I Would, I Swear

Right now I'm watching the finale of The Song Off. Pentatonix just won. I knew they would, but I'm a little disappointed the Dartmouth Aires didn't win instead, since I bet Pentatonix would have gotten a record contract regardless (they really are super talented).

Dave is still home tonight since he's been too sick to go back to work. Poor guy fell ill just before Thanksgiving, spending the hours leading up to the big meal in bed. He lost his voice for two days, and mob mentality had us all whispering along with him during the meal.

He's feeling okay at the moment, so he's working on getting my laptop's operating system to the point that I can use some software for my research. As it is, I have to use the programs on my instrument's computer, which is situated on a lab bench without a knee hole, forcing me to stand in a very uncomfortable way. It is fine for programming my sample runs, but that's about it.

So *if* I had a working laptop, I swear I would update the last post with pictures and would be working on my photobook. Instead, I'm relaxing and typing this on my phone via email.

My upper back and neck hurt quite a lot because I spent too much time using the leaf blower yesterday. Holding a heavy, vibrating machine in one hand for so long seriously took its toll on me! Our front yard had amassed a month's worth of wet leaves so it took about 45 minutes to blow all the leaves from between the plants. Sometimes leaves are okay, but at this point they were just acting as snail habitat. My lacy looking cabbage and bok choi leaves show it. So I'm laying here on the couch with a heating pad on a pillow to ease my tight muscles.

I got my composts (of my BIG experiment) wetted up last week, just before the holiday. Hopefully I'll find some time soon to finish writing and post about my qualifying exam experience...I started it months ago, but other things have taken priority. Of course, I also have a deadline for using my free photobook promo code, so I need to work on that, too. Christmas cards probably won't happen this year, unfortunately. We have no decent family pictures at all from 2011...I might end up just using a picture of Eddie, though.

Dave just told me that our blue gourami fish died so I put the body into a canning jar and some water into another jar. We bought Eddie two fishies this weekend, something we intended to do just before he got sick with hand, foot, and mouth disease, which prevented us from taking him into the store since he was sporting nasty blisters on his touch-everything hands.

Because Amex offered $25 refund on small shop purchases on Saturday, Dave figured getting the fish that day was ideal. Poor little blue fishie never did seem quite right. He didn't swim much and seemed to sink to the bottom most of the time. The brown one, though, seems fine. We still have the receipt so we will take the body and the separate water sample in for a replacement fish (store policy requires each of those).

So tomorrow we will hopefully have another fishie and I'll be trying to convince Eddie to name them something more unique than "the blue one" and "the brown one." It seems like he'd at least choose Thomas and either Annie or Clarabell, you know?