Snow, Snow, Everywhere!

Well, I finally unburied my car earlier this week, when the roads were in good enough condition to drive my non-four-wheel-drive car.

And now, once again, my car has turned into a mound of snow, with a hint of blue metal on each side of the mound.

I thought I would share a couple snow pictures, because there is not much else to do up here, except take snow pictures. Oh, and Jonas loves snow pictures too.

This is my parents' house.










This is through the side window.









It has snowed even more since I took these pictures, but right now I am too cold (and lazy) to go out and take more.

Unemployment

Well, I am still unemployed, since I am waiting for Jonas to settle down in a permanent job, before I make my big move. I will most likely move to CA, but I am in a holding pattern for a little while longer.

So, I thought I would make a list of things you can do while you are unemployed, with no one to take care of, in a small town, in the middle of the winter.

And of course, these all are things that I have done in the past month…

1. Spend time with family and friends.

2. Organize thousands of e-mail messages by folders/tags and delete the no longer relevant messages. (I LOVE organizing!)

3. Listen to hundreds of songs on iTunes and assign ratings to them. (At least I don’t have as much music as some people… and by some people, I mean Jonas.)

4. Go through old print/digital documents and shred/delete the irrelevant ones.

5. Scan old non-digital photos and organize the new digital files by date and event. (Yes, I know, I was born to be a librarian.)

6. Rip your friends and family’s music.

7. Burn awesome mix CD’s. (For a future road trip, when I have time and money.)

8. Check credit report and fix errors. (From when my idiot ex-fiancé went on a shopping spree in my name and decided not to pay.) BTW, the official free credit report website, as cited by the FTC is www.annualcreditreport.com.

9. Apply for a Passport. (It is sad…I have not yet traveled out of the North America, but I have BIG plans for the future.)

10. When in doubt, do crafts! (With my mom’s "crafty" and patient help, I have made jewelry to match specific outfits, a cute little camera case/purse, and a photo collage for the cover of my 2006 planner. Yes, I have A LOT of time on my hands.)
These are all of the things that I have made so far...

11. Exercise. (My skinny jeans from when I was 20 are getting slightly less painful to wear, yay!)
12. Eat dark chocolate.

13. Exercise again…

14. Teach my mom how to organize her e-mail into folders.

15. Teach my mom how to more efficiently organize files on her computer. (I am thinking that if I do this enough, I can put it on my resume under "library instruction".)

16. Get your hair done. (Making appointments is a breeze when you don’t have a job.)

17. Daydream… (about future jobs, where I am going to live, marriage, kids… oops, I probably just scared Jonas.)

18. Reflect. (Self-reflection is much cheaper than therapy.)

19. Watch TV (My favs: Lost, Project Runway, Grey’s Anatomy. I think I am starting to like this TV thing.)

20. Read. (O.k. I don’t do this as much as my other librarian friends do, but I am trying.)

21. Go to auctions. (My mom loves auctions and now I can see why. It is about exciting as our town gets.)

22. Make lists.

23. Take pictures of the snow for Jonas. (This is a NEVER-ENDING task, because he is obsessed with snow.)
Snow blowing is also a never ending task...

24. Sleep. (I am still catching up on my (lack of) sleep from grad school. Boring, but wonderful for me.)

25. Oh yeah, search and apply for jobs.

Red Envelopes

Guess what I got in the mail today from Jonas' family!!!!??


And they had cash money in them too!

Additional holidays is another delightful benefit of dating someone from a different cultural background. Oh, I am so happy...