Tweet Tweet Tweet

Ok, I don’t want to say that I’m lazy, but today’s post is going to be a lazy one on my part. About a year or so ago, I joined Twitter. Originally, I joined for work purposes, but after a few months, I got into tweeting. I never say anything important on Twitter. It’s just a place I like to say random (sometimes funny, mostly weird) things to the 6 friends that I have that follow me on there. I like to think I provide a bright spot in an otherwise dreary day. So what I’ve done here is taken a few tweets that I’ve sent out in the last year, just as a “Hope you laugh at my dumbness” kind of post. Hope you enjoy!

I just had a sip of diet coke, so I should be awake until, oh…tomorrow morning or so.

Pretending to be my mother right now on the phone to get some information. The trickiest part is nailing the German accent.

Rebecca Black has a new single today! Great day, or greatest day?

I got all the way to work before I realized my Chapstick was empty. This will be a tough day.

Car in front of me has “Jimmerd” for a license plate. Is this an expression for getting cut off? Because if so, I totally just got Jimmerd.

If my last name was Crunch, I would absolutely join the army and work my ranking up to Captain.

You know what would be a cool job? Snail herding. So easy – plus, if your little guys make you mad, salt is the cheapest punishment ever.

I didn’t even get a cool bandaid for my shot at the doctors. :(

I ran of Superman bandaids this morning. Now what am I supposed to cover this cut with? Regular bandaids? Please.

I just walked by a guy that is considerable bigger than I, and all I wanted to do was jump onto his back like a spider monkey.

When you think about it, Taylor Swift sure likes to break up relationships.

If I see a generic repair van on the side of the road, should I assume it’s an FBI stakeout and drop by with cookies?

Sometimes, after I pull out the third Starburst, I just want to throw away the whole bag.

I snuck some Cheerios into the theater as a snack. I win, movie theater.

How mad would a biker get if I leaned out my car and pinched his bum? He should accept it as a compliment that I think his calves look nice.

A guy at work has a handkerchief hanging out his back pocket. I want to ask him if he’s a Jet or a Shark.

Full disclosure: I never eat the recommended serving size of cereal, I always eat a little more.

So there you are. Twitter is a fun way to communicate with people all over the world (Except most of my people are within about 50 miles of me) and it’s a great way to waste time. I love that you can follow celebrities on it, and get to know a little bit more about them, because some of them are genuinely funny outside of their movies (and some are incredibly boring, but that’s neither here nor there).

And now, this brings us to the last day of the month. I hope everyone enjoyed my blog-a-day, and if not, suck it, you didn’t have to read all of these. But I will be keeping up the blogging, just not every day, of course. Just when something happens that I can legitimately write about, so you don’t get stuck reading about my cookie cutters in the dishwasher. In a related item, I counted all of my cookie cutters yesterday.

I’m missing 3.

This is How I Load

Many many years ago, I bought a cookie cutter set. The 100-piece cookie cutter tub by Wilton. When I moved out of my parents house, there are many things that I just didn’t grab right away, mostly because A: I just plain forgot it existed, and B: I didn’t have the room to take it right then. For example, Thanksgiving was a big day for remembering things I left there. Apparently, (and I hadn’t remembered this at all) I had forgotten some heated hair curlers in the bathroom. I swear I didn’t forget anything in the bathroom, but my brother reminded me that they were there, so I took them. Then, as we were all eating dinner, I looked up at the cupboard, and lo and behold, there are my forgotten cookie cutters!

*Note – my cookie cutters are only 100, but this is the only picture I could find of it*

I celebrated with a shout of hooray! and we got them down from the top. As I was looking at them, I noticed the lid was off (it’s hard to get the lid back on, with that many cookie cutters in there, you see) and the cookie cutters were all dusty, there were tiny dead fly carcasses, the works. So last night when I was looking at them, I googled to make sure they were dishwasher safe (they were! I was just being cautious) and then I loaded up the washer. There were already a few dishes in there, but I thought I could make all 100 of my cutters fit in there also. And I did! Barely. And with many that were overlapping just a little. But since they were only dusty, I thought it was ok if they were. This is what my top shelf of the dishwasher looked like:

Colorful, right? So now they’re all done, everything is washed. I haven’t attempted to take them out yet, fit them back into the tub, but at least they’re clean. I also cleaned the tub, so it’s all shiny and new as well, so I’m excited to see if I can get them all to fit again. And luckily, all the cutters stayed mostly where I left them, there were only a few that fell out and are on the bottom of the washer. But none broke, and none melted. Win!

Miscellaneous Monday

The power button on my iPhone recently broke. On Friday night, it wouldn’t work at all. I couldn’t turn off the phone, I couldn’t lock the phone (I just had to wait for it to go to sleep by itself) so any time I needed to stop using it, I just had to hold it, I couldn’t put it anywhere, lest it accidentally do something. So on Saturday morning, I made an appointment at the Apple Store in SLC, and drove up (by my lonesome, since Husband couldn’t be torn away from his things apparently), and since the Apple Store was running on time (so he said) I only had to wait like 10 minutes! (That’s running on time?!) But it’s ok, I had iPhone, so I got to play games, etc while I waited. Finally a “Genius” came up to me, and I explained the problem. He took the phone from me and said he’d be right back. So then I had to wait…alone…with no phone to play with. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to wait with no phone, nothing to do to pass the time. It was very unnerving. As I was waiting, I thought, I should tweet this out, that I have nothing to do when someone takes my phone, but then I realized, I had no phone to tweet from. It was very strange. Finally he returned (it could have been 2 minutes, it could have been 15, it felt so long!) and told me that he’d unstuck it a little, so it worked now. And then he explained my options to me. Since my phone was no longer under warranty, I could either A: Pay $150 for a replacement phone, B: Pay $200 for an upgraded phone (instead of getting a iPhone 4, I could have an iPhone 4S. Fancy!) or C: I could just deal with the slightly broken phone. Since right now, I have neither $150 nor $200 to get a new phone, I’m with option C. So I’m dealing with it. It’s a little tricky to turn the phone off and on, but at least it sorta works, and I’m trying to see the positive in that. But if it breaks down more in the next little while, I’ll just have to deal with the money loss and buy a new phone. I’m hoping that won’t happen.

I recently saw Savior of the World at the Conference center on Friday. It was amazing – I really enjoyed it. We walked around the Conference center for a little while, waiting for our whole party to arrive. I love that place, it’s just so pretty. Seeing the play was pretty awesome. It started with a prayer – which at first threw me off. But then I remembered where I was, and went with it. It was pretty long for a play, which is fine, but I was a little tired from not having gotten that much sleep the night before, what with Black Friday and all. I encourage everyone to go see this play, if you can. Afterwards, everyone wanted to walk around Temple Square and look at the lights, but Husband and I were pretty drained from the days activities, so we gracefully bowed out. As we filled up the tank with gas, we got some caffeinated drinks, which may have been a mistake. I was sleepy-ish the whole time we drove home, but then after I got ready for bed and laid down, I was WIDE awake for another 2 hours. Curse!

I have some exciting news. Last night, Sunday night, at approx 8:45 PM, I caught up on my TiVo. Since Husband went out of town a few weeks ago, we’ve been at least one week behind on every single thing, but luckily, with this week being Thanksgiving, there’s been nothing on TV, so nothing has been recording. So with a bunch of laying around this weekend too, we got a lot of stuff watched, so we finally caught up. When I deleted the last thing yesterday, I did a little fanfare, and felt really good about myself. Of course, last night recorded some shows as well, which means I’ll never be caught up, but I’m psyched that it’s not full like it was.

And this is a tidbit – people need to go see The Muppet Movie. It was glorious. It’s hysterical. I saw it Saturday night, and I was laughing so hard, I wondered if the people around me thought I was a crazy person. I hope they didn’t, but it was so funny, I couldn’t help it.

Snapshot Sunday

I forgot to have a Foto Friday this week (well, not really forget, but I didn’t have a picture to accompany the entry) so I decided to have a sort of one today. As everyone knows, I run races. I try to get at least one race in a month, no matter the length. I have a board that I pin my race bibs to when I’m finished with them. I have it hung in the room where my treadmill is, sort of as inspiration. With the recent edition of the Turkey Trot this past week, my board is now full:

And there it is. 23 races. 6 10Ks. 3 Half-Marathons. 4 4-milers. 10 5Ks. There are a few more races that I’ve run, but for one reason or another, I’ve lost the bib, and I have no clue how that would have happened. I am proud of all of my numbers, and I like that so far, I’ve not repeated a number. So here’s to a previous 4 years of running, and many many years of more to come.

Winter…is chilly. This message brought to you by Captain Obvious

I have blogged (several times) on the heater in my car. Since 2009 (I didn’t even realize I had been this long!) It has spontaneously not worked. Sometimes, it works like a dream, and heat is flowing and everyone is warm, and sometimes, there is not heat flowing, and its quite chilly. (This also happens in summer, btw. It gets really warm in a car when there’s no air blowing cold on you) About 2 weeks ago, it stopped working completely. It went off one day, and never returned. After a week or so, after I mentioned it here, Chelle came to me with her can-do spirit and said we could look at it ourselves. I was impressed by her attitude and knowledge, and I was like, heck yes we can do this! So we googled some things, figured out where fuses were, etc., and went to my car to look at things. Since I was a little confused, we got someone at work to come and help me look at things.

*photography credit to Chelle here*

So we thought we had found the thing we were looking for, and thought that we should go to AutoZone to get a little help from a person there, to see if he could test the relay we found, to make sure it was still working, because we had figured it out that it was the fan that was broken. So we get there, and the guy comes out to help us. I super sneakily took a picture of him looking at my car with my phone.

So after looking in a few places, he took out my glove box and looked in there. He touched some fan in there, and boom! The fan started blowing! (It also almost took off the guys hand, I felt bad) We celebrated a little, he explained what the problem was, and how to fix it if it stops again (this involves getting someone to fix something in there, its something with the motor I believe) and we went on our merry way. For the rest of the car trip back, we kept turning on the air at full speed, to make sure it worked. It worked on the way home too, so I was so psyched!

And then…on Black Friday, I got into my car during the shopping-palooza and…it stopped working! What the heck, heater, you were supposed to be fixed! So now, I’m playing it by ear. It didn’t work Friday, but then today, it worked. So I don’t know what the deal with it is. It’s possible I just need to give up the hope that it’ll be fixed magically, and get it actually fixed. But for a brief, shining moment…I had hope.

We be shoppin'

Happy Black Friday! (sing it with me...Black Friday...Black Friday...everyone loves Black Friday...) I am writing to you now, done with the shopping of the day, and pretty tired. Black Friday started a little earlier this year - stores opened at midnight. So at 10:30, we (PJ & I) bundled up, and got to Target at about 10:45, and waited.

The line was huge already. We were pretty far out, even though we were over an hour early. Finally, a pretty chilly hour, and some exciting happenings (my button fell off my coat! It's now lost forever), the doors opened at midnight and we finally made it into the store 15/20 minutes later. We quickly grabbed the things we were looking for (DVD's, mostly) and back out. We went to Best Buy...the line was too long to stand in the cold. We went to Kohls...the line there was so long! We then went to Old Navy...no pants in my size/preference there. :( We went back to Best Buy and success! We got in after minimal waiting, got our items, and out again. We went to Shopko, they didn't have any of the things we had seen advertised. It was a little after 3 in the morning when we all shuffled home, tired and sleepy. (Those might seem like they mean the same thing, but in this case, they do not.)

On the way home, as I was turning off of Center street onto Orem Boulevard, I accidentally (in my sleepy state) turned too early and was on the wrong side of the road! Of course, on that road there's that median thing, so I couldn't just swerve back into my own lane, I had to drive for a bit on the wrong side, panicking the whole time that a car might come and hit us. Luckily, there were no cars - phew!

I went to sleep at about 3:30, then woke up at a little after 9:00. Then Husband and I went shopping at about 10. We went to a few stores, bought an elliptical at Sports Authority (we got such the deal on it! Thank you sales) and then I tried to go to Gap to get some jeans for like, 70% off, but sadly, I was about 15 minutes too late, so I didn't get that deal. :( Apparently this was not my week to get new jeans!

Finally, at about 2:00ish, we came home. After a long day, and a lot of shopping, I was pretty tired. But all in all, a successful weekend. I won't lie, this year wasn't as good as others. I think it's because the shopping all started at midnight, so instead of having overzealous people getting up at like, 3 in the morning to go shopping, everyone was like, dude, I can stay up past midnight, so there were a lot of teens this year, whereas previous years, there are rarely any teens. But I survived, and am here to tell the tale. And some advice - always make sure to drive on the RIGHT side of the road.

Gobble Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope all of your holidays were amazing. This morning I had the standard Turkey Trot, the one I’ve done for the last 4 years. Thankfully, this year was way warmer than last year. Last year, the temp the morning of the race was 2 degrees. This year, about 30-40, so that was a world of difference, and oh so better. It was a good run, felt really good when finished. I went to my parents’ for dinner at 2:00 which was of course delish. One of their dogs (he is technically mine, I suppose, but I think he likes living there way more) has his own chair that he sits on. I was dying laughing when I saw him, I had to take a picture.

Isn’t that adorable?! Sarge is such a card.

I hope you spent the day thankful for any blessings you have. I did – I’m thankful for so much. I’m thankful for my family, my friends, the warm weather today, and my the computer I have to blog this from. ;) Of course, I’m thankful for many many things, but to list them all on here would just be crazy.

Happy Turkey Day!

Chocolate Treasures

I got hit by the baking bug again. I don’t know what it is (actually, I think it’s the time of year. For some reason, in the fall/winter, I just want to bake all the time. Must be the cold weather) but here I go again. This time, I made Chocolate Treasures. I got the recipe in the mail. Ever since we moved into our house, the company that did our mortgage has sent us a little magnet recipe every month. The first month was some barley beef stew, then something else, and finally this month was a delicious dessert. So I set my heart on making it.

And those are them. For the recipe:

Chocolate Treasures

Brownie batter for 9x13 pan

(your favorite recipe or from a box)

48 Rolo Candies

2 Cup Chocolate or Vanilla Frosting

(your preference)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix brownie mix according to directions on the box. Spray mini muffin tins well, or line with small paper liners. Spoon the brownie mix into the muffin tins until 2/3 full. Bake for 13-14 minutes. Remove from oven and insert Rolo into the center of the brownie, the top (or tapered part) pointed downward. Let them cool. Remove cooled mini-cakes, and squeeze frosting on top, covering the candy using a piped star. Sprinkle with decorations.

 

So there it is. It’s really quite easy. I didn’t really look at the recipe before I got started, so I didn’t know that I needed to use mini-cupcakes. So I only had about 24 cupcake cups, which made for interesting times. Half of these got the cupcake liners, and the rest, I just sprayed the heck out of the muffin tin with cooking spray, and hoped for the best. Luckily, it worked out pretty well. They are pretty delicious, too, of course.

A reaction is priceless

I have a friend at work, Dirk. (I originally was going to change his name, to protect the innocent, but meh. I don’t really care) He is funny. He’s quick with a joke, he’s witty and pretty clever. But he does A LOT of dumb jokes. He does puns, he does “dad jokes” (you know, the ones that when you hear them, you can’t believe you’re laughing at it for how dumb it is). So many times when he tells a joke, I am mad at myself for the short burst of laughter that escaped from my lips, but then, it’s already happened, so I keep laughing. We’ve recently started doing some ‘bits’ around the office, mostly so we can laugh like idiots, but Chelle also gets the benefit of laughing. Also, she thinks we’re really dumb, which is just funny too.

Here’s a picture of one of the things we do: 

I’ll explain. Dirk will come over to our desks, and holy cow his hand has disappeared! He always has the reason why, he was over-zealous with a knife or scissors or something, or he just slammed it into a door and it came off. I will have the appropriate reaction, I will jump up in shock, will be looking around for it, etc, with a lot of over-reacting, and then after a second, he’ll pull out the hand, laughing that he just played a trick on me, it was up in his sleeve the whole time! Of course, I laugh hysterically, and say that I had no idea, I really thought that the hand was gone! Then we all chuckle while Chelle just laughs and call us dumb.

When I explain it like this, I realize just how dumb it sounds, and it is, but man do we have a good time with it. There are a lot that we do, foot lost (just up in the pants), an arm falling off, (which is just up in the shirt) and so many more. It’s all in good times, and a lot of the time we get a laugh, at the expense of a little of our dignity.

Miscellaneous Monday

The heater in my car hasn’t worked for about a week now. I don’t know what’s going on with it. And I know, I could bring it in and have it looked at, but whatever needs fixing will probably cost money – and I really can’t afford to pay a lot of money right now for a heater. I should – because my car is so chilly in the morning/evening when I’m driving to and from work, but usually bundling up seems to do the trick. I’ve Googled my problem (since Google is like a magician) and so far, the answers are that either the fan is broken, there could be a fuse that blew, or my whole system is broken. (I’m banking on the first two – since they seem the cheapest) I’m really hoping that its just a broken fuse, that would be crazy cheap to fix. So maybe soon, within the next few weeks, I’ll get my car taken in. Hopefully before all the snow happens…

On my way to work today, I saw a stranger walking to work in the rain. I felt sad for him. Even though it wasn’t raining hard, it must be awful to have to walk places in the rain. Whenever I see anyone walking in the rain, I want to pull over and give them a ride. But then I realize that no matter how sad I am for them to be walking, I’d probably be sadder for myself if they killed me. And I realize that at 8 in the morning, my odds of getting killed by a person I pick up are pretty low, but still. I’d rather not have the chance. Plus, it’s not like they’re hitchhiking or anything, they’re just walking on their merry way, having accepted that they’ll walk in the rain. And good for them. I like the rain, don’t get me wrong, I just think I’d hate walking in it to work, getting there all wet and soggy and cold.

I have a real problem with cravings. It’s not like, I randomly crave things, necessarily, it’s that as soon as I see someone eating something, or I hear someone talking about something, or see a commercial, I’m very susceptible to wanting it. I’m an advertisers dream – their commercials work really well on me. So thins morning, for example, I’m watching something where someone is eating a sub sandwich, and I thought, boy would that be a great idea for lunch. A little later, I see someone eating some Nacho Cheese Doritos, and I think, that would be so good right now. It happens all the time, and for the most random things. I want cupcakes usually all the time, but I’m pretty good at only getting them once in a while, so that I don’t eat cupcakes all day every day. But usually, all day long I wonder, should today be a day I get a cupcake? Should I eat something else instead, to take the place of it? But usually, I abstain, and I eat a tiny candy bar instead. So far, thank goodness, those are the only 2 things I’m craving, a sub sandwich and Doritos. And luckily for me, they go pretty well together. And maybe I can make those things for dinner, and have my craving subsided. Provided, of course, that I don’t see something else I want more…

MLS Cup

Well ladies and gentlemen, today was the MLS Cup game. An entire season boiled down to this one game - and RSL wasn't even a part of it. (Frowny face) LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo. I'm not really fond of either of these teams, but boy do I hate LA. Their team is my least favorite - mostly because I hate most of their players. Because I was barely interested in this result, I didn't even record the game, I just followed it via Twitter.

As I understand it from Tweets, it was a pretty boring game, until LA scored in the second half, in the 72nd minute. And then the scored stayed that way until the end, with LA beating Houston 1-0. I wish Houston had won. That's actually what I was hoping for. I wanted LA to lose. I can't even explain why I dislike LA so, I just do. When the game got over, I was really glad I didn't watch it. To watch 2 teams that I don't care about battle a scoreless tie? Boooring.

And there it is. The Cup is taken again, by a team I don't like. I'm hoping next year we can make it to the final game, that would be great. I want another championship for RSL. Go team!

Scattered Saturday

So here we are, 19 days into the month, and here it is. My first time that I legitimately don't know what to blog about. I've thought about it all day. I've thought of a few subjects, even. But so far, they're all so short that they don't have more than a few sentences to say about them. It's almost like a Miscellaneous Monday, but I think I'll make this entry Scattered Saturday.

Today was Mama's birthday. So we took her to dinner to Golden Corral, her favorite place. The thing I like about those places is you can literally have the weirdest meals and no one judges you. I had mashed potatoes, mac&cheese, onion rings, a salad, and some fried chicken. Then an ice cream cone for dessert.

Husband and I were watching a scary show in our room, and just as we were at a particularly scary part, our bedroom door slammed shut and I almost peed my pants with scaredness. Turns out, the heater had just come on, and the introduction of air in there made the door shut. I was scared for about 20 minutes still.

I have been scrapbooking of late. It's nowhere near the quality of what good people do (mostly I compare myself to Chelle, as she is quite good) but I think it's going pretty well. I've been debating on showing them to people, but I don't want to be judged for how not good they might be. I'm so critical of my work on these sorts of things. I've gotten like 10 pages done in the last few days, and that excites me.

I couldn't believe it actually snowed last night. I thought it would be like the last snowstorm, and just sort of not happen, but boy howdy did this happen. Walking out of the theater into a really big snowstorm like that was pretty crazy. It made things so pretty this morning though.

I think that's pretty much all I've been thinking today. I hope you enjoyed these random (and dumb) thoughts. :)

Foto Friday

I didn’t really have a photo for today’s Foto Friday. I haven’t really taken any pictures lately, so I had to go to an outside source. PETA has released this photo, trying to get people to eat healthier this Thanksgiving. No offense to any vegetarians, but I love meat. I love steak and chicken and pork and everything meaty delicious. So when I saw this photo, I just laughed. Really hard.

Uh…PETA. I want to tell you something. Putting a dog head on the body of a turkey creates a small monster that people want to kill and get rid of, not keep as a pet. It doesn’t make me think of a turkey as a dog, something I want forever, it makes me want to hurry up and eat that creature. So now, in honor of PETA. I will be eating my turkey with more pleasure than ever.

Vieve’s Videos

A year or so ago, I posted a video about Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. I hope you saw the video, because I love it. He’s so cute. The other day, they posted a sequel – Marcel the Shell with Shoes on 2. (Fancy title, eh?) So now, in all it’s glory -

I think my favorite line from this is - “Guess why I smile a lot? Because it’s worth it”. I just like it. I hope you like this video too.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

Well, I caved and did some bakin’ yesterday. This recipe is ridiculously easy, and I really like the end result. These bars (while hard to cut into then) are good when they’re still warm and gooey.

In case anyone wants to make them, the recipe:

1 (18.25oz) Box Plain Yellow Cake Mix

½ cup butter, melted

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 eggs

1 (12 oz) package milk chocolate chips

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

2 TB butter

2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine cake mix, melted butter, peanut butter

and eggs into large bowl using mixer or spoon.

Press into a 9x13 pan, reserving 1 ½ cup of the mixture.

In small pot, melt chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk and butter until smooth. Remove from heat and add vanilla.

Spread chocolate mixture evenly over the pressed mixture in the pan. Crumble the reserved mixture on top evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Cool completely before cutting into bars.

I cannot stress enough that you need to cool the bars completely. If you don’t, it’s dang near impossible to get through them, as it’s just gooey chocolate coming out. I had to just eat a bit with a spoon, it wouldn’t work the other way. But these are super good, warm or cooled. Enjoy!

Itchy. So very itchy.

I have prided myself on not having any food allergies. I feel bad for people (Chelle) who are allergic to my favorite foods. To not be able to eat delicious things…oh man. That would depress me. I know that for the most part, they usually don’t know what they’re missing, but still. I like my wide open choices that I have for eating. But sadly, this, like all good things, has come to an end. Lets recap.

Last night, Husband and I made Chinese food for dinner. When we were at Target on Saturday, we tried a sample of this frozen Chinese stuff that was pretty good, so we decided to get it. The kind we sampled (orange chicken) was sold out, so we got a different kind (sweet&sour chicken). Husband made dinner while I was reading, and it was smelling pretty dang good, I was looking forward to eating it. As we were eating, there was something in the sauce that was making my gums sting. Right now, I have a little tear or something in my upper gum, behind my teeth, and sometimes, foods hurt it. But I just kept eating, despite the stinging. After dinner, I was sitting next to Husband on the couch, and he looked over and asked if I was ok. I’m like, yeah, totally fine, and he said that my skin around my neck was all red. My chest was itching a little, so I said that, and then, right before our (well, his, I can’t see myself like that) eyes, my skin itching and rash started to spread, and all of a sudden, my whole upper body itched. It was on my chest, neck, chin, arms, back, and it was itchy. There were hives breaking out, and I was trying not to scratch. After a few minutes more, my neck area had swollen up. This was panic time, since this is the first time this has ever happened to me.

We quickly went to the local Target, and got some allergy medicine. I took it as soon as we got home, and after a while, the itching subsided. After a while longer, the redness went away. I’m still not sure what was in the food that did this to me. I’ve eaten frozen Chinese foodstuffs before, but never this brand, so perhaps that was it. Alls I know is, I’ll not be eating this again. I should probably find out what exactly it was that I had the reaction to, but I’m not sure how’d I go about it. Read the packaging, and the ingredient list? Get everything on there, and try them, one by one until I find out what it is? Luckily for me, it wasn’t a super bad reaction (It could have been worse!) so I got through it with flying colors, and lived to tell the tale.

Miscellaneous Monday

We have come to the time of the year when it’s chilly in the mornings when I come to work. It’s not freezing yet, thank goodness, but I do prefer to have the heater on in my car when I drive now. I blogged a little about this a year or so ago, and I’m still having this problem in my car. Sometimes, for no reason, the heater in my car doesn’t work. It’s not like it’s cold air coming through or anything, its that the heater doesn’t blow. So thank goodness, it doesn’t make me colder, it just doesn’t really make me any warmer, either. When I’m driving fast enough, warm air will blow through a little (I don’t understand that at all) so that’s nice.This morning was another morning in which my heater didn’t work. If I wore shoes, it probably wouldn’t be as big of a deal, but so far, I’m clinging to my flip flops.

Speaking of, since I still wear my flip flops, I still get pedicures. This is my one indulgence for myself. On Saturday, Husband decided to take a nap, and I decided to go get my nails done. There’s something about just sitting there, having someone give me a foot massage and then paint my toes pretty that just makes me feel awesome. I’ve decided, I know it’s almost winter now, because instead of my usual flower that I get painted on the big toe, I now have a snowflake. This is how I embrace the winter, painting a snowflake on my toes. It works out for me. (I was going to include a photo of it, but I couldn’t get a good picture that didn’t make my toes look super ugly. I don’t have very attractive toes)

This past Friday, PJ and I went to Tepanyaki for dinner. I don’t know if you guys have been there (which I’m sure you have) but I love it. A guy cooking my food right in front of me, making jokes and doing awesome things? Yes please! I love when the do the onion stack train. I love the choo-choo and the smoke coming out of it. I love all the pranks that they pull, and just how fun that place is. When we went, we were at a table with a family – a dad with his 4 teens, but they weren’t all that fun. PJ & I are like, egging the guy on, cheering, clapping, which is just how you have to be at these places. When it got near the end, the guy did the normal thing, and had us catch the shrimp in our mouths. I hate shrimp, but when he threw it at me, I caught it! I never catch it! Since I hate hate the shrimp as soon as I had it in my mouth, I quickly drank a bunch of water, and ate something good. Since we were so good at cheering the guy on, he started a little fire in a bowl in front of the two of us, and gave us marshmallows on chopsticks, so we could roast it! It was delicious and awesome.

Yesterday in church, there was a child a row in front, and slightly to the side of me. She had held on to her sacrament water cup afterwards (I don’t know why, but I love when kids do that. Maybe it’s because when I was younger, I was never allowed to hang onto my cup – no matter how hard I tried). For the rest of sacrament, I kept watching her, because she would take her bottle of milk, pour it (pretty slowly, because of the top of the milk) into the little cup, then take a “shot” of it. Then she would do it again. I was dying watching her, I was trying so hard not to laugh. She just kept going, though, until the end. That’s determination, my friends.

I have a problem lately. I am finding way too many recipes of things that I want to bake. So far, I’ve been abstaining from doing all the baking, but today, I am feeling the itch again. Except I just barely made stuff less than a week ago, and I don’t want people to be like, “Dude, is Vieve baking again?” Because I know I do it a lot, but its because there are so many things that I want to make! If only I would stop finding these dang recipes! As of today, I’m trying to decide if I should make these bars…it’s very tempting…I think I might…but I’m trying to decided…Eh, screw it. I’ll probably make them at some point this week.

Slow Cookin’

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and bought a Crock Pot. I’ve wanted one for as long as I can remember, after reading recipes that called for it, trying others’ meals that they’ve done in one, and just hearing about the awesomeness. Finally, yesterday, I caved in, and bought one.

*Note: this is not the actual Crock Pot, just an image I got from the web*

I then bought all the ingredients to make a slow-cooked roast (I got the recipe off the internet, of course) and was excited to make it. So Sunday morning, we chopped up the veggies, concocted a juice of beef broth and spices, and turned it on. Throughout all the day, the house has been smelling delicious. I was really psyched to eat it. Finally, church let me out at 5, we came home, and ate pretty much right away.

It was delicious! It was all soft and tender, and the veggies were delish. There was an attempt to make gravy from juices, etc., but holy cow that did not go well. When I tried it, I couldn’t believe how bad it tasted, so I quickly threw it out. But the meal was good besides that. And now, I’m so excited to try other things. I’ve always wanted to try to make a slow-cooker chili, and so many other things. And now, I finally get the chance, huzzah!

My New Friend

I have a new friend. I was introduced to him today. At first, he seems a little off, but then the more you look at him, the more you realize, he’s probably a nice guy. This is him:

This is Inspector General. You can’t really tell from his picture, but he’s a giraffe. His face suggests he has a kind heart. Husband bought this for me at the airport, as a souvenir of his recent trip. He’s really soft, and very cuddly, so I think we’ll get along great. I know his name is quite formal, but I like how formal and fancy his name is compared to him.

Anyway, that’s my new friend. Thinking of things to blog about every single day gets tough sometimes.

Foto Friday

Last night, I had an interesting meal for dinner. As I was in the middle of eating it, I realized, of course I should take a picture, and show it to others! Sadly, I had already finished one part of it, but I can still describe. As I’ve said before, Husband has left me to my own devices this week. Usually, when we’re home together, we make a dinner, it has many food groups represented, and it takes time to make. For instance, the Monday night before he left, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Delish. Tuesday night, my first alone, I had a Totinos pizza (well, half of one) and a bag of steamed mixed vegetables, but I only ate about half the bag. Then Wednesday, I had a salad and a bologna sandwich. So last night, I thought I’d eat my leftovers, so for dinner, I ate leftover mashed potatoes, leftover vegetables, and the leftover 2 slices of the mini pizza. It was delicious, but a very odd combination. But I felt pretty healthy, having eaten vegetables for the 3 days while he was gone. Usually when I’m alone, all I eat is mac&cheese, so at least I’m growing up a little. Ha, that’s not true. Anyway, here’s my plate (minus the pizza)

Delish!

Chai Spice Cupcakes

I found this delightful recipe on Twitter a week or so ago, and decided to make it. Husband is out of town right now, which leaves me with ample time to do what I’d like, one of them being baking. I could do it anytime, but I like to bake when I’m home by myself, and I can sing at the top of my lungs, and dance around the kitchen with no one to judge me. So I set my speakers on high, and got to baking.

This recipe called for tea – so I had to do something I’ve never done before, steep tea bags. For those that don’t know (and I didn’t, I had to Google it) steeping is when you put the tea bags into hot water (I used milk, for baking purposes of course) and then let them sit for a little, maybe even dipping the bag up and down. Doing that made my hands smell delicious, especially after I had to squeeze out the bags to retain all the milk.

Then you just make the cake like normal, and fill up the cups. I used a cream cheese frosting to round it all out, and it tasted pretty good.

After I had done all the baking, frosting, etc, I realized, I didn’t have any cinnamon! (Even though I SWEAR I had some, I couldn’t find it) So I set the cupcakes aside, and went to the store to get some cinnamon. The one I found had really big holes for the cinnamon to come out of, which made the ‘cakes look a little weird, but I still did those. And this, my friends, is the final product:

So there they are, Chai Spice Cupcakes. They are pretty good, but they’re a really dense cake, they almost taste like a muffin. The recipe made 24 cupcakes, plus about 10 mini cupcakes. I’m looking to give these cupcakes away – so I don’t have to eat them all myself. Because if I had the chance – I probably would.

Stamping & Chatting

Every month, Chelle holds a Stamp & Chat. For those who have not heard of this, it’s a class in which she teaches those of us who come to make cards. It’s 3 cards that we make, and of course, there is a theme to the cards each month. I’ve blogged about Stamp & Chat before, long ago, but here I am, again, so deal with it. Chelle is freaking amazing at all things stamping, creative, card-making, etc, whereas I am like a 3rd grader. I have to helped along at every turn, and walked through everything, and she just zips along, so quickly at everything that I do slowly. But I improve, slowly, and I work at it still.

Last night was Stamp & Chat. It’s usually held on Wednesdays, but this time, we had it on a Tuesday due to conflicting schedules. It was a lot of fun, and the treats afterwards were delicious.

And these are the cards from last night. The theme this month is “Thanks”, which I love to make thank you cards, as I believe they will come in handy later. I don’t give out too many of my cards. I’ve been attending S&C for a while now, and I’ve only given out about a handful of these cards. Its because I work so hard on them, I don’t know that someone else will appreciate the effort I’ve done here. So I have my cards, and I hoard them like crazy. I keep thinking I’ll start to give them out, but so far, I still just like keeping them. I’m just selfish, I suppose…

Things I’d Like

Well, we’re 8 days into the month, and so far, I’m already out of things to blog about. Doing this every day sucks all of the ideas out of me, but today, I have one that I just thought of. It took me a while, but I think I have a very interesting topic. It’s called: Animals I’d Like to Have.

The first one is a Munchkin Kitten -

Come on, how cute is this?! I don’t even like cats, but this is cute, so I would like one. But once it grows up, it might be a regular cat, and I wouldn’t like it anymore, but come on. This is a cute cat. I’m name him Mr. Mittens. (unless it was a girl, then Miss Mittens. Obviously she’s not married)

The second one is a turtle. But a specific turtle -

Its a small one! The size of a grape – which is too cute. Now, I fully realize that with an animal this small, the chances of me stepping on it or losing it are high, but if I kept him in a tiny cage, he’d be ok. I’d call him Tuttle.

And finally, we come to these two -

I would like to have penguins, but if I had them, I’d like to put them in tiny sweaters, like these. I know that they don’t necessarily need sweaters, being from Antarctica and such, but nothing makes a cute animal cuter than having clothing on. And on a slightly serious note, the reason these particular penguins have the sweaters on is because the little guys were involved in an oil spill. And the sweaters were knitted by an Australian Relief Society. I thought that was pretty cool – so I especially wanted these. I’d probably get 2 penguins, and I’d name them Zippy and Brigitte. What a fancy couple they’d make.

Now, I realize that all of these animals are just small and cute, but I like my animals small and cuties. When an animal is too big, I’m just like…meh. I get the appeal of the big animal, and sometimes, I like to cuddle with a big dog sometimes, but usually, I like my animals small and able to be held in my arms. So if anyone is looking for ideas of Christmas gifts for me…

Miscellaneous Monday

Today, I woke up before the alarm went off. I couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. You know, doing the things that you usually do…fake that you didn’t wake up, in case your body can be tricked, I just lay there with eyes closed, not moving, hoping to fall back asleep. I didn’t want to look at the clock, because I didn’t want to know how much time I had before the alarm clock went off. If its too close to the time, usually I just say, screw going back to sleep, I guess I’ll get up. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally gave up and looked at the clock. Yup…4:30. I had at least an hour of sleeping before I had to wake up! So I tried…and tried…and I think I may have fallen asleep for a while. But dang it that I woke up in the first place.

I have finished with a little more of my house painting! Slowly but surely, I will finish it. This weekend, we finished painting the laundry room, and I finished painting the trim in the kitchen. Now all we have left is a stairwell, and a little section in the upstairs. Its so close…so close… I can feel it…

I got my towels back! I came home from grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon, and there they were, just sitting on the couch in the living room. Now, does this mean that they came into my house while I wasn’t there? Yes it does, but I’m not focusing on that, instead, I’m just glad that I got back my few bathroom towels, hand towels, and a few kitchen towels. (Seriously, how did they “not realize” that they had taken this many towels? And what were they doing with my kitchen towels anyway?)

Husband has a cold/flu right now that manifested itself yesterday. I had a tiny cold like, 2 weeks ago, so he claims that I must have given to him, but he’s wrong. He couldn’t really stand up (which means I braved church alone, what up? *high five*) and he was so out of it all day. And he kept cracking “jokes” that he thought were funny, so he’d say one, laugh at it until he coughed, then lay still like he died. And I was trying to be nice, and do things for him, get him things, but I was also avoiding him like crazy to make sure I didn’t catch anything. That’s a tricky line – helpful avoidance. I hope it wasn’t obvious what I was doing.

And that's the end.

Well, tonight, RSL had the Western Conference final. They played against the LA Galaxy to see who would be going onto the MLS Cup. The game was at LA, sadly, and I just couldn't afford to go, but that would have been amazing. But I set the TiVo for the game, and settled in to watch.

The teams were pretty evenly matched. LA scored first, and we scored within 5 minutes. We stayed 1-1 until the end of the first half. When the game resumed, everyone was playing really well, and I actually didn't know who would win. After about 20 minutes, LA scored-dang it! Then a few minutes later, they score again- the score was now 3-1. RSL fought and fought and sadly, never came back. The game ended, LA 3. RSL 1.

It sucks that we lost, but at least we played well in the last game. I would have loved to go onto the final again, but this year it just wasn't meant to be. And now, the season is over. There are no more games - which is actually ok, because now its getting too cold to sit at games. But hopefully, we'll regroup in the off-season, and come back better than ever. And next year, we'll win the Cup!

If Only I Could Invent My Own…

I love ice cream. Really, I love all sugary treats, (Well, for the most part. There are a few that I just don’t like) but ice cream…mmm. The great thing about ice cream is you can eat it even if you’re full, because it just kinda fills in the little cracks, because it’s all soft and melty. So even if you ate a big dinner, eating a little ice cream makes everything ok still.

I really like the Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, for many reasons, one of them being that they come in those little individual containers. I know, the serving size of one of those things says its like, 4, but really, its not for 4 people. Its for one, maybe two. There are a lot of delicious flavors, but I really like a few, them being:

This is a really good kind. It’s a vanilla ice cream, with fudge-covered potato chip clusters. Those are crazy – you’re eating a little chocolate ball, and once you bite into it, its Lay’s potato chips. It messes with your mind, but boy is it delicious. I recommend. Another good kind:

This one is awesome – it’s vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl, and fudge-covered waffle cone pieces. (Wow, I just realized how similar these two ice creams are. Hmm.) When this one first came out (a few years ago) it was really hard to find, I could only find it at like, one Albertsons in Orem, and only once a month or so. But now you can find it anywhere, which is great, because it is delicious.

Tonight, I tried a new flavor of the B&J ice cream. It is:

This is so good. I love me some pumpkin cheesecake, because of the Olive Garden one, and this one doesn’t disappoint. I think the only thing that could make it better is if I added whipped cream to some bites, but maybe that would be sweet overkill. I recommend all of these flavors, but there are so many more that are also good. If you haven’t ever had a flavor of theirs, I say, stop waiting, and go get some post haste, and I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed, no matter what kind you get.

Foto Friday

And welcome back, kids, for a Foto Friday: Marathon Edition!

Last weekend, PJ and I ran a half marathon (which I did mention on here, just not in detail). It was a really cold race – they brought us up to Sundance, (the race finished at the Riverwoods) where we sat around and waited for 3 hours prior to the race. Finally, we got going, and it was chilly and all downhill for the first 9 miles, then we evened out, and I started to get warm. It was a fun race, because costumes are fun, but I just don’t like the way it was planned, so I don’t know that I would do it again. They took pictures of us during the race, and emailed them to us finally a few days ago. I did a (slightly illegal) thing and just saved them to my computer instead of buying them. (Shhhh)

This is PJ and I during the race. I don’t know what mile this is – it must be at least after the 9th or so, because my gloves are off. My hands were getting really hot. Look how great we look as the Power Rangers.

There’s a part near the end where for some reason, the race course narrows so that only 2 people can run through. I was stuck behind this lady, because near the beginning of the narrowing, she grabbed the hand of her son (who was not running, but there to cheer her on) and they were in front of me, and I couldn’t get by, it was driving me crazy. So my face is mad, because I was stuck, but this is finally where I got to get around her and run fast again.

I always look really mad at the end of the race, in every picture. But at this point, I was really close to the finish line, and I was happy to be over, my body was screaming at me to just stop running at this point.

So there it is, the Halloween Half-Marathon. It was a fun race, once it got started, but all the waiting around stuff just drove me crazy. But at least I finished, and had no guilt eating candy the rest of the day. Not that I do anyway…

Skirt Thursday…and Other Musings

I wear a skirt every Thursday. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, I just do. It mixes up what I wear, so that I don’t wear the same thing all the time, plus its just fun. In the summer, a skirt provides a nice breeze when its warm, but in the winter, its really fun to jazz up a skirt with some colorful tights. I enjoy Skirt Thursday, I’ll keep the tradition alive.

Last night, my tenants moved out of my house. I know, they’ve only lived with us for a short time, since October 8th, but they decided to leave us before the before-agreed upon time, to move in with others, to spend time with them. Its nice to have our house back to ourselves (not that they took up that much room, mind you) and not worry about affecting anyone else around. This morning, when I went downstairs to see what conditions things were left in, I noticed that they had taken our towels. I’m not entirely sure why they did this…maybe they wanted to be nice and launder them before they gave them back? I’m hoping this is the case. I’m really not looking forward to making the call that asks to return my linens.

RSL won last night. Well, technically, Seattle beat RSL 2-0, but with the aggregate goal situation, we technically won, 3-2. It was a brutal game, and very nerve-wracking toward the end, but when the final whistle blew, we (Husband, PJ and I) all jumped up off the couch and screamed. It was awesome. I’m not sure when the next game is – there’s another playoff game tonight (between LA & NY) and the winner of that determines where/when we play next. Good luck to NY – I’d like them to win this one.

 

I don’t really like vanilla yogurt. I keep trying it once in a while, to see if maybe my feelings change (its happened before, on other things) but so far, they remain the same against the yogurt. I tried some the other morning, and there’s just a weird taste in the ‘Very Vanilla’ Yoplait yogurt. 

I tried some of Chelle’s ‘French Vanilla’ Yoplait, and it did taste better, so maybe in the future, I’ll switch to that one, and see how it goes. There’s something about the fruit flavors lately that I’m just sick of eating. But eating yogurt is healthy for you, and I’m trying to make healthier choices. Since I won’t give up eating cupcakes/cookies (despite my best efforts) I have to make different choices of healthiness. Because, I’m sorry, but giving up the sweets – its not really fun.

It’s Only Halftime

Last Saturday, RSL played Seattle in the first leg of the 2011 MLS Playoffs. It was a crisp evening (and by that, I mean, I was pretty dang cold) and the air was crackling with excitement. They’ve made the playoffs for the last 3 years, so you’d think at this point that we’d be sort of used to it, but not yet. The 2009 playoffs, which won RSL the championship, happened because of a series of fluke accidental games, but last year was all our talent. After a lot of bad luck this year (so many people getting injured, including Javier Morales’ broken ankle, and a lot of call-ups to the national teams) we ended up doing pretty well, and got into the playoffs in the third spot. But there’s still some work to be done.

Now back to last Saturday. The game was at 8, hence the chilliness. We got off to a good start, and scored before halftime, so thank goodness for that. The team seems to do better when they lead going into a half. After an exciting second half (in which 2 of our defenders got injured, and had to be substituted out) we ended the game with us winning 3-0. It was awesome – the screaming we all did was so loud.

But right now, its just halftime. We play at Seattle tonight, to finish the first round of playoffs. This round is based on aggregate goals – meaning, the end result is decided by who had the most goals when you add the 2 games together. So getting a 3-goal lead last week was the best thing we could do. If we win tonight, awesome! If we tie, that’s good. If we lose 2-0, or 3-1, that’s ok, too, because we’ll still have the most amount of points. I’m going to root for a victory, but I’ll settle for a tie.

Go RSL!

Halloweeeeeeen!

Ok, everyone, here it is. The month of November. And as everyone knows, as it happens every year, it is now National Blogging Month. I will again take on the task of trying to blog every day. Now to begin this year’s attempt, here is my recap of Halloween.

This year was my first in a new place, where I got to be the one who answers the door and pass out the candy. Of course, I had to get ready for it. So when I got home from work last night, I carved myself a pumpkin.

I already know that I’m not very good at carving pumpkins, since I’ve only done it once before, but here is my attempt. He’s just a happy guy, ready for the Halloween festivities to start.

I was in a great costume this year, and by great, I mean, I sort of dressed up. For a half marathon that PJ and I ran on Saturday, we dressed up as Power Rangers, because A: Power Rangers are cool, and B: they were really easy to run in still. So I basically repeated the outfit I ran in, just with minor changes.

The evening was fun, we basically just sat about, handing out candy, and Husband kept trying to scare the kids that came to the door, but I don’t think he was ever really successful. I was just glad when the night was over and we had helped our last trick-or-treater. Happy Halloween (either 1 day late, or 364 days early)!