Weekend at the in-laws

We're in Western New York at the D's house. So far a traffic-y ride over, a power washer waking me at 7:30 this am, a trip to the car show (hence the power washer), and a trip to the lake (and Sasha's first boat ride)...

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Yargh

Dear Mr. D - I know that you are a little happy/grateful/excited that I have all of next week off between my two jobs, but let's keep the excitement in check. For instance, now that we aren't moving, I'm glad we found a new bookcase/TV stand that we both like for the living room. Hopefully, I can pull the books and knickknacks we don't need in one day and get everything ready to install for when you get home from work. It is a little convenient that most of the boxes came early, but I really think we should hold off pulling everything else out of the box at least until we get back from your parents' house this weekend. I agree that the one bookcase does look great, but since the old bookcases are still in place, it's a bit inconvenient (not to mention terrorizing Sasha) for it to be in the hallway to the front door. Maybe we can move it before we leave For our road trip tomorrow. I love you, I really do (and I promise to dispose of the two old laptops that have been in the bedroom).

Me

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Dinner Tonight

We made sausage and pepper pizza with homemade fried unknown squash. The pepper and squash (a zucchini-colored ball) came from our CSA box. I just breaded the zucchini and fried it up. I made the dough this morning before work and let it rise while we were gone. Mr. D made the sausage a few weeks ago so we just had to pull it out of the freezer. I was pretty proud of our little meal, but prouder that I remembered to take a picture before we ate it.

Use Video Games for Good, not Evil

Yesterday afternoon, my boss invented a report for us to do for a client for Monday, which left me to do some formatting for a PowerPoint, and we did not finish until 6:10 pm. On a Summer Friday*.

Anyway, as I suspected, Mr. D beat me home, but had not taken the dog out yet. Usually the dog-taking-out schedule is that I take her out in the morning, then when I get home, and Mr. D takes her out at night. There is a unspoken agreement that if Mr. D gets home first, he will take the Soosh outside. When I got home yesterday, Mr. D was plopped on the couch with the dog playing video games. "Have you taken the dog out yet?"

"No, I just got home from work, when would I have had time to do that."

In my head: "I don't know, the cowboy on screen is already halfway to wherever, how much time did that take?"

Out loud: "Hmm, fine. Do you want to take the dog outside or make dinner."

Him: "I'll make dinner."

Best deal I ever made. Not that dinner was going to be too difficult, some fish fillets with veggies from our CSA box (tomato and mozzarella salad and sauteed squash). Yumm.

*Summer Fridays are a weird thing. My brother-in-law asked my sister why we had summer Fridays, when our business wasn't necessarily seasonal. I think it's more of a New York, Northeast type of thing. Basically everyone gets out early on Friday, though some companies are just having off on alternate Fridays. Our office is a little more frustrating; since it's not a set time, we can't make plans dependent on our leaving early.

New Job!

Yay me. The reason last week was so stressful (really last month) was that I found a new job. Whoo hoo. The stress was because I was debating when to tell my boss, and eventually decided that, in this situation, two weeks notice would be sufficient. The stress was waiting until Friday to tell her.

Her personality is such that I did not know what would happened. I started (secretly) cleaning out my personal space (in our office, we have one drawer to use for our personal belongings, including your purse), because one of the scenarios included me having to leave right after I gave notice.

That day, I was kind of looking forward to going home, what with the wicked cold medicine hangover, and, since that was the night we were having dinner at J&R's place and J had told me I should come hang out while she was cooking, because she had the day off.

The actual act of telling my boss that I had quit was very anti-climactic. We sat down and she rather condescendingly told me that she would make it easy for me, because she like to make things easy for young women when they had something difficult to talk about. Um, what? At that point, I basically was just laughing in my head the entire time we were talking.

All in all, it worked out. I'm out and on to bigger and better things. Too be continued...

Don't Try this at Home

Last week was a bit stressful (more on that later); so stressful, in fact, that I think I had the beginnings of a cold on Thursday. I really thought it was allergies, which it could have been. I started having symptoms Thursday afternoon at work, where I was a bit sniffly and sneezy. Not that big of a deal, considering most people come to work sick at my office. I think there have been maybe 3 times when people have taken a sick days in the almos-two years that I have been there.

That evening I was meeting J for drinks, so I took some of my allergy medicine. I felt better pretty quickly, but I knew that I wanted to nip a cold in the bud, before it started, so after drinks (really just one glass of wine) with J, I came home and ordered some pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). Then, right before bed, I decided to take some NyQuil and some Aleve. NOT a good idea. Too many antihistamines at once. I woke up with the worst fog/hangover ever. I didn't lose the fog until 2 pm in the afternoon!

Note to self: allergy meds or cold meds, not both

Kitchen Goodness

J and I met up for drinks on the terrace at the apartment complex, one of our favorite places to meet up - though we did have to move the party to the lounge area when it started to drizzle on us. While we were there, we talked about what I should bring over to their house for dinner the next night. I was assigned dessert, and assured J that I would be able to bring it, even though I would have work the next day. At 8:30, we went upstairs to our respective apartments to have dinner. Due to the power of the Ratio book, I was able to throw together a pound cake that night. Pound cake is really easy, but the one is the book is a citrus pound cake, which wouldn't go with the hazelnut ice cream Mr. D and I had made the weekend before nearly so well as a chocolate one.

That is the wonderful thing about the ratio book. You know you have the basics, and the book shows you how easy it can be to tweak the recipes, so I just added some cocoa powder to the recipe - but since cocoa is so dry, I just added a little milk to the mixture to make sure that the cake stayed moist. Pop it in the oven, and voila.

Once we were at J&R's apartment, I made some chocolate sauce (also ratio) - heat some milk and pour over an equal amount of chocolate. Stir to melt the chocolate, and you're done (but you can add a liquor or flavoring to it too). To make the dessert, we put the pound cake on the plate, topped it with hazelnut ice cream and then drizzled (read - drowned) the ice cream with the chocolate. Tadaaa!

Note - this was a bit of a fail, as I tried to remember to take a picture of this last night when we had the leftovers for our own dessert. I remembered before dinner, and I remembered after dinner, but then I forgot until after I had finished devouring my dessert.

Anniversary dinner

Saturday night, Mr. D and I went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary at Annisa. The head chef, Anita Lo, was on Top Chef masters. The meal was delicious; a lot of the menu was seafood, so we stuck to that for the most part. My appetizer was soup dumplings with seared foie gras on top. Soup dumplings are one of the most amazing inventions ever. For those of you unfamiliar with them, they are dumplings that have soup broth inside of them, so when you bite into them the yummy broth explodes into your mouth - soo good.

The only problem was the air conditioning in the restaurant. I can understand that sometimes the a/c might not work that well, but when you see the he'd waiter take off his jacket, and that it was cooler outside than it was inside, you would think they might open the door.

After dinner we went to the Rusty Knot, which is a tiki bar that Mr. D has been wanting to try. He warned me that it was a bit of a dive bar, but a) I didn't mind if I was overdressed and b) NYC dive bars would usually still not qualify as a dive bar in Texas. The bar was pretty tiny and crowded, but fun - decorated like someones basement might be if they wanted a Hawaiian theme in the 60's. The Rusty Knot is also a drink - kind of a slushy mojito, but with the mind blended, so you don't get the big leaves.

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Why I Like Being Married

Since the beginning of July, Mr. D has been on a special rotation in his department that has the reputations for being understaffed, which means the attorneys work longer hours. For the past two weeks, we have been suffering with the longer hours (not too long, but long enough where I have had to eat by myself more nights than not). So, for the most part I've been cooking for myself, which has led me to realize that I am a lazy cook. For the most part, I had pasta w/ leftover pork and whatever veggies I threw in from our CSA box. Super creative, right. I guess I just didn't feel like making a dinner that was more "presentable" since Mr. D wasn't home to eat it, too. If I wasn't eating with someone all the time, would I even bother cooking "nice" meals?

Best Husband Ever

My husband is the best ever. Our anniversary is this Monday (I have jury duty - boo), but we actually exchanged gifts in June, when we purchased new iPhones for each other. Last week, I reminded him that we didn't need to give each other gifts, we had our phones and we are planning to go to a nice dinner on Saturday to celebrate. Mr. D agreed. Until he "forgot" and ordered a present over the weekend.

When the package from Amazon arrived, I thought it contained some picture frames I had ordered to redo the wall behind the couch. Open the box, and ta-daaaa it was a Kitchen-Aid ice cream maker attachment!! Initially I thought my in-laws had sent us an anniversary, then I called Mr. D. and he told me I shouldn't have opened it, because it was my anniversary present. Umm, how was I supposed to know?

Anyway, this was an especially sweet gift, as I had put it on my birthday list, but wasn't lucky enough to get it. He may have also purchased it, since he watched Alton Brown make hazelnut ice cream on Good Eats (Mr. D loooooooves hazelnut, hazelnut anything). Methinks this weekend will include some making of the ice cream...