I like to scan Flickr statistics to see what keywords folks are using to land on my photos. Sometimes they are simply bizarre. Today's made me chuckle:

Someone searched for picture of a geek at his laptop, and landed on the picture of Jonas on the right. Apparently it shows up on the first page of search results on Google Images.

Teehee!

I've just solved a mystery that has been puzzling me for some time: why this picture tops my list of most-viewed photos on Flickr. The photo is unexceptional, taken in poor lighting at my cousin's wedding, but it has been viewed a curious 154 times.

Apparently, there is a popular band among youngsters these days called the Jonas Brothers, one of whom is named Nick. Because my photo has both the tags 'Jonas' and 'Nick,' it probably turns up in searches performed by gushing tweens.

I'm pleased to report Jonas fixed his car last night, replacing a part that I'm going to call the ignition switch because I can't remember what it was really called. It completely took care of all the problems he'd been having the past few months (which the repair guys failed to diagnose, I might add). Of course, now he thinks he's MISTER HANDYMAN! :)

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

I'm in the middle of World Without End, and it's got me completely captivated. So what do I do? LEAVE IT AT WORK! Aaaaaaaargh! I'm terribly disappointed in myself. Worse, I keep thinking about it and looking forward to reading in bed later on, only to remember that it isn't here. *shakes fist*

In unrelated news, Jonas' car is busted. He's fairly certain he knows what the problem is and is actually going to attempt to fix it himself, but it's been too cold recently to perform auto repair. We've been more or less carpooling for the last week, which has not exactly been convenient now that he doesn't work in EP anymore.

Soooooo. I made beef pasta and mushroom soup tonight because I saw it on the Betty Crocker recipe of the day, which has been one of my RSS feeds for some time but up until today I'd never been sufficiently enticed into trying one. It was beefy goodness.

Along the lines of my current 365 Days of Julia project, Jonas has decided to initiate a project of his own: Year of Geocaching. Starting January 1, he has made a point to find at least one geocache every day and to take a photo of himself in the process. Click the link to see his progress so far. Now we'll just have to hope he doesn't suffer geocaching burnout.

This may be one of the funnier photos I've taken. I couldn't stop giggling when I saw how it turned out. Be sure to view it at a large size so you get the full effect of the endearingly goofy expression on Jonas' face.

Tee hee.

Dean woke me up yesterday morning calling to let us know he'd completed the title transfer of the car we gave him and added it to his insurance. I decided to stay awake anyway, but I stayed in bed reading for an hour or so. I've reached the limit on renewing my book, and now it's due for real on December 16th. If it starts to look like there's no way I'll finish it I'll have to reserve another copy.

Note to self: I need to fill my new prescription this week.

This morning we carpooled in Jonas' new car. Boy, was it toasty with butt heat! I'm not sure what's going on after work -- I'd love to go out to eat but we really shouldn't. I've got such a craving for Culver's chili cheese fries right now!! Then there are the turkey leftovers in the fridge ...

My car seriously needs a paint job and some windshield repair. I have several patches where the paint has peeled off entirely and they are steadily growing larger and rusting. My car is already 10 years old so it's not worth much, but it also needs to last me another 2-3 years. I don't want to feel like a poor person driving around in a piece of junk. Jonas looked into the cost of touching up the peeling spots as well as getting a complete new paint job, and they basically amount to the same. A whole new paint job seems silly considering the age and relative value of the car itself, but something has to be done -- and soon.

Oh, I have to mention -- Jonas and I played Scrabble the other night. He doesn't really like playing that much because English is not his first language and he gets really frustrated trying to compete with me. Somehow I convinced him to play just once for that night and he came up with some pretty good words: growy (something/someone that grows really well), eggdressed (presumably describing an egg that you dress for cooking, like a dressed turkey), sundressed (the state of wearing a sundress), and lionjowls (in Swedish you can often smack an adjective onto the noun it describes to create one long word, unfortunately not so in English). I wasn't trying to be mean or make fun of his efforts, but they were so funny I couldn't stop laughing. :)

This morning I woke up and checked my email to find that Jonas had left me one of the most wonderful emails I have ever received! He's not really poetic, so I've never really received any flowery love letters before. This wasn't exactly a love letter (although I felt some love upon reading it!), but a lengthy, multi-paragraphed(!) message in which he told me he regretted staying up to play computer games last night instead of going to bed with me, how much he appreciates me, and also listed some things about himself he wishes he could improve. I was floored. What a great start to my day!

It was a long day -- it always is when I have to work until 9:00pm. By the time I'm off it's already been dark for several hours and it seems even later than it is. Jonas had made pasta and on the phone had mentioned that there "might" be some left for me when I got home, but it turned out he got too hungry and ate it all (piggy). So I heated up some fat-free hotdogs, which actually aren't too bad, and I'm embarrassed to say we watched the Average Joe show. Everything about that show drives me nuts, but still I end up watching it every week. Grrr!

Dad's birthday is in two days and I had no clue what to get him. I had half an idea of having some pizza delivered to his work for lunch on Wednesday, but I guess it's kind of polite to have enough delivered for his whole department, and then it didn't seem like such a good idea. I also have no idea what time he eats lunch -- he goes to work at like 6am and is off at 2:30, so I guess he'd eat lunch at 10ish, but if I was too early or late it that wouldn't be good. Then I was flipping through a 1-800-FLOWERS catalog we got in the mail yesterday and thought, "Food in the mail!" So I ended up ordering him some steaks from Omaha Steaks. He's a red meat kind of guy, so he should enjoy that. Unfortunately, now they probably won't arrive in time for his birthday, but I don't think they should be more than one or two days late. He's probably not expecting to receive his gifts until we get together for Thanksgiving anyway.

Now Jonas' birthday is coming up on the 27th. He and I have both pretty much exhausted our birthday spending this year already, so I know I don't have to come up with anything big, but I still need to think of a little something.

I missed the recycling guy this morning. Grrr. By the time I remembered to put it out I noticed all the neighbors' bins were already emptied. That sucks because our bin was full this time. I was in time for the garbage still, so I wheeled that baby out before I left.

Jonas is sick again today, so he stayed home. I told him it's because he hasn't been dressing properly for the cold. He has some bizarre theory that if he doesn't wear his coat now when it's just starting to get cold, the more severe cold later in the season won't bother him as much. Now maybe there is something to that psychologically, but on the other hand it seems to me he's just allowing himself to be more susceptible to getting sick. Not really much of a tradeoff if you ask me.

I've invited Heidi and Steve over for dinner on Saturday night. I'm going to try to get Jonas to make plankstek. It's been a year or so since he's done that, and it's really yummy. Makes me hungry right now just thinking about it. Our house isn't really babyproofed, but we don't have a lot of small stuff lying around as it is, so hopefully Emily will be fine.

I'm going to swing by Target again on my way home in a second attempt to retrieve the reprints for Georgia. They'd better be in today! Grrr.

I don't recommend eating rice cakes at the keyboard -- it's worse than chips. Actually, though, I consider keyboards somewhat disposable. When mine gets good and gunked up after a year or so I just toss it and buy a new one. The $10-15 for a cheap keyboard is worth far more than not having to pry it open and clean it out. Sometimes I don't even want to know what's in there.

Threw in two loads of laundry right when I got home from work. They should be done in a few minutes.

Then, I have Big Plans.

I think I'm going to start going through things. Yes, sorting through closets and boxes nobody's looked in for years. I'm determined to have gone through EVERYTHING and discarded a significant chunk of my possessions by the time we move. I am an amazing packrat. For example, there are two boxes of crayons in one of my kitchen drawers. My reasoning goes something like this:

-- Ah, some crayons -- I'd better hold onto these, you never know when you'll need crayons!

-- Hmm, I'm 23 years old. I don't have any kids. Do I really need crayons? I should donate them somewhere. This nice Crayola 64-count box has never even been used!

-- Except it's been opened. They probably don't want it then. I'll just hang onto it until some needy kid comes along.

-- (3 years later) These crayons are still in the drawer?? I've got to get rid of them once and for all.

-- Well, now I'm closer to having kids myself. Maybe I should save the crayons for them?

-- Christ. How much does a box of crayons cost? $4? Surely I'll be able to afford a box of crayons when the time comes! Toss these!

It's very sad, but I think it's time to get rid of the crayons.

This morning Jonas went out to the house and met the guy from Convergent Media who is doing our computer wiring, security system, and full-house speakers. He said it was fun and went well. He had the guy put a set of speakers in the master bath so he can listen to NPR in the tub. Hah. His original idea was to wire cable in the bathroom so he could have a TV, but there I put my foot down. Music is OK, but I would be embarrassed to have a TV in the bathroom. That just seems wrong.

Tomorrow ought to be a snappy day. I head out to SL for 3 hours, then back to EP for lunch and our construction meeting, then back to work for at most 2-3 hours. It should fly by super-fast.

Off to delve into the mess ...

So my car went over 150,000 miles today.

Last night when I came home from work and pulled into my garage stall, the odometer read 149,999.9. Pretty cool.

I've been the owner for only a little over 3 years, so I don't think of it as "my little baby" or anything, but it's still my first car to reach this milestone. Actually, it's my first car, period. How about that.

Since I was off work today I hadn't really planned to go out anywhere, but then Jonas called and said he'd signed me up for a facial and haircut at Sanctuary, a local spa. How cool is that! I guess it's sort of a belated Valentine's Day gift, but anyway he said he just thought I should go pamper myself, so I did! It was pretty neat. I'd never had a facial before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I'm not sure of the extent of the physical difference it actually made, since I think a lot of spa benefits are as much mental as physical. Got my hair cut afterwards, sort of the same cut I got last September when I got it all chopped off, only this time around it turned out to be more of a trim. It seemed OK, but of course I had to go home and shower and see what it was really like, since you can't trust "salon do" to represent what kind of haircut you actually got! :)

Currently reading at work: I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

I'm so full of chili cheese dog and hot fudge sundae.

This morning, since he had the day off, I sweet-talked Jonas into driving me to work so that at 9pm when I got off he would be there to pick me up and I wouldn't have to go out and get into a freezing cold car. I suggested that after he dropped me off in the morning he could go treat himself to a nice breakfast somewhere. Worked like a charm. Heehee!

This evening when he picked me up we headed to Culver's to grab something to eat. I of course had a chili cheese dog and Jonas had chili cheese fries. The sundae flavor-of-the-day was Turtle Thunder, so for dessert Jonas had one of those and I had a hot fudge sundae (I don't like pecans).

Work was uneventful. As I mentioned above, Jonas had the day off. UNFAIR! Well, he did actually have to go in for a little while this afternoon as someone called him at home and said there was some kind of problem he needed to go in and fix (it always happens on days off or otherwise inopportune moments). Now it's practically time to go to bed -- Mondays always seem like a lost day. By the time I get home after 9pm and get a few moments to myself to wind down and relax, there's hardly time to get anything else done before bed. Ah well, I'm used to it by now.

Here's something fun for fans of language. There is a dialect survey study going on at Harvard. They are encouraging native speakers of North American English to participate in a survey about how they speak. There are 100+ questions, so it takes a bit of time to complete, but the results are really interesting. They ask that you answer the questions according to how you actually speak (or learned to speak), rather than according to what you perceive as the "correct" answer.

Some of the questions whose results I found most fun were roof/room/broom/root, drinking fountain/water fountain and pop, soda.

Work was uneventful. Since the attempt at installing our self-checks was an utter failure yesterday, we expected them to come back and try again today. And word was they were going to. But as of 5pm when I went home there was still no sign of them. Of course, all day long the patrons were commenting about the inactive machines just sitting there. One man glanced at them and asked, "Do they ever work?" (He didn't realize these were brand new machines instead of our old, clunky, archaic ones which did in fact break down several times each day.) Ah well. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Jonas and I managed to spend 15 minutes together this afternoon before he was off again to job #2. He'd brought home Wendy's and Taco Bell (the Taco Bell is for me -- I won't eat Wendy's and their freaky mutant square hamburgers). He teaches from 6-10 and then goes back to job #1 for their weekly Wednesday-late-night-maintenance, so I am not expecting him until wee hours of the morning. I don't know how he can do it, it makes me exhausted just thinking about those long hours.

So after he left I did some laundry and caught up on some email. Not too exciting. I'm trying to teach (force?) myself to be tidier around the house. It's perpetually messy, and Jonas and I are equally apathetic (not a good combination). But I keep thinking to myself -- how are we ever going to manage a household with kids if we can't even keep it straightened up when it's only just the two of us? We're soon going to buy a house, which will be an even bigger living space to keep tidy!

Another long lost cousin has emailed me today. If I've figured correctly we're 5th cousins, once removed. This is fun.

Currently reading at work: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Well, Jonas is all legal again. It turns out that he did have sufficient paperwork to start the new job, but it was good that he went down to see the INS to get an updated passport stamp if he should want to travel anywhere outside the U.S. His status was OK, but the actual date on the greencard expired September 2001. So now he's just requesting an updated greencard. The INS woman also gave him the necessary paperwork to get the naturalization process started, should he be so inclined.

He seems to want to go ahead with it, and I think it would be cool, but I'm encouraging him to think it through carefully. It's one thing to immigrate and obtain citizenship in another country because you want to have nothing to do with the one you left behind, but quite another when you have nothing whatsoever against your homeland but just happen to live elsewhere. It seems both the U.S. and Sweden allow dual citizenship, so he wouldn't have to give up one for the other, but then the issue of allegiance becomes interesting. What if, for example, the U.S. and Sweden went to war against one another? Aside from this being a highly unlikely (and somewhat amusing) scenario, which side would he fight for? I would have to think that at least right now his choice would be Sweden. And would that make him a bad citizen of the U.S.? Certainly some would think so.

It's been a long time since there has been a day this good: HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY, JONAS!!

First of all, it was my "bonus" day off. You absolutely cannot beat a day off when it comes unexpectedly. That might even be good enough to make a great day by itself. But wait -- there's more -- we had plans!!

The evening began with reservations at Goodfellow's Restaurant, downtown Minneapolis. This apparently is one of the top-rated restaurants in the Twin Cities, and it was every bit as great as I was hoping/expecting. We decided to splurge for the occasion and went for the 8-course Chef's Tasting Menu:


Pacific Oyster and Smoked Brook Trout
Ahi Tuna, Tuna Poké and Asian Pear
Lobster Enchilada with House Made Bacon Pot Liquor
Pekin Duck Carpaccio with Mu Shu and Foie Gras
White Truffle Game Consomme with Rabbit Turnover
Prime Beef Tenderloin with Horseradish Bruleé
Assorted Domestic Artisan Cheese
Goodfellow's Dessert Sampling


Wow -- what delicious and artistic creations! I tried a bit of almost everything, but had to pass on the oyster and foie gras. Our service was beyond exemplary; we had three men visiting us regularly: one to pour wine for each course, one to replenish the silverware we'd used and take away our plates, and one to arrive with and tell us about each new dish. The only thing that wasn't perfect had little to do with the restaurant itself. It always feels slightly awkward to be "fine dining" when you don't have a lot of experience with that sort of etiquette. But I think we did OK. :)

So that would make a great day, wouldn't it? But ours didn't end there. Jonas had also made reservations for us to see The Producers, playing at The Orpheum. The show was pretty good, although I have to admit I was awfully sleepy having just eaten that 8-course meal and couldn't help nodding off a new times during the first act. I was 100% alert for the entire second act, though! We had a good time, and both felt afterwards that the whole day was excellent. Jonas was pleased with his birthday.

We're so excited! Jonas was offered the position today he'd been hoping to hear about all week. I'm so proud of him! I knew something would come along, now he can finally get out of a position in which he felt he could get laid off any day. Hopefully he'll be under less stress in that respect, now, although the new job might be more stressful than the last in other ways. It's amounted to about a 30% raise, which will be nice. We'll finally be able to buy a house this coming year after having already been financially ready for quite a while, but not daring to make such a huge investment with such job instability. House, yard, pets, kids(??), here we come!

With his new job he's alotted $125/mo. for a cell phone, so after I got home from work today we headed to the mall to check out the phone kiosks. I've always been against having a cell phone purely on principle, having been so turned off by how inconsiderate people become while using them. However, since Jonas needs to get one for work anyhow, we thought we might as well each get one and go with a family plan. I found a cute blue one I liked. Of course, being a girl I'm generating my opinion based almost solely on its appearance. :)

While at the mall we bought tickets for the 10:30pm showing of the new Bond movie, the name of which escapes me at the moment, so we'll be leaving home in a few minutes for that. The earlier one was completely sold out (I think today's the first day).

Currently reading at home: Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Currently reading at work: In the Lake of the Woods (Tim O'Brien)

Well, after much anticipation (and whining!) Jonas' new computer finally arrived today. I was talking to him online when the delivery guy called up to the apartment from the lobby and then when I told him it had come he was so excited he came home on his lunchbreak to open it up. Then he even decided to take it back to work with him so he could play with it for the rest of the day. Silly boy.

While I was doing laundry Heidi called and said Liz was in town for the holidays and wondered if Jonas and I wanted to get together for dinner with them and Steve. Sounded great to me, but I mentioned that it might be tough to peel Jonas away from his new machine. :) Nah, he had no problem going, and we all went to Chevy's, a local Tex-Mex style restaurant. Everything was really good; Jonas and I both ordered steak quesadillas. It was so great to see Liz again since she's living in Texas (designing for Fossil watches) now. She had a lot of funny stories to tell us, it was hilarious. I had a fabulous time and I'm pretty sure Jonas had a great time himself, even if he would rather have been home playing with his new toy, haha!

Awwwww, back to work. I was actually surprised at how many people were into the library today. Boy, I know if I hadn't had to come back to work I'd be relaxing at home. :)

In general, "business" is slow this time of year. Right before Christmas we got an avalanche of returns so that our shelves are ready to burst, but now both the returns and the checkouts have slowed down. While we normally have anything from 5-15 trucks in the back waiting to get shelved, today when I got to work there were just 2. It's almost laughable! When there is such a small number waiting we all start to get nervous; we know what happens when there is nothing to shelve: shelfreading. Eeeeek! Shelfreading is staring methodically at each row of shelving in turn and making sure every single book is in the correct order. It's soooooo tedious and will give you a headache really quick.

Jonas's company let all the students off classes this week so Jonas will be working regular business hours. Today, however, he didn't have to work at all. We weren't entirely sure why, but his company gave everyone an extra day for Christmas break. Lucky duck!

When I got home we decided to go out to eat, since it's so rare that we have a weeknight to spend together. I had a craving for Lion's Tap, so that's where we headed. Boy, do they have fantastic burgers! Yummy.

What a day. Just a little before 7pm at work one of our telecommunications lines went down completely for the rest of the night. So none of the computers worked, including our own circulation desk terminals. Checking items out to people suddenly became an archaic procedure. We wrote down all the numbers. Boy was that tedious. Eventually we got our "emergency" PC up and running and it could check out books, but it wasn't connected to the system, so it couldn't check patron records, fines, etc. That made things to a little faster, but still there were often several people waiting in line since only the one machine could check out. If someone was in a hurry, we just took down the numbers. Also, everything entered into the PC was not really checked out at that exact time. It just stored the information until it was possible again to connect to the network. It would all have to be uploaded whenever that happened.

So we were all kind of stressed out, to say the least. After work I went to Jerry's and picked up a cherry pie (he loves cherry everything) and some candles. When Jonas got home from work I told him to sit down and close his eyes and I brought out the pie with the lit candles in it. He was kind of surprised, but admitted he had eaten too much for dinner and had no room for pie right then. Figures! :P~ So we put it in the fridge for tomorrow. His birthday gift was the computer game we picked up a few days ago (so he could play it over the weekend).

Worked all day until 5. Earlier in the morning I was feeling kind of strange. My right arm was aching around my elbow and my feet were aching, although I'd not been on them that long as it was only about 11am. To top it off I felt completely exhausted in my body. I don't know what it was, I felt like I must be coming down with something, but after I went to lunch and ate I felt better the rest of the day.

Jonas got home a few minutes after I did, after stopping at Best Buy to pick up a microphone. We considered going out to eat and I let him decide where, so he chose Cattle Company. I called up and made reservations for 5:45 (in 15 minutes) and we were off. We both had the New York strip dinner with potato soup to start with. That soup is soooooooo good!! I've never had a better bowl of soup in my entire life. I'd almost consider going there for just their soup! Well, the rest of the meal wasn't that hot. We both thought our cut of meat was of poor quality. I know mine didn't taste that great, either. It was the same thing I got last time we went there in July when it was delicious, but today it sucked. I don't know.

We went home and Jonas went in and took a short nap to gear up for his intended night of gaming. I putzed around at my computer until I went in to wake him up at 9pm, at which time he decided to call Gurk using his new microphone. It was with the same site I mentioned the other day, the one that Gurk called up here with. Jonas really likes it too, now. So they babbled on for an hour or so, and I have to say it was pretty damn funny to watch Jonas sit there, staring at and speaking animatedly to the microphone. Jonas plans to call his mom with it tomorrow, but I suspect she may not be too fond of the lower quality in talking that way.

I went to bed fairly early, it was about 10:30pm when I went in to read and I only got to read about a half hour before I was too tired to continue. I woke up at one point about 3am and Jonas still hadn't gone to bed yet.

Jonas is home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had to work all day until 9pm, and then I had to run to the grocery store or I wouldn't have any lunch for tomorrow. Then I finally got home and there was my honeypie waiting for me. :) I was so hungry because I hadn't gotten to eat any dinner at work so we decided to go out to Applebee's, where we could have a nice meal and sit and chat while we waited. We were apart only about 4 days, but it seemed like we had so much to catch up on! I had a cheeseburger and Jonas had their fish and chips. We sat and talked and talked, then we went home and Jonas went to bed right away. I stayed up a little while longer but then went to bed myself as soon as my stomach had digested a little.