Our holiday report

We had a little over two full weeks off of work this year for the Christmas and New Year holiday season, and we managed to stay quite productive the entire time. We each had a list of tasks that we wanted to work through and I think both of us came close to completing all of them.

Jeff started with a big project: Basement Storage Organization. About half of the space in our basement is unfinished and has become a collection place of miscellaneous unused and rarely used items over the four years we’ve been in our house. It’s a dumping ground for furniture we don’t like, things we brought home from my mom’s house after her death, extra storage for Joella and Dan who don’t have room at their places for all their stuff, old computer parts, and such and another. Jeff spent the better part of two days going through everything, organizing, piling, and tossing. We had been wanting to get rid of a few large pieces of furniture for quite a while. Our first thought was to donate some of the pieces, but we didn’t really think that any were in good enough shape to do that. We couldn’t take them to the dump because we don’t have a vehicle big enough to do that. So, we decided to list them for sale on Craigslist, and they all disappeared within a couple of days. We listed some smaller items as well, but so far no one is interested in those. Perhaps we’ll garage sale them someday. Anyway, the basement is now in a much nicer state of organization than it had been before the holiday thanks to Jeff’s hard work.

Would you believe that someone PAID us for this thing? Jeff marketed it as "Mid-Century Mod".

During Jeff’s first project, I was working on a couple of things: the scrapbook from our 2006 Colorado vacation, and the completion of Level 1 of my Rosetta Stone German training. I posted previously about my general slackerdom with the Colorado scrapbook project, but with a few days off work and nothing else requiring my attention I finished it. I even had some time to start working on the photo book for our 2008 Europe trip. It will be my first fully digital scrapbook, and it’s going much faster than the all-paper Colorado one did.

The Rosetta Stone program is actually something I’m doing through work. Our company pays for online subscriptions to the program, so I decided to take advantage of that and try and learn some German. It’s going well. I feel like I might even be able to semi-communicate with people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland now without forcing them to try and speak English with me. I also feel more comfortable in my pronunciation of various words and phrases that I already knew before starting the program.

A project we worked on together during the break: Wine Cellar Reorganization. I think this will probably be an annual event for us. We’re up to nearly 400 bottles in the cellar now. We have space for approximately 160 in our wine fridge, and the rest go on open racking in the coolest part of the basement. We have to prioritize each bottle to decide which ones make it into the refrigerator for long term aging and which ones have to suffer on the rack. It used to be fairly easy because we had more bottles that weren’t meant for long term aging than were, but lately our collection has shifted the other way. We implemented our house “Plonk Reduction Program” about a year ago, and have drunk up many of the less exciting stuff and have replaced it with good stuff. This year we’re implementing the “Stop Buying So Much Wine and Drink Up Some of the Really Good Ones to Make Sure We Like Them Before Collecting More Wine That Won’t Be Ready for 20 Years Program” (might need to shorten that program title). Anyway, we’re sacrificing some of the good stuff this year to make sure we’re on the right track with our buying habits. I predict that this year’s wine nights will be much more enjoyable than last year’s! Jeff also made a few modifications to the basement (mostly involving curtains) that make the cellar room much darker, which is a good thing for long term wine storage.

Other little activities from our holiday break:

• A trip to Kansas City to see Michelle’s grandma, aunt, uncle and cousin, and our puppies' godmother, Mary. Joella tagged along, and we had fun shopping down at the Plaza in 6 degree weather.
  

• Cooking our first duck at home (YUMMY!!!)

Duck...

a l'Orange, of course

• Hemming some pants Michelle bought in KC

• Getting a rather bad cold on our 7th anniversary (Michelle)

• Many trips to the gym (so nice and uncrowded during the day!)

• Going out for a belated anniversary dinner at one of Wichita’s finer restaurants where the food, unfortunately, mostly sucks. Lucky for us, it was nearly free, courtesy of Jeff’s employees, who bought him a gift certificate to the place for his Christmas present. I’m beginning to think it’s high time I start an anonymous Wichita restaurant review blog so I can air my grievances with places like this. Two sympathetic coworkers have already volunteered to be contributors.

• Blissful slumber