Muscle Movers

We went to the 'rents tonight after dinner to lend some muscle to take some furniture off their wall.
The 'rents came home on Monday, taught their last dance class yesterday, and have been packing up all their worldly belongings from the lake house for the big move Saturday morning.
We take Mr. A. to pick up the moving van at 9:00 am on Saturday and then the property management company is doing their final walk-thru at 1:00 pm. Then they're off for greener pastures with no desire to do this again any time soon!

Dinner and a movie

After an almost 10 week movie theater hiatus, we finally managed to make a matinee show this weekend. Both of us wanted to see Green Zone (Iraq war movie with Matt Damon), so that's what we chose for our afternoon outing.
We both enjoyed it, though anything about the Iraq war just makes us hate the war over there all the more. But it was a good action flick.

When we got home the Canadian was hungry for some grub so I put together a shrimp risotto for us with a side of focaccia bread.
The recipe said 2 servings, but it was more like two really large servings plus an additional serving for lunch leftovers for Chris. Lucky him!

Final masterpiece

I did it, I finished my 2009 album! One last layout for New Year's Eve:
It's hard to tell in the photo, but there's silver stickers spelling out '2010' after the word celebrate. Ah, now I can relax and do a mad catch up in the summer.

What a deal!

Armed with a handful of coupons I went and ran errands this morning around town. First stop was at Kohl's where I had a $10 off of $20 purchase coupon from the newspaper, plus Mom had given me a $20 rewards coupon good off of any purchase amount. Combining the coupons allowed me to get a $30 purse (on sale from $55) and necklace for a total of $2.49! Dear Kohl's, I love you.
It's a soft burgundy leather and looks much better on me than you.

One of my other stops was at Wal-Mart to pick up some more photos so that I could finish my New Year's/wedding scrapbook pages.
One more page and I'm done....but first we're going for a walk to enjoy the 67 degree afternoon before the rains come rolling in tomorrow.

Bait and switch

While out running errands after my lab work this morning I got a call from Wilson who was headed over to the car dealership in Chico to get her runaway Toyota fixed. Since it was almost 11:00 am we made plans for me to go pick her up and have lunch together. I took her downtown where we got some coffee at Peet's and went across the street to Upper Crust for lunch. She got some kind of roasted veggie and chicken sandwich and I got a turkey and chipotle chutney sandwich.
After confusing her with my lunchtime generosity I kidnapped her for my true diabolical plan of grocery shopping. It was supposed to be my first trip by myself, hoping that I was healed enough to lift the grocery bags by myself, but instead I had free slave labor at my disposal. Too good to pass up!
Look how excited she is to be my shopping gopher! Unfortunately, before I could drag her to Trader Joe's, the dealership called to come pick Sasha up. So on my way home I slowed down on East Ave and told her to roll out. Her parting threat was to maybe stop by tomorrow with my other daughter, Raquel.

Smells like dirty old man

When we went on our walk tonight, we found a box of Swisher Sweet cigars on the sidewalk. Being the cheap bastards we are, we stole them. Swisher Sweets are individually wrapped so it's not like we're going to get the mouth herp from them. Or so we hope....
No, they don't smell sweet, they smell like stinky old man. Hence why Chris likes them.

I dedicate this blog to Pumpkin

Last night was the season opening 2-hr extravaganza known as Dancing with the Stars. Since there were actually people resembling real celebrities this year we decided to give it another try. Sometimes I wonder if any of the contestants have watched previous seasons because right out of the gate celebrities were dedicating their dances to people special to them. Don't they know that dedicating dances is the kiss of death?? Everytime somebody has dedicated a dance in a previous season they've been promptly shown the door by an unimpressed America. So I'd like to dedicate my blog to Pumpkin so that others can learn from my impending demise....

We had a special guest over tonight, Mr. A. He was in town to teach the 'rents' last dance class and grab another load of loot from the lake house. Since their place probably isn't stocked with fine foods and wines in the midst of their move, we invited him over for dinner. I made some homemade minestrone soup and a casear salad with some warmed sourdough bread. Tasty and easy. After dinner the boys retired to the man cave to talk about manly things like engines, guns and college girls.

I hung out inside putting away dinner dishes and changing into my walking clothes, during which I noticed that more bandages on my stomach had come off revealing my newly engineered belly button.
As you can see, there's still a couple of more bandages around the incision intersection, but other than that I'm well on my way to recovery.

While I didn't get any photos of my minestrone tonight, I did snap a shot of last night's pesto pasta with broccoli, salmon and roasted red bell pepper. So delicious, though my tummy was righteously unhappy this morning about trying to digest it.

Once the boys are done chatting and tinkering I think it's walking time. It's almost 8:30 pm and it's still 65 degrees out. Nice.

Comfort Coffee

What could possibly make coffee better?
Irish cream. And conveniently I have a whole bottle leftover from my St. Paddy's pound cake.

Last night I spent a little time in my craft room and finished putting together a layout for the Christmas cookie exchange with my b.s. girls.
Down to my co-worker's wedding and New Year's Eve to finish up my 2009 album. No pressure, Jessica!!

[Note to family:The new blog I added to my 'follows' list is Face's]

Home & Garden Show

Mom, Chris and I decided to go the Soroptimist Home, Garden & Antique Show at the fairgrounds this morning. They opened at 10:00 am and we arrived there shortly thereafter. There was a building of antiques, a food building, commercial (business) building, and the "marketplace" which was just different gift vendors. The antiques building was first up on our tour.
Mom and Chris deciding if we should get a painting of dogs peeing on a wall or two cats grooming themselves. Hey, I never said they were good antiques.

On the way to the food building were garden and nursery suppliers that caught Mom's eye.
I loved the food building (though waaay too crowded to get any photos). It was local vendors selling oils, nuts, fruits, spices and other food products. We scored two bags of flavored nuts from a Chico almond orchard.
Mom got some too, plus some Almond butter. Yum!

The commercial building was just a lot of businesses selling their services. Yawn..... Oh, except that we ran into Big Bryan and Kathy that used to live next door to us on Scottwood. Hugs and 'hi's'.

Besides the food building I also like the marketplace. There was a jewelry vendor that had super affordable metal and glass necklaces that were beautiful, but they didn't have a credit card sign up and I didn't have enough cash. Sad Susan. But I did find their website and saw that they'll be at Gold Nuggy Days next month so I can save up my pennies to buy one of everything!

In one of the outdoor exhibits we found some lawn ornaments that would be perfect in our front courtyard.
Except that I suspect they'd get stolen faster than my Halloween pumpkin!

Spice Master

While chatting with one of my sisters today, the FedEx man dropped off a surprise package for me from Pampered Chef. I'd totally forgotten that I'd ordered some spices online from my co-worker's party.
So much potential, and absolutely no ideas...

My other big surprise today was finding the recently released 30th anniversary limited edition ale from Sierra Nevada at Safeway (and on sale).
It's a big boy, so it'll be perfect for getting tanked over the weekend. The other beer is just another Lagunitas that I don't think the Canadian's had yet. Get it? WTF beer! Hehehe....

I can now consider today a success!

No pinching around here

Since I had a sit down meeting with a project applicant today I decided to skip my traditional shamrock t-shirt and wear something a little nicer. The closest dress I had to green (that I hadn't worn yet this month) was really teal, but close enough in my opinion. My co-workers proved me proud and wore their holiday finest, too.
I'm the tiny leprechaun in the middle.

As part of our festivities we planned for a potluck today, too. Curtis, or rather his wife, was on scone duty. Today it was mint chocolate chip flavor.
We also had dips and chips, corned beef and cabbage, Irish cream pound cake (my contribution), split pea soup, a sandwich setup of rolls, shredded corned beef and coleslaw, cheesecake and deviled eggs. I made sure to dabble in a little of everything.
Even our mailman got in the spirit.

Tonight was b.s. at our house so for our dessert I kept it in the holiday spirit with a lime jello poke cake topped with creme de menthe whipped topping. Mint and lime, just like a mojito.
I sent some with Chris today to share with his co-worker, and I brought some for our IT guy at work who is also a dessert fan. Both to rave reviews. Well worth the three hours I spent baking last night.

Collect them all

Even though the cookie fairy graciously left four boxes of Girl Scout cookies at our doorstep, I was suckered into another box from the girls infront of Safeway yesterday.
Soon I'll have one of every flavor.

Even though today was a Monday, there were a couple of highlights. First, I was able to buy a fresh loaf of sourdough bread for $3.00 from my co-worker, Sherry, because she had another baking class this last weekend (the one I took Mum to last year). We cut into it as soon as I got home. So delicious slightly warmed with butter.
While we snacked on buttered bread we filled out our Census 2010 form that came in the mail today. We want to make sure that they count every man, woman and damn dirty Canadian.
And we tried a new recipe out of Sunset magazine that was a big winner. Turkey smoked sausage, white beans, and spinach in a diced tomato sauce over rice.
We topped off our evening with a nice long walk around the block. Now we're each on our own side of the couch with our respective laptops open on our laps. If I need anything, I'll just email him. Lord knows we don't want to spend the evening talking to each other!

St. Paddy's delights

Heaven forbid we come anywhere near St. Patrick's day and not have corned beef and cabbage. So, to alleviate the Canadian's fears of a beef-less existence, I let him make a batch yesterday. Always searching for the perfect recipe, this time Chris crock-potted it in a mix of two bottles of beer and one bottle of water.
As is true with any application, booze made it better. It was so tasty that Chris drank a cup of straight juice. Like a hot spiced beer toddy.

We bought two roasts at the store so we can do this party all over again next weekend!

2 pages down.....

While Chris was outside playing on Ratty this morning I spent some time in my craft room and finished up two more pages. One for the October bunko at our house;
And a page about the Fall Festival at church.
Fine Blogger, you win. Merge it in upside down for all I care. I hate you.

I shall go drown my photo merging woes in corned beef and cabbage. I can hear the splash of meat being pulled out of the crock pot as I type. Mmmm....smells so good. Like delicious sweaty feet.

Cookin' and Craftin'

Much to my annoyance I once again couldn't sleep in this morning because my incision was hurting so bad. I keep rolling on to my side in my sleep which hurts my abdominal muscles since they're not healed yet. I'd stop if I even knew I was doing it. Anyway, I was up at 7:30 am and out running errands by 9:00 am. Of course it started raining as soon I left home, but surprisingly I didn't melt even though I'm made of pure sugar. I finally, a week later, went to Wal-Fart and picked up my photos to finish my 2009 scrapbook. Since the scrapbook store in the Almond Orchard closed last month (went exclusively online) I now only have mediocre Michael's and the store up in P-town. The one good thing about the store closing is that it's forcing me to use up my existing vast supplies of paper. Using some old paper and a layout from a scrapbook magazine, I put together a layout for Chris' 35th birthday.
We've been trying some more recipes out of my new cookbook and loving everyone. First was a roasted veggie, bean and pesto pasta.
Then we tried a scallop stir fry with a honey-ginger sauce.
And even my latest Rachael Ray magazine had a recipe keeping with the theme. It was shrimp over coconut rice.
Lastly we made a chicken and couscous dinner with North African spices, namely cinnamon.
All were delicious and full of leftovers. No new recipes this weekend though, it's time for tried and true corned beef and cabbage. Chris has already been doing an Irish jig in the anticipation of.
And no, it's not pretty.

The Dog House

Tonight was supposed to be bible study here, but one of the gals was sick so we postponed it for a week. But that left me without a dinner plan for tonight so we decided to go out. We did a 3 mile round trip walk over to The Dog House by Safeway on East Ave. Their specialty is gourmet hot dogs, but they also have burgers and chicken sandwiches. Chris got The Big Chicago dog while I got the Italian fusion burger. Meat seasoned with Italian spices, monster (Muenster) cheese, Valhalla sauce, pesto aioli, lettuce and tomato.
And I ate every bite. We also split a basket of thick cut fries and a diet coke. We have to watch our girlish figures, you know. Check out Chris' blog for the hot dog review.

Bounty of awesomeness

Last night we went to the 'rents to celebrate our leather anniversary (3 years) and as a parting gift we got some kitchenwares and food items that Mum doesn't want to haul back to Medford when they move next month,
and she gave me these three magazines that her mom had kept since she was a teen. They're Vogue and Mademoiselle from 1964. You cannot believe the sweet, sweet fashions of 1964!
Everything is about the new age of man-made materials (polyester, Lycra, etc). Every other ad is for some sort of support wear (girdles, girdles and more girdles) and the back is full of classified ads for secretarial schools. I love it! I'm taking these to work and sharing their glory with my co-workers who remember back when Vogue apparently only cost .60 an issue. Where's my kohl eyeliner? There's an intuitive article on the perfect cat eye.

This morning we woke up "early" (8:30 ish), showered and made a run for the waffle house. We had some errands to run and only the waffle house could fuel our body and minds for the daunting experience of Ross.
The Waffle Combo and the one egg breakfast. It's like heaven on a plate with a side of mediocre coffee.

Apparently the Canadian wanted to look at Ross for plaid shirts that he could cut up to make a seat cover for Ratty. Instead, he found nothing and I ended up buying four dresses. How does that happen? Next we ran next door to JoAnn's where he did find a nice red and black tartan for only $4.99 a yard. Armed with a staple gun, some spray glue and a yard of fabric he's got some crafty plans for this afternoon.

Oops, I did it again

I just couldn't say 'no'....
Hopefully Chris will forget that this is the same company that made the Midas Touch beer that he loathed. This is a brown ale and doesn't say anything about being a 10,000 year old recipe.

My co-worker's daughter is having a Pampered Chef party this weekend. And while I'm not going to drive back up for the hill for it, I did place an order online that she'll get credit for. Since I already own all the cooking tools and stoneware, I now focus on their spices which are really unique and tasty.
I give up!!! I hate you Blogger photo merger do-hicky, I hate you!!!! Obviously my original photo is not sideways. And nevermind that I've tried to merge it in correctly 5 times now.

I'm going to go pout now. :(

Some new friends

I brought some new friends home to spend the weekend with us:
Beer and cookies!

We have a hot date with the 'rents tomorrow night for an anniversary celebration. We're bringing some of our leftover cake to go with Mum's ice cream and champagne. Other than that, we're just kicking back and relaxing this weekend. It's what we do best.

Third anniversary's a charm

Today was our 3 year anniversary. Three blissful years of motorcycles, beer and Band of Brothers. To celebrate our milestone we did the same thing we always do for our anniversary; go to Franky's for dinner,
And come home for cake from The Upper Crust.
Chocolate Rum Raspberry this time.
Everything was wonderful as per usual. In addition, I also received a surprise bouquet of tulips to brighten up the house. All in all, a very lovely evening.