Happy New Year!

First blog of 2010, three days into the new year. New Years Eve was quite uneventful. Steve and I went over to his dad's for a quiet celebration. I made oyster stew for them, we visited and had munchies just before midnight, watched the ball drop, toasted with sparkling grape juice, then cleaned up and were home by 12:30.

We got up the next morning and watched the Rose Parade. Me once, Steve twice. When NBC's broadcast was finished, Steve found a repeat on the Hallmark Channel and watched it. He said it was better coverage of everything without the running smart-aleck commentary. If Hallmark does it again next year, we'll watch it instead of NBC.

Spent time in the basement, starting the big cleanup that has been sorely needed for a long time. First cleaned out the area around our old hide-a-bed couch, which was designated "garage sale central" (items headed for one anyway) but other stuff had just been thrown there. Then to the area where much of my craft and scouting items have been put. Much more organized and unnecessary stuff thrown out now. There's still a long way to go but it's a start anyway.

Yesterday, I had a Wood Badge executive board meeting, which was at a restaurant on Alpine Avenue. Many of the scouters at the meeting came from the lakeshore, so Alpine Ave in Grand Rapids is about as central as it can be for everyone. The meeting was long - 4 hours before we left. I spent the next three hours geocaching - a new winter series of 25 caches was put out by Just Below Freezing. About half were in the Alpine Ave. area and the other half are all pretty close to home. Got all of the Alpine Ave. area caches and hope to get the ones closer to home later this week. One of the caches turned out to be my #2300 milestone. And that's the only one where I ran into other cachers so they took my picture.

Last night, Eric baked a (frozen) cherry pie and I thought I'd take that opportunity to run a self-cleaning cycle on the oven as some olive oil had spilled over last week. Not a good idea as the oil ignited inside the oven (several little fires, not at the same time.) Needless to say I turned off the self-cleaning cycle and did NOT open the oven door. Still, we had a fair amount of smoke in the kitchen and had to open the windows to air things out. We're surprised we didn't set off the smoke detector.

Two degrees this morning as I headed for church, we are definitely in a cold spell. But it's winter in Michigan, what can you say?

Headed back to a more "normal" routine tomorrow - the holidays are over. Haven't taken down the tree yet. May do it yet today or save it for later in the week.