Date Night

Last night Susan and I went to Ikea to pick up a few things, and on the way home we decided to rent a movie. At Fred Meyer's they have a vending machine feature called MovieCube that lets you rent movies for $1 a night. We had never tried this, but had talked about it before and thought it would be fun to try out. It's much better than paying $5 or $6 at Blockbuster and having it for 5 more days than we need it. The movie that we chose was "Step Brothers," with Will Ferrell.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From there, we went to Trader Joe's to pick up some pizza dough. They didn't have the plain dough, but Susan wanted to be adventurous and try the Garlic & Herb flavor they had. We have a pizza stone that we use a lot when we get Papa Murphy's, and Susan has made homemade pizza before, but this was the first time that we've done this together. Susan made hers first and covered it with peppers and mushrooms, along with some pineapple.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

After Susan cooked hers I started putting mine together with some hamburger that Susan had already cooked up. I was having some problems rolling the dough in an even circle, and after I started putting the sauce on I decided to turn my pizza into a calzone.

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

From Ulbin I & Ulbin II

Both turned out great, and it's something that we'll definitely do again. We had a great evening and it cost us less than $3, plus the ingredients that we already had at home.

Dan's getting chains

We woke up this morning to find that we are still getting snow. I looked out the window first thing after waking up and Dan said, "How's my car look?" I said, "Which one is your car?" He said, "WHAT?!? Mine is the clear one. I just drove it home at 7 last night and it was clear!" I let him know that it had a couple inches covering it, and the snow is still coming down.

That was enough for him to decide to get chains today. He woke up early to call Les Schwab, but all of their phone lines are busy. So he just went out in the snow to see if he could get some chains in person. Here are a few shots of him clearing off the car.

From December 2008 Snow

The car behind his was also cleared off late last night.

From December 2008 Snow

I just noticed he doesn't have gloves!

From December 2008 Snow

Good luck finding the road. It's all white down here.

From December 2008 Snow

The Saturn is all ready to make the 5 minute trip to Les Schwab. Judging by our conditions, it will be a 20 minute trip.

Update: Dan said that there is already a 25 person line there, and they haven't been open for even 30 minutes yet! Hopefully they don't run out of chains (or Dan doesn't run out of time before he has to go to work).

UPDATE: No chains. Dan has a very popular size. I might hurt him (as I've been begging him to get chains for a week). If I get stuck in the apartment for Christmas, I will be very sad.

Update part III: Dan got chains in his hand after searching for 2 hours. He texted me while he was in line (30 people back) and said he hoped they were the right size. I looked them up online only to find out that you are NOT SUPPOSED TO USE CHAINS WITH SATURNS! All of the stress for nothing! He was late for work, so he took off, but now we have to decided weather to get chains for my Echo tomorrow, or weather to just stay home for Christmas.

First Day of Winter

Happy first day of winter everyone. The snow has made way for ice. Below you'll find some pictures from this morning. Boston Dan was quoted as saying it was "the worst" he's ever seen (that he can remember).

We worked together to scrape off his car so he could get to work today. Luckily he only has to drive a few blocks, because our parking lot is like an ice rink. Some of the ice from the car was laying on a bed of snow, and it came right off. Some of it was stuck directly on the car, and that was a bit of a bug-a-boo to get off. I scraped off the stairs on the apartment (I'm such a good neighbor), and now I'm back in the cave... I mean apartment. It's not supposed to get above freezing today, and we are supposed to get more freezing rain. Currently it's 23 degrees and it's 10 AM.

I plan to scrapbook Christmas photos that I pirated from all of you. Keep me updated on your weather with pictures and messages!

Here is a plant on our balcony:

From December 2008 Snow

A layer of ice on our balcony:

From December 2008 Snow

Here I am holding a chunk of ice from the Toyota. We are going to use it as a mold to make a chocolate echo. PS... this wasn't the biggest piece of ice from our cars:

From December 2008 Snow

The start of our winter storm

We are just now getting some snow in Vancouver. We have about 1 3/4 inches now at 11:25 AM on Saturday. We are under blizzard condition warnings starting at 4 PM. We are supposed to get about 10 inches in the next 24 hours and winds up to 50 MPH. I know that might not seem like a lot to those of you on the east side of Washington, or on the East side of the U.S., but you have to remember that our entire county only has 3 snow plows.

From December 2008 Snow

This is the frozen duck pond at our apartment complex.

From December 2008 Snow

Don't be fooled... these are not real boulders. They are from the abondoned mini golf course!

We will keep you updated. Stay warm and safe!