Etc.

Well, I'm finally done with my last externship for my new career. I feel like I'm rejoining the world of the living again.

To celebrate, here are some pictures - first of a belated Valentine's Day rose and then of a tree in bloom at the lake near our house.Although the picture above was taken on a sunny day, we haven't had too many of those recently. Yesterday morning, it was 39 degrees in the city when we woke up. So we are really still in the eagerly-awaiting-spring's-arrival phase.

In other news, my dresser broke. Or, really, I should say: In other news, we gave up on my broken dresser. The dresser hadn't been in great shape before we moved to Japan, and the journey to and from the storage place didn't really help things. I sort of accepted the dresser; it was willful beast whose drawers stuck frequently, but, in the end, I could always yank the drawers and make things work. That is, until last week when the drawers became so hopelessly stuck that I couldn't get my clothes out. I was actually planning my days around which clothes were not in the dresser.

But, with the upcoming move, buying a new dresser seemed dumb. On a number of levels [levels, stairs, whatever, get it?]. And buying a cheap dresser from that Swedish place was what got us into this mess in the first place.

So we went plastic. And light. And, yes, sort of lame and pathetic.
We posted the old dresser on freecycle, and had several offers within a few hours [fools!]. I will say, though, that this dresser met a better end than Dr. M's dresser [her dresser was, in weird twist of cheap and functionality-induced decision-making, the exact same model] which her father hated so much that was always threatening to hack up with an ax every time he helped her move. Did I mention how heavy the darn thing was? Her father may have actually taken an ax to the dresser in the end. The dresser certainly deserved it.

Thus endeth the dresser saga. Talk about a boring post. . . .

Oh, and as for what we'll name the blog - you all are such a creative lot! I especially liked the suggestion of "burritos for breakfast". I also like "(deep in the heart of) fish for breakfast". So we'll see. I'm also thinking about a re-design of the blog to accompany the move and the new name.

You know, now that I have all this time on my hands.