Yargh

The best thing about Thanksgiving is the gathering of family and friends without the pressure of religion or presents. Perfect holiday for a poor atheist, eh?

But the worst thing about Thanksgiving is the cleaning. At least, when the Thanksgiving is at my own house. Yesterday was fun - cooking, baking.... basically goofing off in the kitchen. One of my favorite passtimes. Today, however, has been mostly cleaning. I even ironed! (Gasp!) I decided to start at the east end of the townhouse and work my way westward. So far, the kitchen (except the sink) and dining area look pretty good. You can even see the top of the dining room table. Anyone who knows me knows that a clear dining room table is a feat of monumental proportions.

Now I'm on to the coffee table. EEK!

Theft! I like it!

Stealing a MEME. Again, from Karla, who stole it from someone else, who stole it from someone else, etc. etc...

Yourself: silly
Your partner: five feet away, also computing
Your hair: strawberry blonde slowly edging towards brown
Your Mother: progressively more senile
Your Father: dead, damn it!
Your Favorite Item: prolly my MacBook Pro
Your dream last night: don't remember, the night before last was about derranged kittens and 9/11. Yargh.
Your Favorite Drink: Grey Goose vodka martini with a twist
Your Dream Car: currently the Astin Martin DB S
Your Dream Home: the Dwell home or some other such modern design prefab architecture
The Room You Are In: what do you mean what room? The second floor of our townhouse only has one room!
Your Ex: was more than 12 years ago - who cares?
Your fear: falling, seriously
Where you Want to be in Ten Years? a pedi EM doc with a house and a kid
Who you hung out with last night: husband and two kitties - one who is usually not pukey but currently throwing up what looks to be a cockroach... ew!
What You're Not: licensed
Muffins: blueberry
One of Your Wish List Items: my license
The Last Thing You Did: lounge
What You Are Wearing: a sweater! In Texas!
Your favorite weather: winter - specifically snowy winter.
Your Favorite Book: Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey
Last thing you ate: Bo Luc Lac
Your Life: not where it should be
Your mood: quitely furious
Your Best Friends: coming in tomorrow!
What are you thinking about right now: perhaps going to bed early
Your car: needs repair
What are you doing at the moment: uhh... typing?
Your summer: freaking HOT
Relationship status: loving
What is on your TV: DVR or the Discovery Channel
What is the weather like: cool, thank the fates
When is the last time you laughed: dinner

Yay! A MEME for me!

Turkey Day!

For the first time, we're having Thanksgiving at our house. (Okay, okay, we had a Thanksgiving in our apartment in Boston, but that was an apartment, not our HOME.) Which means, for the first time, I can actually do some prep work with my stuff in my space. How cool!

So today I kinda went apeshit with the prep. Here's the list:

2 pies (sweet potato, not pumpkin, alas)
one bread starter
four pints of veggie stock
four pints of chicken stock
and a huge ass grocery run

Not to mention tiling a half of the north bathroom wall. Oh yeah, and halfway through my pressure cooker broke so I had to go get a replacement. Yargh. But that wasn't all bad, 'cause my first pressure cooker was a lesson in why product research is good. Ya see, I bought a model of pressure cooker that can only create an internal pressure of 12 psi. The international standard for pressure cookers, and thus all pressure cooker recipes, is an internal pressure of 15 psi. That was a little factoid I had not grasped before making my purchase. Oops.

I'm sure you can understand the problem.

But now that the under-researched pressure cooker has kicked it, I had an excuse to replace it with the real deal. Yay!

And tomorrow? Bread baking!

Almost thirty

I haven't been posting much 'cause I haven't much to write about. I'm still wicked underemployed, incredibly frustrated with TSMB and depressed as hell. And really, who wants to read me whining? Is not so good.

On the super upside, my best friend (AF) is flying in two days. And I saw the new Bond. (Side note - the Dossier option on the previous site is quite cool. Especially the psych profile. Hehe.) New Bond, new Bond - YAY! Ahhhh... How I love the Bond. I even like the new actor playing Bond - Daniel Craig - is so incredibly hot as 007. He gets this little quirky pout whenever something pleases or amuses him. I don't care that he's blond. His huge baby blues make up for it. (I have a thing for men with intense blue eyes, just like my wonderful Mr. Man.) Check out all the different Bond sites - each is very cool.

And AF is coming to town. We're gonna make a turkey and sweet potato pie and something veggie - our neighbor Lance is coming over, and he doesn't eat meat. I know, he's crazy - cow is GOOD. We'll have to find some movie to see after we stuff ourselves with tryptophan, 'cause it is the tradition in her family. Then again, we may just put in a DVD and pass out on the couch.

Oh yeah, and did I mention I turn 30 on Sunday. Yargh.

Camping!

I finally talked the husband into going camping. We went down to New Braunfels, TX for Wurstfest, stayed at a campground on the Guadelupe River, and drank copious amounts of beer.

All of which are good things. But the best thing was definitely our tent. Why, you might ask? 'Cause a) it was free, b) it was freaking huge c) we were actually able to put the damn thing up in the dark. It has these huge, nearly 1.5" diameter poles - they're heavy as all hell. And there weren't any drawings or directions or anything - just two drunk (and possibly high, knowing them) guys, my tired husband and myself. But we did it! The thing went up, didn't fall over, and kept us sheltered for the night.

Of course, the other fly in the ointment was the fact that the stupid thing doesn't have a rain fly. And, of course, the next day we all started feeling raindrops.

Oops.

Luckily for us, it was a false alarm and nothing more drenching than a drizzle. But we would have been in major trouble if the rain had actually come.

On another note, we pretty much had the campsite to ourselves. We reserved three spots - which amounted to the square footage of a freaking postal stamp - but ended up using seven. Hee! We pretty much had our own little tent city. Everyone else's tent was nicer than ours, but ours was the tallest, so that's something.

I also met the oddest human ever. I can't decide if Billdo (yes, that's a reference to dildos) is the greatest waste of carbon on the face of the planet or simply a marginally likable, no more intelligent than he needs to be guy... but not quite as much of a waste as I initially thought. The first night Billdo was the biggest cockbiter I had ever met, but the second night he slowed down into a mostly-normal human. I can't decide which Bill is the real one.

But anyway, hubbie and I are going to buy a tent (with a rainfly, thank-you-very-much) and try this camping thing again sometime soon. Yup.