tired of winter

i am officially tired of winter. i like to think i have a higher tolerance for cold and snow than most after growing up in this area, but every year when it gets to be nearly march and i'm still snow-blowing, shoveling, and bundling up on a regular basis, i am bummed that it is still winter. i had to clear my driveway of snow 3 out of 4 mornings this week, last night i drove home in a minor blizzard, and it is getting old. particularly after reading katie's blog about the 50 degree weather, i am ready for that - 50 degrees sounds nothing short of glorious right now. i haven't seen 50 degrees since...i moved here. c'mon spring, we need you!!!

AT: when your computer is smarter than you think it is

it's been almost two weeks since i blogged, and after pretty successful string of blogs in january with awesome things, i've decided to return to my awesome things format for the most part. instead of numbering them, i'll just denote an awesome thing in the title with "AT". glad we got that cleared up.

yesterday i got a new computer at work - i was really excited for this development because i was going from an 8 year old laptop (slow, small screen, etc.) to a brand new desktop with windows 7, all kinds of speed, and a great big monitor. unfortunately, the transition yesterday was not as smooth as i'd hoped. a program i rely on daily wasn't working with windows 7; we hadn't gotten microsoft office and we were using "open office" instead (a free version), and i couldn't figure out how to make some common features of my most critical spreadsheet work as i was used to. it got to be 5:00 and my entire afternoon had been whittled away by computer woes so i just went home.

i came in this morning prepared to do battle with this "open office" situation. i sat down, opened up my spreadsheet, and started with one small change, thinking this would lead to a string of tedious other changes. lo and behold, it did not! the program recognized my change and updated automatically! it was awesome. when you sit at a computer pretty much all day for work, it's these little victories that make random tuesday mornings bearable :)

you guys may have snow but we had...an earthquake!!!

that's right folks, last night around 4:00 in the morning, chicago's western suburbs, along with parts of wisconsin and indiana, experienced a 3.8 magnitude earthquake! of course, i slept through the whole thing so i can't report first-hand, but my mom woke up and said the whole house was shaking, which she mistakenly identified as a possible gas explosion or ice falling on the roof - both theories were disproved after a quick examination of the house. i didn't even know this, but apparently we are along a fault line out here in the midwest, although actual activity you can feel occurs pretty infrequently.

it's not quite as dramatic as snow-magedon, but there certainly are some crazy natural phenomena happening these days...

snow blower extrordinaire

this morning i snow-blowed my driveway all by myself for the very first time and it was AWESOME! my dad is out of town, so it was up to me to get my car out without packing down too much snow. i have to say, snow-blowing is waaaay more fun than lawn mowing, because you get to see the snow shooting out from the top and you can aim it and our driveway is way smaller than our lawn :) so for all of those reasons, i am psyched to snow blow again tomorrow morning after the next 6 inches or so have fallen tonight!

wish i was out in VA to share my new found skills with a lot of you guys - i'm trying to help in spirit!!!

new home sweet home?

this weekend alex and i took our first house hunting excursion with our new realtor and it was LONG - we spent over 4 hours looking at a bunch of places, and i think we've found 2 possibilities! of course, it's only our first time out with her, so there's probably lots more looking to come, but it was exciting to find 2 places that were in the budget, in a location we liked, and in move-in condition!

the first is a townhouse near a cute downtown area with good highway access. it's 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, with a little dining area and a living room, a patio, plus a kitchen of course. this is a place we could really do a lot to make it feel like our own - we'd paint, replace the kitchen cabinets, maybe put in a new floor, possibly make some upgrades to the bathroom (all in good time of course). the major plus here is that it is 2 blocks from the train we'd take when we want/need to go downtown, it's a very residential area, and it's walkable to several restaurants.

the second is a first floor condo, also with good highway access and close to a mall/restaurant hub. this one has gorgeous hardwood floors, a cute updated kitchen & bathroom, and the patio backs up to a big green space with a pond. it would be really fun for entertaining, has lots of closet space, and fun paint already done on the inside. it's not in a very residential area, but the community has a nice feel.

anyways, those are the updates from the house hunt - anyone have advice on pitfalls we should watch out for in this process??

you know you're a true LOST fan when...

you dream about being on the island the night before the season premier. yes, that's right. tonight is the season premier of LOST and this morning i woke up in the middle of a dream about being on the island...and it was awesome!!! i've been reading up on this season's speculations, spoilers, and mysteries to be resolved, and apparently these issues have seeped into my dream life, haha. the only sad thing about tonight's incredible television event is that i won't be able to watch and question and theorize with all of you afterward. thank goodness we have blogs to share our thoughts :) who's ready to get LOST?!?!?!

last awesome things!

#29 - house hunting: as most of you have already heard, alex and i are in the market to buy a condo/townhouse before the new homebuyers tax credit expires in april. friday was our first trip out to look at properties! although the process is a lot of work (finding a realtor, getting approved for a mortgage, searching endlessly online for property information), i actually really enjoy it. mostly i enjoy it because i know at the end of the road, alex and i will have a place to call our own and that will be awesome :)

#30 - measurable progress: one of the cool things about a sport like track is that progress is very obvious because it is measurable - a season best, a personal record, or just a better performance that the previous week. well, the vikings' meet this weekend was downtown so i went in to the city to watch! it was really exciting because alex's athletes had great performances - one guy won both the weight and the shot put! they all have already shown considerable improvement since the beginning of the season, and that is an awesome thing for a coach AND a spectator :)

#31 - regular blogging: so this is the the end of my "awesome things" month, and although i didn't even keep up with that as regularly as i would have liked, i still really enjoyed doing it. it gave me a framework to talk about the good things in my life and reminded me of how much i have to be thankful for. i won't promise an awesome thing for every day going forward, but don't be surprised if the awesome update format lives on - it's been awesome!