so much to catch up on...

1.  First I must tell you that we love, love, love the new apartment.  Seriously LOVE.  We've created a lot of storage opportunities - thank you very much, IKEA - so almost everything is in its place and that makes me happy.  The apartment gets lots of light and feels bigger than it is because of it.  There's not a day that goes by that each of the three of us doesn't say how much we love the apartment.  Definitely the right choice for us.  Pictures will be forthcoming!

2.  We bought a lot of stuff from IKEA for the apartment.  If you've never bought from IKEA, let me explain to you what happens.  You walk through a humongous store/showroom and pick out all these great things that will provide you endless storage potential and associated happiness.  Then you get to the end of the store and you pick up a lot of boxes because you have to assemble all those great pieces you picked out.  Assembly is horrible.  Dreadful.  A nightmare. I'm sure I have carpal tunnel syndrome from the repetitive motion of screwdriving and allen-wrenching.  What comes to mind is Newton's third law of motion:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  If you're not scientifically minded, let me break it down for you.  For the euphoria-inducing action of spending lots of money at IKEA that you know will make your apartment perfect, there is an equal and opposite reaction of dread and dismay and physical pain and injury when you have to put all those boxes together.

3.  Speaking of science, Mac has decided to dress up as a nerd for Halloween.  This is fitting since he goes to the Arlington Science Focus School.  Scientists are stereotypically nerds.  Get it?  He will debut the costume at the school's Halloween party.  I hope nobody at the school finds this offensive or derogatory.  Wish us well.

4.  Jimmy and I have been halfway following the New ABS Diet for Women (don't worry - Jimmy eats more than the portion size allotted for women), and let me tell you this diet works.  When I say "halfway following", I mean that we followed it for 3 or 4 days the week before our move, we totally flubbed it on the week of the move, and we've more or less followed it the last couple weeks (at least for breakfast and lunch and more or less for dinner).  The diet allows you one cheat meal a week, but we've cheated more than that because of necessity, but we're finding that we're making smarter choices when we do cheat and we're not cheating when we have opportunities to cheat.  And we're losing weight.  Jimmy's lost at least 10 pounds and I've lost 5.  We are both pretty stoked about the weight loss but we also just feel better too.

5.  The diet allows lots of smoothies but we sold our blenders in Bogota, so I got to buy a new blender.  After some research, I decided on one of the Ninja blenders.  I got the 1100-watt one and not the super-powered 1200-watt one, but holy smokes, is this thing a blending machine.  I cut my fingers just washing the blade before the first use.  Mac loves to make "snow" out of ice so that was our first test.  Let me tell you, this machine can make snow in seconds.  No icy chunks, just snow. Snowcone ice.  I made a smoothie yesterday and overfilled the cup, which got me nervous about excessive blending, but the frozen fruit I used was pulverized. It's a beast of a machine and I love it.

6.  We got two chairs out of storage and they smell of moth balls.  I'm so frustrated as I've tried everything short of putting the chairs on the balcony (where they could get direct fresh air and sunshine which I know is what they need, but it's dirty out there).  What should I try next?  Right now I've got dryer sheets stuffed in, on, and around the chair.  The chairs gives me a headache.

7.  If we're Facebook friends, you know that we had one moving tragedy.  The piano was being offloaded from the moving truck and it fell off the back of the lift gate that lowers from the truck bed.  It was fairly horrific and almost surreal.  We have submitted the claim forms to the moving company and we'll see what happens.

8.  We are heading to SC tomorrow for a quick weekend trip to enjoy Camp Meeting.  The New ABS Diet for Women will not be followed in any way, shape or form.  I am so super-excited.  I LOVE Camp Meeting.

9.  Mac is very lazy in his schoolwork and is quite happy to accept B's that he makes with his eyes closed with minimal effort.  He is unmotivated by the pursuit of good grades and seems unwilling to put in a little effort to make the A's that he's capable of.  This is really driving me crazy.  So we have been reduced to bribing Mac for good grades.  We told him that if he got two nine weeks' worth of straight A's on his report card, we'd get him a dog.  (You know this nearly killed me to offer this.)  Mac asked what he could get if he made straight B's.  Really?

10.  It's really cold in DC right now.  The high is supposed to be in the 50s, which is crazy nuts to me!  Brrrrr.

On that note, I'm off to enjoy my delicious ABS diet for women-approved lunch.