Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Bloop.
Since my last post I have:
Decided to get glasses.
The doctor says I don't really NEED them, but I wanted them so he wrote me a prescription for reading glasses. I have to say...I'm a little disappointed. I'm legally blind in my right eye, which normally doesn't bother me at all, but it's a bitch to deal with when putting on eyeliner. So I had this fantasy that if I got glasses, I could just maneuver my eyeliner brush around the frames and put my eyeliner on that way, which would be a lot easier than what I do now, which is basically like, put a little on, open my eye to check the work, put a little on, open my eye to check the work, repeat repeat repeat. But my optometrist said that glasses like that wouldn't be practical. The correction for my right eye would apparently be crazy huge, and he said that since I don't use that eye normally anyway, ACTUALLY seeing out of it would probably 1) be something I could only do by "manually switching" to that eye (which is hard to explain to people who use both eyes all the time, but I totally knew what he meant, and it makes my left eye cross), and 2) it would probably give me headaches and make me nauseated, because I'm just NOT accustomed to using that eye. So, bah. I guess it's still going to take me fo-eva to put on eyeliner.
By the time my doc gave me the bad news about my eyeliner situation though, I'd already picked out frames I liked. And I WANTED them. So, because I'm a freak who actually wants glasses, I was like, "what CAN you give me a prescription for?"
He said he could give me reading glasses, since sometimes my poor little left eye gets tired from reading/beading/etc, because it has to work doubly hard. So I got reading glasses. Brett got his normal prescription, but with entirely new and different frames. Our optics shop was having a sale, so before the sale price and insurance, his frames and lenses totaled about $350 (his lenses are expensive). After the sale - $215. After insurance - $15. After the HSA card - $0. Mine were about $260 before the sale price, but then went down to $205, then $5, and obviously we paid that with the same HSA card mentioned above, so we walked away paying $0. Except for what B put into the HSA card initially, which was pre-tax income with matching funds from his employer.
If your employer offers an HSA with matching funds and you plan on using your body for things, ACCEPT THEIR GENEROUS OFFER, PEOPLE!!! Little bits of money (the amount is up to you) are taken from your paycheck each month, your employer automatically matches those funds (so the amount doubles, duh), and then if you, say, hypothetically, go to the dentist for the first time in seven years and need two cleanings, a fluoride treatment, eight fillings, a root canal, and a crown (I am SO glad that's over), not only is it NO STRAIN WHATSOEVER on your daily budget, but you might even have extra money left over for things like fancy reading glasses and expensive prenatal vitamins. (I'm not pregnant yet. STOP ASKING.) Three cheers for good financial planning!!!
Been told that I'm going to San Francisco as an early birthday present. Woo!
Apparently, despite the "early birthday present" label I insisted that my iMac be bought with, my mom and dad have also been in cahoots with Brett planning a long-weekend getaway for the two of us down in SF. We'll be staying at a cool boutique hotel downtown, hanging out with my little brother (Sam) who lives in the area, eating lots of good (DF) food, and possibly, if I can talk Brett and my brother into it, going to Maker Faire. I want to go sooo bad. But we won't have a car, so Sam will have to drive us. But Sam would love Maker Faire. I bet. So he should totally go with us. And we should go. Pleeease?
Been feeling a bit under the weather, and have consequently let the house go to shit.
All last week I had a headache, congestion, and a feeling of like...blah. Just not good. I thought it was allergies, and when the achiness set in I thought it was allergies + pms. But then Brett got sick too. REALLY sick. He spent most of Saturday with a fever over 100, and I took my own temperature as well, and it was 99.5. So we were sick. :P We were SUPPOSED to spend Easter with his family at his parents' house, and I was supposed to bring dairy-and-soy-free biscuits and gravy, but since we were sick and Ali is seven months pregnant, the consensus was that Brett and I spend Easter quarantined in our own filthy sicky house, so that nobody, fetus included, would get our cooties.
So I went to the store and bought a dozen eggs, determined that, come hell or high water, I WOULD have deviled eggs on Easter Sunday. Then Sunday came around, and I was too exhausted to actually cook them. And since I'd been feeling sick all week, the kitchen was so disgusting that I couldn't really cook much of anything. I actually don't even remember what we ate that day. I think we made a sort of half-assed chicken soup. It was Brett's idea and really it tasted pretty good: just chicken broth, carrots, rice, onion, and garlic. No actual chicken. if there had been chicken in it, I would've considered it whole-assed. But sans chicken I give it only half an ass.
Brett stayed home sick until today. He was MUCH sicker than I was, so he had every right to lay on the couch all weekend creating a massive pile of dirty dishes, snotty tissues, sweaty blankets, food crumbs, dvd boxes, etc. But I just didn't have the energy to feel yucky, take care of him, AND keep up with the mess. By the time he went back to work today the house was like, COPS messy. You know, like on COPS, when they go into someone's house and it's totally disgusting, and the person is all like, "yeah, I've been meaning to throw out that dead cat for awhile now." But like, there's so much shit all over the floor that the camera can't even FIND the dead cat, but the cops just keep commenting on the smell?!?
We had no dead cats (thank God), but it did take me all day just to clean up the living room and bar. And I barely made a dent in the kitchen. I swear, never in the history of our marriage do I remember our kitchen ever being this messy. This morning I went in to make breakfast, and since I only had about 5" of counter space, a couple of spoons, and no cookware, I ended up microwaving canned soup in a mixing bowl and THAT'S what I had for breakies. And lunchies. I managed to clean it up enough to make beef stroganoff in the crock for dinner, but it still has a looong way to go. Man I hate getting sick.
Incidentally, I worked on that dairy-and-soy-free biscuits and gravy recipe for THREE DAYS, and it was really good. Not a perfect milk-and-flour sausage gravy base exactly, but an excellent sausage gravy, never the less. Made with a bacon fat roux, crumbled breakfast sausage, sauteed onion, and a combo of almond milk, beef broth, and water as the "milk" part. It looked more like something that should be coming up rather than going down, but it was delicious.
Been totally obsessed with LHotP.
LHotP, aka Little House on the Prairie, is a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Aka LIW. I'm actually obsessed more with the whole "Laura Years" series, but I refer to it as LHotP. I have them as audio books performed by Cherry Jones, with Pa's Fiddle performed by Paul Woodiel. I normally prefer audio books to actual books, but the extra treat of Cherry Jones' soft accent and soothing voice, and the singing and fiddling of songs that, in the books, would've just been written out as lyrics has been awesome. I read the whole series of books over and over again as a kid, and for some reason I got the urge to listen to them as audio recently, so...I have been. I like to listen to them on le ipod while I'm cooking, cleaning, madly clicking through (fluff)Friends, etc. It's been quite nice, and it's put me in a very nesty sort of mood. Which, since I'm a homemaker anyway, is a very nice way to feel. :)
Been more okay with the idea of moving.
Brett's wanted to move closer-in for awhile now, but I LOVE our house, neighborhood, and town. And I don't want to leave them. But as the population of this area has grown, the traffic has rapidly gone from bad to worse. Brett's average commute is about 45 min each way, and we're spending about $200/month on gas, so living here just doesn't make sense any more. Moving closer-in will most likely mean moving into a smaller house, which seems like a bad idea since we're also planning on having kids in the near future (and we want to have three), but lots of people have children in small living spaces, and it's just fine. It's funny - when we moved into our current 1800 sq ft house I thought it was TINY, but now that I've lived here awhile I feel like I really don't even need all this space.
There are some things I'm having a hard time letting go of; I still want more than one bathroom, I want a dining room, two separate living areas, a master suite with plenty of closet space, etc, but I've let go of my previous demands that our next house HAS to have a music room and it HAS to have a bar, a hot tub, etc. Because really. WTF. It sooo doesn't have to have those things. All it HAS to have are places to sleep, eat, play, and relax. And places to go to the bathroom. Preferably multiple places to go to the bathroom.
Because this one time, when I was little, I was staying in someone's house in OKC with my aunt and uncle and cousin for a wedding, and there were so many people staying in the house that all four of us were in one suite together, with my aunt and uncle in the bed and my cousin and I on the floor. Then my cousin got sick and barfed in my hair, and we only had ONE bathroom for the four of us, so my aunt cleaned the barf out of my hair with a washcloth while my cousin was sick in the bathroom, and then my aunt got sick too (food poisoning, it turned out), and she and my cousin had to SHARE THE SAME BATHROOM for their barfs and rhea. And they stayed in there together, doing those things, all night. I had to pee, but chose to hold it until morning and use someone else's bathroom. Hell if I was going to pee in that toilet.
The lesson I learned on that disastrous trip: multiple people need multiple bathrooms. Even with just Brett and I living together it's been helpful, because if one of us is sick to our stomach, the other one can continue going about their normally scheduled bathroom business in the other bathroom, completely unhindered. And there have been quite a few times after road trips or long days out on the town where we both enter the house and immediately want to head for the bathroom, and why, isn't that lovely! We can both go at the same time. No queue!
On that note, I think it's time for me to pee, listen to some LHotP, and then hit the hay. Good night! :)
Decided to get glasses.
The doctor says I don't really NEED them, but I wanted them so he wrote me a prescription for reading glasses. I have to say...I'm a little disappointed. I'm legally blind in my right eye, which normally doesn't bother me at all, but it's a bitch to deal with when putting on eyeliner. So I had this fantasy that if I got glasses, I could just maneuver my eyeliner brush around the frames and put my eyeliner on that way, which would be a lot easier than what I do now, which is basically like, put a little on, open my eye to check the work, put a little on, open my eye to check the work, repeat repeat repeat. But my optometrist said that glasses like that wouldn't be practical. The correction for my right eye would apparently be crazy huge, and he said that since I don't use that eye normally anyway, ACTUALLY seeing out of it would probably 1) be something I could only do by "manually switching" to that eye (which is hard to explain to people who use both eyes all the time, but I totally knew what he meant, and it makes my left eye cross), and 2) it would probably give me headaches and make me nauseated, because I'm just NOT accustomed to using that eye. So, bah. I guess it's still going to take me fo-eva to put on eyeliner.
By the time my doc gave me the bad news about my eyeliner situation though, I'd already picked out frames I liked. And I WANTED them. So, because I'm a freak who actually wants glasses, I was like, "what CAN you give me a prescription for?"
He said he could give me reading glasses, since sometimes my poor little left eye gets tired from reading/beading/etc, because it has to work doubly hard. So I got reading glasses. Brett got his normal prescription, but with entirely new and different frames. Our optics shop was having a sale, so before the sale price and insurance, his frames and lenses totaled about $350 (his lenses are expensive). After the sale - $215. After insurance - $15. After the HSA card - $0. Mine were about $260 before the sale price, but then went down to $205, then $5, and obviously we paid that with the same HSA card mentioned above, so we walked away paying $0. Except for what B put into the HSA card initially, which was pre-tax income with matching funds from his employer.
If your employer offers an HSA with matching funds and you plan on using your body for things, ACCEPT THEIR GENEROUS OFFER, PEOPLE!!! Little bits of money (the amount is up to you) are taken from your paycheck each month, your employer automatically matches those funds (so the amount doubles, duh), and then if you, say, hypothetically, go to the dentist for the first time in seven years and need two cleanings, a fluoride treatment, eight fillings, a root canal, and a crown (I am SO glad that's over), not only is it NO STRAIN WHATSOEVER on your daily budget, but you might even have extra money left over for things like fancy reading glasses and expensive prenatal vitamins. (I'm not pregnant yet. STOP ASKING.) Three cheers for good financial planning!!!
Been told that I'm going to San Francisco as an early birthday present. Woo!
Apparently, despite the "early birthday present" label I insisted that my iMac be bought with, my mom and dad have also been in cahoots with Brett planning a long-weekend getaway for the two of us down in SF. We'll be staying at a cool boutique hotel downtown, hanging out with my little brother (Sam) who lives in the area, eating lots of good (DF) food, and possibly, if I can talk Brett and my brother into it, going to Maker Faire. I want to go sooo bad. But we won't have a car, so Sam will have to drive us. But Sam would love Maker Faire. I bet. So he should totally go with us. And we should go. Pleeease?
Been feeling a bit under the weather, and have consequently let the house go to shit.
All last week I had a headache, congestion, and a feeling of like...blah. Just not good. I thought it was allergies, and when the achiness set in I thought it was allergies + pms. But then Brett got sick too. REALLY sick. He spent most of Saturday with a fever over 100, and I took my own temperature as well, and it was 99.5. So we were sick. :P We were SUPPOSED to spend Easter with his family at his parents' house, and I was supposed to bring dairy-and-soy-free biscuits and gravy, but since we were sick and Ali is seven months pregnant, the consensus was that Brett and I spend Easter quarantined in our own filthy sicky house, so that nobody, fetus included, would get our cooties.
So I went to the store and bought a dozen eggs, determined that, come hell or high water, I WOULD have deviled eggs on Easter Sunday. Then Sunday came around, and I was too exhausted to actually cook them. And since I'd been feeling sick all week, the kitchen was so disgusting that I couldn't really cook much of anything. I actually don't even remember what we ate that day. I think we made a sort of half-assed chicken soup. It was Brett's idea and really it tasted pretty good: just chicken broth, carrots, rice, onion, and garlic. No actual chicken. if there had been chicken in it, I would've considered it whole-assed. But sans chicken I give it only half an ass.
Brett stayed home sick until today. He was MUCH sicker than I was, so he had every right to lay on the couch all weekend creating a massive pile of dirty dishes, snotty tissues, sweaty blankets, food crumbs, dvd boxes, etc. But I just didn't have the energy to feel yucky, take care of him, AND keep up with the mess. By the time he went back to work today the house was like, COPS messy. You know, like on COPS, when they go into someone's house and it's totally disgusting, and the person is all like, "yeah, I've been meaning to throw out that dead cat for awhile now." But like, there's so much shit all over the floor that the camera can't even FIND the dead cat, but the cops just keep commenting on the smell?!?
We had no dead cats (thank God), but it did take me all day just to clean up the living room and bar. And I barely made a dent in the kitchen. I swear, never in the history of our marriage do I remember our kitchen ever being this messy. This morning I went in to make breakfast, and since I only had about 5" of counter space, a couple of spoons, and no cookware, I ended up microwaving canned soup in a mixing bowl and THAT'S what I had for breakies. And lunchies. I managed to clean it up enough to make beef stroganoff in the crock for dinner, but it still has a looong way to go. Man I hate getting sick.
Incidentally, I worked on that dairy-and-soy-free biscuits and gravy recipe for THREE DAYS, and it was really good. Not a perfect milk-and-flour sausage gravy base exactly, but an excellent sausage gravy, never the less. Made with a bacon fat roux, crumbled breakfast sausage, sauteed onion, and a combo of almond milk, beef broth, and water as the "milk" part. It looked more like something that should be coming up rather than going down, but it was delicious.
Been totally obsessed with LHotP.
LHotP, aka Little House on the Prairie, is a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Aka LIW. I'm actually obsessed more with the whole "Laura Years" series, but I refer to it as LHotP. I have them as audio books performed by Cherry Jones, with Pa's Fiddle performed by Paul Woodiel. I normally prefer audio books to actual books, but the extra treat of Cherry Jones' soft accent and soothing voice, and the singing and fiddling of songs that, in the books, would've just been written out as lyrics has been awesome. I read the whole series of books over and over again as a kid, and for some reason I got the urge to listen to them as audio recently, so...I have been. I like to listen to them on le ipod while I'm cooking, cleaning, madly clicking through (fluff)Friends, etc. It's been quite nice, and it's put me in a very nesty sort of mood. Which, since I'm a homemaker anyway, is a very nice way to feel. :)
Been more okay with the idea of moving.
Brett's wanted to move closer-in for awhile now, but I LOVE our house, neighborhood, and town. And I don't want to leave them. But as the population of this area has grown, the traffic has rapidly gone from bad to worse. Brett's average commute is about 45 min each way, and we're spending about $200/month on gas, so living here just doesn't make sense any more. Moving closer-in will most likely mean moving into a smaller house, which seems like a bad idea since we're also planning on having kids in the near future (and we want to have three), but lots of people have children in small living spaces, and it's just fine. It's funny - when we moved into our current 1800 sq ft house I thought it was TINY, but now that I've lived here awhile I feel like I really don't even need all this space.
There are some things I'm having a hard time letting go of; I still want more than one bathroom, I want a dining room, two separate living areas, a master suite with plenty of closet space, etc, but I've let go of my previous demands that our next house HAS to have a music room and it HAS to have a bar, a hot tub, etc. Because really. WTF. It sooo doesn't have to have those things. All it HAS to have are places to sleep, eat, play, and relax. And places to go to the bathroom. Preferably multiple places to go to the bathroom.
Because this one time, when I was little, I was staying in someone's house in OKC with my aunt and uncle and cousin for a wedding, and there were so many people staying in the house that all four of us were in one suite together, with my aunt and uncle in the bed and my cousin and I on the floor. Then my cousin got sick and barfed in my hair, and we only had ONE bathroom for the four of us, so my aunt cleaned the barf out of my hair with a washcloth while my cousin was sick in the bathroom, and then my aunt got sick too (food poisoning, it turned out), and she and my cousin had to SHARE THE SAME BATHROOM for their barfs and rhea. And they stayed in there together, doing those things, all night. I had to pee, but chose to hold it until morning and use someone else's bathroom. Hell if I was going to pee in that toilet.
The lesson I learned on that disastrous trip: multiple people need multiple bathrooms. Even with just Brett and I living together it's been helpful, because if one of us is sick to our stomach, the other one can continue going about their normally scheduled bathroom business in the other bathroom, completely unhindered. And there have been quite a few times after road trips or long days out on the town where we both enter the house and immediately want to head for the bathroom, and why, isn't that lovely! We can both go at the same time. No queue!
On that note, I think it's time for me to pee, listen to some LHotP, and then hit the hay. Good night! :)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Damn you, milk. DAMN YOU!!!
I usually watch video podcasts while I eat lunch, because it's pretty much the only time I'm willing to sit (mostly) still and stare at a screen without interacting. One of the videos I watched today was Cook's Illustrated's Four-Cheese Lasagna episode.
If you love to cook (I mean REALLY love to cook), you might want to think about subscribing to Cook's. Brett and I subscribed for years and found it amazingly interesting and educational. Pros: each issue is stuffed full of helpful info & recipes. Cons: it's mostly text, so if you're a visual person like me it might feel more like reading-for-homework than reading-for-pleasure. Also, each issue is STUFFED FULL of info, so this is not a magazine that you can flip through for an hour and be done with. We decided not to renew our subscription just because we never had time to finish reading them cover-to-cover.
That being said, I love their podcasts. They contain the same sort of information you'd get from the magazine, only in quick blips of video. If you want to watch them for free, you can do so in iTunes.
Back to my point: today I watched the Four-Cheese Lasagna episode. It looks delish. Rich, fatty, completely unhealthy, and mouth-wateringly, soul-cradlingly, delish. If you figure out an equally delicious, 100% dairy-free way for me to make this dish, I will give you one MILLION dollars*. Now that I've had some time (almost a year!) to adjust my diet, my milk allergy usually doesn't feel like much of a constraint, but food like this...well...boo. :(
Also making me bitter about my milk allergy today? Oddly enough, this:
Don't worry, no one was hurt. Yesterday morning a train derailed about 20 blocks north of my house. It derailed because it hit a semi that was parked across the tracks:
Remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer comes across a jack-knifed sugar truck and ends up shoveling up all the sugar to keep for himself? When I heard about this accident, my first thought was that I hoped no one was seriously hurt. My SECOND thought was, "I wonder what was in the truck..."
Guess what was in the truck?
Can you guess?
I bet you can't.
PIZZA AND CHEESECAKE.
(sonofabitch!!!)
Also, completely not related to milk at all, but kind of in a way related to the train derailment since it happened closer to her house than mine: my friend Kim has a new blog. I've also updated her link in my blogroll on the right. CHECK IT OUT! :)
* you will not actually be paid.
If you love to cook (I mean REALLY love to cook), you might want to think about subscribing to Cook's. Brett and I subscribed for years and found it amazingly interesting and educational. Pros: each issue is stuffed full of helpful info & recipes. Cons: it's mostly text, so if you're a visual person like me it might feel more like reading-for-homework than reading-for-pleasure. Also, each issue is STUFFED FULL of info, so this is not a magazine that you can flip through for an hour and be done with. We decided not to renew our subscription just because we never had time to finish reading them cover-to-cover.
That being said, I love their podcasts. They contain the same sort of information you'd get from the magazine, only in quick blips of video. If you want to watch them for free, you can do so in iTunes.
Back to my point: today I watched the Four-Cheese Lasagna episode. It looks delish. Rich, fatty, completely unhealthy, and mouth-wateringly, soul-cradlingly, delish. If you figure out an equally delicious, 100% dairy-free way for me to make this dish, I will give you one MILLION dollars*. Now that I've had some time (almost a year!) to adjust my diet, my milk allergy usually doesn't feel like much of a constraint, but food like this...well...boo. :(
Also making me bitter about my milk allergy today? Oddly enough, this:
Don't worry, no one was hurt. Yesterday morning a train derailed about 20 blocks north of my house. It derailed because it hit a semi that was parked across the tracks:
Remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer comes across a jack-knifed sugar truck and ends up shoveling up all the sugar to keep for himself? When I heard about this accident, my first thought was that I hoped no one was seriously hurt. My SECOND thought was, "I wonder what was in the truck..."
Guess what was in the truck?
Can you guess?
I bet you can't.
PIZZA AND CHEESECAKE.
(sonofabitch!!!)
Also, completely not related to milk at all, but kind of in a way related to the train derailment since it happened closer to her house than mine: my friend Kim has a new blog. I've also updated her link in my blogroll on the right. CHECK IT OUT! :)
* you will not actually be paid.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Procrastination Station
I have a problem. Well, not so much a *problem,* I guess. But I care waaay too much about the Easter Egg hunt on (fluff)Friends. In all fairness to myself, I am currently playing NO video games. I haven't touched Zelda in like...almost a month. And I haven't played Elebits since Christmastime. So really, this (fluff)Friends thing has become my game replacement. Brett plays his world-domination games (Civilization, Age of Empire, whateva), and I play with sweet, cuddly ♥(fluff)Friends♥.
Here's where I've decided that it's become a problem, though: I usually keep an .xls doc open with a bunch of "to do" type info: what I'm cooking and on what day, an on-going grocery list, chores for each day, on-going tasks that have no specific day assigned, you get the picture. But after the (fluff)Friend Egg Hunt started, I actually started a new worksheet in that document JUST TO TRACK MY EGG HUNTING STATISTICS. It's insane. It's not super complicated or anything; just some countifs, concatenate, a little conditional formatting, etc. But still. For an egg hunt on facebook. I'm such a freak. AND I put so much work into hunting/updating my chart every day, that right now I'm actually blogging as EGG HUNT PROCRASTINATION. Because I now feel like it's more something that I HAVE to do (to finish what I started) than something I want to do.
Sigh.
I'm glad we're going out tonight.
Here's where I've decided that it's become a problem, though: I usually keep an .xls doc open with a bunch of "to do" type info: what I'm cooking and on what day, an on-going grocery list, chores for each day, on-going tasks that have no specific day assigned, you get the picture. But after the (fluff)Friend Egg Hunt started, I actually started a new worksheet in that document JUST TO TRACK MY EGG HUNTING STATISTICS. It's insane. It's not super complicated or anything; just some countifs, concatenate, a little conditional formatting, etc. But still. For an egg hunt on facebook. I'm such a freak. AND I put so much work into hunting/updating my chart every day, that right now I'm actually blogging as EGG HUNT PROCRASTINATION. Because I now feel like it's more something that I HAVE to do (to finish what I started) than something I want to do.
Sigh.
I'm glad we're going out tonight.
Friday, March 14, 2008
ZOMG!!! FM FTW!!!
Okay, so this afternoon B and I went to the library, and we still hadn't figured out what kind of junky, effortless crap food we were going to eat for dinner tonight. But he's not feeling well, and I'm not feeling motivated to cook, so we knew it definitely needed to be effortless.
In order to get from our town library to our house, there's really only one road to take. And on that road, you pass the "Taco Hut." It's not actually CALLED Taco Hut, but that's what "we locals" call it, because it's a magical fairyland where you can get Pizza Hut and Taco Bell at the same time, in the same drive thru, and it's all even on the same receipt. And who doesn't love eating tacos AND pizza?!? (Incidentally, you should see this place at 2am on a Saturday night; the drive thru line literally winds around the parking lot and out into the street. Because when you're drunk, tacos and pizza are The Best Thing Ever.)
So this afternoon, I realize that we don't know what we're doing for dinner, and that we're about to pass Taco Hut. I get excited. My eyes widen, and I gasp. An actual lightbulb becomes visible above my head. And then I remember: I'm allergic to milk. The only thing Taco Bell makes that I can eat are Cinnamon Twists, and I'm pretty sure that even the pop at Pizza Hut has cheese in it. No Taco Hut for me. :(
So instead we decide to just go to FM and get groceries. Brett was feeling worse by the minute (as of now he's actually passed out on the couch, sound asleep), so he decided to just get bread, fruit, and ice cream. I made the mistake of shopping on an empty stomach (I hadn't eaten since dinner yesterday), so I wanted EVERYTHING. I ended up getting a vegan roasted veggie pizza, some df ice cream, and DAIRY FREE BEEF AND BEAN BURRITOS!!! A huge bag of frozen microwavable crappy cheap ones, which is just how I like them. The ones I USED to get added whey to their recipe last summer, so I haven't had a frozen burrito since like...idk. Sometime last summer. But guess what I'm eating for dinner tonight?!? PIZZA AND BURRITOS!!! :DDD Which is honestly what I would've ended up eating from Taco Hut, since I like burritos better than tacos anyway.
On a completely random and unrelated note: this morning as I was stretching out in bed mulling over the idea of getting up, I realized that with very little effort, I can touch both of our bedside tables at the same time. We have a queen size bed and there's about 6" of space between each bedside table and the actual edge of the bed, so BUHJEBUS. I must have the wingspan of like, a pterodactyl or something.
Sometimes my height makes me feel attractive and stately, but sometimes, like this morning, it makes me feel...manish? troll-like? hulking? gentlemanly? It's hard to describe the feeling, exactly. But NOT feminine. So that sucked. But once I was out of the shower and putting on makeup I felt a little bit better. It's amazing what a little eyeliner can do.
In order to get from our town library to our house, there's really only one road to take. And on that road, you pass the "Taco Hut." It's not actually CALLED Taco Hut, but that's what "we locals" call it, because it's a magical fairyland where you can get Pizza Hut and Taco Bell at the same time, in the same drive thru, and it's all even on the same receipt. And who doesn't love eating tacos AND pizza?!? (Incidentally, you should see this place at 2am on a Saturday night; the drive thru line literally winds around the parking lot and out into the street. Because when you're drunk, tacos and pizza are The Best Thing Ever.)
So this afternoon, I realize that we don't know what we're doing for dinner, and that we're about to pass Taco Hut. I get excited. My eyes widen, and I gasp. An actual lightbulb becomes visible above my head. And then I remember: I'm allergic to milk. The only thing Taco Bell makes that I can eat are Cinnamon Twists, and I'm pretty sure that even the pop at Pizza Hut has cheese in it. No Taco Hut for me. :(
So instead we decide to just go to FM and get groceries. Brett was feeling worse by the minute (as of now he's actually passed out on the couch, sound asleep), so he decided to just get bread, fruit, and ice cream. I made the mistake of shopping on an empty stomach (I hadn't eaten since dinner yesterday), so I wanted EVERYTHING. I ended up getting a vegan roasted veggie pizza, some df ice cream, and DAIRY FREE BEEF AND BEAN BURRITOS!!! A huge bag of frozen microwavable crappy cheap ones, which is just how I like them. The ones I USED to get added whey to their recipe last summer, so I haven't had a frozen burrito since like...idk. Sometime last summer. But guess what I'm eating for dinner tonight?!? PIZZA AND BURRITOS!!! :DDD Which is honestly what I would've ended up eating from Taco Hut, since I like burritos better than tacos anyway.
On a completely random and unrelated note: this morning as I was stretching out in bed mulling over the idea of getting up, I realized that with very little effort, I can touch both of our bedside tables at the same time. We have a queen size bed and there's about 6" of space between each bedside table and the actual edge of the bed, so BUHJEBUS. I must have the wingspan of like, a pterodactyl or something.
Sometimes my height makes me feel attractive and stately, but sometimes, like this morning, it makes me feel...manish? troll-like? hulking? gentlemanly? It's hard to describe the feeling, exactly. But NOT feminine. So that sucked. But once I was out of the shower and putting on makeup I felt a little bit better. It's amazing what a little eyeliner can do.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tomorrow is Friday! Woo Woo!!!
I know I don't work, but for some reason I still get really excited for Fridays. I think it's because most other people work, so when Friday comes around I know it's time for hanging out with Brett and other cool people. Woo!!! Anyway.
Tomorrow will be a day of errands and then, if all goes smoothly, the rest of the first disc of season six of Curb, tv shows from tonight that we didn't have time to watch, and a dinner of junky unhealthy food that's easy to prepare and oh-so-satisfying. I have no idea yet what that food will be, but I'm sure we'll come up with something. And I want ice cream. Gobs and gobs of praline ice cream. Soy-based of course, because I'd rather not spend Saturday morning shitting out my internal organs. Thanks, but no thanks.
I kind of want to take some time Friday night or Saturday morning to re-do the "about me" section of this blog, because I've noticed that it's getting some traffic lately. But it always takes me sooo long to think of things to say, so I don't know if that'll happen or not. I just hate that it has so much out of date info. :P But if you have any good like, myspace-esque survey thingies that you'd like to see me fill out send me the link, and maybe I'll fill them out. But only if they're not stupid.
Or if you have any questions you've been dying to ask me about myself, let me know and maybe I'll use them to make some new "random facts."
But whateva. I don't care if you don't respond. I DON'T CARE, DAMMIT.
Also, I haven't told Shannon yet (dude, Shannon, update your blog!), but I MADE NEW LOLCAT TEH OTHR DAI:
Please click through and give it 5 stars. Because it's awesome. I'M awesome. And Star is awesome, for making that face. I'm actually not a huge fan of lolcats; most of the time my reaction is to make a facial expression not unlike the one Star is making in the above photograph. But I kept seeing that shot in my flickr account and thinking, "DAMN that would make a good lolcat." So there you have it.
Speaking of flickr, they added a cool new stats feature a couple of months ago, and I've had a good time using it to look up the search terms people have used to get to my photos. A lot of pervy people have probably gone to my photos and been very disappointed. Like the guy who found this photo by searching for "girl pee bath." I usually delete pervy comments, but I just couldn't get rid of this guy's, because I found them so hilariously creepy.
Then today, I noticed that someone had found this photo by searching for "exposed balls." Why anyone would have the urge to view people hangin' brain is beyond me, but unfortunately(?) for them this photo contains no brain. Only the terror expressed by Brett at the thought that there MIGHT be brain.
Anyway, after seeing "exposed balls" in my referring domain information, I thought, "hmm...I wonder how many 'exposed balls' photos on flickr actually contain exposed balls..." So I clicked the link. Much to my relief, most of the photos had nothing to do with visible cojones. The very FIRST photo listed however, was (NSFW) this. The photo itself is both poor in quality and somewhat traumatizing, but the story below the photo is hilarious. PERVS!!! I swear.
Tomorrow will be a day of errands and then, if all goes smoothly, the rest of the first disc of season six of Curb, tv shows from tonight that we didn't have time to watch, and a dinner of junky unhealthy food that's easy to prepare and oh-so-satisfying. I have no idea yet what that food will be, but I'm sure we'll come up with something. And I want ice cream. Gobs and gobs of praline ice cream. Soy-based of course, because I'd rather not spend Saturday morning shitting out my internal organs. Thanks, but no thanks.
I kind of want to take some time Friday night or Saturday morning to re-do the "about me" section of this blog, because I've noticed that it's getting some traffic lately. But it always takes me sooo long to think of things to say, so I don't know if that'll happen or not. I just hate that it has so much out of date info. :P But if you have any good like, myspace-esque survey thingies that you'd like to see me fill out send me the link, and maybe I'll fill them out. But only if they're not stupid.
Or if you have any questions you've been dying to ask me about myself, let me know and maybe I'll use them to make some new "random facts."
But whateva. I don't care if you don't respond. I DON'T CARE, DAMMIT.
Also, I haven't told Shannon yet (dude, Shannon, update your blog!), but I MADE NEW LOLCAT TEH OTHR DAI:
Please click through and give it 5 stars. Because it's awesome. I'M awesome. And Star is awesome, for making that face. I'm actually not a huge fan of lolcats; most of the time my reaction is to make a facial expression not unlike the one Star is making in the above photograph. But I kept seeing that shot in my flickr account and thinking, "DAMN that would make a good lolcat." So there you have it.
Speaking of flickr, they added a cool new stats feature a couple of months ago, and I've had a good time using it to look up the search terms people have used to get to my photos. A lot of pervy people have probably gone to my photos and been very disappointed. Like the guy who found this photo by searching for "girl pee bath." I usually delete pervy comments, but I just couldn't get rid of this guy's, because I found them so hilariously creepy.
Then today, I noticed that someone had found this photo by searching for "exposed balls." Why anyone would have the urge to view people hangin' brain is beyond me, but unfortunately(?) for them this photo contains no brain. Only the terror expressed by Brett at the thought that there MIGHT be brain.
Anyway, after seeing "exposed balls" in my referring domain information, I thought, "hmm...I wonder how many 'exposed balls' photos on flickr actually contain exposed balls..." So I clicked the link. Much to my relief, most of the photos had nothing to do with visible cojones. The very FIRST photo listed however, was (NSFW) this. The photo itself is both poor in quality and somewhat traumatizing, but the story below the photo is hilarious. PERVS!!! I swear.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Six short blips, one really long post.
Mmm...
I'm feeling very content right now. I have a pot roast simmering away in the kitchen, filling the house with it's delicious pot-roasty smells (think pork, soy sauce, black vinegar, ginger, garlic, etc.), and a husband soaking away in the tub after a stressful day at work, filling the house with his latest favorite music (think Vampire Weekend).
I love how quiet and still our house is during the day when I'm the only one here, but I also love how, as soon as he comes home, everything seems to come together and suddenly dinner is done cooking, music (or tv) is on, and I have this whole, other person with me that I can interact with, and it all feels so warm and lively. My life is teh good.
Yar.
I use gmail and I love it, but I access it through entourage, because...I just do. I hate checking my mail in my browser, and entourage is the email client I like best. Sooo...last year at some point gmail added the option of accessing my email via IMAP instead of POP, but I chose not to make the switch at the time, because I'm lazy. And I knew I'd have to import aaalll my shitty old mail aaalll over again, and resort everything.
So I just continued on without IMAP, allowing myself to accumulate even more crap in my gmail inbox.
Now that I'm on a new computer, I thought...eh...why not. Might as well switch. It's really cool how anything I read/delete/whatever in entourage is affected the same way in gmail, but here's what sucks:
As of right now, after deleting hundreds and hundreds of emails, I still have 3,071 emails in my inbox. A lot of them are crap that will be deleted as unread, but peppered throughout the pages and pages of random notifications, sale alerts, surveys, and whateva, are important receipts and other information, as well as meaningful emails from ♥loved ones♥. So THAT sucks. On top of that, because I'm now using IMAP (which is still toootally awesome; no complaints), *each time* I delete an email in entourage, gmail has to search for it and delete it as well. It's nice to be cleaning out my inbox fer realz instead of pretending to clean it out but really only getting rid of things in entourage, but still. It's taking forevs.
Woohoo!
I am totally, completely addicted to (fluff)Friends. Those of you who have seen this app and pooh-poohed it were right to do so. It's 3,000% ghay. But still...I love it. I mean...there are hearts, unicorns, flowers, and vicious, cut-throat competitions! What's not to love??? Right now they're doing an easter egg hunt, and I'm so totally going to collect as many eggs as I fraking can. (Fraking, because it's almost time for ♥BSG!!!♥)
*cleeek*
My new computer is much faster than my old one, and therefore importing & uploading photos from my camera is no longer an epic task. So I'm trying to both take more picshurs, and upload them more promptly. We'll see how well I keep this up, but for now things are pretty up to date.
*chomp*
As you can tell from my recent photos, I've been eating food lately. I often eat food. It's a thing I do. I've also been looking for an excuse to talk about food more, and I think I've found one. I *thought* I'd found one last year when I finally got around to registering at allrecipes, but then I quickly learned that allrecipes doesn't allow you to post recipes yourself; you have to submit them, and once they're approved, they're reformatted by someone on their staff and THEN posted. Which is funny to me, because a lot of the recipes on that site are pretty disgusting. Or include typos that, if not recognized by the reader, would drastically alter the outcome of the recipe. Stupid.
I still use allrecipes a lot, but only to look through other people's recipes, not to post my own. I thought for awhile that I might start a food blog, but that never happened. Well, I started it, but then stopped before I even told anyone about it. Then, after I'd given up on the idea entirely, I came across OSF. This site still seems a little rough, and is MUCH smaller than allrecipes, but there are a lot of things I like about it so far.
I haven't added any recipes yet because I have to actually figure out how to write them down. Which means thinking about measurements and times and stuff, which I haven't really done much of, oddly enough. Or maybe it's not that odd...I don't know. You just add some of this, smell it, taste it, add some of that, cook until done. The end. But it's been really fun having to be more precise, and hopefully I'l have bothered to figure out a whole recipe sometime soon, and I'll post it, and the world will bask in my culinary genius. And in Brett's too, since most of our recipes are a team effort. YAY!
*ssshhhuuuuummmmm*
FYI: THAT is the sound a lightsaber makes. Brett says, "bewvvvvvvvvvvvv," but I disagree. Anyway, so we were in the pet section at the grocery store last weekend, and I found a laser pointer cat toy. It can make different shapes, one of which is a mouse, but the cats seem to like it best just as the standard pointer. They've both been chasing it around like crazy; I've never seen them this worked up over ANY toy before. And Mordechai (our husky little lay-about) has probably gotten more exercise in the last two days than he has in his WHOLE LIFE prior to this. Since they can't snuggle with it, lick it to death, or chew it's eyes off, it won't exactly replace their other toys. Still though, at $5 I think it was an AWESOME deal.
I'm feeling very content right now. I have a pot roast simmering away in the kitchen, filling the house with it's delicious pot-roasty smells (think pork, soy sauce, black vinegar, ginger, garlic, etc.), and a husband soaking away in the tub after a stressful day at work, filling the house with his latest favorite music (think Vampire Weekend).
I love how quiet and still our house is during the day when I'm the only one here, but I also love how, as soon as he comes home, everything seems to come together and suddenly dinner is done cooking, music (or tv) is on, and I have this whole, other person with me that I can interact with, and it all feels so warm and lively. My life is teh good.
Yar.
I use gmail and I love it, but I access it through entourage, because...I just do. I hate checking my mail in my browser, and entourage is the email client I like best. Sooo...last year at some point gmail added the option of accessing my email via IMAP instead of POP, but I chose not to make the switch at the time, because I'm lazy. And I knew I'd have to import aaalll my shitty old mail aaalll over again, and resort everything.
So I just continued on without IMAP, allowing myself to accumulate even more crap in my gmail inbox.
Now that I'm on a new computer, I thought...eh...why not. Might as well switch. It's really cool how anything I read/delete/whatever in entourage is affected the same way in gmail, but here's what sucks:
As of right now, after deleting hundreds and hundreds of emails, I still have 3,071 emails in my inbox. A lot of them are crap that will be deleted as unread, but peppered throughout the pages and pages of random notifications, sale alerts, surveys, and whateva, are important receipts and other information, as well as meaningful emails from ♥loved ones♥. So THAT sucks. On top of that, because I'm now using IMAP (which is still toootally awesome; no complaints), *each time* I delete an email in entourage, gmail has to search for it and delete it as well. It's nice to be cleaning out my inbox fer realz instead of pretending to clean it out but really only getting rid of things in entourage, but still. It's taking forevs.
Woohoo!
I am totally, completely addicted to (fluff)Friends. Those of you who have seen this app and pooh-poohed it were right to do so. It's 3,000% ghay. But still...I love it. I mean...there are hearts, unicorns, flowers, and vicious, cut-throat competitions! What's not to love??? Right now they're doing an easter egg hunt, and I'm so totally going to collect as many eggs as I fraking can. (Fraking, because it's almost time for ♥BSG!!!♥)
*cleeek*
My new computer is much faster than my old one, and therefore importing & uploading photos from my camera is no longer an epic task. So I'm trying to both take more picshurs, and upload them more promptly. We'll see how well I keep this up, but for now things are pretty up to date.
*chomp*
As you can tell from my recent photos, I've been eating food lately. I often eat food. It's a thing I do. I've also been looking for an excuse to talk about food more, and I think I've found one. I *thought* I'd found one last year when I finally got around to registering at allrecipes, but then I quickly learned that allrecipes doesn't allow you to post recipes yourself; you have to submit them, and once they're approved, they're reformatted by someone on their staff and THEN posted. Which is funny to me, because a lot of the recipes on that site are pretty disgusting. Or include typos that, if not recognized by the reader, would drastically alter the outcome of the recipe. Stupid.
I still use allrecipes a lot, but only to look through other people's recipes, not to post my own. I thought for awhile that I might start a food blog, but that never happened. Well, I started it, but then stopped before I even told anyone about it. Then, after I'd given up on the idea entirely, I came across OSF. This site still seems a little rough, and is MUCH smaller than allrecipes, but there are a lot of things I like about it so far.
I haven't added any recipes yet because I have to actually figure out how to write them down. Which means thinking about measurements and times and stuff, which I haven't really done much of, oddly enough. Or maybe it's not that odd...I don't know. You just add some of this, smell it, taste it, add some of that, cook until done. The end. But it's been really fun having to be more precise, and hopefully I'l have bothered to figure out a whole recipe sometime soon, and I'll post it, and the world will bask in my culinary genius. And in Brett's too, since most of our recipes are a team effort. YAY!
*ssshhhuuuuummmmm*
FYI: THAT is the sound a lightsaber makes. Brett says, "bewvvvvvvvvvvvv," but I disagree. Anyway, so we were in the pet section at the grocery store last weekend, and I found a laser pointer cat toy. It can make different shapes, one of which is a mouse, but the cats seem to like it best just as the standard pointer. They've both been chasing it around like crazy; I've never seen them this worked up over ANY toy before. And Mordechai (our husky little lay-about) has probably gotten more exercise in the last two days than he has in his WHOLE LIFE prior to this. Since they can't snuggle with it, lick it to death, or chew it's eyes off, it won't exactly replace their other toys. Still though, at $5 I think it was an AWESOME deal.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Sometimes even *I* want to hate me.
So...upon reading my last blog post, my Dear Sweet Dad (also sometimes known as DSD) promptly sent me a check for an undisclosed amount, in order to aid me in the purchasing of a new iMac. Please note: I did not beg for these alms. They were given freely out of love, and were neither solicited nor even secretly hoped for. I may be spoiled, but I have NOT yet been spoiled rotten. So three cheers for my dad, who is awesome, generous, and very, very thoughtful.
Since I no longer had to wait and save up for my purchase, B and I went out and bought my new iMac last Friday. I decided to go with the 24" model, because it's huge. I love it. So much. It's teh awesome. And though I've had plenty of Macs in the past, this is the first time I've gotten one with an iSight camera, so that's a new plus.
I want to figure out if I can use it to talk live to people (like my DSD), but I haven't yet. I did play around with it a bit last night, but I didn't have anything to say (plus I hate listening to recordings of myself talking), so I just watched myself making faces for a minute (I was fascinated by how barbie-like my teeth looked while using the "glow" effect), and then uploaded that. It's like staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, only the whole world gets to see! Well, the "whole world" of people who bother to watch it, anyway.
On a completely unrelated side note, if you're a NIN fan and you haven't downloaded Ghosts yet, I recommend you do it. The first 9 tracks are free, and that's what I've downloaded so far. I plan on shelling out the $5 for the remaining 27 tracks (it's $5; how could I not?), but the download speed is rrreeeally slow right now, so I'm going to wait a bit. The first 9 tracks took over an hour.
Brett heard one of the tracks and said "no wonder it was free," but he's a jerk. It's all instrumental, so if you like the screamy kind of NIN, you're SOL. But if, like me, you prefer the less angsty bits of NIN, you'll like it. My favorite album is and may always be Still, but this one may become a close second. I really, really like it. It's very like, gentle sort of. Not gentle. But like, not so full of anger and despair that it makes me hate the world.
And if "it didn't make me hate the world." isn't a positive review, I don't know what is.
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