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We’ve had two really productive Saturdays in a row. Last weekend we wanted to go hiking to celebrate the offical end of Brian’s lyme disease (he took the last antibiotic that morning) but Hurricane Noel caused the weather to be steady rain, wind and cold all day, so we turned our energies to the Rumpus Room instead. Over the summer it had become a messy repository of stinky workout clothes drying on equipment, scattered hiking gear ready to be stuffed into a pack (or having just been removed from a pack), and piles of files that had managed to get put there “just for a while” but seemed to be out of sight and thus out of mind. We moved everything to one side of the room, started putting it away in the attic, folded in drawers, or in the closet as we went, then dusted and swept that side of the room before doing the reverse. At the end of the afternoon we had a clean exercise area, one half for lifting and the other for yoga or Martina workouts. Success! This was definitely a task best tackled together. We were both pretty sneezy and tired by the end. We had one fun interlude on the paperwork front: we decided to shred all our old checks from inactive accounts. The process was to tear out about 6 pages of checks, feed them into the shredder, smile gleefully as the shredder ate them, then get more checks. Brian and I alternated feeding paper so efficiently that we caused the poor little shredder to overheat. Luckily we let it cool down and it seems to be as good as new.

This weekend we tackled the living rooms. Again, lots of sweeping and dusting and moving electronic equipment and putting piles of stuff away. The front living room is ready to entertain guests or just hang out, and the fireplace room has significantly less cat hair and is thus more conducive to reading or working by the fire. It’s really much more fun to clean together.

Today (Nov 11) is Brian’s birthday. I noted Saturday morning that it’s his “Big Papi” birthday, #34. Since David Ortiz is my favorite baseball player, this can only bode well for Brian’s year, I think. We celebrated by having dinner with Dan and Nate at 10 Center Street, then came back home for chocolate cake and coffee. Brian got several nice cards from our family too.

In between, Brian completed his training at the women’s crisis center, I went to a purse party, and in sports I was able to escape my conference to participate in the Red Sox rolling rally down Tremont Street. It’s a great time to be a sports fan in Boston. I think those are the highlights.