Wedding!

I suppose after that tease in my last post, it's the least I can do to start off this month by talking about the wedding we attended last weekend.

I love weddings. It's a chance to dance and laugh. To see friends and celebrate. To get nostalgic about our own wedding. And it helps that our friends and family tend to put on amazing affairs. (Disclaimer, I'm probably rather biased in that evaluation).

Dinosaurs!

While in town for the wedding, we stopped by the Houston Museum of Natural Science. All I can say is, if you get a chance to go, GO! It was amazing. The hall of palentology included some incredibly detailed trilobites, awe inspiring dinosaur skeletons, and cheeky plaques and displays. The mineral hall was breathtaking. And we found nemo (along with a lot of gorgeous specimens) in the mollusk display. It really deserves much more of a write up than this. Do wear your walking shoes though, it's a full day of discovery.

Game Night

Some of our friends have invited us to a standing game night. We've been a couple of times now and had a blast. Great games, good conversation, and staying up till 1-2am. It's like college with none of the homework and all of the fun. : )

Vote

Much of our political process in the US leaves me worn out, cynical, and crabby. The mudslinging, the selective memories, the fear mongering...ugh.

But on election day, I can't help but be buoyed by the passion for the process. The name calling, the arguments, the mean spirited "jokes"...they all turn into a single rallying cry "GO VOTE!". It's beautiful to watch everyone come together, to share in the common purpose of exercising our right and responsibility as citizens.

Vote I did. I hope you did too.

Halloween 2012-Year of the Meme

As I mentioned, the hubby and I were invited to a costume party. A friend on facebook had considered (and rejected) nyan cat as her halloween costume, so I suggested it to hubby as an idea for his. He liked the idea and I had a pretty good plan for bringing it to life. After much pondering, I decided to stay on theme and go as my favorite meme of recent history.


I thought it turned out rather well.

Pink and Yellow and DIY

The hubby and I have been invited to a Halloween/Day of the Dead party next Saturday, so today is The Day of Making Costumes. I'm stoked! Pictured above are the supplies for my costume; any guesses as to what I am making? : )

Lizzie Bennet Diaries

I have been a fan of Pride an Prejudice for, basically, forever. Which is why the Lizze Bennet Diaries caught my attention. It's kept my attention because it's brilliantly scripted, well acted, and adds some reinterpretation to the basic story line as well as modernizing it. Go, watch it now, thank me later.

Inchy Worm

I made a new friend this weekend. One of the very few bugs I actually like. He/She was just so cute and so dedicated to inching along the roll of paper towels. Bunch and stretch. Bunch and stretch. Bunch and stretch!

Rolled

So this happened. AGAIN.

Our house and one down the street are favorite targets for rolling (or tp'ing as it was called in CA). The hubby ran off a group of 3 boys one night after seeing a roll go sailing by the upstairs picture window on his way to the bathroom. We're fairly sure that this is some sort of adolescent cry for female attention--the house down the street has a teenage daughter as does one just two doors down from us--and that they have screwed up their addresses.

The first time I was willing to laugh it off--kids do stupid things, and surely it would wash down eventually, right? After three more times of pulling toilet paper out of trees and watching what we couldn't reach (the photo above is AFTER cleanup) linger beyond all reason, it's gotten old.

I'm contemplating a large lawn sign that reads something like "SHE DOESN'T LIVE HERE" or "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK IT'LL BE ANY DIFFERENT THIS TIME?".

Our neighbors, however, feel even worse than we do. Several different households all feel that *they* are the intended targets and came over to apologize and help clean up. So, boo for punk high school kids and hooray for awesome neighbors?

Hello

In my last post, I mentioned that we sold the Pontiac. As you might imagine, this wasn't some wild hair. In fact, it was step 2. Step 1 was purchasing a new Toyota Matrix. Nautical blue metallic. Blue tooth enabled. With the spoiler and body side moldings and (simply because it's what the dealer could find) tinted windows.

The hubby is over the moon about his new love and has busily gone to work geeking it out. The blue tooth means his car and his smartphone can have deep pseudo-intellectual conversations. My husband's ever inquiring mind means that he found and set up an ap that allows him to set conditional behavior. Specifically, he's set it up so that as soon as he enters his car, his phone syncs with the car and turns on Pandora. No set up time, no fiddling, just sit down and wham! music of choice. It's crazy fabulous. As is the rest of the car. And my husband : )

GoodBye

Last weekend, we sold the Pontiac. This car was my first car. My parents bought it from my grandmother when it became clear she could no longer drive herself around town. The deal was mom would drive my grandma and I would drive myself.

This was the car I took to college. The one where I left the lights on and discovered, upon leaving my then friend's (now hubby's) apartment at 1 in the morning, that my battery was dead. One call to AAA and many hours later, that friend and I spent an hour driving the freeways in the dead of night to recharge the battery. (Why yes, my husband has always been completely awesome. : )

It was the car we shared when a dead battery caused his parents to decide to sell his car. It was the car we drove up and down California to visit my parents and back again and, finally, to move to LA for grad school. It was the car we drove from LA to Alabama, loaded down with things to precious or necessary for the movers. It was the car that we continued to share until we bought my Corolla. Then it became my husband's. At 17 years old, it's been aging out. A blown fuse with no available replacement parts took out the horn and the air bag. The air conditioning has some unidentified leak. The steering wheel literally comes off in your hands in powdery pieces on hot days. The plastic is degrading due to UV exposure and, on hot summer days, smells awful. But the hubby has had a short, 2 mile commute, so it's been manageable.

Last Saturday, we sold the car to a coworker of my husband's. He intended to use it for a rally car, but seeing that it was in impressive shape for a 17 year old car, he's decided instead to fix it up himself and give it to a family member. I'm pleased that it will live a bit longer instead of being sent to a scrap yard and I suddenly find myself nostalgic and a bit misty eyed. It was a good car and it's been part of the fabric of my life for so long that it seems strange to see it suddenly gone.

Number Four

The hubby was visited by a fourth scorpion the other night, as he tried to use the bathroom in peace. Unfortunately for the little critter, he was spotted, scooped and flushed without fanfare.

I am a little alarmed at the increasing frequency with which we are finding these and I'm keeping my fingers crossed they continue to remain downstairs.

Third Time's the Charm

I made many trips up and down the stairs today. I was putting my craft room back to rights and apparently that included a free stairs workout. (Downstairs with giveaways, upstairs with tape. Downstairs with trash, upstairs with water.) And all day long, I kept seeing this weird black thing on one of the steps. Too dark to be cat hair, too small to be a hairball. And all day I kept wondering what it was and hurrying past it because I was a woman on a mission.

So when it caught my eye again as I was headed upstairs after dinner, I stopped to take a closer look.



Oh, you can't quite see it?

Finally Framed

Picked up my mating today and was finally able to frame this beauty. It's headed for my office so everytime I run across something tough I can say "But, ah! I conquered that!"

Hullo Bread Machine!

Over the last few years, the hubby and I have gotten more and more interested in making our own food, from scratch. First to go was pre-prepared meals, snacks, and brownie box mixes. Then store bought jams, salsas, spaghetti sauces, and pickles. The next item on our radar was bread. And ya'll, we eat a lot of bread in this house. My hubby is a carb happy snacker. Where I am more likely to reach for chips or nuts or whatever requires absolutely no preparation at all, he snacks on slices of sandwich bread, rolled up tortillas, and leftover rolls. To the point that, with just two adults in the house, we go through 1-2 loaves of bread a week. Plus any incidental tortillas, buns, rolls, etc.

Enter the breadmaker from my grandmother.

PE studying has stopped us from playing before now, but this week, we pulled out the bread maker and made:

• Wheat bread
• White bread
• Breadsticks
• Cinnamon Rolls

(For the last two, we let the machine mix and proof the dough and away we went!)

At this point I figure we have no reason to ever buy bread again.

Nice and Toasty

Last weekend we bought a space heater. One downside to a lightly furnished, two story, drafty house is that the downstairs is perpetually cold. As in, last winter when we had our month of nothing over 20 degrees outside, our downstairs was hovering at about 52 degrees. WAY TOO COLD. We would layer on jackets to cook dinner. Ridiculous.

Enter the space heater! Everything began well. Nice toasty heat, lovely oscillating motion. For about 3 days we enjoyed our heater, carting it up and downstairs to switch between kitchen, rec room, and bed room as desired. Blissful. It gave me hope that I might not forget that my toes exist this winter.

Then came the funny burning smell. Sigh. Back into the box, back to the store, switch for a new one.

Get home, set it up, realize...the display is broken on this one. *headdesk*

So, the plan is to take this one back too. Any recommendations? Honeywell (which this one is) was fairly well regarded on Amazon.

I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up If I Tried

Sometime last year, the cats started poking at something in the kitchen. I asked my hubby what they had and he said "A scorpion". I about flipped my lid. I grabbed the cats and he got the job of dealing with the scorpion. Unfortunately, nowhere in there did I have a chance to grab my camera and no one believed me when I said there had been a scorpion in my kitchen! It had been pretty good sized, about 3" long, so when the hubby was so calm about it, and everyone else insisted they weren't indigenous to the area, I began to half wonder if my husband was pulling some sort of prank.

Tonight I came home from work and began my usual routine--pet the cats, raid the pantry. Except when I opened the pantry, I noticed something rather large for a bug moving on the floor. This time I DID manage to grab my camera and took pictures with one hand while holding back Jack The Fierce Hunter with the other. As I was doing this the hubby arrived home, thus ensuring that he once again got to deal with the scorpion while I corralled cats.

This one was much smaller, about 1.5 inches long, so not quite as impressive as the last one. But at least I got pictures!

California Raisins

I figured that going through the boxes sent form my Grandmother's house would turn up a few surprises. I was prepared for antiques and old tins and the accouterments of elderly life. I was not prepared to find two California raisin Halloween costumes. I thought the raisins were freaky enough back when they were popular, it never occurred to me that people would dress up like them. However, there there are.

The costumes look like they could be handmade from pre-printed panels (they are simply straight stitched with the edges left raw), but if so it must have been part of a kit because there is a plastic piece to give the face area some structure. Speaking of which, wasn't it nice of them to add not only eye holes but air holes?



I'm guessing that one of my Aunts made these for her daughters but why they were saved is beyond me. They certainly don't look the 20+ years old that they are, even the plastic is in good shape.

Do you remember the California raisins? Did you think they were awesome or creepy?

Plop

I was pulling into our garage today when I heard a "plop" and saw something largeish land on the windshield.

It's The Little Things

I believe this is the first time in my life I have ever finished a jar of spices before it expired.