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Terms of the Duel

New-Year's resolutions have a pronounced and infamous tendency to fall by the wayside by, say, the 1st of February. Perhaps, however, that is because they are resolved upon, adhered to, and discarded, by solitary individuals. Perhaps what's needed is some good old-fashioned competitive spirit.

The participants:

  1. Ilya Gandelman - desk jockey from 9-5:30, Monday thru Friday. Free time activities include, but are not limited to, writing, reading, watching tv/movies (very selective in this area!), eating Meredith's delicious food, playing with Gizmo, spending time with family and friends.
  2. Meredith Gandelman - also a desk jockey, from 9-6, Monday thru Friday. Free time activities include, but are not limited to, reading, watching tv/movies, cooking/baking for Ilya (and others), snuggling/playing with Gizmo and spending time with family and friends.

The resolutions:

  1. To read more books
  2. To watch less television
  3. To spend less money (by reading library books, and by making our way through unread volumes gathering dust on the shelves)
  4. To spend more quality time together with a shared interest

Therefore, the challenge proposed: who can read the most books in a year? On one side the wife, on the other the husband: who'll get the most volumes under her or his belt before 2015?

The rules:

  1. Books will be chosen independently. Any genre or subject is eligible.
  2. No second thoughts once starting a book. An uncompleted book is not counted, except of course as time lost. We shall have to choose carefully; and if a book seems to be disappointing, best to soldier on through to the end!
  3. A 300-page minimum. However, books briefer than 300 pages may be combined with others to count as one entry in the Duel.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Don't give up on us!

Well folks, the water leaks have not only refused to stop but have continued with a vengeance, with issues in every room now.  When you have to keep getting up every 15 minutes or so to change the towels catching the water, somehow it's just not really conducive to reading.
Fortunately we didn't have any plans for Valentine's Day anyway.  Well....we had planned on a relaxing night in which we got minus the relaxing part.
At any rate, this whole situation is frustrating beyond just messing with our reading schedule.  It has been really upsetting and stressful.  We have been met with uncaring and/or dismissive attitudes from the apartment management since this all started and have been told conflicting information.  But we were told yesterday that there will be a roofer coming tomorrow to try and figure out something to do as a temporary solution to stop the leaking until winter ends and they can (and hopefully will) figure out a more permament solution (which would be better insulation...the issue we are having is from ice damming).
I'm certainly not going to plan on it, but hopefully they were sincere and we will be able to spend our evenings this week doing something other than tending to water leaks everywhere.
Also, as part of our debt reduction plan, we cut down on how many days we use the dog walker.  So now on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays one of us has to come home on lunch to walk Gizmo (which uses the entire lunch between driving time and walk time).  Right now I am the one doing that, since Ilya's work has a huge need for overtime now, and he has been working overtime on lunch.  It is so nice spending lunch with Gizmo (I used to do that every day when he was a puppy...for the first year or 2), but it has cut out a chunk of time where I was reading the most before.
And also there are just life things going on right now that I have needed to use lunch/break time to work on.  Life has just really gotten in the way of all of our fun lately.  I'm sure it is only temporary though.
So we apologize for the lack of exciting blog material and progress on here.  We really hope to change that ASAP.  Don't give up on us!
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