A year in books

One of my favorite things about the ending of a year is that I get to go through my list of books read (or in some cases listened to) and create a collage of covers. Here are this year's books:



I've been making these collages since 2007. Here's a look back at all of them:















It's pretty rare for me to finish a book I don't like (although there are a few notable exceptions), so if something is in one of my cover collections, odds are it was pretty good.

Christmas yarn

I've been very excited about a few projects I made for Christmas. First of all, here are Mike, Sarah, and Annabelle in their Grumpy Cat hats. Get your frown on!



I also made Annabelle some mittens in Rochester colors, because it's freaking COLD up there:

Filomena

Last year when Mike and Sarah were up for Christmas, we went out to Peking Gourmet Inn for a delicious Chinese meal. Peking Gourmet Inn is known for being THE place for good Chinese food, and the walls are covered with photos of celebrities and dignitaries who have dined there. I wanted a similar experience this year, so we went to Filomena in Georgetown on the advice of one of my co-workers. We were not disappointed!

Filomena is also known for its famous clientele, and the cover of the menu is embossed with the names of some well-known diners:



The restaurant was extravagantly decorated for Christmas:



And the food was top notch! I had a pasta with lobster sauce that was Bill Clinton's favorite when he was living nearby. Then for dessert, we split several items, including this amazing cheesecake:

Merry Throw--Back Thursday!

Christmas dogs

Annabelle got home for her winter break this morning, and the first thing we did when we got home was take our Christmas card photo. This isn't it, but it's too adorable not to share:

Lifting heavy objects

Mike competed in the USA Powerlifting American Open Championships today in the city and did quite well! Buddy has all the details and lots of video on his blog. Here's a rather blurry pic of him with his silver medal at the end though:



Way to go, Mike!

Sassy is here!

So is Mike, but his nose isn't quite this cute:

What a noble beast

Deck the bourbon

Fred has got quite a collection of bourbon going:



This bottle is even dressed for Christmas:

Beautiful music

Tonight the UR Wind Ensemble had their fall concert, and thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we were able to see it, and so were Annabelle's grandparents. And now so can you!

Watch live streaming video from universityofrochester at livestream.com

Well, the mold is gone

Let there be tile

We just bought a ton (literally, probably) of this porcelain tile for the basement.



The plan is to heat it. I figure with heated tile, we will always know where the cats are!

Christmas cheer

We decorated the tree tonight. It all turned out well in the end, but Fred did have to make an unplanned Target run for more lights.

Harvey managed the whole affair:

I know what Ginger's thankful for today

Christmas tree in the house

We got our tree tonight (thanks, Home Depot!) so that we can put Annabelle to work decorating it when she's home for Thanksgiving:

The work continues

See this wallpaper?



If they have wallpaper in hell, I'm pretty sure it's this kind. We went out today though and bought a steamer, and that seems to be doing a pretty good job with it:



Meanwhile, we had to make some tough choices in the man cave. There were gorgeous built-ins at either end, but ultimately we decided that these needed to come out to make room for Fred's office furniture:



Fred has started dismantling them:



We also decided to pull up the carpet in the man cave, and look what we found:



I hope he doesn't come alive at night!

Proud of our boy!

Mike has spent the weekend in Orlando coaching the Special Olympics powerlifting team from Tallahassee in a meet. His lifters were successful in the competition, and tonight Mike was nominated as Leon County's inspirational coach of the season:

Another cool feature to remember

I don't think it's going to survive the renovations, but how cool is it to have a toile-phone?

Greetings from the home office

One of the great things about being done with my 6-month probationary period at work is that I now get to work from home 2 days a week. The future is looking bright:

Best lot in the 'hood

I love the house that we're renting, but it's set on a corner lot where every car that enters or leaves the neighborhood has to go right past. The new house, however, is tucked away at the end of a pipestem, and you likely wouldn't even notice it unless you were looking for it (that's it, way back and to the left):



The yard itself is just lovely (these pictures were taken a couple months ago):









I love the double porches on the front and the big deck in the back:





And we are just over the moon with excitement that we are getting a double garage (most of the garages in our neighborhood are singles, and no garage at all is more common than you might expect in this area):

An unpleasant discovery

Fred is hard at work stripping away all the wallpaper. Today he was working in the kitchen/family room and discovered some mold underneath the paper:





It's nothing that would have been discoverable during the inspection, and it's not like the seller put the paper up (with matching draperies!) to disguise the mold. It's just one of those things but likely means we'll be putting a new roof on sooner rather than later.