Monday, September 26, 2011

A Cold Stone Tragedy

The other day I picked Adam up from work, and we decided to go grab some ice cream at Cold Stone as a little treat. My mother had sent us a gift card for ice cream and just like real money it was burning a hole in our pocket. And just like I always do every time we go to Cold Stone, I started ribbing Adam about something that happened on a previous trip to Cold Stone....many moons ago.

You see we officially started dating the fall semester of my Junior year when Adam was living in California, and I was still going to school in Mississippi. So obviously we weren't spending a lot of face to face time together.  Which was hard and annoying, and every other adjective you can possibly think of to describe a long distance relationship. To fix this, Adam invited me to spend the summer between my Junior and Senior year living with him in California. And I agreed.

That summer was definitely an interesting one. Adam was living in a teeny, tiny studio apartment overstuffed with way more furniture than he needed (my opinion, not his). So there was absolutely no privacy and all we could do all day was sit around and stare at each other. You had to hang out in the bathroom to get a little privacy. And just like the place we have now, it had no air conditioning. So while he was at work, I was at home (without a car) sweating tremendously and worrying that the heat would cause me to be overcome with the "vapors."

And can we discuss how he didn't even have cable? I mean he had a few basic channels, half of which were in Spanish and Vietnamese, and somehow the Oxygen channel was miraculously, accidentally given to us. So I spent all day watching The Bad Girl's Club and Snapped! marathons. I watched so much Snapped! that I think Adam worried that I was taking tips from the murderous women and planning his demise.

The first weekend after I stepped off my plane at LAX to embark on this summer long adventure, we found ourselves at a Cold Stone. Adam was sitting across the table from me, and out of nowhere he says, "I just realized that for the whole summer you are going to be here every second of every day." He didn't say it in the, "I'm so in love with you and this is going to best summer ever!" kind of way. No, he said it in the "This is totally going to cramp my style," kind of way.

Of course I handled his words with grace and understanding, and it's not like I would ever freak out in the middle of a Cold Stone or anything. Yeah right! I am so not that level headed, and I totally started crying in the middle of Cold Stone. I only have vague recollections of what happened after this. I'm pretty sure Adam piled my hot mess of a self into the car, and we headed back to the studio. And at that point, totally convinced we were going to break up,  I was whipping out my emergency credit card and trying to book my flight home. 

Obviously, Adam talked me down off that ledge and we are still together all these years later. Now I understand that this comment came from a fear of the unknown and losing his lifelong "bachelor status." But Adam still feels really bad about this whole thing, which makes it all the more fun for me to tease him about.

Song of the Day: Why Can't I by Liz Phair

Monday, September 19, 2011

Lobster Fest

See Bernard? Bernard was my lobster. See me eat Bernard.  This weekend Adam had to stay home and work, meaning he was making boring, long conference calls every few hours. And these conference calls were making my weekend extra boring as well. So our friends Albert & Rianne offered to in essence "babysit" me. Meaning they invited me to come hang out with them and some of their family and friends at the Lobster Fest in San Pedro.

I had never had a lobster before because I typically shy away from food that has faces.  I developed a bit of a phobia of food with faces because once when I was on vacation in Israel, a guy in my tour group ordered fish and it came out looking like this: 

Hairy Arm was not Part of the Meal, Thankfully

And that is just plain scary. But everyone promised me that the lobster would taste amazing. So I was gung ho to try something new. I got my lobster, and just to make it a little weirder for myself I decided to name it, and I named it Bernard. I was told to name it Sebastien like the crab from The Little Mermaid, but I figured that was too cliche.

Once I figured out how to eat it (hey, it's complicated), I dug in. I have to say it was pretty darn amazing. So soft and so tender. And the butter sauce? I wish I could swim in it. I even ate the green stuff inside the lobster. I still don't know what that green stuff was and I probably don't even want to know.  But I am definitely a lobster fan!

We spent the rest of the fest eating other fair style foods, shopping, and playing carnival games. I was so happy that they invited me and gave me an opportunity to get out of the house this weekend!

Song of the Day: Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Pin-Interested

So just like a million other bloggers, I'm just a tab bit obsessed with pininterest. And lately I've been pinning some pretty tasty/pretty/random things on pinterest.  Such as...

The Perfect Table Setting


A Recipe To Try
Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Cookies


A Fun DIY Project
Darlin Mini-Poloroid Magnets


The Kitchen in My Dream Home


Something from My Wishlist
Recycled Globes


Song of the Day: Men & Mascara by Julie Roberts

Monday, September 12, 2011

Football Season Opener!


Football made its official return to our household Thursday night. We, of course, were uber excited because as a couple we celebrate five seasons yearly: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Football! And we love our Green Bay Packers! To celebrate, I baked two chocolate cakes with peanut butter icing. One for Adam's co-workers and one for a little get together we had for the game. And I baked these when the temperatures were sweltering and I thought I might pass out. That is how much I love my husband, and how much he loves my peanut butter cake.

Everyone loved the cakes, I got so many compliments on it. In fact, one of our friends who had a piece on Thursday night called us the next day and asked if he could swing by again because he wanted another piece! I love getting compliments on my baking. It makes my day.

We had a blast watching the return of Superbowl Champion Packers and enjoyed it even more because they won! Boo-yah, take that Steelers! And I can't wait to see what the rest of the season has in store. Hopefully, it is a repeat of last year!

To see how Adam gets ready for a Packer's Game check out this entry.

Song of The Day: Dani California by Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Ten Years Ago Today

On September 11th, 2001, I was 15 years old and a tenth grader in high school. That morning started just like every other morning. My mother woke me up, I ate breakfast, and left for school. My first class of the day was U.S. History with my all-time favorite teacher Mr. Jones. In the middle of his lecture, one of the football coaches stopped outside the classroom door, and said we should turn on the news because a plane had just hit a tower in NYC.

There was a small TV behind the teacher's desk, and we all turned our desks around to watch the broadcast. We saw the smoke billowing up from the tower and the gaping hole the plane had made. And only a few minutes after turning on the TV, we saw the second plane hit the South Tower.

At the time, I didn't know what the twin towers were and "Terrorism" never crossed my mind. I thought it was just some terrible, terrible accident. I had no frame of reference for terrorism. I had no frame of reference for war, Bin Laden, or Al-Qaeda. And I only had a vague notion of unrest in the Middle East.

But once it came out that it was indeed terrorism many students, including myself, were worried for our parents. In the town I am from in Alabama, many people work for a huge government base, which could potentially have been a target. Teens lined up at the pay phones and tried to call their parents, I tried to call my mother. No one could get a hold of anyone. Later, we learned this was because they were all encouraged to take shelter.

The rest of the day went by in a haze. We continued on with our classes, but did no work in any of them. We watched TV in every class, and in German class the teacher led an in-depth conversation on what it all meant. The news just seemed to worsen as the day went on-the towers collapsed, a plane hit the pentagon,  and one had been crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

I remember being most disturbed by the footage of some people in the Middle East dancing in the street and celebrating what had happened. That was really hard to comprehend as a 15 year old and even harder to comprehend now.

On my trip to NYC last summer, I visited Ground Zero with a tour guide that had been there that day. And even staring at the site and listening to his story, it was hard to imagine or comprehend the horrors that went on that day. Yet, I will never forget where I was on 9-11-2001.

Ground Zero, June 2011

Song of the Day: American Pie by Don Mclean

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A Little Note on a Little Date


Dear Husband,

          Thanks so much for taking me out to eat tonight just to get me out of this over-sized, Dutch oven (A.K.A air-conditionerless sweat box) we call our home.  Because the heat was making me behave as if I had Charlie Sheen's tiger blood racing through my veins, and the thought of turning on the oven to cook dinner was about to put me over the edge.  Even if it was only Subway, sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant after this scroching hot day with my tuna sub and sharing a large Dr. Pepper with you was pretty much the bee's knees. 

Love, B


Song of the Day: Brick by Brick by Katy Perry

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Richard Nixon Presidential Library










Because Adam and I are two geeks mixed with a pinch of nerd (and big old history buffs at that, heck we went to Washington D.C. for the HISTORY for our honeymoon), we decided to check out the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda this weekend. I love presidential history, and I can spurt out so many random factoids on the presidents. Did you know that George Washington was a brilliant dancer?  Or that Ulysses S. Grant received a speeding ticket for riding his horse too fast? I bet you didn't, but if you did know that I think we should so meet for coffee sometime and revel in our combined history nerdom.

The museum was huge, and it took us three hours to get through it all! But of course, it was because we had to read absolutely everything. Adam's favorite exhibits were Nixon's Marine One helicopter (the one he left the White House in after he resigned) and all the space stuff. There was also an exhibit which housed all the keys to the cities Nixon was given, and when Adam saw that the key to the home of his beloved Green Bay Packers was there, he was uber excited. I enjoyed seeing the home Nixon was born in, a piece of the Berlin Wall, and the Watergate exhibit.

I hope everyone enjoyed their labor day weekend as much as we did!

Song of the Day: Soldier by Ingrid Michaelson

Thursday, September 1, 2011

A Perfect Match


When I was a wee third grader, my teacher had all of her students read The Boxcar Children books. If you haven't read The Boxcar Children books, you obviously had a deprived childhood. The Boxcar Children books were about a family of orphans who take care of each other and lived together in an old, abandoned train boxcar. Well, at least the early books in the series were like that. The later books in the series kind of jumped the shark because they found their older, wealthy grandfather and moved to his orchard. As an adult, I think that is wonderful because the kids needed that kind of a security. But you have to admit it kind of screws up the plot line. Anyway.

One day I was sitting next to this little boy in class, and I finished my chapter long before he did. When he noticed I had finished before he did, he accused me of not reading the story at the all, basically calling me a liar. He said that no one could read that fast. I was so upset. How dare he accuse me of cheating? And I started to worry that I was some sort of super, mutant, speed reading freak. And this brief conversation in third grade has stuck with me my entire life.

Last weekend, Adam called me over to the computer to read something he found interesting online. As we were reading, I recognized that we were finishing each page at the exact same time! Adam is just as fast of a reader as I am ! With this realization, I felt less alone in this world, and the years of shame that that little third grader placed on me began to fade away.

Somewhere in our house I plan to place a sign, "Welcome To The Home of The Super, Mutant, Speed Reading Freaks."

Song of the Day: Shine by Anna Nalick