Merry Christmas!

Posted on by Jordan

HerbieTree

Heather and I have a (short) tradition of getting a new ornament every year. Herbie got the honors this year… Heather sometimes talks like I am the only one who feels weird about being in Iowa, but I think we both have strong allegiances there. We have the same little tree from last year, it works really well in our space-limited apartment. We still don’t have many Christmas decorations, but the tree does a lot to make the apartment feel the holiday spirit.

Speaking of the holiday spirit, Heather and I have discovered that we listened to different Christmas music while doing traditional things like decorating the tree…. and I find that I don’t feel as into it without that. Heather’s tradition is to watch “White Christmas” during/after the tree decorating. I know my family always listened to the same albums of Christmas music… I just don’t know what those albums were called. Heather has actually accused me of being “a scrooge” but I just don’t care for some of the more…. artistic interpretations of traditional Christmas songs.

Along with tree decorating, Heather spearheaded baking some Christmas treats. More than spearheaded, I didn’t even help. Not to say I wasn’t willing, but we have found that only one person should work in our galley kitchen at a time. It only takes a few times bumping into the other person when you are trying to quick get something done to think it isn’t fun anymore. After making some amazing cookies, Heather broke them up into a bunch of gift plates:

HeatherCookies

We then worked our way around the building giving them away to any of our neighbors who happened to be home. It was a fun thing to do, and I am really glad she took the initiative to do it. I think about half our neighbors weren’t sure what to think, but it’s hard to complain about a plate of cookies!

I know this is a few days early, but we are looking to slip out of Des Moines before another wave of ice and snow shuts the city down, so I probably won’t get the chance to post closer to the actual day…. Merry Christmas!!!

-Jordan

p.s. I don’t think I ever mentioned before, the ornament from last year was a sand timer… we only had a month until the wedding at Christmas 🙂

Things I Should Not Cook Without A Recipe

Posted on by Jordan

With all the snow, I thought some home made chicken noodle soup sounded really good.

For some reason I have it in my head that I can just throw that together, despite having never turned out a good batch. I am not going to bother with a picture… but lets just say my streak of not very good soup continues.

It is edible in the sense that I have been eating it, but Heather won’t touch it. I am learning how big a factor visual appeal is in cooking. In this case even if it looked ok, the soup has other problems.

Anyway… beyond cooking, Heather and I have really gotten settled in around here. We had the snow day, Where we both had to work some, but were around the house, and then this weekend was our first week with nothing planned that we have had in a long long time.

We still don’t actually have that last box of books unpacked, but we re-organized some left over wedding decorations into a more robust container such that it can go to the garage and free up a little more space. (I have no idea why we have that stuff, don’t ask)

We also solved some of our closet problem with a little board with coat-hooks on it that Target had. Unfortunately it wasn’t 16 inches wide, so I used a heavy duty drywall anchor for the non-stud end… I hope when we move out the wall isn’t too bad. At least we have someplace to hang a coat in the meantime 🙂

-Jordan

Snow!

Posted on by Jordan

I was expecting to get to do a nice little post about the first snow in our new home. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate:

snow

We are more or less trapped at our apartment until the plows roll, and right now that isn’t expected until tomorrow morning!

-Jordan

Podcast Recap

Posted on by Jordan

I have been thinking about the podcasts I listen too quite a bit as of late.

I managed to find a few I really enjoyed over the past few months. During the Atlantic drive, “a few” just wasn’t enough.  I branched out, listening to others that weren’t really what I was looking for, but at least they filled the time.

As of right now, I have about a 30 min each way drive. That creates an interesting problem, in that I now have more podcasts minutes in a week coming in than I can keep up with if I only listen while I drive. I have thought about doing podcasts while in the gym, but I haven’t made that leap.

The podcasts I want to listen to:

Security Now. An information security / internet privacy focused show. The two guys doing this both know a lot about the subject and manage to explain things really well. I like this podcast a lot, although Heather says it makes me annoyingly paranoid (I frequently admonish her to never ever use public wi-fi). I feel like I have to keep listening to this, as I have learned so much already.

The Instance. A World of Warcraft show. I am not really an active WoW player these days, but I like the chance to keep up with game news… keeps me somewhat up to date when talking to people who are playing more frequently. That fact alone would not even begin to keep me subscribed though, this show has some really good production quality. Unlike a lot of podcasts, the host actually owns a radio-grade mic, and knows how to post-edit. Add in a sense of humor and you have a pretty solid podcast.

Extra Life Radio. Done by the same main host from The Instance, it’s a group of guys who get together and talk about sci-fi, video games, and movies. A fun listen, but I think this may get cut.

Gamers With Jobs. I was really taken with the concept of GWJ, guys who still like video games, but are married with jobs so they don’t have the unlimited time some people seem to have for games. As it turns out, they have a lot more game time than I have. They are also active and former journalists in the game industry. This means they know a ton of people actually making games, and as much as it frustrates me to hear them talking about loving every minute of a game I know I don’t have time to touch, I am so captivated by them getting into the nuts and bolts of game design with the actual game designers as guests I can’t stop listening.

Gun Dudes. A few guys talking about guns. I started on this podcast expecting a more informative show. Really, it’s just 3-5 guys (depending on the week) shooting the breeze… more or less on the topic of guns. I find it pretty entertaining. I think it might have something to do with my envy over their ability to drive 10 minutes and be out in the desert and able to shoot. I guess that’s and advantage of living in rural Utah.

To sum all that up…

Other than Security Now, I didn’t really manage to find podcast that really taught me much, I was hoping to use my drive in a beneficial way, but it turns out it’s a lot easier to just find a way to stay entertained as you slog out the drive. I tried out a few other podcasts, but nothing I am even going to bother to mention here.

And… that whole thing is probably the last thing you wanted to read about, but not much else is going on 🙂

-Jordan