movin' on up...

so my move up to the 12th floor and my new office is complete. it is a bittersweet transition for these reasons:

-sweet: bigger office. MUCH bigger. like 3 times the size. very good. i no longer feel like i am in a closet.
-sweet: carpet! yes! i have carpet instead of yucky institutional tile!
-sweet: bright lights! my boss insisted if they were moving her (and subsequently me) that they were going to do it right, so she ordered the best lights and best ceiling tiles. which may seem trivial to some, but i dig nice, bright white light. especially considering...
-bitter: no windows. ugh. as if i didn't already have a dearth of vitamin d in my life. my old office didn't have a window either, but it had an office behind it which had a window, so i could peek through the doorway or walk in there to catch a little sunshine or a glimpse of the outside world. here, i am in the middle of the building and have no idea where i can find a window (at least, i don't know the people with the offices with windows).
-bitter: i left my girls downstairs! on the seventh floor, i had my pals brie and krystyna to gab with on occasion. i can still go down there when i want, but it's just not the same as walking around the corner.
-bitter: i don't know anyone on this floor. there are two ladies down the hall who i know sort of, but they're older than me, whereas brie and krystyna are much closer to my own age. i'm friendly, though... i'm sure i'll meet plenty of folks in due time. :)
-sweet: i have a nice full-size leather couch in my office. perfect for friends who visit, emergency naps, or reading boring ass grants, or heck, even reading for pleasure during lunch or something. also, i have taken to watching 24 on myspace most tuesdays, so now i can sit back on the couch and turn my monitor that way!

so, i guess tallying it all up, there are more sweet than bitter things about the move. then again, it's only day 2 in the new digs, we'll see how it goes as time goes on!

in other news, bryan and i are on the hunt for furniture for our front living room. this is proving to be more difficult than i expected. i realized i am a picky lady. i have a vague idea of what i want (modern but not overly so, nice but not stuffy, comfy but not overly so since it is the "formal" living room), but nothing we looked at really jumped out at me. we went to 7 furniture stores on saturday and there was nothing that i felt like we absolutely MUST buy. now that i've seen pretty much everything that's out there that's not super expensive, i am hoping we can revisit the couple of stores that seemed the most promising and i'll rediscover something i've already seen as the set that we actually will buy. we shall see.

of course, starting this week bryan will be working longer hours and more weekends, as it is outage season and he'll have to be at work making sure things are running smoothly. (well, i think that's what he does, generally. :) ) so who knows when the actual furniture buying will happen. i'm really hoping to have it in the house in time for the grammer/klinger birthday extravaganza on april 7... keep your fingers crossed!

becoming julia child

so i may have already told you this, but a while back, i realized the problem with me cooking is that i never could decide what to cook. i used to arrive home after work and stare into the freezer trying to decide if defrosting meat would be worth it, and what would i do with it anyway once it was ready to cook. for a couple of months, i've been picking out several recipes before each grocery trip and buying the ingredients so that i know exactly what i'll be cooking over the next week or so. this has worked out rather nicely. i have subscriptions to both cooking light magazine and real simple, and own several cookbooks, along with the box full of recipes i got at my bridal showers.

i have always liked to cook, but i feel like i'm on my way to becoming the next julia child. i really got into this past season of top chef on bravo, and even asked bryan to get me a gift certificate to sur la table for christmas, where you can go do various cooking classes. and now, i get excited about cooking the recipes i've selected.

for example, on sunday night i made sirloin steak with tarragon-garlic sour cream, over pan fried potatoes. it was pretty good, if i do say so myself. then monday, i drooled the whole bus ride home over my planned menu: homemade chicken pot pie. and honies, it did not disappoint! in fact, i ate so much felt sick. :)

of course, my excellent cooking skills are periodically interrupted during the week, as bryan and i are both addicted to chipotle, and we must have it at least once a week. plus we do tend to eat out a fair bit on the weekends in particular. but i went to the grocery store on wednesday and have big plans for french onion soup, pork chops with tomato-sage pan sauce, mahi mahi with a citrus ponzu sauce and chicken enchiladas with salsa verde. (the enchiladas give me a chance to make my guacamole, which i must say is pretty good!)

also, i used my gift certificate to sur la table and signed up for a 3-part cooking essentials series. i figure it will be nice to have a professional cook show me how i'm supposed to be cooking this stuff, and then i can move on to culinary divinity from there. :) those classes start march 8 and run three thursdays in a row. i am very excited!!

you'd think from this blog that i'm hungry right now, but the opposite is true. in the past two days i've eaten way too much (my coworkers and i went to a great italian restaurant for lunch yesterday to get out of the office). but with all those recipes waiting to be cooked, i think a lot about what sort of masterpiece i can create in the kitchen next! :)

ok, i'm done with winter.

well, i was really pulling for a good old fashioned snow day here in the RIC, but it appears that is not happening. and so, i've given up on winter and am urging spring to come a little sooner. the government appears to be with me since they've decided to move up daylight savings time, hopefully the weather will cooperate.

winter and me don't mix. i am loathe to do anything but lay on the couch and watch tv when it's cold outside. which is why you haven't heard from me in a while--i've either been working or under a blanket on my couch or in the bed! i guess that's not entirely true, though. a few things that have been going on since we last met...

• one week ago i managed to get a new VCU id card with my real name on it! i'll spare you the other 20 steps that took, just know that it never did get easy. but it happened. next is tackling IT. i am not excited at this prospect, and have therefore been putting it off. soon, though...
• one sunday a few weeks ago, after realizing that i virtually never exercise, i told bryan we should go to the park and go for a walk. so we did, and it was a lot of fun! we went to pocohantas state park, which is just a few short miles from our house, and did a 2.5 mile loop. at one point we passed two men running, and this inspired bryan to suggest that we run as well. i must inform you that i do not run. nor have i ever. but i decided to humor him and see if i could actually move faster than molasses, and i ran! i believe in total about 1/4 mile. that was over 4 or 5 different instances. (one of those stretches i swear i ran constantly for about .05 mile!) it was... kind of exhilirating, actually! (although i have not done it since then. but it's cold.) anyway, very slim chance i'm going to become a runner. my hips hurt for a couple days after that, proving to me that i am just not made to be a runner. that, or i'm in really bad shape as i suspected.

• our first valentine's day as a couple was not exactly what i had in mind. i had an attack of the swelling condition i have, an autoimmune disease called hereditary angio edema. i'll spare you the science, but suffice it to say that i get an enormous excess of fluid in my abdominal cavity, it presses on all my guts and hurts like a sonofabitch and makes me nauseated on top of it. so i woke up wednesday morning 110% miserable, i even had to have bryan call my work because talking made me feel like i was going to hurl. so i rifled through the medicine cabinet and found some pain meds i had leftover from an august 05 foot surgery and anti-nausea meds i had leftover from my october 03 chin surgery (don't worry, the box says it doesn't expire until august of this year!), took those and stayed in the bed ALL DAY. i did manage to get up and take a shower around 4p that day because i thought it highly inappropriate for a newlywed not to have showered on valentine's day, even if i wasn't going to be much of a date for my dear hubby. bryan brought me roses and a card home, and then proceeded to work his culinary magic in the kitchen, making us lasagna for dinner. unfortunately i was only able to eat about 4 bites of it--all i ate the whole day--but it was good, and has provided excellent leftovers! :) after that, i went and got back in bed and he brought up my next valentine's surprise. one of his co-workers had videotaped our wedding ceremony, but we haven't been able to watch it because we haven't converted it from the camera-sized tape it's on. so bryan had asked the guy to bring the camera to work, and he plugged it in and put in our wedding ceremony tape and we laid in bed and relived the day. it was very romantic and a nice way to spend valentine's day! he was bummed to learn on thursday that the flowers he had sent me at work had not yet arrived. they actually didn't arrive until friday afternoon, and they were not what he ordered!! this actually happened to a friend of mine in tennessee as well, and we discovered that both our sweethearts used ftd.com for the flowers. so, a word to the wise, don't order flowers from ftd.com.
• this past weekend i took advantage of an occasional perk here at work--free tickets to a vcu basketball game! we had a couples date with our friends todd and sarah and went to dinner at a restaurant called popkins on east broad street in richmond. they've renovated the old popkin's furniture store and turned it into a restaurant, it was pretty good! it was fun to go to that area of richmond, where they're working really hard to revitalize. the basketball game was fun, but it was kind of funny to see that arena compared to the fabulous john paul jones arena in charlottesville! vcu lost unfortunately, but thankfully none of us are vcu alum so we didn't mind too much. it was just a fun thing to do on a saturday!

• yesterday was my friend jodie's daughter's (and my flower girl) jordan's birthday, she turned 8. as her gift, i thought it would be fun to take her to the circus, so jodie and i took her two kids to see the greatest show on earth. it was fun, but obviously doesn't have the magic it held for me as a child anymore. now i look at the performers and wonder if they are happy in this lifestyle and look at the animals and wonder if they are treated well... freaking conscience! i'll still probably take my own children if i am blessed with them, but bryan and i will have to save up for a few months beforehand. it cost us $120 for 4 tickets, then another $46 for 2 sno-cones in souvenir cups, popcorn and cotton candy, then another $36 for a stuffed lion for jordan and a light up sword for dylan. good lord! i felt kind of bad because the family in front of us had gone the frugal route and brought snacks from home, and the little girl, about 5, kept turning around staring longingly at my sno-cone. even though i knew i couldn't offer her some, her little puppy dog eyes were really doing a number on me! my favorite part of the circus was the dogs doing tricks and flips and stuff. while some of the animals look completely pissed to be forced to do little circus tricks, those dogs looked happier than pigs in... well, you know. they were panting and jumping up and down and practically peeing themselves from joy! it was cute and fun to watch.

so, another week begins! next week we move offices, so this week i am trying to get everything in order for the move. fun!

"i'm not trying to be funny with you," or, the saga of the VCU id badge name change

i believe that the process of getting your name changed on your vcu id card is equivalent to becoming a member of the witness protection program and acquiring an entirely new identity. at least, that's what it feels like. let me map out this process for you.

1. get married sept. 30. spend most of october catching up, worry about getting social security card and driver's license changed to new name.
2. early november, decide to go ahead and get name changed at vcu. call hr rep.
3. hr rep sends me email, copies hr generalist, tells me to send copy of new drivers license.
4. hr generalist sends scathing response to me, copying hr rep, telling me i must fill out personal data form and send copy of social security card and marriage license.
5. i respond saying, i had to have marriage license to get social security card, are you sure i need that too?
6. determine that form + copy of new ss card will do. i send those in.
7. by the beginning of december, my paychecks and such reflect new name.
8. mid-december, decide i should get vcu purchasing credit card updated wtih new name. email holder of credit cards in purchasing and tell her this needs to be done.
9. she emails me back that she has cancelled the card i am holding. which sucks since i'm in the middle of interview season and holiday party season and am forced to use personal credit card and be reimbursed for about $1200 in expenses. (luckily, i accrue valuable world points with these purchases, so this isn't so terrible).
10. in the meantime, vcu card office moves to my building and thus i decide it's time to get my vcu id card updated with new name as well.

here's where it gets REAL fun. this takes place over a couple of weeks because i do need a break in between all the frustration, plus time for voice mails to be responded to.

11. go to vcu card office. they tell me my name has not been updated in their system. i say, "but when i look in the system, it's changed." they say, "no it's not."
12. go back to office. call hr generalist. she tells me it's an IT issue.
13. call IT. they tell me it's an HR operations issue.
14. call HR operations. they tell me they've taken care of it.
15. go back to vcu card office. they tell me my name has not been updated in their system. i say, "but HR told me they fixed it." they say, "no, they didn't."
16. get HR operations lady on the phone, who tells me the vcu card people don't know what they're talking about. i say, will you be there for 5 minutes, can i go to the card office and have that lady call you and you guys can figure this out. she says she will be there.
17. go downstairs to card office. lady at counter is on the phone yapping. she yaps for 5 min, finally gets off phone. i spend another 5 min explaining that the HR operations lady says it's fixed and can she call her so they can sort it out. she calls HR operations lady. HR operations lady has left the building. super.
18. vcu card lady says there is nothing she can do for me, try again with HR and then come back when they fix it.
19. out of desperation, i search vcu website until i locate name of executive director of human resources for entire university. i email her explaining the problem and begging her for help.
20. going straight to the top pays off! ED of HR tells me that the problem is that because i take classes and have a hospital email account (which is separate from the university, but i need it to access my boss' calendar), i need to also update my information with the registrar and the hospital HR, because those records are overriding the vcu HR name change in the vcu card office system (say wha?!). gives me phone numbers for these people.
21. call registrar's office, am guided to form online. print, fill out, take downstairs with my driver's license and am told name change from student side will take about a week. cool.
22. call hospital HR. ask for form. am told someone will call me back.
23. someone calls me back. says i need to take ID with proof of name change to hospital HR express near cafeteria and there i can fill out the form and they'll make a copy of my id. cool.
24. take driver's license to hospital HR express. stand in line for a few minutes before finding myself face to face with a man who looks like he is a retired marines officer.

25. mr. marine asks me to explain what i want. i do. we have this exchange:

mr. marine: you must have your social security card. i'm not trying to be funny with you.
me: but they told me on the phone to bring my id.
mr. marine: well, i don't make the rules, and i'm not trying to be funny with you. but you have to have your social security card.
me: but i had to have a new social security card to get a new driver's license.
mr. marine: i'm telling you, i'm not trying to be funny with you, but that is the rule. and then you fill out this form and bring it here and that will get it changed in our system.
me: well can i just fax this form and and a copy of my social security card?
mr. marine: well, that will be fine, here's the form. i'm not trying to be funny with you, this is just what they require us to do.

so i walked back to my office, form in hand, and thankfully i still have a copy of my social security card here from the FIRST name change i did, because i don't make a practice of carrying that around. as i was walking back i found myself laughing out loud and trying to control it because i didn't want people to think i had escaped from the psych floor. this has just become the most asinine sequence of steps and if you could have just heard him saying that over and over again, "i'm not trying to be funny with you." no joke, dude. you're trying to be a PAIN IN MY ASS!

now i'll send in that form and see what happens. the really fun and exciting part is that all of this is just to get my ID changed. next i get to deal with various IT people to try to get my email address changed. that is, if i don't lose my mind first.

and i am not trying to be funny with you.

the single life

so this week, bryan has been in roanoke on business and i've been living the life of a single girl. it has been very weird. i can't remember the last time we were apart for this long, probably about 2 years.

i managed to do alright, but i am so glad he's coming home today! tuesday i took my friend leslie out to dinner at a great restaurant i discovered thanks to the newspaper. it's called andre's. it's french-style food (kinda) but the chef is asian. it was EXCELLENT. which reminds me, i was going to bring the leftovers for lunch today... darn. i had a 4 oz. filet mignon and crabcake. yum. it was fun to hang out with leslie, too. she has good stories about her dating life and such. while i'm more than happy i don't have to date anymore, it's still fun to hear those stories. :)

wednesday i had another date with my friend jodie, to watch american idol. i don't know if the judges are more harsh or if i'm more sensitive, but every year i squirm a little more when they insult the bad singers, and even more so for the pretty good but not great ones... the ones that arent' delusional, they just really believe that they're good enough. and then the judges tell them they aren't. i hate that. i can't stand to see peoples' dreams shattered on television. so i'll be glad when it gets past the auditions. jodie and i met in 1995, and she and i have always had so much fun together. when we were younger we were totally crazy, and although we've tamed down tremendously, we still find ourselves doing the goofiest stuff sometimes. this week it involved me, jodie and her daughter jordan acting out our own version of american idol. none of us can sing too well. jordan probably has the best voice of all of us, but that might just be because she's cute. :)

last night it was time for me to get back down to business and get the house all cleaned up for bryan to come home. it's amazing the amount of worn clothes that can accumulate on a bedroom floor in a few short days... :)

now, it's lunchtime, and i am counting the hours down until i see my honey again....

grandma's gonna have my hide if i don't post.

well, i truly have no good excuse for not posting for a month. except i got spoiled and L A Z Y over the holiday break, then once i was back at work i was busy and by the time i got home from work i had no desire to get back in front of a computer and blog. so, i apologize for the lack of updates. i will try to catch you up to speed without writing a book.

our first christmas as husband and wife was very nice. my mom and her fiance came for christmas eve dinner, which i cooked all by myself. :) (still proud of this feat!)
i made, let's see... turkey, mashed potatoes (from scratch!), stuffing of course, green beans, corn, broccoli casserole, gravy, rolls, chocolate chiffon pie and pecan pie. and the day before i baked about 10 dozen more cookies. holy crap i was a cooking MACHINE! i must say that cooking a turkey has got to be the most disgusting thing i've ever experienced in the kitchen (save a few things left in the fridge a little too long in my college days, maybe). i was squealing like someone was attacking me when i was taking out the sh*t inside it (which was in plastic bags). bryan was still upstairs at the time and thought i was in pain. i wasn't--just extremely grossed out! ew! it is a freaking DEAD BODY! and yes, people, i am fully aware that i am eating dead animals when i eat meat. but i do not need to see it's freaking RIB CAGE and STICK MY HAND INSIDE ITS DEAD BODY! gross. now i know why people only cook turkeys on special occasions. i may do this again one day, but no time soon if i can avoid it. gross.

anyway, dinner was great if i do say so myself. we took some pictures by the christmas tree, opened gifts and went to see papa and sandra afterward, and it was a fun time for all.

christmas day was spent at aunt elaine's with all the grammer clan. dinner was great as always and it's always good to see the crew. we then went over to dad and neener's to exchange gifts, then on to grandma's. it was a long day but a great first christmas as a klinger.

which brings me to christmas with the rest of the klingers. we had decided to do this over new year's weekend, as bryan's mom's family was going to be down and since we switch holidays back and forth and had been in PA for thanksgiving. unfortunately, bryan went to work the wednesday after christmas and discovered that one of the units at the power station had caught on fire and the whole station was shut down! so he had to work overnights for a few days and christmas with the klingers was postponed until the following weekend. in spite of it being two weeks after christmas almost, we still had a great time in pennsylvania with the other half of our fam.

new year's eve this year was lots of fun. we had dinner with our friends todd and sarah at an EXCELLENT italian restaurant in shockoe bottom called la grotta. i ate all of my soup (red pepper and crab), all of my entree (lobster and artichoke ravioli) and pretty much all of our dessert (creme caramel with vanilla sauce). yummmmmmmmmmmmmm. i use this restaurant for work functions a lot, so the owner invited us to have limoncellos on her before we left. if you follow celebrity gossip, this is the drink that danny devito claimed he had been pounding the night before he showed up wasted on the view.


then we went to carytown, where a new tradition began for ringing in the new year in richmond. there was a "ball rise" a la times square (it rose instead of dropping so that more people could see it at its pinnacle). i was sort of expecting to go there and wander around and in and out of a few bars. not possible. there were so many people there that it was standing room only! it was really cool to be part of a new richmond tradition, though. hope we'll be back next year (and we'll remember to bring our own champagne!)

since new year's and the next weekend's trip to pennsylvania, we've been doing a lot of relaxing, then last week several of my favorite shows started up again for the new season. 24 and american idol have certainly not disappointed me! bryan even hung out with me to watch a few of the, oh, 8 hours i spent watching fox last week! oh, we were also able to take advantage of the unseasonable weather last weekend and took a nice motorcycle ride that ended at grandma's house and DINNER! :)

this past weekend was the arthritis foundation's crystal ball, their black tie fundraiser. i went as a volunteer and it was great to see such RICH people out supporting my favorite cause! my favorite moment of the night was at the end. i was chatting with a couple i have known through the arthritis foundation for several years. they are the nicest people, and the husband just happens to be the CEO of the company that owns the richmond times-dispatch. so of course whenever i talk to them i'm thinking "holy crap these people are RICH and they're talking to ME!" this time i was just joking around with the husband and said, "you know, i was having an awful time getting my newspaper delivered!" and gave him the short version of my newspaper subscription fiasco which is this: i stopped getting the paper in august. in november i got a charge on my credit card for about $50. i called to see why and they said for your 7-day subscription. i said, i haven't gotten a single newspaper since august! well, mr. CEO says to me, "next time you have a problem, you know who to call!" HA!!!! isn't that hillarious? like i'm just going to call up the freaking CEO of a company that owns many, many newspapers and other media outlets, and say, "hey, marshall, i didn't get my newspaper today, can you do something about it?" i love it! (and won't do it! :) )

yesterday we went to a UVA basketball with my dad and neener. we had the crappiest weather driving up there that we've seen all winter, and there were 8 wrecked cars between richmond and charlottesville. luckily we made it to the game just fine (only about 25 min late), and UVA won! yay! the new arena is absolutely awesome, and it was lots of fun.

unfortunately, when we left charlottesville, bryan went west and the other 3 of us headed back east. :( bryan is in roanoke until friday on business, and i am lost! i can't remember the last time we were apart for 5 whole nights. to make myself feel better, i headed to kroger when we got home yesterday and bought myself the junkiest of junk food to eat while he's gone. they don't call it comfort food for nothin'! :)

alright, it's almost time for prime time tv. there must be something good about to come on to distract me for another hour until jack bauer and the nuclear bomb come on to entertain me.....

toodloo!

photos posted

and by the way, i posted photos on the previous post from the grammer family tree trimming party! :)

holly jolly

well christmas is officially here now. i have my tree up (actually two), i've been to christmas parties, i've shopped, i've baked... now just gotta wrap and clean and cook and it's christmas!

this past weekend was bryan's christmas party for work. it was at the ramada in petersburg. it's always there. not sure what's up with that, except it's a pretty decent hotel and i'm sure it's dirt cheap (actually i know so, the rooms are only $50/night!). bryan is on the rec. committee, so we had to get there early to help set up the hospitality suite. it was pretty funny to me to see the way these 50-60 year old men set up for a party. just slingin' stuff wherever. i tried to stay back and let them handle it but i did have to reorganize a few things here and there... like, when you have a tray with a little dip thing in the middle, you're supposed to put one thing in the middle and something else around the outside. not cheese cubes all over the plate. so i had to put crackers on the outside and the cheese in the middle...

since we had a room at the hotel that night, we both had a very good time and took advantage of the open(ish) bar. we actually got just three drink tickets, but the bartenders often didn't even ask for them, and i may have accidentally swiped a few extra tickets off the roll of them that was laying on the floor...

anyway, here are some pictures from our fun evening:

the party started out fairly normally... a few nice shots of friends...

our good friends the bennetts:

our good friends the gooches:
























a hug and kiss for my hubby:











































bryan with his boys: justin (l) and rich (r) and his co-worker christina's date (c):

























me with the girls (christina, tammy and hailey), and woody (far left):























and then bryan ran into santa claus.






















santa had all kinds of fun things in his sack. including plastic body parts:






























and mini bottles of crowne royale. apparently bryan was a very good boy this year because santa gave him quite a few of those bottles of crowne royale. bryan soon became the dancing king:











































and we ended up with about ten pictures of this lovely chandelier:

all in all, we had a great time. :)

yesterday i did tons of shopping and then came home and baked. i swear, you'd think i was betty crocker herself. i made chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cherry cookies and sugar cookies to give to people at work. here's me in suzy homemaker mode.

rolling out the dough for the sugar cookies. these never turn out the way i expect them to. but they were still good. last year i painted each one with icing i made myself. this year it was getting late so they just got sprinkles.
















































the chocolate chip cookies are just regular old chocolate chip cookies. the chocolate cherry ones have cherries under that yummy chocolate frosting.












































my mom gave me this apron. it came in very handy. i really like christmas. last night i made bryan turn off the lights in the living room (just the christmas lights on) and turn on christmas music for me while i baked. it was very fun and festive. :)
























i also made mini banana bread loaves but i didn't take any pictures of those because by the time they came out of the oven i was ready for bed.

today's my last day of work until january 3. woohoo! guess i should go see what i need to wrap up before then! :)

achoo! sniffle.. .snort... cough.

have i mentioned how i HATE being sick? i have a cold. again, or still, not sure which. and right now i can only breathe through one nostril. fantastic!

so friday was the grammer family tree trimming party. it was so much fun! i love getting together with the family, we always have so much fun. my level of fun may have been enhanced by the entire bottle of ste. michelle riesling i consumed, not sure. nevertheless, it was a great time! we showed the wedding slideshow bryan worked so hard on and everyone was impressed (as they should be. ;-)). we decorated grandma's tree with the 13,423,598,235 ornaments she has accrued over her lifetime, and we ate some yummy food. and of course drank yummy drink. :) well, i did. bryan had to stick to the coca cola so he could drive my drunk a$$ home. :)

finally, here are some photos from the grammer tree trimming party:




saturday we went over to our friends the bennett's and hung out with the rest of the chesterfield power station crew. i guess there were four of us couples, then the new guy and new girl. we try to get together about once a month or so, and it is always fun to see them. us "engineer wives" can dish about what a pain in the rear our engineer husbands are. ha! not really. we all love 'em. :)

after we left tammy and justin's we went home and got the christmas tree out. bryan lugged it downstairs and set it in the base and i put on my gloves and set about fluffing the branches. it took me about 2 hours to fluff all 9 freaking feet of it. i love our tree when it is finally up and decorated, but getting it up and decorated is not a fun job. it's all worth it in the end though... this year we also put up a 4.5" tree i had from my apartment. i am a little anal and decorate the big tree with only silver, white and light blue, so we put up the second tree to put on all the other ornaments we own that don't fit that color scheme. :) i'll have to take some pictures and get them up.

sunday was devoted to pajamas. well, that is to say, i never got out of them. which is always a good thing. :) i spent a little while preparing my "final exam" for the spanish class i took this semester, which was a 5 minute presentation in spanish. it is a conversational spanish class, so we don't have to do any written stuff, whcih is nice i guess. although being a foreign language buff, it drives me a little bananas that she doesn't teach us how to write it. but i'll get over it. :) so i did that, then decorated the tree (bryan helped some, too), then made jerk pork chops with pineapple chutney for dinner. they were yummy. the only problem was that i have gotten the concept of selecting recipes for the main course, but somehow have forgotten that we are going to need to eat some side dishes as well. so i quick heated up a can of corn. well, that still wasn't going to be enough. so i found a box of instant mashed potatoes in the closet and fixed what was left of them. bryan doesn't like the instant mashed potatoes so much, but he dealt with it alright. :) from now on i'll plan the ENTIRE menu beforehand, not just the meat. :)

and this week so far i have been.... stuffy! last night went home and drank a theraflu, then watched tv, then drank another theraflu, watched more tv from the bed, then went to sleep. i feel a bit better today but still STUFFY! and i would go to the doctor, but we all know they're going to say "common cold" and send me on my way with orders for rest and liquids. and that just ain't worth $25 to me! i can give MYSELF that advice! :)

december already?

so today is december 1 and i hear the forecast is a high of 76 degrees! figures. welcome to virginia winters. personally, i like it this way. although it sort of puts a wrench in my wardrobe works, because you never know how to dress...

well, we did not in fact win any money in atlantic city last weekend. bryan and i, however, understand that gambling involves both winning AND losing. and that's alright. we just have to make sure we win next time. i lost my entire allotment for the day. i actually left the poker table with $16 (10% of what i started with) and went and stuck $10 in a nickel slot machine. i managed to turn that $10 into $208, then promptly began losing it all again. freaking slot machines. i was just CONVINCED that if i kept playing it would go back up, but it did not. so there that went. and i left with empty pockets. still makes me mad to think about how greedy and stupid i was. this is why i never play slot machines.

so we got back home sunday night from pennsylvania after some nasty traffic in delaware. that stupid state... no offense to anyone who is from or likes delaware. there is a toll to get in and a toll 13ish miles later to get out. talk about greedy! it can't possibly cost them that much to run 13 miles of interstate. once we were past there traffic moved pretty decently until we were in northern virginia, which was no surprise. and of course the HOV lanes were not open in our direction. as always.

this week has been busy at work and at home. somehow since we got married and i have nothing to plan, i have managed to become a domestic goddess of sorts. well, not really. but close! i have been trying to keep the house neat and i figured out this neat trick so that i actually have something to cook for dinner. i pick out 4 or 5 recipes and then make a list of everything i need for those before i go to the grocery store, so that i have things to cook for dinner for a week or so. this is a nice change from coming home from work, staring into the fridge, staring into the pantry, staring into the cabinets, then ultimately staring into the freezer and deciding it's too much of a pain to thaw anything out and so maybe we'll just have chipotle. now we just decide to have chipotle without going through all those other steps. ;-)

last night i actually made chicken enchiladas with salsa verde. they were actually REALLY good if i do say so myself! i was impressed anyway. and bryan liked them, too... anytime i can cook something besides rattlesnake pasta or broccoli casserole and he likes it, i feel like i've accomplished something. :)

after dinner last night i headed to my friend jodie's house to help her and her daughter jordan build an indian village for jordan's class project. the kid is 7, i have no idea why they give second graders homework that obviously must be done by the parents with minimal involvement of the kid. i mean, seriously, what 2nd grader that you know is going to be able to sit down and come up with a plan to recreate an indian home scene on a cardboard box? maybe i underestimate 7 year olds. but anyway, it was fun. i have pictures of our handywork on my cell phone but i left that at home. i'll try to upload them if i remember.

this weekend is shaping up to be lots of fun! tonight is the grammer family tree decorating party at grandma's house, tomorrow we have a party at our friends' the bennetts, and i am determined to convince bryan to lug our giant 9' christmas tree downstairs so we can get that set up.

before all that, though, i have a lot of work to do!