The Snowcation Continues

We are now on day four of our "Snowcation." Unreal.


Mark is out shoveling AGAIN.

We have enjoyed our four days off from school and the federal government, but cannot believe what the last week has brought us!

I did not post pictures of the snow yesterday but let me give you a little review.

Blizzard conditions. White outs across the metro region.



No public buses running. No above ground subway lines running. Again.


Yesterday was perhaps the most severe day of weather as winds gusted up to 50 mph.


It was so cold and so windy that the snow even made its way into our house. Yes, that's with the glass door closed. Amazing.



Mark took the opportunity to do a little work inside the house (he only shoveled ONCE yesterday). He recaulked our bathroom tile...and did an outstanding job of it!



I worked on finishing up projects that have been way overdue.

Soba just chilled on our bed with Timmy.


Here are pictures from Mark's daily shovel job.



He's holding up three fingers in the one picture for the third snow storm that he's been a shoveling fool!


Last night for dinner I decided to make a pot roast without the meat---what makes it pot roast then? Well, my argument is that really the tastiest part of the pot roast is the soft potatoes and carrots and onions that come with it. We also bought baby bella mushrooms for our stir fry the day before but forgot to add them in so we added them to last night's dinner. I called mom and got the heads up as to what to do for the broth since I didn't have a pot roast package. She gave me the perfect recipe!

I had already cut up one white onion, three garlics (not the bulb!), four white potatoes, and seven carrots.

To that mom suggested I add:

2 cups of vegetable broth
1 veggie broth bullion cube for extra flavor (I actually added a total of three veggie bullion cubes and found it to be perfect!)
a dash of Crazy Jane's salt
Bay leaves
Parsley
1/2 cup of red wine (I added closer to a cup)

I let it cook in the crockpot for 4 hours and whoop! There it was! A perfect wintry night meal! It was filling but didn't leave us feeling gluttonous. I loved it and so did Mark.



Last night we decided to watch Couples Retreat. HI-LAR-I-OUS! Mark and I had a great evening. Here's the trailer. If you haven't already seen it, we highly recommend it. If you have seen it, we recommend you watch it again. :)



School was out again TODAY, but it's a beautiful and sunny day here. Mark is out shoveling AGAIN--there's just nowhere to go with all of the snow.


We're looking forward to getting out soon and heading to the gym and then to the dog park for Soba.



No word yet if tomorrow will be another snow day. Still no public buses running and no above ground subway today. The kids didn't have school scheduled anyway since it was a PD day for teachers...I will keep you posted!

Movie Madness

With all of our snow days we've had plenty of time to catch up on movies. Our favorite new thing is to rent movies from iTunes or Amazon. For $1.99 or $2.99 you can bring the theater to you. We used to have Netflix and loved that service until we lost one of the DVDs. We didn't lose it permanently but we did lose it within the timeframe of our subscription....in fact, I think losing it is what ended our subscription.

So, the renting from iTunes and Amazon is wonderful for us because there isn't any disk to keep track of, nothing to return, nothing to lose.

I brought home the LCD projector from school and Mark hooked up to my computer so that we could project the movie on to the only bare wall in our house (we had to take the TV off from its TV stand first). We hooked up our external speakers and voila! We have a home movie theater!

So what have we been watching?


On Saturday night we watched Nursery University.

This documentary was stunning. It details the admissions process for NURSERY SCHOOL in Manhattan. Evidently due to the baby boom shortly after 9/11 the competition for the "good" nursery schools became cut throat. It might be easy to laugh at all of this if it weren't the reality for some.

And at the end of it, I was left asking, "what's wrong with NYC public schools?" I'm pretty sure there have to be SOME good public schools that are FREE (not $20,000 a year!!)!!!

Regardless, it's a great introspective film and we definitely enjoyed following the different families in the film to see where they (more so their children) would end up. We found ourselves rooting for the "nice" and "down to earth" parents, while chastising the pushy ones.

You'll have to watch it for yourself!


On Sunday night we watched Religulous. Wow!

This was very interesting, but I think Mark and I definitely felt it was VERY slanted by the end. Granted, that's what documentaries usually are, but the more it went on, the more absurd (or rather the reporting of it) became.

We enjoyed the questions that Bill Maher asked and the comedic way that he approached religion, and all that goes with it. We also like the variety of people he interviewed. We did like the intertwining of beliefs from the different religions and the comparative nature of the Creation stories.

It's a great movie if you can take it with a grain of salt and not see it as an attack on your religion or other's perceptions.



On Monday night we watched Dogtown and Z-Boys.

From Wikipedia: The Z-Boys were a group of skateboarders in the 1970's from South Santa Monica and Venice California who are credited with inventing modern skateboarding and essentially creating the punk/skater subculture that now exists. Their name is derived from the name of the team they competed with together, the Zephyr Competition Team.

Mark and I loved the photographs and learning about evolution of skateboarding from surfing. It's really well done and taught us something we had heard about but hadn't really stopped to investigate before. The skateboarding of the Zephyr team was incredibly well documented. This history teacher really appreciated all of the archival footage!



Check out this review if you're curious to read more!

Last night we decided to just read magazines and watch the Biggest Loser. Although, we were reminded of how much we prefer to watch the Biggest Loser ala Tivo---the weigh in takes a tenth of the time when you can just fast forward and see who lost what weight without the drama and commercials.

What's on the docket for tonight? Not sure yet. Any recommendations?