Pre-Holiday Updates

The month of November was pretty uneventful for Nick and me - a welcome change! No new house projects, no travel to speak of (aside from Nick's work travel), and we even managed to just show up for Thanksgiving dinner at my friend Daryn's with a turkey in hand. Sweet!

One thing keeping our attention last month was going through the process of having our building power washed and painted. Normally not such a big thing, but we had to move EVERYTHING off the back deck and front porch. Those who have seen these spaces know that a) I have A LOT of plants and b) they are all in large and/or heavy pots. Way to plan, me! Nick and I spent a very long night carrying the patio furniture down to the garage and the plants down what is normally a relatively short path to a grassy area (that night it seemed miles long). We performed some patio furniture Tetris in the garage so that we could still get one car in there and then put pictures of it up on Craigslist ... I wanted to sell it because it was time to upgrade, but I find it funnier and slightly more shocking to tell my neighbors that I just didn't want to have to haul it all back up to the deck!

Anyway, it took the painters forever to get the job done, in part due to delays from some much-needed rain. Before they got started, we let Natasha do some supervised exploration of the newly emptied deck:



Then she was captured by Nick and was forcibly rocked like a baby. She actually doesn't look like she minds it in this picture, but this was probably taken between whines.



But once back inside, she sprawled in the sunshine in her usual spot:



Thankfully, the painting was finished shortly before Thanksgiving, so I spent the last few weekends repotting some plants, pitching others, and giving some new ones good homes. In the same heavy pots. Hmmm, I never learn, do I?!

In other news, we were incredibly excited to hear that the ILLINI have secured a spot in the Rose Bowl!!!! Sadly, it's against USC, which means we stand an excellent chance of getting trounced ... but that will not deter us from trying to get tickets for the New Year's Day event! I'm keeping my eyes peeled for an announcement from our local alumni association; so far, the tickets we've found online are upwards of $300, which seems like a lot to spend to see Illinois lose. Lord knows, we did our fair share of that during our time in Champaign-Urbana. See? We're serious fans ... no, no, no fair-weather fans here ... remember, Nick and I were on hand in NOLA to witness the embarrassment of the Sugar Bowl in '02. We're huge fans - but we still have memories!