a little bit of this, a little bit of that

• These days Jon and I have found ourselves rushing to bed before the cats arrive so that we can get settled and designate the appropriate amount of blankets and sheets to ourselves. If we get in bed after the cats, a night-long fight over who sleeps where occurs. I woke up this morning to a Shinji pushing my legs out of his way. If you haven't noticed already...we've turned into those crazy cat people.

• Speaking of being a crazy cat person, I found a kit for knitting catnip mice at a yarn store and made a few mice for Shinji and Nuku Nuku to play with. They enjoyed licking the directions and the box it came in better than the finished mouse, but that's okay...I learned how to increase and decrease.

• Jon and I are trying out meal planning this week. We picked out 6 recipes to try and bought all of the ingredients on Sunday night. So far, so good. It's nice not having to decide what to eat while at work and then stopping at the grocery store every day to pick up one or two ingredients.

• Jon is my hero (again)...he reformatted and fixed my work computer this past weekend. Now everything is running better and faster than ever! And...the other day I got a weird muscle cramp in my foot and he says: "Do you want me to get your heating pad so that you can look at it again?" Does he know me or does he know me?

• I finally painted over the last patch of old owner color last night. I'm really glad to have that last bit of peachy cream gone from the house. We bought a new programmable thermostat and it saved us $40 on our heating bill last month (that's more than the unit cost itself!)..

• Great news: The Shins released their newest album, Wincing the Night Away, today. It's on my nonexistent "albums to purchase" list. I pulled out my old albums tonight and have been enjoying their music all evening.

• We finally bought our Japan tickets last week, and actually saved a lot of money because we waited forever. We're leaving in just under two months! Can't wait for the big trip and the break from work.

• And...I'm almost finished with Jon's looong scarf. I really hope that I can finish it tonight and move on to something different!