Monday, January 17, 2011

Cheese and Skis Please

The three-day Martin Luther King weekend comes just soon enough after the Christmas break that the two short school weeks feel kind of like when you stick your toes in the water to test the temperature and then pull them back and recoup before you actually dive into the water. Maybe the metaphor's a bit lame, but the break was definitely refreshing. I feel like that's a bit off-the-mark for why we have the holiday, but Joo and I did watch MLK's last speech together and discussed it.


In other news, Joo and I started a little evening tradition that 10-years-ago-Dan probably would have shunned us for... we watch a little bit of comedy TV each night before going to bed. I don't know exactly when or where I started associating TV with the pits of Hell, but I seem to be against it at almost every stage of my life (in my social university days, it was the anti-relationship box; in my early spiritual fervor, I saw it as selfish complacency; in recent years, I have considered it the epitome of materialism and a waste of precious time).


Thankfully, Joo has loosened me up a bit and since we needed a bit of laughter and relaxing into our schedule, we chose a random sitcom that we could borrow from the library. Our choice was, "How I Met your Mother," a sitcom about a group of friends living in New York City and their life experiences (now that I write it out, it kind of sounds like Friends). So we've been watching a couple episodes each night to get the laughs rolling.


On Saturday night, we had Dave over to try out the fondue pot Jusu and SangOk had sent us from California. We tried a cheddar-cider fondue (figuring it would be best to shoot for a mild fondue since this was Dave's first) and it turned out nice albeit a bit sweet.


Monday evening, Craig and Aimee Howley invited us to their home for dinner. In addition to a lovely tour of the house (with the cherry-on-top being a harpsichord-style piano piece by Craig), we enjoyed a tuna-chicken-artichoke salad (I just had a sudden wave of sorrow for steadfast vegetables like carrots and lettuce that never define a salad enough to get mentioned in the name) and some home-grown homemade baked goodies like whole wheat bread and squash pie.

We broke from tradition a bit in that, instead of giving our hosts gifts, we received them. They gave me a recent book on place-based education and unexpectedly gave Joo (and me) a Nordic Track, which was perfect since we had just been talking about budget-y ways to exercise indoors.
So, it ended up being a lovely weekend for Joo and I amidst the gray January doldrums.

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