Frog and Goat

We went to San Antonio and Austin for our honeymoon. While we were in Austin we went to Waterloo Records and I bought Live by Dwight Yoakam. Every time we make our way to Texas we make sure we stop by Waterloo and we always come home with something. It’s a great store.

Today I’ve been listening to Dwight. I haven’t seen Dwight in years but I assume he still looks good in a pair of jeans. Oh and his singing is mighty nice too.

Early this morning I was having a dream about vampires and zombies. Apparently the area around our house was full of them. I had to kick the kitchen chairs apart so we’d have stakes to dispatch the vampires. When we finished them off, the zombies took over harassing us.

Only these weren’t just any zombies. They were garden gnome-sized zombies and so we were especially worried about Simon coming into contact with any of them. Pretty soon we were outside wailing on the hordes of tiny zombies until we felt like those were done with too. Then just as the alarm clock went off, my dream self was telling the better-half’s dream self that I thought the zombies were gone. His dream self informed me he just saw one.

A few minutes I checked my weekly betterPropaganda email and noticed there was a song by Ursula1000 called Zombies available. Of course I downloaded it.

I’m working from home today because a course I’m working on needs image work and the person who usually creates our images has a conflict with doing the images for this particular course and so I’m doing them. At home. Because the getting longer all the time story is that I don’t have the appropriate software at work to create images. Also, I needed some Photoshop lessons and the better-half agreed to help me today.

All that to say, it’s nice working from home. This is a scene that would never happen at work:

Edited to add: that’s iced tea not bourbon as the better-half suggested.

Yesterday the better-half met me at my office and we drove to Charlottesville to see Alejandro Escovedo perform at the Gravity Lounge. Before the show we stopped by Miller’s and enjoyed the smoky goodness of a great bar. The food and drinks were well done as well.

We’ve seen one other show at the Gravity Lounge and were expecting places to sit. We overheard they were expecting 300 people. It’s not a huge space so 300 seemed like a lot. We found a ledge to perch on and enjoyed Shannon Worrell and Sam Wilson warm up the crowd. Actually, they were quite good but subdued as was the audience. At some point Shannon Worrell commented that she could hear a pin drop.

Alejandro Escovedo and his band started playing around 9 and they started with Always a Friend. I expected he’d leave that for the encore since it’s so popular right now. Instead he pumped up the crowd. We didn’t get to see the encore because we had to leave a little early to get the car out of a garage before they closed. We didn’t want to pay the fine or spend the night so I have no idea what the last few songs of the set were but I’m sure they rocked.

The Chinese New Year is on Monday but we’re celebrating early by having The Niece, Lil’ Elvis and their parents over this afternoon.

For Christmas we gave the MIL a rose bouquet a month from FTD. We bought the six month plan and today she was supposed to get her second delivery. UPS claims they can’t find the recipient name and won’t deliver the flowers until Monday. That’s awesome. Flowers hanging out in a truck/warehouse until Monday. Assholes. Now, I ask you how the frak did FedEx manage to get the delivery there without incident in December but UPS can’t seem to find a HUGE adult living community?

I went to FTD to lodge a complaint and I am sick to death of websites that say EMAIL US and then they proceed to strangle the everliving out of your complaint by not actually giving you the opportunity to complain unless it fits into a very narrow choice of pull-down menus. After fiddle fucking around on their site, I finally managed to send them an email. I know I could have called an 800 number, but I’ll be damned if I’m calling India to get a flower delivery issue in Richmond, VA resolved on Friday afternoon.

It just goes to prove the adage of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished and the newer adage that you may not have heard of When It Comes To The MIL There Will Be A Black Hole.

I just finished completing some information on a monthly report that everyone in my department must complete, but I get the lucky experience of being responsible for the entire thing whereas everyone else just updates and goes about their merry way. As I finished typing in some details about a course revision I just finished, I decided to look at all the things I’ve done this month. I’ve updated 5 courses this month, observed a day of training, passed a draft of an elearning course to a SME and managed to write an evaluation of why a course should not be moved to elearning. I’ve also worked on three online course modules.

I think I may have blown my wad for the entire quarter in the first three weeks of the year. At least I’ll have time to fiddle around with those three online modules and finish them with plenty of time leftover before the deadline pops up. And, I’ll have time to tinker around with school related activities.

Since the dissertating diva has talked me into speaking to one of her classes (with an activity no less), I’ll have time to figure out what I’m going to do about that. She’s also asked me to teach her how to make garlic hummus and so, as a smart-ass, I’m figuring out a way to do that via elearning. If it turns out well and fairly anonymous, I may post it here. I know, the excitement of it all!

We let the duck breast hang in the garage one extra day because we wanted to be sure that it was cured enough. The garage has been especially cold and we were worried that the drop in temperatures out there would slow the drying process.

I’m happy to report the prosciutto turned out really well. We ate a couple of slices plain and some with balsamic vinegar.

The whole breast before slicing (the powdery stuff on top is white pepper not mold):

We sliced the ends off for munching and my ability to take a picture that’s too dark is absolutely top notch isn’t it?

I had a beer from Star Hill last night. Only one beer at a hockey game? It’s so I didn’t have to get up and disturb the natives. The natives were restless and rowdy.

There were two fights within the first 10 seconds of the game. The first one happened during the face-off. The ‘Gades lost. Not surprising because they played like crap until the third period. Not sure, but I think the officials screwed Richmond.