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February 25, 2007
29
We're going skiing for my birthday! Here! Yay!
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:18 AM | Comments (3)
February 18, 2007
Sundays
Ben and I went to the Sunday Night Dinner Club tonight. It's a group composed mostly of Grinnellians, and it seems to exist for the purpose of sharing good conversation and good food. I enjoyed it.
We were, I think, invited back again next weekend. I won't be able to attend, however. Rian is coming up to Portland, where I'll be hosting the seventh annual Sherwood-Sands Oscar Night Extravaganza. Yep, she and I have seen the Academy Awards together every year since spring 2001. It's become something of a tradition.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2007
economics
I am kind of surprised that intro to microeconomics at the community college is this hard. I'm spending 8-10 hours a week on this class.
I have vocabulary terms like "value of the marginal product of labor curve," which is derived from the value of the marginal product of labor, which is not the same thing as the marginal product of labor, or of any other factor for that matter. This curve, incidentally, is a graph that shows the value of the additional output generated by employing one more unit of labor. It's also the individual producer demand curve for labor. I think.
Ben majored in economics in college, and he seems to think that much of economics is just common sense. I've never been particularly good at common sense.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
Sunny Saturday
I planned to go skiing on Mount Hood today, but I needed to get up at 4:30 a.m. and out the door by 5 a.m. in order to make it to the shuttle bus on time, and at the last minute I decided to sleep in instead.
I'm glad I did. This is one of those amazing Portland days. The sun is shining, temperatures are in the 60s, people are strolling about with big grins on their faces.
Ben and I took a nearly nearly 2.5 mile round-trip stroll to North Willamette Boulevard, a scenic hill that looks out over the city. We found a new coffee shop and ate day-old pastries there. I took of my sweater and walked short sleeved outdoors for the first time in probably four months.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Maybe turning 29 won't be so bad after all
Ben got me an early birthday present (my birthday is next weekend): a MacBook!
It comes with a built in camera! So of course I assaulted everyone who lives here in order to take their pictures. Ben and the cats sure put up with a lot.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2007
Taxes
Negative tax consequence of being married: I no longer qualify for free electronic filing, which means I have to do a lot more work
Positive tax consequence of being married: We get a much bigger combined tax refund.
Positive tax consequence of being married (for Ben): His crazy wife does all the hard work months and months before the deadline and has the tax refund directly deposited into his checking account.
I've just gotta double check everything, make copies, and drop it in the mail box. Then it will be a matter of weeks before we get our money back.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2007
I defy you!
Well, I went against the preferences of more than half of the people I know, including my husband, and placed an order for glasses option A yesterday. They weigh much less and are more comfortable than the other alternative. My eyes are more centered in the frames, which is good for both my vision and my vanity. I spend most of my time out in the world wearing very conservative business clothes, and having a slightly funkier pair of glasses to counteract my clothes appeals to me. The purple frames bring out the green in my eyes. Also, the advocates for A made more compelling arguments.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:57 AM | Comments (6)
February 04, 2007
Vote!
I'm watching you. I also need your help. Above: the glasses I have now. I really like the frames, I like the way they look on me. But they don't fit quite right. The nose is the wrong size for my nose. I get headaches and red marks. So I'm getting new glasses. I've narrowed it down to two pairs. I need your votes to help me decide:
A -
B -
Don't let the stickers on the lenses sway you.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:59 AM | Comments (19)
February 03, 2007
Social life
I owe a thousand people phone calls right now, but my excuse for not dialing is that it's 11 p.m. on the west coast, 2 a.m. for most of my friends out east. Also, I've been faking having a social life.
Early on today I volunteered at a regional science bowl, where I was on the "celebrity panel," a bunch of adult journalists willing to humiliate ourselves by competing against the most scientifically brilliant high school kids in Oregon and Washington. They wiped the floor with us.
Then Ben and I ventured back to our old neighborhood for a Portland tradition, breakfast in the afternoon. We went to the Cricket, which was Ben's old haunt for years. Long before he knew me, he and Jason used to eat there and goof off together. Ben pointed out that we've been going there together for 5 years now. We started dating in January 2002. Pretty amazing.
In the evening, I hung out with Michael and a bunch of Daily Newsers in downtown Vancouver. Beer, barbecue and poker* were the featured entertainment of the evening. Michael is a Grinnellian and former Daily Newser, just like me, and he even works at my current paper. Which is kind of spooky.
* (Originally I wrote "beer, barbecue and power," but that was a typo. Though "power" would have been an interesting alternative to "poker.")
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)