Simple Sundays 09/30/07

Hmmmm, what to pick as my simple pleasure for this week. That's a tough one.

I'm going to say that my simple pleasure this week was my latest issue of Mothering Magazine arriving in the mail. I love love love when I check the mail and I have my new issue. It is only published every other month so I have to make it last. When I get a new one, I quickly skim through and maybe read one article. Then I go back through and read the letters to the editor followed by one or two articles that really caught my eye. Then I go back through a third time and read Peggy's article along with any other articles that I missed. If I do it right, I can make it last for at least a week. I really wish they would go to once a month. But for now, I have to make them last.

My lighthouse, my albatross

I did something tonight that I haven't done in quite a while. And I didn't even realize that I hadn't done it until I actually made the decision to do it. I decided to buy a book just for me. Gasp!

You see, I view books as both necessities and luxuries. I love my books. I have a hard time getting rid of books. When I was in college, I would throw away clothes so as not to have to pack and unpack them in my semi-yearly moves from the dorm but I would continue to collect more and more books. I still have most of them. Some are packed away in boxes because I have yet to realize my dream of having a library room in my house. One day I will have my semi-dark room with tall espresso colored wood bookshelves complete with sliding ladder so as to access those faraway books.

But back to this evening. I met my big human at my favorite shopping center for what has become our Friday Evening Date When We Don't Have The Small Humans. We went to my favorite restaurant and had my favorite stromboli and then we walked a bit and ended up in Barnes and Noble. I did a bit of poking and ended up with Eat Pray Love in my hands. I started this book last year when it first came out, before it was a fashionable read simply because Oprah said to read it. For some inexplicable reason, I didn't finish it. But tonight it caught my eye and I decided to buy it. This was quite out of the ordinary for me. I have no problem buying books for the small humans, in fact I probably buy too many. And we, as in the big human and I, buy lots of get smarter books. But I have not bought a book just for me and actually paid for it with my money rather than a giftcard in quite some time. It felt delightfully wicked. And something that I realized I must do more of. So I have decided that perhaps once a month, I will buy a book just for me.

Anyways, I must get back to Liz and her discovery of God. She's quite delightful and charming, isn't she?

Simple Sundays 9/23/07

I missed writing this yesterday because frankly I forgot about it but I figure that a day late is better than nothing.

My simple pleasure this past week was playing freeze tag with 4th graders. One of the best kept secrets of people with small humans is that they are the best excuse for playing. The large amount of Playmobil exists in our house right now not because the small humans wanted it but because this big human did. Anyways, back to freeze tag. I have started going to lunch with my small girl humans on Thursdays. If I time it right, I get to do recess with the 3rd graders, eat a bit of lunch with them, then move over to the 4th graders and then do recess again. After that I head back to work. So this past Thursday, after lunch was cleaned up and all the chairs were stacked, we lined up and headed out to the playground. One small human was designated as "It" and then we all started running in circles. There was a lot of stopping and starting and loads of shrieking. I went back to work sweaty and with a slightly pulled thigh muscle but it was worth it. I can't wait for this Thursday!

The winning continues

So last Friday I won my bracelet and the Lindt chocolate. On Tuesday, my company had training by one of our vendors and there were going to be prizes given away. The top prize was a 32" TV. I really wanted to win that. And my friends at work joked that if I won something else, then they were going to have to jump me. I went to the training and filled out the form that needed to go in for the drawing, checked out the prizes they were giving away and then I left the room and forgot about it completely.

I came back to my desk on Wednesday afternoon from lunch and there was a box sitting in my chair. I won something! Not the TV but something pretty cool. It was kind of like a DVD burner but you could hook up your camcorder or camera and make DVDs of the movies or pictures. Well, we already have a miniDVD camcorder so I was having a tough time figuring out what we would really do with this cool new toy. I then got an email from another prize winner in my company that won something different. She wanted to trade because she thought her prize was too complicated to hook up. So we traded. And my big human loves me even more now because I brought home this cool new toy that hooks up to our DVR and now we can watch our TV on any computer anywhere in the world and also the stuff that is recorded to the DVR. It is very very cool.

I guess "The Secret" stuff does work...hmmm...

10 things I've done that you probably haven't

I enjoyed this list so much the other day that I have been thinking about what mine could be so that I could post it. So here goes.

1. Swam in the Baltic Sea. In October. Yes it was frickin' freezing.

2. Slept in a former East German apartment building.

3. Escaped being kidnapped with my friend while trying to hitchhike in Norway. We were released because we sang the Cake version of "I will survive" at the top of our lungs for about 30 minutes straight.

4. Flown in a private jet.

5. Been kicked off of a train because I snuck on.

6. Been responsible for a female marine recruit getting her butt chewed by her DI because she didn't say "Good afternoon, ma'am." to me when I passed by her.

7. Stood in line for 3 hours in below freezing temps to get a free chair when the IKEA in Chicago first opened.

8. Convinced two police officers to drive me to my friend's house because it was late, cold and snowing.

9. Played in the fountains at the FDR Memorial in the middle of the night.

10. Held a tarantula.

My informal language class

So sometimes at my job, I have to do repetitive stuff that doesn't require a lot of brainwork. So while I do that, I put my headphones on and I listen to the current day's show of God Morgen Norge. I love it. I do get weird looks though from my coworkers when they walk up and ask me what I am listening to and I tell them that I am listening to basically the norwegian version of the Today Show. If you go here, you can listen to.

Tales from a Former Michigander asked me in a comment on my last post what my bracelet looks like. I don't know how to reference back to a previous post like she does so I am just going to say that you need to scroll down to the post entitled "I Always Do" and you can read the story about my bracelet and there should be a link to David Yurman's site that has a picture.

I have been at work for over 10 hours now and I didn't really take a lunch. It's been a long day.

Does it match the bracelet?

This is my deciding question now when planning my outfit for the day. I want to wear my new bauble every day so it must match what I am putting on. This is made infinitely easier by my decision to not wear flipflops to work anymore which means I have to wear "fancy" shoes which means I need to dress up so as to not look ridiculous. Although that brings a whole new problem to the table. I need more work/dress clothes. My recent weightloss, while wonderful, means that none of my old clothes fit. So last night I went shopping. I have decided now that anytime I need an instant pick-me-up, all I need to do is find the closest Banana Republic. Their clothes consistently run big on me. For instance, yesterday I wore a pair of Banana pants that fit me great and they are a size smaller than what I wear from Old Navy or Gap. And then last night, I bought a skirt that was a size smaller than the Banana pants I had on! Amazing. I know the truth is that they size the clothes differently so rich fat people feel better about spending a gazillion dollars on clothes but I don't care. I heart Banana Republic.

Simple Sunday Sept. 16, 2007

I am going to start participating in this.

So here is the simple pleasure that I participated in this weekend...sorry no photos. I spent late Saturday afternoon and evening sitting outside behind my friend Mark's house with my big human and one of Mark's friends and we enjoyed a simple dinner of finger foods and wine. It was a lovely chianti from Whole Foods and we had some nice cheeses, crackers, a seven-layer dip from Whole Foods and some fresh fruit. The weather was beautiful and the company entertaining. We then ended the evening by watching Geraldo attempt to conduct an interview on Fox News.

A great evening.

I Always Do

Friday evening, I picked up my big human from his office and we went to my favorite shopping center. It's my favorite because it has just about every store that I would want to go to (except Target) and it's nice to walk around there in the evenings. I needed to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and I was also craving a veggie stromboli from my favorite restaurant there, Casella's. So we went to the shopping center and we parked halfway between both places so we could just walk to everything and not have to keep moving our car. We ended up parking in front of Talbot's. I don't usually go in to Talbot's but they were having some sort of party in the store because the doors were open and there was live music being played. So we went in and they were having an open house. There were tables set up with finger foods and giveaways to register for and there were some people from other stores in the shopping center doing demonstrations. One was from a store that sells luggage and he was showing us how to pack effectively and the other was from a new jewelry store that had just opened next to Talbot's. They were having a giveaway for a bracelet but you had to go next door to register for it. So we headed over there after we were done with Talbot's and registered for this, a David Yurman bracelet. My big human also tried on a fabulous Rolex and I tried on a couple of different David Yurman bracelets. We then left and headed down for our yummy dinner. While we were eating, my cell rang and I didn't answer to be polite. They left a message however so I couldn't resist and I checked the message. It was from one of the lovely ladies at Fink's asking me to call her back asap. So I did. And guess what? I won this lovely bauble. Oh and I also won a big bag of truffles from Lindt from the drawing at Talbot's. I've alway been rather lucky. I wonder what I will win next?

Fall Cleaning

I took today and tomorrow off from work so that I can have four straight days to clean clean clean. Today, I tackled our storage closet outside. I found some stuff that I haven't seen in ages. One was a notebook that I had bought in college and I had written down some Magnetic Poetry poems that I had written on my fridge in the dorm. I liked them a lot so I am going to share. Enjoy!

my longtime friend
like sky dancing
he is sun balm
to my dark storms
-Feb. 2001

hurry the present
dreaming to feel him surrender
light through the blue cold
his breath like sudden spring
-March 2001

a gentle lie shall
leave you loveless
and me without a star
-March 2001

anticipation built
nothing found
a hole in my heart
for my unmet dreams
-March 2001

Radio Silence

I don't normally talk about what I remember from that day or the weeks following. When the anniversary comes around, I think about it but I don't normally participate in the active remembering that usually comes with that day. This time, it feels different. Maybe it is because it is the same weekday as when it actually happened but it has brought back a lot of memories from that time.

I had some time to kill in my car last night because I had to drive for an hour or so by myself and since I was tired and wanted to make sure I stayed awake, I listened to a radio program on my XM that I haven't been listening to in a while. It is Opie and Anthony and they are irreverant and rude and make fun of everyone and everything and they can usually only be handled in small doses or you really start to corrupt your brain. Anyways, so they live in New York and they have been on the radio for a long time and they were playing some clips of their shows from the weeks following 9/11. They were playing tribute songs that other radio stations were playing and then making fun of the self-importance of the people that wrote the songs and how they weren't really trying to honor the people and the country but really just hoping that their song would become popular and they would be famous. So they were playing these songs and they were all really quite awful and I was trying to remember why the songs didn't sound familiar to me. I couldn't recall hearing them play on the radio. And then I remembered why. Starting that morning when I heard the news of the attacks, I couldn't bring myself to listen to the radio when I was in the car driving. I would listen to NPR occasionally but the mostly I would drive in silence. There was something that felt so wrong about be-bopping down the road when this horrible event had occurred. It was about a month before I started listening to music again while I drove.

So there's my obligatory post about 9/11.

The Case of the Melting Wedding Cake

"The cake is ruined! Mark* ruined the cake!" Kendall screached as she burst into the changing room. Lanie turned with her mouth agape, "What do you mean the cake is ruined?" Kendall could only repeat over and over again, "Mark ruined the cake, Mark ruined the cake." Lanie ran down the church hallway to the kitchen to find the ruined cake but did not see it amongst the empty boxes of mozzarella sticks and chinese dumplings. She rushed into the fellowship hall and discovered Kendall's sister, brother and friend standing silently looking at the cake. It did in fact look ruined. Lanie started to see what could be done to salvage the cake when she realized why it was ruined. All of the rich buttercream frosting on the three layer round cake was melting from the heat. Without pausing to figure out why the frosting was melting, she stuck her hands in between the first and second layer and jerked the second and third layer up to remove it from the platter. She then barked at Kendall's younger brother to pick up the platter with the first layer and follow her to the kitchen. "The cake needs to get cold again before I can try to do anything to it.", she explained to Kendall's sister Kate. Luckily, this church kitchen had an industrial size refridgerator with slatted shelves so that Lanie could slip the wooden stakes that were still attached to the bottom of the second layer through the holes and safely rest the top two layers while they cooled.

"It's not Mark's fault.", Lanie tried to explain to Kendall, "The cake was poorly made." Lanie could not really lay her finger at that point on why it was poorly made but she wanted Kendall to know that Mark did not ruin the cake. Kendall was not convinced and continued to question Mark, "Why didn't you take Joe with you to pick up the cake? It took both of us to carry it on Friday." Poor Mark could only utter, "I'm sorry Kendall. I was really careful."

Lanie returned to the kitchen and started her repair job. The original cake was three round layers covered with smooth buttercream frosting and decorated with delicate polka dots. At the base of each layer was a wide dark pink satin ribbon. When Lanie first returned to the kitchen, she thought that the ribbons were ruined and would need to be replaced completely. Once she realized that her options were extremely limited in the replacement ribbon department, she set out to remove the ribbons, wash them and lay them out to dry. She then started "erasing" the surviving polka dots and repairing the damaged first layer. It took about an hour of working with the cake staying in the refridgerator but once she smoothed out the damaged frosting and worked to make the rest of the cake blend in, it started looking like a cake again. She replaced the ribbons and then enlisted the help of her husband, Rich, to assist in replacing the second and third layers on top of the first layer. She still had some major holes and gaps that needed to be covered up so she picked up some roses and tore off the petals and sprinkled them around the base of each layer and added a few to the top. The cake was still extremely unstable and very crooked from almost every angle but in the end, Lanie was able to carry it out, snap a few pics of it and let Kendall and Mark do the ceremonial cake cutting before swiftly removing it to the kitchen.

Now the question remained why was the cake melting to start with? Lanie mulled over that thought for a few days and after discussing it with her amatuer cake-making mother, she realized what happened. The first problem was the bakery put the cake together on the Friday before the reception. Any bakery worth their salt knows that cakes should only be assembled once they are delivered to the reception site. When Kendall and Mark's cake was assembled on Friday, it not only made it too big to then be put in a conventional refridgerator, but it also put a lot of strain on the first layer. Lanie guessed that the cake had not been refridgerated and while it was probably cool in Mark's aunt's house, it was not cool enough to keep buttercream frosting from melting. So after much thought, Lanie was positive that the cake being mostly destroyed had nothing to do with Mark and everything to do with the bakery.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Sound Bites

Here are a few funny snippets from this past weekend with photos to illustrate:

"That cake looks a little tilted..." nervously said to me by the MC for the event after I brought the semi-salvaged cake out so that the husband and wife could do the ceremonial cake cutting. I had to laugh because it was a little more than tilted! That episode deserves it's own post.



"There are three things I know about this shirt. One: This is not my shirt. Two: I'm pretty sure it's a woman's shirt. Three: It's not my wife's shirt. Other than that, I don't know why it was in our car but I kept it on." This was said to me and my big human by the guy in the photo below, the bride/wife's older brother. We couldn't stop laughing.

"You should see the trunk space in the Charger. It's massive!" This was said repeatedly by the members of our table which would then prompt a visit to said Charger to view the massive trunk space in the rental car. As you can see, the trunk was indeed massive.

It was a fun weekend. In fact it was so much fun that not only did we delay our trip home but so did our friends that flew in from California. It was great to visit with everyone.

Yummy New Colors

I like the mint green one but my apple green one is still the prettiest to me! It doesn't play video though...oh well.

Only at night

This past weekend, my big human and I were up in Maryland for Tales from a former Michigander's wedding reception. We had a blast and I will do a different post about that. This post is about our drive home. We left Silver Spring a little before 8 PM on Monday night to drive home. When we were leaving the area where we had been with our friends, we needed to turn left or right. I said, "Honey, I think we should turn right here." He said, "Let's turn left." Since he was driving, we turned left. Now at this point, I was not concerned about getting lost because I spent so much time in Maryland and DC during the summer months of my college career that I can find my way out and get home although it may take me a while. So while it was getting late and we both needed to be to work early in the morning, we went on a little adventure. We headed toward DC and things were fine. I started getting a little nervous because we were on a path to end up in a not nice part of DC. So I gently suggested that we needed to start heading to the right a bit to get to a better part of DC. So we end up on 16th St which takes us up behind the White House. We wave hello to Dubya and make some jokes about stopping by for a drink and keep driving. At this point, we are headed for Union Station which does not get us on a path to get home. I ask "Honey, do you have a path in mind or do you want me to help you get out of here?" and he responded "You can tell me how to get home." We have a brief discussion about which interstate we are going to take to get home and once we decide, we head down 14th St and turn right on Constitution. This puts us on the path to go past the White House again and also the Washington Monument. These places are awesome to view at night and my big human starts making comments that leads me to understand that he has not spent as much time perusing our Nation's Capital as I have. I then turn to him and say "Hey, you wanna do something fun?" and he says, "Yeah babe!". So I direct him to the FDR Memorial. He had never been and it is my absolute favorite memorial to visit at night. In fact, I think I have only visited this memorial at night. If you go late enough, you can play in the fountains. So we got here about 8:30 PM and spent 45 minutes or so hanging out and taking pics. We then packed up and jumped on 66 West and headed home. It was a great night. And I got some great pics.

It was a fun night. I decided that we need to plan a day trip back up to DC so that he can properly view the sights. Can we have our bedroom again, Tales from a former Michigander?