back in the dirty south

Ah, the warm, non-snowy, dirty south. Actually right now it's much cleaner than the north with all its salt and crap all over the roads. Alfred's car needed a bath when we got back, it was pretty disgusting. We got back Tuesday night just before midnight, it took us exactly 18 hours. That included stops for gas/food/restrooms, traffic in Charlotte and Jacksonville, an attempted beer run at 5:45am, and horrible weather in Pennsylvania. That's what this picture is from. This was a major highway, it hadn't been plowed at all so we couldn't see the road, and snow was blowing everywhere. Traffic was going about 30 mph. It was ridiculous.

Our trip was nice, except for the 3 cats that now live in my parents' house. Our allergies just love going there more and more every year. The new cat is cute, my nose and lungs just hate it. We saw lots of family, got some great gifts (including a bound book of our road trip blog, which includes all of our posts, pictures, and comments, it's really nice.) Most importantly, we played the new Mario Brothers game for the Wii. Alfred, Katie and I were the main players, though Dad and Uncle Ken helped out at times as well. We basically played for 4 days straight. And we beat the game! It was awesome. It's fun to play because when you play with multiple players you're all on the screen at once, so you can be nice and use teamwork or shove each other into pits and stuff. We also ate a lot of food. Like, a lot of food. But what else is new.

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!

a pair of Guys

So, you all know my dad, Guy.

And you may know the Food Network personality, Guy Fieri.


I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed this, but.... don't they kind of look alike? I mean, take away the Guy Fieri's hair, and













Or you could give my dad a little hair













It's uncanny! And has anyone ever seen the 2 of them in the same room? I know I haven't! The mystery deepens...

last Christmas post

After all, it's New Years Eve! Today's also Jeff's (Lindsay's husband) birthday. He's pretty old, I think 32 maybe. Happy birthday! Anyway, it's about time I stopped writing about Christmas. I left work early today, partially to finish cleaning and getting ready for tonight, but mostly just because I wanted to. I'm also taking tomorrow off, but have to go back Friday. I was expecting the other girl to be back at work today, but she called this morning and asked if it was ok if she took a couple extra days off because she and her fiance just broke up. I said sure. Anyway, Mercedes and Ilya are coming over tonight, we're going to have some good food, a bunch of alcohol, and a bonfire. Then we're making french onion soup for tomorrow, using our beef bones to make the stock. I'm excited.

Back to Christmas. I never got my mom's pictures before they left, which sucks, because I didn't take any pictures on Christmas Eve and I know there were a few good ones. Mom, please email me those. Or send a cd or something. Anyway, here's a good one of the cookies that Katie decorated:

I like this one, it's how we spent several evenings: in front of a bonfire.

Christmas night, Maureene made lumpia, which were like eggrolls, using the leftover pork from dinner. She had a bit of help rolling them, while everyone else was in the picture above.

Then she fried them the next morning, and we had a delicious breakfast. We took the rest with us shooting and had a delicious lunch as well.

I wanted to post a video of us shooting, but I can't seem to get them to work on my computer, so I can't find a good one. So instead here's a picture of my dad, covered in cabbages:

And that's all I have the patience for. Have a happy new year!

good clean Christmas fun

First things first: a Christmas day post! We started out nice and early (well, most of us did, anyway) to get cracking on some food. I also made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast, which we had with mimosas. Then we hit the presents! I played Santa, but look too hideous in all the pictures to post them. We made a mess. We were careful to cover as much of the floor as possible.

Some Wii was played, since Katie had just received Mario Kart. Then we had to get started on the hard core cooking. Here's Alfred working on the chicken. The smoker with the pork shoulders is in the background.

We also had macaroni and cheese, baked beans, buttermilk biscuits, turnip and mustard greens, and cole slaw. All from scratch, of course. With apple pie, cookies, and chocolate birthday cake for dessert. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

While we were working on food, everyone else took part in a gingerbread house competition. I made it extra challenging by making the gingerbread pieces while drunk, so they didn't quite fit together. Surprise! But that made it fun. I think.

Ilya and Mercedes won for most decorated house (unfortunately all the M&M's caved one side of the roof in at first, but they rebuilt):


My parents and Katie won for most creative use of materials (theirs collapsed, so they remade it as a FEMA shelter after a hurricane):


Max, Robyn, and Ellery won for best plan (they cut their pieces to fit together better before construction):


And Mike and Maureene won for best overall. Theirs didn't collapse at all, even though they did use a few toothpicks to help it stay together until all the frosting dried. They also did a lot of decoration. Check out their gingerbread people in the second picture:



Then we ate, opened more presents, and sang to Emily. Then we drank again. All in all, a pretty great Christmas.

cookies galore

My parents are here! They got in yesterday afternoon, we went out to eat and then headed to a shopping center and played some chess. Because that's what you assume you would do at a shopping center: play chess. My dad won.

Today we spent aaaaaaalll day making cookies! To be more specific, my mom and I made cookies while Alfred watched and drank and my dad played a hunting game on their Wii. We made those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss in the middle, almond cookies with almond frosting, peanut butter oatmeal M&M cookies, peppermint sugar cookies (I started making them in the shape of candy canes but didn't like how they were turning out, so I made the rest as pinwheels and didn't like those either, oh well), cut out sugar cookies, and cut out anise cookies.

We frosted all of the cut outs and decorated the anise ones.

Katie's going to decorate the sugar cut outs when she gets down here. As we learned when making our Easter cookies last year, she's much better at piping than I am.

Now we're *watching* (thank you, mom and Ro) Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Interesting choice of movies to watch with my parents, yes. It's good so far. They're dropping quite a few f-bombs.

happy birthday, dad!

Yup, it's Big Guy's birthday today. I called him this afternoon and spent 10 minutes hearing about how one of the dogs bit the other, and so he was trying to take a picture for me so I could see what he (the dog) looked like. Apparently he looked like Rocky (as in Balboa). We also discussed politics, which is always interesting. We don't tend to agree on politics, my dad and I. But that's ok. He doesn't read this, I don't think, but happy birthday anyway, just in case.

I also forgot to mention that yesterday was both Lindsay's and Allison's anniversary. They got married the exact same day, just a few miles apart, 3 years ago. I don't have any pictures of them to post. Sorry.

We just got back from dinner, I joined Alfred house sitting tonight so he took me out to eat. We went to a Cuban place, and it was pretty fantastic. I learned that I love fried plantains with a passion that burns from the bottom of my heart. We got a bit of a late start because Alfred's car battery died, so I had to go pick him up at work and hold a flashlight (tough work) while he took out the battery. Stupid car. We're trying to figure out a plan now to get him back to his car tomorrow. I think he thinks I'm not listening and is getting annoyed. Sorry honey. Ok we have to go pick up a car from his parents. Peace out, girl scout.

guess who's back, back again

Katie's back, tell a friend.

But first, I was a little miss Susie Homemaker last night. I chopped up stuff for our dinner tonight, which we put in the crockpot this morning to cook all day. (Lamb shank and breast, if you're interested. It was good.) There wasn't much to do, just chop onions and rosemary, but it made it nice and easy this morning. Rosemary the herb is kind of strange looking. Who the hell decided to eat something that looked like pine needles? Rosemary the friend, however, is rather fetching.

We had a rosemary plant once. Robyn gave it to us. We put it out on our dock so it had full sun, and it hurled itself into the water to avoid a slow, painful death at our inept hands. Can't say I blame it.

Back to Katie. She's down here for a couple of days to finish up her exams (we were in NY for most of her exam week) and do her dives to get certified. She's probably going to do her best to corrupt us while she's here. My parents have become pretty corrupted since she moved back this summer. I got multiple text messages the other night regarding a certain funneling incident.

I don't seem to recall this occurring at any point of my teenage years. Clearly Katie has some sort of voodoo magic hold over them. It's pure insanity.

happy birthday mom!

Today's my mom's birthday. I'm guessing she didn't notice the link to this blog in the email I put it in, so she never comes here, which is good because she probably wouldn't like this picture. It's from Christmas last year, we all smoked out of the hookah together. It was a good old fashioned family Christmas. How old is she? Old enough to have a 27 year old daughter, that's how old!

I was making her birthday cheesecake last night (pictures will be here tomorrow, of course) and I burned my finger on the oven rack. Stupid. It blew up into a gross looking blister and hurt like a little bitch. It doesn't hurt this morning, but it's still nasty looking. I'll spare you a picture of that. For now. At least the burn is on my middle finger - middle finger injuries are kind of fun, as far as injuries go.

Also worthy to report: my dad caught a crab this morning! He's been going fishing off (what's left of) our dock every morning and hasn't been having much luck, he caught this little guy today though. I thought it was neat.

By the way, do you like my new banner at the top of the page?? I made it myself :)

house meeting #3

(James Blunt sucks. All of his songs are the same. Lame guitar/piano music, then the same 3 lines sung over and over and over. I bet they're easy to write. I know they're easy to get stuck in your head. Guess what we were listening to in the car.)

So Alfred went to another meeting about the new house yesterday. This one was with DEP, who we had already met at the house site and who indicated it wouldn't be any problem to get a permit from them. There was also a woman from Water Management there, and she apparently was not so easy. We now have to pay an engineer to say that our house will not cause the surrounding area to flood. It seems a little silly to have to go through this step, since we're surrounded by swamp, which is connected directly to a canal, which drains into a lake, which connects to the St Johns River. We are literally less than a mile from the lake, less than 2 from the river. We couldn't flood the area if we tried. But we have to pay someone to write this down for her. Stupid rules.

The good house news is that between moving the house by 5 feet and shrinking the pad a little, we only need to request a permit to fill .06 acres of land now. That's almost half of what it was before. We're submitting the paperwork to the Army Corp today, hopefully he'll be satisfied with what we've done and will just give us a damn permit. He said if it all looks ok, we can have a permit in 3-4 weeks! That would be great. I just hope he accepts it, he said at our meeting it's a 1 try thing, if he says no the first time we can't change it and try again. It's a little nerve wracking, but hopefully it will work out ok.

In other news, my parents are on their way down to visit. They left yesterday and should be here tonight around 6 or 7. We bought lots of meat and TP at Costco last night. I hope we make it through the week. My dad's on a diet because he's either borderline or actually diabetic, so I'm going to make a brownie recipe that has black beans and splenda instead of oil and sugar. I'm obviously not telling him that's what's in them until they're gone. I bet he'll like them until he finds out about the beans, then he'll hate them on principle. I made a similar recipe for the Superbowl and they were actually pretty good.

Hm, no pictures yet. Well, since Alfred's the one who bugs me when there are no pictures, here's an old one of him holding Ella. See, he totally loves babies!