Another Week Closer to Spring!

Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose a few days ago. I must be one of the few people on the planet who had absolutely zero name or face recognition of this actor. Movies obviously aren't my thing.

Toby is doing much better and appears to be back to his normal self, chillin' on the ottoman in the sunporch or curled up by my feet when he's not nestled in my lap. It's nice to have my friend back to his normal self again. Charlie and Toby don't play together but neither do they fight as they once did. Toby has accepted the little mischief-maker who can often be found pulling up a spot next to his big brother. Allie and Charlie will play together but that's usually a result of me giving Allie the high-sign to go after Charlie and "give him a beating he won't soon forget!" She loves that and so does he. He can't get enough of being chased through the house. That little guy brings a lot of fun to our home.

Tammy spent much of the last few weeks working on a shawl or maybe it's a 'throw' for one of our couches. She's not sure how she'll use it but it's really nice. I'm glad she's finally finished it though because now she's dabbling with watercolors again and that's something I've wanted to see for a while. She's got lots of natural talent for painting and drawing.

I've finally got our surround-sound synced up with Netflix. It had me stumped for a while until I took the time to figure out the proper connections. I noticed that while I could stream video reasonably well on my laptop at home, streaming on our TV in the sunporch was another matter. It was continually hesitating and buffering the feed. A speed test of our connection showed that we were downloading at between less than .5mps to upwards of 25mps. A new wireless router fixed all that and has us humming along with more than enough speed. Plus, it's nice to be actually watching a crisp HD picture rather than the lower resolution one we figured was normal.

Rachel and Tony came by Sunday afternoon to spend a few hours with Tammy while I was at work. Tony had a hockey tournament in Hutchinson about 70 miles west of us and they stopped by on their way back to Rochester. They all enjoyed dinner at Mediterranean Cruise Cafe and came back with probably as much food as they ate while they were there. I got home from work in time to spend an hour chatting with them with the TV tuned to the Super Bowl blowout between the Seahawks and Broncos that had much earlier become a bore.

It dawned on me about 20 minutes after they left that I didn't get a photo of them for my blog. Rachel was kind enough to help me out once they got home.

I'm in no way done riding my fat-bike this winter but I'm beginning to shift my focus to my CompuTrainer and the punishing indoor workouts it provides me. I love that thing! I sometimes dread the thought of riding it because I know it's going to work me harder than anything else I do but once I get into a ride I'm fully committed and indulging my otherwise quiet masochistic tendencies. The Real Course Videos are nice for the scenery and the change in resistance that goes along with the terrain in the video but what I like best are the computer-generated graphics workouts where I can set other riders out on the course at varying speeds/efforts and compete against them.

We're working our way through what is so far the coldest winter in 32 years in the Minneapolis metro area. We've seen very little letup in harshness since this cold descended on us a couple months ago. Any temperature above single-digit has become a welcome relief. While we haven't had an enormous amount of snow, it's been enough that the snowbanks are becoming sizable at the bottom of our driveway. Spring can't rescue us from this winter too soon at this point.

Pondering the extreme weather we've had gives me a renewed appreciation for those who came before us and how tough they had to have been. Rather than complain about the weather, I'd rather focus on how good we actually have it with heat for our homes generated at the touch of a fingertip while outside it's a whole other world!