I am from Alabama, after all

I admit it…I’m staying up late tonight to see if it snows.

Snow doesn’t happen often enough here to not be a big deal. I’ve lived in Birmingham over five winters, and I’ve seen snow that accumulated one time. And even that wasn’t all that much.

I guess it’s also the inner child in me. I like seeing it snow; I love seeing the ground covered in white. It’ll be interesting if it does happen, seeing it on my own yard for the first time. I think about Ricky and Tammy’s new baby, about the fact that she might see snow for the first time before she’s two weeks old. Part of me wishes we already had our new dog so we could see it playing in the snow. I hope that there’s enough to make snowballs, so I can have a snowball fight with my wife for the first time (entirely good-natured fighting, of course).

Snow’s more magical for us here in the south. Up north, it’s just another seasonal event. (For what it’s worth, we probably take warm beaches for granted.) And I’m glad that I’m not so grown up that the part of me that wants to see the magic happen as soon as I can can still convince the tired man who worked hard all week to stay up, just in case crystalline ice flakes fall from the sky.

And given that, even if it doesn’t snow, I think it’s time well spent.

under the gun

Nothing special happened today.

See, this is why I stopped doing this for awhile. Sometimes nothing really important happens. You just do your thing during the day. Of course, in my case, you miss blogging about the really big things that have happened too, like the new place, etc.

I need to come up with ideas for useful filler when nothing about my day strikes me as interesting. Hm…

1/2 month – resolutions?

Okay, so now the real entry for today. We were watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay earlier, so I couldn’t get my thoughts in order, but Kelly’s gone to bed now so I can write some.

I don’t remember the statistic, but I remember reading somewhere that most New Year’s resolutions are broken before January ends. So every once in a while, I will try to check in with my overall progress on mine that I mentioned previously. Since we’re now halfway through January, why not now?

  1. Post at least once every day. Yep. You’re reading the proof.
  2. Lose weight. I haven’t weighed myself during the course of this month (for that matter, I didn’t weigh myself on December 31, either, so I don’t really know what my starting weight was). I haven’t done a great job here – haven’t really changed anything about my eating habits or my exercise. My clothes don’t feel looser or anything. I’d guess I’m about where I was at the start of the year.
  3. Read my Bible every day. Yes! I’ve read at least a chapter every day. I’m ashamed to admit this, but it’s the longest consecutive stretch of days that I’ve read my Bible in quite a while. We’re currently doing a church-wide Bible reading on Jesus where we read through three of the Gospels one chapter a day until Easter. I’ve used that as my guide.
  4. Better neatness around the house and yard. I’ve been better, but not what I really want to get to. For example, I’m still not the best at cleaning up dishes every night, so they’ll still pile up. (Ricky, I’m sure that you’re nodding your head in remembrance right now.) But I am getting better at it (in fact, I cleaned the kitchen tonight while Kelly made dinner). It’s a little cold for doing much in the yard right now, though.

I mentioned financial goals, but I think for the most part that I’m going to keep those to Kelly and myself. I like the topic of personal finance, and for the most part I’ll talk about it with anyone who will listen, but I don’t think that I’m quite ready to have an open wallet.

So there you go. I’m 2 1/2 for 4. But the year is still young – still room for improvement!

dear HGTV…

I normally love your channel. I like seeing all of the ideas that I could do in the house and yard for fairly little money. I like seeing the really awesome designs that some people can come up with. For the most part, you and I are tight.

However, your commercial for your new show “Sleep on It” makes me gag. The faux-musical number just leaves me diving for the remote whenever I see it. The show looks like an interesting idea – prospective buyers stay a night in the house to see if they really like it – but I’ll never watch it because of the horrible commercial.

I hope that you can find it within you to realize that this was not a wise choice, and come up with something that doesn’t make me scream inside whenever I see it.

Love, Brandon

mmm…

The best pizza in the world is from a little place in Ozark, Alabama, named DiFlippo’s. And tonight, that’s what we had for dinner.

My mom has told me that they might go out of business soon. The current owner is advancing in age, and his children don’t really want to continue the business. So I like to have it whenever I come home if I can.

If I find that they really are going out of business one day, I think I’m going to ask them for the recipe for their sauce.

we’re off to see the Wizard…

In the land of Oz this weekend…we’re returning the car that we borrowed from my parents while looking for our new wheels.

Not really much else to report today…hm. Well, I did say that I would post something every day. I didn’t say it would necessarily be interesting every day.

maybe some time…

The really random thing I eventually want for our living room once we ramp up the process of redoing it (it’s currently like number four on our list) is to eventually get my great-grandmother’s mantle clock fixed. I like clocks in general, and it’s a nice piece of history, so I’d like to get it working again.