awesome things

Today was one of my days off of work for this week. My work schedule has been so screwy, with working some weekends and taking random days off during the week, that I have very little idea what day of the week it is lately. We spent a good chunk of the day hanging out at Lucy's parents' house, in and around their pool. I drank a bottle of wine. I was hungover by 6pm. It was awesome.

I'm sure I'm the last person on earth to discover this website, but it's funny. I like this article in particular.

Also, happy birthday to Mike and Ellery. We had dinner with Ellery last night, he lit his birthday candles with a blowtorch. It was awesome.

Harvest

When I got home from work today I went out and picked a whole bunch of pole beans. I did have to use a ladder (the poles they're climbing on are a solid 8 feet tall, and those little bean plants just shot right on up there once we put them in), and I did get 14 mosquito bites in the process (yes, I counted), but I got them! I roasted them for dinner with a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper, and they were really good.

It's so fun making actual meals and side dishes with stuff from the garden. So far we've used at least 2 dozen tomatoes, an eggplant, these beans, and the 2 jalapenos in the picture are going into chili this week. I've got a bunch more tomatoes ripening soon, the herbs are doing well, I think I have an actual ear of corn forming, and I counted 3 tiny butternut squash today. The only thing that's really not doing well is the zucchini. The stems are splitting and no zucchini have appeared yet. And of course that's what's supposed to be so easy to grow and so fruitful. Figures that's what I have trouble with.

long weekend!

I'm in the midst of a 4 day weekend from work! We decided to take a little mini-vacation and headed down to Fort Lauderdale to visit Alfred's grandmother, Egee. We left Friday morning, spent all day Saturday down there, and left to come back home yesterday morning. The three of us went out to dinner on Friday night. I wasn't terribly impressed by the meal, but the creme brulee we had for dessert was phenomenal. On Saturday we had lunch and dinner with Egee at the dining room in her building, spent a few hours at the beach, and watched TV in our hotel room. We used priceline to get a really nice hotel for really cheap, so we figured we should take advantage of it. Plus, I was on vacation! I wanted to be kind of lazy. It was a really nice little visit, and Egee seemed to appreciate us coming down.

Yesterday we had dinner with the rest of Alfred's family for Father's Day: lots of good food, as usual. Today is my last day off, and I have a bit of socializing planned. I'm having lunch with friends, a book club meeting later this evening, then some laundry and grocery shopping to do, maybe some ironing if I get motivated enough... busy, busy!

Robyn's birthday extravaganza!

Today was both my day off of work, and Robyn's birthday! We spent the whole day with her. Well, most of the day. Alfred and I started out at the gym, then picked up the rest of the family (except for Emily, who had to work) and headed to an Indian restaurant for a lunch buffet. It was really good. After lunch Max and Ellery went home, and Robyn, Alfred and I went to the zoo. It was hot. But fun. My favorite part was the bonobo monkeys. One had a little 6 month old baby who was super cute, and the 2 other older ones in the exhibit were swinging on ropes and chasing each other around and playing. One even kept spinning around in circles and then rolling down the little hill into the water. We must have watched them for 15 minutes. There's a penguin exhibit there too, it's the weirdest penguin exhibit I've ever seen. First of all, it wasn't in a building with AC, just outside. Second, there was just a tiny little viewing window to watch them swim, and it was right at ground level so you had to bend down or sit way back to see them swim. And there were only like 7 of them. Lame.

After the zoo we went back to their house to start making dinner: the most complicated hamburgers ever, onion rings, and french fries. The burgers were really good, just a lot of work, and the onion rings were delicious. The fries were just ok. The picture is of one of the burgers, it has cabbage, special spicy ketchup, tomato, cheese, onion, and fried egg on it. They were huge. We're waiting to digest a bit before we have dessert: blueberry cheesecake! Hopefully we'll both fit in the car to go home later.

check it out!

I think everyone who reads this regularly is my friend on facebook also, so you should go over there and check out the pictures I posted today. The museum is getting some billboards! It's super exciting, definitely more exposure than we've ever had before. Hopefully it works and we're nice and busy this summer. I'd like to have a job for the rest of the summer.

In other news, I passed a pick up truck on the highway doing probably 70 miles an hour, with 4 little kids in the truck bed. Ah, Florida.

What in the what?

I just picked 6 or 7 of these juicy little bastards off of my tomato plants. They're as big around as my thumb and each one was somewhere between 3 and 4 inches long. I think. I'm not great at estimating measurements. Anyway, they're eating my tomatoes. And I think something else is climbing on my squash. Stupid wildlife.

Quote of the day

Gara: I am sooooo drunk right now, guys.

par-tay!

Last night was our annual end of the season party for work! Not to brag, but I totally started this tradition 5 years ago. I planned the first 2 annual parties, then my replacement planned it the year I was gone, then last year we didn't have one (it sort of fell through), then this year it was all me again. We set the date about 2 1/2 weeks ago, I ordered all the food within the past 3 days, then got all the decorations and got everything set up yesterday afternoon. I did have help with decorations and set up. It was pretty fun, I do like doing this sort of thing. It was pretty simple too. We had about 70 people RSVP yes, and probably about 50-60 showed up. I'm not sure, I could try to figure it out but haven't bothered. It started out all normal and innocent.

After the first couple of hours, people started leaving, and the people who were sticking around started getting a little tipsy. (We had 3 cases of beer and 20 bottles of wine.) At some point my maintenance guy started singing along with the music using the microphone that was attached to the sound system. It all went downhill from there.

I may or may not have performed "Baby Got Back" for the benefit of a few of my employees. I was smart enough to stay far, far away from the microphone. It was really a lot of fun, I had a blast! It was a great way to end our busy season and go out with a bang.

memorial-ness

I actually took a holiday off - I was off yesterday for Memorial Day! More because I'm working this coming Saturday than because of the holiday, but that's ok. It meant that I/we could go to Ilya and Mercedes' for their Memorial Day picnic! A whole bunch of people ended up coming, and we had a whole bunch of really good food. Ilya made ribs (which are always awesome), we brought smoked pork (which Alfred chopped instead of pulling, also good) and smoked wings, and then there was corn on the cob, potato salad, cole slaw, a couple of dips, and a variety of desserts. It was all delicious and I ate too much. But, what else is new?

We also spread the fun of speed Uno to a few new people that have never played before. You know us, never missing a chance for speed Uno. I've actually tried getting people to play at work a couple of times, but somehow our jobs keep getting in the way. Anyway, Ilya and Mercedes also bought Connect 4. I used to play in like 4th grade and loved it then, and apparently still love it now. So, it was fun. Of course we did not take any pictures, so no pictures again with this post. I'll have to work on this for my next post or 2. Sorry.