12.30.2009

HVAC 2, Maintenance Man 0.
Or maintenance men, I should have said. Two of them worked several hours today to restore heat to my office. There was a new (hand-drawn!) board schematic bandied about. I heard something about orange wires and blue wires, but I was on the phone so I couldn't pay that much attention. After thumping around in the ceiling for nearly twenty minutes, one came down and waved a fuse at me. He installed a new fuse, and while he was attempting to find out why the compressor was not turning on, he blew it. After thumping his head against my wall, he crawled back up in the ceiling and installed a second fuse. The compressor enigma, as it has now become known throughout the land, continues to befuddle them. So, my office remains chilly...

Back to the Christmas loot:
At the family swap I unwrapped an animatronic chicken which clucks Jingle Bells. I have a thing about animatronics (as D can confirm), so I traded it at the first opportunity. But on round 2 of the swap, the chicken was gifted back to me. Poor strategy on my part. However, my boss raises chickens, so I took it to him on Monday. He loved it. It was actually scary to watch him giggle at it. At least he was happy. The only bad part is that he played it all day long. And I could hear it in my office, even with the door shut.

TEM gave me some good smelling stuff from VS and a flower vase. I will have pictures of the vase at some point. I haven't yet found flowers I like for it, even though I've looked in the floral case at three different stores. She also gave me some around-the-house stripey socks, which are so soft and comfy that I have become addicted to wearing them. I seriously considered structuring my work clothes around them so I wouldn't have to take them off.

Mom gave us a lifetime supply of racquetballs, which should come in handy once we get some racquetball racquets.

My second stocking stuffer I picked out myself. I found it on etsy.com and I watched it for about a month before I bought it. It's a water bottle cozy. I figured it would keep the condensation off the racquetball court floor, out of the treadmill cup holder, etc. I just love that it's a shark.


LRL and BBL and Grandma B gave us gift cards. D and I thought that it would be very fitting to use the cards to purchase racquetball racquets. We drove all over G'ville looking in different stores. Sadly, the local selection is not the greatest.
So, we switched gears completely. In addition to racquetball, D and I also really enjoy cooking together. One kitchen item that we lacked (after 14 years of marriage) is a Dutch oven. We have an awesome stock pot, but it cannot go into the oven and we haven't been able to cook some recipes that we wanted to. My inner-foodie has been lusting (yes, lusting) after a Le Crueset French Oven in Caribbean blue but I cannot stomach the price. D and I found this 6 quart Lodge Dutch Oven, which is comparable to the Le Crueset in quality, but is only a quarter of its price, and it had very good reviews. It took all three gift cards, but we now own a Dutch Oven. We know what dish we want to make first and if we can assemble all the ingredients quickly, we will probably fix our New Year's dinner in it.