehab he was very angry at all of us for putting him there, and didn't seem to be making a lot of progress on his road to recovery.  However, after 2 weeks the staff at the rehab center thought he was ready to move on and suggested he move into an Oxford house.

His time at the half-way house was a disaster, and he was asked to leave after two days.  After leaving the half-way house he spent several sleepless nights in his car and in jail for various reasons.  After 5 days of complete chaos, two trips between El Dorado and Lawrence, starting a fire, stealing gas and being arrested twice he asked to be taken to a hospital for mental evaluation.

Once he was evaluated it was determined that he was having a manic episode and most likely had bipolar disorder.  The doctors thought he had likely been experience these mood swings for a while and was using drugs and alcohol to help regulate his moods.  As it turned out, he had not used drugs at all since leaving the rehab center.  But he was so chemically imbalanced that it appeared to everyone he was high.

Hopefully over the next several days the doctors can better evaluate him and get him on some medicine that will start to make him feel better.

Day 156

Today I had to go to school on a Sunday... SO LAME.

I signed up to take this Deposition skills workshop because it's 2 hours of credit for 3 days of work.  I figured I couldn't go wrong, but thanks to MLK jr. day we have to meet on a Sunday (instead of MLK jr. day on Monday).  It's totally ruining my weekend.

Hopefully this class is worth it. We're supposed to be working with practicing attorneys who take a lot of depositions, so that should be interesting.  Today however was just 5 hours of lecture time about the basics of depositions and the class. It really dragged on.  Not to mention Rick was at home all afternoon cozied up on the couch watching football.

The Bears are doing really well this year and made it to the play offs so Rick is super pumped.  If they make it to the Super Bowl, we just might have to take a drive down to Dallas.

Day 155

Today we headed over to KC so that Rick could pick up some more beer brewing equipment.  We met up with Libby and Tom at the beer brewing store (which was much smaller than I expected) and then headed to a place in Westport for a drink.  Libby and Tom suggested the beer kitchen which turned out to be an excellent choice.  They had a very interesting food menu and a very extensive beer menu... much to the guys' delight.  On their menu they had deviled eggs!  I've never seen deviled eggs on a menu before and these were very fancy deviled eggs with salmon and caviar on top.  Yum!

After a few drinks we headed over to Katie and Charlie's for dinner.  Katie had made little pizza crusts for everyone to make their own pizza.  Super cute dinner party idea.  Then we watched football and eventually convinced the boys to watch the Miss America pageant if we fast forwarded through all the boring parts.  We ended up each picking 2 contestants and rooting for ours to win.  It was really fun, especially because my girl won!!  Go Nebrasksa!  The highlight of the whole thing, though, was the contestant whose talent was yodeling ventriloquy.  Hilarious.


All in all a fun night!

Day 154

Friday Favorites...

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd do a little update on some of our new favorite things.
- Brewing beer (this is rick's not mine. He's Obsessed.)
- Running (I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit)
- Cooking Stir Fry (although it doesn't make very good left overs)
- Fish Tacos (this may have been an old favorite, can't remember)
- Word Feud on our phones (so far we're tied)

Day 153

Today Rick and I have been married for 5 months.  In honor of this milestone I'd like to share a little story of why Rick always keeps life interesting :)

Recently, we went on a trip to Austin, Tx.  While in Austin we got to sleep in a king-size bed.  It seemed huge compared to our queen size bed at home.  Apparently, there was just a little too much room between us, because one night I woke up to find that Rick had gotten out of bed and come around to my side and gotten back in bed on my side.  I had to scoot all the way across the bed to get out and go to the bathroom lol.

I've created a diagram to illustrate the hilarity of this...

Rick has done a lot of funny things in his sleep, but I think this tops them all.  It's nice to know he missed me, though. :)

day 152

After the 7 inches of snow we got yesterday and last night, the weather turned absolutely frigid.  The high for today is like 12 degrees.  So, as Rick was getting ready this morning he noticed this...


That's frost.  On the inside.  Of our bedroom window.


You can sort of see it in between the blinds, there.  After discovering this we checked all our other windows and found the same thing, to a lesser degree, on all of them.

I could have made my own snow cone with all the frost we had!  It was really frozen, too.  I tried to scrape it off with my finger and it didn't budge.  So, now you know that I am not kidding when I say that it is absolutely frigid here.

Then I came home from work and found that the snow plow had come again and created a nice 2 foot ridge of snow all across the end of our driveway.  But, I managed to ramp over it and power through in my little civic. Rick was really impressed that I actually managed to make it into the driveway haha

day 151

Places my husband falls asleep, part deux...

In the car.

does this pose look familiar?





I realize he is sleeping in bed here, so it isn't as funny.  Please notice, however, that he is sleeping directly in the middle of the bed.

Day 150

Today it is snowing like crazy here.  We're supposed to get 7 inches, which is a lot.  Rick and I drove together to school for a couple of hours this morning and we definitely used the 4 wheel drive.

Random story...
When my grandparents first got married they lived out in the country in what we now call the 'little house'.  It was a 3 room tiny little thing and there wasn't enough room for everyone, so eventually, they renovated the barn next to the little house into a real house and that is where they lived for 50+ years.  After my grandpa died about 10 years ago my grandma decided she didn't want to live out there in that big house all by herself.  About that same time, my dad had just divorced his second wife and wanted to move back out to the country.  So, my grandma moved into a little condo in town and my dad moved into her house, the house he grew up in.

Since my grandparents built the house 50+ years ago almost nothing has changed.  My dad has kept everything almost exactly the same since he moved in... including a lot of random things in the pantry.  So, when we were out there over Christmas Emily (his gf) discovered these olives in the pantry and wanted to serve them as hor d'oeurves.  When she suggested this to my dad he said, "well you could, but those have been in the pantry for at least 30 years".  lol.  Later that night Rick and I tried to use our phones to scan in the barcode and figure out how old they were. When that didn't work I called the number on the label...that number does not go to the company who made these anymore.  These items are so old they don't even have the modern nutrition labels that all food is now required to have.  They only had a very early version of what we now see, with only about half of the info.

Day 149

Brewing Continued...

So now the wort is in a bucket in out kitchen with this little contraption on top.  I think Rick said it is oxygen bubbling out and it makes a little 'blub blub' sound every 10 seconds.  I keep thinking our kitchen sink is leaking.



It has to stay in the bucket for a few weeks and then we bottle it.  Rick has been collecting bottles out of our recycling and has quite the stash.  His kit came with it's own caps and a capper, which looks pretty fun.  After it goes in the bottles it has to sit for another few weeks and then we can drink it.  Hopefully it doesn't smell like horse by then.

Day 148

Brewing day...

So, the other day there was a groupon for a start-up beer brewing kit.  It included all the equipment you need and a kit of ingredients.  After clearing it with Tom and getting approval that it was a legit deal Rick signed right up.  The package arrived earlier this week and he has just been dying to brew since it showed up.  Today he got his friend Plencner to come over and help him with his first batch.  Plencner also got a brewing kit for Christmas and tomorrow Rick is going to his house to help brew his batch.

After all the hype by Rick, I thought brewing was going to be super exciting... it wasn't.  It really just involves staring at a pot of boiling water for really, really long periods of time.  The main part of the brewing was done outside... did I mention Rick bought a turkey fryer to do this in?  He did.  I'm a little disappointed that it's first use was for beer and not delicious, fried turkey, but I'm holding Rick to frying at least one turkey.  Anyway, before they could get going in the turkey fryer they had to boil the grains (I think that's what they were) inside in a smaller pot for like an hour.  The grains were gross and smelled like horse.


While they were boiling outside they had a 'boil over'.  The instructional video Rick made me watch with him warned of these, "They can be messy and dangerous".  When it happened Rick picked up the pot with his bare hand while boiling hot liquid was gushing out of the pot... crazy.  Somehow he managed not to burn himself, perhaps because it was -10 degrees out while they were doing this.

After cooling the 'wort' in our bathtub with two bags of ice, it was ready to go in the 'ale pale' and ferment for awhile.  Rick tasted the wort, but it still smelled like horse, so I declined.

Day 147

This has been the first full week back to work and school since break and it has been busy.  I had the day off from work today, but I had to go in to legal aid and work on a bunch of stuff there.  It's always a disaster after a break because the supervising attorneys take cover all of our files, which means lots of things get misplaced and go undocumented.  It took me a good 3 hours to get all of my files in order and get caught up on what was happening in each of them. whew, glad to have that done.

Things are also getting busy with the symposium since it is know almost a month away, so I have been playing catch-up/wrap-up on a bunch of that stuff, too.

Tonight Rick and I had our first monthly date night.  We went to see the fighter which was good, but not what I expected.  When we left Rick's comment was, "well they make your family look normal" haha.  They were pretty crazy.  And one of the sisters was played by Conan O'Brien's real life sister.  I heard an interview on NPR where they said she looked like a version of him in drag... poor lady.  Christian Bale looked nothing like batman... I almost didn't recognize him.  And Amy Adams were a lot of skanky outfits.  All in all I could have lived with waiting till it came out on DVD.  True Grit was way better.

After the movie we went to Johnny's West for dinner.  My sister had gone there the other day and said it was really good, so we decided to go try it out.  The food was pretty good, but the best part was that the had $3 champagne drinks.  I got something called a Crimson Cocktail and it was yummy.  The only downside to eating there was that it happened to be the one night every lawyer in town was meeting there for a judge's going away party, so that was kind of awkward.  I felt like I was crashing the party, but I honestly had no idea it was even happening. haha

Day 146

I can't believe I forgot about this little gem until now!

So, over Christmas when we were all back in El Dorado Libby was really sick with a head cold and lots of congestion.  My mom suggested that she try out the neti pot.   Now, I have tried the neti pot before and now that it is basically a torture device and only provides temporary relief.  (Sidenote: I have a weird ear popping disease and this was one of the things the dr's recommended.  It didn't work.)

Libby agreed to try it out AND let Rick and I take a picture of her doing it! haha  After seeing how much fun Libby had, Tom decided he should try it out, too.  But, apparently Tom's sinuses aren't routed like everyone else's because the water kept coming out of his mouth instead of his other nostril.  It was hilarious.

I googled neti pot pictures and everything that came up is far superior to the pictures that I took, but they're still funny.

Tom testing out the neti pot.

Rick preparing to take a video of Libby neti potting

Day 145

Rick is a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings.  I meant to take a picture of his box set of the books, but I forgot.  He recently started re-reading them again for the 100th time and the books are in bad shape.  The covers are bent, one was definitely spilled on, the binding is basically gone, and two of them have fallen into two separate pieces.  These are well-loved books.

Anyway, Rick has been trying to get me to watch the movies with him forever.  I watched the first one a long time ago when they first came out and didn't like it.  It was too dark and complicated for me.  But, I decided since he watched all the Harry Potter's with me I should give LOTR the old college try.  Rick has the super-deluxe-extra-special-extended versions too, so they are in two parts and it's like watching 6 movies instead of 3.  (Actually, I don't know if the regular versions are in two parts or not.)

Turns out, I actually like these movies.  Who knew?  It helps that we can pause it and I can ask Rick a lot of questions to clarify what's happening.  We're currently half way through the second one, but I fully intend to finish them over the weekend.

The only down side is that these movies made me realize that Harry Potter is a total sham!  I love HP, but there are a whole lot of parallels between HP and LOTR.  Rick says that in HP's defense LOTR covered pretty much every theme, character and storyline that you could use in a fantasy book so there wasn't a lot left over for HP.

Gollum = Dobby        Gandalf = Dumbledore       The Ring = Horcruxes      Dark Tower = Dark Lord
I could go on...

Day 144

So, now that things are back in full swing with work, school (almost), etc. I thought I should probably work on some resolutions/goals for the upcoming year.  I feel like I make the same resolutions every year: eat healthy, work out more, work harder at school, etc.  This year I tried to come up with some more concrete and detailed resolutions, so here goes:

- Run a 10k (and maybe a half-marathon)
  Rick has already scoped out a training schedule and a race for me, so I'd say I'm well on my way to this one!

- Find 5 new, healthy and easy recipes to work into our regular rotation of meals
   I feel like we're pretty good at cooking and not eating out too much, but some of our recipes could be healthier so I'd like to work on that

- Pass the bar and Get a job
  Duh, obviously this is a non-negotiable goal

- Get involved with the alpha chi alumnae group wherever we move after graduation
   I want to make more friends, and also do things to help the collegiate alpha chi chapters because it was a really great experience for me  

- Volunteer or donate to charity
   Every holiday season I always think about how I should be giving back more to the community and I always    make the excuse that I'm in school so I don't have time or money, so this year I'm going to at the very least volunteer some of my time somewhere.

- Date night
  Rick and I spend a lot of time together, but I don't always feel like it's quality time when we're zoned out in front of the tv, or whatever.  So, I want to institute date night, once a month, something cheap that includes an activity and food

day 143

Look what Rick left in the front seat of my car lol. He got out to put gas in the other day and I looked over to see this. We concluded that it was the remains of a cinnamon roll that he'd accidentally sat on when we got breakfast at hyvee that morning. I would blame it on a new year's hangover but he wasn't even drinking haha

For the record this is in no way a reflection of his hygiene. He is very clean. :)

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day 142

Culinary experiments today: roast and herb bread.

I would say they were both a success! Rick's reaction to the roast was multiple wows haha

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Day 141

We have been such bums today, but still managed to get quite a bit accomplished.  All the presents and luggage are unpacked, laundry is all done and we made it to the grocery store.

Rick still isn't feeling well, but we got his some drugs at the grocery store along with some OJ, so I expect big improvement very soon.  He's been watching a lot of football, while I worked on the laundry and read my book.

Tonight we watched A Serious Man.  Terrible movie.  It got such high ratings on netflix, but it didn't make any sense and the ending was terrible.  I do not recommend it.