January 12 of 12

Another month of the 12 of 12 phenomenon, brought to you by Chad. Best wishes to Chad for a speedy and full recovery!

These pictures were all taken on Monday, January 12, 2009 in Seattle, Washington.

7:41 a.m. Leaving for work. A wet, grey day. Must be January.

7:59 a.m. Paying for a day's worth of parking. $7.48 for 10 hours. Score.

8:00 a.m. Walking the four blocks to work.

5:09 p.m. Wow, it's actually still somewhat light out! Cloudy, but visible. This is Two Union Square, which we designed.

5:10 p.m. The Space Needle seems to have lost its head.

5:28 p.m. Our house. We took down the Christmas decorations this weekend - but Scott wanted to leave the blue lights up for now:

5:42 p.m. Surfing.

5:58 p.m. Marinating chicken breasts for burritos.

6:11 p.m. Fragrant paperwhites blooming in the living room.

6:46 p.m. Scott ripping someone a new one at Dell. His computer crashed and burned - and now everything on his hard drive may be lost, due to their advice. One does not want to be on the receiving end of this mood.

7:01 p.m. Love love love this hand lotion.

7:17 p.m. Stoli loves the view from Scott's arms. Who wouldn't?

Miss Rose and Her Rhythm Percolators

As usual, at the taping of Says You on New Year's Eve, there was a local, original musical group playing before the show, at intermission, and during the "time outs" on the show. We were treated, from the third row, to Miss Rose and Her Rhythm Percolators. Stunning, fun, and just not enough of them. They play 1920's-early 30's jazz, with period costumes, and are fun as heck. Miss Rose plays her vintage ukelele while singing old standards like "Button Up Your Overcoat" and "'Deed I Do", the trumpet and piano players are in fedoras and tie clips, and the bass player swings her hips in her flapper dress and bobbed 'do while plucking away. I swear I was thinking of "Some Like It Hot" and waiting for a flask to drop out of Miss Rose's garter. :)

She was, by the way, wearing seamed stockings and as we learned, a real live garter belt. That's the spirit, Miss Rose! We're going to follow them around like lemmings. Fun fun fun.

MatterBulletPoints

The week according to Matterdays:

Still have my job. There are a lot of layoffs planned for the next few weeks, mostly here in Seattle. One in our Accounting department, which is so hard to see happen. But my job still exists, for the moment.

This is probably because they realize I'm so neck-deep in work that I can't be laid off until I finish some huge projects. Of course, the daily emergencies make those deadlines look impossible. Maybe if I stretch them my job will be safe for a couple more months.

We took down the Christmas tree and decorations yesterday. It took quite a few hours. I was dreading doing it, but it's kinda nice now that it's done. Everything's ready for spring. I think next weekend I'll drag Scott to a nursery and start planning the spring gardens, or at least get a new house plant or two. (He doesn't need a lot of dragging). There are paperwhites blooming inside right now, which have me itching for spring.

We ordered out and had teriyaki last night. This makes us happy. The lady at the place we order from is undeniably the sweetest person in the entire world, and she always remembers us. She gives us extra sauce on the side and always takes about 5% off of our order for no reason.

With the decorations down, I could finally REALLY clean the house. After all the snow and rain lately, we had muddy puppy pawprints everywhere. The floors are mopped, the carpets are steam-cleaned, the laundry is chugging away. These are a few of my favorite things.

Scott's computer has gone tits-up. He had a Dell Geek out the other day, but he has to run a diagnostic that literally takes a few days. He's hoping to recover his hard drive, but it's up in the air right now. I need to get an additional hard drive and back up everything, and pronto. Scott's heartbroken to think that his music and pictures may be gone forever. Poor Scott. I hope we can find some of it.

Our neighbor E's dog Buster (a Wheaton Terrier) got out of their yard earlier this week and was hit by a car. A Good Samaritan called E and stayed with Buster until E could come and take him to the vet. They couldn't save him ... he died in E's arms 10 minutes later. While Buster and our dog Kitty have had their share of scrappy fights at our neighborhood camping trips, Buster was an adorable and sweet pup on his own. Out heart goes out to E, his wife K, and their daughters C and S. Heartbreaking.

And now - some MatterPics:

Thanks for noticing me ...

Eeyore has always been sort of a mentor for me, but lately I'm feeling more and more like him. I've been depressed and gloomy and pessimistic these days ... in part, I'm sure, to post-holiday blues (our Christmas decorations are still up - I didn't have the heart to take them down yet), in part due to stress at work both from my job and from the fear that's always lingering over my head of being laid off. I'm in a constant state of stress and worry and I want it to stop, please.

Oh - and it's snowing again.

New Year's Eve - Says Us!

Yes, Scott and I are writing mirror posts today ...

Being the big NPR geeks that we are, last night we went to a taping of the radio show Says You. This is the second time we've gone to a taping while they're in Seattle, and it's a ton of fun - more specifically, "a game of words and whimsy, bluff and bluster". We had a great time!

The show was taped at Town Hall Seattle just outside of downtown:

Sorry, no cameras inside the hall ... but walking back to the car, a pretty view of St. James Cathedral, in First Hill - just a few blocks from where I lived when I first moved to Seattle:

We got home just before 11:00, to let the dogs in and make potstickers and turn on the local coverage of the countdown to blowing up the Space Needle:

(Which, luckily, was slightly better than last year).

I hope you all had a fun and safe New Year's Eve, and the best of everything to y'all in 2009!