Happy Chinese New Year

On Tuesday we ordered Chinese food when our Blue Apron shipment got delayed in Memphis. For about the third time in a row, there was no fortune in my cookie. Hopefully this doesn't mean anything more than the restaurant is buying their cookies from a cheap supplier with poor quality control. But on Thursday when our food finally arrived, I made Togarashi Chicken to celebrate Chinese New Year. I found out later that Togarashi is actually Japanese. Oh well. 2021 is the year of the Ox. It also happens to be the year my baby sister turns 60. YIKES! That really makes me feel old.

For about the last 10 years during the month of February, I've been in Florida or California or some place warm without snow. So I forgot how it feels to wake up each morning to a new layer of snow and single-digit temperatures. At least I don't have to go to work each day. Because of the pandemic, several people in my neighborhood have taken to riding their bikes to work and it looks like they're still at it, judging from the tire prints in the snow. I feel bad for Courtney, because since her car died, she's had to rely on her bike to get to exercise class.

But at least I usually manage to get outside and take a walk most days (thank goodness for my fleece-lined hiking pants). My favorite destination is the grocery store (surprise, surprise). The other day as I was reaching for my favorite Dunkin Donuts mocha drink, I saw that Coke had come up with a new coffee-flavored Coke. I can't imagine who would really be interested in drinking such a thing. You must really be a caffeine junky to drink this stuff. Yuck.

I've been building robots to solve some of the missions in this year's robotics contest. Many of the challenges require you to do multiple things at once. On the Bench mission, you have to knock down the bench, take the backrest out of its supports and drop cubes into the rectangular spaces in the frame. I can get my robot to knock down the bench and take out the backrest. And I can even get it to deposit the blocks, but unfortunately it releases them too quickly and they end up propping up the bench (aka. no score if I were actually competing). Frustrating.

We're still working on some home improvement projects getting the house ready to sell. About 5 years ago, I bought new house numbers for the front. Bruce finally put them on this week. I think they look so much better than the curlicue froo-froo ones that were on there before - very modern.

I also decided to paint the rest of the walls in my art room. Since the house was built back in the 1940's, they had coal-burning furnaces. My art room is actually the old coal bin with shiplap on 2 walls. 

I painted the shiplap and Bruce painted the outer wall which is stone (and a pain in the neck to paint).

I think it turned out really cool - kind of an HGTV Joanna Gaines meets IKEA organizers style.