When I moved into our house in South Minneapolis Chris & I were unhappily surprised by the fact that the box spring for my queen sized bed didn’t fit up the stairs to our bedroom! Boo! So, we had a slumber party on the mattress in the living room for one night before I could locate some split box springs for the bed.

Then, I tried to get rid of the box spring. We thought about donating it to Bridging, but their website says that they will only pick up from a household if there are multiple items so that was out (mostly because we don’t have a vehicle to transport the furniture). I emailed friends & family to see if they could use it with no luck. Then, we stuck it in a spare room and left it. Many times I talked about taking a photo of it to post on Craig’s List but the timing never worked out because I wanted to take it out of the spare room & take nice pictures. Well, it turns out you don’t need nice pictures!

On Sunday afternoon I shifted items in the spare room so I could take 2 photos of the box spring & I promptly posted the item for FREE on Craig’s list around 3pm. By the time I got to work on Monday morning I had 12 responses! I ended up with 18 people interested in it & the 2nd one I contacted actually came to pick it up. Yes…about 28 hours after I posted it online it was out of the house! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!

All in all I think 18 people contacted me before I took the ad down. It was a little time consuming because first I responded to each one saying that I had received a lot of interest and would let them know if their name came to the top of the list. Then, after it was officially out of the house I went back and emailed each person that the box spring was gone and took the ad down. I wasn’t sure who would come take it or if it was really someone that needed a box spring or who was going to sell it but we think the couple that stopped by to pick it up is actually going to use it. Either way, it’s not here so I’m happy!

January 3rd is my sister’s birthday. Poor girl celebrates her wedding anniversary on December 17th, Christmas on December 24/25th and her birthday January 3rd. Lucky for her we usually are able to have a separate birthday meal sometime after the new year…and this year it’s TODAY!

In honor of her birthday I tried out the pixie paper doll and some different letters for her card. Here’s the inside…I think the unicorn looks like a My Little Pony!

Well, here it is…2009. This has the potential to be a VERY exciting year for me. I mean, in less than 3 months I’ll be a wife & will be changing my name! SO EXCITING! Who knows what the rest of the year holds for us, but I’m fairly confident that Chris & I will have a great time taking new adventures together.

Chris & I were able to ring in 2009 last night with our friend Andy. We had a nice evening that started out with way too much Chinese food and ended with some tattooed drummer on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. In between we saved the world from a Pandemic, I proved that sometimes you just Can’t Stop and we learned a new card game, Dominion.

My main hope for 2009 is that by the end of it the US and the World is in a better position than it is now. We should be close to “the bottom” by now, right? Here’s to better days.

Fireworks photo by Timothy K Hamilton via Creative Commons.

In the past few months I’ve been lucky enough to become the owner of two books on baseball. The first one, “The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and its Ignore at your own risk Code of Conduct“, was written by a guy with contacts in the Twins organization because many of the quotes about baseball’s code came straight from current & former players as well as coaches. Chris bought it for me in order to complete his “free” shipping minimum on Amazon.com. Yes, it probably would have been cheaper to just pay for the shipping - but this way I got a book out of the deal!

The book was all about the player’s code. The quotes from players and coaches were interesting because they would explain how that particular person interpreted the (unwritten) code. Older players talking about younger players, pitchers talking about their teammates, etc. Generally, I think the book probably could have been 100 fewer pages because there was a lot of redundancy…but overall it was fun to read. Even the umpires got involved to talk about how they’re supposed to call teams who are pitching at each other which the umps KNOW is part of the code being played out and it isn’t fair if the other team doesn’t get to retaliate!

The second, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Minnesota Twins History“, arrived in my stocking on Christmas morning. I hadn’t heard of this book before but it was pretty fun to read. The author divided up the chapters by certain highlights and low lights of the Twins history. It was written after the completion of the 2006 season so it was relatively current too! The book covered the careers of the obvious famous past players as well as some that I had never heard of.

Did you know that a pitcher who gave up at least one run without getting any outs has an ERA of infinity!?!? There’s a Twins player stuck with that for…infinity. I’d say I learned a lot from reading the book and I finished it in just under a week so - it was good! It definitely gives me baseball fever - only 4 months to go until opening day & it’s FREEZING outside today! I think it’s going to be a long 4 months.

If anyone is interested in reading one of these, let me know. I’d be happy to share!

On Christmas Eve we were joined by my parents, josh, robyn, aunt julie, gma b, tia and nate for a fun evening. We had a taco bar for dinner which turned out to be a little bit hectic when everyone was arriving shortly before we planned on serving dinner but I think overall it turned out a-okay. Everyone had a place to sit down and I think all the food was hot at one time!

After dinner some of us decided to rock out a bit with Wii Guitar Hero. Including…

Yes…BOTH of my parents!

Once everyone was done rockin’ a couple serious games of Dr. Mario were played and some nice conversations occurred (especially about the wedding!) before the responsible people left for the night and the rest of us irresponsible hooligans got into some craziness. Irresponsible may not be the right word, but lets just say at least a couple people woke up drunk and one person didn’t even make it to Christmas! Ah, yes…fun times.

What started out as a plan to play Cranium never worked out. Instead we played Ride the Bus followed by Moose…both of which I haven’t played since 2001, if even then!

Thankfully, Christmas day was a little more low key. Chris & I headed up to my parents house for lunch followed by a nap, opening some presents and watching A Christmas Story. After dinner we drove out to Andy’s place where we played Tales of the Arabian Nights board game at which Andy kicked our royal butts.

Besides missing my sister & her husband, I’d say it was a pretty fun couple of days!

Yep - that’s right, this morning on my way to work I filled up my gas tank for $1.52/gallon. Less than $16 for the 10 gallons I needed. Crazy.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was asking if anyone remembered the last time gas was $1.50…do you think we’ll make it down that low in Minnesota? The map at this link shows gas as low as $1.32 in parts of the country! Here’s the current image as of 10:00AM:

Looks like a road trip to Missouri, Arkansas or Texas wouldn’t be a bad idea to escape the cold Minnesota weather!

On Saturday Chris & I went to the Science Museum to see the Mysteries of the Great Lakes Omni movie and the CSI: The Experience special exhibit. Since we became members last year we were able to spend the afternoon there for a total of $7 ($2 to reserve tickets + $5 discounted parking)!

The movie was good & the CSI exhibit was pretty fun! We were assigned Case #2 and the first thing you do is take notes at the crime scene. After 4 1/2 minutes we moved on to different crime lab areas where we reviewed the victims cell phone, matched tire treads, looked for finger prints, etc. Finally we got a report from the medical examiner before placing our report. We’re pretty big fans of CSI and NCIS so there wasn’t a lot for us to learn from the exhibit but we had fun with it anyway!

This year I decided to make cards for my family to open up on Christmas Day. It was a fun project, although Chris got a little annoyed by the noises the cricut makes. Oh well…I think they turned out really cute and they actually didn’t take as long as I thought they would. Here they are!!

Click on the small images if you want to see the full size photo of the individuals.

Click here to see Mrs. Claus.

I wish everyone a happy day no matter what your religious beliefs. This is the mantle at my parents house…we decided last weekend that it was very pretty.

Have a great day!

So, it turns out that I think I like to bake! On Sunday morning I woke up and felt like making some Christmas cookies, so I did. Four types as a matter of fact!!

We went to the grocery store and I started with this:

First things first…haystacks. No bake, no chocolate deliciousness!

Then, what turns out to be everyone’s favorite…peanut butter blossoms:

Third: Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies (Chris’s request):

And finally, Oreo deliciousness (I don’t really know what these are called - Oreo Balls maybe):

I actually made some fudge Tuesday night to join the other sweets but thankfully both Chris & I were able to share some of the cookies with our co-workers Monday & Tuesday so we don’t get stuck with ALL these sweets!