1. finished geneva’s Christmas Coat just in time for Belated Christmas on the 2nd. i’ve been working on this coat since July. the last week it got all sweatshop up in here; every night ben would go to bed at 10 or 11 and then i’d stay up till 2 or 3 working on the coat [kept company by item 2 on this list]. when Geneva, being two years old, opened the box she pulled out the tissue paper, threw it behind her, then pulled out the coat, threw it behind her, then looked, disappointed, into the empty box in search of her actual gift. when pressed to try it on she threw a fit, so her poor cousin Grant was imposed upon to model the coat instead.
2. watched season one and started season two of The Tudors. i know, all the boobs, its ridiculous, but i so love frock dramas. those dresses! and i confess that by season two i was totally dorking out on the history. i’ve been reading the wikipedia entries on all the historical figures. Anne Bolyen is kind of getting a bad rap, i think. but Katherine of Aragon was a pretty cool woman and she totally got the shaft. i’ll let you know what i think of Jane Seymour when i get there.
3. replaced our thermostat with a programmable one. yeah, girl power!
4. decided i’d take on the 100 days challenge as a way to get my sorry butt back in gear. i was training for a half marathon all fall, but two weeks before the race when i realized that i had forgotten to register and the race was now sold out, my motivation went zinging out the window and my running shoes crawled into a closet where they’ve been ignored for all of december. the deal with the 100 days of fitness is that it just requires 30 minute of any kind of exercise a day. any kind. seriously. as in, i played DDR for 30 minutes today. tomorrow i’m back to the gym, i swear.
5. played DDR and called it exercise [see item 4]. i know that DDR is soooo 2002, but i’ve only just now acquired one thanks to a regifted Wii and DDR game mat i received at Belated Christmas [see item 1].
6. i baked. oh, i baked. new year’s day challah (Smitten Kitchen) (goes stale quickly, but makes excellent french toast the next day), buttermilk waffles (Bittman, Everything Vegetarian) (the extra freeze beautifully), a loaf of our favorite no-knead bread (Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery). there was also a failed loaf of bread-machine bread [see item 7]. the bread machine seems to be fine for making white bread, but wheat bread just causes it to seize up and produce dense, gummy lumps instead of loaves of bread. there were plans in the works for a flourless chocolate cake for new years’ eve, too, but it just didn’t happen. sometime this week, it will, and it will be amazing. just wait.
7. kicked the bread machine to the proverbial curb. i had decided a while back that i had to learn to bake bread by hand before i could consider a bread machine. there’s been plenty of failures this fall, but i think i’m getting a pretty good handle on it now. enough that i was willing to experiment with the breadmaker. my sister-in-law was kind enough to loan us her bread maker so i could decide if i wanted to own one. the answer is no. it takes up way too much space on the counter, the bread is sub-standard, and it’s kind of annoyingly loud. i’m unimpressed. i think we’ll stick with making it the old fashioned way.
8. welcomed the new year in a low-key manner, narrowly beating Ben at scrabble just after midnight at our local, the goodly Albatross.
9. did not write holiday cards. i had SUCH good intentions this year, i swear. i carried those holiday cards around in my messenger bag for weeks, always sure i’d find some time to sit down and write. i only managed to squeak out about three of them. even the week after Christmas i fully intended to write cards, since they’re holiday cards i have all the way to new years day, right? and now it’s the fourth and it’s starting to seem ridiculous to send cards. i love you all. i do.
10. introduced Ben to Slings & Arrows (which is finally available to stream off Netflix!) it’s a wonderfully obscure 18-episode Canadian comedy series about the inner workings of shakespeare festival theatre. i know, a narrow audience, but imagine how you’d feel about The Office if you actually worked for a paper company.
11. started another Vegetarian January. last year Ben volunteered to try it with me, but he was brought down by a prosciutto pizza 8 days in. this year he didn’t even consider it. still, the overall meat consumption goes way down in our house not just for january but for probably half the year as a result of the Vegetarian Januaries, so i think it’s a good thing.