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Okay, so it isn’t technically a movie, but close enough. Band of Brothers is a HBO-miniseries (10 hour long episodes) following the first-ever paratroopers through WWII. Its based on a true story, and the History Channel has a portion of their site dedicated to it, so it must be fairly accurate. I do know it is fabulous. Absolutely awesome. Eric got me the entire series for our anniversary and we just finished it the other night. Not only does it have the miniseries, the DVD set also comes with interviews with the survivors, basic military information, and extra information about each man and his choice to sign up for the paratroopers. I haven’t watched the interviews, but I believe when I get a chance, they will be good.

This is fall, so the term ’spring-cleaning’ seemed inappropriate. The unseasonably warm, sunny weather, however, also cloaks the time of year. But I digress.

We’ve worked on our bedroom lately, and its finally taking the form of its namesake. In the beginning it was a living room/bedroom all rolled into one, and then morphed into an office/bedroom mix until just recently. Now its just a bedroom. And there’s so much extra space; I find myself stumbling over quite literally nothing as I grope around in the wee dark hours of the weekday mornings. Only me. Its nice, though. Very nice.

On the north wall, the one with the closet and bathroom doors, we’ve moved both a tall and short bookshelf between the doors and put the majority of our Packers/Broncos memorabilia on the walls. Pennants, autographed photos, figures, and autographed footballs adorn that section. For now, the rest of the walls are pretty bare, but here’s our plan: The NE corner, near the bathroom, has begun to house corner shelves that will hold something…perhaps souvenirs from various trips or photos? We have plenty of crap. I’d like to finally get some frames filled out so maybe that area can be stuff we’ve done together. In the SE corner, the corner shelving Becky & Bob made us holds ocean knickknacks next to the moving picture of the beach Eric got me (now I can finally plug it in!). The nightstand is in that corner next to it the bed (king-size, non-water). Opposite the wall with the window, we put both our bureau and chest of drawers (which match). The rest has yet to be finished. I want to hang my diploma and graduation shadowbox aboveish the nightstand, and we have some banners and posters and such to decorate the rest of the room with. The room gets a lot of light, so I’d also like to put some plants in, but we’ll see…I don’t want to neglect them to death.

We’ve also worked on the garage, although we desperately need to do 2 things before it gets much better – go to the dump and recycle cans/bottles. We probably have $35 of recycling in there, fairly organized. With the mass exodus from the garage sale, we’ve been able to stack our tubs against the south wall (the one next to the walkway in. The ping-pong table is still covered with crap, but all the stuff underneath it is gone, and most of the ex-roommates’ leftovers are also gone. What I can’t wait to get together is a place each for my tools, my gardening/yard stuff, and our camping gear.

Update: Carlos wants the recipe for the mexican wedding cakes, they were so good. Guess the recipe wasn’t too bad; here it is:

Mexican Wedding Cakes

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup finely chopped almonds, pecans, or walnuts (I used walnuts)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• powdered sugar for rolling

Pre-heat oven to 325F. In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla. Blend well. Stir in flour, nuts, and salt until dough holds together. Shape into 1-inch balls. Place an inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 15-20 minutes until set but not brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheets. Cool slightly and roll in extra powdered sugar. Cool completely and reroll in powdered sugar.
Note: 20 minutes wasn’t nearly long enough. I would either raise the oven temperature to 375F and try for 15-20 minutes, or bake for 22-25 minutes. I also didn’t reroll after completely cooling because the first roll was sufficient.

Although I’m about to make a pumpkin pie and a cheesecake for our what’s becoming an annual Halloween costume party, I decided to make some birthday cookies for my coworkers (Carlos’ birthday is tomorrow, and Tom’s birthday was the 4th, but he didn’t tell anyone until that day). Rather than the usual chocolate chip or peanut butter, I tested some Christmas cookie recipes and made mexican wedding cakes and snickerdoodles. The mexican wedding cakes recipe was off the internet (I think I will get my mom’s next time), and the snickerdoodles recipe came from a cookbook my mom sent me off to college with in hopes that I might take at least a slight interest in cooking. So far I’ve pretty much stuck to the cookies section, all of which have been good, so at least I figure the rest of the book has yummy goods as well.

The snickerdoodles were much easier overall to make, but both taste great. I used walnuts (because I had them) instead of almonds or pecans in the mexican wedding cakes, but they still taste good. My only complaint was that the mexican wedding cakes took much longer (like 5 minutes extra) in the oven than the recipe stated, and I wasted a few cookies on making sure they were thoroughly cooked.

*shrug* My roommates like them; let’s hope my coworkers do too!

Okay, this news made four people’s days; I know its good.  I got the entire week of Christmas off to go home to Montana! *huge grin*  I get a week of paid vacation for my anniversary in the end of November, so I’ll be getting paid to spend time with family and friends.  

Boo-yaa kick ass.

If you can’t win with 6 turnovers, a 20-point second half lead, and no offensive touchdowns by the opposing team, what can you do? Fire your kicker for missing the second game-winning field goal in 2 weeks. Fire your offensive coordinator (this did happen) for running the ball with minimal success the last 3 quarters of the game while your quarterback, when he does have an opportunity to throw, dominates the Bears’ stifling defense. Learn to play to win. Wallow in the agony of hapless Arizona.

What a game! The Broncos win! The Broncos win! It must be the new Champ Bailey (#24) jersey i got from Eric for our 7-year anniversary (today). Guess what we did? Watch the game and make dinner in-house. True football fans at heart – the date portion of our anniversary is scheduled for Saturday when we have more time (and no football games).

We had a great turnout for the 2006 Willamette University alumni softball game…the alums fielded every position except pitcher. The better part? We won, 8-5! And it didn’t rain. Truly, catching up with players, alumns, and parents made for a great day.

2 big things in my life (lately) have been laid to rest this day.

Finally, after months of toil, “strategery” -heheh – and preparation and relatively few hangups (no major ones, thankfully), the Highland-brand catalog is done. We trucked it to the binders today and will make the trade show deadline. This catalog I speak of is 24 pages (12 spreads, 6 sheets) long, and each page was somewhere between 4 and 7 colors with lots of tight registration (difficult to line up all the colors, especially when some of the colors are actually several colors mixed into one). Carlos, the printer responsible for this monstrosity, worked really hard – read multiple Saturdays and extra hours each day – to finish it on time, but he did a FABULOUS job. In fact, he’s made me look so good that I’m taking him to lunch on Wednesday. I can’t wait to see it bound. This is a great relief to have off my shoulders – it feels good to have completed such a daunting task that everyone is going to applaud, but the past week and a half have been stressful because one error during this time would have taken literally days to fix.

Softball is also over; we finished just over .500 with 2 wins tonight. The weather will be getting rainy for the winter soon and I believe league won’t begin again until next April-ish. I’ve already been asked to play both Mondays and Fridays next year and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone after the winter hiatus. Season highlights? 2 (in the park) home runs in the same night, one to win the game in extra innings. Diving catch for the 3rd out in left field. Breast cancer “Play for the Cure” tournament. 3 new t-shirts. Although I will miss softball, I will now get to watch Monday Night Football.

As the song goes…every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.