Checking In

I've been a terrible blogger lately.

Yes, I know.

And I'm sorry. I know that my internetey friends may have found greener and wordier pastures and my 3-D life friends are probably wondering if I'm still alive, because I'm not all that great at the phoning thing lately.

As I type this post I'm waiting for my veil to dry - every 20 minutes I go into the bathroom where it's spread on the floor, freshly cut, waiting for that glue stuff that keeps the edges from fraying. A little less than classic, yes, but I like it. My dress is so ornate that I think the simplest veil possible will be perfect. And this one is white and shimmery and gorgeous in fabric alone - why mess with a good thing?

As I wait I'm also shopping for wedding earrings. Blue roses have a special significance for us, and I've seen so many lovely choices! For example, here are a few that caught my eye while searching on google:

I just got a message back that this shopkeeper may be making me a special, personalized pair. Can't wait!

T is across the room, working on our wedding slideshow. Here's a little preview for you (yes, the second one is me. I didn't have hair til I was 3....let's hope the one-day children get T's follicles...)
Tomorrow I'll have more updates, if I get around to writing. It's a busy one, this life!

Happy Week Start!

Today's quote:
"Human beings, you and I, are goal-centered organisms. We are teleological in that we are motivated by purposes, by desired end states. We are engineered mentally to move progressively and successively from one goal to the next, and we are never really happy unless, and until, we are moving toward the accomplishment of something that is important to us."
~Brian Tracy

On Missing Granola

So for lunch today I had 6 chicken Mcnuggets and a snack size parfait. Not the healthiest thing I could've had.

But, in my defense, not the unhealthiest.

As I picked up said lunch, I was on the way back from an ortho appointment where new fun attachments were stuck to my teeth (ugh. At least they're not really visible...unless you're up close. ANYway) and got my next 3 sets of aligners (yay!).

Now, some people reading this won't know the life long saga that is my teeth. Sure in pictures they look normal. But, I assure you, they are not. On my 1st summer of grad school, I was grabbing some D'lites (oh how I miss that delicious frozen yogurt fluffy stuff...healthy too! If you're in Gainesville, go. today. Then write me about it and make me jealous. At least I'll have some vicariously) with Katie and as I bit down on a hunk of cookie dough in mine, I felt a crack.

A big old piece of my #19 molar just broke off. Broke. Off.

We'd just been kayaking down on lake Alice (my very favorite thing to do on Saturday mornings back then. Now, it's...um...sleep. Wow the life of a working girl is glamorous...), and were all giggly and the relaxed that you only are after a nice workout and sunshine fatigue. And, it didn't hurt, so I called home, went to CVS, got some tooth putty, and went and had dinner at Katie's mom's (who was also my advisor . Miss her too!) house.

And that was the beginning.

Since then, I've had 2 root canals (on that tooth. Yes, both. The first time a file broke off in the tooth as they were trying to do it. Believe me, you don't want details), 6 crowns, I don't even remember how many fillings, and an immeasurable amount of tears cried in various dental chairs (and that's saying something for me), usually when no one was looking, sometimes when they were.

So, last summer the dentist I go to said that, to keep my teeth from breaking, braces would help.

Hmm, I'm kind of old for that. So, I weighed getting braces or getting veneers. I figured that if I spent time and money on braces, then those prettily straight teeth just broke anyway, it wouldn't be worth it (duh).

I said something like this to my Mom once over the phone, before I'd made a decision:

"If any dentist would agree to just pull all my teeth and put in implants instead, I'd sign up for it right now. Just as long as they won't break anymore..."

It was traumatic! Various ones (always non-visible. That's an interesting karmic thing I bet) over the next year or two, and they would always make for an afternoon/evening of tears. I know that, all things considered, I have it great in the body department (everything works just fine functionally, and I'm pretty happy with all of it as that stuff goes), but to have any part of you just quit, with no warning, and nothing you can do about it, is horrid.

So, I saw the orthodontist. When he said I was a candidate for invisalign, I was in. And, here I am now, several months later, with 27 more trays to go (which means 54 weeks, mind you).

But, my teeth are kind of sensitive all the time. Not sore persay, but I don't like unexpected crunches.

Which brings me to the parfait. No granola for me.

Oh, the humanity!

I used to eat granola every day in my yogurt. Sigh. I miss it.

But, totally worth it. I think almost anyone would agree, yes?

But still, it's sad to throw it away w/ the empty cup that was my parfait...

OH! And something else, more exciting than anything else in this post. Last night at Macy's I bought a dress for the wedding this weekend that was originally $349 for .........wait for it.............$15. Not. Even. Kidding. It rocks too. I'll post pics after the weekend :)

Shopping Dates and Peppy Mornings

This morning I am extremely energetic. Like, freakishly so. I don't know why, but I'm going with it!

Sometimes you have randomly "good days" or randomly "bad days". Where stuff just goes right or wrong. Little things, here and there, but in the end they all combine to make things awesome, or to make you want to turn in early (around 1pm, say...) and start again on the next one.

Today isn't necessarily either good or bad in those ways, but energy always helps. It's also helping me with my resolution resolutions, which are coming along nicely, if quietly.

Perhaps last night has to do with my day today. It rocked. I hadn't hung out with M in what seemed like forever, so we had a shopping-and-dinner date. Traffic wasn't horrible on my way home from work
-hold that-
Traffic was nice on my way home from work (working on more optimistic wording. It's a good thing) so I got there in under an hour, went home, relaxed, read, puttered around, did NOT unpack (oops. Maybe bruised a shin or two on random boxes. Karma) for roughly a half hour til M came by and picked me up.

We are straight-up JcPenney sales junkies (I once got a satiney summery dress there, strapless, black and white and lovely, for $6. I know. Amazing) and knew that there was a good sale still going on from the weekend. So we beelined it to the mall. As M was driving, there was a lot of:

"I think my turn is coming up-" (as I watch it go by)
"Wait...was that it?"
"Yeah."
"Crap."
she turns around
"I've never been to this mall before..."
"Yeah you have"
"I have?"
"Yeah, we saw the Sex and the City movie here"
"We did?"
"Yeah"
.....5 points if you can guess who was who.....
One of the many reasons I love my sister - she is an intellectual giant (nope, not exaggerating) and yet I'm still sometimes smarter. **insert evil laugh here**

ANYway, she'd checked to see where JcPenney was online before she left to come get me, and we got to the mall finally, trying to decide whether to circle around it until we found the correct entrance, or just park somewhere and walk. Finally, we decided to do the latter. We went in and, lo and behold, there was um, no JcPenney in that mall. Anywhere. So we called up our ever-useful GPS system, Mom, back in VA, who is 98% of the time magically by a computer, who searched it for us.

Yes we do that. Like we're 5 years old. Hey, if you had a resource that always came through like that, you'd use it too. Sorry for all the sleep deprivation because of the time difference, Mom. :)

So we were on our way to the actual JcPenney!

We drove for a while, thought we'd passed it, realized we didn't, wondered if that was a mall or just a Macy's on the left, I figured it must be a mall because it had a massive parking structure...which went on, and on and, we decided that we could turn in any old time because the parking garage went to the end of the earth....

But finally, we were there. And?

No good sales.

Sigh.

But, all was not lost! In a quick perusal of the mall, we found an old-timey scale!

I didn't realize we were making a Burlington ad,


And M, glam as always.

We decided to hit up Outback for dinner (I love. It had been waaay too long) and here's the carnage that remained of the Pumpernickel loaf. (note. I did abide by my kicking-illness'-a#$ diet all day. I figured a splurge wasn't so bad. And, this morning? Only a mildly scratchy throat. Yay!) Oh. It also includes a picture of her delicious martini and what I was drinking - hot water with lemon. No fun at all.

There was delicious food, laughter, an amazing gingerbread martini which we will now put on our 'search and destroy' list to figure out how to replicate it at home, and upon the drive home, we found the most ghetto stop sign ever:

And that's it. Wishing you lots of family fun this December!

PS: here's one that shows why I love where I work. I was walking across campus yesterday and witnessed cuddling turtles. Makes me happy. (sorry it's kinda dark...)

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving!

Or, as we should perhaps call it, Turkey Day! (because we should give thanks all the time, right? Oh, maybe I'll withdraw that opinion, because there's Valentine's Day too, which, yes, is a holiday greatly inflated by the consumer industry blah blah blah, still - it's nice that there's a day devoted to love. And we should love everyday too...so Thanksgiving it is.)
~
I cooked a LOT this year, for the very first time. I, of course, like to cook and all, I just don't do it too often. Hopefully, that's changing. (the only thing that 'hopefully' stands for in that instance is my 'hope' that I'll get off my tired bum at the end of the day and actually cook something...) In the past, I've taken care of one or two dishes, but I'd never been responsible for the turkey. Or for anything very important, for that matter. I've made lots of pumpkin pies, but I don't count that. This time, I did the turkey, sweet potato casserole, cornbread, AND pie. It was lots of fun!
I'll get back to cooking in a minute. The first thing that I learned this holiday, prior to the turkey-making, was how to play chess. T and I are learning together. Now it's all we do.
(note the grocery bags in the background, having yet to be unloaded...)
I was very excited. Although we were only 5, somehow a 12-lb turkey was purchased. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
I got the idea for what I'd do from a combination of a few recipes on www.allrecipes.com, good old common sense, and the amazing vegan chef and friend B, who has not always been a vegan and dug up some great tips for me out of the foggy pre-vegan memory. Here he is, being kind enough to help me with the brining (was it kindness or the fact that he didn't want me to touch his salt container with my gross turkeyed hands? we'll never know...)
Because T doesn't eat gluten, I searched for some gluten-free recipes for things like cornbread and pumpkin pie. I was 1 for 2 - the cornbread was awful. BUT, the pie was great! The crust, not having regular flour, didn't stick together the way it should so I decided to do mini pies in a cupcake pan rather than gambling with a full-sized pie crust:
They turned out amazingly well! Beautiful, perfectly browned and delicious. I think they'll be making a reappearance before long.
~
Finally, the time came. After a day of cooking, chess, and general foolery, dinner was ready! I was also the only girl in attendance, so I represented the whole gender (you can bet I was under some how's-the-turkey-gonna-taste pressure!) The friend who we were visiting has a balcony that overlooks the Pacific, so the boys moved the table outside as I got ready. I came out to a bare dining room and a lovely table under the sunset:
Gorgeousness. They even did a great job with setting the table, for boys :)
So, we all sat, and after lots of pictures were taken (I could've sworn B's tripod was going to fall off the wall of the balcony to the mountain below, but all ended up fine in the end) we sat down to eat. There was amazing butternut squash soup, delicious vegan stuffing, green bean casserole, wine - of course, marinaded brussel sprouts, plus everything I'd made, and I'm sure I'm forgetting even more. We passed around the serving dishes, and I heard echoes of kudos on the turkey. (I was SO nervous!) Finally I got some, and tried it...and....it was AWESOME. Yay! Moist and flavorful (oh yes, I used bacon. That's right, bacon. Everwhere. Can't go wrong with that.) I think I've found my permanent turkey recipe.
~
I finished before the boys (snacking while cooking all day made me the one with the smallest appetite) and hung out on the hammock nearby on the balcony, gazing up at my much-missed-in-LA stars -
Eventually T came over and joined me, as well as thankfully keeping me warm (if you know me, you know that I don't generate my own body heat)
yes, those are snowmen on my socks. I can at least wear snow if I can't see it, ever.
~
The next morning, we woke up at 4am for Black Friday shopping! T was infinitely less excited than I was, but he was an amazing sport about it, as always.
I love Black Friday. I usually only shop for a few hours, am back in bed by 11am, and spend maybe, a THIRD of what I would on Cmas presents otherwise. It's amazing. The crowds don't bother me because I am ready. It's like my own personal Running of the Bulls. (any more than once a year, I would never. Just sayin.)
But sadly, this time the sales were not so great. We ended up only buying a few things, and heading back down toward home just as the sun was coming up. Made for oh-so-gorgeous views though:
Once we arrived back in Santa Monica, we went to the omelette parlor for breakfast. This, unfortunately, was where we ran out of steam. Terry did about 1.7 seconds before me.
Back home, back to sleep, to wake up at noon, refreshed and ready for a great long weekend!
~
I can't complain. Even though it's Monday. One down, two to go. Bring on Christmas!