I'm Finally Cool!!

Attention readers and adoring fans... All 4 of you... I am now all the things I wanted to be via owning- that's right- AN iPAD!!! I'm now the proud lover of yet another piece of fairly unnecessary technology and it makes me feel invincible! You may grovel if you like. Bt really I love my husband so so much and my inlaws for pitching in to buy me this beauty. Jordan worked so hard all week trying to find me a white iPad 2 for my 24th birthday yesterday and he did the impossible! Not only did he find it but he didn't have to wait in a fat line for it :) So major brownie points to my dear husband.

Now, speaking of my birthday... I am now an old hag. Officially in my mid-twenties and feeling grosser than ever about my age, I chose to spend my birthday night eating cereal at home and seeing a movie with Jordan. Although in my defense we haven't had a night in since before we left for Las Vegas last weekend.. We deserved a break! But back to the festivities.... Tonight we shall dine with Hollywood at Mr. Chow's in Beverly Hills. If you haven't been there, go! Tomorrow night we'll act young again at a dinner with friends in Corona Del Mar at The Crow Bar & Kitchen and then we will finally be done with the mad birthday marathon of events.

Look out world, theres a new old lady on the streets!!

Martha Stewart, I Hate You!

Hate is a strong word- more accurately I hate Martha Stewart's website. I found this great recipe to make homemade bath fizzies! And I thought, "What a great gift for my friend Gabby," who is coming down this weekend for her birthday. Fun right? So i got all the ingredients- ordered a 5 lb bag of citric acid online and today I finally made them. I followed the instructions on the site- what I thought was perfectly and then I'm realizing that something isn't right... After you start adding the water/food coloring mixture it's supposed to dampen a bit but not fizz- well, mine was fizzing. Maybe my water to food coloring ratio was off but i had to keep spritzing the mixture or it wouldnt take on the purple color. So it just kept fizzing and fizzing and it's supposed to be 'packable'. Well mine was certainly not that; it was like, growing... fizzing higher and higher. Once I spooned it into the ice cube trays and it looked like this:

I knew somewhere in there I had gone horribly wrong.

So now I'm left with a nasty- although relaxing smelling- mess (lavender breeze) and no thoughtful homemade birthday gift for Gabby.

So here's what I'm annoyed about... the website doesn't have step by step pictures- and maybe because I'm a visual person this helps me more than it might others- but this is more complicated than it looks and I now am let with less than enough cornstarch and baking soda to give it another go :(

I WILL try again though. Soon. Because homemade bath fizzies are just too cute to give up on.

I'm boring, I know.

I'm home sick from work today so it's the perfect time to post! I wish I had something interesting to post about. Oh well. Last night I had two of my best friends over for dinner.. I had planned on making tortellini with chicken and homemade alfredo (a personal specialty) and garlic bread... but then when I was sitting at my computer at work I found myself craving cheddar buttermilk biscuits. I discovered these little beauties at a delicious restaurant in Napa called Farmstead... if you're ever there go to this restaurant. Anyway, because of that little craving I tossed the idea of italian, despite the fact i already had half the ingredients in my house, in search of something that would go with these cheddar buttermilk biscuits, aka: comfort food.


I thought about chicken pot pie- but I don't have those individual bowls to cook them in, I thought about shepard's pie- but it looks weird and one of my friends is allergic to peas, and finally landed on beef stew. I've eaten it plenty in my life but never made it and honestly I really wanted to bust out my crock pot again :) So I used this recipe from Paula Dean as a guideline and adjusted it with beef broth, onion soup mix... flour.. whatever I decided I felt like tossing in there. I was a little concerned things wouldn't turn out well b/c I was making 2 things I'd never attempted before.. BUT everything turned out great!! The stew was delicious, the biscuits were to die for, the mashed potatoes were of course yummy but they're easy, and well the salad was salad.


I also made individual pies in a jar for dessert but we didnt get to eat them b/c the boys wanted to go to the wine bar down the street. So we went and they were closing, then we went to main street and found a bar and continued to bar hop for a while- who goes out on a wednesday night?! Us apparently. I was so exhausted by the first bar I was tired and ready to go home, but no one else did... mhrrr. Oh well we had fun but at a price.. Staying up later than 10:30 (i'm apparently a 23 yr old granny) made the cold I'd been fighting off finally win- hence my sick day.


SO to make myself feel better I'm getting my hair done tomorrow and I'm going- wait for it.... BLONDE! It was between fire red and blonde, and since I went red this time last year I decided it's time to have more fun.


Is this not the most boring post ever? I'm tempted to just delete the whole thing. I'm too tired to think of something clever and entertaining. oh well.

My Subconscious is an Enigma

Wild, vivid dreams are no stranger to my unconscious nights. I often dream of outrageous things, however the last 2 nights they were different somehow...


2 Nights ago I dreamt that my husband and I were at an apartment complex we recently toured and as we stepped out we saw the bright red of the sunset- unusually red- filling the sky... we stared at it and suddenly it opened up and huge figures of men were coming through... they were the same color red like as if made of smoke and mist... I turned to my husband and said, "It's finally time..." and then I fell into unconsciousness. When I woke I was not in Heaven as I expected to be. The rapture had not happened- the sky never opened I just passed out and that was what I saw when I did... I expected that it must have been a premonition or something... the dream went on to other weird things- I woke up and it took a while to shake the feeling that it was real.


Last night I dreamt wildly again... I dreamt we went to the moon we flew in a shuttle- like a shuttle bus. It didn't take long at all actually. There were a lot of people with us too... like just other tourists.  We watched the new world they built on the moon go by our windows as it slowed to show us the beautiful new settlement... almost ready for people to move and live there- make the Moon their new home. It was full of large rivers and lakes and cities built on cliffs by the waterside. It was all new but looked old- like Narnia or Rivendale. With a golden glow and glittering light from the sun shining all over it.


The first dream was a little unsettling... the second was nice, however combined they forebare a frightful  picture.


Now I'm not saying my dreams are of the future or even that the things written to be symbolized by these things in dreams are real or to be taken seriously- but I have always felt that dreams are more than just random thoughts and memories from your waking life jumbled together into a stream of odd events.


I haven't found any dream dictionaries that cover "rapture"... but...


Sun: God, illumination, strength, masculine energy, your true self or conscious ego, life, waking consciousness (ironic, no?), joyous events and prosperity...


The Color Red- passion, anger, raw power, caution/danger, symbol of life...


A red sun predicts a struggle from which you will emerge victorious. (phewf!)


Moon (to see it): femininity, psychic/ intuition, feminine and spiritual self, light in the dark, success in love and business, fertility, new life


Moon (to fly to it): Global Disaster, war, famine, Troubles of all kinds you will soon hear of...




And then I saw this which coincidentally combined both dreams:
To see the heavens illuminated, with the moon in all her weirdness, unnatural stars and a red sun, or a golden one, you may look for distress in its worst form. Death, family troubles, and national upheavals will occur.




Creepy right?????? Lets just hope that it was just the ice cream I had making me dream like a loon. Although Jesus coming wouldn't be bad at all. So maybe we should hope that I'm a psychic and my dreams are premonitions. ;-)

Indulgence, Diets, and Judgment

I don't really make New Years resolutions... they never stick and then just make you feel guilty for not following through. So, I made no resolution for 2011. 

Dear Husband and I have been talking about getting back to the gym and back in shape for a while but just haven't really gotten serious about it- what with the holidays and all... anyway I kept telling him "After the holidays are over we'll really get to work"... this was my excuse to indulge and eat whatever I want and not have to miss out on delicious and fattening goodies at parties and family gatherings. 

Although I suppose if it's a habit it wouldn't really be indulging would it?

DH bought me the Reebok Runtone's so I can run to work out, or at least that's the idea- but really the reason I wanted them is because the girls on the commercials have such great butts and my flat ass is a sad disappointment. I also decided to try that Special K 2 week challenge. The issue is that I'm the least self-disciplined person in the world- hate dieting, hate working out, always cheat... but I really do wanna shape up and feel better about myself (and my eternal spare tire). I figured this might be a good place to start.

Anyway, I went to Target tonight (a much delayed errand) to return some items and pick up a few things I've been meaning to buy like a scale and free weights... cat food, etc. I get up to the register and after I've laid all my purchases on the belt I suddenly feel an overwhelming rush of embarrassment as I see what it looks like. I've got an intense weight watchers scale, a million boxes of Special K diet bars, protein meal shakes, free weights, a yoga dvd, wheat thins, organic fruit strips... "Hi! I think I'm fat, my new years resolution was to lose weight, I'm really excited to start and I'm buying all this stuff to try and get skinny and feel better about myself!" Thats what my line up of purchases was saying to everyone that could see them and the check girl. I felt judged. So judged.

The Flavia Thief

Awkward and odd interactions are nothing out of the ordinary to me at work. Being the receptionist- usually all you get are the quirky, nervous, or obnoxious side of employees and visitors. Yesterday I was just sitting, minding my own business when an employee from the other building with a thick russian accent stops at my desk on his way to his building... He holds up an entire hangar of Flavia flavor inserts for our big fancy coffee machine and asks me, "Who is responsible for refilling these? The machine in my building is out of this kind and I need more- it needs to be refilled." I told him the name of our day porter who is the person who refills the machines every day. And to my surprise he had no idea who I was talking about.... 


Everyone at our company knows the day porter.... he's the guy u call to clean crap up, haul stuff, bring you things, set up for meetings... anyway, he had no idea who I'm talking about, and, quite frankly, seemed upset that I wasn't the one responsible for refilling the machines because he seemed to want to be mad at someone for his machine being out of the "raspberry spark" flavor (I'm not kidding- he was all in a tissy for that girly flavor)... And to make it worse he has those cookie-monster eyes where they're looking different directions... so it probably upset him that I was switching between eyes bc I didn't know which one to look at when talking to him... 


So he leaves me a packet of the flavor to show the day porter and then runs off to his building with all of the packets from our building's machine. I laughed in astonishment and called the day porter to tell him what happened. Of course, this is his domain- restocking and such... so he got a little perturbed that someone was messing with his stuff. He dashes over and asks me about the exchange and then goes running after the thief. 


Come to find out later, the russian employee's name is Igor. Sadly ironic.

Wants

Lately, I just can't get my mind off of a couple things....


First, I've decided I really, really want a record player

like this one from Urban Outfitters

I can just see it sitting on a side table by some flowers and pretty books playing beautiful music while I read a book or cook something spectacular in the kitchen...

Also on my mind: Uggs. I've always been that person who hates them and says, "they're called 'ugg' for a reason." And then I saw these...

And these... 

And the onslaught of nonstop rain here in Orange County has only made it worse... I can think of nothing better than Uggs to keep my feetsies warm and toastie out there.

I cant wait for Christmas to get here- not only b/c I'm getting some really fun stuff (which of course I'll post) but also I'm sure I'll get a few things I can return and then buy at least one of the above!