Frog and Goat

Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year. We’re entertaining The Niece and her parents. Last night when I asked my sister if there was anything special she wanted for dinner, she half-joked that we should celebrate the Chinese New Year. You know, the cultural aspect for The Niece. Know what’s busy this time of year? The big Asian supermarket. Luckily, we were in a “get the goods, get out of there” mode or The Niece may have ended up with a chicken foot. I’m sure it would have looked lovely in her room.

The posts, they’ve been lame and infrequent, an ass-load of reading for class will do that, I guess. I remember that I never really liked doing homework for a reason. It cuts into the lazy portion of the day. At least when I was in college, my job was to do school work. Now, not so much. I got home yesterday and thought I’d breeze through the last required chapter for tomorrow’s class. I was almost finished but then the better-half got home. We made dinner. He suggested wine. We ate dinner and drank the wine and then it was 9pm. I said can’t work on school work and promptly snoozed in the chair in front of the TV. I got up and went to bed.

Today, I got home and finished my assignment. I know what you are thinking. This is only the second week of class. True. I’m sure I’ll get into a rhythm. Speaking of rhythms it took me 4 different attempts at spelling rhythm. I’m a very good speller but some words, especially ones with too many consonants, just flummox me sometimes.

Today we’re having a special election for the 97th District House seat. So far today we’ve had FOUR phone calls about the election. That’s FOUR in one day. Yesterday we had 2 calls. I can’t even tell you how much junk we’ve received in the mail in the past month about this election. Thankfully the polls close in two hours. Last week I told one candidate’s lackey that he’d get both of our votes. We received a call over the weekend from that same candidate asking us about our votes. Did I stutter? I said you’d get both of our votes.

I was the 21st voter this morning at my voting place. The better-half was 85th. We got to vote with something other than the huge old, old, old voting booths but I was not particularly thrilled that I had to walk my ballot across the room to put it in the electronic counter. The ballot had one item on it so anyone could have easily been able to tell how I cast my vote. It is especially irritating since I guarantee that everyone in the voting place was Republican–they are thick around here. It is only because they’ll go to jail or some such that they didn’t coach me on how to vote.

This piece from Yahoo! News just really makes me roll my eyes and exclaim with as much apathy as possible, “who cares”. Of course, I’m aware that by even drawing attention to it means I’m not that apathetic about it. Whatever.

Only in Mechanicsville, for a limited time…

Last night we had dinner with friends at this place. The website is pretty skimpy but the quality of the food is not. We thoroughly enjoyed everything. We started with mussels and escargot, moved to salads and bisque and finished with creme brulee and an out of this world chocolate mousse.

Two of us ordered veal sweetbreads and we were both blown away. The better-half ordered a veal chop that was amazingly tender and juicy and my other friend ordered the striped bass fillet.

We hung out for nearly four hours eating, drinking and telling stories. We made tentative plans to have dinner together again in the next month or so at this place. They’ve been and raved. We have had it on our list for awhile but just haven’t tried it yet. Luckily, we will soon.

If you like beer, you should look for this:

Yesterday afternoon I had my first class and against my better judgment I took a seat in the back of the room. We’re changing classrooms next week to our permanent location so, perhaps, I can put in another effort at behaving and sitting closer to the front. As it was, two other people from my organization are also in the class and they sat next to me. We acted a little like the peanut gallery. As the class was very interactive last night, our behavior wasn’t really too out there.

The class participants are very varied in age, race, sex and professional status. I think that’s going to work to our advantage. We should be able to have great discussions on the different types of adult learners since we’re all so different in other aspects of our lives.

I started off very energized and then started to doubt the wisdom of my choice to take this course. We’re going to have to talk in “scholarly language” and quote the “great minds”. I’m a put-it-into-practical-terms kind of girl.

One of our first activities was to go around the room and introduce ourselves. I’m always suspicious of the one person in every group who introduces themselves towards the end and says something like “I’m so fascinated by the people in this room and hope to have great conversations with you”. Yeah, quit sucking my dick and just tell us your name and why you are taking the class. Move it on, sister.

We have a bird feeder hanging in the backyard. So far we’ve watched squirels climb on top of the feeder and hang by their back legs to eat; we’ve spied a mole pop up and grab seed; we’ve watched a possum and a racoon nose around under the feeder; and we’ve even seen birds out there. A couple of weeks ago Bambi stopped by for a taste and I thought it was just one of those weird moments that would never happen again. Until tonight…

No wonder there’s never any seed in the feeder.

I took a schload of coins to the grocery store today and used the Coinstar machine…hold the rolling of eyes over the fact the machine charges a fee, whatever. I walked out of there with nearly $78. And, I recycled the old plastic grocery bags so I was feeling twice as good. Then I hit a bird on the way home and had to apologize to the universe.

This week at work we’re starting an exercise routine as a group. We have 4 different exercises we’re supposed to do three times a week and at the end of a month we complete a form and then we get a microwaveable bowl (one for each of us). I’m not ashamed to admit I’m in it for the bowl. I need one at work to use at lunch. Since that seemed really shallow, I decided today I’d start doing some exercising again. I did some yoga today and I have to say it’s really nice to exercise in the morning. However, I won’t be waking up any earlier so the yoga and whatever other exercising I do will be done in the afternoons. Today, I got lucky and had the day off.

I’ve had the yoga tape for a few years but this is the first time I’ve used it at the new house. How much nicer it is to do the poses on carpet instead of a concrete floor. I may actually stick with it this time. I felt completely energized afterwards and whatever soreness I feel doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I just need to work on the will power.

Also starting this week, is my class. I bought a notebook today at the grocery store. The book I had to order from the school bookstore came late last week. I’m all set. Now, I just have to knuckle down and get at least a C so I don’t have to pay the tuition. I’m pretty motivated. Perhaps I would have gotten better grades in undergraduate if I saved all that tuition money.