The Misadventures of Lauren E.J.

My Nephew, Will

2010-01-11T18:14:00.003-06:00

Here's a picture of Will and me from our trip to North Carolina. It was taken on Mark's phone, so they're not the greatest quality, but he's still pretty darn adorable.

2009-12-17T20:22:00.003-06:00

So, here's my ring! Isn't it beautiful?!

It's been resized twice now (made smaller twice) and now it feels REALLY tight. But I'm going to give it a few days and if it still feels too small after we get back from all of our holiday travels, I guess I can take it back and get it made a 1/4 size bigger. Geez! Ridiculous!

We're Engaged! Wow!

2009-12-13T00:26:00.002-06:00

I think I very well may be the luckiest girl in the whole world. I got an invitation in the mail a couple of weeks ago--Mark planned a whole weekend of activities to celebrate two years of being together. On Friday night, we went to a couples cooking class; on Saturday we had some fun at Dave & Busters before a romantic dinner at a lovely little restaurant. When we got home, he gave me a CD he made for me. It is full of special songs that chronicle the journey we've been on together for the last 2 and a half years--our past, our present, and our future. Of course, I loved it and started crying and hugged him. But...he cut our hug short and....proposed! It was perfect, actually. So, we're engaged! Wow!

Mark made me a cake!

2009-04-19T14:37:00.001-05:00

Yes, I'm still alive...

2009-03-01T20:25:00.003-06:00

So, a few months ago, I decided that Mark needed to try crab legs. Now, pretty much every time we go to the grocery store, he insists that we look to see if they're on sale. Most of the time they are and crab legs have joined the regular dinner rotation at our house. It's really a pretty cheap dinner whenever we end up buying them...tonight we each had a crab cluster and it was $4.25 total. Toss in two baked potatoes and it's a cheap, delicious meal.

Fidgie really likes crab, too.

A New Phone for Lauren

2008-12-08T21:43:00.003-06:00

Well, after having my original cell phone for many years (6 or 7, I think), I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered a new phone. I have been putting it off for years....literally.....and finally decided that if I haven't changed carriers or plans in the last seven years, I probably won't in the next two either. Plus, my phone is in poor shape. Something inside of it rattles when you shake the phone...which can't be a good sign. It has served me well, but I figure there are only so many things that can come detached inside of a tiny, old phone and it's only a matter of time before that broken piece breaks something else. So, with a 2-year plan extension, I got a totally free upgrade! Here it is, and LG CU515 (I think):Not quite as extreme as a new car, but it'll do!

Mega-post

2008-11-01T16:01:00.004-05:00

So, it's not so much that I'm REALLY boring--it's just that I've been too busy and lazy to update here. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is an amalgamation of my October:

1. We have the cutest cat ever.2. Mark got a haircut--from me--in our bathroom!
3. The roof leaked. Mega-big-time. With steady streams of water from 2:00 in the morning until 4:30 in the morning. It was not good.
4. We named our Jack-o-Lantern "Maxwell" this year. He was spooky. But he was moldy and rotten within 3 days of being carved so we had to throw him away before Halloween.
5. These mushrooms were delicious.
6. Our cat does not like to be held. She does not like it one bit.7. I made apple strudel. It was marvelous and it turned out beautifully. It really wasn't as much of a pain in the ass as I was expecting. The only real problem was that the bottom crust got soggy within a week of having made the strudel. I'll have to figure out a better way to store it next time.

And last, but not least, Fidget likes to play fetch. With a straw. Her favorite toy ever.

I won!

2008-10-25T16:47:00.003-05:00

Our local Jewel-Osco had a re-opening sale this week and the prize machine was there today. Basically a giant slot-machine type thing where you pull the giant lever and win a prize if you get all three pictures to match. I won with three pictures of beer--the irony! I got to pick out a prize from a whole big tent full of kitchen-type prizes. There was a toaster oven, a mini-deep-fryer, a quesadilla maker, an electric griddle, a blender, etc. But I got.......a fancy-schmancy coffee maker! It makes individual cups of coffee from pods!
Of course, as soon as I we got home and I was filling the water reservoir, I dropped it on the floor and cracked it. Then I started to cry. But Mark saved the day and fixed it enough that it is usable. It still leaks, but it's at least usable.

So far, I've only tried the "capuccino" flavored pod, which was a little disappointing. I read online, though, that that is the least impressive of all the types of pods.

This is great--the pods are probably more expensive than just getting a coffee pot and coffee, but it makes one cup at a time, it doesn't require pain-in-the-ass cleaning of coffee grounds, and it is actual good coffee (not instant stir-in stuff). Plus, it's cheaper than, say, going to Starbucks. And I got the $90 coffee maker for free!

So, Mom, next time you come visit and stay with us, you can have coffee!

HA!

2008-10-03T22:14:00.001-05:00

Mom in the seventies. Ha! Made my day.

Ahh, how I missed school...

2008-09-28T22:32:00.002-05:00

NOT.

Excuse the "not"--straight out of the nineties, I know.

Last week was rough. I worked a ton more than normal, Mark and I were both so busy that we saw each other for less than 2 hours all week until Friday night (literally), and school is really intense at this point. In anatomy, we learned the skeleton and the joints and we have a test this coming Wednesday. My brain might explode. In micro last week, we spend 5.5 hours listening to her lecture on antimicrobial agents in great detail, all the while wondering what the hell she was talking about. We don't really know or understand the vocabulary she was using and she literally went drug by drug talking about the chemical structures, exact mechanisms of action, and all kinds of other stuff that I don't even know how the hell I am supposed to memorize. We do 2 more chapters and 2 labs this coming week and the test is a week from tomorrow. In human growth and development, we have a take-home test due next week...haven't started that either. At least that is going to be easy and I don't have to memorize anything for it--it's just a pain in the butt. Luckily I'm doing really well in both Anatomy and Micro thus far (no grades yet for human growth and dev.)...hopefully it will last.

On the plus side, Mark and I went to the corn maze this Friday. We went during the day the weekend before they tore it down last year. This year, the corn was WAY taller (probably 10-12 feet high) and denser than last year...and it was dark. Walking around a dark, maze-ified, nearly deserted cornfield with flashlights was about 60% fun and 40% terrifying. I was more than a little tense worrying about Jack Nicholson jumping out of the corn with a hatchet. Overall, it was great fun. Plus, while we were making S'mores (they have campfires there too), we didn't have any close calls with flying flaming marshmallows this year (ahem...Mark). We decided that it is now an annual tradition.

Boring post, but alas, such is life.

Dinner Tonight (and the obligatory and funny Fidget photo)

2008-09-11T19:27:00.003-05:00

We made a delicious dinner tonight. We've been doing lots of grilling (a) because we got a mega-pack of frozen hamburgers and a mega-pack of frozen sausages at Aldi and (b) because it will soon be too cold to grill on a regular basis. The burgers are just okay, but the sausages are remarkably yummy. They're smoked and have a great flavor. The texture is more like a hot dog and leaves something to be desired, but the flavor makes up for it. I'm sure they've got about 800 grams of fat per sausage...oh well. Doesn't it look worth it?We also had breaded skewered mushrooms (our favorite way to grill mushrooms) and I decided to try breading a slice of onion and grilling it, too. It was okay but honestly, it looked better than it tasted. Not bad, but not amazing. I think it would be better served with a slightly different breading mixture...perhaps some crushed red pepper to give it some zip.

On Tuesday, I was trying to study. She was having none of it.Also, she did a somersault this morning when I was playing with her. Ha. I love this cat.

A Dental Update....

2008-09-10T21:49:00.002-05:00

No cavities! For the first time since I don't know when! So exciting! No cavities!

Fidget....

2008-09-10T21:46:00.002-05:00

...is now officially a wild woman. Apparently it was shyness or recovery from surgery that was making her such a mellow lap-cat. Now she is certifiably wild. Fun, but full of energy! Hunting her bendy-straws; jumping over the back of the couch to get her toys after Mark throws them; sprinting around the house chasing the toy mouse; shredding her tissue paper.

We got a really, really good cat.

Things We Have Learned About Fidget:

2008-09-06T20:12:00.003-05:00

1. She has zero interest whatsoever in any of the toys we bought for her. Zero interest. But the bendy straw, man oh man, does that get her riled up! The multi-straw contraption Mark made after we realized this: zero interest.

2. It is a good thing that we didn't waste our money on a cat bed. She spends 65% of her waking time on our laps, 25% trying to get on our laps, and the other 10% on a piece of pink tissue paper intended to be a toy. She really, really likes sitting on that tissue paper. And our laps. She is relentless. Mega-snuggle cat.

3. Putting a cone on her head so she won't scratch and bite at her incision site: impossible. That was traumatic for everyone involved. We gave up after five tries, an argument, and a yelping, wheezing, squeaking, panicked cat.

4. As much as she likes being on our laps ALL THE TIME, she has no interest in taking naps in bed with me. She's just not interested.

5. We're keeping her out of Mark's room so that there is one cat-free room for me to escape to when my allergies go nuts. But now that she has sneaked into Mark's room once, she now sits outside of his door and meows anytime we are in there...either that or she has magical powers that let her know when anyone is getting ready to come out--that she uses as her cue to come meow by the door.

6. Her old owners must have given her people food because anytime either of us in the kitchen, she is at our heels meowing and following us around.

7. She's not so good at taking a hint. The other day Mark was trying to stand up and he's still too scared of hurting her incision site to lift her up, so he just kind of started standing up and thought she would get up. She did not. She just let him stand up, she got dumped/rolled off of his lap and onto the couch, and she just landed where she rolled and didn't move a muscle.

Fidget is a good cat.

2008-09-04T20:45:00.001-05:00

Welcome, Fidget!

2008-09-02T21:15:00.003-05:00

Our cat came home today! Her name is Fidget.I tried taking some pictures, but she wasn't cooperating too much! She just wanted to climb on me more!
She is very curious and has a lot of energy, even though she had surgery and moved today! She has been climbing and walking all over us every time we've gone in my room. She has been pawing at us and flopping all over the place. She is no longer hiding under the bed, she is now on my bed. She peeked her nose out when we had the door open. Then she took a few steps out of the room. Then she skittered back in the room--backwards. It was pretty darn cute! She's not drinking her water yet, though. Hopefully she will tomorrow.

Anatomy flashcards

2008-08-31T22:46:00.002-05:00

54 flashcards.

For chapter one.

Tomorrow I will finish memorizing the chapter one information. And I will make my flashcards for the integumentary system.

Oof. I'm betting on a pop quiz on Wednesday.

We got a cat!

2008-08-30T19:31:00.003-05:00

We adopted a cat today! She gets spayed and comes home on Tuesday!
When we first got to the Anti-Cruelty Society, we went into the cageless roaming rooms to look at those cats, but we didn't really like any of them too much. One that we had seen online and were interested in was nipping at me as soon as I tried to pet her....no good! My hopes were down at that point, but we decided to go in and look at the ones in the cages in the other room. As soon as we walked in, a woman told us to look around and said that we could see as many as we wanted but not to pet them in their cages and that we had to wash our hands between cats. So...we started washing our hands and heard little tiny "meow, meow, meows" coming from behind us. It was Lucky...so....we asked to see her pretty much right away without looking around at all. And that was it. We didn't even get any other ones out of their cages. She was scared at first and seemed to be startled by loud or sudden noises, but even when she was scared, she wasn't nipping at us or being agressive at all. Mark even touched her paws and her nose to make sure she wasn't a biting cat...and she passed the test. Before long, she crawled up on my lap and made herself at home. She started sniffing my hand as I was petting her head and I was afraid that she was going to bite me, but she licked me instead! Soon after, she curled up on Mark's lap. She is a year old and has beautiful fur colors and big green eyes. She even has a black stripe running down her spine--so cute! Her fur is soft and she's teeny tiny. She is so pretty and sweet and because she's very little, she won't break our legs when she sits and walks on us (ahem, CLARK)! They said she might get a little bigger, but that she's probably pretty close to her full size. When it was time for us to go fill out the application paperwork and get interviewed, she didn't want the lady to pick her up off of Mark's lap! She was pretty mellow, too. She seemed pretty content just sitting curled up on our laps. She wasn't even trying to get away after she got used to us a little bit.

So...Mark's going to leave work a little early on Tuesday to go and pick her up. We are very excited!

School and Whining

2008-08-27T22:45:00.004-05:00

Well, karma has come back to bite me in the butt big time. My classes were so easy over the summer and it seems that I am being paid back for that now....times a gazillion.

Anatomy and Physiology 1:
After the first day of class (this Monday), we had a homework assignment that even Andrea didn't easily know the answers for. Like...medical applications and working diagrams of injuries and directional X-rays and other scans. Way beyond the scope of what I felt prepared to answer. On the first day, we covered chapter 1. Today, the second day, we covered the majority of chapter 5 (Integumentary system), some of chapter 4 (tissue types), and looked at epithelial tissue slides. So now I have to draw diagrams of a bunch of stuff that I'm not sure I even saw on the slides. Much of what he lectured on today is pathology, which is not even in the book. My notes are full of words that I don't even understand the meanings of. Words like: corpuscle, keratinocytes, Vitiligo, bilirubin, Thalessemia, Hemolysis, vernix caseosa, lunago, mycogryphosis, koilonychia, and onycogryphosis. On the first day when he was walking us through the online program we are using (Course Compass), he was showing us how the grades are inputted and on the screen were last semester's students' grades. Mostly Cs, Ds, and Fs for the assignments/tests we could see. 32/50, 56/100, 23/30. When he's lecturing, he frequently says, "this will get you a 70." Today after drawing a detailed diagram of the dermis on the board, he said, "This will get you an 80 or 85." That's the highest grade he's mentioned. He has made it clear that we are responsible for his lectured material as well as stuff in the book that he doesn't even mention...pretty normal, but I'm pretty worried about the first test. Overall, we will have 8 tests, 2 pop quizes, lots of homework assignments, an oral and written mid-term and final, a paper, a presentation, 3 dissections, and a few other labs. I predict lots and lots of flashcards. On a more positive note: the subject matter is very interesting and fascinating to me and he's a good lecturer--not boring or too scattered. I'm just a little freaked out right now about the sheer amount of completely unfamiliar information and diseases to be learned. This is not simple memorization (which is easy for me)...this is something else entirely. I'll be fine once I get the hang of it, I'm sure...I hope....

Microbiology:
Well, my teacher is very enthusiastic and seems pretty hardcore. We did 2 labs in that class today. On Monday she lectured nonstop and showed pictures of bacteria for 2 1/2 hours straight. Lots of drawing in this class....which sucks for me cause I really can't draw.

Human Growth and Development:
Lots of work. Lots and lots of work. 15 hours of observation, 6 interviews, 1 in-depth observation and report, lots of homework assignments. Take-home exams and final. Basically, the material is pretty easy and I'm already pretty familiar with a lot of it, but it's just going to be lots of time-consuming work. Add to that the fact that by the time I get to that 4 hour class on Monday nights, I have already sat through 6 hours of class earlier in the day. I think I'll need coffee.

I think the class I'm most freaked out about is anatomy. Hopefully after the first test (2 weeks from today) I'll have a better idea of what and how much detail I need to know. I'm guessing a lot. I also think that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are going to be mental breakdown-inducing, but the rest of the week and weekend will be easier and less filled with frantic studying. They will still be filled with studying, just not the frantic type of studying that comes from fearing a pop quiz on the second day of class. I think that on the weekends I am going to try to get ahead on the next week's studying so I won't be so stressed out and overwhelmed.

I still don't have my microbiology book. Supposedly they tried to deliver it on the morning of the 18th and left a slip. I was home then and the doorbell never rang and I never got a missed delivery slip. Supposedly it's at the post office, but I went today and it wasn't there. So....who knows what's up with that.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can get some more work hours with another family. 15 hours just isn't cutting it, especially with all of my unexpected recent dental costs. And another big cost coming up in 3 months when it's time for the crown. Hopefully some more hours will come through as hoped. Although I'm not even sure how much extra time I'll have to work extra hours once I get into a study schedule and all. I can surely make time.

Have you seen my basil?

2008-08-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

It's huge!

Heart Attack Sandwich

2008-08-14T13:57:00.003-05:00

Grilled cheese with salami, tomato, and fresh basil. Yummmmm
Four basil leaves down, about 8 gazillion left to use.

Dinner

2008-08-13T17:44:00.003-05:00

While the pasta was cooking, I cooked a turkey sausage and some tomatoes in a skillet, added jarred tomato sauce, some spices, and some basil. Viola!

Cookies!

2008-08-13T17:29:00.000-05:00

Pizza, take 2

2008-08-12T17:59:00.002-05:00

I decided to use the other Pillsbury pizza dough in a can that we bought to make a pizza last night and just threw a bunch of stuff on it that was already in the fridge. So, here it was:
fresh garlic, onion, pancetta, salami, tomatoes, and a conglomeration of many different cheeses. It actually tasted pretty good...it was definitely a "grown-up" tasting pizza. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it's the only way I could think to describe it.

Dinner

2008-08-08T19:07:00.003-05:00

Pesto, tomato, and mozzarella pizza. In hindsight, I think it would be better with fresh mozzarella and with a little more oil in the pesto. (We made a very un-oily pesto because someone was afraid that it would be too oily and greasy. It was not. It was maybe the ungreasiest pizza I've ever eaten, come to think of it.) Overall, it was quite good. The rest will be lunch tomorrow.
Also, I am sad to report that this is one pizza I won't eat cold for breakfast. That would definitely not be good.

The Dentist

2008-08-08T14:10:00.002-05:00

I had the first non-horrible dentist appointment of my teen and adult life today!

On Monday night, I noticed that the root canal tooth was turning gray...that can't be good! So on Tuesday morning I called the oral surgeon and it was decided that I should go back to the endodontist before the apicoectomy on the 18th (just to make sure he still thinks it's a good idea to move forward with the surgery)....that appointment got set for next Monday, the 11th. That was Tuesday morning. Tuesday night, a filling fell out of another tooth! And then I started crying. So I went today to have that filling redone. I was really dreading the appointment (as I always am) but it was actually pretty easy. Barely any drilling at all. He also looked briefly at the root canal tooth and said that the discoloration is definitely of internal origin (which is good because I was worried that it was being stained from food/dark blue mouthwash/etc.). Now I can get to work eating more of that blueberry pie! There's a procedure they can do to bleach it from the inside before they do the permanent filling if it doesn't correct itself. Also, both the endodontist and the oral surgeon said that it needed a crown, but Dr. Nasif (general dentist) said that he doesn't want to do that...at least not right away until they know for sure if the procedure is going to work. If the infection returns after the apico, the tooth will have to be pulled, so there's no sense in spending tons of extra money on a crown until they know if the tooth will be viable longer-term.

On another note, he was asking if I've ever tried whitening my teeth and I responded that no, I hadn't, largely because I was concerned that it would further damage my already troubled teeth. So then he said that it wouldn't as long as I didn't go crazy and overdo it....and something about how the cost of the trays and the bleach gel is 300 bucks, but he could give me a 25% discount (I suppose as sort of a frequent-driller-club benefit...blargh). Ha! Way beyond my current budget...but wait...he said that that price was for bleach and trays. I said that I already had the trays they made for me to use with the fluoride gel. Oh, well in that case, they'd just give me the gel today....it's only $30! I paid $40 for the trays, but they charge so much more to make for bleaching essentially because it's cosmetic. $30 for bleach and $40 for trays (that I had already bought) brings my total whitening cost to $70 (really, only 30 bucks because I didn't actually buy the trays for the whitening). But they charge $300 for the same thing! That's a 425% markup! So, I have whitening gel now to start trying. Maybe, just maybe, it will work. Then I wouldn't have to be so self-conscious about my ugly teeth. We'll see. I'm not going to get my hopes up just yet.

On another note, I have to go for my 6 month cleaning at the start of September. Wow. I'm still not done with the follow-up from my last cleaning 6 months ago! But he said today that my teeth look good and he's confident that I won't have any new cavities at the next cleaning. We'll see about that...again, I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

OMG

2008-08-05T15:08:00.001-05:00

OMG. My tooth. Enough already.

Mega Blog Post!

2008-08-03T20:37:00.004-05:00

I have been remiss and not posting any new pictures lately. So here they all are...

First order of business....chocolate cake! Notice that there are no chocolate cake flecks in the white icing...I was awfully proud of myself on that one! Of course, after I got the idea of chocolate cake in my head, I realized that I didn't actually have a chocolate cake mix. Well, once I started wanting it, the only thing that was going to make me stop wanting chocolate cake was chocolate cake. So I made one from scratch! It was really delicious and a lot richer than boxed mix cakes. It was the perfect moistness and the perfect denseness. All in all, it was quite a success. And the individual cakes for the layers didn't come out domed, so I didn't have to slice the tops off before building the cake. When you take that into account, it really wasn't any more of a hassle than using a cake mix. The same thing happened as always happens: Mark only ate about 3 pieces and I had to eat the rest of the cake myself. Darn.

Next order of business...grilled chicken wings a la Mark.
And finally....blueberry picking! Mark and I went blueberry picking and to the beach yesterday! We drove for about an hour and a half to a blueberry farm in Indiana and picked 10 pounds of blueberries. Boy are they delicious! We used some to make blueberry pancakes this morning and we made a blueberry pie for dessert tonight. But we had some leftover pie crust dough so we made (and ate) a mini-pie as we were getting dinner ready. Here's the baby pie:
And here's our dinner:
With homemade pesto made from homegrown basil:
And finally, our amazingly delicious blueberry pie:Yes, the crust vent-slits say LJ + MO ....you got a problem with that?!

2008-07-18T23:11:00.002-05:00

This commercial makes me giddy and hysterical every single time I see it. I love it. I even think I can go so far as to say that it's my favorite commercial of all time. (I even like it more than the old Expedia commercial with the little boys at the hunting lodge.)

Seriously?

2008-07-18T22:46:00.002-05:00

How do you get to college without knowing what plagiarism is and that it is not acceptable? Seriously.

Stupid group research paper.

Dinner

2008-07-13T19:20:00.003-05:00

Here was the prep:

On the grill:

And here was our dinner:

Dude, Look at my Herbs!

2008-06-27T20:11:00.002-05:00

I was browsing my blog the other day and noticed that the last picture of my herb garden was posted quite some time ago. Here is what it looks like now:

A Blast from the Past!

2008-06-22T09:53:00.004-05:00

I made Applesauce Puffs this morning on a whim! I got applesauce at the grocery store the last time we were there, as I figured it'd be easy to eat, even with all of my current dental limitations.

I only made half a batch, and we ate most of them, but that's okay. They were pretty yummy. I think that next time, I'll use a little extra applesauce--they were a tad bit dry.
Ah, they took me right back to the days of junior high and slumber parties!

Boo.

2008-06-16T16:59:00.003-05:00

The stupid root canal didn't work, so now I have a referral to an oral surgeon for an apicoectomy.

It's My Blog, and I'll Whine if I Want To! And...a Root Canal Feast!

2008-06-13T19:55:00.007-05:00

95% of root canals are routine, with little or no pain. Most root canals go smoothly in one visit to your general dentist (and a second visit for the filling/crown. Not for me, however. Nope. I went to the dentist last Thursday, who pretty much hollowed out my tooth to discover that the reason I needed a root canal in the first place was because there was decay underneath a filling that my previous dentist had done. ("I was wondering where all that infection was coming from.") But wait, the inside of my tooth was calcified, making it impossible to get into the canal with the tools available at a general dentist's office. So off they went to call the endodontist to see if they could just send me over right away to finish the procedure. Nope, the endodontist was on vacation and wouldn't be back until Monday. I couldn't get an appointment until Tuesday because I had class and work on Monday. Fine, I wasn't in any pain. Until Monday, that is. Monday I was hurting a little bit. Tuesday, I was hurting a lot. So Tuesday I went to the endodontist, who, by the way, doesn't accept the dental discount plan included in my insurance. And it was more expensive because they're specialists. They did give me a discount for being a student, but still. Ouch, that was a sucky bill to pay. Anyway....I was saying that Tuesday I went to the endodontist. Who couldn't get into the canal. Then the anesthetic wore off mid-procedure. That was fun. He put a de-calcifying agent where the entrance to the canal was and closed my tooth back up with a temporary filling. Hollow tooth, live nerve. Needless to say, the past 4 days have been agony. I go back on Monday for a third try. Hopefully it will work, or they'll have to pull the tooth (which at this point almost seems preferable to this kind of pain--if I didn't know that then I'd have to get and pay for an implant).

But...(pity party is over)

In honor of my first day of non-excruciating-pain (thanks to the antibiotics, steroids, ibuprofen, and Vicodin) post-2nd attempt at my root canal, Mark and I cooked what I have deemed a Root Canal Feast! I have been surviving the last 4 days on instant mashed potatoes, milkshakes, and Ritz crackers. Today, though--today!--I haven't cried in pain yet. And today, for the first time in almost a week, I was hungry and functional enough to eat real food!

I know what you might be thinking--"She better be careful or she'll induce some more mega-pain what with all the eating of normal food!" Was I careful, you ask? Why yes. Extraordinarily. I cut up my garlic bread with a fork and knife and didn't even touch any food to the left side of my mouth--I slid it all right back to my right molars. I was in no mood to instigate another evening of "MY MOUTH IS GOING TO EXPLODE" hysterical crying. (Poor Mark.)

I was stuffed by the end of the meal, but man, was it worth it! Notice the fresh home-grown herbs on my shrimp!

Ha!

2008-06-06T08:07:00.003-05:00

Andrea took and posted this picture on their blog, but I have taken the liberty of highlighting a very amusing detail. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.) It seems that perhaps the tongue-biting is a learned habit!

I love you, Mom!

Our Dinner Tonight

2008-06-02T22:08:00.003-05:00

We ate outside (for the first time) on the new deck furniture. Brats (smoked with oak and finished on the grill), cherries, salad, and potatoes. Yum.Unfortunately, some smoking juice got on my thumb at some point during the cleaning process and now my thumb smells like oak. And probably will for the next few days. Fun. But at least dinner was yummy!

My Thriving Herb Garden...

2008-05-31T17:51:00.004-05:00

...looks like this after I thinned it out. Clockwise from the top left, oregano, cilantro, basil, chives, parsley, and green onions.

I will have to thin it out again, I suspect, but this picture was taken after I reduced the sprouts by approximately 50-70%. Yay to Mark for watering while I was in Italy! They already smell amazing (the green onions even resemble miniature versions of what you buy at the grocery store) and I can't wait to start using them. Now I know for next year to not plant so many seeds!

My Sister....the Doctor!

2008-05-19T15:42:00.004-05:00

Andrea, MD (eek!)

Here's the hill...and the crowd.

Andrea and Jeremy

My Basil and Oregano are Sprouting!

2008-05-12T20:27:00.003-05:00

I'm a college student again...

2008-05-07T16:46:00.003-05:00

I'm officially a student again. This summer, I'm starting taking classes at Truman College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago (thanks to pretty flexible scheduling and relatively cheap tuition-$72/credit hour). At this point, it's looking like my ultimate goal is nursing school and because my first degree is in theatre, I haven't taken any of the prerequisites needed to get into nursing school. So, I'm looking at four semesters of prereqs, which is actually only going to take a little over a year, as two of those semesters will be summer semesters. To start out my second college eduation, I'm taking Nutrition (online) and General Biology during the Summer 08 eight-week summer session. I have applied, gotten accepted (of course, they have an open admission policy), taken the math placement test (not fun, as it has been approximately 9 years since I've taken trig), registered, paid (always the worst part), and ordered my book. I am officially a college student once again...here goes!

Oh, How My Garden Will Grow!

2008-05-04T15:57:00.003-05:00

I finally (thanks to the dollar spot at Target) acquired the things I needed to start my little balcony herb garden today! I had been holding off because I wanted some planters that would attach to the balcony railing, but they were all ridiculously expensive. So then I was just going to get a couple rectangular pots and just keep them on the ground, but they were also pretty expensive (like, 6 bucks each!). I was really getting frustrated--a little herb garden shouldn't cost so much! Then I found these uber-cute little tins in the dollar spot, and decided to just go for it. Of course, I had to use a hammer and nail to create some old school drainage holes in the bottoms of the tins, but for $1 each, I don't mind a little bit of extra work. Plus, during the winter, these will all fit on the window ledges inside, whereas only one rectangular planter would've fit. I also bought gloves ($3), a trowel ($1), a rake-y thing ($1), and shears ($1). And the rake-y thing and shears were in the dollar spot too...and they have pink handles! I'll be gardening in style!

I'm going to attempt to grow chives, oregano, basil, green onions, parsley, and cilantro.
Wish me and my little herb garden luck!

Can we not see the hypocrisy, people?

2008-04-24T00:56:00.005-05:00

I will never understand parents who give their kids time-outs for treating other people badly ("We are polite and we say 'Hi' and we do not scream at people.") and then stay out 2 1/2 hours later than they told the sitter they'd be home without so much as a phone call explaining their lack of punctuality and consideration.

2008-04-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Wow. I officially have the best, most fun, awesome-est, most incredible boyfriend ever. We went on a mini-road trip for my birthday!

I woke up early on my birthday due to the fact that I had gone to bed early the night before due to the fact that I'm now an old lady. "Are you ready for your present now?" Oh, I guess so. Two tickets to The Color Purple that night! The catch: it's no longer playing in Chicago...the tickets were for the touring production currently in Cincinnati! So....off we went!

We had a wonderful dinner before the show--I had seared sea scallops; Mark had salmon. We shared a strawberry, pound cake, ice cream dessert (it was the only dessert that had a cake component). I was sang to, much to my embarrassment.

The show itself was just okay. Some of the music is beautiful and there were a couple of great performances, but the production overall was just okay. I don't know if it was the space, or the performers' diction, but it was really hard to understand what they were singing much of the time. There was some cool choreography, though.

The drive back was great. We just had so much fun. We stopped off at a dairy farm/ cheese factory that was advertised over a 160 mile stretch of highway ... just because. We were thinking that it'd be a good stretch break, but we pulled in and there were tons of cars in the parking lot. This farm was in the middle of nowhere, and it was really pretty crowded. But the most amazing thing: a "jumping pillow"--think of a trampoline, but bigger and better.

True to their claim, it was indeed....But wait, there's more! A short while later, we decided to stop off the highway for a candy shop that claimed to have the best gummy bears in the whole world. They are indeed delicious, and we bought a lot of gummy bears and some sour worms for when Mom and AJ visit next weekend. The soup can is for scale. This candy shop also boasted a Wonka-style chocolate waterfall, but pictures were not allowed.

By the time we got back to Chicago, my face was tired from smiling so much!

It's My Birthday!

2008-04-19T07:50:00.001-05:00

Some Food Pics

2008-04-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

Here are some food pics from the last week or so...

Here was my dinner tonight. Mark smoked and grilled some brats. I wasn't hungry enough for a bun, so I just ate the brat and onions plain. And some beautiful strawberries. Yay for spring!

Here are some homemade potato chips we made the other night. We used the V-slicer to very thinly slice potatoes, dried them on paper towels (an important step to prevent sogginess), lightly coated them with melted butter (although you could probably use olive oil instead--we'll have to try that next time), layed them out in a single layer on a cookie sheet (another important detail to prevent sogginess), sprinkled some mesquite seasoning on them, and baked them at 400 deg. until they were light/golden brown. A bit of advice--they go from undercooked to burnt very quickly, so you have to take them off the tray as they get done and put the rest of the tray back in to cook...and repeat until they are all done.
And here, for your entertainment is a picture of what I opened the fridge to find. What, might you ask, is that Ziploc bag of mush sitting on the shelf in the fridge? It's tuna salad. Mark had used a bag to store a partially used pouch of tuna, and when he made tuna salad with the rest of it, he figured he'd just use the same bag rather than getting a tupperware dirty. Ahh, boys. ;)

Where am I headed?

2008-04-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

Where am I headed? A good question indeed. I know some people have been wondering and worrying about this as much as I am--yes, I would be referring to you, Mom! :) The answer: I don't know. At this point, I am pretty sure that I have come to the conclusion that with theatre, I love the work but hate the business. Which puts me right at the point where I'm looking for a new long-term career plan.

There are a few options on my plate that I'm seriously looking at. One relatively convenient option is doing some temp work and seeing if I happen to fall into some tolerable/enjoyable office-type job. The problem with this is that I am very limited in terms of having any real choice over where I end up. There are several fields in which I have no experience but could see myself being interested in, but with temp work, I wouldn't get to pick where I worked. So it could be a long time before I found anything I liked. Or I could be great at some job I have no interest in doing long-term, get offered a permanent position, and fall into another career I don't like. Or get stuck doing temp work for a long time just waiting for something good to fall into my lap.

I am looking at options for nursing schools. The problem is that my undergrad degree is from a theatre conservatory, which means that I had very limited gen ed classes. Which means that not only would I have to take several prerequisites, but I would have to take prerequisites for the prerequisites. All of the programs that I've seen that are for degrees higher than associates degrees require many prerequisites, none of which I have. So it'd take quite a while to even get prerequisites done. Like--a year full-time or two+ years part-time. Between all of the City Colleges of Chicago, I would be able to take all of the classes I'd need at $72/credit hour, but most of the class times are 3-4 days/week during the day. So I couldn't even do temp work while taking most of the prerequisites. I could maybe find some tutoring/nannying work for afternoons/evenings...

Another option is going back to stage managing. I was really good at that and could very realistically and almost certainly have a good career doing that. But I'm pretty positive that I don't want that lifestyle for the rest of my working life--evening rehearsals and performances several evenings/week when I'm doing a show.

Is there something I can do that will utilize the degree I already have? I don't know. I enjoy teaching/choreographing, but I am almost certain that I would get burnt out doing just that for more than 2 months at a time.

I just had to get a degree in theatre.....

My New Do

2008-04-09T15:07:00.000-05:00

I got a haircut! Finally!
Oh, and by the way...anyone who plans on visiting Chicago and riding a bus or the el, here's a little tidbit of CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) etiquette:

If there are 8 empty seat wells (both seats in the two-seat set are empty) in plain sight, it is rude and bad train manners to sit down right next to another person, move around a lot and impede on their personal space, and then try to start some shit when they accidentally "elbow" you when they're just scratching their arm. Seriously. Go sit somewhere else. Butthead.

$15.00 Well Spent

2008-04-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

Wow. We just got what was possibly the best food delivery bargain ever.

See, we had planned on ordering pizza tonight to eat while watching the KU game and I was just about to call and place the delivery order when I stumbled upon an article about how to save money. There was a link to the Entertainment Book company's website, and I clicked it, remembering the coupon books and the wondrous bargains within from my childhood. So, Mark and I bought an Entertainment Book online for $15.00 (the price gets discounted after April 1st) and it's being shipped to us for free. This was all happening as I held both my phone and the sub-par coupon we had planned on using. Obviously I got distracted and the pizza delivery order had been pushed to after the ordering of the coupon book. But wait!--you can use the website to print about a gazillion additional coupons. I found the place we were planning to order from and lo and behold there was a coupon for buy one get one free (up to a $17.00 value). We called, caused much confusion (what kind of coupon is it? what size pizza is the coupon for?), and placed our order for two large two-topping pizzas. I thought I had just misheard him when he said that the total was $11.33, but rather than causing any more of a ruckus and asking the price a third time, I decided to just wait and see when they brought the pizza. I was thinking that maybe despite my double-checking after the first mention of the price that they were indeed large pizzas they would maybe be mediums or even smalls. See, each large pizza was supposed to be $12.99 plus $1.75 for each topping. Here's what arrived: Two large two-topping pizzas. We still can't quite figure out the math.

Just Look at This!

2008-04-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

Just look at this: my very first lemon meringue pie! It was a two-hour ordeal. (That's including the time it took to redo one part of the intricate recipe due to mistakenly reading 4 tbs of cornstarch instead of 4 tsp. There is now a very dense gelatinous blob in our trash can...I was afraid it would clog the disposal!) Definitely a pain in the butt, but it came out beautifully and tastes absolutely AMAZING! Sour enough, but not too sour; sweet enough, but not too sweet; lemony enough, but not too lemony. Seriously good stuff. Besides the difficulty of the ordeal, the only thing I'm not happy with is the appearance of the crust. It tastes good, but it doesn't look pretty...and those of you who know me know that I like my pie crusts to be pretty and fancy! Despite it's sub-par appearance, the crust tastes good--it didn't get soggy and it's not tough. The secret? Hard to be sure, but I think it was that I rolled it out between two sheets of saran wrap so I didn't have to handle it a lot.

Just look at that lemony goodness!
Actually, I think that with the exception of the crust's appearance, this might be the best pie I've ever made. Go me!

Home Improvement Lunacy!

2008-04-02T18:07:00.000-05:00

Well, this morning, I undertook phase two of the great bathroom project. Phase one was a very, very thorough cleaning of the bathroom and the tub. I scrubbed the baseboards, scrubbed the gunk and buildup off of the tub floor, and cleaned out the bathtub jets. (Although as you can see from the pictures below, I clearly didn't clean the shower wall tiles. Oops. I guess maybe that'll be phase three.)

When I was cleaning the tub during phase one, I couldn't seem to get all of the mildew off of of the caulking around the edge of the tub. The reason: it was under/in the caulk. So phase two was re-caulking the tub. Now this was my first major home improvement project, so I was a little scared when I first undertook this task. But a little excited too.

The first step was removing the old caulk and cleaning out the seam. I didn't take pictures. You should be glad. There was actual slime. Lots of mildew and lots of slime. Ewwwww.
Step one: scraping off all the old caulk with a razor blade and a screwdriver.
Step two: scraping out as much of the slime and mildew as I could with a screwdriver, razor blade, and paper towels, and Q-tips.
Step three: dredging the seam with bleach-water.
Step four: letting it dry.
Step five: getting impatient and blow-drying the seam. (At this point I remembered the creepy "Don't learn electrical safety by accident" ads that KC Power & Light used to run. Then I shut the toilet lid in case I fell backwards and dropped the hair dryer into the toilet.)
Step six: letting it dry more.

Here's what it looked like during the drying process.

Imagine how gross this seam looked when it was filled with mildew and slime.

Before I knew it (okay, so it was hours later) it was time to fill up the tub and apply the new caulk. It's a little lumpy and there's probably more caulk than is absolutely necessary, but I did it! And it doesn't look too bad! Go me!

Hopefully I let the seam dry out long enough. And hopefully this will last a while without getting all grody and mildewy and slimy. Here's the finished product!

I Still Want One!

2008-03-28T12:13:00.001-05:00

I found some more cute polar bear pictures! The bottom one was taken a while after the top one. See, Mark, he's not growing too big too quickly to live in our bathtub!

I Hate Money

2008-03-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

Well, it's not money I hate, it's dealing with money. I like having money. I don't like trying to invest money. And it's entirely possible that the business of getting my personal finances in a state of long-term responsibility and growth might send me over the edge and into a nervous breakdown.

So, I'm 24....soon to be 25....and I have just recently opened an IRA. But now I have to figure out what to do (how/where to invest) with the money in that IRA account. I don't know anything about this stuff! I don't know what percentage to put in mutual funds, stocks, bonds, I don't even know. I don't know how to pick which mutual funds, stocks, bonds to put the money into. I don't know anything about anything. At all. And it is daunting, to say the least. I really have no idea how to research these things and keep getting really overwhelmed.

But I will figure it out. Somehow. Some way yet to be determined.

Yummy Yummy Yum Yum

2008-03-26T19:03:00.001-05:00

Yummy. This was my dinner tonight. I felt like a slug for the better part of the morning/early afternoon. I'm definitely sick of being less employed than I am used to. A solely sloth-like life is not for me. So....then I went to the bank, and gee whiz....I hate dealing with money. So then I came home and made some yummy mac and cheese based on a recipe I found online. It called for cream cheese (yum) and cheddar cheese, but I only had about 1/2 of the shredded cheddar that was called for. Luckily we had about 1/3 of a block of Tilamook smoked cheddar in the fridge, which I chopped up. (We're without a usable cheese grater. PITA) The addition/substitution of the smoked cheddar was delicious--and it smells amazing, let me tell you. The bread crumbs on top got nice and crispy. I also added some hot sauce, red pepper flakes, and garlic....and boy was it good. This recipe is definitely a keeper. Yum. Cheered me right up! Oh, I also had some corn, but that wasn't worth taking a picture of.

The Joyful Return of Food Pictures

2008-03-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a few entries since I've had any pictures to post, but have no fear, food pictures are here!

Mark and I made dinner together tonight, and it turned out spectacularly, if I don't say so myself. We decided that the chicken and the skewered breaded mushrooms will definitely be on the menu of Lark, the restaurant we will one day open. Although Mark decided to inform me today that he doesn't think the name Lark is a good name for a restaurant after all! I felt so betrayed! (As you can tell, I'm goofy and at the height of my dorkiness after being sick and cooped up for 3 days.) For the record, I still think Lark is a perfect name for our restaurant. Anyway.....here was our dinner:The chicken is adapted from a recipe my mom mailed me a long time ago. Basically dipped in olive oil, then dredged in a breadcrumb/seasoning mixture. After that, we rolled it up and skewered it. We used some of the leftover breadcrumb mixture to coat some of the mushrooms...and let me just say....YUM. Seriously YUM. We also skewered some onions and made some potato wedges from an internet recipe. They were just okay.

While all of that was cooking, I used some leftover chocolate candy melts to make chocolate covered strawberries. How fancy! (I have a bit of a problem with buying produce and not eating it all before it goes bad. But cover it with chocolate and I'm guaranteed to eat it!)

And a close-up:

Isn't she love-ly? Isn't she won-der-ful?

2008-03-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

Mark just chronicled my day and I found it funny enough to post.

"You woke up and went, "eeuuuuhhhhh." Then you went back to bed. Then you came out of your room and went, "eeuuuhhhhh." Then you went back to bed. Then you woke up again and went, "eeuuuuuhhhh" and said you weren't going back to bed."

And that was as far as he got because by that point I was already silent laugh mode-ing it up.

A Two-Parter

2008-03-22T18:13:00.000-05:00

Part A: (or) Why it sucks to be your boyfriend's roommate when you're sick

Pros:
~Someone to take care of you and fetch you OJ
Cons:
~He can know that you've slept for 10 1/2 of the last 12 hours.
~You look grody when you're sick.
~You couldn't be bothered to brush your hair between the shower and the crawling back into bed, so your hair dried sticking up in every imaginable direction and your hair follicles hurt entirely too much to wear a ponytail and taking another shower is way too hard.
~He gets to learn that my affection for watching Little House on the Prairie when I'm sick is not something that I'm likely to ever grow out of.
~There is a witness to the fact that I ate an entire box of popsicles in very slightly more than two days.

Part B: (or) Becoming a Fiscally Responsible Citizen, even when you're sick

I took the necessary steps to becoming a financially responsible citizen today, opening an IRA and taking steps to open an online savings account that will get 4x the interest rate I'm currently getting. Geez, talk about exhausting and overwhelming and stressful! I know next to nothing about these things, but I'm on the right track now! The next step will be distributing the IRA according to my risk/timing preferences. Eek. One step at a time--can't forget to breathe!

Spring Has Most Definitely Not Sprung

2008-03-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

Well, it's Easter weekend. And that means dying Easter Eggs! I sprung for the deluxe pack - with nine colors instead of six! - and was pleased to discover post-checkout that it was only $.86 more! Here is a chronicle of our egg-dying escapades:

Here I am prepping the egg dye cups.

And here are the eggs post-dye. Only you might notice that there are eleven eggs here. Why, might you wonder, didn't we dye an even dozen eggs?

I present you what has been affectionately nicknamed "the Death Egg." There was a hard-boiling crisis for this particular egg, but we didn't want him to be left out of all the dying fun.

Here are the ones I dyed. Lovely, no?

And, lest you wish you were here to join in the springtime fun, I leave you with a picture of Chicago right now. Still pining?

2008-03-19T17:43:00.001-05:00

Andrea has awarded me the title of "the Most Grateful Knit-Gift Receiver!" Here is a picture of the latest knit-gift! It is rather long, but when folded up, it works just fine!

Thanks!

I Hate My Teeth, Part 2

2008-03-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

I hate my teeth. My mouth hurts.

My Fancy-Schmancy Dinner!

2008-03-16T17:35:00.000-05:00

I recently had an unexpected day off and decided to make a work-intensive meal!

Here are the results:

First on the menu: Pineapple-Carrot Jell-O. Now, this is a dish we had growing up, and Mark looked at me like I was crazy when I told him what it was. But he just finished off the last of it this afternoon! Next time I make it, I'll omit the salt, as it just tasted like salt to me. Mark couldn't taste it, but I barely ate any because of the excessive saltiness. Which could've been mostly in my imagination.

Next, macaroni and cheese. This was the first time I've actually made baked mac 'n cheese. It turned out quite nicely and was really easy to make.

I tweaked a recipe I found online for chicken, using a mixture of crushed oyster crackers, cornflakes, and ritz crackers mixed with some seasonings for coating. It turned out really well despite the fact that I had to use garlic butter to stick the crumbs to the chicken because I used the last of our eggs making this....................
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Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting....from scratch! Another first-time effort. And I must say, it was quite delicious. Very dense, very chocolaty, and quite delicious. And because Mark hasn't been eating the leftovers, I have. Lots and lots of chocolate cake. Yum......

By the way, I still want a baby polar bear!

I Want One!

2008-03-12T22:48:00.000-05:00

OMG. I now officially no longer want a baby hippopotamus. Now I want a baby polar bear instead. It can live in the bathtub and we can move it to the zoo once it gets too big for the bathtub. That's my plan. It's just so damn cute!

See? He's trying to escape to come live in our bathtub.

2008-03-05T14:05:00.001-06:00

I hate my teeth. The end.

NotifyList

2008-03-04T10:37:00.001-06:00

SuperCook is Super Indeed

2008-03-03T15:08:00.001-06:00

This is a shameless plug, as I am now obsessed with this website. OMG. It is amazing. See, the reason that I don't spend hours looking for and trying new recipes from online is because I always get so frustrated within the first 15 minutes. I find a recipe that looks decent and has good reviews....oh wait, I don't have lemon juice. I find another recipe that looks decent and has good reviews....oh wait, I don't have buttermilk. I find another recipe that looks decent and has good reviews....oh wait, I don't have freaking tomatoes....or onions....or sour cream....or....

You get the idea. And then I give up and eat instant mashed potatoes or leftover pizza (ordered the last time I couldn't find a recipe to try) for dinner and invariably feel oh-so-unsatisfied afterwards. But no more! Yesterday I made fancy cookies, thanks to SuperCook. Tonight I made Baked Paprika-Parmesan Chicken, all thanks to SuperCook. Wow!

And thanks to my nifty-difty boyfriend, I have a screen-shot for your touring pleasure!

Notice:
(A) the list of ingredients currently available....this is super-easy to update
(B) that you can highlight a particular ingredient that you want to use
(C) I can choose from 70 possible chicken entrees that I have the ingredients to make
(D) it recommends ingredients to acquire to increase the number of potential recipes
(E) the section tabs: entrees, starters, desserts

Features that hopefully SuperCook will one day acquire:
(A) an option to specify how much/many of particular ingredients you have. For example, I only have 2 bananas, but most recipes call for at least 3.
(B) better section tabs....i.e.-side dishes

But I'm not complaining....oh, no. I wouldn't complain about SuperCook. Not after all that SuperCook has done for me!

2008-03-02T18:44:00.000-06:00

So, I wanted to try a new recipe today. But what new recipe to try? And how to find a recipe to try? Well.....I stumbled upon a wonderful website: SuperCook --basically you type in a list of ingredients you have and it searched several different websites to find recipes you already have the ingredients for! This is especially good for me considering that the combination of living in the city and not having a car makes going to the grocery store for a last-minute ingredient quite an ordeal. So, I found a recipe for....."Magic Peanut Butter Middles." Here is a chronicle of the magical journey!

Making the middles (simply peanut butter and powdered sugar):As you can see (above) I had to add a little bit of extra peanut butter because originally I used extra-crunchy and so the mixture was too dry. The finished product:And here is where all those years of rolling Sausage Balls and Russian Teacakes came in handy

At this point, I put the tray of peanut butter balls in the fridge to chill and harden while I ~~started the outer chocolate cookie part~~ er.... cracked open a nice cold Diet Coke. On a side note, I all but stopped drinking pop when I moved to my first apartment over4 years ago simply because it was too hard to haul home from the grocery store on the train. Now, though, Mark and I decided to get some so that we wouldn't have to pay $2.50 for a 2-liter when we order pizza. The problem: now I drink it all the time. But there is a solution on the horizon: keep it in the basement!

Here is the start of the cookie dough. Light and fluffy!

And here it is again after I added the cocoa/flour/baking soda mixture.

This is where the recipe turns into a little bit more of a pain in the ass. By the end, though, I had found a pretty easy way to wrap the peanut butter balls in the chocolate cookie dough. Basically, I flattened it out and then rather than just rounding the chocolate dough around the PB, I treated it more like a present to be wrapped (making two sides meet and leaving the ends open) and then pinching the ends closed....as such:

Ready for the oven!

The recipe said to flatten them with a glass dipped in sugar, but they were already pretty flat, so I only did that on one of the two trays...just to see if it would make a difference. It didn't really.

Caught in the act! (Not really--this was posed. I made him freeze so I could take the picture.)

The middle! It's a magical peanut butter middle! Overall, they taste pretty good, but I don't think they're quite worth the trouble. In general I tend to avoid recipes that require you to roll things into balls....the trauma of so many sausage balls in my youth! Unfortunately, the food processor chopped up the chunks from the chunky PB a lot; it would've been nice to have that texture. But they were good, I guess. I won't make them again.

And here's the damage. And Mom, I was going to wash the dishes by hand....but then I remembered that the dishwasher would wash them for me!

So, there you have it: Magic Peanut Butter Middles.

Dude.

2008-02-29T23:11:00.000-06:00

Dude. Mark forced me to watch 28 Days Later tonight and I got waaayyyyyy scared. So scared, in fact that I looked a lot like this:Sadly and embarrassingly, I looked freakishly like that poor girl. Only I was curled up in a ball whimpering and mumbling about how much I hate that movie. Actually, now that I reflect back on the horror of the past two hours, I'm pretty sure that I was actually MORE scared than that poor girl. Now, some of you out there may be thinking to yourselves, "Now, come on, Lauren E.J., he couldn't make you watch a scary movie!" True, but my choices were 28 Days Later or Saw IV. Those are the two movies currently on loan from Blockbuster. Now, why Mark thought it would be a good idea to put those movies at the top of his list at the same time, I do not know. But considering how horridly horrifically horrendously appalled I was by that movie, Saw IV may have been the better choice!

So he will pay. Many girlie movies are to come. Mark my words.

A Picture from a Two-Months Ago Date

2008-02-28T11:42:00.000-06:00

Okay, so this is the only picture that Mark will let me post. It's almost like he thinks I'd post an embarrassing or silly picture of him (like perhaps the one of him trying to eat his new TV)! Me?!? Can you believe it? I'd never do that! But I'm sure I'll wear him down eventually. Probably not until after I post some more embarrassing pictures of myself, though.

I'm not too incredibly crazy about this picture, but what can you do? This was taken a while ago--almost two months ago...I suppose I should take more pictures so I'll have something current to post!

A Big-Ass TV

2008-02-26T21:11:00.000-06:00

Okay, so apparently I have been remiss and not sufficiently updated everyone I know of the new TV that has entered my life. I would describe it, but I think that the pictures will speak for themselves. So, without further ado, a big-ass TV:I am in this picture simply for the sake of scale. And to be a giant dork, apparently, as that does seem to be my specialty. Whatever. There's a picture of Mark trying to eat the TV, I just didn't post it.

If you'll notice, the new TV dwarfs my pathetic-looking little bookshelf. Also, the massiveness of the new TV necessitated the banishment of one of my bookshelves to the basement. I was very sad about it. But I have since gotten over it.

On another rather uninteresting side note (it's a filler!) I wore that same shirt today. Maybe I should re-title this blog to: The Menial Banalities of Lauren E.J.

To recap, Mark bought a 50" plasma TV with his end-of-year bonus. So yes, this new TV has been here for over a month now; I'm pretty surprised that some people (ahem, Andrea) didn't know about it! All in all, it is very fancy and........

(that picture took some effort, let me tell you!)

Valentine's Day Goodies

2008-02-24T20:17:00.001-06:00

And now, a back-post. I made a delightful albeit pain-in-the-ass cute treat for Mark. And yes, I did make him unscramble the letters. For those of you too lazy (0r spelling challenged) to unscramble them yourselves: Happy Two Months of Togetherness.

And now for a close-up:

Basically I made cupcakes in miniature silicone heart-shaped molds. Unfortunately, they ballooned up to the point of not being recognizable as hearts. I ended up slicing the tops off and turning them upside down so that the intended shape was distinct. I melted a can of pre-packaged frosting (In my defense, I ALWAYS make my own frosting, but the kind I make wouldn't melt so nicely and thus wouldn't settle into a thin, smooth layer of icing. So there.) and poured it over the cupcakes. Then I used red melting candies and piped on the letters.

The lesson for next time: Don't store cupcakes on a cooling rack after slicing them open. I think that because they were raised and I had sliced off the tops (now the bottoms), air went up through the bottom of the cupcakes and they were stale within a couple days. Boo.

The Inaugural Post!

2008-02-24T19:59:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the blog of my life. This idea started out as a competitive food blog inspired by my sister and her husband's blog: The Pan and Jerm Show; but hey, let's not limit things here. So there will be food posts (photographed with my new digital camera!), but also goofy posts and pictures and blurbs and other misadventures. So we'll see......here goes......