thanksgiving highlights day 1

We started Thanksgiving day with a walk around the riverside & Arch grounds.





We had so much fun wandering around and discovering the parade that we got home late and the turkey went in 2 hrs. later than we had intended. And it was several pounds heavier than we remembered. And so we ate a lot later than we thought we would.

I'm including the following pic for 2 reasons:

1. b/c this will henceforth be known as the year I scandalized the family by forgetting to change out of my t-shirt into something nicer before we sat down to dinner. Scandalized!

2. look at that turkey!!! browned to perfection & oh so juicy.


A few other highlights in addition to all the great food we ate at dinner:

1. The turkey was so big (and therefore it took so long to cook) that I had enough down time to laze around on the couch with the dog for an hour in front of the fire.

2. Mimosas! Brilliant! And a new T-day tradition, if you ask me.

3. Sarah's Jell-o mold. Excellent.

weather reports

updates from my Twitterific feed...


I love that in these days of crazy technology & ever-evolving forms of communication, the number one thing people still love to communicate about is the weather.

what did you do this weekend?

We hosted a smushy-face convention.

out of context

Bits of text message conversations saved on my phone:

From me:


Can you even stand the
amazing awesomeness?!

I am so eating peanut butter
out of the jar right now.

Thanks man. I'm drinking
Belgian beers. Watchout!


Official verdict: cabbage on
sandwich = so good. Who knew?



From others:

So many kinds of awesome.

All I hear from McCain is 'old old old'

Mathematically impossible

Drinking Stag*

*Not related to this post. And while it may have been funny if i had exchanged numbers with that pseudo rock star, the friendship would have ended with that text. But when it came from my husband it seemed cute and endearing. I guess that's why we're married.

I'm loving these portraits of trees, by artist Myoung Ho Lee in the Morning News.
I put them on the desktop of my computer as a reminder to find some peace & joy in the day.

Things are nuts for the next few weeks as I finish up the semester, so posting will continue to be sporadic.

first world problems

Hosted a clothing swap today. Swell ladies, fun clothes. Two kinds of soup, and cookies too.

Everyone left with a bundle, but look at all we have leftover! It's all headed to women who need these things more than we do. But it makes you think a bit about all of our excess, doesn't it?

oh, internet. let's get married.

Several things about my iphone have been stressing me out lately.

1. The weather is chilly. I am cold. I need to answer my phone, but that requires me to take off my gloves so I can work the touch screen. Another call missed. Until this. Now, I'd never wear those gloves because they'd make me look like a robber in a B-rated heist movie, but it did make me remember my handy mittens with the flip back thumbs! Rejoice! Commence communication.

2. The cord tangle nonsense. Do you remember those puzzles made out of iron rings that we all used to get as stocking stuffers? Where supposedly you could untangle the pieces, but only if you had been a national champion in Olympics of the Mind for the past 3 years? That's how I feel about my headphones. Somehow, even if I only took them out of my ears five minutes ago, they are always wound into a gnarly mess. Until now. (via not martha)

3. My tendency to jump right in. I never read manuals & I prefer to learn how to use new software through the trial-by-fire method. But sometimes that means that I never learn about the cool shortcuts until I've been doing things the long way for 6 months.

And this is why I love the internet and we are going to live happily ever after in a stone cottage by the sea.

all figured out

Conversation on our way home from Cunetto House of Pasta, where I had consumed a bucket of spaghetti & espoused mixed reviews.

me: ... I just keep thinking about the awesome bowl of whole-wheat fettucini with walnuts & gorgonzola that I had at Mangia that one time. It was just sooo much better than what I had tonight.

A: Your problem is that you have sophisticated taste in food all the time. You never feel like just having a nice old-fashioned American plate of food.

me: That's not true. I like toast.

A: On artisnal bread. With roasted pear jam.

me: ... or Nutella.

A: Ha. You have spohisticated taste in food all the time... ... ... except for when it comes to candy.

me: ... ... ... yes. Yes, you have a point there.

A: You're all "I'll have the butternut squash ravioli. And for desert, could you just bring me out a bowl of Spree? Or, do you have Wildberry Skittles back there? I'll take those.

me: Touche.

making the world a better place

All kidding about my not-so-secret love of the Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" ad campaign aside, here are a few brilliant minds that I'd like to meet:

-the inventor of carbonated beverages,

-the first person to think up burritos as big as my head,

- the philanthropic engineer who designed the Hippo water roller so nine year old girls don't have to carry 30lbs of water back from the pump

-and of course, the genius behind this.

history

Cross section

There is a complete cross section of the population @ the Obama party.
And I believe that is why he won.

did you?!

highs & lows

Wow, what a weekend. I usually try to not bore you with a run down of my goings-on, but this one comes with a message.

It started out so grand-- we channeled all of our pre-election fervor into Halloween costume party excitement & stayed out way too late eating candy.


Then we headed out to the country for another round of Halloween-spirit fun, complete with a bonfire, hayrides and man in a mask stumbling through the woods with a chainsaw.



The weather was perfect and the company was grand, but there were a lot of dogs. A lot of dogs that didn't know each other. A lot of dogs that didn't know each other and were not necessarily used to a big-dog-socialized little boston terrier who wanted to play. One of them cornered her in the house in the middle of the night which resulted in my waking the whole house with my shrieks. Then right as we were leaving this morning another one decided to try to take a bite out of her. More shrieking, but this time on her part. Sadly, she wasn't the only little dog in the bunch to end up in the doggie ER. Bag doggy juju going around that place.

Lesson learned. Big country dogs & little city dogs do not mix, at least not in that large of a group.

On the up side (?) I ate so much candy this weekend that I think I'm set for a good week or so. Maybe five days.

saddest puppy in the city