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!