My favorite things...

Right now, here are the things that are rocking my world:

5.  The new green paint in our office.  It's still wet as I write this, but it's awesome!  It's a cross between Slimer from Ghostbusters and the Green Giant.  Bright, crazy, and totally awesome with the white moulding and doors in the room.  The furniture is all white and modern, as well, with some orange, blue, and yellow accents throughout the room.  This is what happens when you marry an artist.

4.  The Archer Farms dinner in a box things that Bizzle picked up at Super Target.  Easy, yummy.  What's not to love?

3.  Valentine's Day surprises.  Brook surprised me with dinner at a very delicious, romantic Italian restaurant in our neighborhood.  I am going to surprise him by having a print framed.  He bought it years ago at the Northern Waters Smokehouse in Duluth, but he never got around to framing it.  It will be a belated, but unexpected gift.

2.  Hot beverages.  Damn it, groundhog!  Why did you doom us to 6 more weeks of winter?  I guess I'll have to keep chugging hot whiskeys until it gets above freezing.

1.  My friend's new baby.  Audrey was born on Tuesday, and I'm so excited!  Love the name, too.

Also looking forward to getting a facial with Kersten at the Aveda Institute next weekend.  How awesome is it that my birthday present to her is also a gift to me?  That sounded kind of selfish, but oh well.

Bad me!

I have been horrible with remembering to post and all.  Plus our too good to be true MPLS city wireless has turned out to be... well, too good to be true.  We hope that we can soon get an upgraded antenna that will help us to pick up the signal better, but it has been spotty at best.

Things in teacher-land have been hectic.  We just started a new semester last week so I had tons of new kiddos to get to know.  My sophomores seem to be pretty cool kids; one pain in the butt, but I am pretty sure I can alleviate that problem soon.  Today we played with play-doh, so the kids were all pumped.  Yes, play-doh.  It was a goofy vocab review activity, but you'd be surprised how much the faces of these 16-year-olds light up when I whip out the case and start passing around tubs.  "Oooh!  Pass me the pink!"  "Look at this, Mrs. L!  I made an impenetrable wall!"  Totally cute.  It reminds me of the days when roomies in Groves 6D would sit on the stoop and blow bubbles when we were too stressed about final exams.  I am a firm believer in the need for all of us to revive that inner-child from time to time.

Otherwise, things have been chugging along.  The social life has been all fun and exciting.  We've had parties and events every weekend, it seems.  Between birthday and work parties, fancy ladies' dinner nights, concerts, and such, I haven't had time to get bored.  Meeting new people has got to be one of my favorite things, and there have been plenty of opportunities.  My friend has been entertaining an overseas employee of his company, so we've spent some time with our new Parisian friend lately.  Most recently, three of us went to the Louis XIV, Hot Hot Heat, and Editors concert at the Fine Line.  I had seen Louis and Editors before, but not in a small venue.  I actually had never been to a show at the Fine Line before.  It was pretty darn fun, but much of that was due to the great company I had.  The show itself could have been better if the bands weren't so rushed to crank out the hits and get off the stage so the next group could perform.  I like the single-headliner shows better for that reason.  But our French pal kept buying bottles of wine, so I didn't mind too much.

Well, I will bid adieu.  Stay warm out there!