Memorials and Elusive Beeping

Yesterday started out as a rather stressful day with worrying about a friend having surgery, and remembering that it was also the 20th anniversary of both my grandmother's death, and coincidentally the first bombing of the World Trade Centers in New York.  Twenty years ago, I was 8, and I still distinctly remember getting the call that grandma had passed away. My mom took the call, I was sitting at the table. I knew, as soon as my mom picked up the phone that she had passed away, and while we knew it was coming, that didn't help the mourning process much. My grandmother was an amazing woman who still lives on in our memories and through the lives of her children and grandchildren. I was touched to find out that my mom had put this memorial in the paper.

Sensational Sunday!

Before I went to bed last night I wrote a list of things I need to do today.  Here is it

*laundry-contine to push through
*make pasta for hubby
do something with the *chicken-make pecan chicken?
*yogurt (skim!)
*get mail
*costco, need lemon juice

Instead...when I woke up unusally early this morning my husband asked for my phone and asked what I had planned for the the day. "Nothing special," I replied.
"Oh good, I've got a surprise for you, and you can't guess it.  Go take a shower and dress up...we are going into DC today."
See...my husband doesn't generally like leaving the house. He has this theory about setting his house up as his comfortable castle and never leaving it.  It works for him, but for someone as social as I am, it can get annoying (hence my making up a meetup.com group!).  Because of the rarity of him wanting to leave the house, much less voluntarily going into the city, I hurried to get ready and tried really hard not to guess correctly (since he said we wouldn't do it if I guessed it correctly).  I have a habit of randomly guessing correctly, and it drives him insane.  We were out the door around 10am heading down to the metro.  I'm wearing my favorite purple velvet coat. It isn't too heavy and it is perfect for the cool weather. Much more practical than the short shorts I saw girls shivering in today.
When we got to the metro and got on the train, the first person I saw was the founder of another meetup group that I met ON FRIDAY.  The probability blows my mind!

Turns out we were going to see the Broadway Musical of The Color Purple!  We had a bit of time to kill before the show...

so we stopped to smell the flowers

ironically purple tulips.  They smelled like honey...

Since it was a Sunday Matinee, there were a lot of empty seats, and we were in the fifth row, center.

obligatory theatre shot...

The opening screen.  Dear God,  I am fourteen years old.  I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me. 

The show was pretty awesome. I would highly suggest seeing it if you have read the book or seen the movie. It follows the movie apparently more than the book. One of the challenges in making a musical that spans 40 years is expressing to the audience the passage of time.  I think that if you hadn't seen the movie or read the book their way of expressing it would be difficult to follow.  

The book is graphic and disturbing at times.  The musical portrayed these hardships while not being overly graphic or glossing over them.  There were some seriously hilarious scenes (including some VERY ripped field workers "flirting" with Celie when she first comes to Mister's house).  The whole thing comes off as a humorous story of overcoming hardship and finding love.  My husband's favorite character was Sophia whose tag line is, "HELL NO!"   The National Theatre is running a special next week for $29 tickets on Easter. If you are interested--check it out! It is worth the time and prices. The acting/singing were amazing.  

Best pickup line from the movie is, "If you need anything else done around here Ma'am, just call...it doesn't have to be plumbin.'"  Like I said earlier--it was hilarious.  

main course was this ribeye steak and onion fries

Next...oh yes, this amazing day isn't over yet, Aaron suggested was meander towards the Ceiba Restaurant where we went on one of our first dates.  Since they take reservations and it is barely 5pm, I didn't think we'd be able to get dinner but Aaron strode in and said "Reservation for 5pm" and gave my name.  Wait...what?!  Did he just make that up to pretend we had reservations?  No...he had made them online earlier when he was hiding in his office while I got ready.  The true surprise was the dinner at Ceiba Restaurant, NOT the show.  See, when we first met he took me there and it was that dinner and the following show we saw, Avenue Q, at the National Theatre, that made me realize how serious our relationship was, and ultimately that I was going to marry him.  It was wonderful to relive those moments and make new amazing memories, plus...the food was AMAZING...

this was right after he told me about the surprise. He still looks...sneaky

We had a lovely metro ride home...seeing the most adorable little Asian baby that I wanted to snuggle so much.  Her mom kept trying to get her to wave at us, and she was like uhhh...no. We loved that she was sitting in her stroller with a plastic cover, and propping her feet up on it like it was an easy chair. Too cute for words.  

Now we are sitting at home on the couch with a snoring cat between us, and I can say with certainty that this was a much better Sunday than I had originally planned!

Stupendous Saturday! Friends and yogurt...and mulch?

(insert big satisfied smiley face right here!)

What a great Saturday I have had.  My husband and I both had friends over, and it was a great day, even if it poured most of the day.
Yesterday morning Mona and I headed over to a meetup (with another group) and met some great people.  On the way out, they gave us these beautiful flowers!

This morning I decided to attempt to make yogurt after a friend sent me a link to the http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ recipe.  I only have skim milk and skim fage yogurt, so this might end badly, but oh well I can buy the proper ingredients next time!  After putting the ingredients in the crockpot, allowing the milk to heat for a couple of hours, stirring in the yogurt and letting it cool, I put it in the oven (OFF!) and covered it with everything I could find (including sending my friend upstairs to grab a towel to wrap around it.  I have two aprons around it, and there might be some place mats.  Whatever...it works!

you can't really see anything but the string hanging down from my apron

It says 'NO TOUCH! yogurt"  It was a small sticky note...and a bad marker!

Since I didn't want anyone preheating the oven and starting a massive fire, I also put a sign up...








One of the things that my friend Mar and I love doing is coloring.  No joke...I like it more now that I'm an adult than I did when I was in school.  This is our latest...project.  If it were more zoomed you could see how her side is perfectly even and beautiful and mine is...well me.  Not always inside the lines and uneven.  Pretty much sums up my personality-messy but effective...

It is hard to see, but it is apparently a picture of a sorcerer's chamber. The orange thing at the bottom was supposed to a lion. 

Last night the husband and  I hit up Costco for some serious produce.  Mona and I shared some of hers as well, so I now have mangos, cantaloupe, pineapple, avocados, a sweet potato, spinach and 2 asperagus shoots. I can eat asperagus, but no I don't like it.  This fact is making it really hard for me to finish.  I sort of gave mona most of it.
The menu this week worked pretty well.  The hubs either ate a couple of bites of my food or had it for left overs, which worked pretty well. I ended up cooking the hamburger meat yesterday, and then we can make tacos whenever we want.  We ate at Costco last night since we were there, which made me feel a little guilty but my husband doesn't deal well with hunger, so I had to feed to beast.  Here are some yummy produce shots...



Twice a year we apparently have to mulch our front garden.  This is okay in theory, but I didn't know jack about mulching.  I made a big mistake. Instead of getting the more expensive stuff that is darker, I got the cheap red crap that it looked like they had put down before.  Dyed...wood. What was I thinking?  Basically, I don't now won't eat anything out of the garden (there was an herb garden) because God knows what chemicals they use.  Oh well...lesson learned.  Next time, I'm getting cedar or pine. Does anyone know anything about using dyed mulch? I've never mulched before. I'm glad I was planning on simply container gardening anyways!

Before the red mulch fiastco I pulled out a bunch (no seriously, it takes over) of mint and decided to make mint lemonade from a recipe I found online.  It's good...I've had way too much. I ran out of lemon juice...two bottles. I should be shot for using it, but I had it on hand and...they did all the work for me! I just had to measure it, right?  It was a good project for 9pm.

That is it for tonight!  I'm thinking tomorrow will be low key.  I will try to get some pictures of our front garden now that it is mulched, even if I will grimace every time I look at it...just a little.

I can read patterns, successes, failures and pretties

I have been crocheting on and off for more than a decade but it wasn't until now that I made something more than a scarf reading a pattern.  2 patterns and 4 hats later, I had a success!! 

me rocking the headphones and a side view

(Second pattern, second attempt--win!)

I really wanted a slouchy beret, and it took forever it seems to get one! Here is where the pattern came from--Thanks Julie!

http://www.gleefulthings.com/blog/?p=640&cpage=1#comment-3986

I attempted to follow a similar pattern and got this hat...

NOT a slouchy beret:( (first pattern, second attempt)

I also had the misfortune of ending up with this atrocious mess of a hat the first time I attempted to follow the first pattern. It was big enough to fit my cat in. Thankfully I managed to pull it apart and reused the yarn.  

My friend took this picture during our skype conversation to show how awful my first hat was, and how tiny my second hat (on top) was in comparison.  Hilarious....On that note, I LOVE skype! I had an hour long conversation with my friend in WV, and when we were on vacation we chatted in real time with our friends in Germany.  

My husband was quite crafty yesterday too and did lots of little things around the house including putting up a lovely metal branch I picked up at my favorite store, velcro for our remotes (awesome idea) and hooks so I could hang up my awesome stained glass.  

Stained glass my friend's mom made

remote + wall + velcro = win!

This now lives on my wall. 

My awesome friend Mariette came to visit and we did some shopping, coloring and made some jewelery holders out of picture frames.  I'll post pictures after I hang them.  

This week I head out to WV for the birth of my friend's daughter. I'm really excited to spend time with my friends, and see a beautiful baby girl.  I'll post some pictures of her and my surprise present for her mother next week.  I'll be gone for awhile, but thanks to the awesome internet, I hope to keep you updated!  

Thank you to everyone that read my last post about my grandmother.  It was awesome to see the comments that my family posted on facebook, and here.  We don't have to keep our memories in our heads. We can share them and help others remember as well.  

I love spring, and love how early it comes in Maryland.  Even though Newton has tried to eat them, I still got flowers...They are so pretty and bright!

Spring...NOT
snow!

Oh yeah...it SNOWED in Oregon when we were visiting a nearby town. It was this insane and intense downpour of huge snow flakes, followed by just chilly weather.

Valentine's Week!!

A couple of weeks after we met, my husband took me to see Avenue Q (2003 Original Broadway Cast) at the National Theatre. It was AMAZING. After the show though, he did tell me that he doesn't 'do' holiday. He however is perfectly happy to give me a 'birthday' type present in the middle of May though! This translates to getting some interesting presents on unbirthdays, or not expecting anything unless I ask (umm..or hint). I love giving/getting presents so I fell into giving Valentine's WEEK presents instead of day.  Here are my some of my presents....

Wednesday: some cool household stuff that I got at Bed Bath and Beyond
Thursday: Zombie Dice
Friday:Gummy Heart Candy
Saturday: lots of couple time
Sunday: Couples Yoga Class followed by a nice lunch
Monday: SKIP BO Card Game and Dinner (I'm aware that this hasn't happened yet, but he found his gift and we discussed dinner already;))

I am sure that I missed some stuff, and it wasn’t even planned originally to give him a gift a day.  I just had fun with the stuff that I picked up. The games were because  I wanted to buy him a couple of games that we could play on our way to Oregon in a couple of weeks. 

Today we had an awesome time a couples yoga.  While my husband hadn’t done yoga before, and I’m a newbie, we still had an amazing time. We are both really flexible, and have decent balance.  The class was really light and fun, but also at times challenging and I would go so far as to say a trust activity.  In one position we hand to hold hands and then basically sit, using the other partner’s weight to hold you up.  this was the hardest position for me because I had to trust that he was basically holding me up....very hard.  The most fun position was something like this

http://www.fitsugar.com/Partner-Yoga-Pose-Facing-Fence-332192

Only instead of facing each other, we were both facing forward.  We then did it as an entire class. Something like 30 people in a circle all doing the pose.  It was pretty hilarious and fun. Sadly, this class is only offered once a year, and not weekly since I would love to do something like this with my hubby every week.  

Yesterday we were working on finances and since we were already on the couch in the basement, decided to watch a movie on our big screen TV.  Our choice? Top Gun.  I actually had NEVER seen it before!  I liked it, but now I have the music stuck in my head!  After we finished Top Gun and lots of popcorn, we moved onto the Bond flick “The Living Daylights.”  I love the show Chuck, so it was hilarious seeing Dalton playing Bond.  He is most certainly NOT my favorite Bond, but it was so much fun.  

What did you do to build intimacy with your partner this Valentine’s Day?  

On another note, I need a schedule so badly. I’m a lazy schmuck if given the chance so I want to make a real schedule. My friend is going to do some language lessons with me, but I want to do a lot more.  I also need to work on my programming so that I can go forth and confidently say that I can program and have the skills needed to learn other programs.  I also really need to get back in the gym and STILL haven't had luck finding a gym/trainer that I like.

How you deal with your personal vs. work goals?  How do you incorporate them?  

Mission Impossibly Early Morning!

My husband is on a mission. Daily he goes to bed a little earlier and wakes up earlier. It started with him going to bed around 10 waking up around 6. Last night we went to bed at 8 and he got up at 4:30.  Does he do this to go to the gym? Have a lesiurely time sitting around in the morning, or even strive to get more work done? Nah, he does this all for a parking spot. Yes, that is right, you read correctly, a parking spot.  See where he works parking is a precious commodity traded for a good nights sleep on the open market. If you don't want to walk for a quarter of an hour in sub zero weather, you get up before most teenagers go to bed and haul your ass into work.  On the up side, he can work his eight hours and leave at 3pm, but at that point he is so exhausted he just wants to go back to sleep and start the whole vicious cycle again.  The most humerous part of this for me though, is that he actually gets up early on the weekends now! He used to sleep till noon-1pm on the weekends to 'catch-up' on sleep and then wouldn't get anything done the rest of the day.  Now he is finally used to getting up early, and seems to get more done.  I believe becoming a morning person however is the last nail in the coffin of actually becoming an adult.  My dad would be so proud...

My limit of getting up early is getting up at 5am with him, seeing him out the door, watching a little hulu and falling back into bed. I am not a morning person, or perhaps I am a closeted morning person who is reluctantly leaving the safe sanctuary of the comfy bed in the closet that I've been huddled in for the last 26 years. Last night however, it seemed like too much work to get ready for bed, be read to (we are reading Royal Assassin) snuggle, and then come back downstairs, so I just went to bed with him....at 8pm.  Now I understand why old people eat dinner at 4pm!  While I wasn't wide awake and perky at 4:30 in the morning (is anyone?!) I was at 7:30, and stumbled downstairs to respond to email, read facebook and do other mindless tasks until the rumble of my belly necessitated food.
I had been laying in bed last night dreaming of new things to make with my vitamix, and I really wanted a green smoothie again.  Green? What? You put Spinach in your smoothies? Yeah yeah, ya can't taste it! Promise.

Here is what I threw into my Vitamix CIA Professional Countertop Blender with 2+ HP Motor, Platinum, and no I as you can probably tell, I didn't really measure.
an apple cut in 4
a whole banana (missing a bite, cause I like bananas)
some frozen strawberries
2 cups of BABY spinach (ok, in my case 2 fistfulls of spinach)
some grapes (I got bored and stopped after about 15 of them)
splash of cranberries juice
end of a container of fage yogurt (probably 1/4 cup)

(Note: There are no rules to green smoothies other than including some spinach to make it, green.  Generally though, you can't taste the spinach and it gives you a lot of iron and other nutrients we aren't getting since most of us (read:me) don't eat enough veggies. A Vitamix is perfect for making green smoothies because it has an amazing motor that can liquefy most anything in 10 seconds or less)
blend that sucker...then I tasted and added 10 ice cubes and 3 more strawberries and blended some more.  
Thats it!  I went to pour said smoothie and "SPLAT!!!" It filled my cup and runith, splatith over onto the counter and got a little on my radio (don't tell my husband). Woops...I cleaned it up, grabbed a couple of mini-muffin tops and breakfast! I think I might have a couple of hardboiled egg whites too.
Here is a picture, cause I know that people like pictures.

before...

after...