Tuesday, September 26, 2006

China: Unpacked

Our dining room furniture was delivered a few weeks ago, and last weekend we finally got around to unpacking our china and putting it in our new china cabinet. This is china we were given for our wedding almost five years ago - most of which had never been out of its original box and most of which has moved with us four times in those five years. Impressively enough, nothing was broken, which I think is more a testament to the wonderful things packaging engineers can do with cardboard these days than to the care of our various moving companies.

So we got it all unwrapped and stacked up, and we discovered we had 10 tea cups, 10 dinner plates, 10 salad plates...and 8 saucers and 6 bread plates. "Do you think this is some kind of practical joke that we're just now getting, five years later?" Randy asked. Hee. Luckily, the next day I found one more small box of china that had 2 saucers and 4 bread plates in it. We're all good now. (The dining room furniture, by the way, looks fantastic. It's like we have a real house, with real furniture, now!)

In other news on the home front: We have finally found someone to re-do the shower in the master bath. It looks like the previous owners put up a surround on their own, and it...really looks like it. So much so that we've actually never used that shower - the big, gaping seams in the surround always seemed like something you would definitely not want to get water near. The rest of the bathroom is great - it looks like they recently replaced the toilets and vanities in all the bathrooms, so it will be nice to finally have an attractive, and usable, shower to go with. The only sad part will be waiting the four-six weeks they estimate it will take until they have our custom-formed replacement surround ready to go. We'll keep you updated!

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Holy Toledo!

We haven't blogged about it yet, but college football has started! This is the third weekend of the season, and is being billed as "Separation Saturday" or "Showdown Saturday" depending on which sports site you visit. The reason? There are seven games pitting Top-25 teams against each other.

Lost in the hype, though, was Friday night's game between Kansas and Toledo. I had been looking forward to it all week long; Toledo is a scrappy team from the overachieving Mid-American Conference, while Kansas is a solid, middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team. You could just sense that these two teams were evenly matched. "It's gonna be a barnburner," I told Wendy. "I think Toledo might take it."

The game did not disappoint. It took double-overtime for Toledo to pull out a victory, 37-31. Before the first overtime started, the announcer summed up the unusually exciting game by pointing out there'd been 5 lead changes, 2 safeties, 2 two-point conversions, 2 fourth-down touchdowns, 17 punts, and 17 penalties. And on top of that, Toledo didn't get a single first down in the second half, but still managed to score 14 points! In the end, though, Kansas was doomed by their 5 turnovers. (These last two stats prompted Wendy to ask "Is it really a barnburner if the offenses are so inept?" That's an interesting question that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.)

This is why I love college football, though. It doesn't matter who's playing -- New Mexico vs. New Mexico State, Kansas vs. Toledo, or Pittsburgh vs. Ohio -- it's so easy to get into it because the games are all about emotion. It's the emotion, the pride, the passion, and the tradition that make it so great. For the next 12 weeks you'll find me glued to the TV on Saturdays, enjoying every touchdown, overtime, last-second field goal, goal-line stand, and fourth-quarter rally.

College football. God bless it.

Update, 7:04pm: I neglected to mention that on Saturdays you will also find me yelling, screaming, and cursing vehemently at the TV (and the officials) when things aren't going well for the Sooners.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

The weather here has been fantastic lately - mid-sixties and gray and rainy. I'm not being sarcastic; I really love this kind of weather and missed it desperately when we lived in Colorado and it was sunny day after day after freaking day. The clouds and rain remind me of fall and melancholy and thick socks and warm drinks and jackets and books and football and other things that I love.

I will admit that chilly gray days are not ideal for picnics, but that didn't stop us from going to two this weekend anyway. Friday was the employee picnic at my college. It's not nearly as big and fancy as Randy's company picnic, but it was a good time anyway. Randy got to meet most of my co-workers for the first time, we ate Mexican food, and we played the beanbag-toss game. (I lost. Repeatedly.)

Saturday was the neighborhood association block party, and it was pretty windy and cold all day. We ventured out anyway and chatted with more of our neighbors (they're still all very friendly). We also met a woman who grew up in our house - her parents were the original owners of the house, and she still lives in the neighborhood with her husband and kids. Apparently there used to be a hot tub in our backyard.

Sunday we bought dining room furniture! It hasn't been delivered yet, but we're very excited about it. A table big enough for more than two people to sit at! Chairs that match the table and each other! We also got a china cabinet, so the china we got for our wedding may soon be freed from the boxes it's been living in since we got it. Living room furniture is actually kind of a more pressing need - we did have dining room furniture; it just wasn't very nice, whereas we don't have any furniture in the living room yet - but we haven't found anything yet that we liked enough to buy. We'll keep looking.