<!-- meta:title cookbooks, snowballs, and bowling parties -->

<p>Dear Journal,</p>
<p>Good morning, everyone! Hope you're having a great Sunday thus far.
We're having an easy morning, waking up with plenty of time to get to
the eleven o'clock church service, but I'm sure that by the time I'm
finished writing this entry, that will no longer be true. Rodney is
currently chilling on the couch with a bowl of peanut butter captain
crunch and a glass of juice. As per usual, he's watching water slide
videos. Getting him out of bed this morning, he was still practically
glowing from our <em>bowling party</em> last night with our friends Alex and
Cassie. We kept him up until 9:30 PM, which in toddler time must be the
same as 3 in the morning, so it's no wonder he was still talking about
it when he woke up. "Rodney loves bowling parties," he said while
sleepily rubbing his eyes.</p>
<p>I should have probably started writing this entry sooner, but I got
distracted by my new side project. Yesterday morning I started tinkering
around with creating an online cookbook, so I've been on-and-off
distracted by it since. I ported four of my recipes from my personal
notes so far, and I can't stop looking at the final result. I fired off
a link to Alex yesterday, and we chatted about it at the bowling alley.
I see this as a great opportunity for me to clean up my old recipes and
standardize them with a clean format. It's got me pretty excited.</p>
<p>Yesterday was a pretty good day. I spent some time hacking on my online
cookbook, but I also spent a good amount of time shoveling snow, and
later playing in the snow with Rodney. Yesterday's snow, slightly damp
from the sun and warmer air, made for perfect snowballs, so not wanting
to waste the opportunity, I took a break and pelted the side of our
house with Rodney. There's few things in life that are more satisfying
than a good snowball exploding on a brick wall, right?</p>
<p>For lunch time, we grazed on leftovers from our fridge, heating up
stammpot and pizza. Marissa announced she was "going to do a brunch
thing," sitting down with a bagel and grapefruit. "More like a pregnancy
craving thing," I teased.</p>
<p>After putting Rodney down for a nap, Marissa and I hung out on the couch
and watched some sketch re runs. We wouldn't be meeting Alex and Cassie
until six, giving us plenty of time to nap and relax.</p>
<p>Finally, it came time for us to head out. We jumped in the car and drove
to our bowling alley, where Alex and Cassie were waiting for us hanging
out at the bar. They looked pretty content having drinks and watching a
boxing match on TV. "Bowling alley bars are a great place to hide out,"
I later remarked to Alex. "They're very relaxing in their own way."</p>
<p>We rented a lane, each of us giving up one shoe as collateral. As the
guy went in the back to put our shoes away, we remarked at how strange
of a system it was. Who's going to steal a pair of old bowling shoes?
How would having your shoes help the situation? If I walked out with
their rental bowling shoes, would they start renting out my shoes to
offset the theft?</p>
<p>I sat down in front of the dim kiosk to punch in everyone's names. I
chose silly bowling names for everyone, giving Marissa "Pregnant Lady",
which the system hilariously abbreviated at <em>P Lady</em>. We put in for an
order of pizzas, then perused the racks for our own bowling balls. "I
have this anxiety that whatever bowling ball I pick is going to rip off
my thumb," Marissa shared. Cassie's eyes widened - "Me too!"</p>
<p>"Well you know how getting your thumb ripped off is," I added. "After it
happens the first time, it's not so scary any more. It's part of
bowling."</p>
<p>We played, taking a long break to eat pizza and refill on beer. I was
playing pretty terribly, barely keeping up with Rodney's score. I felt
kind of silly bowling a low 80 on the first game after bragging that our
new January weekend tradition of bowling has made me stepped up my game.
For whatever reason, the mojo wasn't there. I leveraged the situation to
make Rodney laugh, throwing the ball through my legs and trying to put
as much spin on the ball as possible.</p>
<p>In the middle of our last game, the lights dimmed and the bowling alley
switched on their <em>cosmic bowling</em> mode. We had never stayed at the
alley past nine, so you could imagine our surprise learning that all
along we had been missing Saturday cosmic bowling by a mere half hour.
The disco lights and loud music gave a tired Rodney second wind. He
relished the last few frames, dancing, crawling on his belly, and
running around with his arms extended like an airplane yelling
<em>LEEEEET'S GOOOOOO</em>, in his own <em>Dude Perfect</em> style. He looked purely
in his element.</p>
<p>Heading home, Rodney contested going to bed without a story, but soon
after his head hit the pillow, he was asleep. Marissa and I were free to
catch up on cleaning the house, and even empty a few project cards from
the board. We wrapped up the night on the couch with a new movie pick.
Marissa, continuing her march through the Alien movies, picked <em>Aliens</em>.
Before we started the movie, we spent a few minutes on the couch
throwing out fake titles in a dramatic voice, like <em>Aliens: More
Aliens</em>, <em>Alien…s</em>, and <em>Alien: You Though We Were Done?</em>.</p>
<p>Today, after church we're going to go out to lunch, then swing by the
grocery store to pick up food for dinner. For playoff game day, we're
going to make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3GN_W2kVrA">Chef John's Buffalo Chicken Wings in a Jar</a>, which sounds
just perfect for snacking while, in all likelihood, watching a team I
don't care about beat a team I don't like in the NFC championship. Go
49'ers (I guess). In all seriousness, from the little I've seen of the
49'ers this season, they are terrifyingly talented and no doubt deserve
a super bowl win. Even better if they eliminate the Packers on the way.</p>
<p>Hope you all have a great day today.</p>