In this post, I congratulate myself on surviving the first week back at work. Not only was it the first week back after a long, excellent vacation, it was the coldest freakin' week of the century. Or at least the year. The temperature rarely climbed above zero, and on Thursday I had a 90 minute commute home because we were having a mini-in-town blizzard. The roads were glare ice, and there were over 650 accidents.

So, that's been fun. On to the better stuff.

We decided to have the pre-Christmas party on the post-side of Christmas, so that's happening tonight. I had thoughts of keeping the tree up, but on Monday I decided that I couldn't stand it anymore so it came down. We've had this one for going on 5 years now, and the many of the pre-lit lights were now not-lit lights. I left the window lights and decorations up, and our entryway is still all festive and stuff, so it'll still feel somewhat Christmas-y in here. And holy moly... that tree DOES take up a lot of space. It was like we gained about 25' in the living room when it came out of there.

Other happenings of the week were knitting, and dinner with my girl Aviary (that will always be her name in my head!), and brunch with my niece (the last time I'll see her again until her next semester of law school is done, I suppose), and a couple of really, really terrible hockey games.

My Wild boys are just.. well, they're awful. And yet I'll still watch them (and yell at the TV a lot while doing so). I keep hoping for a rally. Or maybe the season will just end, and then I can root for the Avs or the Ducks in the playoffs.

Oh, and the duolingo Swedish and Italian are going well. I can now say "I read the newspaper" in TWO languages!
Jag läser en tidning.
Io leggo il giornale.
THAT will definitely help when I take a trip around the world.