Richard and I love to play board games and card games, but we often don't think about playing them. On Saturday night, we went to a game night with some friends from our church, and we had so much fun playing Skip-Bo, we've remembered to play some games this week.

Richard's favorite game is Uno because, in his words, it's the one game where he consistently wins. It's true- Rich is the Uno master. He counts cards (at Uno!?), and he can pretty well guess what color you have in your hand when you get down to one card.

Our deck of Uno cards is actually Richard's set from college, which he probably pilfered from his parents' house. He couldn't find a complete deck, though, so he went online and figured out how many of each card was supposed to be there. Then, he went through three different decks (from three different time periods) and combined all of the right cards to make a full deck.

We call it "Uno through the ages."

Yeah, Richard loves Uno.

Today, for lunch, we had baked ziti. This is a favorite meal around these parts for a lot of reasons. I love pasta (mmm, carbs!), but Richard isn't the biggest fan. He tolerates baked ziti because it isn't all that saucy (mmm, sauce!).

As I was preparing lunch today, I was thinking back to the first dinner I made for Rich and myself after we got married. We had baked ziti that night, too. We had just moved into our first teeny-tiny apartment, with an even tinier kitchen. I couldn't figure out how to work the oven since I had never cooked on gas. I was so upset, Richard went next door and asked if we could use their oven to cook our dinner. The girls who lived there kindly agreed. The baked ziti turned out great- warm and filling on a rainy night.

And the oven? The pilot light was just out. Richard fixed that, too.

Lotion Blanket Corndog Gumby Homestar-Runner

One of my favorite past times is making up new middle names for our dog, Charlie. Richard tolerates this pretty well; he just rolls his eyes as Charlie acquires more and more middle names. As of this morning, Charlie's name stands like this: Charlie Lotion Blanket Corndog Gumby Homestar-Runner Newton.

It all started when Rich and I were watching that old episode of 60 Minutes about the life of Michael Jackson. They started talking about Jackson's children, and when I found out his third child was named "Blanket," I thought it was delightful! I couldn't stop grinning, thinking about naming people after inanimate objects.

(Side note: Arguably, I should have already known that Jackson's child was named "Blanket," as everyone I told about it at the time looked at me like I was insane for not knowing this. But you have to cut me a break, as I grew up in a house where, for the first NINE YEARS of my life, I though the radio only played one station- the Christian one. Michael Jackson wasn't exactly on my radar screen.)

It all started that day. Charlie gained two middle names: Lotion and Blanket. Charlie LOVES lotion. Anytime I moisturize my hands, I can count on Charlie to dutifully make out with my hand until no lotion remains. I think he would eat it straight out of the bottle if we would let him. Blanket naturally had to be included as an homage to our inspiration for random middle names. (This, I can safely say, is the one area of my life where Michael Jackson can be said to be my "inspiration" for anything.) The list just grew from there, and now Chuck has five glorious middle names, to be verbally slung at him whenever I get to feeling a bit schmoopy.

All this to say, give your pets some middle names! The stranger, the better.

People keep asking me what we did for Valentine's Day this year, so I guess I'll dish. We're really not THAT kind of people, so this may be unentertaining. That's what you get for continuing to read after you've been warned!

On Friday night, I picked up Chinese take-out on the way home from work. This was a real treat (in terms of calories and eating out)! We ate together, and then watched The Wire from Netflix. Nothing like drug violence in Baltimore to help romance blossom!

I gave Richard a Victorian Valentine's Day card (think naked cupids) with a scmoopy love poem written inside and a coupon for a homemade apple pie whenever he wants it.

And that's it! We enjoy spending time together, so that's the best present of all.

February Room a Month

It's February--which means it's time to tackle another room. This month, the kitchen is on the agenda, and I've got quite a task ahead of me.

I have several issues with the kitchen, the first being that the room gets no natural light. It's tucked back in a corner, which makes for a very efficient layout, but it's a little gloomy without any sunlight. Since I can't exactly change that, I do want to brighten the room up a bit.

Which brings me to my next point. When we moved in, Richard commented that our kitchen looks like the Apple store. Everywhere you look, it's white. I want to liven the room up with even more color.

Additionally, when we moved in here, we had SO much more space than in our old kitchen, and I wasn't exactly sure how to efficiently arrange things in the cabinets. Now that we've lived here a while, I have a much better idea of what's working (and what's not). I plan to rearrange some of what's going on behind those oh-so-white cupboards.

Finally, though Rich and I keep the kitchen pretty clean on a day to day basis, it could use a good deep cleaning. I plan on wiping down all the cabinets (inside and out), sweeping and mopping behind the appliances, and basically just cleaning in all the nooks and crannies.

Next time you see this room, it will be more functional, cleaner, and, hopefully, prettier too!

Dear me. Today someone told me that their code of ethics was purely "Judeo-Christian" because it is based entirely on the Bible and THE CONSTITUTION.

"Really?!" I wanted to reply, incredulously. "You live by the code of the 20th amendment and base your life decisions on your belief in checks and balances?"

Yikes. I don't call that Judeo-Christian; I call that civil religion.