New Shoes

Mr. D was so depressed after watching the Bills lose on Sunday that he just wanted to get out of the house. He had mentioned that he needed new tennis shoes, so I suggested a trip to DSW. I also needed a new pair of shoes, as my athletic shoes have probably had it. They are so old that they have puppy chew marks on the heel.

While we were there, I picked up these cuties by... Dr. Scholl's. No joke. They are super comfy with a teeny wedge heel. I could live in them.

The Amazing Race

We're sitting around watching TV after a lazy day. I'm wearing my equivalent of sweatpants - a jersey skirt from Old Navy. Very comfy, a good option to change into after work, or when I don't want to get dressed. I've only worn one in public once or twice. One of our favorite shows is back on - hooray. Every time we're watching, Mr. D brings up the fact that he wants to be on the show one day. I predict disaster, but we'll get to see, because I think the guy (Chad?) of the guy/girl team where the guy is going to propose during the race acts like Mr. D. I am pretty sure that is a terrible plan. What if they get kicked of before he does it? What if they break up on the race (as has happened before)?

Anyway best quotes from this week:
I can't feel my face.
I have the worst headache ever.
Maybe we're our boat.

Before and After

No, this isn't a post with my elbow in it, and I am alive - it didn't kill me.
Despite the whole elbow thing happening this week, we managed to finish the living room rearrangement. Well sort of finish. In the ideal world where we had infinite money we would probably get a new carpet, the couch from the HGTV Urban Oasis apartment, and maybe a new chair. Eventually, eventually. For now, getting rid of the IKEA bookcases (nothing really wrong with them until the movers punched holes in them when we moved in - so yes, we've lived with them like that for two years) and my old TV stand (when I made the dumbest purchase ever and, in my cheapness, bought the last non-flat screen TV ever made).
So, the old bookcases did not look bad, by any means:
Note: The white thing all the way on the right is a cabinet that we used as a printer/supply stand. Yes, those are Mr. D's socks drying on the Rock Band drums.

This is what new living room looks like:

Not nearly as dark, and not just because the lighting is better. Honestly, part of it is that we got rid of (taking to the Strand (kind of like Half Price Books) and I say taking, because they are boxed up in the bedroom right now) a LOT of our books. While I would like to have bookshelves full of books, we decided to only keep ones we use all the time (ie cookbooks or bar books) or might actually look at again. Lately, we've been reading on the iPhones/Kindle (Mr. D got one for Christmas - actually two in the year of multiple Christmas gifts), so we don't have books, except for cookbooks or ones that are given to us.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. The printer is now on the wine fridge, which was previously a junk repository. The only issue now that white cabinet is gone, is that the curtain that just went to the top of it now doesn't cover the newly exposed section of window. The curtains are just panels from Bed, Bath & Beyond, but now they're out of the long ones - everywhere. So a new window treatment solution is in order. Sigh.

Big thank you to Mr. D for arranging for Salvation Army to come pick up the old TV stand (he called Salvation Army, and I talked the doorman into keeping it in the package closet until they came). They're one of the few places that will pick up donations in NYC. We (I) decided the bookshelves were too damaged to salvage - the fact that they nearly fell on top of me while I was taking them apart and wobbled from side to side (as in you could make the shelf not have right angles) made me think Salvation Army wouldn't have taken it anyway.

Owie

Last week, I scraped my elbow - a little scrape. Annoying, because it was right on the part where you rest your arm. Flash forward to yesterday morning, when my elbow wakes me up because it hurts, at 7:00 am. I try to go back to sleep, and if I'm going to call my dad for medical advice - he's a doctor - then I'd like to wait until it's at least 7 back home.

I couldn't wait that long - I called the house at 6:45 his time and told him I thought I had an infected elbow. At this point I was crying, since my still sleepy brain immediately jumped to the time my cousin had an infected scrape on his knee and wound up needing surgery. Aaah. After I calmed down, my dad told me that it could be inflammation or an infection, so I should go to the 24 hr clinic, if I could.

Luckily, the clinic is only a few blocks away, and I was the only person in the waiting room when I got there. The doctor's must have been changing shifts, because I still had to wait 40 minutes. Once I got in, the doctor was very nice, he thought I might have a minor infection and definitely some inflammation, so he gave me a prescription for some heavy-duty antibiotics and told me to keep warm compresses on it.

Off I (yes, I - Mr. D stayed home) went to the pharmacy, which was a block away. I handed the scrip over to the tech, and he acted surprised that I wanted to wait for it - wouldn't you think that people who are getting really strong anti-biotics would want them as quickly as possible. He didn't seem to think so - he told me 15 minutes, and after 20, I walked up to the counter to check. The pharmacist had no idea that I was waiting, but 30 seconds later it was ready - thanks, buddy.

On my way home, I played good-wife and picked up one ingredient for Mr. D's gumbo (J&R were coming for dinner) and grabbed coffee. After I got home, I used the heating pad on my arm, then fell back to sleep for an hour. Then we went to the market to get some last ingredients for dinner - which I regretted the whole time we were there. I could feel every step in my arm. I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between cleaning and laying in bed with the heating pad on my arm.

Luckily, the swelling in my elbow went down by the time I woke up this morning, which meant that I didn't need to go back to the clinic to have it drained. My arm still hurts, but I can move it without wincing every time.

Bus Ride

I took my first bus ride yesterday (in NYC). The reason is that we needed another box from the Container Store for the new living room setup. The store is on the way home, but if you take a subway, get out, and get back on, you have to pay twice, but if you ride a bus for one of the legs, the second leg is free. So I'm cheap, but I also just wanted to try it out.
As you can see from the picture, it started out well: sunny day, almost no one else there, and we were zipping along. It only lasted a few blocks. Clouds appeared, more people got on the bus, and traffic came to a standstill as the rain started.
Eventually, I had to get out and run thrower few blocks in the rain. Fail.

I'm old

> Running to the bank for new work when I encounter 4 high school girls walking 4-across on the sidewalk. As we get ready to pass, they somehow manage to make it impossible for me to pass them. One of them said - I'm sorry MA'AM!! For the record, I'm wearing jeans and a top - very un-grown-up-like.
>
> Sent from my iPhone

Farm Share Box Update

Our farm share box has been a bit of a debacle lately. I mentioned that I had cooked during my week off from work - but since we were out of town, we certainly didn't have time to eat the ginormous zucchinis (as big as a roll of paper towels) that were sent in our box. So that they wouldn't go bad, I grated up the zucchini and popped it in the freezer for zucchini bread - the first loaf is coming out of the oven as we speak!

Dinner Tonight

Swordfish steaks w/ white wine, balsamic vinegar & caper sauce, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini fritters. The swordfish recipe is from Epicurious (but I threw the tomatoes in just because). To make the fritters, I cut one of our CSA zucchinis into matchstick sized pieces and added the to the Ratio fritter batter, seasoned with a little salt, pepper, and dried basil. The sauce "kind of" went all over the place, probably because of all the extra tomato juice.

New office view

Not too shabby - and I have my own little office!

Exercise

I don't know if golf in a cart counts, but I know tennis does, which means I've worked out at least two of the past three days. Yay me. Sidenote: my former employer always spelled yay "yeah," but I think that is how you spell what is pronounced as "yah."

The new job is going well, especially since I found out I get to leave at 5. Even though my commute is a bit longer (10 more minutes), this gives me more than enough time!

Sent from my iPhone

Labor Day Vacay

We're in North Carolina, (not the coast, but golf country) at the rental house my parents got, get this - 18 years ago. I haven't been here in years, I think Mr. D has been here more recently than I have, for one of my dad's birthday golf trips. It was weird coming back, and especially weird since we're the only ones here (we invited J&R to come with us, but R's parents are in NYC to see his new nephew).

Earlier in the week, Hurricane Earl gave us a bit of pause, but we realized that we weren't going to be anywhere near close enough to the coast to worry about it, so here we are, relaxing in the gorgeous weather, the faint smell of grilling in the air as the UT vs. Rice game gets started.

Thinking about the hurricane makes me think of all the "recent hurricanes, which I have been lucky enough to avoid my traveling. I remember Hurricane Rita, which caused HUGE amounts of panic, as almost all of Houston evacuated to Dallas/Austin, remembering Katrina, which struck New Orleans just weeks before. Mr. D and I had just met that summer, and his friends were trying to get me to wait out the storm in Austin with him, but I was all set to go to San Francisco for my friend Sara's wedding - and was able to move my flight up a day. The window in my office overlooked I-45, and the road was completely bumper-to-bumper with cars, and the southbound traffic was non-existent, as they had closed the road so people could use that side for northbound traffic, too. My dad took me to the airport the next morning, and the streets were deserted (Mom and little sis had gone to Dallas, but Dad was staying with my uncle who had just had surgery). Later that afternoon, they closed the airport, but, as we learned from the news in San Francisco, the storm was not nearly as bad as had been predicted.

Two years ago, as we were spending a week at my parents' house after our honeymoon, but before driving up to NYC, my Mom actually made us leave early, so that we would miss Hurricane Gustav, which turned out to be a dud of a storm.

Two weeks after that, we moved into our apartment, and my brother and a couple of his friends came up to visit for Labor day before his second year of med school at UT Galveston. While he was up, Ike hit Galveston hard, and we just had to watch the news for word, while the boys realized what they had left undone back home. My brother realized he had left all of his textbooks on the floor, while we kept reassuring another that someone must have thought to get his turtle before leaving town (despite the fact that the frat house flooded, the turtle was fine).

We've been relatively lucky to have funny stories about what happened during the hurricanes and not stories of injury or destruction (though my brother did have a huge job to deal with as fraternity president that year).

Life of Leisure

My sister called me last night to see how my week of leisure was going (I finished up work last week and don't start the new job until Tuesday). My week has not been very leisurely. Monday we spent driving back from Mr. D's parents' house, then swapped out the TV stand. Tuesday, I went to the dentist (at 9 am), made sandwich bread (since I had time) and swapped out the old bookcases for the new ones - and it was hot in the apartment - thank you, heat wave (oh, and I made Alton Brown's spaghetti sauce, which probably didn't help the heat situation).

Yesterday I took the dog to the park, did some "fitness yoga" on the on-demand exercise channel, then collapsed, took a shower, and made some ravioli. The ravioli turned into a disaster; when I went to take the food processor bowl out of the fridge, the top popped off and half of the shrimp paste plopped in the refrigerator and then on the floor - fail. When Mr. D came home, we stopped by Eataly - which is basically an Italian food store/restaurant/theme park started by Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich, and maybe someone else - in the hopes that we would be able to eat there. Umm, the hordes of people (literally) and hour-long wait to eat in the pizza section led us to eat elsewhere (craftbar - yum). We did see Mario walking around helping the employees. He's kind of like part of the family - we did go see Avatar with him (or, his family was sitting next to us in the theater - same thing. If you watch MasterChef (of course we do - it's a reality show with food), then you know that Joe Bastianich is the token jerk on the judges panel who rarely has anything nice to say and throws food in the garbage.

Today, I plan to take the dog to the park, take some change to the Coinstar machine, order the last piece of the bookcase (we weren't sure we were going to get it), sell the books we don't need anymore, make red beans & rice, and make another batch of ravioli (chicken this time). Order the bookcase, done. Dog park, on my way so I can get iced coffee (we're out). In order of probability of happening today - red beans, ravioli, coinstar, and books - I still have tomorrow off, so the last two could happen tomorrow (except I remembered that I have to do laundry so we can pack for our trip to NC - not the coast, so no real Earl worries).

Things I made from Ratio this week: bread, mayonnaise (a bit of a fail, but I'm not sure exactly why), pasta for the ravioli, and filling for the ravioli. Have I mentioned I love this book?

Before and after (so far) pictures of the bookshelves: