Happy New Year!

It has been an active day.

This morning we had creme brulee french toast with bacon for breakfast. Yum.

Then we headed over to the other side of Fort Mill to pick up an aquarium stand so I could move the fishtank from CootieBoy’s dresser to something a bit closer to the ground AND a bit more steady.

I cleaned out the fishtank, which was getting medium-range ammonia readings. In order to move the tank I did a 70% water change, which is more than was necessary, but what needed to be emptied out so Denis and I could move the tank successfully. I think the fish are happy with the cleaner water, and I know *I’m* happy with the new fishtank location (still in CB’s room, but lower and easier to access for feedings and water changes). And yes, all eleven fish are still alive – it’s been about a week in the tank with all eleven fish still healthy and happy!!

Denis and I (mainly Denis) did some light decluttering – mainly our paperwork. We had lots of miscellaneous papers laying around and we went through all of it and threw away about 99% of it. That’s a lot of unneeded paper! We also wrote out a few bills for mailing off tomorrow. Property taxes are due January 15. I’m very nervous and hope we have all the money necessary to pay them. It’ll be close.

Denis then went out and visited with our friends Roger and Amy, who were giving away their exercise bike. It’s an old bike, but still works well. And hey – I’m all over free exercise equipment! Denis just arrived home with it and once he’s done cleaning out his car we’ll move it upstairs to our bedroom.

Denis is also working on some homemade pizza dough with the idea of grilling the pizza. I don’t know if he’ll be putting it in the smoker he got for Christmas, but the idea is intriguing. Last night he smoked a beef brisket and it was PERFECTLY COOKED. Just the right amount of smoke flavor, and perfectly medium rare in the center. If I hadn’t just downed about 30 steamed mussels before he served it, I would have eaten more!

We *did* stay up last night. We watched the craptastic “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” NOT a movie to be proud of, I must say. It was VERY craptastic. I’m not even gonna review it. The ONLY thing great about it was having Karen Allen back as Marion, because I adore her.

We drank champagne at midnight and by 12:09 a.m. I was heading upstairs to bed for the night. Our neighbor was doing fireworks and I woke up CootieBoy so he could see them, but right when I get CB to the window they stopped. Bummer.

As far as CootieGirl’s responsibility checkmarks, this week she earned $2.85 in checkmarks. She could have earned more but didn’t have school last week or this week, so that’s about 15-20 checkmarks she just wasn’t ABLE to earn since last Thursday. I just divvied out the money – 10% (28 cents) for tithe, 20% (56 cents) for savings, and the remaining $2.01 into a container for spending. She wants to go to the movies, so we told her to earn more checkmarks and in three or four weeks she’d have enough saved up to go to the movies. She’s very excited.

Not much else planned today. Tonight we’ll watch another movie (the 2nd Chronicles of Narnia movie) and then it’s back to work tomorrow. We have a LOT of people out of the office tomorrow (I counted 18 attorneys and 6 staff). Nic felt that more people than that would be out than was listed on the calendar. If that’s the case, then we had BETTER close early because that’s just ridiculous to stay open.