And because there's been a severe lack of cute and cuddly around here...

JC has gotten into the habit of hanging out on top of the window in the guinea pig room. You see, in order to keep the cats out of the windows since they were stretching out the screens, we have been opening them from the top. This is just JC's way of saying, "Ha ha! Not as smart as you thought you were, eh?"



The cooler evenings and days have meant more open patio door time. And the cats love that. They can get up close and personal to all the nature in the backyard.



Apparently sleeping in pants isn't limited to JC or my pants. Here's Ted in Adam's pants.


All three cats sit in the same position and they all get that same "you with the camera, go away" look.



And finally, here's JC, relaxed and just hanging out.

The Beat Goes On

Another boring weekend here and gone. We hit Seafood Fest on Friday night. We went a little early to beat the crowds and managed to find a parking spot in the parking lot. Sweet. We had dinner, were attacked by wasps. I hate eating outside. As I was finishing up our onion rings a bug fell from the tree above us making me scream and scare everyone around us. Awesome. We were also serenaded by a local high school band. Ah, memories of bad band music at football games.

Anyway, we stopped at Walmart on the way home. Saturday morning Adam left to go help his grandmother move and I did the rest of the shopping. I also went to Shopko and managed to find a couple of shirts on clearance. Yay! I made the white chocolate-strawberry bars which Adam says are addictive. Sunday was pretty boring. Football, racing. I made a chocolate cake that turned out so horrendously that I refuse to even take a picture of it. It tastes wonderful. It just looks like total crap. I’ll attempt another one at some point in the future. I need to regroup first though.

I made some honey-mustard chicken and potatoes on Saturday night. They were meant to be grilled but I baked them in the oven instead. The potatoes worked out fine, but the honey in the chicken ended up burning and stinking the place up. Oops. We had quinoa and vegetables last night. The quinoa is teeny tiny and Adam says it looks like baby fish eyes. Appetizing… The recipe I used was pretty easy but I might cut the tofu up in smaller pieces next time. It seemed to overwhelm everything else.

My testing this morning was pretty quick, but not painless. I never seem to be able to get by the blood pressure thing in one try. Only two times this morning, but last time I went to the doctor I had two tries on both arms before they got it. The blood taking, ugh. My veins are apparently sneaky fellows and luckily the nurse got one on the first try this time. Last time both my arms got jabbed while hunting for one. But then I started gushing blood when she went to tape the gauze on. Grr. My arm still hurts, but at least it looks as though I’ve avoided an ugly bruise. That was pretty much it. I got some apple juice and was sent on my way. I don’t know what kind of information I’ll be getting back from this effort, but at least they can’t kick me off the insurance plan for non-compliance. Woo.

The rest of the week looks boring. A few new dishes on the menu, the start of the Packer’s season.

Movies (post Oscar)

After finishing the Oscar movie list I kind of forgot to keep up with my quasi movie reviews. We/I’ve watched a few in the last couple weeks:

The Simpson’s Movie – We didn’t get around to seeing this in the theater and didn’t get around to renting it until now. It was the first Blueray movie we got to make sure the PS3 player worked correctly. Not having an HDTV, it really didn’t make the movie-viewing experience better, but whatever. The movie itself was pretty funny. I’m thinking it’s similar to other “tv-shows-turned-movie” wherein some things are only funny if you’ve seen the original show. Having only watched it once I’m sure I missed many references. I caught enough to appreciate the nerdy-ness of Matt Groening and the other writers. How it is possible for people to remember so many previous things and be able to throw them into a new storyline? One of my friends from college had pretty much every “Simpsons” episode memorized and could spout off dialogue in an appropriate context. While it was kind of creepy, it still amazed me that he could devote so much of his brain capacity to a cartoon show. Oh well. I thought the movie was pretty good even though I seem to recall that the overall reception of it wasn’t too stellar.

The Graduate – Also kind of amazing that I had never seen this movie considering how much of a classic it’s supposed to be. I must say I was kind of surprised. Everything I’d heard about the film didn’t really prepare me for what the actual plot turned out to be. It’s much darker than I anticipated (dude, he totally stalks the poor girl!) And man, Simon and Garfunkel really got on my nerves quickly. It’s an interesting movie with some interesting camera work and sound editing. I’m not sure it’s the masterpiece I expected it to be, but it was better than the semi-related Rumor Has It. Ha ha.

Miss Conception – Ok, so this was probably a bad choice on my part, but this movie was awful. Heather Graham plays a lady who can’t agree with her boyfriend on when to have kids. After kicking him to the curb, she finds out she only has one egg left and will thereafter be as barren as the Sahara. And she ovulates in two weeks so she’d better get moving to find herself a baby-daddy. Oh Barf. She and her two classic side-kick friends (gay male friend, bitter female friend) come up with a foolproof, three-prong plan which (of course) doesn’t work. But wait! This is a comedy! Everything works out in the end even though it negates the premise of the entire film. *sigh* Absolutely nothing redeeming about this film at all. It wasn’t even that funny. And it just makes me nuts when females are portrayed as sperm-hungry mommy wannabees with raging biological clocks.

Scenes from a Mall – I appreciate most of Woody Allen’s work. And Bette Midler has her days as well (although she can tend to get kind of shrieky sometimes.) So I figured this would be a fun movie. While I admit it did start to get tedious towards the end, overall it was a good movie. I want to congratulate whoever came up with the idea of giving a surfboard as an anniversary gift in the first 10 minutes of the film and then requiring the characters to carry this neon green thing around for the rest of the movie. The mime character kind of got on my nerves, but I’m guessing that was kind of the point.

Superbad – I’m afraid this falls into the Napoleon Dynamite category. That movie was so popular and everyone raved about it. I watched it and thought it was boring and had no plot. Now Superbad has a plot, but I really don’t see what all the fuss was about. Entirely too much unnecessary profanity and dirty conversation which takes away from the finer points of the movie (not that there were many.) I mean, the DVD even has a counter feature so you can keep track of how many cuss words and sexual references there are. I suppose this appeals to a certain demographic (hello adolescent males!) but I’m not it. I was just put off by the swearing and the ridiculous storyline. I never went to parties like that in high school. I can’t relate. And unlike American Pie (the original), I just didn’t care whether the guys got any or not.

A Hairy Situation

I'm having a problem making a decision. I've been procrastinating on getting a haircut because I'm not sure what I want to do. Adam pretty much always tells me to just shave my head but that's not happening. I like longer hair, but it gets to a point where unless I devote more attention to it it just looks like crap. It's to that point now so I need to regroup.

So I went online to look for one of those things where you upload your picture and can see what you'd look like with certain styles. What do you think (just ignore the hideous color - it was the closest to red I could find)?



Or how about this one?



Bwahahaha, just kidding.

I suppose the only way to go is shorter, but it looks to me like layers might be too much work for me. I'm a wash, towel dry, run a comb through it kind of person. I don't even have a hair dryer or hairspray. I do have a flat iron, but even that has gotten very little use. I was hoping it would eliminate frizz, but it didn't really do what I wanted it to. I also have some leave-in conditioner spray but that makes my hair greasy. I'm totally lazy and don't really want to add 10 minutes to my morning just to arrange my hair. I'd be thrilled if I could get something that takes no additional effort on my part.

So I'm looking for opinions. Ideas. Suggestions. Something I can take to Cost Cutters and hand to the hair cutting person.

The cat is chewing on my toe

Sorry, couldn't think of a title for this post so I just made an observation. JC is weird. He likes sitting below the computer desk and chewing on my feet.

Anyways...

You’d think after a number of years I’d realize that I drop off the face of the earth for a week every month and I’d maybe plan ahead and have some posts automatically show up or something. Alas, I’m not that organized. So apologies again for being lost in the land of the month-end close. (I did post on my cooking blog over the weekend though – I was way behind on that one as well.)

This week was a short one thanks to Labor Day. We people in the accounting world dislike most holidays because they always land in the most frustrating places in respect to the month-end/year-end close calendar. Labor Day is no exception. And the fact that it was on September 1st only added to my annoyance. This means we did our physical way back on the 29th, leaving plenty of time for people to mess everything up before final sales and receivings were complete. *sigh* Just look ahead to November though. Freaking Thanksgiving. We’ll end up doing our physical on the 26th. That’s just ridiculous.

Anywho, our Labor Day weekend was pretty uneventful. We finally got our comforter to the dry cleaners. I’m not sure I’d do that again. I didn’t want to try and stuff it in our washer/dryer because it’s a king-sized and therefore would probably not fit. I also have this reputation for screwing up the comforter in the dryer and all the batting bunches up. So I figured it might be easier/safer to have a professional do it. Yeah. It came back clean I guess. But noticeably faded and with a couple snags I don’t remember being there before. Live and learn.

We did our normal shopping rounds, feeling the pain of a cat food week. Of all the price increases, it seems like I notice the pet food ones the most. We used to be able to get the cans of Fancy Feast for $0.42. Now they’re $0.48. That’s almost a 15% increase! Guinea Pig food used to be $8.97 for the big bag and now it’s $9.44. While that’s only a 5% jump, it’s not nothing. Bedding went up as well. And it’s not as though I’m wishing death on our rodential (is that a word?) friends, but it will save us some money once they kick. And we considered adopting a dog. We must be nuts.

For the first time in quite a while we decided to go out on Saturday night. We went to the Monkey Bar in downtown Appleton. Thanks to the holiday weekend it was pretty dead. We got a decent parking spot and were two of five people in the bar. Sweet. We each had a drink and two “deadly sins” shots. I think mine were greed and vanity. Don’t recall. But they were good. Then we went downstairs to Déjà Vu, the martini bar. They were also pretty empty until a bachelorette party came in about ten minutes after us. Although they are part of the same bar group, Déjà Vu doesn’t have the “dirty drink” menu that The St. James has. Luckily the bartender knew what the Dirty Girl Scout was so it was all good. I also got the Tiramisu. Yum-a-licious. We stopped for food on the way home as all semi-drunk people should do. Then we went to sleep. And woke up with a headache. Drat. We also spent some money on some basics for our bar. So it was a lot of alcohol purchases this weekend. That’ll throw off our categories in Money. Heh. Sunday and Monday I don’t think I even left the house. Relaxation to the max.

But Tuesday it was back to work, thrown into month-end in a most unrelaxing way. It’s been pretty much work, home, dinner, sleep this week. Tomorrow Adam will be helping his grandmother move into her new apartment. We also plan to hit Seafood Fest in Menasha for dinner tonight. I’ve got some basic shopping/cleaning on my list, but nothing too interesting. Handbell rehearsals start a week from Monday and the first IMA meeting is the 17th. With the crappy weather we’ve had the last two days it sure looks as though fall is here a bit earlier than desired. Adam even built a fire last night!

I’ll be trying out a lot of new recipes in the next few weeks. In my quest to replace Cooking Light (and man, are they persistent in trying to get me to renew!) I bought three new magazines and found quite a few interesting things to try out. Our first meal with quinoa is coming up this weekend. I’m hoping it’s easy to find – I’m guessing it’s probably in the natural foods section. I’d never even heard of it until Adam sent me some article about it and how great it is for you. On the other end of that spectrum, I’m going to make some white chocolate-strawberry bars I saw on a blog awhile ago and I also hope to bake a cake to test out my decorating tools. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve got my (stupid, mandatory) biometric testing bright and early Monday morning. That means I have to do the 12-hour fast thing on Sunday night. Boo. I guess I’ll bring my breakfast to work with me and eat it after they forcibly take my blood. Boo on that too. I hate having my blood drawn. The things I do to keep my health insurance… I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least I have insurance in the first place, right?

In any case, time moves right along and before we know it Christmas music will be playing in the grocery store again. Blech.

A Very Serious Political Question

Is it just me or does Joe Biden look kind of like the politician that Carrie dated on “Sex and the City”? Let's hope they don't share other interests (if you know what I mean.)

Oscar 2008 Recap

Boo-yah! I'm all finished with my Oscar movies. Here's my recap of them all. Winners are in bold.

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Nominees: George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah, Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises

Comments: I guess since I didn’t really like any of these movies I wouldn’t really have had a vested interest in this category. They all had their moments, although perhaps Viggo’s accent would have won me over.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Nominees: Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's War, Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild, Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton

Comments: I’m surprised Javier Bardem is considered a supporting actor in No Country for Old Men. Isn’t he the main character? No complaints about this winner.

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Nominees: Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Julie Christie in Away from Her, Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, Laura Linney in The Savages, Ellen Page in Juno

Comments: This is a tough one. Marion Cotillard did a wonderful job, but so did the other ladies. I honestly liked all of them. I’m glad I’m not a voting member.

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Nominees: Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There, Ruby Dee in American Gangster, Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone, Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton

Comments: I don’t even remember who Ruby Dee was and the others were all pretty much equal to me. Perhaps Cate Blanchett would have edged out the others because she played a guy. Dunno. Tilda Swinton does always freak me out though. There’s just something about her look…

Best animated feature film of the year
Nominees: Persepolis, Ratatouille, Surf's Up

Comments: Persepolis, while definitely animated, is really not in the same league as the other two. It’s about the struggles of an Iranian woman while the others are about talking animals. I don’t know that it was fair to judge them all on the same plane.

Achievement in art direction
Nominees: American Gangster, Atonement, The Golden Compass, Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, There Will Be Blood

Comments: I'm not entirely sure what this category entails. Is art direction the same as set decoration and props and stuff? In that case, sure, Sweeney Todd had some cool sets. If not, I have no idea what to judge...

Achievement in cinematography
Nominees: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Comments: Once again, I have no idea what this category is based on. For such a boring movie, There Will Be Blood won an awful lot of awards...

Achievement in costume design
Nominees: Across the Universe, Atonement, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, La Vie en Rose, Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Comments: No question to me that Elizabeth had the most complicated and involved costume work. Across the Universe and La Vie en Rose were pretty much modern day settings, Atonement was still in the last century, and Sweeney Todd was your usual theatrical garb. Elizabeth had period dresses and all kinds of other details to worry about.

Achievement in directing
Nominees: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Comments: Nothing much to say here. Not a film-maker, have no idea what it takes to direct or how to choose one over another.

Achievement in film editing
Nominees: The Bourne Ultimatum, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Comments: Don't really know what to say about this category either. I didn't notice anything particularly grating about any of these movies related to cuts and scene changes...

Achievement in makeup
Nominees: La Vie en Rose, Norbit, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Comments: I suppose Norbit could win for making Eddie Murphy a fat woman. And an Asian guy. But we’ve all seen that before. Even the Pirates movie had a lot of the same characters as the first two. Still impressive though. I don’t know that Edith Piaf’s transformation from a young street singer to an old arthritic was the best of these three, but that’s what won. There you go.

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
Nominees: Atonement, The Kite Runner, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille, 3:10 to Yuma

Comments: I don't really remember any of these movies having particularly great soundtracks. But at least There Will Be Blood wasn't nominated. Horrible, horrible music in that one...

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
Nominees: Falling Slowly from Once, Happy Working Song from Enchanted, Raise It Up from August Rush, So Close from Enchanted, That's How You Know from Enchanted

Comments: Funny how the rules changed after Alan Menken was nominated for three songs from one movie. Heh. The songs from Enchanted were your usual Disney movie fluff. I don’t even remember the song from August Rush. The right one won this category.

Best motion picture of the year
Nominees: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Comments: Ugh. Considering the only one of the nominees I actually liked was Juno I think my vote would be swayed. Not sure what made No Country for Old Men better than the others. The haircut?

Achievement in sound editing
Nominees: The Bourne Ultimatum, No Country for Old Men, Ratatouille, There Will Be Blood, Transformers

Comments: Er, don't have any opinion on this one either. I totally suck at this.

Achievement in sound mixing
Nominees: The Bourne Ultimatum, No Country for Old Men, Ratatouille, 3:10 to Yuma, Transformers

Comments: What is the difference between "sound editing" and "sound mixing?" Seriously.

Achievement in visual effects
Nominees: The Golden Compass, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers

Comments: I thought Transformers should have won something. It was a surprisingly good movie. I suppose The Golden Compass had some trippy CGI stuff, but it was still more boring than Transformers.

Adapted screenplay
Nominees: Atonement, Away from Her, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Comments: Screenwriting awards are very subjective I think. If you didn’t care for the plot lines or subject matter, you might have a hard time differentiating those points from the overall script construction. I don’t really have an opinion on most of these. The time travel bugged me in Atonement, but the others all really were ok.

Original screenplay
Nominees: Juno, Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille, The Savages

Comments: Also very subjective. I think Lars and the Real Girl was an adorable movie but I don’t know if it’s just because the screenplay was good. Same with Juno and The Savages. I don’t know how the voters determine which is the best in some of these categories. Surely there must be some guidelines to prevent people from just voting for their friends?

Only five more months until the 2009 nominations are announced! :)

Camping in Door County

I'd like to tell you we went up to Door County on Friday afternoon and had a great night. But I'd be lying. We took a look at the weather forecast on Friday morning and decided to forget the camping thing altogether. We suck.

We did drive up Saturday morning though. We left bright and early and just made the 9am ferry to Washington Island. The back gate was actually up when we pulled up and they lowered it back down for us since they weren't full. Awesome. One short ferry ride later we stopped for a bathroom break at the visitor's center. We then headed to Mann's looking for some fish for Adam. Didn't find fish, but did find a t-shirt for Adam and some interesting beer bread mix. Cheddar bacon. Yum. Looking forward to trying that out. By that time the farm was open so we were first in line. All the usual suspects were there:

The peacock


The donkey (who really didn't like Adam...)


The ostriches


The potbelly pig (so cute!)


Otto (not sure what he is, but also, so cute!)


The miniature horse


The goats (no live births this year)


The sheep


And of course, the camel. Ollie. Who is in love with Adam. I didn't get a picture of the huge lip thing he does, but I did manage to get a video of the funniest part of the whole trip:



You don't get to hear me laughing hysterically for five minutes while Adam goes back to the front to get another bucket of food.

Anyway, another good time with the animals at the Double K W Ostrich Farm.

We then went to lunch at The Albatross. We had intended to stop there last year but ended up catching the ferry and eating at The Viking Grill instead. Adam tortured everyone by putting money into the juxebox and playing Jimmy Buffet songs. After lunch we got back in line for the ferry and headed back to the mainland. We stopped at Charlie's for Adam's smoked fish fix. We also hit the Confectionery and Lautenbach's. Our final stop was a farm market where I found the hugest cucumbers ever.

We came home to hungry cats and leftover chicken. Yay.

So camping this year? Not so great. We'll see what next season brings.

Odd things cats do...

Practically every time I go to the bathroom JC follows me in. He paces back and forth by my legs and then climbs into my pants. Seriously. Every time. This afternoon he refused to move when I tried to claim them back so I just stepped out of them, went and got the camera, and took a picture:



I have no idea why the cat likes napping in my pants. It's kind of annoying, yet kind of cute at the same time.

Also, it weird that the other cats often accompany me to the bathroom? It's like they decide to have a kitty party outside the door. Conner lays down along the wall and Ted sits directly in front of the door. They're strange.

Recent Movie Viewings

Ok, so about those movies I mentioned. The first was another Oscar movie – Across the Universe. Now, I’m definitely not a Beatles fan. At all. But the obnoxiousness of this movie didn’t come from the fact that the songs were Beatles music. It came from the fact that people randomly broke into song for no apparent reason. It got pretty annoying. The storyline is pretty unoriginal, the acting is ok, but I think the mass appeal of this movie came from rabid Beatles fans looking for all the hidden references. Not being a Beatles fan I probably missed most of them. But the minute I heard the guy’s name was Jude I knew I was going to hear “Hey, Jude” at some point. I was not disappointed. And the girl’s name was Lucy. It goes on and on. I suppose that was the point of this movie – an homage to all things John, Paul, Ringo, and George. But really, it got old.

The second film was The Secret. It’s a remake of a Japanese film and I don’t think it was ever released in the US. I found it under it’s original name Si J’etais toi – meaning “if I were you.” (Ah, the conditional tense. How I miss you, French grammar...) It’s an interesting plot concept – a mother and daughter get into a car accident and while in the ER somehow the mother’s soul gets transported into the daughter’s body. The mother’s body dies. It takes a bit for the daughter (well, the mother in the daughter’s body) to convince the dad/husband that she isn’t crazy. But it causes a lot of problems in their relationship. Obviously. The husband decides that it’s best for them to keep this a secret and the mother should continue to live their daughter’s life in case the daughter’s soul returns at some point. They then discover they really didn’t know their daughter at all. It’s kind of a supernaturally themed film, but not to the point where you must completely suspend reality.

I also watched La Vie En Rose. Once again, a pretty long movie at 2 hours and 15 minutes. But I didn’t mind since this was one I wanted to watch. Having taken French throughout high school and college I knew who Edith Piaf was. I wasn’t aware of the level of crappiness her life included. I knew of her boozing, drug addicted, abrasive personality thing. No idea about the other stuff. Marion Cotillard did an outstanding job portraying a young Edith at 20 as well as a quickly fading Edith near her death. And the voice. That voice is one of a kind. One of the few Oscar films I’ve liked lately.

One more to go – Into the Wild arrived today – and then I’ll do an overall recap of my Oscar film viewing experience.

Today we went to the theater and saw House Bunny. There are many similarities to both Legally Blonde and Sydney White. So while not entirely an original concept, it's still a cute and enjoyable comedy. Although I'm still not sure how one of the "loser sorority" girls is hugely pregnant for almost the whole movie since they supposedly don't know how to talk to guys... but whatever. Suspension of belief is needed I guess. Both Adam and I were amazed by the number of older audience members, but I guess Friday's are "senior day" at the theater...

A cheesy situation - and many other tangents

I think I might have a problem.

We went out to The Melting Pot as planned last night for our anniversary dinner. We got what we usually get – the Big Night Out with cheddar cheese fondue, the lobster main course for Adam, and the S’mores Chocolate. Yum. I usually stick with the chicken and ravioli and dip with the ginger plum, teriyaki, and occasionally the Green Goddess (unless Adam eats it all before I get to it, which happens sometimes.) Last night I decided to branch out. I tried the mango barbecue sauce at Adam’s urging and didn’t like it at all. I still avoided the cocktail and curry sauces. But I also tried the gorgonzola port sauce. And it was wonderful.

So here’s my dilemma: I’m not a cheese person. And I’m definitely not a bleu cheese person. That whole veins of mold growing in the food thing is kind of off-putting. But this sauce was creamy, sweet but salty, delicious. I ate it on pretty much everything. This discovery has shaken my “foods I don’t like” beliefs. I even spent some time this morning trying to find a recipe for it. That’s how much I liked it. Argh. Must resist the temptation to buy gross-looking cheese.

Somewhat along the same lines, this weekend was full of fine dining. We went to Koehring's Grand Central House on Saturday with my dad and Cheryl. It’s an interesting restaurant with eclectic decorating taste. The food was great – everyone had seafood except for me – and it was a good time. We had champagne! Adam had a Schuam Torte for dessert and was then bitten with the “let’s make meringue” bug. I don’t do meringue (it’s that whole not having any patience thing. Egg whites take a while to beat) so I told him to have fun. He found a recipe on Sunday morning, went to Copps to get a carton of egg whites (since I told him we didn’t have enough eggs for him to use just the whites of since I’d have no use for just yolks and I wasn’t going to separate them for him anyway) and went to work. I don’t know what went on since I was in the bedroom watching a movie, but he beat those eggs for a long time. Like more than an hour. He baked it for an hour, let it cool, and then threw it all out when he discovered the center was still raw. Oh well. Like he said, a fun egg white experiment. Perhaps I’ll discover a well of cooking related patience some day and make some meringue and baklava and homemade ravioli. Or not…

With a steady schedule of meals out I didn’t cook much this weekend. Or at all. Adam went golfing last Thursday afternoon and I was by myself for dinner. I cooked up the gnocchi that were on the menu, but instead of making the thyme butter sauce I just cooked up a few pieces of bacon and added that. Yum. I was tempted to eat it all myself, but I was nice and left half of it for Adam to eat when he got home. Friday night I had a chicken Caesar salad with mini sliders on the menu. I discovered we had no more ground beef in the freezer (and luckily it was on sale last week so I could stock up) so I added the last two leftover chicken breasts from the cookout instead. I did make croutons (from leftover hamburger rolls) so that was good. That was pretty much the extent of my cooking for the weekend. I made frozen pizza two days in a row for lunch. So sad.

But I’m back in the saddle for this coming week. I bought three new cooking magazines in an effort to find a replacement for Cooking Light, of which I’m not much of a fan. Two Taste of Home spinoffs – Healthy Cooking and Cooking for Two, and one that appears to be Food Network related – Clean Eating. I browsed through them and found some good stuff to try out. Adam looked through the Cooking for Two issue and picked out some stuff as well. Mostly desserts. :) I plan to try out a few of those soon, although probably not this weekend since we’ll be camping.

Speaking of desserts (man, this tangent thing leads to long blog posts…) I went out and bought a cake decorating kit on Sunday afternoon. That whole mint brownie pie fiasco had gotten me thinking about the things that were still missing from my kitchen collection. I missed having a spatula when I made that pecan cake a ways back and had intended to pick one up at some point. Then with the need for pastry tips for the torte I figured I might as well go ahead and pick up a set for future use. Now I’m looking for an excuse to bake and decorate a cake. Not that I need one, really, but it would be nice to be able to justify making a cake and eating it all. Hey wait! People eat cake for anniversaries! I could just make a belated Happy Anniversary to Us cake. There. Perfect.

On another tangent, speaking of camping, we decided that we’ll go for only one night this time. There’s not a lot going on up in Door County this weekend and we really can’t come up with things to keep us busy for two days. We’re also going minimalistic, planning to eat our meals at restaurants rather than cook at the campsite. We’ll still be sleeping in a tent so that still counts as camping in my mind. We also plan to do the s’mores/campfire thing so it’s kind of authentic. We plan to head to Washington Island, stop at the candy store we like, maybe do a winery tour. With the crappy growing season, cherry crops suck so there’s no picking going on anymore. That’s really about all we can figure to do without spending lots of money or too much time out in the sun. I think we’ll still have a good time as long as the weather is good.

Ok, I’m going to cut this off before I go on way too long. Even though I watched two movies. That will have to be in another entry.

Hah-Hah!

Got him!



Yes, this is Conner. Asleep!

And JC conked out in the hall.



And since they don't get enough air time anymore, here are Mo and Einstein along with Howie and his huge honey treat. Seriously, it's bigger than he is.

One Year Ago...

Another milestone completed. I don’t really have a lot to say about it, but in some ways it’s like the year flew by, in others it seems like it’s been way more than a year. Things are pretty much the same as they were last year with the exception of the addition of three cats and loss of two hamsters. Some furniture moved, some trashed, some new stuff brought in. But the past year wasn’t tumultuous. We didn’t fight more than the year before. We spent pretty much every night together except for the few days that Adam was in California for work. I say “pretty much” because there were some nights that I (voluntarily) kicked myself out of bed and slept in the guest room when I had that hacking cough and cold that seemed like it would never end because Adam complained that I kept him up with my coughing and snoring.

I don’t know that being married has been harder than being engaged or just dating. Living with another person requires compromise and flexibility. There have definitely been times when I get annoyed, but that’s to be expected. I’ve come to terms with the ridiculous amount of wrestling that Adam watches on a weekly basis. He seems to have come to terms with my “Project Runway”, “Tori and Dean” “Denise Richards” and “Kathy Griffin” DVR-ing and has even started to watch some of them with me.

Anyway, this whole post is kind of pointless and doesn’t say much. Happy one year, Adam. Now let’s go TP our own house to celebrate our paper anniversary with flair.

How's about some year-old wedding cake?

The party went well this past weekend. We had a few new people over (some of Adam’s co-workers), it was a beautiful day, and everyone fit on the deck at the same time. We dug the cake out of the freezer on Friday night to let it thaw for a couple days. Adam unwrapped it and we discovered we had thawed it upside down.



Whoops. In our defense, it’s not like it was labeled. It had held up to almost a year in the freezer with no sign of its age. It was as moist and delicious as it was last year.



And we still shared it with everyone. Aren’t we nice? We did pretty well with leftovers too – that is not having a ton of them. Good planning on our part.

This week will be pretty light on cooking duty. We should be done with the majority of the leftovers tonight. This coming weekend will be full of fun dining. We’ll be heading to Kiel on Saturday to have dinner with my dad and Cheryl. Sunday night we have reservations at The Melting Pot. We really worked this one out well. We have a coupon for free chocolate fondue since Adam’s a member of their club and they know our anniversary. We also have a Supple Restaurant Group gift card from one of Adam’s co-workers and The Melting Pot is part of their empire here in the Fox Valley. So we could potentially eat there for nothing (or way less than normal) out of pocket. Sweet deal. Looking forward to that. That’s pretty much our anniversary celebration plans.

This afternoon we (finally) have our first meeting with an estate planning lawyer. Not that either of us have any great stash we need to protect, but we figured we should get the power of attorney, pull the plug kind of thing taken care of. We called for the appointment back in May but this was the earliest we could get in. Crazy. It should be a good time, sharing with a lawyer how much we don’t have in net worth. Our home equity is still in the negative range, but it’s slowly creeping up to zero. Adam suggested we just make an extra payment to zero it out. Tempting, but since we don’t plan to sell or try and take out loans anytime soon I’m in no hurry to throw money in that direction. It is kind of depressing to see that negative each month though. Boo.

Tomorrow is the annual summer employee cookout here at Milprint. It’s usually catered in by La Sure’s and it’s pretty good. We don’t have a company picnic or anything like some places do. We have a summer cookout, a Christmas dinner, and an omelet breakfast throughout the year. Tomorrow afternoon is the meeting about the new wellness program they’re forcing on everyone. In order to get health insurance through Bemis, everyone must go through biometric testing for Kersh Wellness. They’ve had this program for a few years giving employees the opportunity to lower their part of the premium by documenting stuff or something. I avoided it since I’m totally lazy. But now I am kind of forced to participate. Granted, I don’t have to wear a pedometer to track steps or anything, but I will have to be unwillingly examined and have blood drawn in September. Not happy about that, but whatever. Hopefully the meeting tomorrow will help me to resent it less. We’ll see.

That’s about it for this week I think. We need to start planning for our one and only camping trip next week. I think we’re still kicking around whether we want to do one night or two. There’s not a lot going on up there right now since the cherry season suffered from bad weather. We’ll go up to Washington Island to visit the camels and we’ll stop at the candy store. Other than that, who knows?

Sleeping Cats

Cats are like babies: they're cute when they're asleep, but can be terrors when they're awake. (Of course, I don't have any babies so I'm just speaking from blind assumptions and commonly accepted details of parenthood.)

Ted's fighting it:


JC really likes the dead mouse pillow from IKEA:


Ted lost:


JC's favorite nap spot:


You may notice the lack of sleeping Conner pictures. That cat is so paranoid it's rare that he relaxes long enough around us to even lay down and shut his eyes, let alone sleep. We're working on that.

They also roll around a lot:


And this picture of Ted taken by Adam from outside was just so cool I had to share it:

Crock pot and pictures!

Ok, so 3:10 to Yuma wasn’t that horrible. It reminded me of a lot of other movies throughout. Not outstanding, but no Cinderella Man either. I’m now down to 3 Oscar movies. We’ll see what order Blockbuster decides to give them to me.

Adam has had a lot of time off from work these past two weeks between air conditioning problems and lack of work at the beginning of the new fiscal year. So he’s had some time to sit at home and accomplish things. Yesterday he rented a pressure washer and cleaned the siding. Something we’d meant to do before we even moved in over a year ago. Hey, better late than never, right? He also went out and got me another anniversary gift: a 4-quart programmable crock pot.



I’d been looking for a smaller one since the current 6-quart always makes way too many leftovers for the two of us to wade through. It was hard to find a smaller version with a timer and auto-warm feature. I had found the model he ended up getting but couldn’t justify spending that much. But I’m ok with him spending it. Heh. I have a crock pot recipe on the menu for tomorrow so maybe I’ll try it out then. I still haven’t tried out the big spaghetti pot. The recipe I thought I was going to use it for turned out to not cook the noodles before putting them in the oven. Hrm. Eventually I’ll make some pasta or steam some veggies.

We’ve got a lot of cleaning ahead of us for this weekend. That’s the bad thing about throwing parties at your house – you have to make it presentable and temporarily banish the kitties. They never seem to be very happy about being shut up in their room, but when we open the door back up they’re undoubtedly all sleeping curled up in a ball on the bed. Cats…

Speaking of cats, it’s been a little while since I posted some sickeningly cute photos. Prepare to “Awwww.”







Ok, so that last one's not a cat, but still pretty cute, eh?

More Movies

A couple more movies seen, neither of them from the Oscar list. We rented Witless Protection simply for its fourth-grader type humor. And it did not disappoint. Fart jokes and inappropriate innuendo abound, all tucked up in a cute comedy with just a hint of social commentary. Larry the Cable Guy isn’t going to win any acting awards any time soon, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the “blue collar comedy” every once in a while. Except for Ron White. Cannot stand him.

Anywho, the other movie we saw this past weekend was The Dark Knight. We went early on Sunday afternoon, the first show of the day. It wasn’t crowded at all, which is what we were going for. We were originally going to try and see it down in Madison on the IMAX. But with Adam’s year-end and now my month-end, there really wasn’t a good day to take off from work and go down there. We also missed it on the UltraScreen here in town as it got bumped by The Mummy III this week. *sigh* So regular screen it was. It’s on the longer side, about two and a half hours, but unlike another movie I endured recently (*cough* Jesse James *cough*) it didn’t seem that long. Well, ok, it seemed like it was three movies in one, but it wasn’t hard to sit through the whole thing. There is so much in terms of plot points, action sequences, etc. that it would be hard to sum the whole thing up easily. I pity the people who go to write the synopsis on IMDB. It’s going to be a long one. But it’s a good movie, perhaps slightly over-hyped, but not much. And $400 million at the box office thus far doesn’t indicate a failure either, now does it?

Blockbuster tells me that 3:10 to Yuma is one its way to us for our viewing pleasure. It should come as no surprise when I say I don’t even want to watch it. But I will. For the good of mankind. And to fulfill my Oscar Movie Challenge. *sigh*

Didn’t do much this past weekend again. Shopping, church, movie, cleaning. We are so boring. I finally managed to get the cooking blog back up to date with the various dishes we’ve tried lately. Nothing too impressive, but I plan to make a mint brownie cake this weekend. I bought the ingredients for it last week but didn’t get around to it. Which puzzles me, since we did pretty much nothing. Who knows where the time goes.

We’re hoping we have a good turnout at the party on Sunday. We cast a bigger invitation net than previous cookouts. It also appears that Adam’s 3-on-3 will be cancelled so we’ll have the next weekend free as well. We’re still messing with actual anniversary plans. We’ve got a coupon to The Melting Pot, but we’ve also got a gift card to Fratellos. Hmm. We’ll see what happens.

Me = Slacker Blogger

So, wow. Not really keeping up on this blogging thing again.

Firstly, some sad news to report. Our duck saga is over. Sometime last Friday night something came and ransacked the nest. Who knows if mama duck was there at the time, but on Saturday morning all but four of the eggs had been smashed. The other four were gone Sunday morning. I know that’s how nature works and all, but it was exciting to potentially have a family of ducks in the backyard. And just like that they’re gone. We’re not sure who is responsible for this murderous rampage. There was a hawk hanging around the deck on Saturday and then a random stray cat wandering around the yard on Sunday. I don’t think we’ll ever know. But no baby ducks for us this year. Boo.

In other news, not much is happening again. We went up to Green Bay last Sunday to visit with Adam’s grandma. She just put her house on the market and will be moving in September. Adam painted the bottoms of the front railing while I conversed with her inside. She seems really excited to be moving to her new place. I guess that’s a good thing. Changes…

Speaking of changes, last Saturday Adam was at work (it was his year-end) and when he came out to come home apparently his tire was flat. In checking his tread he discovered he needed new tires. So we headed to the tire store. Got them swapped out that afternoon. Good deal. But July was definitely an expensive car month for Adam’s car. 60,000 mile check-up and new tires. Yeesh! My tires will need to be replaced sometime before winter as well, but I think I need a few weeks to recover from his before I start seriously looking for mine.

We finally got around to watching the latest Oscar movie to arrive – The Assassination of Jesse James. We’d been putting it off because it’s OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG. What is with these ridiculously long movies? I swear, over half of the movies on the Oscar list this year were over two hours long. Is this a new trend? Because I don’t like it. But we bit the bullet (no pun intended) last night. The movie is so slow. So boring. If they’d cut out the stupid “suspenseful” scenes of people sitting around looking at each other they could get the movie done in like an hour. Grr. In any case, not a fan of this genre, didn’t really care about the story, and I just wanted it to be over. And the music? So annoying after about 10 minutes. So, yeah, thumbs down from me. But I made it all the way through it! I’m down to four. Doing well.

It’s been quiet around here lately. August will be a little more exciting than July perhaps with a few vacation days planned and our informal get-together next weekend. We'll see. Maybe then I'll have more to blog about than just the hot weather or crazy cats.

IMA Planning - Done

The last IMA board meeting of the summer is over with and I get a month off before the 2008-2009 program year begins. I’m not too much more involved than past years with planning and execution of meetings. I prefer sticking to what I know and not committing myself to anything that requires me to call people I don’t know. Heh. In any case, we’ve got a good mix of topics and some interesting speakers lined up. We even have a tour of the Post Office planned in April. Fun. We’re going to only one new venue this year so that makes that part of my job easier. I do plan to track things more closely this year though so my budgeting process is smoother and I can spout off relevant information about attendance and how much money we’re losing each meeting. Heh again. Hopefully we can drum up some interest in the community with our big awards ceremony in October and our ethics workshop in January. We’re also always working on trying to convince UWO that the CMA matters. *sigh* It’s an uphill battle.

There’s a core group of dedicated IMA board members and we have a good time together. I just wish other people would see it’s more than boring accountants sitting around talking about taxes. That hardly ever happens. For national CPE purposes we have to plan a certain amount of educational content, but I’d say at least half of each meeting is for mingling, networking, and talking to associates within the business world – and not necessarily about business. There have been many dinners where the table conversation never even gets close to boring accounting talk. Like the meeting where we talked about nothing but Tupperware and the benefits thereof. Good times. It’s a shame that so many of our members choose to miss out on these meetings. We have over 200 members. Average meeting attendance is 30. That’s depressing.

The Duck Saga Continues

Didn’t do much this weekend. No major home renovations, no exciting trips. Saturday was normal shopping and Atonement. Adam rearranged the living room again. Sunday Adam went golfing and I watched The Other Boleyn Girl. I made a Bacon Potato Puff and a Spinach Beef Macaroni Bake and Skillet Cornbread. That’s really about it.

We are monitoring mama duck and her growing nest of eggs.



Last count has us at 7, although she was there again this morning and at lunch so who knows how many more there might be. I can always tell when she’s come back because all the cats jump up in the window and stare at the nest. There are so many fascinating things out in the backyard that sometimes I’m afraid the cats are going to go into sensory overload and keel over. We’ve got all kinds of birds, squirrels running up and down trees, chipmunks on the deck, mama duck, a family of rabbits, and numerous insects. And these are just the critters I know about. Sometimes JC will freak out and I don’t see anything out there, but apparently he does. Or he’s crazy. That’s possible as well.

Another One Down

Watched another Oscar movie this weekend: Atonement. Aside from being soooooo slow and Keira Knightly being generally annoying, the movie was pretty good. Interesting story – kind of reminded me of the finale of "Roseanne".

Here there be spoilers, in case you were planning on watching this movie. Or "Roseanne".

So, the “twist” is that in order for Briony to be able to make this “autobiographical” book come to be, she had to take some creative liberties and bend the truth. She royally screwed up the lives of her sister, Cecilia, and her sister’s lover, Robbie, by accusing him of raping her cousin. This was untrue, but at the time she didn’t recognize the consequences of her actions. Robbie gets sent to prison and then to war. In her book, he comes back and reunites with her sister and Briony is able to apologize and correct her mistakes. In reality, Robbie dies during the British evacuation from France and Cecilia dies in a water main break in an Underground tunnel bomb shelter. Briony never speaks to either of them, doesn’t have the chance to apologize or make things right, and therefore spends the rest of her life wallowing in her guilt. Uplifting it’s not.

Similarly, during the final episode of "Roseanne", the viewer learns that the whole series was the invention of Roseanne Conner and her writing. Things didn’t really happen the way we had been seeing. Roseanne wrote “revisions” to make it how she thought it should have been. Becky really married David while Darlene married Mark, but Roseanne explains that she always thought they would have been better suited the other way around, and this is how they were presented throughout the show. Dan had a heart attack in the previous season and in the show, he recovers. In reality, he died. But Roseanne didn’t like that so she changed it. There are a few other bombs dropped in the final minutes of the series. This is kind of like the “it was all a dream” cop-out used when a plot-line spirals out of control. But in these cases, it’s so final hour that its impact is much greater. Every time I see a re-run of "Roseanne" (and it always seems to be on – kind of like "Saved by the Bell" and "Seinfeld") I think of the finale and how everything changed after seeing it.

This is also similar to "Dawson’s Creek". Once you see the finale and find out Joey ends up with Pacey, the whole back and forth, endless struggle between Joey and Dawson loses something.

Anywho, this ended up being a lot longer than I had intended. Bottom line, not as horrible of a movie as I expected. I also watched The Other Boleyn Girl. I’d been meaning to see this one for awhile. It was what I expected. I like both female leads and although I don’t know how historically accurate it was, it was still entertaining to watch.

Garages and Movies and Ducks (oh my!)

So the whole garage door thing has been figured out. Best Adam and his dad can tell, the previous door’s opener was installed too high. This caused the track to bounce and buckle when the door was closing, somehow tripping it to go back up. In any case, some sawing, banging, and bolting later, the opener is moved and the door works fine. It’s so much quieter than the other door! And I no longer fear being crushed by a collapsing garage door on my way out in the morning. Ah, peace of mind. I believe the plans for the old door involve the local junkyard. Apparently these outdated wood version doors aren’t accepted by second-hand/community outreach stores. So sometime this week(end) Adam will take a trip there to dispose of the door. And the armchair that stinks like cat pee. Finally.

I watched yet another Oscar movie Tuesday night. This one was August Rush. I had no idea what it was about and the blurb on the sleeve from Blockbuster Total Access was generally unhelpful. It was an interesting story: kind of a mix of Oliver, A Beautiful Mind, and Once. With some Mr Holland's Opus thrown in for good measure. I was somewhat distracted by weird directorial choices (especially the constant filming directly into lights and then having something (an arm, a head) block the light for a few seconds and then move again. Argh!) but overall it was lovely. I won’t comment on the horrible fake cello playing. Or guitar playing. Or organ playing. Or piano playing. Anyway, the end is sappy, totally predictable, but makes you retain hope that the world isn’t completely messed up. Yay. So, down to six Oscar movies on the list: 3:10 to Yuma (ugh), Across the Universe (hopefully not as horrible as I am Me), The Assassination of Jesse James (ugh #2), Atonement (Kiera Knightly = so annoying!), Into the Wild (this might actually be good), La Vie en Rose (probably would have watched this eventually regardless.) So yeah, mixed bag.

Tuesday morning while I was in the bathroom combing my hair Adam yelled for me to come look at something. I went into the living room and he pointed out an egg that was laying in an indentation under the bush by the window. He asked me what kind of egg it was. I asked him why he thought I’d know. He stated he didn’t think it was big enough to be a rabbit egg. I informed him that rabbits don’t lay eggs. Oh yeah. I went back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. As I did my final sweep, checking on all the animals before I left for work, I discovered the source of the egg.



There was a duck standing in the middle of the yard. She walked toward the egg, sat on it, flipped it over, and then walked away again. From the other angle provided in the living room we could see the male behind a tree.



Ah, l’amour. When I came home from work, the egg had been partially buried and there were no parents in sight.



There are now three eggs in the nest though so apparently they're doing something. They returned for a bit that night but they were gone again in the morning. Strange behavior in my eyes, but I’m not a duck. Maybe that’s how they do it. We’ll keep an eye out for them and wait for the baby ducks.

A Forgotten Milestone

For some unknown reason it just occurred to me that I completely missed a rather important anniversary. Well, actually TWO anniversaries. They both flew by uncelebrated, unnoticed. My bad. And my apologies to the most expensive purchase I ever made. Happy one year anniversary, house!

It seems unbelievable that it’s been (over) a year since I signed not quite as large a mountain of paperwork as I expected and made the house mine (and then ours a few months later.) Yet, May 31st was the day and it’s come and gone. Also unbelievable is the fact that we moved out of our apartment (more than) a year ago. But June 16th was the day we rented a U-Haul and moved our stuff in the pouring rain. It took a couple more weeks to get everything over to the house, but we were out well before our June 30th cut-off.

It’s been a year of home improvements, landscaping reconfiguring, furniture and pet rearrangements, and some unexpected replacements and repairs. We started with a total makeover for a few rooms before we moved in and our most recent endeavor was replacing the garage door. There are still many other projects on our list, some major (like our siding/grading/new deck plans), some less so (like repainting those ugly stencils in the kitchen.) But it’s kind of amazing to see how much we (ok, so mostly Adam and his dad) have accomplished. I wouldn’t say it looks almost like a completely different house, but in some areas it does.

Home ownership is definitely a mixed bag. One the one hand, you can paint walls, tear things apart, replace things all you want. On the other hand, you have all kinds of maintenance you never had to worry about before. Luckily Adam takes care of most of that stuff. On the one hand, you have a rather impressive asset to add to your books. On the other hand, the economy could tank, sending your home’s value plummeting to less than what you owe on your mortgage. Yeah, that sucked. On the bright side, this means our taxes should be lower this year! There’s no question that owning a home has definitely been more expensive than renting was: The mortgage payment is 150% of what we were paying in rent. We have higher electric and water bills. We have to pay for heat where it was included in our rent previously. We had to get a landline phone. We have to pay property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, PMI. But being in our own house, being able to have kitties, being away from the crazy Indian neighbors? Priceless.

So, here’s to year #1, house. Only 29 more and you’ll be all ours. (Hrm, that’s kind of depressing.)

A Little Bit of Howie

You can't hear it, but JC was sitting on top of the cage (you can see his arm in the upper left corner), purring up a storm. Hence my "gees, Kitty" comment.

Ack, expensive weekend!

Adam got a VISA gift card as part of his bonus from work for being “Top Performer” for the quarter and he decided we should just use that for this week’s spending rather than pulling cash from the checking account. Works for me! So Friday night we did our grocery shopping. Not too bad there. No meat purchases to kick up the total, and the major category was dairy products: cheese, milk, eggs, etc. Yay inflation. Saturday morning Adam went in to work for a little bit. I watched another Oscar film (The Kite Runner – pretty good. Only 7 more to go!) and then went and got my hair cut. We decided to go see Get Smart (hilarious) and stopped to check some pricing for an external hard drive (for me) and some RAM (for Adam. Well, kind of. I stole some of his) on the way. (We ended up ordering them online.) We stopped up at Simon’s for some cheese before heading home. I baked some Snickerdoodles and S’more muffins. Adam grilled up some chicken for dinner.

Sunday morning we stopped by his parents’ house to drop off an extra paint tray (they were helping Chris and Katie do some interior decoration.) We then headed over to Menards to purchase a new garage door and accoutrements. One more stop at Walmart and we went back home. I did some cleaning and Adam made pretzels. He had just taken them out of the oven when his dad called, ready to help pick up and install the new garage door. That took them pretty much the rest of the day. And it’s not done yet – it mysteriously reverses itself and opens when it gets about halfway down. Gah. I spent much of the afternoon and evening watching the L&O:SVU marathon on USA. And being attacked by cats. I made Cheeseburger Buns and Onion Flowers for dinner.

Adam had started to get a cold on Sunday morning and it just got worse with him not eating and working all afternoon in a stuffy garage. So this morning he stayed home from work. I, on the other hand, got up and spent my Monday morning being poked and prodded during my annual doctor’s visit. I resisted as long as I could (ie, my prescription runs out this month) but they wouldn’t let me get away with getting a refill without coming in for an exam. Grr. Although the nurse said that if they didn’t require me to come in I probably wouldn’t. She’s right… She had trouble finding my blood pressure (not sure how that works, but she said it was really quiet?) and had to try three times. For the third year in a row I had a different person examine me. This time it was a PA and there were no babies to interrupt the proceedings. She sounded Russian, and was a nice enough person. She did give me a hard time about getting a tetanus shot. I know I’m completely overdue, (it’s been probably 14 years) but I hate shots. Eventually I’ll have to do it. We’ve got (required) biometric testing here at work in September so maybe they’ll do it then. *sigh* Other than that, it went well. Done for another year. Woo. Now I’ve just got to work up the motivation to find a dentist. I’ve been putting that off for over three years. I’m afraid they’ll try and pull out my wisdom teeth.

Anyway, nothing planned for this week. No meetings, no appointments. We’ve got a movie sitting at home waiting to be watched (Last Request) and some new recipes waiting to be made. I’m going to try and do some quality snuggling with the guinea pigs since I’m afraid I might be neglecting them a little. The cats take up more time and are more accessible so it seems like the rodents get second best attention. I’d also like to get a video of Howie going nuts on his chewing log. We’ll see how that goes.

On a Much Happier Note...

Happy first birthday to our nephew Gabriel!

RIP Gus

Again, not a shock. Even before Barry, Gus was slowing down. But after Barry died, Gus stopped sleeping in his house, instead taking up residence under his water bottle. As recently as Friday I saw him up, eating. He had been having problems with his balance though and his eyes seemed to be shut all the time. Poor guy. Hope he and Barry are having a good time in hamster heaven.

Howie is still crazy as ever and both guinea pigs appear fine. We'll see who's next...

July 4th, the Non-Celebration Way

As 4th of July’s go, this one was uneventful. We didn’t even watch fireworks. We heard plenty of them though since our neighbors next door and some people a block over were setting them off pretty much all week.

My week at work was busy and generally frustrating. Not only is it month-end, but it’s also quarter-end, which adds on to my workload with all kinds of extra pricing and reporting. As fate would have it, a lot of my regular inventory counters were on vacation including the guys who normally do my ink and resin counts. This made me nervous even before I saw the numbers their subs got me. It’s much more likely for auditors to pick a quarter-end to review so it’s best to be especially vigilant during those closes. First the ink guy counted everything we didn’t own rather than what we did. Then one of the silos had a faulty gauge so we couldn’t get the levels on inventory day. Then boxed resin counts are all wonky. *sigh* Everyone should be back today so hopefully we can get it all figured out. Luckily, all these issues only affect raw materials so I was able to get WIP and FG done on schedule.

Adam left work early Tuesday afternoon and had off the rest of the week. He spent some time working in the yard, laying sod in the back (here's a before and after. Adam took that second one so don't blame me.)



He also took a spur-of-the-moment trip down to Marshalls in Madison in the hopes that he could buy some hideous golf shorts that I had talked him out of getting when we were in Minneapolis. Luckily the stores he went to didn’t have said shorts so we’re safe for now. Really. They’re hideous.

On Friday Adam left bright and early to pick up the trailer and offload some of Chris and Katie’s firewood. While he was out I went and did some of our weekly shopping. He and his dad unloaded the wood and then they went back up to get Adam’s car. He came home with some old baseball cards and coins that his mother unearthed after he was reminded of their existence when he was going through the tote of old papers. He took some pictures to post on eBay but then decided that our camera was a piece of junk and we needed a new one. (Ok, not as impulsive of a decision as that made it sound. We'd been having problems with our Canon since our honeymoon and I'd been trying to eke out as much use before breaking down and buying a new one.) So he browsed the web for good deals and we headed up to Appleton. We went to American and found the camera we wanted. All the salespeople were busy so I suggested we look at the furniture while we waited. We walked into the dining room area and I spotted a buffet and hutch. It was everything we’d been looking for: shelves for glasses, drawers for accessories, some wine rack functionality. This one even had recessed lighting.

But even with their 25% off all furniture sale, it was still more than we wanted to pay for this piece of furniture. So we continued around the display room and back into the bargain center. And wouldn’t you know it, we found the exact same piece back there, priced $800 less than the one out on the floor. It was returned by a customer who special ordered a whole dining room set. So there was nothing wrong with it, but they couldn’t put in back on the sales floor as new. Score! After taking a break and wandering through the couch section we went back to pick up the camera. With the “help” of semi-competent sales guys we found out they didn’t even have the model we wanted. Well, at least the guy said they didn’t. So we went back to look at the buffet and hutch a little more. Since it was bargain center furniture it had to be paid in full (ie, you couldn’t use their payment plan) and picked up in three days. Adam called his dad and he came to the store to check it out. After a thorough examination he declared it fine and left to go back for their party. We left and found the camera we wanted at Walmart. Then we went back to American and got the salesperson to drop the price an additional $100. So we bought it:



Adam and his dad picked it up Saturday morning. We moved our glassware and booze Saturday afternoon.



The cats went crazy all day Saturday and into Sunday. They can fit underneath it and JC has already been caught up on the bar area as well as on the first shelf. Grrr. Even the cactus doesn’t deter him. So, in summary, we went in to buy a camera, we came out with a buffet and hutch. Whoops. And it’s totally my fault since it was my idea to kill time in the furniture department.

Anyway, after all the running around on Friday I was tired so we cooked out for dinner and stayed in. I think we were asleep before fireworks even began. We both woke up around 11 when the neighbors really let loose with the booming.

After picking up the buffet/hutch on Saturday morning, I rode back up with Adam and his dad and we went to Linens ‘n Things to get him some new pillows. Then we finished up our grocery shopping for the week. I’m not really sure what we did the rest of the day. Obviously nothing noteable.

Yesterday morning we were up at like 6. So sad. We went up to IHOP for breakfast so I could try their New York Cheesecake pancakes. Except they were out of cheesecake bites. Argh! So I was stuck with my usual Viva le French Toast. Boo. Then Adam dropped me off at home while he went to go golfing with his friend Jon. I watched Persepolis (not bad, funny but also depressing) and then returned it for Hairspray, which we watched last night. I stopped at Shopko for some shirts as well. I cleaned the oven (I had spilled meatloaf on the bottom and it was stinky) and spent time cuddling with the kitties while watching mind-numbing television (that would be E!) I also caught Ted and Conner in a compromising position:



Adam went straight from golfing to his grandma’s house to help fill in some concrete in her garage. She’s putting the house on the market so she’s trying to fix up some little things. He got back home in time for dinner – chicken broccoli calzones. Yum. We watched the movie after dinner and then called it a night.

And this morning was back to work for both of us. No more vacation until mid-August when we have our second camping trip planned. Hopefully Door County doesn't get flooded too. :)