Meat

Last night we had our first taste of grass fed beef. And it was delicious.

The local Sprouts market has their organic grass fed beef on sale for 40% off so we splurged and bought some meat that was on sale for $7.48/lb. Said meat was from Uruguay. And the corn we had with it came from like California or something. So yeah, the carbon footprint of the meal was kinda dismal.

Just makes me want to get meat from here. Or anything from here.

If you are interested in lowering the carbon footprint of your meals, go to EatWild to find grass fed dairy/eggs/meat near you.

Law-Talking Lady

Since half of my readers are not in the Austin area, I point you to this news article. I will wait while you read it.

Official: Shots fired when census worker visited

That's right. A lawyer went and fired 5 shots at a census worker who showed up at her house. A LAWYER! 1) this wouldn't have happened if she had just filled out the damn sheet (hell, she could have done the same thing my coworker did and claim that "Texan" is a minority if that would make her feel any better). and 2) I did not realize that they were letting nutjobs be law-talking dudes now-a-days.

Texas: The only place where you can be shot at for going door to door.

I'm DYING!

AGAIN! I was fine for a couple of years there, but apparently I'm dying.

Again.

Went to the doctor and my bloodwork came back bad.

Again.

As I said, it was fine for a while there, and then it went down.

Just the usual--high cholesterol, high triglycerides, gain weight, exercise more, eat less calories. I'd like to see the physics for that one.

What they probably should have said was eat more good calories. As in whole foods, not processed foods.

Good thing I already read In Defense of Food and have decided to get rid of all the processed crap, and in order to get Shawn to let me get grass fed beef when we do buy beef, I'm going to have to give up my daily caffeine/corn syrup habit. (though I'm still working on that...I think the easiest way will be to make him read In Defense of Food).

And I decided to up the amount of spinach I grow this next year. More spinach, less beets.

Oh yeah.

And exercise. Boo! Hiss! But I'll do it. Because I don't want to be dying. Again.

Nostalgia Sunday: Falling

I noticed the other day that Snarkymommy hadn't been going through my rotation list meaning that either Amy hadn't been blogging or that her website had changed thus making my feed null and void. I checked out her site, and sure enough it had changed from www. to no www.

As I was catching up on her posts, she had one where her daughter fell down the stairs. And I started laughing. Not because her daughter fell down the stairs, but because it reminded me of my my sister fell down the stairs. And that story is as follows:

My grandparents used to own a cabin in the Colorado mountains. Since they both worked full time jobs, it meant that the only time anyone was at the cabin was MAYBE on the weekends. As such it meant that it was pretty open to having lots of people over when no one else was planning on using it. This usually translated to having extended family over, or my dad would take his coworkers, my parent's marriage encounter group would have a get-away, my uncle's minister friends would have a retreat, etc., etc.

During one of the marriage encounter get aways, someone (and I'm going to blame one of the boys for this), had the brilliant idea of sliding down the stairs on sleeping bags. Still bumpy, but the sleeping bag made it so you continued to slide the whole way. This was shortly upgraded to the twin air mattress. As you can imagine, this was great fun for a bunch of kids to do--toboggan down some carpeted stairs until the wall at the bottom stopped you. The boys and girls were greatly enthralled with this while the adults were all sitting outside on the deck and communing with nature or some shit.

After a while, it became boring to sit on the air mattress and go down the stairs (luge style), and shortly one of the boys decided to go head first (skeleton style). At some point, I started going down head first (great fun!), and started trying to talk my sister into doing it because it was SO much more fun than going down on your butt. She finally agreed to go head first, but only if I went with her at the same time. Since we were both like 5 or 6, it wasn't difficult to fit on a twin mattress. And so we prepped at the top of the stairs, hanging over the edge, getting ready to go. When I gave the word, the boys pushed and Dani and I started down the stairs.

I remember going down a couple of steps and feeling like something caught so I put my hands out and stopped us completely.

Only Dani didn't do the same thing.

Dani slid off the front of the air mattress and then tumbled down the rest of the stairs.

Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. All the way to the bottom where she probably landed on her head and her butt hit the log wall.

HiLARious. At least to the rest of us kids.

[aside] Kinda like the time when Shawn and I went backpacking and he twisted his ankle and fell down right after I told him not to twist his ankle, and so I could not stop laughing. [\aside]

We were told, in short order, to stop going down the stairs like that because someone was going to get seriously hurt. So instead we went outside to play with the bows and arrows my grandpa had made for us from aspen seedlings...much safer, I'm sure.

Doctor

So I just got back from the doctor's office. And I always have this one problem when I'm there: After the doctor has seen me, do I wait for the nurse type to come back and get me or do I just see myself out?

Unfortunately, this has been happening since college. It mostly started when I went to the doctor for a sick appointment and happened to mention that my dad had recently been diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor wanted to do a non-fasting blood sugar screen for shits and giggles. So the nurse did the finger prick and then said that the doctor would be in to see me. 40 minutes later the doctor walked by and happened to notice I was still sitting in the exam room and was like "oh my god! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize that the nurse didn't just tell you that your blood sugar was fine. You could have left 40 minutes ago." From that point on I just always left after they did whatever it was they were to do--if it's that important, they'll call me. Or at least that's what I told myself.

Now then, when I started going to the doctor down here, the first nurse flipped out when I walked myself to the lab for the blood-draw and I was apparently "missing" for a little while. (which really? jesus, I was already 22, it's not like I was likely to be kidnapped.) So ever since then, I've waited for direction (whether it comes from the nurse before, or the doctor during, I don't care). Today I waited 15 minutes for the nurse to come back and get me. And I figure it's because the doctor told her that she didn't think I had left the room yet and they should probably check on me to make sure I hadn't passed out or something. If the doctor hadn't noticed, I might have been there until closing and I could have pulled off the Veronica Mars goes searching for medical files thing.

Maybe I should go back to how I did it in Colorado--just walk my own ass down to the lab and leave afterward. They'll call if they need anything.

Houseplants

Houseplants to help you survive the Zombpocalypse. Written by Mr. Subjunctive. pure awesomeness. That and Bond already has half these plants in her office...which makes me think that she knows something I don't.

Eggs & Toast

A few weeks ago, I realized I was hungry for something I had never had before: scrambled eggs on wheat toast. I mentioned this to Shawn at some point and he said I was crazy. "No one eats scrambled eggs ON toast," he said, "they eat scrambled eggs WITH toast. But never ON."

So I decided that I was going to still make my scrambled eggs with toast, and he asked that I make poached eggs with toast. Since I am nothing if not accommodating, I did both.

Guess whose new favorite breakfast item is scrambled eggs ON toast? especially when served with a Kraft American Single?

That's right.

Shawn.

Last time he'll make fun of my food ideas.

Friday

On Thursday night we slept with our bedroom window open. Of course the damn doves started going off super early in the morning. I woke up honest to goodness swearing that my alarm clock ALWAYS made that "Coo coo ca choo" sound.

18

Yesterday Bond told me a story about the field work she was doing with our (female) intern.

they were out in the field, sitting on the bumper of the Escape and waiting for a third coworker to get back to the car so they could leave the job site. As they were sitting there, a man came up and asked if the lovely ladies would like to purchase an Adult Movie (bow-chicka-wow-wow). When they both declined, he then asked if they were 18. What would he have done if they said Yes to the movie and No to the 18+ thing? would he have demanded his movies back? Aside from the fact that we haven't even gotten to the question of this man's mental stability since the vehicles have a nice, big City seal on the doors. Yes, that's what us government workers do--avoid doing work by watching porn all day.

Friendship Bread

10 days ago, one of my coworkers gave me a starter thing of Friendship Bread. I have dutifully mushed it and added the various ingredients. It came time to separate it, which required adding more milk. Milk that we don't have. Oh sure, we have SOY milk, but I don't know if it would ferment the same as cow's milk. So thus, instead of adding ingredients and then separating it, I just added the remaining "to make bread" ingredients and forewent the giving out of starters. Sorry guys, I know how disappointed you are right now. Please try to contain your sadness.

There's another problem. I don't have loaf pans. So it is in a 9 x 11 (or some such) pan instead. So, we'll see how this crazy bread turns out.

The thing I find funny about this whole Friendship Bread thing is that it's like a pyramid scheme...AND they have this silly little admonition about not giving away all your starter because only the Amish know how to make starter. well, the Amish and Google. there's also the rule of "DON'T USE METAL BOWLS OR THE WORLD WILL END IN A FIERY FIREBALL!" And I find this ludicrous. What's the thing of 'no metal bowls'? is it supposed to make the recipe more "Amish"? It's basically soured milk and yeast. I've made soured milk and yeast things in metal bowls all the time without any ill effects.

So now the bread is baking away, hopefully it's decent. Maybe we'll have this for dinner instead of Breakfast Potatoes. :)

Beet It! (Part 2)

So, after last night's smashing success (and insanely long time line) of roasted beet salad, we decided that we should do it again. Only being industrious, such as we are, we decided to grill everything instead. The menu is thusly:
Roasted beet salad (on the grill via aluminum packets). Sliced beets (homegrown), parsley (homegrown), butter, garlic, salt and pepper with some sliced green onion (homegrown). Spinach, beet greens, and bleu cheese to go on after cooking with homemade dressing (which is basically condensed orange juice with olive oil).
Cheesy potatoes (on the grill via aluminum packets). Sliced potatoes, butter, garlic, salt and pepper with some sliced green onion (on mine). Grated Kerry Gold Dubliner cheese to go on after.
Filet Mignon for Shawn (I refused to eat it since it's ancient)
Grilled Chicken Breast for me
And likely, for dessert:
Greek Yogurt with fresh blackberries.

See, we can do this eat healthy thing if I'm forced to use produce from the garden. Come on spring garden, get a move on!

Beet it

I made roasted beet salad for dinner tonight. With homemade salad dressing. It was pretty good, not super great, but I do like the salad dressing a lot.

I used Michael Chiarello's recipe on Food Network. So there's a ton of prep work, but still, the outcome was pretty good. Good enough that Shawn said he liked it. Actually liked it. Beet Salad. Amazing.

Since I have like 20 more beets to go, I'm guessing we'll be eating this a couple times this week.

So, let's see, all the things used from the garden:
Beets + tops
Onion
Pea Pods

Things bought at the store specifically for this:
Spinach
Bleu Cheese
Orange Juice

And I already had lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil on hand. So, all in all, not too bad. And it means we ate healthy for once. Go health food!

Association of Caffeinated Wheelmen

Caffeinated...My favorite state.

Soon we will be starting the commuters challenge. Soon I will be riding my bike again. Soon you will have to hear ALL ABOUT IT. Better prepare yourselves.

GAH!

Don't you hate it when you take a test, go to sleep that night and then dream about the test? Only to wake up the next morning and realize that you made a stupid mistake when calculating something?

Yeah, I did that. Screwed up finding an area. Added up the area but forgot some parts. The one saving grace is that I do not remember the answer options, so I may still have gotten it right if the one I chose was higher than what I had calculated. But still. Stupid mistake.

Also under "stupid mistakes" is forgetting to size something to the specifications they give you. That one I KNOW I missed because the answer I got was one of the options.

So...while I feel good about the test, who knows, maybe I just kept making stupid mistakes. At least my units all matched.

Celebrate Good Times!

Yeah, so THAT happened.

THAT wasn't so fun. I took a test from effectively 715 am until 6 pm. What did you do with your Friday?

I swear it was a dream though. Not as in the test was a dream because it was easy but because after lunch, I'm sitting there solving some problem when I feel like something is making my scalp itch. So I reach up and feel something on my head, figuring it's a twig or something from outside, I grab it. And then it moves. So I FLING the poor bug to the ground and quietly freak out. Can't be too loud about it because it is a test after all. I know it's harmless once I look at it as it's one of these:
This is a Ladybug nymph. AKA a baby ladybug. First time I've ever seen one in person. And it's in my hair. During the most important test of my life. Awesome. About 5 minutes later, I look at the floor where I had "placed" the insect and it is no longer there. About 10 minutes after that, I feel an itch on my leg, so I pull up my pants leg, absentmindedly, and go to scratch, only to find I've got a bug on my leg. And I again quietly lose my shit. Of course I look under the table and it is the SAME FREAKING NYMPH, people! I planned on looking for it after the test in order to take it back outside, but I forgot.

Now, I fully expect to wake up from this crazy-ass dream any second and go take the P.E. Exam.

Hangin' with my Peeps

Does anyone else remember when you could only get these in 1) Neon Yellow and 2) in Chick form?

Flowers

As I've been studying for the P.E. exam (which is this Friday, eek!), I haven't been blogging much (for those of you who follow my gardening blog, it just SEEMS like I'm blogging lots over there--I've been creating multiple entries on one day and then scheduling them to be doled out over the week. I only don't do that for this blog because this one tends to have events and thoughts more so than pictures. Though maybe I should do more pictures. Yay for easy blog entries! But I digress...)

Anyhow, yesterday I studied with two of my fellow initiates at the office from 930 til 630 with an hour or so for lunch. When I came home, I found these on the table:

Now then, I know what you're thinking: 1) Wow, your husband is so nice. and 2) Why is your calculator still in its original packaging? Aren't you supposed to be, you know, USING it to study?

And the answers to these thoughts are as follows:
1) It was not my husband who got these flowers for me, but my Mom and Dad. In fact, I walked in, Shawn was on the phone with his mom, and I saw the flowers, gave him a questioning look and his response was "don't look at me, I didn't get them for you." and I was like "yes, well, duh. They're obviously from a florist and not from the grocery store."

2) I have been using my calculator to study. BUT I didn't have a backup calculator and my current calculator does this weird thing where it sometimes won't register that you've pressed a key, so you have to mash down on the keys to get them to work. Therefore I decided I needed to get a secondary calculator in order to give myself options during the test.

Ut-toh

Last year I went to a Master Gardener's seminar. They handed out coupons for online ordering at Renee's Garden. The deal was buy 4 seed packs, get one free. I bought like 10 packs and then split the seeds with various coworkers and friends.

Renee's Garden has apparently gotten worried about my lack of recent purchases because they sent me an email with 15% off of my total order. Now I will spend the rest of the evening perusing the various seeds available, and then I'll ultimately talk myself out of buying any.

Now, if only I could get Botanical Interests to give me a deal (they've got some Black Krim tomato seeds I'd like to try).

Luncheon

We (coworkers) went and ate at a restaurant for lunch today. A restaurant in which two of us paid cash. Needless to say we were both surprised when the waiter came back and had shorted us both $5. It was mentioned to him and he ran off to get our money and when he came back he said "I had left it on the counter." Really? The counter? In a restaurant? where anyone would have grabbed the money? I don't know if I buy it.

Then Ross made a comment jokingly like "Better luck next time, man." and the guy didn't even crack a smile. At all. Which makes me even more leery that he was actually hoping to short us money without us knowing because if it was an honest mistake wouldn't you at least be like "ha ha, yeah." or something? I know I would because I'd be so embarrassed that I'd shorted someone unintentionally.

To top it off, as we were leaving the restaurant, we passed said waiter and he didn't say anything to any of us. Usually when I leave a restaurant and I pass the waiter we had, said waiter will make some "come back soon," or "have a nice day" type comment. this guy said nothing. Not a peep. And actually seemed to be glaring as we left.

Sorry dude, better luck next time.

From the Archives

From our camping trip almost 2 years ago.

625

I thought I would update everyone on my ear issues (because I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seats, on bated breath going "I wonder what is happening with her ear. Is she deaf yet? When will she stop writing all this drivel? etc."

Anyhow, the day I blogged about it was the last day my ear hurt. I woke up the next morning feeling fine.

I knew kicking that coke habit was the key to success.

Stuff

So I realized that I posted all these entries about cable but haven't posted any updates. Mostly that update would be that we no longer have cable. You see AT&T was doing this deal where if you signed up two services (internet and phone, phone and cable, internet and cable) the installation charge ($150) is waived. So, for $40 extra for one month we were able to save $110 by getting cable and internet when we only really wanted the internet.

So far, the only thing I miss is all the home improvement shows we watched on the weekends. Because that's the only time cable came in handy.

Ache

For about 2 weeks now I've had this aching feeling in my jaw/ear area on the right side of my head. It started out as a jaw thing (hurt to open), and then after the dentist appointment, it felt like a tooth thing (damn dentist). But now it is firmly an ear thing (feels like there's pressure building up in my ear...and it still hurts to open my mouth...and it really hurts if I try to jut out my jaw---like that one character in Family Guy). Basically I think I have an ear infection (other than pain I haven't had any of the symptoms that indicate the need to go to the doctor, though I may have to just because it's annoying). Anyhow, just to make sure that it is indeed an ear infection, I used the WEBMD symptom checker.

When I enter the problems associated with my jaw possible options that come back are TMJ, Tetanus and Cocaine Addiction. That's right. COCAINE ADDICTION. Another symptom of a cocaine addiction includes a craving for alcohol. You heard me.

So, I'm now working on the theory that if, by the next time we have a happy hour, I still have a achy ear/jaw then it must be my cocaine addiction that's causing it and therefore no need to be alarmed.

Sam I Am

"Did you think that the name for my bracket was unique, did you know it was mine?"

"What now?"

"Green Eggs and Ham. The name of my bracket. I was trying to be unique and reference Mother Goose."

"You mean Doctor Seuss. You were kinda close. At least they rhyme."

I guess this would go under "he'll still say dumb shit."

Though to be fair, I also did a major dumb shit thing, too. One group was talking about something that happened a while ago and David was like 'Oh, Colleen, you don't know that story!" except that she did, but Pam, joking around said "oh, I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know this story." Except I thought she was being serious so I started in on this whole long winded story, a story everyone at the table already knew. and I got most of the way through it before I realized that everyone was looking at me like I was insane. Sigh...at least I bring the entertainment to the table.

Teeth

I went to the dentist last week and everything looked great to them. Of course, I mentioned that the right side of my jaw has been hurting. It hurts to open my mouth more than half way...but it was also something that had only started a day or so before so I wasn't too worried about it. Because I get my xrays in September, they didn't do xrays this time around. Of course, since Tuesday my jaw has done nothing but feel the same or worse. If this doesn't get better soon I'm probably going to have to go back to the dentist and ask for an xray. Or something.

Showering

Right now Shawn and I have an approximate total of 1,345, 632 bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the shower. I don't know why this is...well, yes, I do. The daily clarifying shampoo which has no perfumes or colors makes our scalps itch. I don't know why this is. But it did make me pull out all of our shampoos and conditioners so we could test to see if any others made our scalps itch. So far that daily clarifying is the only one to do so.

Anyhow. I get to make delicious smelling mixes to entertain myself while in the shower...because what fun is a shower if all you do is get clean?

So far the different mixes I have made:

Fructis Shampoo + Goji Berry Conditioner + Cucumber Melon body wash = I smell like a fruit salad.

Fructis Shampoo + Lady Killer Cinnamon Conditioner + Peach body wash = I smell like peach cobbler.

Chamomile Shampoo + Lavender Conditioner + Peppermint soap = I smell like a field of wildflowers.

Roommates

Shawn and I went to "Cowboy Breakfast" last Friday. Cowboy Breakfast is put on by Rodeo Austin and it's basically a large breakfast extravaganza. you walk from booth to booth and pick up free breakfast foods (pancakes, breakfast tacos, sausage wraps, muffins, etc.).

At one point, I thought I had seen one of my coworkers roommates. A gent that I had just met a few weeks earlier. This man looks like he could be Shawn's brother. As Shawn and I were leaving, I said, "You know, I think I saw Jameson's roommate....Dave?" and Shawn replied, "Ah, yes. I prefer to think of him as Little Shawn."

Which...now that I wrote that, that sounds really bad...

3

Nostalgia: With a Twist

So, based off of that title, how many of you believe this will be a post about twister? all of you? well, you'd be wrong. WRONG!

No, what I will ruminate on tonight will be about habits when on vacation. Are you more of a lay low and enjoy room service type of person? or how about the need to see everything in this town to the point where I have everything planned down to the minute of what we will do type of person? Or maybe even the Eh, we'll figure it out when we get there type?

I fall somewhere between person B and person C. Shawn is more of a person A and C. And he won't even order room service. It's just more that he never wants to do the touristy thing. He finds it...what's the word?..Touristy.

Anyhow, I digress from the real point of this. Things you do while on vacation (sounds like a Family Feud theme doesn't it?).

Growing up, my mom would have these lists of things to complete every time we went on vacation. My dad had lists of every historical thing we were going to see (which is why our trip through Texas took longer than expected--he did not expect Historical markers every 10 miles), and my mom had lists of both things we were going to see/do and things that SHE had to see/do/eat. So like when we were in the south, she had to get her picture taken with a Magnolia tree, eat grits, and buy a doll dressed as Mamie from Gone with the Wind. Though to be fair, my dad will get in on the food thing...to some extent (a la when in New Orleans, you have to eat at Arnaud's and Cafe du Monde). But my mom seems to take it to extremes. Like she wanted to drink a mint julep when we were in New Orleans, and I'm sure if she could have figured a way to sit on a balcony with wrought iron at the same time, she would have. Ultimately, she ended up having a hurricane instead of a julep because she didn't realize that a julep is whiskey with muddled mint while I think a hurricane has delicious, delicious rum instead.

Somewhere along the line she stopped buying knick-knacky things and instead started buying Christmas Tree ornaments to commemorate the trip. And this is what has stayed with me. When I got older (college), she started buying Christmas Tree ornaments for me and my sister on each of our family trips. This made some sense since my sister and I each got an ornament from our aunt every year with the theory that by the time we moved out, we'd at least have 22 ornaments of our own to decorate a tree. And so, when I moved out, I continued buying ornaments on our vacations. In some cases, I've had to turn some very non-ornament things into ornaments (like the keychain from Las Vegas), but there is an ornament on the tree from every vacation. At some point after getting married, I also decided that I'd like to have a shirt from each vacation...which of course was busted in the first east coast vacation because I forgot my strapless bra at home and had to buy a freaking expensive one in Manchester, Vermont, so I have three shirts and one bra. I would normally have also started Shawn on this, but he says buying shirts is stupid. I don't know why he says that as he wears shirts he had when he was in high school which are threadbare, but whatever.

So, do any of you have things that you just HAVE to do or buy while on vacation?

So much

So much has actually happened in the last week. Not to me, personally, but big things were afoot.

First on Thursday there was the whole thing with the guy and the airplane and the IRS and the the firetrucks and the weewoo, weewoo, weewoo. and the fact that at work we were glued to the TV for 2 hours straight wondering if we should even be in our building, or you know, maybe going home.

Then I spent all day Saturday reading a book.

Sunday, Shawn and I went to MaBelle's house. There are pictures somewhere of Shawn and me with the kids (MaBelle and her brother, Meegle). I will get a copy of this picture and put it on my desk next to the computer so it will confuse the hell out of people when they come to my office. It will be glorious. Also, MaBelle decided it would be fun to call Shawn "Daddy" for a bit. IF there were any plans for kids in our future, they have officially been pushed back at least 5 years.

Monday...uh, Oh yeah! I ran hills. Fun. And came to the realization with the help of some coworkers that since our interns and temps are counted as 'half a person' for budgeting reasons, it effectively makes them worth less than slaves in 1860.

Tuesday it snowed. Actual SNOW in some places even. So once again, work was a bust because a) we were watching it snow, and b) they let us out early because it was snowing. Some good pictures can be seen here

On Wednesday I talked to my mom and laughed a lot because she said email was the new hip thing in 2001. (we were talking about social networking, texting, faceyspaces, twitter, and what have you). Also we at at Moonie's Burger House on Anderson Mill at 183. I liked it. I think we shall eat there again sometime. Though maybe not on Wednesday because it was packed...because of the live music.

Yesterday was once again boring.

Today I wore a skirt. with heels. and tights. I know, hell hath frozeth over.

Yep. I'm ready for another boring week, but Restaurant Week starts on Monday. And this year they're doing LUNCHES. I may have to broaden my culinary horizons.

From the Archives

Quazi 12-30-2008

Ivy and Gray Kitteh

Last picture of Ivy before her feeding tube was taken out. It was taken out on Monday, so right now she's all nekkid while the hole heals. Yes, those are some glass sheets from our Window Replacement of '10 project...aka old windows. So, if anyone needs some sheets of glass, let me know.


Gray Kitteh! is "owned" by one of the neighbors...which is obviously why he spends more time in our yard. duh.

Mirrors

I have gotten to the point where I refuse to see myself less than fully clothed in front of a mirror. See, my metabolism has finally started to slow down and so now I've got a little pooch of a stomach. This doesn't bother me so much. The part that bothers me is that I can still see my ribs. So...ribs and a pooch. How does that work? So, the solution is to never be topless in front of a mirror. Ever.

Valentimes

Since Shawn and I are homebodies and he is anything but romantic (yeah, I dont know how this worked out--all through high school he gave all of his girlfriends flowers all the time, then we start dating in college, and I can count on one hand how many times he's given me flowers, gah), we decided that instead of going out on Valentines, we'd cook a nice meal at home.

Now then, I'm no slouch in the kitchen, oh sure, I can be lazy, but when the occasion calls for it, I can prove that I know my way around ingredients. Back in the day, my dad, sister and I would create a 4 or 5 course meal for my mom once a year. It required planning, team work and preparation. And we only had one day to do it since the whole goal was to surprise my mom on when we were doing it (by the time we were in college though, it was pretty obvious that it would be done sometime after New Year's but before we went back to school since that was the only time that we'd all be home together with nothing to do). Usually my dad would choose the Appetizer and Soup course, I'd choose the salad, and my sister and dad would choose dessert and we'd all throw in our ideas for the main course and what sides. The only rule seemed to be that everything had to be made by us, and other than dessert it had to come from some cook book, and we couldn't repeat recipes year to year. Except for the soup. Because it was the Colorado Cache French Onion Soup. After I started dating Shawn, I was invited to dinner with his parents one night but I couldn't make it because it conflicted with our 5 course meal night. When I told my now Mom-in-law about this, she sighed and said that her kids would never do that for her (which, well duh, Christina had already moved out and Shawn is somewhat hopeless in the kitchen especially when it comes to making more than a main dish with sides). So that year, I did a 5-course meal for Shawn's parents too. Of course, because there was really only Shawn and me and I felt bad about making him do work since he didn't really care, I did tone it down--slow cooker main course, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream for dessert, French Onion Soup for the soup course, my go-to salad, and the Texas Razzpotle dip for the app.

Anyhoo, since moving to Texas, I have tried to continue doing some nice meal thing every year. So far, it has normally ended up being on Veteran's Day since I had that day off and Shawn didn't. This year I had already pre-decided not to do a nice meal (which was a good thing since I ended up babysitting Ma-belle while her baby brother was born). Instead I figured I'd once again, make Shawn help and we'd do a nice meal on MLK day or President's day.

So I was somewhat surprised when Shawn said we should do the fancy meal on Valentine's day. He had a special request--Oso Bucco. I mean it WAS the reason I got a dutch oven for christmas 2 years ago and we still haven't made it. So Oso Bucco it was.

I used the recipe from America's Test Kitchen Restaurant Favorites cook book. I typed in the shopping list on my phone, we went to the store, and i tried to pull up the list while there. It didn't work because somehow I had been signed out of my gmail account while I was filling out the shopping list so it didn't save it. Yay! buying ingredients I never use from memory! somehow I managed to remember everything. $50 later we come home and put everything away. At 3pm I start dicing. Shawn starts dishes. Just as I'm finishing dicing, Shawn's finished enough dishes so I can start cooking. For the most part, everything goes okay. The only thing i screwed up was the peeling the potato part...as in, I didn't. I don't know why this is the step I always forget. So whatever. non-peeled potato. it isn't like it will end up in the final product anyway (you fish out all the solids at the end of the cooking time and only keep the liquids and meat). The meat and vegetable filled dutch oven goes in the regular oven for 1.5 hours. During which I read my book (Catching Fire), instead of doing something useful, such as prepping the next batch of mirepoix . So the timer goes off and then I have to chop and dice like a madwoman to get everything back on schedule, and CRAP I haven't even thought of when to start the risotto! So Shawn is called in to help (which he was supposed to be doing anyhow). And is set to work smashing all the vegetables through a strainer while I make the stuffing for the Bucco and start the risotto. Ultimately Shawn starts telling me that he can't set the table because everything on it is mine (which is true), so i tell him he has to watch the risotto while I clean the table. Somehow everything manages to actually get done and finished at about the same time (other than I wanted to have some salad with the meal, which we didn't. psh, who needs green vegetables anyway?).

So, we sit down to eat and the risotto is kinda bland and then we bite into the Oso Bucco, and it's one of those things where the first couple bites are delicious...and then the next couple bites are kinda blah...and then by the end you're hoping that you can just finish because it doesn't taste good any more.

Final verdict: I think the whole going from great to 'just get this over with' was just something that was my issue since I think Shawn liked it the whole way through...maybe I had too much sugar, or something just wasn't right for me. But, we both felt that it was way too much work for the pay off. Only funny because Shawn did mashing, and stirring, while I was the one that did all the measuring and dicing and mixing and timing. Shawn even mentioned that the Oso Bucco at Trattoria Lisina was much better (which, at $50 for ingredients, it would have been cheaper to go to Trattoria Lisina), and if we ever tried this again, we would need to add more tomatoes and make the starch mashed potatoes instead of risotto. I think instead we'll go back to the chicken pot pie in the America's Test Kitchen Best Skillet Recipes, or with the Shepherd's pie in the Restaurant book. Both of those recipes also took some time, but it didn't seem to be as much time as this one took (two batches of mirepoix while the shepherd's pie only required one), and we like the flavor of those better.

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

thank you for the awesome genes in regards to my teeth. I have always taken it for granted that my teeth are awesome. Dr. Nick always used to joke that he could never make any money off of me because there were no problems with my teeth. I always assumed that most people did not have major tooth problems. I have since learned that this is not the case. At lunch the other day I found out that 3 of the 4 coworkers I was eating with all have weak enamel and it is likely they will have an entire mouthful of fake teeth by the time they are 40. These coworkers are also all younger than me. I, knock on wood, do not have that problem and I can be pretty bad to my teeth before there are problems. So it seems the worst that I've gotten is the predisposition to gingivitis, which is preventable with flossing and Listerine. Much easier and cheaper to deal with than enamel that dissolves on contact with soda.

Love Much,
Katina

Befores I forgets

I noticed a sticker on the toilet paper dispenser/holder/whatever you want to call the thing at work today (okay, I really noticed it like eons ago, but totally kept forgetting to blog about it until recently). The sticker says "Protected by Microban" or something like that. The funny thing is that this sticker was only put on fairly recently (within the last 6 months) while the toilet paper dispenser has been there since I started working at the building (almost 5 years ago). So. What is Microban? It's supposedly some coating that makes it tougher for bacteria to adhere to the surface. But seeing as how they didn't to ANYTHING to the toilet paper dispenser, I'm thinking it's something that is sprayed on instead. So...why not just call it what it is--Lysol. Wait, it's probably not Lysol, it's probably generic Lysol. Generic Lysol called Microban.

Silliness

After having a conversation at work today in which we talked about "OMG! SURPRZE! Baby in ur pantz!" and whether people were "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob" (keeping in mind that the gender ratio was still 60-40 in favor of the guys), I decided that I would post about something most decidedly NOT silly.

And what is decidedly NOT silly is the fact that in regards to the Haiti earthquake and the relief efforts it seems as if some people are forgetting that children are not dogs. While they may be cute, and cuddly and fit well in a kennel; small children do not qualify as dogs and therefore you shouldn't just walk around a disaster-ravaged country picking up children all willy-nilly regardless of whether said children have parents who are still alive*. Children still qualify as people and perhaps, instead of transporting them out of the country (without the benefit of having a picture taken, being microchipped, and placed on a national website for the lost...wait, damn, that was the dogs!), one should attempt to help the country itself so that it may one day be able to take care of its own children. Besides, how big of a leap is it from "They're helping our children by taking them to a different country!" to "They're stealing our babies!"? And then where would we be? Somewhere not good. That's where.

*Oh great, now I have this silly scenario running through my head and it's totally like the scene in Old School where Vaughn, Wilson, and Farrell are 'kidnapping' the fraternity recruits and they go for the guy with his wife in the parking lot of the grocery store where they get the guy, then promise the wife that he'll be home before midnight and ultimately take all the snack foods that were just purchased, while this poor lady, who doesn't know what hit her, just stands there quietly freaking out.

Also, I read about the top brass in the military wanting to do away with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which I'm fine with, but are the people in the trenches okay with that? I mean it's been fairly recently that women have been allowed in the "trenches" and there are accounts of that not going so well (like here). Do I think that it's going to go any better with gays being allowed to be open about their sexual orientation? Not unless said person is a woman. I guess I could ask all the military and ex-military people I have as friends on facebook, but that would require work...and the assumption that those guys would actually respond (yeah, I'm sorely lacking on knowing any women in the military). But I do wonder...

Family

My Family. Family tradition of taking a photo of everyone sitting on the stairs. Including dogs, would have included the cats if they didn't hate the dogs. The white dog is my parents' (Claire), and the orange one is my sister's (Remington)--they have their Christmas jackets on because my sister's dog is a wimp and thinks it's too cold in Colorado; Claire only has her jacket on because it's the ONLY jacket that my mom and sister have ever put on her where she didn't have this look on her face like "oh god, what are they doing to me? please make it stop!"

As per usual

I do not remember what it was i was going to write about today. DAMMIT!

Homes for Sale!!

As Shawn and I were watching a bunch of home improvement shows on cable this last Sunday, we did start discussing how much our home is worth. You see, there's this show that basically has people asking realtors to give them a fair value for their house if they sold it in the current market as is. And in all cases, the people were over-estimating the value of their home. Which just emphasises the fact that most people think their house is worth more than it really is.

I estimate our house could sell for $135k, but Shawn insists that it would go for closer to $150k. This of course spawned another "Let's search Realtor.com" bonanza. I found out that there are two houses for sale on the street behind us. One just went on the market a week ago or so, and it's 1625 sq ft (about 350 sq ft larger than our house) going for $165 (and I think they just dropped the price by $4000 because I swear it was at $169 when I looked at it yesterday). The other house is 1850 sq ft going for $135 which I thought was a bit on the low side unless the house was just a mess, but today when I walked by it, I found out that it's actually a foreclosure, but it looked pretty good from what I could see (of course the most expensive fixes for any house are the ones you can't see from the outside).

Then of course, there are houses that really gained in value because of the Domain being built. Houses in that area probably gained about $50k just because they're within walking distance. Lucky bastards.

Of course watching one of those "What will 250k get you in _____" and apparently you could get some nice houses in Kona, Hawaii for $150k in 2004 and now most of those houses are closer to $350k.

Man, it really is all about Location, Location, Location.

sicko

I'm home sick today. I think its food poisoning, though I guess it could be the flu...though I doubt it if only because I don't feel like I was hit by a truck nor do I think I have a fever. But still the worst part about being home with stomach issues is that every time I need to fart or burp, I only feel safe about doing so in the bathroom--just in case. Bah.

Life Changes

I've been feeling that I haven't been blogging as much lately as I used to (which is obviously a lie since I logged more entries in October, November, and December each than I did in April and May combined, but I feel that everything is of a lower caliber. Which is funny because I know I set the bar SO HIGH).

I have come to realize that the reason I don't blog as much as I used to is because I used to blog when I got home from work before Shawn did. But now I come home from work at the EXACT same time as Shawn since we now carpool. That's us--saving the planet one car ride at a time, but also seriously cutting into my blogging time.

Also, because of the copious amounts of comment spam (which has seemed to get out of hand rather quickly--I blame the Twitter feed I added), I've had to enable Captcha Verification. Sorry, dudes!

So What to Blog About? Nothing interesting is happening aside from GRAY KITTEH! I let him in the house today (what? it was totally cold and windy outside), Shawn wasn't too happy with that. Which is only funny because that animal was walking around our house all day Sunday last week, what with the windows not being in their window holes and what have you. Anyhow, I know you all just come here for pictures of GRAY KITTEH! and now, for your viewing pleasure:

Window Replacement: In Pictures

Step One: Destruction.

Step Two: More Destruction. Also, I swear I feed him. Really.

Step Three: Framing.

Step Four: Screwing. Hehe.

Step Five: Ta-Da!! And it only took 3 hours. For this one.

You asked for it...

Gray Kitteh!

Facey-Spaces

Been having some conversations with people today about facebook and privacy and the internet and whatnot.

There is no privacy anymore unless you're in the bathroom, and now with blogs and Twitter you can even update people on that too. Pictures you post anywhere on the internet have the possibility of being found by your employer. Nothing is truly ever 'deleted', unless you go through the hassle of overwriting it with 1s and 0s, but I don't know if that's even possible on the internet since everything goes to somewhere else. Email provides ads based on keywords in your email (apparently typing suicide/death/9-11/murder somewhere in the body prevents ads...but it probably also puts you on the terrorist watch list). Our cell phones have GPS in them and it can be remotely enabled. The president isn't the most powerful man in the world, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are. Except in China.

I'm just waiting for the day when they put a chip in my brain that will play advertisements based on which store I'm walking by. The epitome of consumerism. I can just sense it. It's coming. It's like that short story about how the government decided to make everyone equal so those that were graceful had to walk around with sandbags tied to them, those that were innovative had a loud squawking noise go off in their brain every 10 minutes to prevent any new thoughts. And I don't remember who wrote this story...probably Shirley Jackson. Possibly Garth Nix. Anyhow, yes. WAVE OF THE FUTURE I tells ya.

Also, it is apparently de-lurking day. So for all yas out there, leave a comment to let me know you read my blog (drivel, though it may be).

[edited to add] yes, I realize how ironic that I post about this when I am obviously a Google fangirl--phone, email, search engine, blog. Just pointing out how technology will take over the world, especially if someone who will use it to their advantage is in charge...which means that at this point I love Eric Schmidt. Ergo: Please don't whack me, Googleplex!

Cats

Here are some pictures for my sister (who refers to Quazi as her "grand-nephew kitty"). This year, for Christmas, the cats received a huge bag of toys treats and other such stuffs from their "cousin", Remy (my sister's dog):
Ivy coming out of the little "house". Dani got it figuring that Quazi would like it, but it has actually become Ivy's new favored hiding place. It sits next to the chair, and she likes it because two of the 'doors' are on the backside so she can get in and out without having to go in the front door.

Ivy playing with "Cheepers" This damn bird toy is covered in cat nip so both cats love it and every time they bat at it, it does this obnoxious chirping thing. Which drives the cats wild. They also love the little mice. I came home from work the other day and one of the cats had crawled into the bag to retrieve the mice. The mice in which I had never shown to the cats. So someone must have smelt the catnip. Of the three mice, one had been ripped from the packaging (a cardboard back), and the other two were still attached. All three were COMPLETELY covered in cat spit. Like they were 50% heavier because of cat spit. Ew. I haven't taken the other stuff out yet mostly because we dole out toys throughout the year, otherwise they'd end up with all of them under the couch within a week.

So Thank You Aunt, Dani.



Now then, for the rest of you. If you've been following my half-assed posting the last two days, or have been reading my Tweets, then you know that we've had a gray tabby kitten hanging around in our backyard. We don't know if he's a stray, but we think he MUST have a home because he doesn't just hang out in our yard all the time (he does actually leave for large periods of time). He's very people friendly and he follows Quazi around and vice versa. Ivy puts up with him being around but he isn't allowed within 3 feet of her. He does have ear mites (our cats are on Advantage Multi so they won't get any from him), and he's got a spot on his left ear where the skin is rubbed off--can't tell if it's like frost bite, or if he was attaked by a different animal and the skin is sloughing off, he also seems skinny to me--If I remember right, when Quazi was this age, he still had a little bit of a belly (not fat, but you know, a little spot where you could feel that he had a belly, this cat doesn't have that). He keeps trying to come in the house (reminds me of Ivy when she found us), but he's not allowed in because he's still "someone's" right now.



Also, all these photos were taken with my Droid. The top two in low-light, and the bottom one in bright-light. The most annoying thing is the response from when I tell it to take a picture to when it actually does take the picture. you gotta have a VERY patient subject.

Mint

As discussed eons ago, I read the "It's your money or your life" book and started doing step 3...or whatever it was. And I honestly haven't done anything since. But, that's not the point. The point is that Shawn has been teasing me since about March that I use Open Office Spreadsheets to keep track of everything when I could just use the open source equivalent of Quicken to do the same thing, only better. I however found it cathartic to actually go through and type up everything at the end of the day. Then, instead of typing everything every day, I started only checking stuff on Sundays. And then it went to 2 times a month, until finally it was checking everything on the last day of the month when it just became a hassle to typing in everything just to get the end numbers so I could put it in my graph. The graph that shows how much I spent/earned over the month, how much is in my Roth account and how much I have in my account from which I make donations.

[aside] funny thing about the donations account. I started it so that during our combined charities drive at work, I could make donations and shawn couldn't complain because I'd budgeted to donate that money (basically counting it as money I've already spent so when I donate it, I don't actually use any money we need). However, since starting this account with ING, I haven't EVER transferred money out of it to donate and instead just donate directly from my paycheck. Which is how we ran into that overdrafting of my account debacle. [\aside]

At the beginning of the new year, Shawn decided to broach the subject of using an online tracker for our expenses instead. Now then, I don't trust the internet. When Shawn started using ING back in 2004, I only signed up for it so he could get the $10 "refer a friend" thing and then only kept like $50 in the account for a year. So basically until I was pretty sure that ING wasn't a scam that was going to take my money. Sadly, ING actually has better security protocols than a lot of banks. Shawn's new baby: Mint.com

When you sign up for Mint it asks for all the other log on information for your other accounts (bank, credit card, 401k, etc.) and then tallys up your net worth every time you sign in. Plus it has nifty features such as showing you where you spent the most money in the last month, proposes budgets for you, and you can set it up to text you whenever there's odd activity.

Now then, as I said, I don't trust the internet. So of course my biggest fear is that someone hacks into the servers at Mint.com and steals all of the money out of all our accounts (which I realize the irony since I do all of my banking online. But! if they hacked into the Wells Fargo servers, they could only take my Wells Fargo money, and my other money would be safe). Shawn tells me that this wouldn't happen because who would be stupid enough to steal a bunch of money out of one person's Mint account? Wouldn't it be smarter to either take a little bit out of everyone's accounts so that no one notices (how many people would notice a penny missing)? Or wouldn't it still be smarter to only take money out of accounts from the same bank? If you take all the money out of all the accounts, it's pretty obvious that it happened because of Mint, and it would get shut down; whereas if you only took money out of one brand of bank account, then it would look to be that specific bank's problem and it would take much longer for Mint to be shut down.

Yeah, sometimes he scares me too, people.

cable

We finally have cable (I say that like I've wanted cable, which I haven't). I have been watching animal cops all morning. That and gray kitten visited again, this time Quazi was outside. All I can think is that gray kitten keeps thinking "today is the day. Today is the day I will make a new friend. Oh shit, hiss, nope, not today. Maybe tomorrow."

Dipping the toe in...

We've taken the plunge and gotten ATT U-verse. Only took the poor man 4 hours to set it up (required him drilling holes through our walls). Half of the time he was outside. and it's only 25 degrees out today.

Ever have one of those days where you thought one thing but totally said something completely different? Yah, I did. I said,pretty much out of the blue: I am so funny. Yeah...while I may like to be funny, I'm usually not. Until I do something stupid. Sigh.

That Wench!

That wench on the radio lied to me. you know the one. the one that does traffic. This morning she told me that all the highways were slow, so I took Alternate Route 1. I did not need to do this and in fact wasted precious minutes because of it.

Speaking of radios...I love the clip they keep playing of Dick Clark. 20...19...18...17...16...15...14...12...10...11...10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...Happy New Year!

But hey, he still did much better than I. At least he was still awake.

Ringing in the New Year

So yes, sometimes my posts are boring, and there are only maybe 4 people in the world who read this blog. So, I figure I will show you just how old-fogey I can be.

Last night, that is, New Year's Eve, Shawn and I ate leftovers for dinner, watched a movie, fell asleep on the couch while watching the movie, and then, after waking up after the movie finished, I decided that it was time for bed. It was 10:00.

I was totally asleep, in my bed, when the new year started. And I don't even have kids waking me up at 4 in the morning to blame it on.

Trevails of the Travels

Like totally OMG guys! I haven't posted in what seems like forever. Okay, I posted using my phone while on vacation, but still, I don't think that counts.

So onto the Travails of the Travels.

We took the cats back to Colorado with us. We spent the night in Lubbock with Shawn's friend and his family. One of the cats spent the entire night under the bed. Until we were asleep, then he had a party. We go up and drove to Parker. We stayed with my parents and since my parents had been in Hawaii the week before, their dog was still at the kennel so the cats had free reign of the house and interestingly enough, they LOVED it. Quazi especially enjoyed the exercise room because there are floor to ceiling mirrors in there and that cat sure does love looking at himself in the mirror.

On Monday we went to Shawn's parents house and helped them by painting the trim on the chimney, patching holes in the chimney, moving an exercise bike and cleaning out the fridge (as per my previous post).

On Tuesday we went skiing. That was miserable. As I posted via twitter, "The first time I ski is out of love, the second time is out of pure folly." That or being completely shitfaced.

Wednesday I convalesced at Mom and Dad's house and read a book until it was time to meet Grinder at Anthony's Pizza. He claims I was pretty spry. Which is a word you use to describe an 80-year-old woman. So, considering I was feeling like I was 90, I'll take it as a major complement. We went back to my parents place and then Matt showed up after dinner and we watched "War Games: The Dead Code." I'm amazed the boys managed to get through it since they're both major computer nerds and kept pointing out all the flaws in the movie. We also put the cats out in the snow. Quazi did not like it at all, and Ivy thought it was just a hindrance to her explorations.

Thursday (aka Christmas Eve), we went to Shawn's house and Shawn shoveled while I pulled old glassware off the top of the cabinets. At one point, Shawn's mom asked his dad to go get some cardboard barrels out of the attic so the glassware could be packed in them. This is the point where Shawn's dad fell down the second half of the attic steps and knocked out 3 of his front teeth and then bent a fourth one back (so it looked like it was missing at first). Needless to say, Shawn's parents then spent the rest of the day at the emergency room while Shawn and I finished washing the dishes, cleaned the stove-top, organized some movies, and made Christmas Eve dinner. We opened our presents that night. And then headed back over to my parents' house where we opened presents there until midnight.

Friday (aka Christmas Day) we woke up and had breakfast then opened our Christmas Stockingbags (my mom didn't do stockings since Shawn's and my stockings are down here in Austin, but decided to just put everything that would go in a stocking in a plastic shopping bag instead). We started watching Angels and Demons (it was a gift for my dad). We had to stop so I could peel potatoes for dinner. Then the sink got clogged with potato peels (hey man, my mom has ALWAYS put peels down the garbage disposal and never had a problem, I do it once and end up having to use a plunger to get the sink to drain). Oddly, there was one point where I started giggling uncontrollably because I was standing there plunging the sink while Shawn and my dad stood there and watched. We watched some more of the movie until Shawn's parents arrived for dinner. Then we all ate a pound of perfectly cooked roast beef each. We watched more of the movie while Shawn's parents were there and finally ended up finishing it after they left. We then packed up all our crap so it would be ready to go in the morning and finally went to bed around midnight.

We woke up at 730, ate breakfast, packed up the car and the cats and headed back down to Texas. We got to Lubbock around 7pm and stayed with Irwan again where Ivy, once more was a trooper with the toddler and Quazi spent the night hiding under the covers. Once Ethan went to bed, however, then that cat was going everywhere and being everyone's friend. Ethan had gotten a matchbox cars racetrack which of course provided endless amounts of entertainment for the adults because the goal was to do as many loops as possible without having something to wrong. Our record was 3 (it was a total MouseTrap situation and it required each adult setting up 2 cars before the loop was complete to keep it going).

We drove into Austin on Sunday, and other than a small mishap where Shawn got confused between the clutch and the brake, we didn't have any problems. The cats traveled extremely well, albeit Quazi was a bit of a spaz, but Ivy was perfectly content to sit on the console between our seats.

I'll update later with pictures when I get around to getting them off my camera.

copper

We went skiing today. I did two runs, both green. It took 5 hours. We didn't take breaks, that's just how much I fell. I think I'm gonna be black and blue tomorrow. Surprisingly for as many times as I fell on my hip, it really hurts to sit down. And I may have pulled a groin muscle, and a calf muscle. And I think my knees are all bruised too. As a man wiser than I always said, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

cleaning

Since shawn was helping his parents by repainting the chimney, I decided I'd help by throwing out all the moldy cheese and fruit that was mushy in the fridge. After I pulled out the fruit drawer, I noticed there was some goo stuff along the back. I pulled out all the drawers and lower shelves and found an egg that had fallen down behind the shelves and broken, thus goo-ifying the back and bottom of the fridge. It required a knife to scrape off the yolk. Hopefully they can keep it fairly clean so they don't have to scrape anything when they decide to sell the house.

texan

What the texan told me: "if you're born in paradise, why leave?"

Non-Sequitors

"That 'adopt an Ethiopian for $1 a day' thing does not count as 'dating'."

"I don't think she's retarded; I think she's German."

"Wait, are we going to start a Droid users group in which we all get together, wear matching Snuggies, and set our phones to all say 'Droid' all in unison?"

lack of mojo

between a cat who still is being tube fed and watered and writing an SER and taking an ethics test in preparation for the PE exam in April, I've lost my blogging mojo.

Don't worry, as soon as i get it back, you'll be the first to know.

On an unrelated subject--I think the PM's Love Theme from Love Actually is the song used for the trailer for The Young Victoria. I like it when they do that--use a song from a different movie for the trailer. Like one of the Lord of the Rings trailers used Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream.

SER

I am supposed to be using today to write my supplementary experience report (SER) in order to register to take the PE exam in April. This is a 6 page report of all the engineering related work I have done since I was hired by the City of Austin.

As you can imagine, I am doing everything but because deep down, I am a procrastinator.

And by 'everything' I mean sitting here in front of the computer finding other things to do on the internet.

God love the internet. What did I ever do before it was invented?

what I heard

What I heard: Ihad to go for a run on the field of an orgy.

What was said: I had to go for a run on the heels of a gorging.

Lunch

The waitress comes to the table... The menu clearly states that the chicken fried chicken platter comes with a side salad + one other side.

"I'll have the chicken fried chicken please, with a side of fried okra."

"Which type of dressing would you like with that, sir?"

"None, thanks."

We all give him weird looks. and one of us finally says, "Really, you don't want any dressing?"

"Why would I want dressing? Okay, fine, what do you have?"

"Ranch, Blue Cheese, vin..."

"Wait, you're asking me if I'd like salad dressing on my chicken fried chicken?!"

"no, sir, I'm asking which type of salad dressing you want with the salad."

"oh, fine...yes, I'll have Ranch. I would also like a coke."

"it's okay sir, I understand, let's get some caffeine in you, then it'll all be okay."

one of his friends: "I wouldn't count on it, he'll still say dumb shit."

New Phone

Image from Best Buy's website

Today, Shawn and I decided to spend 3 hours at the Best Buy and get ourselves some new phones.

Normally it should not take 3 hours to get new phones--just so you know.

It all started on Friday when my coworker texted Shawn that my phone was ancient and I needed a new phone. (Okay, it didn't really start on Friday, it started on November 6 when Verizon released the Droid.) Shawn texted back saying we would likely work on it this weekend.

Today, after talking to the most affected family members (that is, Shawn's mom since she's on our family plan), we printed the Sears deal on the Droid ($149 with 2-year contract instead of the normal $199 with 2-year contract), and headed off to Best Buy as they do price matching.

We got to Best Buy and sat down with our sales guy. This is when the problems started--some of it could have been because we were transferring our current numbers and we were also switching from Shawn being primary to me being primary. So we sit there for half an hour filling out forms and then we get to the credit check which ends up requiring the copying of my social security card. After a 20 minute trip home and back, we sit down again, re-fill out the application, wait for the credit check...and wait....and wait....and let's go fax all the stuff to Verizon...okay, and wait some more...alright, let's call them to see what's taking so long...and 20 minutes later they tell us to re-fax the information because it was illegible when it was sent the first time. So there is re-faxing...more calling...more waiting...and more waiting...and after 2 hours, FINALLY they decide I must be who I say I am. After that, everything went quickly, except that Best Buy still didn't have it in the system that Droids could opt for a data plan that wasn't the executive one (yay! another call to the help desk at Verizon), AND it also hasn't been added to their "transfer all contact info from one phone to another" doohicky machine.

But, I'm very happy with the service from Best Buy (Adam in particular) and I guess, to an extent, I'm even okay with Verizon--if only because they were doing due diligence to make sure I am me--otherwise it's a very scary concept that we could have just walked into any cell phone store location and said "yes, I'd like to get my current number, which is XXX to be on this phone, with this new carrier." There's no guarantee that the person coming in would be honest and suddenly, you're phone can be hijacked by someone else. What a fun thought. Of course, we were told it was because of 9/11 that they were being so persnickety. Which...okay...but if that's the case, how do you explain the fact that you sell prepaid disposable phones which require no credit check and no contract--what to they require instead, a blood sample, semen sample, and promise of your first born child?

Critics

I can't believe people are surprised that New Moon is a blockbuster in spite of the fact that the movie actually sucks. Trust me, all those thousands of fan girls going to the movie aren't going because they expect it to be good. And the same goes for all those mothers and grandmothers.

Checking

I did something I've never ever done in my life on Monday. I overdrew my checking account. GASP!!!

Every year in October, work gives us a list of like 1000 charities that we can opt to donate to. This charity drive ends November 1. And because I like to get simple things checked off my to-do list, I always do the combined charities almost as soon as they hand it out. I took care of this like October 12. Would you like to guess what overdrew my checking account? That's right. A check I wrote donating money to charity a month ago.

I don't necessarily know if it's ironic...but it's definitely a fucked up life lesson.

Thunderdome

What is with the dancers looking like they're extras from Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome this season on So You Think You Can Dance?

Yams

Bond had a very good idea today--in order to get what we want, we have to always suggest something completely and utterly out there first. Therefore, if we want to be able to award people 1 hour of time off, we first have to ask if we can give everyone a large can of Yams that they can give to someone else. Because really, who is really going to be excited about a can of yams?

Belgium

Just so you know: Either Colorado has been annexed by Belgium, or the public school system in Texas is really, really bad. The other day, someone told me that Fat Tire is brewed in Belgium. I'm pretty sure it is not.

The Count of Monte Crisco

Seriously, it took for the movie coming out in 2002 before I realized that it's CrisTO not CrisCO. Anyhow, I just started reading it this morning on Shawn's digital reader. It's 2990 pages, people. of the digital paper, sure. But that still translates to over 1000 pages in a normal book. This. Will. Take. Forever.

Okay, not really--If I can read the 4 Twilight books in 2 weeks or the entire Harry Potter series in 3-4 weeks, then I'm sure I can handle a silly 1000 pages.

Holidays

It's happened.

We have reached the point in the year where the holiday spirit hits me. It usually (since moving to Austin) doesn't hit this early, but what are you going to do?

I can even tell you the precise moments leading to this point-- At Bond and Dave's house I flipped through a foodie magazine that was themed for Thanksgiving. It is 'cold' outside today, meaning it is in the mid 60s and is rainy. I got the Pier 1 Christmas catalog the other day. The day after, I got the LLBean Christmas catalog (this is because all the retailers are trying to get you in the Christmas mood early so you'll buy more stuff). And then finally, the Woman's Day December magazine came yesterday so I've been reading all these Thanksgiving recipes, and feel good Christmas stories, and decorating ideas and gift ideas all day. And that's when it hit me. I'm now officially looking forward to the holiday season.

I'm sure it doesn't help any that last night my dream was about finding an ornament for Ma-Belle, and since she's in a total Disney Princess phase I was trying to find a princess-esque ornament but all the ones I found were all wrong--all the Snow Whites were wearing blue Cinderella dresses, Sleeping Beauty was wearing a Jasmine outfit, etc.

Yankee Sports

God I have missed hockey. Not that I ever really was into it when I was in Colorado. Okay, you caught, me that's not quite true. I was totally into college hockey in 4th and 5th grade, and went to a bunch of the DU games with my friend Kay (Wow, just checked the DU site and Gwozdecky has been head coach for a long time--he was the head coach back when I watched them) . When Denver finally got a hockey team, albeit a farm team (the Grizzlies), my parents got me tickets for my birthday. Then the Avalanche came to town. I remember being most excited because they were previously the Nordiques. Yeah. Weird that I remember that. I helped Kay babysit Patrick Roy's kids once, it was back when none of them spoke English and the boys were, well, boys. But I never went to an Avs game. And then after that I just never really went to any more hockey games.

But tonight I remembered why I liked hockey so much: because it's a lot of action in a short span of area and time AND there are fights.

For example, tonight there were 3 fights in the first 2 minutes and 15 seconds. AWESOME. I'm honestly still a little surprised that the Dallas Stars' farm team (Texas Stars) beat the Canuck's farm team (Manitoba Moose)--the Stars' offense wasn't as good as the Moose's offense...but then the Stars' goalie was better than the Moose's...so I guess it all washes out in the end.

1981

Every year the insurance people send me a birthday card about how things were in 1981. Things like which movie won Best Picture, which song was on the top of the charts, etc.

One of things is "averages." This is the part that I am going to be sharing today:

Average Income 1981: $25, 065
Average Income 2009: $50, 986

Average New Home 1981: $68,900
Average New Home 2009: $218, 400

No wonder more people are broke today--their salaries only doubled while their house prices tripled.

Cat Rug

I realize this is about a week and a half late, but this is the cat that I had gotten back from the Emergency Vet two weekends ago

Home

The cat is home. We'll have to do tube feeding for a while--40-50 ml 4 times a day, and subcutaneous fluids 50-100 ml once a day. The goal is to do the feedings for a while until she starts eating on her own, and the fluids every day for about a week, then every other day for about a week, and then every 3rd day for a week.

We have to take her in to get her bandage around her neck changed every 3 to 5 days (where the feeding tube goes in), and blood work needs to be done again as well--we'll see when that gets done because one doc doesn't want to draw blood since they have to sedate her until at least a week out while another doc wants to do blood work when she's in for the bandage change.

The biggest problem with all this? the fact that the Quazi doesn't even recognize Ivy and so we're having to go through and re-introduce two cats to each other, neither of them likes cats, but they put up with each other. Last night Quazi managed to get Ivy stuck on the bed by guarding the bottom so she couldn't jump off to go to the bathroom. That was a fun time at 4 in the morning.

Elevator

Overheard in the elevator on my way to my office yesterday:

"At one point last night I thought to myself, 'you know, I should really switch to drinking Red Bull and Vodkas now so I won't get drunk.' Obviously I was already hammered."

In other news, I have Ivy sitting on the chair next to me because I picked her up from the E-vet early and have to wait for my normal vet to open. She was meowing a lot which either means "don't take me there", or more recently it's meant "I have to pee now, where's the litterbox? K, thanks" so I decided to stop off at home. Sure enough, I let her out of the kennel and she first headed for the back door (oddly cats that used to be strays and are still indoor/outdoor prefer to go to the bathroom outside instead of a litterbox, no matter how clean the litterbox is). Obviously I didn't let her out, and so she then turned tail and made a beeline for the litterbox. That cat can hold a bunch of urine in her bladder.

Anyhoo, the main point of this post isn't that she's using the litterbox (which is good), but it's more that because since she's gained so much weight on the force fed diet, she's like the really overweight people you see at Walmart--you know, the ones that have to take the little invalid carriages because they can't walk around the store without getting winded? Yeah, the poor cat has to rest after every 8 steps or so because she's getting so worn out. She jumped on the chair next to me and promptly went to sleep for 15 minutes.

well, looks like she's awake, and the vet is open, so I better get her back there.

Sigh...fingers crossed that she can come home soon and we can do fluid treatments here.

Prognosis: Still guarded...I think?

today I dropped Ivy off at the e-vet for the night. Yes we're still taking the cat to the e-vet. She has gained 5 pounds. I gave them a slightly overweight house cat and they handed me back a brine filled butterball. And when I dropped the cat off at the vet, the actual vet himself asked me when we're going to be done with this back and forth thing...sounds to me like they're wanting her out of there just as badly as I want it.

Grocery Store Run

From my coworker:

"We ran out of children's Tylenol, which wouldn't have been a big deal, but of course the baby ends up needing a dose, and the toddler was already awake. So, at 4 in the morning, still in my pajamas, I take the boys with me to the grocery store because the wife is out of town. I'm at the checkout lane and the cashier asks me 'would you like to buy body wash or one of our WOW! items today?' I politely said no but I was thinking 'I'm standing here with 2 kids who are screaming, we're all in pajamas, it's 4 in the morning. NO I DON'T WANT A WOW ITEM!'"

Prognosis: Still guarded

After picking Ivy up from the E-vet this morning and driving her back to the normal vet, and then waiting all day long for the blood test results, they finally came in. The results are far from great (they're all still really high), but they are definitely better than what was expected. The expected result was that the blood work would come back the same or worse than it was yesterday, but thankfully it came back better than yesterday. Yesterday, there were 4 things that were higher than the normal ranges--Potassium, Creatinine, BUN, and Phosphorus. Of those, the Creatinine and BUN were off the charts--as in the machine couldn't even read the levels they were so high. Today, the Potassium and Phosphorus were in the normal range (elevated, but normal), and the Creatinine and BUN were still extremely high, but the values had come down enough that the machine could actually get a reading. This is good news in so much that it means she's recovering...now the question becomes whether she can recover enough to be able to survive without being on the IV drip...plus she has to be able to eat on her own.

Of course it also means that we have to do this normal vet, emergency vet dance until Friday afternoon when they do her next blood test. Here's hoping that that blood test comes out good (or she starts eating on her own by then) since Friday is my birthday and it would doubly suck if she had to be put down then since she is generally considered my cat while Quazi is Shawn's cat.

Prognosis: Guarded

Ivy is at the Emergency Vet tonight. She puked Monday morning at 4 am. Between the time that my inlaws went out for the day (1030 am) and when Shawn came home from work (530 pm), she had thrown up 4 or 5 more times. We figured that the stress of us being gone and then having guests over was a bit much. She proceeded to puke another 4 times throughout the night. I took her to the vet first thing in the morning. They did blood work and diagnosed acute kidney failure and raging bladder infection. She was put on IV fluids and baytril. They called me at 3 pm and said she was doing better, but would need to be transported to the E-vet for observation through the night. I'm then to pick her up at 630 am to transport her back to the normal vet where they'll do another round of blood work to see if her kidneys have recovered at all from the fluids.

If so, then great, she'll recover.

If not...well then...what a birthday present for Shawn. :'(

Shawn

"There are certain things I ask myself every time we go car camping: Why do we always choose the site next to the drunk college kids? Why do those people have a lantern that is as bright as the sun? And if they have that lantern, why the hell are they still wearing head lamps?"

Charles Kuralt

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.

EZ Reader

While Shawn worked for NI, he did some candidate hosting. It's basically a situation where NI brings potential candidates for jobs down to Austin for a weekend. Interviews happen on Friday, there's a dinner to attend Friday night and Saturday night, but otherwise the applicants are on their own in a town where most of them have never been. So, NI has this brilliant idea where they'll pair up an employee with a candidate and that employee's job is to make sure the candidate has a good time in Austin. The employees are required to go to the dinners with their candidate (so yay, free meal), but otherwise it takes up the weekend. To sweeten the deal, NI gives the employees "hosting points" which they save up for goods and services (much like all those sales thingies we did in elementary school). Shawn has hosted on and off the entire time he worked for NI (5 years) and never cashed in his points.

Because Shawn's last day with NI was on Friday, he had to cash in all his hosting points. These points totaled enough for a $200 gift card to Fry's Electronics Store.

So Shawn went and bought himself a Kindle-type reader called the EZ Reader (made by Astak). I find this funny because he doesn't usually read books. The reason for getting that specific reader is because it's got some 100 books already pre-loaded on the thing, and it can read 20+ formats (too bad all the books you get on Amazon require that you use the Kindle, and all the books you get on Barnes and Noble require their proprietary reader), and it's Linux compatible...naturally. The best part about the books that are preloaded on the thing are of the variety that Shawn doesn't read, that is, anything that isn't of the O'Reilly technical books variety. I'm predicting that the only full book he'll read on that thing is the user's manual.

Moooo

My coworker was doing some field work the other day, walking down a creek with fenced dogs on either side.

At one point in time he started freaking out because he swore there was a dairy cow in one of the yards, and no matter what people say, he was pretty sure that city code does not allow dairy cows. So he took a picture, and that's when he realized it was just a great dane.

Looks like it's time for a new glasses prescription.

CBS

We're watching last week's episode of The Amazing Race on CBS.com. The video viewer keeps crashing.

After the most recent crash, Shawn has started threatening the viewer with death when it is sleeping.

Hmmm...

Theodore Roosevelt

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.

Debonair

What I learned today:

If you're going to call someone debonair, you should do it to their face.

And don't believe a small company when they say they'll be open 'til 5pm on the Friday afternoon during ACL.

George Burns

Happiness is having a large, loving, close-knit family in another city.