Milestones

Lots of landmarks this week! First, a couple of days ago (not sure exactly what day to be honest) marked my second anniversary of blogging. Thanks to all of you crazy people who keep coming here to read this insanity. Second, yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary. It makes me feel old. Yesterday we had exactly the kind of weather I was afraid of for our wedding: cold, windy, generally miserable for Florida in March. Alfred and I went out to dinner. Pizza and beer, nothing fancy, but it was somewhere I had been wanting to go and it was really good so that's all that matters. Third, today is Ella's seventh birthday! Talk about feeling old! We sent her a couple of sundresses for her gift. She's definitely old enough now to have her own opinions on clothing and stuff, so I hope she likes them. Happy birthday Ella!

We've been house/dog sitting for Max and Robyn the past couple of days. They're in Milan for about 5 days, Max went with a friend of theirs for work and invited Robyn to come. Lucky stiffs. Really, we're just keeping Ellery company while he takes care of everything. Although I have walked the dog a couple times, so I've been mildly useful. It's a whole different traffic situation going to work from here, but at least I had to go to work really early yesterday (yeah, that's really a great thing) so I beat most of the traffic. I get to go in today too, but the weekend should be fine traffic wise too. Oh, and speaking of traffic, I thought of something yesterday that I definitely do not miss about our old house: all the motorcycle traffic from Bike Week! They're loud and go too slow and band together so you can't pass them. But I don't have to deal with them this year!

preparation

Alfred's birthday is on Sunday, but since everyone we know is too busy to celebrate on his actual birthday, we're doing it up tomorrow. We're smoking an entire pig, a couple of pork shoulders, a couple of chickens, and a cow's head. Yeah, not sure whose idea the head was, but we'll see how it goes. They just cut the tongue out and are prepping the rest of the head. It's huge! (That's what she said!)

Alfred and I are house sitting this weekend still, so we're over at his parents' house tonight to help get things ready for tomorrow. Mercedes and Ilya came over too, and we've been working (more or less) for the past few hours. I made 4 (yup, 4) pecan pies, Mercedes tackled the fudge, Robyn and Alfred collaborated on the cole slaw, Robyn's been making some secret sauces, and Alfred and Max have been seasoning meat. There's a massive pot of boiled peanuts cooling on the stove. The gigantic smoker that we're borrowing is heating up outside. We're putting the meat on tonight and smoking it all night long so it's done in time for lunch tomorrow. It's going to be a heck of a Cracker (Florida pioneer) feast!

We've also been doing a bit of eating and drinking tonight. Alfred has discovered the wonders of Bold City brewery and bought a growler today for us to all sample. He also got to open his gift from Ilya and Mercedes: 27 pounds of peanuts! The boy's a peanut eating fool.

Tomorrow should be pretty exciting. We're going to have enough food to feed an army. Good blog fodder!

word

So, we've been busy. And I've been sick. I was fine all weekend, felt just a tiny bit sniffly Sunday as we were getting ready for bed, but totally healthy. Then bam, woke up with a miserable cold Monday morning. Going through tissues like it was my job. Today it seems to have moved more into my throat and chest, so at least my nose gets a break. Which reminds me, I should go refill my orange juice glass. ..... Ok, I'm back. I really did go get oj, too. You can ask Alfred. He's sitting here on the phone with Ilya. They're talking about blueberry picking this weekend. We need to stock up again, our supply from last year is out.

So, the business. Monday evening we had a couple of friends stop by for dinner. We see them about once every 2 years, they live out near Tampa. Alfred knows JJ (the guy) from like middle school or something, I think they were in boy scouts together, and he was in the their wedding.

They ended up spending the night in the guest cottage and then leaving in the morning. They brought some sort of good beer which I didn't drink because I was miserable and dripping snot everywhere. Being stuffed up is the worst. But a fun evening, anyway. Christy works at Busch Gardens as a zoo keeper, so she had plenty of interesting anecdotes to share.

Yesterday we met up with Ilya, Mercedes, Max, and Ellery for a big wing dinner. We polished off 100 wings without much effort. They were ok. Not Anchor Bar quality, certainly, but not bad. Then we went to Ilya and Mercedes' house to work on a website and spent the night up there. We were woken up at 6:30 by a dog barking down the street, but someone finally let the dog in (or someone shot it or something) because we eventually fell back asleep and didn't wake up until 8:30! It was craziness! I have big plans to go to bed early tonight too, so tomorrow I'll be completely healthy again. I've been saying that since Monday, and eventually it has to come true.

Alfred's about to make banana chutney. We have 2 bananas that are far beyond ripe. I'll report back with the results later. Oh, and as he was about to move the load of laundry from the washer into the drier he discovered another load already in the drier. As he just said, "we need a better maid."

two more weeks

Then our busy season at work is over. I'll be back to 9-5 work days, sitting in my office for more than 5 minutes at a time, taking lunch breaks.... ah, summer. I'll also be alone, because Kara's quitting, which I've been expecting. She's been totally checked out the last couple of weeks, she's more than ready to leave. She called in sick this past Tuesday, then told our boss that she wasn't really sick, she was just "exhausted" from having to walk part of the way to her dentist appointment the day before. Yeah, I'd like to call in tired too, but some of us have a work ethic. It still pisses me off. My boss told me I should call Kara on Friday morning and tell her I was too tired to come to work. I was tempted, seeing as how I was there until 10:15 Thursday evening. Two more weeks, just two more weeks. I can do it.

In other news, I was emailing Mike one of the power hour CDs we made (so that he can listen to a song and then drink) and gmail told me about a program called myPowerHour - you put in your playlist, set how long you want it to go for, and it plays a minute (or more or less, depending on how you set it up) of each song, plays a sound at every minute change, and can even keep track of each person, what they're drinking, what minute and beer you're on, and even your blood alcohol content based on what beer you're drinking! It's so unfortunate that we didn't find this sooner. All of our power hours when Mike visited could have been so much more official. Of course I downloaded it, maybe tonight Alfred and I will give it a test run. I'm so excited!

It is a little creepy that gmail can look at my email subjects and then give me an ad for something it thinks I want... I mean, I know that sort of thing existed, but I never had it actually work for me. Or I never paid much attention before. I guess the phrase "power hour" is enough to catch my eye.

We're house sitting again this weekend, first time in awhile. Alfred's out doing something with Max at the model, so I'm here along (with Sam, the dog). Seeing as how it's sunny and gorgeous outside, I'm at a house with a pool, and I brought a bathing suit, I'm going to get off the computer now and go enjoy the fact that I live in Florida. Peace out!

explanation of the white trashiness

(Mike, I timed it, it took me a total of 39 minutes to complete this post, start to finish. Drunk blogging, which you have seen, is totally different from my normal, sober blogging. Although I am about halfway through a Kahlua and cream (aka skim milk) right now.)

So we spent another weekend as vagrants. After work on Friday I headed up to meet Alfred and his parents for dinner near the house we've been working on (the one we've been painting and staying at here and there, not the model.) We spent the night at that house, then spent all morning and early afternoon Saturday looking for dining room furniture for the model. We were sort of in a hurry because I had to head back to work that afternoon, hence Alfred slurping down some leftovers for lunch as we sat in traffic in the truck. It was total class.

After work I did some shopping, then headed back up to pick Ellery up at work and meet Alfred at his parents' house. Max and Robyn had tickets to see Wicked (which I'm totally jealous of) so we were in charge of getting Ellery home. We ended up staying for dinner and then spending the night. By the way, if you ever wonder if there's anyone out there who actually watches the NFL draft, wonder no more. Yes, Ellery recorded and watched (though with some fast forwarding) the entire thing.

Sunday we did a little more furniture searching, found a great table at Walmart that they no longer carry, then headed back to the model with all of our loot so I could set things up. We also got to meet up with Ilya and Mercedes for lunch at 5 Guys. And so, without any further ado, I present model pictures. First, the bathroom downstairs:

The master bedroom:


Master bath:


Kids' bedroom (fun fact: the bottom bunk has a mattress, the top bunk has a box spring. Total bitch to make it):

There are several toys in the toy box, and a couple of Dr. Seuss books on top of the dresser.

Baby room:

We plan to add a couple of pieces of furniture to this side, I forgot to get them at Ikea.

And my personal favorite, the kids' bathroom:

How cute is this set?? I would like this for my own bathroom!

I also found a set at Walmart that had sea creatures on the shower curtain, the soap dispenser has an octopus on it, the soap dish is a turtle, and the toothbrush holder is a lobster who holds the toothbrushes in his claws and tail. Freaking adorable! I need kids so I have an excuse to buy that shit. Or maybe not. Also, there's no attic, so no, we're not living here.

So that's where all the Ikea stuff went. Keep in mind, all of that furniture cost about $2200. Not bad. I bought a bunch of knick knacks for the kitchen, so I'll take a picture of that when I set it all up. Unfortunately Hobby Lobby doesn't carry aby fake fruit bowls in which to hide boxes of cereal. We still need to buy a table for the eating nook in the kitchen, and either a table or couch for the living room area. No one has quite decided on that yet. But thank God, we're almost done. As much fun as it's been to spend other people's money, it's getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass.

3 beds in 3 nights

(So this guy I think I "dated" for a day in middle school is chatting with me on facebook. See, this is the kind of crap I could have avoided by not joining. Curse you, Katherine and Katie!)

We've been living the vagrant life this weekend. On Friday after work I drove up and met Alfred at one of the houses he bought through work. The plan was to spend the night there and do some work on Saturday, but as with many of our plans, it ended up changing slightly. Turns out the well pump didn't work, so we had no water. So we ended up at Alfred's parents' house that night. Saturday morning we started out at our CPA's office (we're such grown ups) to get our taxes done. I stayed in the car and read, thinking it would take about 30 minutes. An hour and a half later, I had to pee like crazy and Alfred still wasn't back, so I went into the lobby of the big fancy building in search of a restroom. Luckily there was a woman there who pointed me in the right direction. I realized once I looked in the mirror how crazy I looked: jeans, sweatshirt that looks like something out of the 70s, glasses, and windblown hair. In other words, like a bum.

Eventually Alfred came out and we went to Chik Fil A for breakfast. We got there right as they were switching from serving breakfast to serving lunch, so we got a little of each. I decided that was a good time to put my contacts in, so I did so in the bathroom. It took awhile to get our food, so the manager gave us a coupon for a free sandwich, which was awesome. Since we had to redeem it at that restaurant Alfred went up to get it before we left. While we were eating that, an employee came around with a tray of breakfast food that hadn't sold and offered us samples. So of course we took some. While we were finishing those up, she came back around and asked if we would take the last 2 sandwiches so they didn't have to throw them out. So we did. It was flippin fantastic. We ended up getting 10 different items for $11. We figure it was because we looked like bums and seemed so desperate for food.

Eventually we did make it to the house.

We got some painting done, although not as much as I had hoped (I always forget how long it takes) then gave up around 6 and left to meet Ilya and Mercedes for some beer, wings and Uno. We crashed at their house that night. We took advantage of the running water and showered too, which was nice. Cause when you're a vagrant, you need to take advantage of those situations.

Today we were up early again and back to the house. More painting, more plumbing, more running to Home Depot and other houses Alfred has bought. Then we met up with Ilya, Mercedes, Max, and Robyn for lunch at this awesome barbecue place. We finally ended up getting home at about 6. Since then we've both exercised, done laundry, made granola, Alfred made lentil soup to cook overnight for lunches tomorrow, and I obviously blogged. Busy, busy. And I got harassed by that dude on myspace. He said I should call him. Um, weird. This is why I don't want any reference to my blog or any link to it on facebook, by the way. Cause of weirdos. I just logged the f off. Ooh, granola's done. Time for bed, laters!

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.

yowza

I totally ran out of time to blog last night. I didn't get home from work until after 7, then I had to make dinner, empty the dishwasher, clean up the kitchen, wash a bunch of dishes, fold laundry, iron, and cut my nails. No time for blogging! See?

I made the same pumpkin sausage soup we made last weekend, but it was way better this time. We had another pretty awesome dinner tonight, I made Puerto Rican style chicken and beans. Then I decided to sit on my ass and watch SNL's election special from last night instead of cleaning the house, so luckily for everyone I can also blog.

We spent Halloween night at Ilya and Mercedes' house handing out candy to kids. There weren't a ton of kids, but there were enough to entertain me. I also got dressed up a bit. Apparently I looked kind of creepy.

Alfred dressed up as a toucan. It's hard to see in this picture, but at least it's a good shot of his beard. It's impressive, no? Mercedes was a lion and Ilya was an elephant.

As I was taking off my makeup, I realized that the blue around my eyes made it look like I had a black eye, and the red around my mouth looked like blood, so we had to take a picture of us simulating domestic abuse.

Saturday we took the rhino out to the land Max owns where we're going to go this weekend with Mike to shoot things. We had to scope things out and get the lay of the land. Then coming home that evening I got pulled over for having a headlight out. Damn pigs. Luckily he let me off with only a warning. This is the second time I've had a headlight out in my life, and both times I got pulled over. This time the light was out for only 1 day when I got pulled over. I bought a new one yesterday and put it in myself, and it actually worked, so I was pretty proud of myself. Max and Alfred also fixed a few other things on my car this weekend, it's nice to have working windshield wiper solution for a change.

Ok, back to tv. I'm excited about the election, but I don't think we'll actually find out who won tonight. Maybe tomorrow, if we're lucky. I hope it doesn't run on for days like the last couple. Exciting stuff!

happy birthday Max and Egee, and Mike's weekend, part 2: drinking

Today is Max's birthday, he's a whopping 60 years old today. I told Alfred yesterday that 60 is a good age to become a grandfather. It's also Egee's birthday - that's Alfred's grandmother, Max's mother. Yes, he was born on his mother's birthday. He was the fourth of her 4 children, and her only son. She says he was the best birthday present she ever got. I'd put a picture of her up, but to be perfectly honest, I'm writing this on Monday night to post automatically on Tuesday night, so I don't have a picture of her on the laptop. Dammit, now I've blown my cover. I'm several minutes deeper into the power hour mentioned in yesterday's post. Bear with me, please.

So, drinking. We've done quite a bit of it. Friday night we went out and some of us drank, unfortunately some of us had to work on Saturday so we had to go easy. We had a gift certificate that required that we spend $100. We ordered mozzarella sticks, chili cheese fries, 10 mini burgers, 48 wings, a piece of cake, and 2 pieces of pie. And a couple of pitchers of beer, of course. On Saturday I had to work, so Alfred and Mike spent the day at our local haunt, drinking and watching college football. They were there for 9 hours straight. They went through 3 different waiters/waitresses. And made friends with some lawyer who I think Alfred has a crush on.

Surprisingly, it was Sunday night before we did our first power hour. Mike brought his power hour CD, which has 60 songs that play for a minute apiece, so I was off the hook for timing. I have a sneaking suspicion that the CD wasn't 60 perfectly timed 1 minute songs, but hey, it worked. Since we're house sitting and don't have our full range of drinking paraphenalia, I used a little measuring cup instead of a shot glass. I got a bit artsy-fartsy with the camera.

Mike and I did some dancing.


I then woke up after about 6 1/2 hours of sleep and worked for 8 1/2 hours. Cause I'm the man. It was probably the best power hour of my career. Seriously, I didn't even feel a thing until about 30 minutes in. It helped that we had eaten roughly 75 pounds worth of junk food earlier that day for Max's birthday party, my stomach didn't get that sloshy feeling it usually gets with a power hour. We were also able to bottle the beer that Mike made with the Mr. Beer kit that we bought him last Christmas.

And now that I've already blown my cover about writing this post in advance, I would like to announce that we are 50 minutes in to tonight's power hour, and not only am I doing well, but I'm still able to type coherent sentences. Well, I assume these are coherent. I'll have to check back tomorrow. However, we just realized that while we are 50 minutes in, we have only gone through 36 ounces apiece. Something's not quite right. I guess that's why I've been doing so well tonight and last night. Damn.

happy 4th of july!

Let's take a look back through time, to the Independence Days of T&A's past...

2002: our first 4th of July as a couple. We were living in DC that summer, Alfred had just graduated. We walked around the mall and watched the fireworks from the base of the Lincoln Memorial. It was packed, and CNN was set up right next to us to record the fireworks. It was awesome.



2005: We were on our honeymoon in Spain, after Ilya and Mercedes' wedding. These pictures may not actually be from the 4th, but they're pretty close. We saw a lot of fireworks there, there were all these festivals going on and they had fireworks for every one. It was really fun. On this particular evening we joined a few of Mercedes' friends for dinner and a parade/fireworks, which actually took place right in front of the church that their wedding was in. Funny story about the alcohol I'm drinking in the first picture: it's a wine made locally called mistela, we ordered a bottle of it one afternoon with lunch and the waitress sort of looked at us funny. Turns out it's very sweet, almost syrupy, and way more alcoholic than wine. People usually have very small glasses or shots of it. And we drank a whole damn bottle.



2007: Katie was visiting, having come down to get some things taken care of in preparation of her moving down here for school. We spent the day with Alfred's parents and some friends. We got to dress up, have a watermelon seed spitting contest, and take turns trying to hit me, a moving target, with little patriotic footballs. Alfred won the seed spitting contest and was awarded a prize by Max.


Good times. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

new house

I know I've mentioned it briefly to some of you, but we have a meeting about it today so I figure I'll write about it. Several years ago, my in laws bought a chunk of land, sold off pieces of it to a builder, and built their own house on part of it. They still own several acres (I don't know exactly how much) but most of it is swamp, and hard to get to. There is one little piece that they have an easement to get to, but again, it's mostly swamp and not right on a road. Well several months ago Max or Alfred or someone decided to try to separate that piece and make it its own lot so that it could be sold and built on. Then that changed into us building on it. So that's what we're attempting to do. It's going to be a bit of a process, because before we can do anything we have to get permission to even build there. It's been legally separated from the rest of their property, and we had to apply to 2 different agencies to get a permit to build. The county has 30 days before they have to make a decision, so we're still waiting to hear from them. We heard from the Army Corp of Engineers (I think that's who it is, anyway) pretty quickly, and they said no in about 5 different ways. Apparently they think it's just a developer trying to wring every last cent out of the property. We have a meeting set with them next week to convince them that we're real people and will actually be living there. So we have a meeting this afternoon with the company who's helping us file all these applications to discuss the meeting next week. Should be fun. Hopefully it all goes well, because this whole hour commute thing sucks.

In other news, I ate a huge piece of cake and then had a piece of pie last night. Since then I've had an old Nickelodeon commercial for the Yogi Bear cartoon stuck in my head. It goes "Cakes, pies, cakes, pies, chicken thighs!" Then there's some music, and then "weekdays on Nick!" It's driving me crazy. I found this picture on a website for a Jellystone campground in Niagara Falls. I think we went camping there once. I think I talked to Boo Boo on the phone. I wonder if that actually happened.

last night

We had our second anniversary dinner last night with Alfred's parents. They made a huge delicious Mexican feast, with a yummy chocolate cake that I was in charge of cutting. The pieces were a little uneven, I ended up with a slab that probably weighed about half a pound. Totally on accident, I swear. Our first anniversary dinner was at a restaurant that happened to have an all-you-can-eat crab leg special that night, so we both had that. Also delicious.

I called Ella last night to wish her a happy birthday, but she was far too busy opening presents to talk on the phone. So I talked to my brother for awhile, and my nephew (who's 3 1/2) for a few minutes. I asked Mason if he had a yummy dinner and he didn't answer right away, then I hear my brother in the background, "she can't see you nod your head buddy." He's too damn cute.

The most important development of last night was our gift from Max and Robyn - a Kitchen Aid standing mixer! I am so pumped. All I've wanted to do today is go home and bake some bread. I found a recipe for white wheat bread, which is Alfred's favorite, so I think I'm going to make that this weekend. I've also decided that I want to start my own business now, but that's a story for another day I think.