Sunshine and Spice

Last week we drove down to Kentucky to see Wendy's family for Christmas. It was cloudy for most of the drive; towards the end the sun finally made an appearance and I was surprised how much it lifted my mood. It was just nice to see a bit of sunshine.

A couple of days ago, while running some errands around town, I heard the song "Sunshine On My Shoulders" by John Denver:

That perfectly describes how I felt seeing the sun on the drive to Kentucky!

Yesterday the new year greeted us with close to 4 inches of snow. When I shoveled the driveway this morning, the sky was clear and the sun shined brightly. I thought again of the John Denver song, especially the line "Sunshine nearly always makes me high".  It occurred to me that it's pretty much the polar opposite of the song "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down" by the Carpenters.

This afternoon, as we took down the Christmas tree, I streamed some John Denver songs through the speaker, including "Sunshine On My Shoulders". Great music!

In other news, we've adopted two kittens! They are 5 months old, both male. We're keeping the names they had at the shelter: Chili and Jalapeno. Wendy has nicknamed them the "Spicy Pepper Boys", which I quite like. So far Chili seems to be the more outgoing of the two, and Jalapeno the cautious one.

When we adopted our previous cat, Gordon, he was 6 years old. This is our first experience with kittens, and I don't think we realized just how much energy they would have! The first couple of days we alternated between "They're so cute!" and "What have we done?!"

They've just about fully explored the lower level of our house, and identified the best running lanes when sprinting all around. It's so funny when they spot each other from across the room. They'll crouch down and stare intently at the other one for a few seconds. Then they'll wiggle their butt, run full speed, and jump up and attack each other mid-air. Yesterday one of them landed in the trash can! It was hilarious to see the confused look on his face, with his head and paws sticking out of the trash!