Yadda Yadda

This weekend is shaping up to be seriously boring. I had loose plans with 2 or 3 people, and it seems none are materializing. I'm (mostly) okay with that; I don't mind a bum-around-the-house-in-my-PJs sort of weekend here and there, especially when it's winter outside. I would have liked to have gotten outside today, as it was nicer out than it has been or will be in a while. I couldn't think of anything to do out there, though. I probably could have crawled under the porch and destroyed the wasp's nests while they're empty - but what a yucky way to spend a Saturday! Instead, I watched The Social Network, and worked on some new cross-stitch patterns. I have one in particular that I love, the other one I worked on didn't turn out so well. I have some ideas to re-do it, though. I think I'll have to use smaller graph paper and aida for that one.

Anyway, I made myself some pickle nachos. That's the picture I chose for today, because it represents just how very little excitement I've had in my life over the past 24 hours. I thought a picture of the pattern might be misleadingly 'fun'.


I could have sworn I'd talked about pickle nachos here before, but I can't find where that's the case.

Andy saw on TV a while ago a show about the origin of 'bar foods', one of which was the nacho. He then came home and made these for me. He doesn't eat pickles (weirdo), but he said the original nacho was just fried corn tortilla triangles, with cheddar cheese melted on top and pickles on each triangle. Everything I've found on the Interwebs says it was just melted cheese and pickled jalapenos, so I'm wondering if he just misheard. However it happened, he made them for me and I've been addicted ever since!

You should try it!

This picture is my lazy version, with tortilla chips. When he makes them for me he always makes the chips from tortillas. Awww...

Petes-ah!

We met my parents for beer tasting, and we were planning to go to get some greasy In-a-Tub tacos afterward, but they gave us this:



so we all went to Pizza Shoppe. It was nice; it felt like we hadn't seen them much in a while. Everyone's hunkered down for the winter, I suppose.

"Making Love"

Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching, and we are poor. Andy & I have agreed we'll just have a nice dinner and exchange cards. I ordered a letterpress card from Etsy, and I'm sort of thinking of trying to make him something. Had I planned better, I'd have saved the Edward Sharpe cross-stitch and given it to him now, but of course I did not.

If you know of any good homemade Valentine gift ideas let me know. I have a few things up my sleeve, but since I just sent the link to my blog to Andy this past week I'll refrain from posting them for now.

Broken Promises

We are trying to figure out which ugly sweaters to wear and what to wear them with for tomorrow. It will be week 4 of Ugly Sweater Fridays at work. Andy had chosen his sweater but had to figure out what to wear under it. I convinced him to try it with my mock turtleneck. I thought it looked good, but he decided against it. However, before he took it off I made him pose for a picture. I don't know if it's the tattoos against the sleeveless turtleneck or what, but I couldn't stop laughing when he was walking around in just this:

I promised him I wouldn't show anybody this, but it's the only picture I took all day and I didn't want you all (all zero of you!) to think I'd fallen off the wagon.

Sorry babe.

Largely Frozen

When we got home from Audrey's apartment last night, I noticed this:

MONSTER-CICLE!

Sister Re-Lo

Well, I guess the trial period was a bust. My sister decided to move in with her friend instead. I am unsurprised, and slightly annoyed. I wasn't dying for a roommate by any means, but I think he's kind of ripping her off/taking advantage of the fact that she'd do anything for him. The good news is it is very close to her work so hopefully that pans out. Good thing, since she won't have enough money to put gas in her car once she splits rent with him so she can sleep in an open dining area.

Anyway, she's excited and I don't want to take that away from her. She had us all over for tacos tonight, and I loves me a good taco night. I think that I probably talk about tacos on here far more than should be normal... Huh. It's a nice place, but barren. I think she'll turn it into something more home-y, and we've all already offered to give her some extra stuff we have. After we had dinner, the old folks left but Andy & I stayed and we all played Spades. It was a nice evening.

So Damn Exciting

Friday night at my house.

...And we're back!

My phone seems to have recovered from whatever was ailing it, so stay tuned for posts. I will be dating them accordingly. Happy Phriday!

SNOW!

Toes in the sand....sort of.

I have to say, except for whole the trying to go places thing, I enjoy the snow. I want to play in it. And when it's dry and powdery like it has been this year I want to sled. When it's wet, I want to build a snowman. Andy does not share in any of these desires. He does not think, like I do, that there are few things more beautiful than undisturbed snow.

Something neither of us desires and must be done, though, is shoveling the driveway. After a sick day in the house today, we realized we had to dig ourselves a hole if we wanted to leave in the morning. We headed outside to shovel in the dark, and a quick 2 hours later we had a path cleared.

As you can see, I got sidetracked. My Wellies sure look dirty in the snow!!

Hydro-Powah!

Yesterday, my coworker gave me this sweet calculator:


I know, right about now you're thinking, "There is nothing sweet about that calculator but the green buttons, and THAT'S certainly nothing worth blogging about." Well, friends, don't judge this book by its cover, check THIS out:

It is water-powered! Seriously, you unscrew that and fill the clear part about 3/4 with water and you're good to go. I don't know how long that amount of water will last, but so far she's going strong!

I'm probably overly excited about this, but it seems to me like a pretty damn cool advance!

I've been taking pictures, but my phone is not cooperating. It won't open the gallery for me to send them. I'm working on the problem, but just wanted to let you know that I'm not slacking off this time! I promise!!!

Day & Night

I took several pictures today and couldn't decide which to use. I narrowed it down to 2 but I can't choose out of them, so I'll tell you about both.

Tonight we hosted a board game night at the house, and so I spent the day getting a lot of cleaning done. Sunday is always my cleaning day anyway. Having been feeling pretty crummy this past week and trying not to get sick, I wasn't feeling like cleaning, so to get myself in the mood I started off by hanging the wall decals Mom got me for Christmas:

I like them. This is in the spare bedroom/computer room, and we've been spending a lot of time in there lately so I wanted to put some more of 'us' in that room. When I first bought my house my cousin moved into this room, and it's the only room we haven't repainted or done really anything with so I figured hanging pictures and cheerful things was a good route to go. I also hung a tie dye 'curtain', which does nothing to block the sun but it looks cute!

So then we had people over for board games. There ended up being 8 of us, which was probably the perfect size for something like that. We played Apples to Apples, Taboo, and Quelf. All are great games in a group setting, and good 'icebreaker' type games if not everyone knows each other. So I'll leave you with a picture from our game of Quelf. Andy drew a card that dictated he do ballet until the timer ran out:

Furniture

So I went furniture shopping with my parents. It was not presented to me as such, but it turned out to be an overall experience alright. Painful at times, though.

Dad is about to get his bonus, and has already more or less decided how he wants to spend it: on kitchen wares and musical gear. I approve. So the first leg of our journey was in search of kitchenware.

We headed downtown to check out Index Restaurant Supply, on a friend of the family's recommendation. We had a suspicion that it might not be open on the weekends, but we gave 'er a shot anyway...Suspicion confirmed.

Afterward, we attempted to go to Ambrosi Bros., a place off of Main that basically refurbishes cutlery and sells it. I was really interested to check it out, and especially the price range...hoping to walk out with 1 super badass knife...but alas, they are only open Monday-Friday as well.

So we were off to Nebraska Furniture Mart! We wandered through fake living room after fake living room, with several requirements: 1) no velour-ish microfiber, 2) Pillow backs NOT allowed, and 3) No sectionals. It doesn't seem like these are very stringent requirements, but it is next to impossible to find a sofa that meets these criteria, isn't hideous, and isn't over $1000.

Hours later, after quite possibly having walked several miles back and forth, we found a great grey couch. It was classy and affordable. Problem was, in its fake living room setting it was paired with an accent chair that cost nearly as much as the couch. We headed to the chair section and found 2 accent chairs that should match pretty well, and they recline and were on super sale. To be delivered next Saturday! Huzzah! Hopefully the pieces are all actually nice, and we weren't just hasty in our desperation, exhaustion, and hunger.

Mom, in a gigantic and wonderful 'chair'

After that, we attempted to go to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner, but it was packed. We were all starving, after not getting lunch (a long story/dramafest that shan't be mentioned here), and I hadn't had breakfast either, and we remembered the gem on the other side of the interstate - Frontier Steakhouse.

Long ago, Andy & I had driven by there and mentioned we wanted to check it out some time. The next time we were in the area with my family, we all stopped there and loved it. They have these awesome fried green beans, and the people are just really nice and the food is all really good. Also, it was opened by a local musician so that part made us all insta-happy, of course. Dennis Laffoon, the drummer of the band Shooting Star, owns the joint and actually seated us this visit. Shooting Star was popular in the 80's and he totally looks the part of the aged 80's rocker. I want to be his friend. And continue to eat at his restaurant.

Kitteh.

So a couple days ago I get a text message from my sister: "Do you still need a roommate?" First of all, I don't know what she means by still since I never said I needed a roommate, but I figured I'd play. TURNS OUT, she and her friend Amanda found a kitten by a dumpster at Amanda's apartment complex. Amanda couldn't keep it unless she wanted to pay a pet deposit somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 *It should be noted here that my sister is very prone to exaggeration.* The only reason Audrey wanted to move in to my house was so she could keep it.

Why this is a bad idea:

1.) I don't really like cats. I mean they're okay as a critter, some of them, but until they can go outside or in the toilet, I won't have one.

2.) I have a dog...a dog who is already somewhat neurotic. One time I saved a kitten from work because it was like 11 days old and noisy, and somehow Yoshimi (my dog) switched into this maternal mode and was actually pretty sweet. Since then she's gotten older and grouchier, and had less contact with other animals. Plus she's kind of a chicken.

3.) My sister works all the time. I'm no dummy, I'm going to get stuck with this stupid cat all the time while she's at work. She'll sleep in with the cat in the bed, presumably, and that will be the extent of their interaction.

Finally, I relented. I told her we could do a trial run, she could decide if the extra time to get to work and back was going to work for her, etc. I also said that the cat was to live in the basement when nobody was home, until we could come up with a better solution, and that I wasn't going to be taking care of it. If she didn't, I'd just set the cat outside (I probably couldn't do that, but hopefully Audrey believes my empty threats...).

She brought her over that night, and so far the cat has mostly been a giant bitch. This is the first she really let me hold her. My dog is terrified of her because she hisses if she can even see her. Audrey has named it Skids for the time being, "because she's skittish".

This could get interesting...

Alexander

Alright, confession time.

Somehow in my Edward Sharpe madness, I missed Alex's solo single. I saw there was finally a release date (March 10th) for his album, to be released under the name Alexander. Then I started to do some digging, and as it turns out one of his singles has been getting considerable airplay already on stations such as XMU. Not knowing that, I was in the dark.

Ahem...

With that, I present to you (2 months later).... "Truth"



It's like ImaRobot meets Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and has a funky threesome with Citizen Cope.

When I first heard it I wasn't sold, but the more I hear it the more I can't stop listening.

(In related news, Ima Robot just released a new album in October 2010 - WHAT!? Single "Ruthless" here.)

I guess I'll crawl out from under this rock, now...

Food...Yes, I'm That Guy.

I told myself I was going to get out of the habit of posting my food, and for the most part I've done well. Nights like this, 7:00 rolls around and I realize I haven't taken a picture for the day and I have no plans to do anything but sit on my ass for the rest of the evening....so long story short, I caved. In my defense, it was a particularly delicious meal.

Andy made slow-cooked achiote pork...I think I have discussed this before in here, because I just had a weird deja-vu feeling...Well, I can't find it so I'll explain (again?)...

Once upon a time, Andy saw a show on TV - I want to say it was the Travel Channel or Alton Brown. They were talking about how in ancient Latin American civilizations (think Mayans) they would roast an entire hog in the ground with hot rocks. They would rub it with adobo and wrap in banana leaves. Well, we don't have a hole or a hog, but he makes this version that he saw on TV once upon a time. You basically take a pork roast and you make a paste of achiote (preferably the block of paste, the seeds are a pain unless you have a spice grinder but they might be easier to find), and garlic and rub the pork with it. If you have time, marinade it overnight, but if not you can cook it right away. When you cook it, add the juice of about 8 limes and let it cook all day. This time he added broth too, since the limes we got weren't all that juicy.

Once it's done, shred the pork, and add a little bit of the drippings (sans fat) to the meat. Heat up some corn tortillas (we do it on a cast iron skillet), and add your favorite taco condiments....YUM! (Pico de gallo, cheese, & lettuce is my personal preference, served with a cold Dos Equis)

After the Storm

I took this picture as we were leaving for work this morning. Isn't it pretty? I love snow.

Except for sliding onto the street we work on (no surprise there - in spite of the fact that probably 1200 people work on this road they never plow it or the turn lane to it), the trip was rather uneventful. I'm thankful for that - idiots everywhere in this weather....in all weather, but this weather brings it to the surface even more.

Snow Day!

Chillin' wit my dawg

It started snowing yesterday...hasn't stopped yet, and it doesn't look like it plans to anytime soon. We got up on time, and headed out to the driveway to start shoveling. There was probably about 4" at that point, and had Andy parked around the back of the house. I have a long driveway, and usually in winter weather we park up front so we don't have to clear the whole thing. We failed to plan this time, so an hour and a half later we'd reached the road. When we walked back up there was probably over a half an inch of snow accumulated where we'd started shoveling. My road looked terrible, and the meteorologist said if you wanted a drive time estimate to triple your regular commute. There were 13 interstate accidents at the time. I called in. If it were closer, or our car was better equipped to deal with these things (like maybe if it were even front wheel drive), I'd have come in. As it was, though, Andy wasn't very keen on the idea of heading out in it and I needed to study differential equations.

I got a lot of studying done, and I also created a Star Trek Online character and played it for breaks. It's actually pretty cool. Uh oh...

Now there's probably 6". It's beautiful, and I want to play in it. Andy doesn't share either of those sentiments. :(

Nerdiness Prevails

I spent the bulk of my weekend building Frankputer:


Several months ago, my aunt's computer (which was formerly my grandfather's) suffered from a hard drive crash. Having a laptop, she decided to just be done with the desktop. My father & I being the computer nerds we are got dibs.

Subsequently, my computer wouldn't run Star Trek Online, a game Andy purchased and was excited to play. It might have overcome the subpar dual core, since the clock speed was more than necessary, but my video card just wouldn't cut the mustard. He went online and bought the recommended card for the game. He should have consulted me, as the motherboard has an AGP video slot and he bought a PCI-E, so we couldn't use it.

This set in motion the plan for Frankenputer. We got the case from my aunt, and I had my desktop as well as Andy's virus-ridden one at the house. We'd been planning to combine our 2 to make the best machine we could out of what we had, but now there was another one in the mix.

Dad came over Saturday and we spent nearly the entire weekend assembling it, but for the most part it is paying off. Thankfully, even though it isn't dual core, it runs Star Trek Online pretty damn smoothly.

We ended up wiping Andy's hard drive and using it, using the RAM from his computer, and his wireless card. My wireless card was acting flaky. I left my system mostly intact and sent it up to my parents' house to live on the farm.

The computer my grandpa originally had, which is the bulk of what our 'new' system is, has some kickass features. It comes with built-in FM and TV tuners, has a remote control, records video, has S-video and composite outputs, etc. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Something was wrong with the DVD burner tray, so I took it out and had to take it apart to get a disc out of it, so we'll need to replace that. Also, I'm waiting on the hard drive cage to make its way back from the data recovery service, where it's still attached to my aunt/grandpa's hard drive. That's why the cover is off and top slot is empty in the picture.

Anyway, what we ended up with:
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
2.5 GB RAM
160 GB HD, w 80 GB master in the works....and striped SATA drives to follow shortly
GeForce 9500 GT graphics card

...and all for the $30 that it cost Andy to get the video card, and as a result light a proverbial fire under my ass.

I'm pretty happy.

Technologic

This is my first post back at Blogger, so bear with me. I have to say, I like the posting interface on the other site much better, but this will be easier for people to connect with, so I succumbed.

I've mentioned previously we have a Saturday tradition of going to my favorite bar in town and eating 75-cent tacos and basking in the gloriousness that is their jukebox.

or was.
They recently 'upgraded' to a TouchTunes. Word through the grapevine is their vending company wasn't hip on the extra maintenance it took to keep up a CD jukebox. My initial thought is 'Fuck them, that's their job,' but of course my opinions on the matter don't make any difference. So when we were there, so was this. We were there for a potluck bidding farewell to a long-time bartender of theirs, John. Ch-ch-ch-changes. Damn them.

The good news is the music selection on here seems to be pretty solid and faithful to what once was. Let's hope it only gets better.

Domination.

We owned you, beyotch.

The picture is sideways, but you get the point. We finished the puzzle after a thorough ass kicking in Zumba.

In other news, I had ravioli for dinner, which I hadn't had in a long while, and it was particularly delish.

The message you might be inferring for today is that it was uneventful. You would be correct.

Movie Night

Tonight Andy & I met my parents and aunt & uncle at the awesome theater I mentioned a couple weeks ago to see True Grit.

I really liked it. The Dude did The Duke quite well, if you ask me. I also liked the girl who played Mattie more in this one than I did in the original. Dad disagreed with that, but that just means he's wrong. :)

Anyway, if you have any interest at all in seeing the movie, you definitely should. My interest level was really not that high, except that I love Jeff Bridges and trust the Coen Brothers (as I long as I pretend Burn After Reading didn't happen), and I came away happy.

....or that might have been due to the 2 Beams on the rocks. (:

The Bar is Set, and it’s High

Today I found a link about a guy in New Hampshire who proposed to his now-fiancee by making a movie trailer starring Muppet versions of the couple.

I read the story of it, and watched the video, and it made me tear up.  It's awesome; you should definitely check it out.

Things I Love, Vol VI: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

So...  Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros are recording their second album!!!

This maketh me ultra happy.  I actually read this article the day it was posted, a couple weeks ago, but didn't think to comment on it here since I was being something of a blog slacker at the time.

As I'm reading this article, and being excited about the prospect of it all, and loving them a little bit more with every sentence, I get to this part:

"There's animals everywhere!" singer Jade Castrinos adds. Three orphan dogs that the band has named Angie, Andy and Precious -- as well as a still-nameless cat -- have wandered in from the thicket and made themselves at home.

I nearly spat out my water!  Seriously, of the 3 animals they've named, there is one named Precious (totally not a person name), and the other two are Andy and Angie?!?!  I know I'll sound crazy, but it's almost like some sort of sign....In any case, it made me quite happy.

I haven't officially written anything about Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros yet, but I did mention Jade & Alex in my post about couples.  I would have to say that, although I first heard about/saw them in 2009, ES & TMZ are probably my favorite band of 2010 (Speaking of which, I should do a post about my favorite things of 2010...).  Chances are you've heard them somewhere: Their song "Janglin'" was featured on the Ford Fiesta commercial, and "Home" has started to get a lot of radio play more recently (and has charted on Billboard), but was also featured on an NFL commercial, a trailer for Cyrus, and a viral video of a man walking across America.

My first experience with them was in the summer of 2009.  Emily and I had a trip planned to go to Monolith Festival (Please come back next year!) at Red Rocks (My absolute favorite concert venue) in September.  I was downloading some music by some of the artists I wasn't familiar with in order to determine what stages to hit up, when I found "Home".  It was instant love, and when I saw them live at Red Rocks it was increased exponentially.  They were my favorite performance at the festival, and I listened to them religiously afterward.  I bought their album on vinyl and the needle never stopped.

When they came to Kansas City in June, I dragged Andy along with me.  I don't think he was too excited.  It was the night before my colonoscopy so I couldn't eat or drink, and when I got home later that night all I had to look forward to was camping out on the toilet... I was pretty cranky, and the show paled in comparison to the one at Red Rocks, to no fault of the band - stupid high-schoolers shoving me and standing in front of me was to blame.  However, in spite of all of that, by the time we left Andy had become a believer.

For my birthday, he took me camping in Minnesota and to see them in Minneapolis.  It was glorious.  We were right up in front, I touched Alex, they opened for themselves - It was perfect.

Do yourself a favor and catch them live somewhere before they really blow up and start playing godawful giant venues.

A Puzzling New Year

...No, literally. On New Year's Day, the family spent a ridiculous amount of time on a jigsaw puzzle Debbie & Robert have.

Difficult mystery to solve

After Zumba tonight, we continued working on it. It's an Alfred Hitchcock mystery puzzle, so you don't know what it is supposed to look like, which makes it REALLY difficult, but also fun. It comes with a little booklet where you can "solve they mystery" and it tells you some of the items in the picture, but that doesn't help nearly as much as you'd expect.

Anyway, we've been having fun with it, and I imagine we'll work on it Thursday before and after Zumba too. Hopefully it's finished by the end of the week! It makes me want to start a puzzle at home, though. It's nice. Perhaps as a reward to myself after the midterm is done...or maybe it's wiser to wait until the class is done!

Ugly Sweater Fridays

I became a first grade teacher at the thrift store.

For the month of January, the managers/admin folks at work have decided to have Ugly Sweater Fridays. Of course, owning nothing ugly but harboring a deep desire to participate in everything possible, I was off to the thrift store. There were only 2 ugly sweaters, and they both fit!

So far I only bought the one in the picture, I'm going to wait until next week to get the other one. Mostly I want an excuse to go back there and check again for ugly mens' sweaters, which they didn't have any of. They had some outdated ones, but nothing horrendous. I need to find the perfect ugly sweater so Andy can be a part of the fun too!