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.

we're getting there

We've been working hard on this whole "moving" thing. It's really not very fun. We spent about half of the day Saturday and then most of the day today at the new house, finishing up some cleaning and painting that needed to be done. We had painted all of the walls already, but needed to paint all of the white trim in the kitchen and bathroom. When we paint, I'm the one who gets to do all the edging, so most of my time was spent doing that. But it looks so much better now, it's amazing what a coat of paint will do. All we have left to paint now is a little touching up in a few spots in the kitchen. Alfred also put some insulation around one of the doors, there was a pretty big gap that is now much smaller. Our electric bill for that house was over $90 last month, and we weren't even living there! We do keep the heat on to about 58 or so when we're not there, partially to keep the pipes from freezing since it's been getting so cold at night, but that was still pretty crazy. To compare, our bill here was about $120. Little to no insulation + an electric company with the highest rates in FL = that sucks! Hopefully sealing the cracks around the doors will help.

Saturday afternoon and evening was spent with Alfred's family for Valentine's Day. Emily was home from school for the long weekend and had her boyfriend over, so we got to meet him. He seemed like a nice chap. We had Caesar salad (with dressing made by the incomparable Alfred, as taught by the incomparable Doug), some awesome red velvet ice cream cake, and then a whole bunch of fried things, thanks to Robyn and some of Emily's friends that came over after dinner. Then Sunday was spent mostly around the house, except when I had to go to work. Yeah, I had to work on a Sunday, on Valentine's Day no less, because of some stupid adult group that showed up 40 minutes late for an hour tour and then complained because they didn't get to do everything they were expecting to do. Here's an idea, move your asses out of the gift shop and get where you're supposed to be on time.

I finished a bottle of liquor tonight - 1 guess what kind it was! (hint: I still have some fat free half and half in the fridge...)

catching up

Still working on the last week's worth of activities. I had to work on Wednesday, and Alfred stayed home to unpack and take care of some laundry and other chores. When I got home, I was greeted by a new little friend: Mr. Squeakerson. He's a squirrel. Alfred caught him when he ran into the garage earlier in the afternoon. He lived in a laundry basket over night. He was really cute. After some internet research though, we decided he was better off out in the wilderness, so we let him go Thursday morning.

We both worked on Thursday, then went out for a lovely sushi dinner for New Year's Eve. Just the two of us. Aw, romantic. Actually we stuffed ourselves so much I kind of wanted to puke. Then we went over to Ilya to Mercedes' house for New Year's Eve. We ate some more, drank, exchanged gifts, and generally had a rip-roaring good time. We even made it past 1:00! Well, I fell asleep on the couch for a few minutes, but other than that we did well. We made a huge delicious breakfast this morning, too. God, this blog is all about food. Well, you've all met me. Shouldn't be too surprising.

On New Year's Day we hung out with Alfred's family and celebrated Christmas with them. Again, lots of awesome food, nice gifts, the works. We also helped Emily with a project for her dorm (she's an R.A.) It was fun spreading out Christmas this year, it made the holidays last much longer. Then we made some soup to continue our long-standing New Year's Day tradition. This year we tried some dessert fruit soups: strawberry kiwi and blueberry peach. Interesting idea, but they left something to be desired. Too bad.

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.

packing

Holy cow, do we have a lot of stuff. We have to fit a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, pillows, a sheet and blanket, a sleeping pad, a camping grill, and our bags into my little Hyundai Elantra. And not only does it need to fit, but we need to have space left over to pick up Doug in Washington DC (that's the plan, anyway). Uh, sure. Luckily we're starting on it today so we have a couple of days to get it all to work. I pack the bags, Alfred packs the car. We stick with what we're good at.


In other news, I finished the last of the Twilight series today. Thank God, now I can get on with my life.

Oh, and the fourth of July! We were supposed to be hosting a party with Phil and Lucy at our house, but it ended up getting moved to their neighbors' house, so we spent the day there instead. We met some new people, got to know other people better, ate some good food, drank a bunch, played some flip cup. It was a lot of fun. Waking up the next morning to go to work was not as fun, but that's ok. Here's Alfred in the midst of a round of flip cup. His team won that round. I played a little, my team won 2 of the 3 rounds I played. And we ate watermelon spiked with vodka. Awesome.

#300!

This is my 300th post. Neato. It's also Father's Day, so happy Father's Day. I also missed Robyn's birthday last week, so happy belated birthday to Robyn. I think that's it for important dates. So, as promised, the cupcake pictures. First, Mason. He did not want his picture taken, so I told him I'd just take one of his cupcake. That's why he's not smiling.

And Ella. She was perfectly happy to pose for me. She had been hitting the frosting pretty hard, in case you can't tell by her face.

Then Tracy spent 30 minutes cleaning up sprinkles. But the cupcakes were delicious!

happy memorial day!

A bit belated, yes. I meant to post this yesterday.

We house sat again this weekend, and ended up doing quite a bit of socializing. Friday night we met up with Lucy and Phil and a bunch of other people to go to some bar and watch Lucy's brother's improv group. They were pretty funny, we had a good time. Saturday we went to the gym and kicked our own asses quite thoroughly. My legs are still a bit sore. That evening we went over to Ilya and Mercedes' house to eat some ribs and play some games. We tested out that power hour program I mentioned a week or so ago - it was awesome! We only did a power 30, but it worked really well. I think we'll be using it a lot in the future.

Sunday we went to go see the new Terminator movie. I was sort of expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I enjoyed it. Better than the third one, certainly. We did another power 30 that evening. God, I wish we had found this program 6 months ago.

Yesterday we hung out with Alfred's family.

We did a bit of drinking.

Wait, that's not us. Emily put one of the bottles on the ground and a raccoon actually ran off with it. We also had some of these drinks, which were incredibly spicy due to the habanero pepper that Robyn had me put in them.

We played a bit of beer pong. Seriously. We kicked their asses.

So that's that. We celebrated the fallen heroes of our country by drinking a bunch and gallavanting around town. We're so patriotic.

happy mother's day!

Alfred's family just left about an hour ago; they came over for dinner tonight. We had hummus, pizza, and chocolate mousse - all homemade, of course - and it was pretty awesome. So most of the day today was spent cooking and cleaning, which was actually kind of fun. Not the cleaning part necessarily, but I like cooking. And now the house is damn clean.

(We're watching the 30 Rock from this past week, and Liz Lemon referred to the Sims! It was awesome!)

Yesterday we spent a lot of the day outside. We decided last weekend that we need to hang out outside more often, so yesterday we actually did it. We went canoeing on the intracoastal and explored some of the canals that branch off of it. The people who live back there really like those statues of little boys fishing.

We also played with some crabs for awhile, freaking them out and making them run like hell. It was fun. We also sat and watched a lizard go about his life: he surveyed his land, found a lady friend, had a romantic experience, was confronted by a challenger, and got into a rumble. Watching 2 lizards fight was probably the coolest thing I've seen all month. It was hilarious.

In other news, Alfred went tanning at the gym the other day and the girl didn't set the timer right, so he got a bit pink. Then yesterday he forgot to put sunscreen on his arms and legs, so he's a little red today. He's been quite diligent about putting aloe on, at least. First sunburn of the summer!

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.

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:

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.

gettin' ready

We took a big step towards being ready for Christmas this year: we got a new grill!

The burners on our old grill were shot, so we haven't been able to grill for a couple of months now. It kind of sucks, we weren't able to use the grill for part of the summer, and we usually use it a lot. Luckily Alfred found a good deal on one, but unfortunately we had to put it together ourselves. But we're a good team. It went pretty smoothly, but made a big mess.

Look, my mom's in this picture with me.

Sadly, the inaugural meal on the new grill was sort of a disaster. We made beer can chicken, but left it on the grill way too long. It was all dried out and the skin was completely charred. Disappointing.

The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. We sat around and relaxed, which was nice. We did clean the house a bit, so we weren't total bums at least. It got freaking cold this weekend. Last week it was in the 80's, today's high was supposed to be in the mid 60's. Sucks. In another day or 2 we'll both have colds. Then we'll go to NY for Thanksgiving and get colds again. Yay!

Friday wrap up

Just a couple of quick things. First, in case you didn't catch it in the comments, my mom has promised to have warm chocolate chip cookies waiting for me at the door when we go up for Thanksgiving. Between those and all the pizza and wings I plan to eat, I don't know that I even need to bother with Thanksgiving itself.

Second, I was reading an article online the other day that said that Obama used to smoke and has been working on quitting during his campaign. In the same article it said that he exercises 6 times a week and generally has to wake up extra early to fit in his workout, losing sleep for the sake of exercise. The following conversation then took place between me and Alfred:

me: I'm just like Barack Obama!
Alfred: Yeah, you smoke and you're black.
me: No, I sacrifice sleep so I can exercise.
Alfred: And you're a man.

I guess it was funnier in person.

Third: a couple of pictures of the sunset as seen from our back porch last night:

Very pretty. And that is all, have a lovely weekend!

blast from the past: NYE 2006

Yay, New Year's 2006! This is the year we went to NYC and met up with my hoes from Cornell. (Looking through all these pictures made me really miss you guys. Hoe Reunion February 09?)

We got into town first and met up with Katherine after she got off work. We walked around a bit and played tourist. For some reason, I really like this picture. The off-centered-ness appeals to me.

We did plenty of boozing, of course. This was the night we got a giant fishbowl full of alcohol (actually I think we got multiple fishbowls, but I was pretty toasted that night so I don't really recall). Clearly Rosemary's expression is my favorite part of this picture.

New Year's Eve itself was pretty rad. I didn't really get drunk, since I had had more than enough the night before, but I certainly danced the night away. They played a lot of good 80's and early 90's dance music, it brought me back to my childhood. Or at least our drunken nights at Cornell.

Everyone else did plenty of drinking that night. This picture just says so much. Clearly Katherine had had a few, and I love the expression on both Ro's and Steph's faces. Also, Ro was double fisting.

At some point the next day we managed to go on a quest for some hot dogs. Mmm, I could totally go for a hot dog right now, I haven't had dinner yet. Ok Tracy, keep it together.

Ok, we don't want to get too greedy with all these pictures in one post. Plus I need to save some for another time. I hope you have all enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. We'll see you here again tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

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!

and she's back

We were out of the office yesterday and Tuesday helping to inspect some apartments that Max's company is looking at buying. Which wasn't so bad, because it got me out of the office for 2 days and I got to wear jeans. But we saw some interesting stuff. We saw all types of apartments, from the good: a grandmothery looking place, complete with a jar of cookies on the kitchen counter, to the bad:


That's mold covering that wall, and the ceiling has caved in at the left side of the picture. If you look at the right side you can see where more of the ceiling collapsed in the hallway. We saw about 3 that were this bad, but luckily no one was living in them. It was gross.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to call my old boss about going back to the museum. I don't want to miss out on a new job opportunity by committing to the museum, but then again, I don't want to miss the opportunity to go back there either. Knowing them, though, they're probably not in any hurry to fill the position at the moment. They probably don't mind not having to pay that salary for a little while, especially with the cost of the new museum. I need to make the decision really soon though, as in today if possible. I just don't know yet.

Most people are probably excited about the 3 day weekend starting tomorrow because of the fourth. It'll be nice to not have to work tomorrow (this week was pretty awesome, really) but it's not like I get to hang out at home or anything. We're going home tonight, but coming back up tomorrow to celebrate with Alfred's parents, then spending the night again since Billy's still out of town. Their grandson was just born yesterday, so we don't know when they're coming back yet. We're going to try to go blueberry picking again on Saturday, but the farm we went to last time is out of berries for the season, so we'll see.

I don't even get to make anything fun for tomorrow. Too bad, cause that's my favorite part. I found a recipe for these frozen cheesecake cupcakes that I wanted to try, but Robyn's making the presidential candidates' wives' cookie recipes, and I think we're making ice cream during the day. Oh well. I tried on the t-shirt and shorts Robyn bought me last night (we get festive clothing for every single holiday known to man, I have socks for every holiday you can imagine) and she gave me way too much credit, they're both size extra small. They might have fit me back before I grew hips or boobs or weighed more than 100 pounds, but not now. It's a nice compliment, though!

I feel like this is kind of a grouchy post. I'm not in a grouchy mood, I just don't like having my social life dictated to me. I don't mind not being home for a long weekend if it's something I get to choose to do, but when I have no choice in the matter, it sucks.

Easter

Not bad, huh? Unfortunately the color from the m&ms bled onto the frosting a little, so it looked like his ears and nose were bleeding. But he looked ok. Tasted ok too, for carrot cake. We spent the day at my in laws house, eating ourselves silly. It was fun. We ended up coming home with a huge bag of chocolate, so that's exciting.

Saturday we went for an 11 mile walk, I'm almost not sore from it today. I also made a loaf of white bread, it turned out really well, it looks and cuts just like sandwich bread!


We played a whole bunch of Legend of Zelda this weekend too. We got past the 4th labyrinth. Alfred's pretty good at it, I tend to get panic or just run into bad guys and get killed but once in awhile I do well. It's weird, I used to watch Mike play all the time so sometimes I can find stuff even though I don't really remember what it is. I'm kind of a dork.

cookies are done!

Finally. Our massive Easter cookie and chocolate project is finished. We finished decorating the last cookies, made the last chocolates, and packed them all up last night, then dropped them off to Robyn this morning. We made 22 bags total, each bag has 5 cookies, 3 chocolate covered caramel eggs, and 3 chocolate covered peanut butter eggs. All hand made by me and Katie. It was a large undertaking, but they came out well, and it was fun (mostly). Tonight though I'm looking forward to going to bed at a more normal hour. Which for us means before 11. Cause we're old. I also plan on sitting down for awhile. Should be exciting! Although, what will I write about here tomorrow??

I didn't take any pictures of the chocolates, because really they were just foil wrapped egg shapes, and I took one the other day of the first set we did, but here's one of all the different cookies together.

Aren't they cute? I decorated the eggs, Katie did all the other ones. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I'm going to attempt a bunny shaped carrot cake for Easter, so we'll see how that goes.

busy weekend, part 2

I managed to duck just as Alfred took this picture, because I looked like ass and was not about to have it recorded for all eternity. This is where I spent all day yesterday. This was the mess by 2, and we weren't finished until about 10. It was a disaster area. But I made a lot of stuff. Almost 70 peanut butter filled chocolate eggs, key lime bars for dessert tonight (although I forgot about the green whipped cream I was going to put on top, oops), soda bread for tonight, pizza dough for dinner last night, some frosting, oh, and cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. You know, it doesn't sound like as much as it was.

I baked 10 dozen cookies last night. Robyn is giving out approximately 20 Easter baskets to friends and work associates, so I am making cookies and candy to give out in those baskets. Which means that Katie gets to decorate 10 dozen cookies, and Alfred gets to deal with the insanity. Once we got going last night though it did go quickly, we got all of them baked in exactly an hour. We had quite the assembly line: I'd roll and cut out cookies and put them in the oven, when they came out either I or Alfred would put them on the cooling rack, then Alfred would transfer the slightly cooled cookies into a container to make room for the new ones coming out of the oven. Each batch was only in the oven for 6 minutes, so we were working fast.

Meanwhile, Katie was decorating, practicing the designs she's going to do on each type of cookie. She's going to work on them some today, them I'll help her tomorrow (hopefully we'll get home kind of early), and finish them up Wednesday. I also have to make chocolate covered caramel eggs. I made a new batch of caramel yesterday because my first batch was overcooked and hard as a rock. Let's hope this batch works.

I sustained a kitchen injury yesterday too, I cut my finger with the food processor blade. While I was washing it, not while it was running. It's on my middle finger, which is handy.

And, last but not least, look what we got! I've had the music stuck in my head all day.