Yikes! Last night, our indoor kitties proved themselves as worthwhile mousers. Shadow caught a mouse in our downstairs guest room - eeeeeekkkkk!!!! We weren't sure if it was a real mouse at first and Shadow (having never caught one before) wasn't sure if he did a good or bad thing, so we had a good stare at one another that seemed like ages. We were thrilled he caught it, but didn't really know what to do next since the poor mouse was still alive and looking at me very pleadingly (I felt terrible!). Unfortunately in our hesistation, Shadow ran upstairs and let go of the still-living mouse in our office, which is right across the hall from the bedroom. Yeah, we couldn't find it. Wasn't real excited to go to bed. The cats kept jumping on the bed all night and I'd wake up in a panic, thinking they might be bringing me a "present". Rough night....

Brad found the mouse dead this morning downstairs. He gave the cats an extra ration of kitty treats for their trouble. It's been over 2 years since I've seen a mouse in this house and then Stitch just chased it towards the door and it slipped out. This is the first time one has been killed by our cute kitties. Better to have killer kitties than rougue mice in the house, I guess.

This is the 4th Thursday night at home and it's very weird. Usually my choir practices on Thursdays and it's kind of a benchmark for my week. My director broke her foot and has cancelled practice indefinitely. She's a pain in the ass so I don't mind missing, but I do mind not seeing everyone. We're all playing conspiracy theorists, convinced something more sinister is going on, but I'm sure her foot just hurts badly...

I didn't make a New Year's resolution to lose weight or work out more, but I'm making a concerted effort anyway. I have this awesome elliptical machine at home set up in front of a tv/dvd player. I'm completely addicted to this Irish show, Ballykissangel, and I'm being really disciplined about only watching it when I work out. Netflix just sent the latest discs and I've worked out every day simply because I can't wait to find out what happens next. I did Seasons 1 and 2 about two months ago, but took a break because I couldn't get ahold of Season 3. I'm well into it right now, but it's only available up to Season 4. Going to have to find a new obsession or I'll go back to being lazy!

After many a conversation with my computer-guru friend, Susan, I've finally got my blog mostly to my liking - enough to advertise it, anyway.

The big excitement here is that Brad is continuing to prove himself a juggernaut with his dissertation. He's made significant progress on his last main chapter and then only has to write a quick intro and conclusion! It's really amazing/scary/cool that he's so close to finishing. It does, however, mean that we're both making a concerted effort to give him time to work. It's always been frustrating when we've done this in the past, but the light at the end of the tunnel is so bright and it's totally worth it.

We did make it out this weekend for a couple of movies. Saw Walk the Line and Brokeback Mountain. Loved them both! Brokeback was my favorite. I know some of you might not be comfy with the subject material, but it was truly a beautiful film. I'm rooting for it for Best Picture.

Over the weekend, Brad's family came to our house to celebrate our niece, Mya's, first birthday. I volunteered to make the cake since I'm trying to hone my skills in that area. After some trial and error, I came up with this Elmo cake. It was so fun! We had a great time. Mya's older sister, Alyvia, kept us in stitches - she is so funny!

As much as we enjoy our nieces, it is always a nice reality check for our readiness to leap into parenthood.

Well here it is. I turned 30 last week and wanted to try something new. Since I'm not really into bungee jumping or skydiving, I decided to do something tame, like learn to create and maintain a blog. I will do my best to keep this site updated with stories and pictures about the stuff going on in my life. I hope you find it at least moderately amusing. Happy reading!