Project 365 day 59: Melting snow! Slowly, but hopefully surely, our collection of snowflakes will be reduced over the next week. With temperatures forecast for most of this week around 30 degrees, rising towards 40 next Saturday, we are very excited by the prospect of seeing our entire driveway again!

Project 365 day 58: In another stunning display of consumerism and childhood regression, we picked up some more Nintendo Wii games today. Well, Amy picked out a practical, healthy exercise software program. I went with Mario Kart Wii, including the Wii Wheel accessory!

Project 365 day 57: We finished off our dinner with friends by breaking out the cactus-style margarita glasses for the first time in the five years since we received them as wedding gifts, filled them with frozen strawberry margarita, and watched Olympics followed by zombie/comedy movie Shaun of the Dead.

Project 365 day 56: Some tasty ingredients from HyVee for our dinner Friday night with friends Ben and Rashelle. I will for the second time be attempting to make pork medallions in a white wine sauce with steamed spinach and garlic mashed potatoes. If you see smoke rising from the Somerset neighborhood tomorrow night, please send help! :)

Project 365 day 55: Amy told me she wanted something with sweet potatoes for dinner tonight, but she couldn't think of what the something should be. I couldn't come up with any good ideas either. Then I figured out the best way to decide would be to go to the Fareway meat counter and let the options present themselves! As it happened, the stuffed pork chops looked particularly good, and I made a point of snapping this photo on my phone camera so we'd remember how to prepare them.

Project 365 day 54: This very, uh, interesting, sculpture of John Vincent Atanasoff (ISU researcher and inventor of the electronic digital computer) guards the entrance to the study area in the Durham building on the ISU campus that makes a fine getaway from my home office.

Project 365 day 53: A plant that we got as a gift from Amy's brother and sister-in-law is growing nicely in my home office/rumpus room in the basement.

Project 365 day 52: Today we stopped by Target, which luckily had just gotten in an overnight shipment of Nintendo Wii's, and picked one up as one of our last gifts to ourselves from our first time homebuyer's tax credit. I have been out of console game playing for the past decade and am looking forward to re-developing this very important skill.

Project 365 day 51: Though I still despise NBC for the Conan/Leno late night debacle (for the record, I'm on Team Conan), I could not think of a better way to break in our brand spanking new Samsung 58 inch plasma TV than watching some of the Peacock network's Olympics coverage.

Project 365 day 50: We left the Movies 12 theater in Ames to find the snow continuing to dust the cars and parking lot. Saw Crazy Heart and enjoyed it, though seeing a scraggly Jeff Bridges drinking alcohol in a bowling alley during the opening scene made me think I had wandered into a sequel to The Big Lebowski (possibly the greatest film of all time).

Project 365 day 49: We stopped at the Hardee's in Toledo, IA for some brain fuel (i.e. Diet Coke) on our drive back from Cedar Rapids, where we celebrated the 5th birthday of our niece Chelsea at Chuck E. Cheese's. It brought back the memories, though of course in my heyday it was Showbiz Pizza Place with nightly shows by The Rock-afire Explosion.

Project 465 day 48: Given the picture posted yesterday, we decided tonight to honor our current TV in its final days as the primary entertainment device in our living room. The 27 inch Samsung cathode ray tube (CRT) has served us well since its early days in my ISU dorm room when I bought it in the fall of 1998. Many movies were watched on it back in the day by 15 people crammed into a 400 square foot living space. Oh the memories!

Project 365 day 47: Our First-Time Homebuyer tax credit check has arrived! 58 inch plasma TV here we come...

Project 365 day 46: The newest additions to the man cave (aka the basement) are the three sets of IKEA bookshelves on the right side of the picture. Of course, I now realize my collection of books cannot even fill one set of shelves. I knew I had a ways to go to catch up with Amy's library, but this is embarrassing!

Project 365 day 45: We could not think of a more romantic way to spend Valentine's Day than clearing the pile of snow that has been sitting on the other half of our driveway for the past two months. Amy helped break up pieces of frozen tundra and I got to run the man-machine.

Project 365 day 44: We tried out the newer bowling alley over on the west side of town, Perfect Game, as one last Birthday activity for me. Bowling itself was fun, though having to wait 10 minutes for a shoe-waitress to come get our shoe sizes, then another 5 minutes for the shoes to arrive, and then be expected to tip when we paid for the games, was kind of odd. We'll be going back to the 20th Century Lanes next time...

Project 365 day 43: Around a table at the coffee shop in Border's with Amy (hands pictured at top) and our friends Ben (hands pictured on left) and Rashelle, enjoying tasty beverages and good company.

Project 365 day 42: My work desk in the basement home office has a big empty spot where my laptop normally sits because I've been going to the ISU campus the last few days with Amy and working there. Sometimes it's nice to change scenery (and use much better Internet access).

Project 365 day 41: Amy and I spent the day on campus and came across this bicycle buried in the snow across the street from Friley residential hall. Maybe this could be a new theft-deterrent idea!

Project 365 day 40: Amy and I attended an interesting talk at the ISU Memorial Union by Ed Schafer, former Secretary of Agricultre and Governor of North Dakota. The talk was about innovation in global agriculture and was heavily attended by Ag students taking diligent notes for class credit.

Project 365 day 39: My 30th birthday! And since it is such a milestone in my life, Amy saw fit to spoil me with gifts in three very important areas of my life: computers, music, and Star Wars. Thanks honey!

Project 365 day 38: I have successfully transformed Amy's old laptop, a Dell Inspiron E1705, from a sluggish Windows dinosaur into a sleek Linux audio workstation that functions as a guitar amplifier, multi-track recorder, and who knows what else!

Project 365 day 37: Gigantic birthday cookies (are you sensing a theme lately?) that we picked up at North Grand Mall's Cookies Etc. and took to Independence for my 30th birthday party hosted at Mom and Dad Oline's.

Project 365 day 36: Peanut butter blossom cookies, an early and tasty birthday gift from my Mother-in-law, with whom I share a birthday!

Project 365 day 35: A happy view of the baggage claim sign at Des Moines International Airport. Why happy you ask? Because I have returned from a business trip to DC (via connecting flight in Milwaukee) and am back in the comfy confines of Iowa with my lovely wife.

Project 365, day 34: Today we ate breakfast at Anamosa's brand-spankin'-new McDonald's, which has a motorcycle theme due to the fact that it shares a parking lot with the world-famous National Motorcycle Museum. Note the cute little motorcycle seats for the kiddies. Mom is concerned that everyone will think we spent this whole week eating out--not true! We also spent part of the week shopping!

Project 365, day 33: Mom and I stopped at a local restaurant for soup today after seeing the movie Precious and supporting the economy by shopping at two bookstores (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Project 365, day 32: I'm staying at my parents' house for a few days, and here are a couple of P. Buckley Moss cross-stitch pictures my mom made when I was a teenager (long before I met Adam). Their names? Adam and Amy. All together now: AWWWWW!