Let's just hibernate this winter.......

So here's the "cheerios" blog for the day.

This weekend was both awesome and sucky, kind of at the same time.

Our furnace all but blew up on Friday. It's been going out for a while now...it's been making this annoying whirring noise that culminated in what can only be described as the sound you'd hear if a plow came down your street with its blade on the concrete. Awesomeness. So we spend the weekend freezing our butts off. I was furious on Saturday morning about the whole situation, but that came in handy for my Anti-Gym session at the butt-crank of dawn on Saturday (okay it was like 830am, but I didn't get much sleep the night before from all the furnace noise). My trainers were giving me crap about being sleepy and blah blah blah, to which I retorted "Yeah, my furnace went out this morning and I didn't get any sleep. I'm good and PISSED OFF right now...whatcha got?!" They tried to kill me during that session, so that was fun. I need a bit of fury to make those workouts do what they're supposed to do. That's beside the point right now.

By the time I got home from the gym, Todd had gotten so cold being INSIDE that he'd taken to shoveling the walk OUTSIDE just to heat up. That was bass-ackwards at best. So I showered and did the dishes and stormed out of the house as we made our way to Belmar for Starbucks, shopping, sushi, and movies. We spent a buttload of money that day just so that we didn't have to be INSIDE the house. What a crock. Oh and I cracked my head really hard in the shower and am still suffering through a screaming headache from that. I was not in good form this weekend. Just ask Todd. Or don't. My attitude was probably much worse than I remember it to be.

So while dealing with the house was a suck-fest, everything else that day was super fab. We got some Starbucks at Jill's Bux (she wasn't there. Sad.) then did some decent shopping (I got some new jeans that DON'T make me freezing cold. I hate wearing denim, if you didn't already know that) and then we had sushi. For whatever unknown reason, I have been craving sushi since late-September. We had sushi with Laura for her bday and haven't had any since then. There's a joint at belmar called Wasabi that has gotten fantastic reviews, so I figured, why not? We ordered a TON of sushi...plus salad, soup, and an appetizer. So delicious! We had shrimp tempura as an appetizer and then dragon rolls (teriyaki chicken, avacado, jalapeno), spider rolls (crab, avacado, cream cheese), California rolls (I think), some more shrimp tempura (for me) and tako (octopus rolls, for Todd). It was all kinds of amazing. I already want to go back.

After that, we saw Fred Claus. Todd even enjoyed it so you KNOW it's got to be a good, cynical Christmas flick. Hilarious, really. It's now on my list of movies to watch every Christmas. I [heart] Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti just makes me laugh real hard. I would recommend it to anyone. It's pretty family friendly, kid friendly, whatever. Nothing terribly inappropriate. Just good old fashoined fun.

Later, we danced the night away at the Christmas formal at our studio. Good times! Mostly we went because it was going to be warmer there than in our house. We were right. And it was miserable having to come home. Blech.

Then came Sunday. Big Christmas production at church. My dad was in it (per the "uzsh"). I usually sing in the production, but had to pass this year. But no worries...I get to sing for Christmas Eve which is really my msot favorite thing in the world to do.

We went to see The Golden Compass yesterday. I'm terrified to even begin expressing my annoyance with the right-wing Christian nutjobs and all their insanity regarding this movie. Frankly, from a purely entertainment standpoint, this one was top-freaking-notch. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. We all should know by now that I love British kid actors so that helped a lot. I have yet to see a British kid do poor acting. Seriously. Freddie Highmore, anyone? He's a genius. Those little girls in The Holiday? C'mon. And how about any kid in Love, Actually? F'real. It's like they can't act poorly (too bad they couldn't find a British kid to play young Darth Vader - I forget his pre-Vader name - in Episodes 1 & 2...probably could have saved those stories. I digress). And hey, if that movie is good enough for Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, it's good enough for me. There was exactly ONE scene that made it non-kid-friendly, but really, when anything loses a JAW it's not really a kiddie movie anymore. Other than that, it's a good good movie. The ending was a bit abrupt for me, but that's just cuz it's a triology. I think I want to read the books now.

So go see the movie and put aside whatever Focus On The Family has to say about it. It's a good one. And Todd and I had a REALLY hard time figuring out where all these "atheistic over/undertones" were. I think they were really digging for that one.

And like Rob said, why all the fuss over a stupid compass?!?!