deli of the gods

We spent last night in a less-than-luxury hotel in Summersville, WV. Quite charming, but I think one night was enough. This morning we managed a free breakfast at Chick Fil A (got there just after they stopped serving breakfast, so when I asked if they had anything left she just gave me the last couple of things of Chick Minis.) And on into Pennsylvania. Less snow here so far.

For lunch we stopped at Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh. They've been on a few Food Network shows, including Alfred's current favorite, Man vs. Food. They've got these big delicious sandwiches that are served with cole slaw and fries right in the sandwiches. I got a cheese steak (pictured) and Alfred got corned beef and pastrami. His was better. They were big, but not too big. We both ate ours comfortably. As in, I don't feel like I'm going to puke. The table of guys next to us were a bunch of wussies though. 5 guys, all in their early 20s, and half of them had to wrap up their leftovers. And then they gave the guy a $2 bill for a tip. Even we left more, and we had less than half the amount of people. Jerks.

Anyway, back on the road. About 3 more hours to go!

big T

It's currently 36 degrees wherever the hell we are on I 77 in North Carolina. Alfred's car has a thermometer read out in the dashboard. Pretty sweet. There's a light dusting of snow on the side of the road. What are we thinking, going to NY in the winter?

We stopped for a late lunch near Columbia, SC at a place called Big T's Barbecue. It was awesome. We got a pound of pork, 3 pieces of fried chicken, fries, cole slaw, and some banana pudding for dessert. All that for $15. Crazy! Chicken was fantastic, and the meal was called the TJ Special, so obviously I liked it.

It's not even 7:00 and I'm pretty ready to call it a night. It gets dark so darn early that it feels a lot later than it is. It's messing with my head. And that about sums up our day!

on the road again

We've been making up our own verses for the past 15 minutes, I think we've exhausted the possibilities for now though. We're listening to Christmas music, so Alfred's happy, and it's by the Brian Setzer orchestra, so I'm happy. We got a little later start than planned, but what else is new? We're taking 2 days to drive up so it's not a big deal. Our only plan along the way so far is to have lunch in Pittsburgh tomorrow. We're going to try a deli that we saw on some Food Network show.

So far, the drive has been relatively uneventful. Of course, we've been gone less than half an hour. We did see a pretty bad accident, a semi truck had practically disintegrated all over the road. Traffic was backed up for miles. Luckily for us, it was going the other direction.

I guess that's it for now, stay tuned for some more potentially exciting reports from I 95 and beyond!

meat off 2: porkin'

Last week was spent mostly in preparation for Christmas: buying and wrapping gifts, sending out cards, the works. I did manage to get out both of the packages I needed to, and possibly even on time. We still have, oh, about half of our gifts to buy. We're getting there, I guess.

Yesterday Alfred and Kevin had their second round of meat competition: pulled pork! Look at how lovingly Gara and I are gazing at the pork shoulder.

This time Gara and I made mashed and sweet potatoes, Caesar salad, and cooked apples to go along with the pulled pork. Once again, the sides were spectacular.

After the meal (it was much closer this time but Alfred pulled out the win in the end) it was time for some more serious drinking, including various games. Beer pong was rather popular for awhile. Brian was so good they had to handicap him a little, although really I think Dylan was probably giving him moral support.

Later it became flip cup, then a few keg stands happened, along with approximately 70 jello shots throughout the night. Alfred definitely took part in flip cup, he was pretty good at it actually. And Lucy's a freaking machine! Kevin and Gara's lawn got kind of torn up in a neat little circle around the table, as you can see rather nicely in this picture.

This girl had to go easy on the booze, because I had to work today. Hurray! Only 1 more day of work until a week off though, so it's not too bad. Plus we made a whole $1.74 today, so totally worth it!

birthday weekend!

Huzzah! Still thinking about my birthday! I love it!

On Saturday morning we headed over to Ben and Jerry's and were standing at the door, ready to go, the minute they opened. We had big plans to tackle the Vermonster, which is a massive sundae consisting of 20 scoops of ice cream and tons of toppings. There were 13 of us total, including Ellie (who didn't get to eat any ice cream) and Robyn, who is not in this picture. We made very, very short work of the Vermonster this time. It was delicious.

After ice cream some of us headed to lunch, because somehow we weren't too full, and filled ourselves up with pizza, wings, beer, and other goodies. We lost some more at this point (Kevin and Gara had to get ready for a wedding, and Ilya and Mercedes left to go visit a puppy!), but the last few of us rallied and moved on to another bar. Ellie enjoyed a deliciously buttery dinner of mixed veggies while we (mostly) stuck to beer (my stomach wasn't too happy with me). From the bar we went back to Lucy and Phil's house, then joined back up with Kevin, Gara, and Bill for a rousing evening of drinking and speed Uno. Gosh, it wears me out just typing it all out!

We ended up spending the night on Saturday, and went out to brunch the next morning to an awesome little diner. I went to town on some pancakes, bacon, eggs, and home fries, since it was the last day of my birthday weekend and my last chance to eat like a pig. After brunch we headed home for the first time in days. Laundry needed to be done, bathrooms needed to be cleaned, and then some TV needed to be watched. It went by so fast, but it was such a fun weekend!

week in review

Let's recap!

Monday: still in Boston and returning home, please see previous post

Tuesday: alas, back to work. I was a little surprised to find that we had a school group that morning, but luckily I had a costume in my car from Friday so I just got changed there. Better than the other girl, who was late and forgot a costume. That night we had a couch surfer arrive to spend a couple of nights with us. He's been traveling for 4 years so far. Yeah, 4 years. And we thought we had a long trip. We were up until after midnight looking at pictures. I sort of dozed off a bit during the slide show, although I really tried hard to stay awake..

Wednesday: Work again, although I got to meet our couch surfer for lunch, so that mixed things up a little. We managed to go to bed a little earlier this night.

Thursday: Gara's birthday! After work we joined her and Kevin at Peterbrooke for a chocolate dipping birthday party! They showed us how they temper and prepare the chocolate for dipping, then showed us how they make their chocolate covered popcorn and other goodies, then let us loose to try it out ourselves. Then we each got a big gift bag full of our finished products to take home! It was awesome! And delicious! After chocolate making we went to the local brewery that Alfred and Kevin go to (almost) every Friday for some pork sandwiches and beers. Good stuff.

Friday: My birthday! Somehow no one at work knew it was my birthday for the first hour or so which is odd because I know I mentioned it at least 2 or 3 times in the last week. Weird. Anyway, one of the girls at our downtown office made me an ice cream cake, and the day went by quickly because we were busy. After work Alfred and I went out to dinner at an Italian place that I've been wanting to try for awhile, then headed over to his parents' house for cake (made with Kahlua!) and presents. Overall, an excellent birthday. I think 29's going to be a good year. Stay tuned tomorrow (or maybe Tuesday) for our weekend update!

boston!

It's been a busy week, to say the least! But finally, a Boston post!

I left work a little early on Friday and met up with my girls at a bar after a mostly uneventful journey. They had already had a few drinks, so they ordered me a cocktail to help me catch up. We stayed out for a few more hours, catching up, then eventually made our way back to our respective hotels and homes and crashed for the evening.

Saturday started out pretty cold. Katie was busy with her conference, and Steph had to take care of her dog, so Katherine, Rosemary and I headed out for breakfast. We ate, wandered around Beacon Hill for a bit, and then ended up going back to the hotel for awhile. Some of us had been bitten pretty hard by a rattlesnake the night before, so we needed a little rest to gather our strength for another evening of excitement. Katie and Steph joined us in time to walk through a snowstorm for dinner.

We went to an Italian place, which was good but not fantastic. Then we walked back to the hotel, through the same snowstorm (it was snowing and blowing and wet and cold and gross) and were greeted by this:

They had gotten cake and champagne for Katherine and my birthday! We all got decked out in some robes and slippers (lovingly provided by the housekeeping staff) and ate and drank our little hearts out. At some point Rosemary and Steph decided we needed more booze, so they braved the storm again for some more wine and champagne. We played some speed Uno (because of course I always carry our Uno cards in my purse) and polished off a few more bottles. Katherine and I decided we wanted a snack, so we headed out in the snow to find the CVS that was apparently a block away. We walked in various directions for awhile, then gave up. By the time we got back to the hotel, the other girls had decided to go meet Ingo (Katie's husband) at a bar nearby. On our way, we walked right past the CVS that had eluded us moments before. Curses! But we got some appetizers, and a couple more drinks, so it was all good.

Sunday was still cold, but dry, so it was a good day for walking. We wandered around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, then went over to the Paul Revere House, then hit up Mike's Pastry for some cannolis!

They were just as good as I remembered. After a pretty full day of walking and sightseeing, Rosemary had to leave to catch her flight, and Katie and Ingo had to spend some time at their conference. Katherine and I headed out to Steph's current home, where Katie joined us later for some homemade soup for dinner. We turned in relatively early (by midnight!) since Steph had to work the next day.

Katherine left for the airport after a last breakfast with me and Katie on Monday morning, then I wandered around for awhile by myself. I wandered over to where Steph works and had lunch with her, then had to head for the airport myself. I ate dinner at the Five Guys that was in my other post, and got in about 15 minutes early. And then I had to go back to real life. It was a great weekend!

Coming soon

We're hosting a couch surfer tonight and tomorrow, so I may not have time to blog for a couple of days. As soon as I get some pictures of Boston I'll work on it though!

Winter wonderland

I don't know how well this picture turned out, but it's snowing!

Coolest airport ever!

I'm at Reagan national airport in DC (which I just discovered, I knew I was in DC but wasn't sure which airport) and this terminal has a 5 guys! Which is a super delicious burger place, for those of you who are not familiar. Alas, I just ate a chicken salad sub in my last airport and am not hungry. Alfred bought it for me for dinner. He got it just the way I like it, banana peppers and pickles and everything. He doesn't do that when we share. I was considering puking it up so I could get a burger, but that would kind of be a waste of money. Plus I think we start boarding soon.

I'm on my way to Boston for a girls weekend! Steph lives there now, Katie (and Ingo) were flying in for a conference, and Katherine, Rosemary and I decided to join them! I found a super cheap ticket, so this is my birthday gift from Alfred. What a guy. I'm there till Monday, so I even get a day off of work, which is awesome. Not so awesome for the other girl, who was alone for 2 hours after I left today and has to go in both tomorrow and Sunday for groups. Figures. but I'm pretty pumped! Everyone else is already there, but I'll be joining them soon enough. It's actually the first time all 5 of us will be together for something other than a wedding since Katie and I graduated in 2003! It's gonna be awesome!

another tale from the road

The place: Vancouver. Just to refresh your memory, we had blown a tire on our drive there from Seattle. So our morning was going pretty well. We spent a couple of hours wandering Granville Market and eating a bunch of food (like that's a surprise), then unfortunately had to leave when our parking meter ran out. We were walking back to the parking garage and neither of us could find the car keys. This had become kind of a running joke by then, or if not a joke then just a thing, that neither of us ever thought we had the car keys but that the other person had them. So I said I didn't have them, Alfred checked his pockets but didn't have them, so I started checking my purse. Couldn't find them. Checked my pockets. Not there. Alfred checked again. Totally not in his pockets. By this time we were back at the car, so I started searching through my purse again. The purse I had on the trip was pretty tiny, so it's not like there was a lot to look through, but still. Not there. Somehow, maybe in setting my purse on top of the car to look through it again, I noticed the keys: right on the roof of the car, where I had apparently left them when we parked. It's a good thing Canadians are honest (or just unobservant). Also, just as a side note, Vancouver taught me that I don't hate Canada. Just Ontario.

pie recipe

I hope you've all been over to Mike's blog and voted on this week's poll. Usually his polls are opinions, but this week there is very clearly a correct answer.

Nothing much has been happening the last couple of days. I'm mostly feeling better, although I had a coughing rampage that lasted for a good hour this morning. I've been watching more TV. We have over 72 hours free on our DVR right now. This is the most we've had since we got the thing. Usually we hover around 20, breaking 30 was a big deal a couple of weeks ago. The new TV should be delivered tomorrow, and our new HD satellite service is set up on Thursday. Alfred's a man with a mission, he's not messing around. Right now he's heating up milk to make yogurt. He's asking me what I'm writing about. Not much, obviously. Today's picture is from when we went to Ichetucknee with Mercedes and Ilya back in September. I was making bread dough sticks like we used to make when I went camping with my family. I was drunk from my multi-colored Russians. You can see some of the bread dough on my toes. Also, there are about 20 pictures of me with that flashlight wedged under my chin like that.

So, the aforementioned pie recipe. A couple of people commented on my last post asking for it, so here it is. It's the one my mom uses and that my grandma and great grandma used to use. History, people! Anyway, use 3/4 cup Crisco, 2 cups flour, and 2 tablespoons sugar. Mix it all together, adding a tablespoon or so of ice water as you need it. Then just roll it out and bake it at 375. I used to go wrong with the water, I never added enough, then I watched my mom make it and saw that she adds at least a couple tablespoons. It's simple but oh so delicious. I can eat it plain by the pound. This recipe makes 2 crusts, although I usually need to add a little more of each thing to make sure I have enough. Mmm, pie...

black friday and beyond

Alfred made a pretty good purchase this year for Black Friday: a new TV! It's a 46 inch Samsung flat screen, and he got a really good price. He actually bought it on Wednesday night, but that's just a minor detail. It apparently already shipped, so we should get it this week! Very exciting! In order to rationalize spending the money on a TV, Alfred returned his fancy camera last week. He hadn't really used it since our trip, and we'll probably use a TV a little more, so I guess it all works out.

I had to work on Friday, unfortunately. It kind of sucked not having the day off, but at least we had quite a few customers so I was busy outside doing tours almost all day. It made the day go by quickly, that's for sure. After work Alfred and I met up with Kevin and Gara for the evening. We started out at Claude's, which is always awesome, and then went to a wine bar for some dinner and drinks. This place was a total cougar den, we were the youngest people in there by far. Alfred liked that, seeing as how he's getting all old and stuff. (kidding, honey!)

This weekend has been the epitome of laziness for me. I've had a bit of a cold, and Alfred informed me that I need to watch and delete everything on the DVR that I care about before he gets a new HD one this week, so it was like a perfect storm. I have literally been sitting on the couch watching TV (and occasionally knitting) all weekend. There's probably going to be an imprint of my ass on this cushion for quite some time. I did manage to step outside today for approximately 1 minute, so that was good. I've been following my usual regimen of Cold Eeze and orange juice for 2 days straight, so hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. I actually really like to have these totally lazy weekends sometimes, and it was probably good since I'm sick, but Alfred has definitely reached his limit.

My thanksgiving grades

I contributed a few dishes to our thanksgiving meal with Alfred's family, and have had a couple of days now to reflect on my performance. Let's see how I did!

Baked brie: this is pretty hard to mess up. It could have used a bit more jam, but other than that, it was good. Grade: A-

Cranberry sauce: I almost forgot to add the sugar, which would have been disastrous, but managed to pull it together in time. Unfortunately, no one under the age of 28 liked it, although the grown ups all did. Grade: A-

Dressing: Alfred volunteered me to make this the night before, so I called my mom for the recipe she uses and got from her mother. It was pretty good for a first effort, but now that I've made it once I'm sure I can improve on it in the future. Needed more seasoning. Grade: B

Ice cream: another last minute addition. We somehow had a lot of extra egg yolks to use up, so we decided on vanilla ice cream. It was really delicious, nice and creamy, but it's pretty hard to screw up ice cream. Grade: A

Pumpkin pie: I was going to use a recipe from the food network with fresh pumpkin and pecan streusel. Unfortunately we couldn't find fresh pumpkin, and Max isn't crazy about nuts in desserts, so in the end I just went with a standard pumpkin filling. It was good, nothing spectacular. Excellent crust though, maybe my best effort (another family recipe). Grade: B+

Peanut butter pie: this was supposed to be a chocolate crust, peanut butter custard filling, and meringue topping. The crust and meringue were fine, but the filling didn't thicken up right. It tasted ok, but looked awful. It was basically peanut butter soup in a chocolate shell with a meringue island floating in the center. Bad news. Grade: C-

Overall grade: B- Better luck next time.

happy Thanksgiving!

Buddha the puppy says happy Thanksgiving! He loves his little Pilgrim hat.

He likes Crookshanks the cat as well. He likes to bark at her, anyway. She does not like him.

He also likes to run through the bushes when you take him outside to pee.

He's very good about letting someone know when he has to go out. He goes to the front door and kind of bats at the bells that are hanging from the doorknob and then whines if no one responds immediately. He's also extremely cute. Alas, he is not our puppy. Robyn managed to get him the other day in some sort of shady back-alley deal. Someone whose dog had 10 puppies was getting foreclosed on and had to get rid of the puppies, so a bunch of their neighbors took one apiece, and somehow Robyn ended up with one. I'm a tiny bit fuzzy on the details, but that's the gist of it. Not too shady after all, really. He's 14 weeks old. Right now his name seems to be Buddha, but since he's only been around for a couple of days we'll see if it sticks.

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

open letter

Dear men,

How are you? I am well. Now that we've exchanged pleasantries, do you mind if I get a little personal? Lovely, thank you.

Now, I'm a girl, so I pee sitting down. But I hear that most of you tend to void your bladders while in the standing position. I also hear that you have a nifty little appendage that you can aim towards the toilet, which presumably makes it easier to hit your target. So why, pray tell, do I find myself cleaning up puddles of urine on the men's bathroom floor at work on a regular basis? Maybe it's just the younger members of your species. Today, for example, I went into the men's restroom after several classes had eaten lunch. There was a large puddle on the floor, directly between the urinal and a toilet. It was such a large puddle that I actually used paper towels to push the fluid into the urinal instead of just soaking it up (I was wearing rubber gloves). In other words, it was disgusting. Unfortunately, today was not an isolated incident. The men's room regularly reeks of urine from the young men visiting our fine establishment. And I can always tell when some of them have been in the unisex, wheelchair-accessible stall. Puddles, puddles everywhere, cause they've had too much to drink. I'll save the non-urine messes for another day. And to be fair, those aren't always the boys.

So, gentlemen. If it's really that far of a distance from you to the toilet, or your aim is really that poor, perhaps you should consider taking a seat. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Parents, please feel free to teach your young charges the fun in aiming for the center of the toilet bowl. Yeah, the rim can be fun, and the floor's always a blast, but hey, why not the water? Peeing in the toilet: it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Thank you for your time.

d'oh

We're getting close to the end of the year, and we've only been to Universal once so far this year, so Alfred and Ilya decided we needed to take advantage of my other four free tickets before it was too late. So off we went yesterday. It was much less crowded than when we went last month; this is totally when we should go every year. It was great, the longest we waited for any ride was maybe 15 minutes. Also, I have a new favorite ride there: the Simpsons ride! It was so fun! It's a motion simulator ride that makes you feel like you're on all these different types of rides in Krustyland. The ride itself is really cool, a lot like Spiderman, but there's a lot of little jokes in there too that makes it better than Spiderman, at least in my opinion. We actually went on it twice. So fun. I didn't even really mind waiting in line because they show clips of Simpsons episodes while you wait.

Later, when we were on our way to go on Spiderman, a couple of Universal employees came up to us and asked if we wanted to go on Spiderman. They took us in through the exit and got on and rode with us, so we didn't have to wait in line. Then after we got off, they gave us 4 free express passes to skip another line later in the day. It was awesome! We used them for the Jurassic Park ride, although we should have saved them for the Dr. Seuss trolley thing. We tried to go on it 2 or 3 times, but decided not to wait in the line each time. Oh yeah, and we were drunk by then. Because, you know, Universal has 2 bars that have Happy Hour. I had at least 1 too many drinks. We rode the Dr. Seuss carousel like 5 times. We apparently sat in traffic for an hour and a half on our drive through Orlando, but luckily I kept falling asleep. I slept through most of the drive back, which is probably really good because I kept feeling nauseous. Anyway, good times were had all around. Thank you for driving us back, Mercedes!

Quote of the day

Alfred (to me): and you wonder why you're old and fat

let's be serious

Yes, a serious post. I had a meeting today with the state attorney's office that's prosecuting the guy who tried to break into our house. I got to leave work early, which is always a plus, and got searched and wanded by security at the courthouse. They confiscated my camera and nail clippers. For realsies. Because I might have used the metal file on the nail clippers to shank a judge or something and then taken a picture of it as a souvenir. I got a little ticket to reclaim my goods on my way out. My meeting went well, it didn't last that long. I basically corroborated the statement I gave the police the night of the incident and answered a couple of additional questions. Apparently the guy our thief tried to rob earlier in the day hired the guys who beat the crap out of him later that day. They cut his neck so deep it looked like they tried to cut his head off, and then tried to cut off his genitals. Somehow he was able to kick enough to keep them away from his goods. He has enough of a prior record that he may go to jail even with the attack. I may have to go in again at some point, so we'll see. Neat.

I was reflecting the other day on how much that guy has effected (affected? I'm drunk) me. I used to feel like I was basically safe. Like I could walk around outside after dark, or just be in the house with the door unlocked, and feel like I was ok. Now I don't go outside after I get home from work if I'm by myself unless I really need to for some reason. I lock my car doors the second I get in, whether I'm at home, at work, wherever. The other evening I walked from the house we were staying at to the restaurant where I was meeting Alfred. It took me about half an hour, and for all but the first 3 minutes or so I was on a well lit, busy road. I not only brought my pepper spray, I carried it the entire way with my thumb on the trigger, ready for action. It's kind of sad that my basic sense of security and really, my underlying feeling of trust in the world at large, is pretty much gone. Some guy randomly tried to break into my house while I was inside. It was totally random, had nothing to do with me, and if it happened once, who's to say it won't happen again? It's probably good that I'm safer now, but it's not like I was picking up hitchhikers and behaving in an unsafe manner before. I'm sad that I feel unsafe. It sucks.

p.s. Alfred made some hard apple cider the other day and we sampled it tonight. 3 sips in, we were both tipsy. Craziness.

we're hip. we're with it.

Yes, I totally used that title today simply so I could photoshop a picture like this. I'm awesome. Anyway, the "we" I'm refering to in the title is really the museum in general. We've apparently become the cool hangout for a bunch of the kids who live in the neighborhood. Somehow they never saw us before we moved across the street. Now they come hang out a lot. There's a couple in particular that come and talk to us a bunch, but there's a whole little gang that apparently comes around once in awhile at night too. They're probably in middle school if I had to guess. A bunch of them came in today just before I closed and wandered around for awhile. One of them tried to get me to let her volunteer for 15 minutes so she could go inside by herself. Yeah, it totally worked. Another one harasses me for free candy. It makes me feel kind of bad for being so annoying like that when I was that age. In other words, I do not enjoy the museum being a hangout.

Speaking of the museum, we had a little boy there today whose name was Cullen. For those of you who have been living in a cave, or are over the age of 17, that's the last name of the vampire family in the Twilight books. The kid was about 5, so it's possible his parents (mom) liked the books, but probably more likely that they now hate the books for making their kid's name so popular among teeny bopper vampire loving weirdos. And speaking of vampires, I'm totally into this new show in the CW, The Vampire Diaries. I read the books when I was in high school or so and really liked them, so when I saw they were making them into a show (since vampires are sort of hip right now, in case you haven't noticed) I recorded the first one to see how it was. It started out kind of cheesy but has actually gotten really good. I'm hooked. I have one still on the DVR and can't wait to watch it when I exercise tomorrow. Part of the appeal, I must admit, is the super hot vampires. Like Ian Somerhalder (on the right in this picture). The other one's not bad either (neither is the lead actress, actually). Maybe women wouldn't be so into vampires if they didn't cast such freaking hot guys in those roles. (disclaimer: I do not find the twilight guy attractive. I'm not that much of a loser.)

us? house sitting? weird!

We've expanded our client base: we spent the weekend house and dog sitting for one of my co workers. We did our best to take advantage of being in a different place. We went out for sangria and appetizers for dinner on Friday, then got some tacos afterwards when we were still a little hungry. Saturday morning I had to go into work for a couple hours, then we met up with Charles, a friend of Alfred's from high school. For those of you who were at our wedding, he was one of our groomsmen, the one with the Superman belt. He was in a bodybuilding competition that day and came to have lunch with us during the break between shows. He hung out with us for the afternoon (and took a nap) before heading back for his evening show. This picture is from his show. He came in fourth in his division. The dog kept licking his feet. Apparently the paint-on tan stuff tastes good to dogs.

Ilya and Mercedes came to join us later in the afternoon, so we drank and played Uno for a couple of hours. The two of them were dominating, especially Mercedes, but I managed to win twice, and Alfred once. After he won his game he decided we were done, so he ended up as the final winner. After Charles left for his competition, we went back to the sangria place for some more drinking and food, and ended up getting pizza and wings for dinner. Pretty healthy stuff. Charles came back to the house after his competition and was attempting to drink a gallon of milk in an hour, but apparently his body was sick and tired of abuse (he hadn't been drinking anything for a few days so that his muscles popped out better or something) and he didn't get very far. Thank God. I was not looking forward to a gallon of white vomit.

Today we headed back home after feeding and walking the dog one last time. This dog, by the way, was pretty weird. This dog was a poop machine, loves car rides to the point of insanity, and searches for cigarette butts to eat when on a walk. There are no sidewalks in their neighborhood, so you have to walk in the street. Twice when I was walking him after dark I totally left his poop in the middle of the road. I'm not touching that. Alfred was a good person and picked up after him. Anyway, we just got finished watching the Jaguars game and eating leftover pizza and wings from last night. We also made beer floats to go with the meal. The game, food, and floats were all good. In fact, a pretty good weekend overall.

It's weird

60 degrees feels so much colder in Florida than it does in New York.

we've found a better maid

This maid only comes once a week, and the day he comes tends to change from one week to the next, but today when I came home from work all the dishes were done and a delicious dinner of fish ceviche was waiting for me! Someone's laundry hasn't been put away yet, but the ceviche made up for it. Plus he watched last night's So You Think You Can Dance with me (which was not great, by the way). What a guy.

In other news, it's Veteran's Day. Here's a picture to dispel the solemn, honorable mental image that phrase might conjure up for you. Yes, this fine young knight is off defending our country. Go visit Mike's blog for a up close and personal view of his life in the army. This picture makes me want a beer.

On another totally unrelated note... one of the reasons we live in Florida is no longer alive. Back in summer 2002, Alfred moved to Washington DC after he graduated college. I was all psyched to join him after I graduated the next year. And then the sniper thing started. You may remember the month or so that fall when people living in the DC area were basically terrified to go outside because of the random sniper attacks taking place. It was one of the things that made Alfred decide to move back to Florida. Well, last night one of the snipers was executed. The other one is serving a life sentence. And I didn't get to move to DC. Jerks.

Sunday, Sunday

Yesterday we were like a couple of crazy errand-running fools. We got up bright and early (because for some reason I'm losing the ability to sleep when it's light out, and with the time change I haven't been able to sleep in. I was having a weird dream about zombies the other morning once the sun came up. Unrelated to the story at hand) so I even had time to exercise before we had to leave. Our morning was very carefully planned out. We left at 9:45 and arrived at Babies R Us to shop for the shower at about 10:20. We were done there by about 10:50 and only had to head across the street for an early lunch at Chipotle! (Another tangent: did anyone see the South Park episode a few weeks ago where they said eating Chipotle made you crap blood? They made fun of the show Ghost Hunters in the same episode. It was funny.) Anyway, I tried the pork for a change, which was delicious, and Alfred had his usual (chicken fajita burrito with black beans added). We actually had to wait about 5 minutes before they opened. We were their second customers.

After lunch, we went to pick up some grass fed ground beef from the farm that we've gotten it from before. The owner wasn't there, which was good because we were on a schedule and we would have been there chatting for awhile. We made it home by about 12:40. Plenty of time for me to get ready and wrap the gift (aka put it in the gift bag with some tissue paper.) All of that, with a lot of driving, in only 3 hours!

(I found a funny ecard to go in this post, but I can't get it to copy for some reason. Go here to see it. Then come back. Thanks.)

The shower was nice, even though I didn't know anyone. Well, I know Allison, the pregnant one, and I'd met one of her cousins before. She had a rubber duckie theme, it was really cute. And I bought her a bunch of bath things, so I fit right in. We played a game where we had to come up with as many words out of the baby's name as we could. I did terribly. I got 17. The winner got 45. No melted candy bars in diapers, so that was good.

After I got home from the shower we pretty much just relaxed. We caught up on a bit of TV, made some pizzas on naan for dinner (we're trying to be creative and use up some of the random stuff in the pantry), and that was about it. An excellent Sunday, if I do say so myself.

paying our debts

To the couch surfing society, that is. We hosted couch surfers the other night! A couple from Germany, actually. They're traveling around the eastern US for 4 weeks. They started in the Bahamas, then flew to Miami, and are driving up and around and ending up in Atlanta. They only spent one night here, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time with them, but it was still fun. It was interesting being in the opposite position from what we were in all summer. It's hard to come up with something interesting to do so your guests aren't bored, which is especially difficult because we don't exactly live in the most exciting area. Luckily they kept themselves busy (and even had dinner) and didn't even get to our house until about 8:00. And I left for work at 7 the next morning. Alfred did stay home and make them breakfast, so that was nice. It was fun hearing about their trip, and they both spoke excellent English.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm all sorts of party-rific this weekend! Yesterday evening I went to a birthday party for a co-worker. There were s'mores and many rounds of pictionary. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being really fun. Tomorrow I have a baby shower for another co-worker. I found out about it on Thursday, so I haven't bought a gift yet. I better get on that. And last but certainly not least, yesterday was my dad's birthday! Happy birthday Dad!

rib off!

(No pictures today, unfortunately we had no camera this Sunday because I had accidentally left it at Ilya and Mercedes' house. My bad.) This past Sunday we had a big event: the first ever Meat Off competition between Alfred and Kevin. They both have smokers, and when we were at Universal a few weeks back they got to talking and came up with the great idea to have competitions to see who's best at preparing various meat products. The first competition was ribs. Alfred makes some awesome ribs, but he was doubting himself a bit. He even tried a totally new recipe a week or so before the Rib Off, but it kind of sucked so he ended up going with his old standby for the competition. Anyway, I/we spent Sunday morning cooking: he started his ribs and helped with the cole slaw, and I finished the cole slaw and made cornbread and macaroni and cheese.

The rib off was at Kevin and Gara's house, and they had invited a whole crew to help us eat and judge. In the end I think there were about 12 people there. We watched the Jaguars game technically, but they played so badly that by the end only 1 person was paying any attention. I was a little worried we wouldn't have enough food, but in the end we had a ton of ribs, pulled pork, our sides, baked beans, cupcakes, and Oreo cheesecake (which was flipping amazing). And lots of beer. And tequila. And I think some rum and vodka. I managed to get away with only 1 tequila shot, plus several beers, while Alfred enjoyed at least 5 shots of tequila and God knows how many beers. Yeah, he was still drunk the next morning. I imagine Lucy had to prepare some formula for Ellie that night. They were playing that stupid game where you hit the top of someone's beer bottle with the bottom of yours and make their beer foam up, and glass ended up everywhere. I say "they" because I hate that game and steered clear. There was a dance party in the living room at one point; someone hit their head on the light fixture on the ceiling. It was really a lot of fun, hanging out with friends and eating a ton of good food. The cheesecake and mac and cheese were fan favorites, and as far as the ribs were concerned, general consensus was that Alfred's ribs edged out Kevin's. Which is good, because I kind of told him I wouldn't love him anymore if I didn't like his ribs better. But I did, so our marriage is safe. For now.... I hear Kevin makes a mean pork shoulder.

halloween goodness

Alfred got my camera back (I left it at Ilya and Mercedes' house by mistake the other day) and came home tonight, so I have both pictures and internet! In other words, I get to post! So here are my pictures of our Halloween Festival this past weekend. Here's our fancy sign and Jack the Scarecrow driving the tractor.

I actually did get to drive that tractor a couple of weeks ago. It had been sitting in the museum, and when they started working on construction in that area they decided to move it out front. So one of the guys tied it to his truck bumper and had me steer while he towed it. It was bumpy. But pretty fun. I got a lot of looks. Anyway! Here's a picture of some pirates and a princess. Their dad was a pirate as well.

Some cute little kids with the curliest hair I've ever seen, plus one of our guides all dressed up to scare people.

One of the Dorothys. Her dog was not named Toto, though. Her name was Poochie. The angel was cute too, though Mario was definitely one of my favorites. He was a little camera shy. He did not have a Luigi. Now that would be cute for two little boys.

This car was probably my favorite costume. He kept saying "honk honk" as he walked around. It was so creative and cute and he was having so much fun with it, and all it really was was a cardboard box. Awesome.

And the best family costumes: our other Dorothy, along with a Scarecrow and slightly homicidal looking Tin Man. That mask is seriously creepy looking. Apparently it was hot, too.

We actually turned a profit on the event, so I'd say it was a success. We sold some drinks and some of the craft people sold some stuff too, but we ended up giving away the popcorn and cookies because no one was buying any. Disappointing, considering how much time I spent on my dman cookies, but at least we know for next year. The end!

Happy Halloween!

I totally meant to post this week, but I've been pretty busy with our Halloween festival at work. I made a lot of cookies. Spent a solid 8 hours on them total. Sold 2. Rather discouraging. Anyway, I'll post about that either tomorrow or Monday. Right now we're hanging out with Mercedes and Ilya. And yes, this picture is all 3 of them doing shots. Except when you're 30, you do classy shots. Alfred and Ilya are doing tequila shots with sea salt, and Mercedes shot brandy. She just announced she's drunk. She's making some bacon wrapped dates. Later I plan to eat the thick fudgey frosting off of her leftover birthday cake. Also, I just had a great "that's what she said," after Alfred said "I don't think I can fit all that in my mouth." score!

more tales from the road

Alfred said he liked my post last week about our trip, so here's another one for him. I think some of you may have already heard this story.

The place: Seattle. It was hot. Seattle in general, and Mike's apartment in particular, is not air conditioned. Mike had graciously offered us his bed, but we declined, saying that the couch and air mattress would be just fine for us. Turns out that was a mistake. His bedroom was somehow a lot cooler than the living room, for one thing, and Alfred managed to deflate the air mattress during the night. He has a talent for that. I fared better on the couch, though since I was kind of sweaty I kept sticking to the couch and had to peel myself off of it whenever I rolled over. I tried to keep myself wrapped in the sheet to prevent this, but then the whole hotter-than-hell thing kicked back in. And it wasn't just the heat. Since it was so warm, we kept the windows open at night to try to get some cooler air inside. Mike's apartment was about, oh, 20 feet from 2 major interstates.

You could probably literally get a running start and jump onto I5. So it was loud. And hot. And Alfred somehow deflated the air mattress. The second night, he and I switched sleeping surfaces. I was fine on the air mattress, but he of course was unhappy on the couch. And Mike and I had to listen to him whine all day about being tired. So Mike got proactive. He asked me (via text, with Alfred in the same room as us, if I recall correctly) if it was ok if he crushed up some sleeping pills and put them in Alfred's drink. I said sure. So Mike very generously offered to get us all drinks. He was even nice enough to give Alfred the frozen mug. After awhile, Mike took our glasses back to the kitchen (he had noticed some floaters in Alfred's glass and didn't want Alfred to see them) and soon after that we went to bed. And our dear friend Alfred slept like a baby. Success! He's so much happier with a good night's sleep. Now, just so you don't worry that Alfred's seeing this for the first time right now, Mike did tell him about this the next day. And when we finally left Seattle, we had a few doses of sleeping pills in hand, in case of future emergencies. Thanks, Mike.

ah, fall

I've decided that I really like fall. I like when the weather starts to cool off and the humidity drops. I like that work starts to get a little busy: busy enough to give me something to do so I'm not bored, but not so busy that I go crazy. And I like that football is on and we spend all day cooking! Yesterday we hit the farmers market and had all these plans for food to make to eat during the Jaguars game. Unfortunately the Jaguars aren't playing this week, so that plan sort of fell through, so instead we watched the Vikings game for Mike. Pretty good game, especially the fourth quarter, though I must admit I slept through some of it. All that eating wore me out.

We started our day with a smoothie for breakfast (didn't want to weigh ourselves down too early). Then we got cracking with the food. We made 2 dips: 1 with eggplant and 1 with spinach and cannellini beans. Both were awesome. To go along with these dips we attempted to make some butternut squash chips. We do this with both squash and sweet potato fairly regularly, but for some reason it totally didn't work today. So we ended up with some kind of mushy baked squash pieces. Still tasted good. Luckily we had also decided to make some pita bread to have with our dip. Yup, pita bread! From scratch! It was awesome!

You roll the dough out really thin and then they puff right up in the oven. So cool. They were yummy, too. Now I totally want to have a Mediterranean dinner party.

After the game (and my nap) we had one more kitchen task for the day: roasting chicken. Yes, we're currently roasting 2 chickens in the oven. One's just your basic roast chicken, with garlic and lemon, and the other one has a Caribbean rub and basting sauce. I'm not so sure we'll be hungry enough to eat much chicken tonight, but that's ok. It just means we'll have food ready to go for dinners this week. We have big plans to make some chicken salad to eat in our leftover pitas. Anyway, our kitchen is clearly a bit of a disaster right now, as can be seen in this picture. Alfred tried his best to get out of the frame. Ha! Got him!

I just remembered the other reason I like fall: cranberries are in season! Last year we found this amazing cranberry chutney recipe, not realizing that we were at the end of cranberry season. So we've been waiting months for fresh cranberries to be at the store again. We made our first batch yesterday. It's so damn good. I might have to go sneak a spoonful right now.

tales from the road

As you may have guessed, there was plenty that happened on our trip that didn't make it into our travel blog in much detail. The other day, Alfred and I were talking about one evening that was sort of glossed over at the time, mainly because we didn't want to worry our mothers. The particular night we were remembering the other day was the night we spent in the Grand Tetons. We had arrived in the park and attempted to find a campsite (such a common theme of our trip). Since the official park guide paper said that at least 2 of the campgrounds rarely filled up, we were rather shocked and dismayed to find that there were no spots left anywhere. At that point, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was done. Just done with camping, driving, the trip, everything. I don't even remember if Alfred had a breakdown, I just remember being on the verge of tears and hating everything. I believe the two of us exchanged some heated words.

Eventually we agreed to drive down a dirt road into the forest to try to find a place in the national forest to camp. The road wound up a hill and ended up overlooking the valley and mountain range in the distance. It was perfect, except for one slight little tiny thing: there may have been a homicidal maniac camping nearby. You see, we had driven past a rather suspicious looking van and campsite parked in the middle of the woods. Just beyond that was a clearing with an abandoned looking tent (it had blown upside down), another tent with no one there, and a broken down looking camper. Clearly, we assumed that the owner(s) of the van were murderers who had already killed the occupants of at least one other campsite. Plus, this was still bear country. But despite the potential killers, both human and mammal, we decided to set up camp.

After dinner we came back to our tent and were somewhat relieved to see signs of habitation at the camper near our site. By this time a storm was rolling in: there were masses of dark clouds, lightening, and reports of hail from what internet we could get on our phones. So in an effort to take our minds off of the violent-looking weather, impending bear attack, and van-dwelling murderers, we decided to watch a couple episodes of Weeds. We shared my earphones so that no one outside could hear it. And yeah, we spent close to an hour watching TV in a tent on top of a cliff next to a mountain range. Looking back, it was actually kind of awesome.

Thin blooded floridians

It was 60 degrees at about 11:00 when I got to walmart. I've seen outfits ranging from shorts and t shirt to winter coat and hat. It's always amusing when the first cold weather of the season hits. (for the record, I'm in pants and 3/4 sleeve shirt, which is completely reasonable, though if I'm going to be honest I must admit I wore a sweater out of the house this morning.) ah, Florida. Also, I recently learned about www.peopleofwalmart.com, which is always good for a laugh.

long time, no blog

I know that people aren't checking this as often, most likely because I'm not writing as much. Sorry, it's just tough to find the time right now. Mainly because we still have the internet card that we used on our trip, which Alfred takes to work every day, so I don't have internet access when I get home from work, which is when I generally used to at least start writing my posts. It just seems harder to write now, too. Ah well. Excuses, excuses. Anyway! On with the news of the week!

Celebrations: it was a big week for events. Katie and Ingo kicked it off last Saturday with their wedding, then Katie continued the fun with her birthday on Tuesday. Tony and Cathy were also celebrating their anniversary on Tuesday. Wednesday was both Egee and Max's birthday, which we were able to celebrate with him. Then yesterday we went to Mercedes' birthday party; her birthday is this coming Tuesday. Lots going on.

Work: we're having a Halloween festival, so the other girl I work with has been stressing herself out over that for the past couple of weeks. She's the type to plan things out way in advance and then worry about it for as long as possible. Pretty much the opposite of me in that way. But there's a scarecrow riding a bone motorcycle on display out front now, so that's neat. We have rats living in our ceiling, we put out some poison, and I found a dead rat in our break room on Friday. There's lots of construction going on, so we have lots of shirtless men roaming around, none of whom are worth looking at shirtless. It's a shame.

Weather: suddenly, it's fall. Today's high is only in the 60s, although it's supposed to be back in the 80s later this week. It's a nice change. It makes me want to bake some brownies or something.

I don't think our break in guy was ever arrested. There was an article about the guys who beat him up being arrested, so I have his name, but google doesn't tell me anything about him being arrested.

sneak peak

Yesterday we went to Universal Studios with Kevin, Gara, and Gara's brother Bil. It was bloody hot, and surprisingly busy. I guess we shouldn't have been surprised by that, since Halloween Horror Nights is going on. Kevin and Gara came to our house Friday night and spent the night (we had homemade pizza for dinner, which was good), then we left nice and early Saturday morning after a breakfast of cinnamon rolls. We met Bil at the park.

There's a new roller coaster there where you get to pick a song to listen to on the ride. I panicked for a little while, trying to decide which one to go with, but luckily we were in line for over an hour so I had plenty of time. They also record video of you along the way, and at the end you can go watch it and make your own music video (which I imagine would be pretty sweet). So we find our picture and start to watch my video, and 3 seconds in you can clearly read my lips as I yell "oh f***!" It was awesome!

We made sure that we brought a camera into the park, and then managed to not take any pictures of us there. The only pictures I took there were on my phone, of the new Harry Potter attraction.



It looks pretty cool, but apparently they got rid of part of the park to build it, including the location of these photos:

Yes, they got rid of the cave bar that had happy hour, but there's still a bar with a happy hour in the area. So yeah, we drank a bunch. And ate a bunch. Then drank some more. No Ben and Jerry's, though. Fun times anyway.

This morning we went out to breakfast before Kevin and Gara headed back home. We've been planted on the couch ever since. It's been a good weekend!

congratulations Katie and Ingo!

Today is Katie and Ingo's wedding day! They met in Australia and are now living in (and getting married in) Germany. We finally got to meet Ingo at Katherine and Jevon's wedding, which is where this picture was taken. I so wish we were there to celebrate with them... congratulations, guys!

friends!

First of all, I apologize to my thousands of readers who have had nothing to read for days on end. My internet had been stolen for days on end. By the most nefarious villain of them all: Alfred. Well, and time, to be fair. On with the post!

Saturday we were house sitting. It's kind of a long boring story, but we weren't going to and then we ended up doing it. I'm sick of the whole ordeal and want out, but Alfred caved. It is a lot closer for him to go to work, so it makes sense, it just makes me mad. I don't like feeling taken advantage of. They asked Alfred to come pick them up at the airport tomorrow night. At 9pm. We live over an hour from their house. So he wouldn't get home until probably after 11. Ugh. He should say no. Hopefully he'll stay strong. Anyway, we were here on Saturday. We were doing some painting at a house Alfred bought through work and took a little break for lunch with Ilya and Mercedes. Lunch turned into drinking some beer, which of course meant speed Uno, which meant less work got done at the house than intended. But we got the painting done, with some assistance from a slightly intoxicated Ilya and slightly more intoxicated Mercedes. They may have been singing the national anthem for a stretch of time. There may be a video or 2. I imagine if there is, it's hilarious.

Sunday was pretty low key. I insisted on going home and then ended up not feeling so great, so I spent a good chunk of the day on the couch. Monday I braved spending the night alone at the house, and lived to tell the tale. (Have I mentioned that the police officer did come by on Thursday and have me ID the guy in a photo line up? I think I got it right, he said our neighbor did so that's good. Still haven't seen that he's been arrested though.) Then last night I came back here to see Alfred and hang out with even more friends! We went to dinner with Lucy and Phil (and Ellie, though she didn't eat much) and their neighbors, Kevin and Gara. We enjoyed a lovely Mexican meal, along with some frozen margaritas for the real women of the group (that would be me and Lucy). Very nice. No pictures. Sorry.

Tonight we're house sitting for the last night. I came back because a) we can watch Weeds episodes on their TV from our laptop, which we cannot do at home, and b) I'm a big old wuss and was scared at home by myself on Monday. In other random news, today was supposed to break high temperature records. Heat index was predicted to reach 99-103 degrees. I was out doing tours for 2 hours straight. Awesome!