Blooming

Here is a bloom from one of the bulbs in the first set we received from Adina and Steph. Chad also has a photo up (from yesterday) of the blossoms, but his appears to be of a daffodil and this one looks more like it's going to be a tulip. At first we thought they would all be the same, but it looks like maybe a mixture of two different flowers. Very cool! If you look at the bottom of Chad's photo, you'll see this particular blossom before it opened more this morning. After they are done, we can plant them outside in the garden and hopefully the voles won't get them!!

Ikea Catalog

This will likely not be the only post about Ikea throughout the year, but it is the first! We got this catalog/brochure today from Ikea. We absolutely love Ikea, as most of you already know. We got a great gift card to Ikea for Christmas and are planning on using it to buy a cool table for our library where we can sit to do work. It will have a sort of light table built in! Very exciting!

Overkill Salting

What is this? This is the parking lot at our office. Usually this surface is totally black, but they must have done a lot of salting because it was supposed to snow last night. The entire surface was all white and covered in huge pieces of salt. It was kind of gross actually ... but at least there wasn't any ice!

Guinea PIg

We went to Chad's family's house today for the twins' birthdays. This is a photo of Victoria's guinea pig. At this point, the little rodent was sitting in Chad's lap chowing down on some gourmet lettuce (actually, it was a package of spring mix, but the vet said to get that instead of iceberg lettuce). Chad really wants a guinea pig now. I guess they are pretty low maintenance, so if he wants to get one, I won't stop him. It should be interesting! This guinea pig was being very cute today. He was in his cage acting like a maniac, running around and such.

Haircuts

Here is a photo of the sign on the outside wall of our barber shop. Everyone in Glenside goes here for haircuts. They really are the best. Getting haircuts is something I've always hated, although I love it when my hair has just been cut. Well, going to Ralph's makes it a lot easier to get a haircut. I always go to the same guy, Chuck. He does a great job on my hair and I never have to explain what I want because, of course, he does it every time I'm there so he already knows. He's also great to talk to so that makes it much more enjoyable. It also helps that Daryl's bakery is right next door, so we always know we can get a sweet treat afterward! Maybe next time we go I'll get a photo of Daryl's instead!

Lame-o TV Preview

So our neighbors, Deb and Bud, invited us to this TV Preview night. They had received an invitation in the mail and got 4 tickets. It was described as the kind of thing where you go and watch some shows that they are planning to put on the air and then you comment on them. I thought that sounded pretty neat and so we decided to go. So later Deb realized that it said we would be watching both programs AND commercials and so we started to get skeptical about it. We went there and there were about 200 people packed into this small meeting room at the Sheraton in Bucks County. They had 4 TVs set up in the front (probably about 20 or 21 inch screens each). We were seated in almost the very last row so the TVs were pretty tiny. Then we had to fill out this form which consisted of putting our address on the front, and then circling one item from each of about 12 pages of products (such as shampoo, toilet paper, etc.) that we really wanted. It was weird. Then they chose three winners to receive prizes. We then watched a horrible "romantic drama" program along with some commercials. We then answered one page of questions about the show. Next, we filled out practically the same package as the first thing (circle items you want) and they picked 3 more winners. Then we watched a sitcom that was O.K., but was clearly recorded some time in the early 80's (definitely NOT a new show). As Deb pointed out, there were no computers in the office so you know it is old! Anyway, after that we had one more page of questions about that show. After that, we had about 12 pages of marketing questions for a variety of products, such as urinary disease medications, dog foods, acid reflux medications, toilet paper, and others. This whole thing lasted from about 7:30 to 10:00, only about 35 or 40 minutes of which was actually watching television programming. The description they sent out was so clearly designed to trick you into coming and participating in this marketing research study. The best part? They didn't offer ANY refreshments. Not even water! You would think maybe they would have coffee and pastries or something, but no! Nothing! Maybe they could have given out something to everyone who came? Nope. We got absolutely nothing for our time. It took about 40 minutes to get there, 40 minutes to get back, and 2.5 hours of crap! I think Deb felt really bad about it, but I didn't mind. At least now I can complain about how stupid it was! It was somewhat amusing that it was so stupid. But just so you know, if you ever get one of these "invitations", DON'T DO IT!!

Gas Below $2

So I've been wanting to post something about gas prices for a while. I think it will be interesting to see how the price changes over the year. Today I just had to post one because the price per gallon actually fell below $2 at my Wawa in New Jersey. I actually saw it for $1.98 somewhere else, but I always go to this Wawa. Isn't it amazing how the price can fluctuate? How many of you have seen that thing that compares gas prices to other common commodities. We all think that gasoline is really expensive, but when you start comparing it, there is quite an astounding outcome. For example, how much does a gallon of milk cost these days? I think it is somewhere between $3 and $4. That is significantly higher than gas. What about orange juice? That's also pretty expensive. And look at Europe and Japan. Their gas prices are easily twice as high as ours is. And guess what? They have more efficient vehicles! Do you think there is perhaps some link between the cost of gas and the efficiency of vehicles?? Oh well. For now, I'm just happy that I can get gas in New Jersey that is about 30 cents less than in Pennsylvania!