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Today I woke up to this:

It seemed silly and unnecessary to put myself through all the shoveling and sliding it would have taken to get to work considering that my entire job right now is Internet-based. Thus, I canceled my two morning meetings and set up the laptop in the living room.

As you can see, we still have not obtained any real dining chairs.

Dr. Jones spent all day either scampering loudly around the house or hanging out where he could snag my chair whenever I happened to get up. I finally put a pillow on another chair to give him another option, but he still preferred to snipe my spot.

Trillian alternated between staring gravely out the window and being Jones' fellow scamperer.

I could have had a cat-free day in my home office, but it's chillier up there than it is in the living room. However, I spent the whole day wearing pajamas, slippers and a fluffy robe, so I might have been warm enough.

The snow isn't supposed to stop until tomorrow morning, so I don't feel there's any hurry in getting the driveway shoveled. We have food, heat, Internet access and cuddly cats. That's all we need for now.

I'd been threatening to do this for a while, but early this week I finally called up and cancelled our cable television service. The cost had crept up to $92 a month (not including taxes), which was absolutely not worth it for the amount of time we spend watching TV.

We were already streaming Netflix through our Wii, but we decided to go ahead and buy a Roku so we could also stream HuluPlus and various other sites. Then we bought a digital antenna for watching broadcast television. It turns out that a lot of the network shows we like can't be streamed to the TV, so we're currently handling that with a combination of:

• Watching TV shows when they're actually broadcast, just like a savage!
• Streaming them to the computer after they're broadcast, and
• Investigating work-arounds.

Some observations so far:

• Who knew there were so many public television stations broadcast in our area? We can watch "Antiques Roadshow" pretty much any time of the day or night.
• The picture quality of most of the HD broadcast channels is phenomenal. The stuff on Netflix and Hulu looks pretty darned good as well.
• We have had no problems whatsoever when it comes to streaming speed and quality. I went ahead and squandered $20 of our bill savings by bumping up our internet speed, but I'm not completely convinced that was necessary.
• Making an "appointment" to watch our favorite shows is actually kind of nice. It gives me an excuse to stay home, cook dinner and hang out with the hubby.

There are definitely a few inconveniences associated with getting our shows this way, but I think we'll make up for it by watching more movies and enriching our brains with public TV fare when nothing else is on. Frankly, I don't think that the firehose of cable TV programming to which we used to have access was all that desirable.

And then there's that big stack of books I have waiting…

Photo credit: Alyson Hurt

I really appreciated all the supportive comments I received on my last post, including on Facebook. Heck, people even offered to hook me up with free massages, which was above and beyond, I think.

I've finally relaxed on my own, helped along by a nice Planter's Punch at dinner on Sunday night. And no, I'm not drowning my sorrows–that's the only drink I've had this whole time.

Fancy umbrellas make everything better.

I'm now back at work and trying to juggle obituary writing and memorial fund planning, all while taking calls from my dad and attempting to convince him that there's no hurry in getting his house on the market. However, he's not one for sitting still so I suppose it won't hurt for him to start cleaning things out.

I've been very pleased by the way my dad's friends have stepped forward. One couple drove 80 miles each way on Sunday to bring him a casserole and other homemade goodies. He's been getting lots of phone calls and I imagine the cards will start to arrive soon if they haven't already.

My husband has been great as well. Just yesterday he proposed that he would take over our housecleaning chores for the time being. I'll have to show him the ropes, but that's a small price to pay to get out of scrubbing toilets and mopping floors.

So thanks again, everyone. You're good people.

I spent most of New Year's Day 2011 at the bedside of my dying stepmother, trying to comfort my dad as best I could. My husband came to the hospital around 3:00 p.m. and we left to get food and run some errands. She died about a half hour later.

So you might say there's nowhere to go but up at this point.

Early in the week I was still trying to shake off the lingering effects of the intestinal bug from the previous week and nurse my husband through the same illness when it got him.

Once I'd mostly recovered, I started helping my dad clear out the small commercial building he and my stepmother had just sold. In the process, I discovered that my dad was going to need a lot of help with day-to-day things like learning to make coffee and run the dishwasher.

He asked me to go through their mail and figure out what bills needed to be paid, which turned out to be a two-day process that eventually involved writing more than 25 checks and dropping off property tax payments at the County Courthouse on their due date of December 31st.

My dad handled things with the funeral home, but today I'm going to go over and help him notify friends and write an obituary. There won't be a funeral, per my stepmother's wishes.

There's going to be so much to do. I know my dad wants to sell their house and move into an apartment. He still runs a small business and he'll need a lot of help with that. It's not an exaggeration to say that my stepmother was his right hand.

Today I'm just exhausted. I got a reasonable amount of sleep, but I have a tension headache that won't go away. I wish I could afford a massage because I really need one.

From here on out, I'm just going to have to keep my schedule pretty open and hope for the best. And try to get in a nap whenever I can.

We'll pretend this photo isn't from last year. I never did get any decorations up this year.

I've had a lovely holiday season so far, for the most part. At book club on Tuesday, I received Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, which I am very much looking forward to reading.

Even though the adults in my family aren't exchanging gifts this year, my aunt and I generally bring each other big stacks of books whenever we meet, so I'm sure there will be more reading goodness available for my week off from work between Christmas and New Year's Day. Oh yeah, even though I haven't found a new job yet, my tenure at my current job has been extended through the end of February. So that takes quite a weight off my mind for the time being.

My sister and I have an elaborate Christmas meal planned that involves a frightening amount and variety of full-fat dairy products. Not to mention rum cake and all of the many kinds of candy I made last week.

Christmas Eve is not looking so good. My stepmother is in the hospital with severe pneumonia and naturally my dad is going to spend the evening with her. I was planning on making Beef Bourguignon for dinner and I probably still will, but I'll have to bring some over and leave it in their fridge for later.

Then there's my current diet: Sprite, Gatorade and little sips of soup. You see, I have come down with some kind of gut thing. It could be food poisoning; it could be a stomach bug. Last night was unpleasant in the extreme. I'm feeling slightly better now, but I still have the urge to spend as much time as possible asleep.

However, none of this has dampened my desire to have a good time with my family and friends over the holidays. So now I'm off to get some more sleep and do what I can to make sure the next two days are as nice as possible.

Enjoy yourselves!

I just did the most thorough refrigerator cleanout I think I've ever done. I had no idea that the shelves could be disassembled so thoroughly. I was also reminded, as I am every time I clean the fridge, that many of the shelves slide forward. I don't believe I have taken advantage of that feature a single time since we bought the appliance.

Lots of suspicious jars of food went in the trash. I married two partial bottles of ketchup and threw away some horseradish sauce that expired in 2008. I kept a random selection of really horrible beer despite my better judgment. I keep thinking someone is going to drink it, but if history is any guide, I'm very wrong about that.

Before I did the fridge purge, I tidied up two of our lower sets of cabinets that were so messy that either the doors wouldn't close or things would fall out when you opened them. I even fixed the rail of a sliding shelf in one of the cabinets, if you count propping the rail up with extra slate tiles as "fixing" it.

So now I'm one step closer to being able to make candy and other holiday goodies. And I'm tired. But it's a good tired.

I have been enjoying participating in Reverb 10, but I think I've had about all the public self-reflection I can stand for now. I'll continue reading and thinking about the daily prompts, but I'm probably not going to write about any of them unless one really stands out.

This image was chosen to represent "something else." It's my husband and a pair of giant, frisky rabbits.

I had a three-day weekend and spent most of Friday hanging out with my sister. We had lunch, went shopping so I could get some more business attire to wear to interviews, and walked the trail at Unity Village. It was so warm out that we didn't even need jackets.

The next day it snowed, but not until evening. My Saturday was mostly given over to reading, cooking, baking and playing with the cats. I had two parties to attend, but it got so cold and icky out that I decided to limit myself to the one closest to my house. I baked a Butternut Pound Cake to bring with me and it was a definite hit, despite sticking to the pan.

I still have not put up any holiday decor whatsoever, but I have been burning a WoodWick peppermint cocoa candle that's not only beautiful but smells exactly as labeled.

Because the weather has finally gotten dangerously cold and icy, my daily walks have moved indoors. Today was the first day A Librarian and I walked on our treadmills in her basement and it went pretty well, despite the fact that the two treadmills seem to be calibrated completely differently. We appeared to be keeping the same pace, but my treadmill readout was very stingy about reporting calories burned. It wasn't even clear that the two treadmills were tracking time and mileage evenly. Still, exercise is exercise.

Ooh, and I found out today that I won this dress at I Am Bossy. I'm hoping my good luck continues from here. Thanks, Bossy!