Jenny Adams Perinovic

life

Goodbye, 2012!

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I know, I know – this is like one of the gazillion 2012 recap blog posts that have appeared over the last few days. But I’m going to do it anyway. But, the question remains – do I just set goals for 2013, or do I go over my favorite things from 2012?  2012 was kind of a big thing, so I think I’ll do a 2012 recap today, and post 2013 goals tomorrow.

So here are a few of my favorite things from 2012:

Favorite day: June 15 – our wedding! I’m so thankful to all of our friends and family who made the trip and helped us have the most perfect, wonderful day.

wedding

Favorite Graduate: Eric, of course! (Though the entire MAGES ’12 class are all pretty awesome, I think I’m a little bit biased.)

 eric

Favorite Puppy: Miss Zoey

zoey

Favorite Book: This is a tough one – it’s a toss-up between Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity or Libba Bray’s The Diviners.

books

Favorite Project: The Great Noveling Adventure! What started as a crazy idea has grown into something really awesome, and I can’t wait to see what happens in 2013!

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Favorite Album: Mumford & Son’s Babel. I mean, you guys saw that one coming, didn’t you?

babel

2012 was a big year for me! We had our wedding (since we eloped in 2011), honeymooned in Florida (our first vacation together!), we adopted a puppy, Eric graduated from Georgetown, I took a class at Johns Hopkins, I made new friends and reconnected with old friends, and I finished the second draft of Flightless and (almost) finished the first draft of A Magic Dark and Bright – only 10k(ish) left to go! I’m really, really excited to see what 2013 will bring.

Meet Zoey!

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Puppies make it very hard to get even the smallest things done. Right now, my house is a mess, I’ve only written eight days out of the last month and I can’t even remember the last time I slept in past six. …I sound like I have a BABY, don’t I? Sheesh. And it’s all because of this little face:

Luckily, our new puppy, Zoey, is starting to settle down and get into a routine. That routine includes lots of walks, playing with the tennis ball, and snuggling on the couch. She’s full of energy and I swear, we’ve met more neighbors in the three weeks since we’ve adopted her than we have in the entire year we lived here! The cats have adjusted just fine and while they aren’t best friends yet, there hasn’t been any blood spilled, so I’m counting THAT as a success.

Zoey gets her name from one of my favorite characters of all time: Zoe from Firefly.  So far, she hasn’t exhibited any kick-your-ass-and-take-no-names behavior, but she’s only four months old. I’ll keep you posted. She DOES love peanut butter and tennis balls and sitting for treats. We’re working on things like STAY and DROP IT and behaving on the leash, but every day she gets a little better.

When Eric and I fist started talking about adopting a dog, we wanted just that: a dog. We had little to no desire to get a puppy and planned on adopting an adult dog from the shelter. But all of the animal shelters around here have really strict adoption policies. Of course, that’s to ensure the best possible home for the dog, so we understood. We were bummed about it, but whatever, we have the cats. Then my friend from elementary school posted on facebook, asking if anyone would like a puppy that she had found…

One look and I was in love.

Zoey was dumped on the side of the road in West Virgina, about four hours from here. Someone tossed her out of the car and left her to die when she was about five weeks old, all alone, in the middle of nowhere. When my friend found her, she was very nearly dead. She took Zoey in and took care of her for as long as she could, but she had other dogs and couldn’t keep her.  I begged Eric for almost two days, showing him pictures that my friend had posted, before he agreed that we could take her for a weekend to see how she did with the cats. We drove two hours, met my friend, and picked her up. Zoey was much smaller than I thought she’d be – she looks so big in the pictures! She jumped right into my arms and started kissing my face, and snuggled up in my lap for the rest of the way home.

Needless to say, Zoey stayed with us. We think she’s just about four months old, and she gets bigger every day! I swear, her paws are bigger every time I look at her, but I could just be imagining things. 😉 Hopefully she won’t get TOO big — she’s a lab/beagle mix (we think!) — but her paws are bigger than my brother’s 50lb Australian Shepherd, so we’ll see. She’s super laid back, as far as puppies go, which I’m thrilled about. I’ve gotten plenty of writing done over the last week while she’s been hanging out on the sofa, chewing on her bone.

Hopefully I’ll have more pictures of her soon. I lost the charger for my camera and it’s SUPER hard to get her to sit still to take a picture on my iPhone. Hopefully, now that she’s used to living with us and a little calmer, things can start to get back to normal around here!

Powerless.

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The past few days have been … interesting.

Friday night, after work, Eric and I headed to the Verizon store to pick up new phones – the LG Lucid for him (after six years with his flip phone, it was time for him to join the modern world!) and a white, 8GB iPhone 4 for me. We were there for two hours, which was way too long. But! We actually became real grown-ups and started our own plan. Eric got to keep his number – I had to change mine, since it turns out my great-grandmother swiped my upgrade back in March. Having a new phone number is strange – I’d had the old one since I got my first cell phone at 16. Anyway, if anyone has any app recommendations for me, please let me know – right now I have the basics (twitter, facebook, goodreads, gmail, instagram).

Friday night, after playing with our new phones for a bit, I received an email from the county, warning of severe weather. Not two minutes later, the house is shaking from the thunder. I ran to unplug my computer, Eric ran to save our plants on the deck (we have a small container garden that we keep on the deck railing). He managed to save the peppers, but the tomatoes ended up flying off of the deck right as he reached for them, and we ended up losing our tomatoes. As he came back inside, the power flickered, surged, then went out.

Eric’s brand new phone was still plugged in to the wall. When we plugged it in in the car on Saturday,  it was dead.  Fried. So. Back to the Verizon store we went, and now Eric’s on his second phone.  So, PSA – keep EVERYTHING plugged into a surge protector. We had barely any warning before the power surge, and thankfully the folks at Verizon replaced it immediately.

We’ve been without power ever since, charging my phone in the car when we ventured out, and we’re not alone: almost one million people in DC and 2 million between Indiana and DC lost power.  Most people around us have power back, but our entire block is out.  The power company says we could be out of power until Friday.  We’ve had to throw out everything in our fridge and freezer. It’s alternated between bearable and miserable the entire time – during the day, it’s not so bad, but at night, it’s sweltering and almost impossible to sleep.  I don’t even mind not having hot water, since it’s so hot in the house that taking a cold shower is almost heavenly. The poor cats are miserably hot – when I left for work this morning, both were sprawled on the tile floor in the bathroom, not moving.  I think they have the right idea.

We spent Saturday and yesterday with one of Eric’s best friends, Isaac, playing Settlers Catan and drinking leftover wine from the wedding.  Thankfully, I finished Bitterblue on Saturday morning before my Nook’s battery died, and I have a few physical books that I’ve been meaning to read,  so we haven’t been bored out of our minds.  My phone and my Nook are both charging at work right now, and if we don’t have power by tomorrow morning I’ll bring in my laptop and charge it so I can at least get some writing done.  For now, I’m scribbling notes and making character profiles in my notebook for the book I’ll be writing after Flightless and praying that the power is on tonight so I don’t melt.  I can hope, right?