oh, but it's friday

i used the word "awesome" in a conversation with my boss the other day.

i am still mortified.

hurricanes in ohio? and other news.

so i've been out of touch with the news that past few days. i was in NC for my brother's MBA graduation, then had a crap-busy day at work on Monday. i didn't hear about the "hurricane" in ohio until late last night! yikes! i called mom and dad this morning, and they are fine. they have a generator, which they are using to power the fridge and freezers... and they are living in the camper, since it uses much less power than the whole house. fun! still no power, but they are thinking of it as extended camping. wow. i still can't get over it. hurricane in ohio.

anyway!

so today is day three of a self-imposed "no refined sugar, no refined flour" diet. i did it a few years ago, in the month leading up to halloween. i lost about 7 pounds, then went on a tootsie-roll-dorito-pizza extravaganza for a week and never looked back. the fridge and cupboards were bare, and i needed to stock up on essentials - what better time to clean the slate and try again? i can't do no-carbs, because i like a little starch. and i can't do it forever, because i love bread. but for a short while, it's a good challenge.

monday:
breakfast - oatmeal with skim milk, coffee
lunch - seaweed salad, miso soup, futo maki roll
dinner - turkey sausage and potato pancake with cabbage, peas

tuesday:
breakfast - puffed rice cereal with skim, apple, coffee
lunch - green salad with feta, green beans, 1/2 grilled chicken breast, fresh fruit (catered at work!)
dinner - zucchini cut into long strands like pasta, steamed; sauce of fresh tomatoes and red peppers, with ground turkey, olives

for snacks and guilty-pleasures, i can have popcorn (whole grain)... potato chips (hey, they're just potatoes, right?)... cheese... apples... and other assorted, more boring stuff.

last time i did this, i cut out all artificial sweeteners. and coffee and all caffeine. i think that was a swell idea, but sometimes i just want something sweet and that became a deal-breaker. so this time i am allowing sugar-free hot chocolate and sugar free pudding, if i reeeeeaaally need it. and coffee. last night i had sugar free cook-n-serve tapioca pudding, with a cinnamon stick boiled in. it was worth the chemicals, let me tell you. i can only find sugar-free cook-n-serve in two kinds - chocolate and tapioca. the cook-n-serve taste (i.e. slightly toasty) hides most of the sugar-free taste. try it. you'll like it.

we are going to a Nationals game tonight. let's see if i can find anything to eat there.... yikes! i suppose a hotdog, sans bun? some chili? this could prove to be interesting.

it's too bad all i can think about are pancakes like these - jess, i think these look right up your alley. sort of like those nifty breakfast muffin thingies you make and then freeze. make some, then mail them to me in approximately one month. :)

oh yeah.

and a friend of mine, ellen, just got a new tattoo while we were all in san francisco. it has awakened my desire to get another tattoo. maybe a post-wedding celebration? my first tattoo was chosen to be added on to at a later date. i think the time has come!

back from the dead.

whew! i've been gone a long time! i blame work. and traveling for work. and general laziness.

i warn you now - this is going to be a reeeeal boring post. no pictures.

in recent past:

- i went to san francisco for work! a whole week on the company dime! i was in a workshop on a new-fangled archives tool for a few days, followed by several days of a big archives conference - the society of american archivists big annual meeting - so it's not like i was lounging around having fancy cocktails. i was sitting in meeting rooms most of the daylight hours, but i still saw some sights around town. i haven't dealt with my pictures yet, but i did manage to take a few before my camera battery conked out. i'll just say for now that san francisco was a strange place, and not as pretty as i thought it was going to be. i'll go more into that when i put up some pictures. oh wait! here is a picture i stole from one of my co-worker's flickr - from the closing party of saa, and the sign from the bar we ended up at later:










i look like a dullard with bad posture and schlumpy hair. where did my good posture go? and my hair needs help. help!

- scott and i are ramping up the wedding planning business, and have chosen a caterer (awesome!) and are narrowing down our location choices - which will allow us to announce a date REAL REAL SOON. i promise. likely in the next week or so. then i can start thinking about even more fun stuff like decorations! cakes! invitations! oh yeah, and getting back to the gym. :)

- the kitties are getting along great! they chase each other all over the house all day. and all night long they hold Extreme Wrestling matches under our bed. how two cats can be so clumsy and loud, i have no idea. although i think nilsson's one-eyeball-ness factors quite a bit into the random clunks and crashes that we hear through the night. he ran smack into the bedframe so hard the other night that i was afraid to look. i thought for sure i'd see his little grey body, lifeless on the floor with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. vashti was shy with him for a day or two, them scared and combative for a day or two. now they take turns being the bully and i think they are doing just fine.

that's all for now.

new style of compliment - use it on your friends!

i almost forgot about this - it happened on saturday evening, as i was on my way home from dinner with scott and his brother, kevin. it was kevin's birthday, so i was making a secret stop at the safeway up near Piney Branch road to pick up a Carvel ice cream cake for desert...

there was a drunk/high older woman serenading everyone in the checkout area with her homemade song - which went something like “oh, my beeeeeaaauuutiful blue balloon, my shiny blue balloon….” she was twirling around, looking up at the ceiling, so i suppose the song was inspired by the mylar birthday balloons hanging around the florist/plant section. Everyone was cracking up, but giving her a wide berth. I got my ice cream cake and started to leave, but as I headed for the doors, I passed by the aisle where she was now buying some stuff. I overheard her tell this odd compliment to the poor little teenaged kid who was ringing her up:

“you are cute, yes you are. i could just crawl up inside your BEHIND. right up in there. yes i could.”

i almost peed my pants laughing all the way home. that poor kid will probably never recover from that.

cozy places.

why can't i have one of these? to escape to for weekend and vacations?



http://www.simondale.net/house/gallery.htm

lumberjacking, crafting and kitties

i chopped down a tree on saturday! all by myself! my back is punishing me now, of course, but it was very satisfying work. we had a mulberry tree growing in the front yard, pretty close to the house. i've been meaning to do something about it for years, but mostly i just hack the top of it off a few times during the summer and ignore it. i like to eat the berries in the spring, but the thing was getting dangerous... i ignored it too much this year, and with all the cool weather and the rain the silly tree was getting really top-heavy and huge. and threatening to topple over into the neighbor's front window. and probably ripping out our foundation at the same time. so! i chopped it down. well, i SAWED it down using a little hand-held saw from el Depot. then i had a huge pile of brushy stuff in the middle of the yard. and i wanted to run away or sell the house and move. instead i dragged a chair outside, along with a can of coke and an array of saws and clippers, and set to work. i now have 4 big logs, about 93 smaller logs/sticks, and a bajillion skinny branches - all drying behind the front bushes. once they are dry, we'll be set for camping firewood for a weekend or two. i'm pretty sure the neighbor's think i'm crazy. in fact, i know they do. and dad? if you're reading this, i'm pretty sure you would have had a thing or two to say about Safety With Saws. (standing on the tippy-top "this is not a step" step of a ladder while wielding a hand saw above my head; sitting down, sawing through a branch that is braced against my fleshy bare leg; sawing towards my own hand; scratching mosquito bites with the sharp edge of the serrated saw; doing all this while wearing flip-flops instead of real shoes; you get the picture. i'm very sorry.)

second meeting of Sew Watts Cookin' on sunday - 4 new people showed up! yay for that. i embroidered a cute little dogger onto a boring thrift store handkerchief. some folks knitted and some cut fabric. all was well in the world. next month we are meeting in rock creek park to do camp skillz (fire making, cooking, whittling maybe) and knitting scarves.

and..... we got another cat! a kitty sister for nilsson! a co-worker of mine knew of an abandoned kitty that needed a home, so i said i would take her. i picked her up on sunday morning. she is peachy-pale-orange tiger stripey, very very lovey and kissy, probably a little younger than nilsson - maybe 7 or 9 months? right now she has an efficiency apartment set up in our bathroom and bedroom. she'll meet her anxious grey brother tomorrow... yikes! i hope he doesn't stay mad forever. and that they have fun playing together.

pictures to come.