Monday fun

It's Monday. The weekend went by rather quickly, although I don't feel like I did very much. I guess when I look back, there were a few things accomplished:

1) Purchased/installed/programmed a new 7-day programmable thermostat. Why on EARTH we didn't invest in one of these earlier is beyond me. Not only for the fact that we can select an actual numeric temperature setting and KNOW to what temperature it is set, but also because we can know the ACTUAL interior temperature! (What a concept.) Of course, it spent the last 24 hours OFF because it's been rather warm out, but I've just put it back on this evening because it's supposed to get cold again. And for those of you wondering about the whole "aren't they renting" question, the answer is "it's coming with us when we move."

2) Carved pumpkins. Nuff said.

3) Went swimming.

4) Walked the dog. Had my hand slammed into a signpost (the metal kind with the holes up the middle) when Jake spotted a squirrel off in the distance and decided that he needed to get all cozy with it. He was on one side of the sign, and I was on the other. You can imagine.

5) Baked "The Great Pumpkin". Yummy pumpkin loaf goodness. It's from the "Company's Coming Muffins and More" book. It's old, but I have yet to find a bad recipe in it. This one called for 4 oz. of cream cheese, a cup of pumpkin, 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 2 eggs. (Not necessarily health food, people.) I make two at a time because it uses up an entire package of cream cheese and a whole can of pumpkin. (Aside: does it EVER make sense to make only one of anything? I fully prescribe to the mentality that when you're making one of something, you might as well make 2 or 3 and freeze the extras. It doesn't take a whole lot more effort, and it's double the productivity! why I didn't realize this years ago is also beyond me.)

6) Watched like 5 1/2 hours of House. (the TV show - not my home.) I've never seen it before, but I enjoyed it. (obviously). House (a doctor who specializes in hard-to-diagnose cases) has a really dry wit. Makes me laugh. It also makes me frequently writhe in disgust, but that's what happens when I watch any medical show. There's a reason I'm not in medicine. Okay, so this isn't overly "productive", but I was tired last night, and there was a 10-hour House marathon on USA.

So yeah, I guess I did stuff. I'm still recovering from the time change. Yeah. Time changes are great when you have little kids. For some reason they don't get really excited that they get to sleep in for an hour. I even kept Kai up for an extra hour or so on Saturday night, but he was still up at 0615 MST.

Speaking of sleep, I have bad news. It seems that we've finally, actually, really and truly lost our friend the regular-afternoon-nap. It has been great. You were around a lot longer than I could have hoped. You had the odd vacation, and you rarely followed us on our vacations, but on the whole you were very reliable here at home. Really. But I guess all good naps have to come to an end. Especially because you were starting to interfere with the somewhat-more-important regular-bedtime.

He's been replaced by his distant cousin, rare-and-unpredictable-nap. I'm guessing this new guy will only be visiting once in a while.

One last thing, here's one of my new favourite ad campaigns. I really like the one with the hamster. I don't even like the Element. They're just fun ads.