Ooh La La

Because I'm a huge dork and am still a little giddy about the couches, here are some before and after shots of our living room. Grown-up furniture is fun!

Livin’ It Up in the 5400

I had a whole first paragraph written out last night about actually writing before Sunday morning and how proud of myself I was. However, before I could finish the post I fizzled out and ended up helping Trout decoupage our TV cabinet instead. Anyway, now it’s Sunday morning, and hopefully this post will actually make it to my blog.

This weekend Trout and I had nothing particular planned. However, a combination of events led us to do something neither one of us had ever done before. Yesterday, after searching in two different towns, we purchased real, grown-up furniture.

It all started Friday night at a going away party for one of Trout’s coworkers. A couple of his coworkers and I were admiring the host’s living room furniture. Those of us in the conversation discussed how nice it would be to one day own actual furniture that wasn’t inherited from friends or family, or bought at a second hand store. We agreed second hand store furniture could usually be restored and decorated to one’s own tastes, but the inherited furniture, more often times than not, left the spaces in which they occupy looking mismatched and eclectic, but not necessarily a good eclectic. This describes Trout and my living room perfectly.

The second catalyst to this story has been in place since I moved to the 5400. As you all know, I left my massive (and free) couch in the hands of a thrift store before I departed Denver because Trout already had a couch, and it just seemed silly to bring mine along. Well, Trout’s couch is really a loveseat, and a pretty worn down, sagging loveseat at that. It’s been a great little piece of furniture, it’s served us well, but it’s very hard to get (or stay) comfortable on it for any period of time anymore. It’s also more of a futon than a loveseat, as the cushions fold out to make a mattress/sleeping pad of sorts. This gives the whole couch little structural support. Now that we have an actual guest bedroom, we have no need for a sleeper sofa, let alone a couch that makes our backs hurt.

Watching an early morning soccer game between Tottenham and Southend, Trout and I decided that enough was enough, we needed a new couch. This was not an impulsive sort of idea, we have been thinking about this for awhile now, but this morning, we realized we couldn’t go on sitting like this for much longer. After looking in three different furniture stores, (and going to a town 30 miles away) we found our new couch. I should probably pluralize that, because after a bit of debate we also bought the matching loveseat. Now, once we saw the couch we actually liked, we realized we had one big obstacle to get over. We had to release ourselves of our college furniture mind frame. Just because a couch isn’t $50 doesn’t mean it’s not worth investing in. Spending money on something you would use everyday is okay.

And spend a lot of money we did. Or I should say I spent a lot of money because I was the lucky soul who handed over her credit card to pay for our new lovely pieces of furniture. I do get double frequent flyer miles, so not only do we have classy furniture, but we’re also well on our way to earning a free trip to somewhere, at some point in the future. It’s a win, win situation!

Tomorrow the new sofas arrive and we have to figure out a way to break it to our current loveseat/futon. In the meantime we’re being extra nice to it, and we should probably remove it before the new couches arrive, otherwise it might throw itself in the dumpster. It deserves better than that.

Greetings from the Ice Planet of Hoth

I really thought I’d do a better job and updating now that my schedule has slowed down a bit. Yet here I am, a week since my last post, and I’m still struggling with things to write about.

I’ve come to realize two things about writing on this blog now that I’m in the 5400. It was easier to write about things when I was living in Denver because I didn’t have to be so anonymous about everything. There was a certain amount of anonymity built into to writing about Denver, just because of the mere size of the city. Just because I wrote about Snooze or Lechugas wasn’t going to reveal details about my exact location in Denver, my profession, my coworkers or anybody else I would talk about. In the 5400, it’s quite a different story. Now, if I write about local hangouts in detail (including real names), then the real identity of this quaint little town will be revealed and it will only be too easy figuring out what I do and what Trout does for a living, and then, well, I guess I wouldn’t have to worry about struggling to write a post, because there would be no more posts.

Now I realize that having to change how I write about certain topics isn’t a really stellar reason why I haven’t been updating, but I think it’s partly to blame. Coupled with shifting my frame of mind, when I was in Denver, I think that blogging might have filled the void where my social life should have been. It is much easier to come up with semi-interesting posts when you have (what seems like) all the time in the world. It’s not like Trout and I are out on the town every night, but lounging around at home with him, watching a movie or reading a book while he ties flies is a hell of a lot more exciting than sitting at home by myself trying to find something to watch on network television on a Saturday night. Then, blogging was a much more exciting and intellectual option, now, well, it’s just slipped amongst my priorities.

That being said, let’s talk about the weather! No matter how anonymous I want to remain or how super-social I’ve been lately, it’s hard to ignore the perpetual deep freeze we’ve found ourselves in the last couple of weeks. The wind rarely blows here in the 5400, but when it does, it usually means a significant weather change. Sometime during my second week of work, from the comfort of my cozy little office, I watched the wind whip the trees from side to side, knowing that while it tossed trees around, it was also sweeping all the warm air out of the valley and the temperature would quickly drop. By the next day, it was well below zero with a fair amount of snow on the ground. We haven’t hit above freezing (and, until late last week, above 10) since. Only on Thursday and Friday did the roads and sidewalks start to melt. Today we awoke to 6 more inches of light fluffy snow, but, thanks to overcast skies, it’s in the 20s. We’re still not looking at above freezing temperatures for awhile, but at this point, we’ll take anything above 20.

When it’s this cold, it’s almost a toss up whether to walk to work or drive. We don’t have a garage, and my car doesn’t have an engine heater. Driving about ½ mile requires me to warm the car up for at least 15 minutes, which is such a huge waste of gas. Even after a sufficient warm up, my car hates this kind of weather, and lets me know this in any way it can. However, walking to work requires bundling up in a long sleeve shirt, sweater, pull over fleece, winter coat, long underwear, a couple layers of socks, ear band, hat, mittens and a scarf. If the wind isn’t blowing, it’s pretty easy to stay warm, except that trying to breathe with out the buffer of your scarf means instant freezing of one’s nasal passages. Which is the better of two evils? For most of last week and the first part of this week, Trout and I both walked to work, but by the end of this week, I was dropping Trout off on my way to the office.

Both Trout and I have to head into our respective offices at different times today. To save time, we’ll be driving. The roads have not been plowed, possibly because the city of the 5400 doesn’t actually have any snowplows, but drive, we will. It’s quite the adventure. At least the weather is warmer. Not warm, just warmer.

And on a completely unrelated note, I think I’ve found the recipe for the Oatmeal Peanut Butter M&M Monster Cookies my elementary principal used to make. I haven’t had them in almost 10 years, and because they’re pretty much the best cookies on the face of the planet, I think I’m going to do some baking this afternoon. It will give me something to do while Trout watches the Bears and Saints game.

That’s all. Stay warm and at the very least, I’ll see you all here next week.

Hasta.

Thoughts on a Lazy Sunday Morning

Life has finally started to pull itself into something that can resemble normalcy, something organized and even routine. It’s about friggin’ time. And you know what comes with routine, folks? Oh that’s right, Kathryn starts to post again! I can hear the collective cheers of my readership now…

Where was I? Oh yes…routine, normalcy, leaving the chaos behind. This should not be mistaken for dull, boring and predictable, it’s nothing of the sort. I’ve been looking forward to a bit of routine since moving in December. It’s nice to distinguish between the work week and the weekend. For about a month there, I was living in one continuous weekend. As lovely as that sounds, it’s not all that great. The weekends are wonderful because you don’t get to experience them everyday; they’re the mini-vacation at the end of the week. Sure, sure I was on vacation for a good long time, and shouldn't and won't complain about it, but I was ready to feel productive again.

Work continues to be one big learning experience. Thankfully it’s not such a huge source of stress anymore. I’m actually enjoying my weekends and I better understand what needs to be done and how I can go about doing that. I still have a lot to learn and the amount of work this job requires is still a little overwhelming, but at least now it seems like something I can do. Hurray!

Trout and I have joined a gym. Oh that’s right, you heard me correctly. We’re actually paying to go and workout somewhere. At the very least, we figured spending money on something would be a good motivator to get our money’s worth out of the experience. It feels great to be active again. It’s a gruesome reminder how out of shape I am, but hopefully that’s going to change. It also helps I won two free training session with gym’s owners at the gym’s open house. Trout and I can get in shape and actually know what we’re doing in the process.

Falling into a comfortable routine might not make for the most interesting posts, but sooner or later interesting insights on life in the 54oo or otehr various things will come out. It’ll happen, just give it time. Stay tuned.

Following Suit

Getting up this morning and making my way to the living room, the first thing I noticed was that, at long last, Trout was updating his blog. Seeing this, I realized it has been a while since I updated. I’ve sat down with my laptop on several occasions to try and update, but lately the energy just hasn’t been there. But seeing Trout make the effort, I realize I have plenty of potential topics, but I know most of it I just don’t want to indulge in such a public atmosphere. Yet, I still want to write, so here goes.

Christmas and New Years were great. It was nice to be home and to narrowly miss the second of the now three snowstorms to hit Colorado in the last month. By narrowly missing the storm I mean we made it into The Ranch before the worst of it hit, but we then spent several hours for a couple days helping Jenn and Phil dig their way out. Trout and I were gone for a week and a half, and when we arrived back in the 5400 on New Years Day (because I started work the next day), we were both glad to be done living out of suitcases. It’s good to be home.

Now that Trout and I are back in the real world, things are great, if not insanely busy. I feel simultaneously excited and massively overwhelmed with all I have to learn and do. By the end of my first week I felt less stressed than at the beginning because I actually learned how to do the majority of the tasks my job requires of me. However, waking up this morning, my brain immediately began thinking of all the things that need to be done in the very near future that I didn’t realize on Friday. The stress level has shot back up again, something I hope will subside a little bit when I can actually get to work on everything that needs to be done. I’m sure I’ll eventually love my job, unfortunately, the learning curve is getting in the way of that at the moment.

I’m also sure the pancakes Trout is making right now will help alleviate some of my stress too. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go see if he needs any help.

Hasta.