Put on the Glasses

Got tea in the mail today for the Reddit Coffee/Tea exchange. I'm excited to try this green tea:

Brian and I have branched out from doing the typical Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange and are now doing other exchanges on Reddit  You are provided with the address of a redditor who also signed up for the exchange, and you ship a gift to that person. A different person gets your address and info and ships something to you. We have had a lot of fun doing the Christmas exchanges the past couple of years, and it is cool to get things you wouldn't expect from people across the country. Brian has already gotten some packages for the Coffee/Tea Exchange and I am jealous.  First, he got a package of Hawaiian coffee, and a laser pointer (because the gift-giver noticed his birthday was coming): Then, he got these in the mail today: I'm green with envy, and I can't wait to see what I get from the exchanges. In addition to the Coffee/Tea Exchange, we also signed up for the Book Exchange and the Snack Exchange.

It's been too long since the last cat picture. So, here is a picture of Leela being her cute self:

My closet is wide open, visible to everyone who enters my bedroom, and there are no drawers. There is no room in my bedroom for a dresser, and this has bothered me for months. It has made my closet a mess of socks. A weekend trip to IKEA gave me the solution I had been looking for. I bought two Helmer drawer units , put them side by side beside my bed and I finally have the storage I wanted. Though they were intended for office storage, they are the perfect height next to my tall bed. I now have a little dedicated drawer for everything, from socks to headbands. My husband is so jealous, he went out and got two for his side of the bed too. He's excited to have a place for belts and ties.

I went to an Oscar party at my friends' apartment last night. It was a lot of fun. They made themed food and decorations for the party. On the walls, they had handmade posters for all of the Best Picture films. Here are a couple of the movie posters: Also, they made a poster with the Vegas odds for the Oscars, which were incredibly accurate:

I hit a book sale at the Nokmis library this morning. While the selection was small, I still managed to grab $5.00 of books to read, including two Preston & Child books. I've been really getting into their Pendergast mysteries lately. Also, Tim O'Brien has never done me wrong. I'm excited to get reading.

Brian picked up a book on famous chess games, The Mammoth Book of The World's Greatest Chess Games. He sat with the book and board, working out famous games.  He showed me the first one on the book, because it is a striking example of how important pawns can be. It's from a game between Alexander McDonnell and Louis Charles de Labourdonnais in 1834. White has captured black's queen. You would think it was all over for black but look at that line of black pawns. White didn't know what hit him.