Average Jane™

Average Jane's February Photo Challenge Day 1: My View Today

I thought I'd kick-start my blogging for February by participating in this challenge I found at Suebob's Red Stapler. That's the workspace I chose at the office today.

If you'd like to participate as well:

The Books That Ate Average Jane's Blog

Right at the beginning of the year, before I even went back to work after the holiday break, I got together with one of my book clubs for our monthly discussion and annual gift exchange.

When it was my turn to choose a gift, I got these:

Since then, my every spare moment has been spent reading and reading and reading. Each book is at least 1,000 pages long. These five are the only ones in the series that have been released so far. 

They. Are. Awesome. Complicated, nuanced characters in a vast and varied world. Bloody feudal statecraft. Little touches of the supernatural. 

Reading them isn't exactly easy - I would often start a new chapter (each chapter is about a different character) and think, "Now, who is this again?" It's completely worth it, though.

On Saturday morning, a little 4:00 a.m. insomnia led me to read the last 200 pages of the final book in the middle of the night. So now I am free to resume my life as it was before. At least until the DVDs of the TV series come out...

Average Jane Volunteers

I wrote a post at BlogPaws about some of my volunteer work. You can find it here: 

Volunteering With An Animal Rescue Organization

Average Jane Protests SOPA and PIPA

For more information, visit SOPAStrike.com.

Here's the most detailed post I've seen explaining why this legislation is so bad.

Average Jane's Sick Person Traveling Kit

Tissues, cough medicine, cough drops and bottled water. Not pictured: inhaler.

I am SO ready to be over this case of bronchitis. Here's hoping the antibiotics kick in soon. It would be really nice to sleep through the night without waking up every two hours to take yet another cough remedy. I'm running out of options.

Average Jane Does A Meme

I'd write about something new except that I'm a week into a bad cold and I don't have the energy. 

So instead, I'll spend a little more time revisiting 2011 with this meme I picked up at 3 o'Clock A.M. It's the last line of the last post of each month from the previous year. Ready?

January - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have some wonderful things to talk about.

February - Here's hoping that spring is a little easier to bear.

March - I know it'll take some work, but I think it'll be well worth it!

April - No more sculptures, though. I promise.

May - For now, I'm just glad to have gotten this far.

June - Do you have any big summer vacation plans?

July - It was exactly the kind of vacation I needed.

August - So the storm actually did me a favor, albeit a rather expensive favor.

September - Next time I do a video, I'm going to fix myself up a little first.

October - Man, I'm tired.

November - Thanks for your patience!

December - Looking forward to an even better 2012!

Hmm. Not the most auspicious group of sentences to start the new year, but there you have it.

Apparently one of my New Year's resolutions needs to be "Learn to end your posts better."

Average Jane's Friend-Filled 2011

When I saw Mocha Momma's photo retrospective yesterday, I immediately knew I wanted to do something similar. Then I started looking through my 1,333 photos from the past twelve months and I could see I had a daunting task on my hands.

I obviously needed an angle, so I decided that I would stick mainly to posting photos of friends and family from last year. I immediately realized that in many cases I had done a rather poor job of photographing people while I was out and about (one of my birthday parties is represented solely by two photographs of cupcakes), but that will be a resolution for 2012.

Here's my sister and my nephew at his sixth birthday party celebration. That's a balloon sword—get your mind out of the gutter.

I did a lot of volunteer work for The Animal Rescue Alliance (T.A.R.A.) all year long. This was a St. Patrick's Day parade. That's my long-time friend Amy on the right.

Mission Pub Crawl! A bunch of my favorite tweeps meeting up to start the all-day extravaganza.

Hanging out in Rockwall, Texas with Kay and Kathie from my Soroptimist Club.

All-day Dune game with my gaming peeps, including A Librarian and Kanga.


Dinner, drinks and animated conversation with Guavalicious and Cagey.

Getting ready for the Urban Photo Safari with Susan.

Relaxing with some of the Regular Girls on a hotel balcony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Eventually there were seventeen of us vacationing together.

More Regular Girls hangout action in Eureka Springs. By this point in the trip, we had all pretty much foregone makeup, but I think everyone looks beautiful.

My San Diego BlogHer roommates: Siel, Liz and Cagey.

Sarah and Suebob, two more of my favorite BlogHers.

Doing a jigsaw puzzle at BlogPaws with Melanie and Stacey.

Sarah again and Laurie, catching up with me during an unforeseen extension of my trip to Washington, D.C.

Let's not forget (wo)man's best friend: my new dog, Toby!

Another game night with the usual suspects. This time including Vince and Nuke.

My husband and his Aunt Pat at their family reunion.

I tried to stick as much as possible with photos I hadn't posted before, so if you expected to see yourself but didn't, you've probably been immortalized in an earlier post this year. Or I forgot to photograph you. Sorry.

Looking back over all of these photos of social activities—which represented a fairly small percentage of the actual social events of the year—it's easy to see why I felt so very busy in 2011. I took four trips (not including business trips), attended dozens of parties, met up with friends for dinners and happy hours, and played lots of board games. That doesn't even count lunches, holidays and the many other opportunities I had to spend time with my favorite people.

If I can take away one thing from 2011, it's that I'm incredibly fortunate to have SO MANY wonderful people in my life. I might not see all of them often, but the connections are there.

Thanks to all of you for your support and friendship in 2011. Looking forward to an even better 2012!

Average Jane, Inert

I haven't been posting because I'm doing almost nothing worth mentioning unless you're one of the animals in my household. If you're my dog or one of my cats, your world has been amazing since I got off work last Friday because of all the petting and snuggling and extra treats and unexpected midday naps.

Which is to say that I'm not leaving the house very much, nor am I accomplishing anything of note. I may or may not have worn the same pair of yoga pants for two straight days.

I have taken a lot of photos like this:

If you look closely, you'll see three sleeping pets in the photo. The dog is on the couch to Dr. Jones' right and there's another cat (either Trillian or Velvet) inside the wicker cat furniture.

I've been cruising around a lot on Facebook and Twitter, but not posting very much because I have little to contribute.

However, I would like for someone to explain this Facebook ad:

Why is Kansas City hyphenated and oddly capitalized? Why is "new" capitalized? Why is "everyday" only one word in this context? What the heck is that whale thing and where in Kansas City is it?

The only good thing about the ad is that it reminded me of the whale sculpture at the Kansas City Zoo that you can walk through, and since the weather is unseasonably warm this week, I'm considering going to the zoo between now and Monday. If you'd like to go with me, so much the better! Email me and we'll make a plan.

Today my main goal is to shower and go to Target for laundry products. Maybe I'll even do laundry once I have those products. I might even clean the kitchen.

Despite the way I'm making it sound, I'm actually enjoying myself a great deal. It's nice to have this kind of downtime to recharge. When I go back to work next Tuesday, I'll be ready for anything!

Average Jane Has A Merry Christmas

The story really starts on Saturday. I spent part of the day transporting cats for The Animal Rescue Alliance (T.A.R.A.) and then settled in at home to make dinner.

We decided it was time to give our cats their gifts: a new scratching pad that looks like a DJ turntable and three toy mice that I'd been holding back from the last package I bought.

They liked the turntable okay, but they LOVED the mice. I should have saved myself the money and just given them the mice and some catnip.

We hosted my dad for a low-key Christmas Eve dinner: enchiladas, Mexican rice and Harvey Wallbanger cake. I had the dishes washed and all signs of the meal tidied away by 8:30 p.m.

I woke up early on Christmas Day with thoughts of the foods I needed to prepare in the morning swirling in my head. Since gifts are no longer the focus of our Christmases, food has stepped up in importance, and I was in charge of quite a few dishes this year.

By the time I was ready to leave for my sister's house, I had made pomegranate salsa and the dough for dinner rolls and gathered up the ingredients for baked brie with pecans and brown sugar and a pot roast. Oh, and the spicy saltines and Harvey Wallbanger cake I'd made the day before.

I packed everything into my little car along with six folding chairs, the wrapped gifts for my niece and nephew, and Toby's bed and blanket. Last but not least, I put Toby himself in a carrying crate and we set off on the 30 minute drive.

As usual, Toby whined the entire time we were in the car, but I just cranked up the heavy metal Christmas songs on House of Hair as I drove. When we arrived, Toby was a little clingy for the first hour or so, but he settled down eventually. I was glad I'd brought his bedding.

We got there right in the middle of the kids' ferocious gift-opening extravaganza. I procured a pecan cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee and sat back to watch the whirlwind. Both kids loved the gifts I got them. I bought each of them a cool kite: a pteranodon-shaped one for my nephew and a koi for my niece. I got my nephew a knitted hat that looks like a sock monkey and my niece a selection of patterned knee-socks.

My nephew also got a lot of Star Wars stuff this year. It's his favorite right now.

When all that began to die down, it was time for me to shape the roll dough. I ended up making two pans of rolls and they smelled amazing.

I also splurged on some Shatto butter to serve with the rolls and it was worth every penny. I actually forgot to bring the butter with me, but I texted my husband and he retrieved it from our fridge before he came over.

We snacked all day long in lieu of lunch and my sister made me one bellini after another. Fortunately, she was serving them in small glasses. I started preparations for the pot roast about five hours in advance and it cooked for four hours.

There was a big concern that their oven might not make it all day long. It has a thermostat problem, but fortunately it did not seem to mind the 275°F temperature that the roast required. Later on it did shut off while we were trying to warm up some casseroles, but we made do with the gas grill and the microwave.

For some reason I stopped taking photos after the rolls came out of the oven, but it was a lovely, relaxing day filled with pleasant conversation and delicious foods.

After dinner, I played a game of Munchkin with my aunt and cousin. I think I'm going to need to own a copy of that game now. The hard part would be deciding which version.

True to form, Toby whined all the way home. We were asleep by 10:30 p.m. and stayed that way well past 7:00 a.m. this morning except for a 4:30 a.m. potty break for Toby.

I should have most of this week and next Monday off work, so I'm looking forward to reading, getting my home office cleaned up, but mostly taking it easy.

Hope you had a great holiday as well!

Average Jane and the Cookies

This was my day yesterday:

I baked Cardamom Cinnamon Snickerdoodles. They were amazing. Just ask my niece, who must have eaten ten of them.

At my husband's request, I made M&M cookies using the Better Homes & Garden's chocolate chip cookie dough recipe (except that I used a cup of butter instead of half butter and half shortening).

Then my friends came over and brought cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. We kept having to rearrange them on the table so they'd all fit.

Here's what it looked like when even more arrived.

We hung out all afternoon, drank hot cider and coffee and wine, eventually watched Bad(der) Santa, and took turns being nuzzled by the dog and various cats.

While we were watching the movie, Toby sneaked a gingerbread cookie from the table, even though I thought I'd secured them out of his reach. I took it away and fed him his dinner. The next time he came into the TV room, he had another gingerbread cookie in his mouth. My guests persuaded me that he should be allowed to keep it. I don't like to reward that kind of behavior, but I acquiesced.

I ended the day with two fairly large containers of cookies. I consider it a win when everyone leaves and I have no cookies left at all, but it didn't work out that way this year because people filtered out at different times.

With all of the grocery shopping, house cleaning, errands and baking, I ended up not actually having any meals all day. My husband and I made a late evening Chipotle run so I would have something in my system besides sugar.

Later this week I'm planning on making some gingerbread Daleks with the cookie cutters that Keith sent me last year. I'll be sure to post photos.

What are your cookie plans for the season?