happy birthday Ilya!

He's freaking 30 years old today! Holy crap, he's old! Gosh, two birthdays in one week, it's crazy. We're going out to lunch with him and Mercedes and various parents, probably right around the time this is posting! Ha, it's like I'm magical! I'm probably wearing my new outfit from Old Navy too, although since I'm not exactly writing this on Saturday I can't be entirely sure. Anyway, I'm sure we're having a great time and he's fully enjoying his birthday. And from what I hear, 30 is the new 20. Happy birthday Ilya!

my poor little toes

Today was an interesting day. It rained absolutely all day long, and the temperature dropped steadily from about 8:00am on, neither of which I was expecting at all. I was completely unprepared for such crap weather. And the really fun part was that we had groups all day! Yay! I was completely drenched from the legs down by 10am. My top half was only pretty wet, as my poncho was doing a valiant job of trying to keep me dry. But it was pretty hopeless. The worst part was my feet. My boots and socks were soaked, since our parking lot turns into one giant puddle when it rains, and 2 toes on my left foot were actually numb for awhile. I don't know why exactly, because it was probably in the 60s and 50s most of the day, but try telling my toes that. They've been enclosed in warm fuzzy socks for the past 20 minutes, but they're still cold. I hope my shoes dry out by tomorrow.

Another thing that made today interesting: I did my first archaeology program today! I was nervous. I've only watched about 2 1/2 programs total, but I've read all the stuff Lindsay put together and wrote the script that we're going to use to train the guides. I think it went well, actually. The kids seemed interested at least. I'm looking forward to being able to do it again and try out a couple of changes to make it run smoother.

One last interesting thing: Alfred took his state exam today for the real estate class he took last week, and he passed! He was nervous too, but I knew he'd do great. He even caved and had carbs (an entire tortilla!) for lunch today. See, carbs are brain food!

happy birthday Ro Ro!

It's Rosemary's birthday today! Hopefully she's having a good day, I tried calling her on the way home from work but it went straight to voice mail. She's probably out living it up somewhere. Or at work, one of the two. This picture is of her and her husband, Greg, from their wedding weekend last year. So cute. Happy birthday, Ro! We'll miss you in a couple of weeks. :(

Today the Chick Fil A I pass on my way to work had a special today. You buy food today, then bring the receipt back any day before April 30 and get that same food again for free. So I was sort of planning to stop and get breakfast there, then stop on the way home and get dinner too. Well, I forgot and had a big breakfast, so I wasn't hungry for Chick Fil A on my way to work. As I drove by, there were about 10 or 12 cars in the drive thru, which is more than usual. I was like wow, lots of people. I didn't stop. Then on my way home I did stop. The drive thru line wrapped all the way around the building, went out the parking lot and down the road. People were blocking traffic to other places, plus no one could get in to actually park in their parking lot. So I parked in the lot next to the restaurant and walked over. The place was PACKED! I mean, packed. The ordering area was completely jammed, and the lines were literally out the door. So I left. I mean, free food is cool and all, but not that cool. I stopped at Publix and got a chicken salad sub instead. Still 2 meals for only $6. And probably healthier. More veggies, at least.

busy, busy

We've got a nice full social calendar for the next few weekends. This weekend we have Ilya's birthday, and possibly plans with Lucy and Phil; the following weekend Katherine and Katie are coming to visit us (I looked through lots of pictures, none of just the three of us, so we get to see 5 lovely ladies instead); the weekend after that, Mike is coming to visit (he's bringing wine, the three of us are going to have a romantic Valentine's Day dinner.) Oh, and last weekend I went to Lucy's baby shower. It's been all sorts of awesome.

I've realized over the past couple of days that I'm not so lonely this year. Last year I was really trying to think of ways to make friends. I started going to a book club (which has more or less stopped), I tried a dance class (which didn't last beyond the first class). I think a lot of it was my job. At my old job, I was related to most of my co workers, plus Alfred has to be my friend whether he works with me or not. It's part of his job description. Now that I'm back at the museum, I have lots more co workers, who I (mostly) like, plus lots more people that I come into contact with either in person or on the phone. I've known a lot of these people for years, so while they might not be the type of friend I'm going to hang out with outside of work (although there are some of those, luckily) I at least have enough social interaction on a regular basis that I don't feel isolated. It's nice. I do still wish I had more close friends down here, but this is better than nothing.

efficiency, thy name is Tracy

I've been working my little butt off making dinners for this week, so we won't have to cook after work. Alfred's not home, my game keeps crashing, my tv show doesn't start for another hour or so, and, well, I was feeling inspired. So I've been a cooking fool. My kitchen smells amazing right now, I wish there was a way to capture the smell because I would share it with you all and make you all jealous.

The closer pan contains sweet potato peanut soup, and the farther pan is beef and eggplant casserole (which I added zucchini to and subtracted bread crumbs from). Right now, the casserole is finished (except for baking) and in the fridge, and the soup is boiling away like crazy. And I'm sitting here eating tonight's dinner: English muffin pizzas. I've been carbo-loading while Alfred's been away. I should have let them toast a little longer before I put on the toppings. Oh dang, the battery just died on my mp3 player. Ok, one last picture before I get back to work on the soup:

This is the eggplant I used for the casserole. As you can see, it has a nice finger-like tumor protruding from it. I knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it. Both the cashier and bagger commented on it. And now it's sliced and smothered in beefy goodness. That's what she said!

brain dump

No pictures today, far too lazy to go upstairs and turn on Alfred's computer. And no post yesterday because I was far too cranky. Luckily that's not a problem today, I was way too busy at work to get cranky. We had a school show up 90 minutes before their tour was scheduled. They had to eat lunch and go to the bathroom, which left them with about 60 minutes to kill. They let the kids run all around the parking lot, playing football and soccer with empty water bottles, they were roaming the museum, driving us crazy. But not shopping. When we go to (finally) start their tour, their guide tells me they want to shop at the end of the tour and that we have to cut their tours short. So they're going to cut out part of the tour that they're paying for to go shopping, rather than utilize the extra hour they had beforehand, because they don't want the kids to have to carry their stuff around. Fools. Oh well, we were their first stop so they spent a decent amount. But that one school made my entire afternoon nuts. I ate my little tupperware container of overcooked pasta for lunch at about 12:30 while on the phone, then had a piece of cold pizza (the one benefit of having them eat lunch at the museum) at about 3:45. Very healthy. But we had a super healthy and delicious dinner, so that made up for it.

Yesterday we had a family with 10 kids and one on the way at the museum. 9 boys, 1 girl. And the newest addition is a boy, too. Poor girl, she's never going to be able to date because all her brothers will scare away any potential boyfriends. They ranged in age from 17 to 2. The parents homeschool them all, too. Alfred and I decided that's what we want to do, we're going to move to 1000 acres somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, pop out a bunch of kids to help with the chores, and live off the land. I'm excited.

Tonight is hopefully the last night that it's going to go below freezing here. It dropped below freezing a couple of times last week, and the last 2 nights. The wind chill yesterday morning was supposedly about 18 degrees. Holy hell! Best of all, our heat wasn't working at the office yesterday morning, and our power was out entirely this morning. Not the best mornings to not have working heat. Luckily I've been wearing 2 pairs of long underwear under my costumes, so I lived to tell the tale. I have to go back outside and cover up my azaleas again soon. Being a gardener is so taxing.

so exciting

We have a new president! Duh, I know, but still. All you hear about is how historic today is, but it really is pretty cool. I actually had no idea what time the inauguration itself was, I knew it was some time after 10:30 (cause that's what time my DVR recording started). I left the office at about 11:40 to run some errands, and since I had NPR on my car radio I heard that the ceremony was at 12. I ended up sitting in my car in a parking lot so I could hear Biden being sworn in as VP. Then they started playing music, so I ran into our downtown office real quick, and luckily they had the radio on too. Now, it just so happens that all but 1 of the people who work in that office voted for McCain. HA! So I got to rub it in a little and do a little victory dance when I walked in. We all listened to Obama get sworn in together, then listened to part of his speech. I was the only one smiling. A couple of conversations:

V: We'll see how you feel about him 4 years from now.
me: Not as happy as I feel today about Bush leaving office!

V: He pauses too much when he talks. I don't like that. Why does he have to pause so much?
S: He's preaching. Although Bush paused a lot too, didn't he?
C: Yeah, but Bush paused because he forgot what he was saying!
me: (cracking up) At least I didn't have to say that!

Then one of them started talking about how she's been nervous for days about something bad happening today. Another one started talking about how if something happened to Obama it would start a race war, and if that's what some black power group wanted (a race war) they would just arrange for someone to shoot Obama so that they could have their race war. Because clearly the best thing for a group wanting blacks to be more equal and have more power to do is to have the first President of African descent be assassinated on the day he takes office. I mean, come on. That sounds like something my dad would say. Just goofy.

Anyway, I'm busy watching the coverage that I DVRed now. So exciting!

all messed up

My days are all screwed up now. I worked all day today and am taking tomorrow off, as is Alfred. Since I was off yesterday, it feels like Monday to me, and tomorrow is going to totally mess with my head. But then I'll feel like I only had a 4 day work week, so that will be cool. By the way, it was 35 degrees when I got to work at 8:00 this morning. I think that's legitimately cold.

So here's a funny little story. Back a few years ago, when Alfred had his 4 runner, he left his hatchback open one day when he was visiting a job site for work. This stupid ass squirrel decided to get inside his car and come along with him. Then the damn thing wouldn't get out! He left the back open when he got home and it wouldn't run out. So we took it out to dinner with us. It kept skittering around the back of the car, all freaked out. When we came out of the restaurant, Alfred opened the back again. Suddenly the squirrel came flying out the back of the car and ran like hell. Then we drove home, no longer afraid that a crazed rodent would jump on us from the backseat. The End.

alone again

Alfred came home last night! We blew through some important tv, had a tasty dinner, and I enjoyed having someone other than myself to talk to. In other words, I was far too busy to blog. But tonight he's at his parents' house again, he had to go to work after his class so he really didn't feel like making the drive home. So, here I am, watching a show about multiple births (they totally just showed a baby come out, there was a warning at the beginning about full frontal nudity) and eating a quesadilla for dinner. Good stuff.

(There's not going to be a picture here. Alfred's computer isn't on and I'm far too comfortable to go upstairs and turn it on, and I don't have any pictures on this computer. Sorry!)

I'm also playing Suzy Homemaker. I sewed up a tear in one of my work costumes, and now I'm going to work on knitting a hair covering thing to wear to work. It's called a snood. Ooh, here's a picture after all!


Except mine won't be orange. We'll see how it turns out. I was hoping to get it finished tonight, but I've been slacking off so far so I don't know if that will happen.

So tomorrow's high is only 49 degrees. It's supposed to go down into the 20's both tonight and tomorrow night. I think that qualifies as cold. Of course, not nearly as cold as it is in NY or MN. We were actually hoping to go to MN this weekend (Mike's there now) but it didn't work out, since Alfred has his class and I have to work all freaking day on Sunday (I have to be there at 8am!) But knowing that it's so damn cold up there somehow makes me not quite as sad to not be going. Still a little sad, though.

return of the jogger

For the last 3 weeks the weather has been freaking gorgeous. Sunny, in the 70s, getting into the 80s a few times. All, of course, while we had no school groups at the museum and I was stuck in the office or store all day long. This week we have groups again, and of course it's goddamn freezing and rainy outside. It sucks! This isn't why we live in Florida. Also, speaking of work, I just realized this morning that I never took out my hoop earrings that I put in over Christmas and am not supposed to wear at the museum. Oops. Ha!

I forgot to mention yesterday that I also went jogging this weekend! I knew I did more productive things than cook and take down decorations! I wasn't even all that sore afterwards. It's been a long, long time. Someone accidentally broke the mp3 player that I got for my birthday last year, so I hadn't gone in a long time, but then Alfred got me a new one for my birthday this year, so I have no excuse anymore. I sort of enjoy it, I guess. I don't exactly love it, but I do it. Slowly. It's funny that I ran track in high school. I only did it because a) I wanted to hang out with my friends, and b) it was the only sport (indoor track, not outdoor) that I could do along with dancing. I didn't take it very seriously. Whenever we had Saturday morning practices, we'd run to my (parents') house and eat doughnuts and watch tv until we had to run back to check in at the end of practice. Anyway, I always wonder what I look like when I jog, I see people jogging as I drive to work and some of them look stupid. I hope I don't look too stupid.

colin farrell just made fun of Florida

I am proud to announce that our Christmas tree is still up. Yes, we've scraped by for another week. We did take down a few lights (only so we could return them, though), and I took down all of the other decorations around the house. I haven't put any of them away, of course. They're all sitting on the table in the kitchen. It's just too sad to take it all down at once. Plus I think we're going to need another Christmas box to store it all and I just don't feel inspired to find one and pack everything up. I was riding a wave of productivity when I took everything down, and once that left me, that was it.

Our Sunday was rather productive overall. I packaged up a couple of boxes to mail to Katie, we made a bunch of food to get me through the week, (Alfred's taking a real estate class and is spending several nights this week at his parents' house) oh and we had a freaking awesome dinner. We grilled a couple of steaks, cooked some swiss chard with parmesan cheese, and made some cranberry chutney to go along with it. Oh lordy, was it good. I could eat that chutney plain. Actually I could, we have a little left over. But anyway, it was good.

Right now I'm watching the Golden Globes from last night. This Steven Spielberg thing is awfully long. I just went upstairs to turn on Alfred's computer and came back down and he's still droning on. I mean, he's made some good movies and all, but come on. Hell, most of this post was written during this section. I really need to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Ok, it's over. And so's this!

Sweden

Looking at my Sweden pictures last night made me want to post more of them! So here's a mostly picture post for you. Hard to believe this was already 7 years ago.

These first couple of pictures was from our first weekend there as a group. We visited this island called Marstrand, it was this old fashioned little island, no cars, everyone rode bikes and stuff. And there was this cool fort thing right smack in the middle.

We're imitating this statue. I was the horse.

This was taken our last official day of the program. From left to right, it's Laura, me, Kimberly, Meredith, and Safi. This was later in the same day that I got my tattoo. Meredith got one too, but Kimberly backed out.

This is us with our professors. The two on the left are from Cornell, the two standing in the middle were from Goteborg University, and the one sort of next to me was a friend of our female Swedish professor. She was a preschool teacher, we visited her school and she helped with some language classes.

Here's my kids! This is about 2/3 of the class, the 3 and 4 year olds. The class I was in ranged from 18 months to 5 years old. There were only 2 full blooded Swedes among the 18 kids in the class. The one in the very center of this picture, the little blond boy with the big smile, is one of them. Most of the kids spoke another language at home, several were from the Middle East. This picture was from our field trip to the zoo.

Here's a good Goteborg landmark: the statue of Poseidon. Apparently the sculptor wanted to give him a nice big penis, befitting the god of the seas, but wasn't allowed to. So he gave him a little penis, conveniently tinted peach in this picture (no, I didn't do it), but gave him that big fish to hold in his hand. Very innocent from the front.

But from the side, it looks like Poseidon has a giant wang. I wish this picture was better, because it really is hilarious to see.

There's a funny story to go with this picture. First, yes I'm holding a cigarette. I smoked a little bit in Sweden. Just a little bit, honest. Anyway, one of our last weekends there, we decided to go to a club downtown. So we started at our little local bar, Olof's (it was right in our dorm complex, quite handy), did some pregaming, then started walking downtown. Partway there I really had to pee. We came across this building with these nice tall, thick hedges all around on a not-too-busy street. I was a bit drunk, so I went behind the hedges, dropped trou, and started to pee. I'm pretty sure Kimberly and Meredith were mortified, but laughing their asses off at me. While I'm back there, totally hidden, a group of guys come up and have the same idea. Instead of going behind the bushes though, they just stand out in front and go to town. Yes, peeing into the hedges that I am hiding behind. I'm done by now, hiding and trying not to laugh and give myself away. Finally I ran out towards my friends, laughing hysterically, practically giving the Swedish guys heart attacks. We all had quite a chuckle. Turns out they were going to the same place we were, so we walked the rest of the way together, and of course got a picture.

This is just kind of funny, there was a big hockey tournament or something one weekend and they had all these ads talking smack about all the other teams. Sahlgrenska is the name of the hospital in Goteborg, and tack means please.

And one last one: Goteborg at sunset.

I'm sort of famous

My regular readers (the thousands of you) may have noticed a slew of new visitors today. I counted 27 just now. Seems someone over on thenest.com was asking about someone who has a screen name that includes T&A, someone found this here little blog, and posted a link asking if I'm that person. Alas, I am not. I feel sort of sorry for all those people who trek over here, hoping to find someone they know and miss, and only find me. I used to frequent a couple of the boards there for awhile, though not the particular board that had this post, and my screen name didn't have T&A in it. Plus I didn't actually post much. Sorry, ladies.

Big TV news: Scrubs is back on! I think it was on Monday night, although with DVR it's hard to remember. 2 episodes though, and both were pretty good, I thought. The last couple of seasons have only been so-so, but these were much better. This is supposedly the last season, although there are rumors of a spin off, in Cheers/Frasier fashion. I'd watch. I watched Joey, after all.

Speaking of TV... I think I've mentioned my love of the show Ghost Hunters here before. (Yup, I looked it up and linked to it in case you were curious. There's 2 separate links there, folks. Just doing my job.) The girl who worked in the store today (Chrissy) also works at the wax museum downtown. She's told me (and others have told me) a few creepy ghostly stories about the place before. Anyway, she told me today that one of the guys from Ghost Hunters (Jason) and his wife came into the wax museum last month! She met them and talked to them and stuff! They were just in town on vacation and stopped in. They went through the museum, then asked her if there were any ghost stories about the place. So she told them a bunch. Then they asked if they could stick around after she closed and turned off the lights, so she said sure. They brought in one of their cameras and she walked them back into one section where there are a bunch of presidents set up. She was telling them a story about the wax face of Abraham Lincoln, and about how it was made from one of his death masks. After she finished talking, Jason's wife told her that during her story, a light came out from behind her, where the wax head was, swirled around her head, then went back behind her toward the wax head. Kind of weird. The wife said she'd post it on her myspace page, but I just looked and it wasn't there, but she hasn't logged in for a few weeks. Chrissy gave them the owner's card and told them they should come back and investigate. If they do, I am SO there! I'll be such a dork, I'd totally just stand around and grin like a goofball. It would totally make my day. No, month at least.

Ok, now that you've read all that drivel, here's a fun little series of pictures of me getting my tattoo. First, the last picture ever taken of my un-tattooed back:

Now a couple of action shots. Look how hard I'm holding onto that seat back. It hurt, yo.

And finally, the finished product. I think it took about an hour. I was considering a butterfly until I saw this little guy, I'm so glad I found him. He's my Swedish souvenir. If he had a name, it would be "Chompers" in Swedish.

a more chipper post

My post title reminds me that I booked a tour today with a guy named Chip. I wonder what his real name is. I hope no one was cruel enough to actually name their child Chip. What grown man goes by the name Chip, anyway? Weird.

Alfred was not happy that I didn't post yesterday and he had to look at my depressing post from Monday for 2 days. I didn't think it was that bad. There was no picture though, so I guess that's sad. Here's a nice colorful one from New Years.

Here's another one. It looked more interesting in photoshop, but I spent like 2 minutes on it, so I'm posting it anyway. I had to crop out a bulb that wasn't working. Those damn lights are brand new, and already bulbs are out. There's a whole section out front that's not working, too. It's not the bulbs or the fuse, we replaced them all. Stupid cheap Walmart lights.

Ok, now that I have satisfied my photo quota, we can move on. I think I'm becoming more cold blooded as I age. For example, right now I'm wearing sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt, and slippers. I'm in the house and the thermostat says it's 71. Alfred's wearing shorts and a t shirt. Here's another example. I put on my sweater before leaving work today because I was cold. I checked the thermometer by the store door on my way to my car. It was 67. I hope it's just a phase. Because otherwise I'm going to be like one of those little old ladies who wear sweaters in 80 degree heat, except I'll be 30.

Tonight is the first night since we put up our Christmas lights that we haven't turned them on. It's kind of sad. I think we really do have to take them down this weekend. It's just so much work to put it all up, I feel like we should be able to enjoy it for longer. But Alfred says we'll look like white trash if we keep them up. It's not like we'd stick out in our neighborhood, so I don't know why that's a problem. Sometimes I'm just struck by the fact that I'm a grown up, that I'm married and own a house. Like right now. I own a house and can decide when and how to decorate it for Christmas and when to take those decorations down. When on earth did I grow up? Alfred's been hearing that a lot lately. For some reason I'm just shocked to be considered an adult.

this is post #199

Today sucked. Of course, since today was the first work day of the first full work week after 2 weeks of holidays, it was bound to suck. There was no hope of non-sucking for today. Nothing particularly bad happened, it just existed. I had to wake up and go to work and know that I'm going to have to do the same thing for the next 4 days in a row. Also, I seem to have fallen off the wagon really, really hard and I can barely see it rolling along ahead of me. It's going to take some real work to get back on. But I need to. I feel disgusting. I'm pretty good at home, it's just work that kills me. I'm all alone all day long with nothing to do but think about all the food I have there to eat. Alfred made me take the box of chocolate macadamia nut clusters that Maureene brought to work, and with no one else there, guess who's eating them all? Kara, the new girl I hired last fall (I'm not sure I've ever mentioned her name, but now I can call her by name and make it easier on myself) was supposed to be back last week but with the whole breaking-up-with-her-fiance thing is apparently not feeling up to coming back to work yet. Must be nice to not need the money. At least she's coming back, I was afraid she was going to move back home and screw me. That would have sucked. Also, is that how you spell fiance? Or is it fiancee? I think one's for the man and one for the woman but I don't really know for sure. I probably made that up.

We had a super lazy weekend. We were planning to take down all of our Christmas decorations and lights and pack them all away and then I was going to reorganize all the stuff in the closet under the stairs where we store everything, since we have no closet space, but it didn't happen. Instead we watched a bunch of movies, some tv, and ate. Just the kind of weekend I love.

happy 2009!

I can't believe it's already 2009. I feel like I just finally got used to writing 2008. I think 2009 is going to be a good year. Let's hope so!

Anyway, our new years eve celebration involved lots of fireworks, booze, and good food. Last night Mercedes made braised short ribs for dinner, and I worked on the stock for today's soup. Then we burned lots of stuff.


Honestly, I don't really remember going to bed last night. I had a few Kahlua drinks, some beers, and champagne at midnight, but I don't think I blacked out, I think I was just really tired and falling asleep in my chair before stumbling off to bed. All I know is I woke up in my bed at about 5:45am, fully dressed except for my shoes, and realized that we never turned off the burner under the stock pot. So I went downstairs, turned it off and put the pot in the fridge, then went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep. Once we got up for good, we got to work on our main meal for today: french onion soup and a Spanish tortilla.

Everything was delicious. It was really a very fun new years, overall. And finally, the sum of our drinking over the past 2 weeks: