Greetings from a frigid West Des Moines, IA..
The weather has been crazy. On Saturday the temps were in the 50′s, but only got into the low 20′s on Sunday. I spent most of the weekend not feeling well. Still getting over the cold/flu… just really tired, bit of a sore throat and cough. Saturday and Sunday morning I slept in until 9:00am – partly due to taking some Nyquil before heading to bed.
Spent majority of the weekend on the sofa being a zombie watching TV. Have started watching home improvement shows in HGTV again. My HGTV watching comes in sputs – will watch for a few months, get bored and not watch for a few months… I watched way too many episodes of Color Splash with David Bromstad… way too many. My favorite HGTV show right now is Rehab Addict with Nicole Curtis. I like how she rejuvenates homes from the early 1900′s in the Minneapolis area. Each episode centers around a single room or area of the house – so she goes into enough depth that you actually learn something about the process. She is not wealthy and keeps things real about how she is does the financing and deals with things not working out as planned. Good show….
Just got back from ice skating lessons outside at Brenton Plaza where I froze my butt off…. It is 7 out with a wind chill of -5 – I must be stupid or dedicated to go through with the lessons…. Probably a bit of both… The coach has us working on a routine for a show they are putting on in two weeks. I’m not too keen on the show thing, but did not want to say no…. So, practicing doing Chasses with a partner. Left, up, left – hold. Left, up left – hold and so on… The difficult part is knowing where we should be going around the rink… The coach drew us a picture afterwards – not sure it is helping much:
Routine diagram...
One of the good parts of being in the show is that I get two more lessons for free…. Not too worried about the show – the only people who will show up are parents of the younger children… they have all seen me fall on my bum before 
Last Wednesday went for a vision exam at Pearl Optical in the Valley West Mall. Then picked out a pair of regular glasses and a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Have vision insurance and it covered the cost of the eye exam and resulted in savings of $237 on the regular glasses and $146 off the second pair. It seemed pretty reasonable. The sunglasses are the wrap around type that will be nice for when I ride my bike or go on long RV trips in the summer. It seems like such a splurge to obtain prescription sunglasses, but I will really appreciate having them….
Not much else going on. Going to watch TV a bit before heading off to bed…. Have an episode of Hotel Impossible recorded on the DVR to catch up on.
We’ve been watching a lot of HGTV lately too. I think it’s because our regular prime time shows were on hiatus for a while.