At Home Shopping Parties

Posted on September 16, 2003 by Frog

I have an invitation sitting at home on my counter to a Jewelry Party. My cousin is hosting. My cousin who didn’t even bother to respond to an invitation I sent to her earlier this summer to come to my house and get together with family. You know a real party. So what’s my problem? I know I need to RSVP. I have her email address. I could email her and take care of it that way or I can call her tomorrow (one day before the RSVP deadline) and just tell her No.

Not that I can’t come because I have a prior commitment but that I’d rather have my fingernails removed by a sadistic Nazi than go to a Jewelry party. I’m still pretty sore about her failure to extend to me the courtesy that she is now asking for. Plus there’s this whole back story of her side of the family and my side of the family not being as close as we once were because my father failed to support his sister and his mother when my grandmother was so ill. Whatever. I can’t pay for his sins.

So, I’m back to having to RSVP and I don’t want to. I don’t want to because what I really want to tell her is if she really wants to see me she should either have come over this summer or invite me over to hang out instead of keeping me on her list of “parties”. I went to one once for candles because I felt like I had to. I won’t go to another.

I’ll probably wuss out and send an email. Not that it really matters…she’s one of those people that even when you send her pictures of her child via email doesn’t respond.

I’m really a people person…especially a family people person, aren’t I?

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Late Week Guest

Posted on September 16, 2003 by Frog

For anyone on the East Coast, specifically North Carolina and Virginia, it is time to set a place for a late week visitor.

I’ve asked our trees to please stay off the house. I hope they are listening. The ground is already so soaking wet that we’re really nervous about the storm knocking trees over onto our house–the thrill, the risk, the danger of living in the woods.

I heard one of our local weather guys say that one of the purposes of North Carolina is to protect Virginia from hurricanes. I’m sure he’ll get some flack for saying that but it is true that storms tend to hit there and then come inland into Virginia. We’re a little less than 2 hours from the ocean so I’m sure we’ll get plenty of excitement on Thursday. But, we’re stocked with toilet paper, beer, blue cheese, cat food and gasoline for the generator….what else do you need?

The blue cheese thing is an old joke from 1998 when we lost power for 3 days at Christmas. I really wanted to make a spinach dish with blue cheese for New Year’s Eve. We could not find blue cheese anywhere—what kind of freaks rush out to the store to buy blue cheese? I can understand not finding snacks, beer or milk but we couldn’t find blue cheese. I don’t think I have to explain that we don’t live in an area known for its gourmet food eateries. To say that our town has every fast food restaurant is not really bragging…it is the truth. So the dearth of blue cheese was puzzling then and still puzzles us to this day.

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Please Don’t

Posted on September 15, 2003 by Frog

Yoko Ono is going to take her clothes off…or rather, she’s going to have people cut it off her. Please Don’t Do It.

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House Proud

Posted on September 13, 2003 by Frog

We made the decision to become House Proud this fall. We bought our house at the end of November 1995 and we’ve lived with some of its flaws and repaired what needed repairing (it was built in 1972/1973). We’ve totally upgraded the heating and air conditioning systems (one winter of half working electric baseboard heaters was one winter enough); we’ve replaced the stove, the dishwasher, the washer and dryer; we replaced nearly all the windows except where we eventually plan to knock a wall out and get rid of our hateful kitchen; and we dug up the yard and composted and re-seeded.

Now we’re on to some other chores. The hall bathroom is yellow tile, or as was once fashionable–Harvest Gold, and I primed the tile walls yesterday. We’re painting over that nastiness. I eventually plan on painting the tub and the yellow tile accents on the floor too. I hope we’ll rip out the yellow toilet and the yellow sinks as well. Yes, we have a yellow toilet–please stop laughing. We’re also going to waterproof the basement and I pulled one of the sections of paneling out yesterday. Today we’re headed out to look for an entertainment center/bookcase unit for the den. We currently have our stuff in remnant post-college crap.

I’ll post pictures sometime soon in a specially created section as soon as I get off my lazy butt. You’ll get before, during and after shots–since I know you are dying to see it. And, if you are lucky I’ll dig up photos of what kind of 70′s nightmare we purchased back in 1995. I may actually scan some of the pieces of wallpaper that we saved to remind us of how far we’ve come.

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Morgan’s

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Frog

We ate dinner at Morgan’s last night (the entries this week seem to be all about food) and it was excellent. We started with sautéed scallops over a garlic puree with bacon, argula and some other thing which escapes me right now. He had a frisee salad with bacon and an over-easy egg and I had mesclun with croutons. The salad dressing on both was too salty but neither of us stopped eating.

For the main course he had beef tornadoes with a béarnaise sauce and potato ratin and I had mussels with pomme frites and a garlic pernod broth. Oh man. Creme Brulee for him and a frozen chocolate mousse with pistachio for me. We split a bottle of Cotes du Rhone (sorry, I don’t remember the name).

Our waitress was great and after dinner she asked if we were full and he replied that we couldn’t even eat a wafer-thin mint. She laughed and said no one ever gets that joke when she says it so she was pleased we did. I said as we cut through the alley to the car–who wouldn’t get that? I thought everyone got Monty Python.

Here’s a pretty good rendition of the joke (of course this makes it sound really gross–which it is–but also hilarious in the skit).

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Lunch

Posted on September 10, 2003 by Frog

Several months ago we walked over to the Lafayette Foodland to have lunch. We went twice (I know this because I still have the fortunes from the fortune cookies they gave out) and really enjoyed it. We walked over a third time and found that it had closed to walk-up traffic. Sadness prevailed.

In recent weeks someone reopened shop there and we went there for lunch today. Oh, saints preserve us! The better-half had a tuna salad with dill and I had tarragon chicken salad with pecans and red grapes–both served on ciabatta. He had a pasta salad and I had potato salad as a side. Everything and all was good. Real good. So good that I wish it was lunch again.

They have a sweet bargain for dinner-4 courses for $18 per person and you can eat there (the eating area is small, small, small) or take it out. I know we’ll be giving that a whirl. They also have small selection of wines and we discussed wines while waiting for our food to be prepared. I don’t know if the woman who talked to us was the owner/manager/buyer or a combo of all three but she was friendly and not too pushy about buying. She made me want to come back and buy some of her wines (even if most of them were priced higher than we normally spend).

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Big Smoochie

Posted on September 10, 2003 by Frog

This morning the better-half made his special english muffins. They are like no other. I can’t duplicate the taste and texture. He takes the english muffin and toasts them. Seems simple enough. Then he toasts them again. Then he puts irish butter on them (at the office he has a block of irish butter–we just use the regular kind at home) and then he toasts them a third time. You would think after all that toasting that they’d come out charred but they don’t. They come out perfectly crispy and all those “nooks and crannies” are filled with buttery goodness. The real trick is to not scarf them down too quickly but to savor every single bite.

He got a big smoochie for those english muffins.

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Totally Random Access

Posted on September 9, 2003 by Frog

Yesterday morning I woke up with hives. Apparently, in addition to being allergic to Penicillin, I am allergic to sulfa drugs. Did you know that if you take two Benadryl you can not lift your head off your desk? It is physically impossible. The back of the box states “may cause marked drowsiness”. Yeah, no kidding. I’ve cut back to one at a time.

My sister defends her dissertation today. Hopefully she’ll be officially known as “CRT, PHD” by the afternoon.

The better-half went to court this morning for the car crash and was given driving school but no fine. I guess plunging down an embankment and having your car totaled is fine enough.

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Reading

Posted on September 8, 2003 by Frog

Here’s an article in the NY Times Book review that I found interesting. I can’t imagine not spending too much time reading. I, too, wonder does spending all that time reading make you and better or worse? I do like the writer’s thought that if reading can turn into a vice more people will do it.

Sunday morning I got up around 6 (went to bed around 9:30 and I figured that was enough sleep) and had a cup of tea and read on the screened porch. It is amazingly quiet at that time of day, as you can imagine. I didn’t hear one person cutting grass, revving an engine or shooting off weapons–it is almost hunting season (yeah!). It was also chilly enough that I had to wrap my robe around me. I’m so glad to be wearing that robe again. And, then my pal, Leon, jumped in my lap and got some big time lovings. He got so much that he had to get down because my allergies kicked in. Yes, I have 2 cats and I’m allergic to their hair. I never said I was rational all of the time.

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Saturday Morning Walk

Posted on September 6, 2003 by Frog

We participated in the Reveille 5K this morning. We finished in 54 minutes which is about average speed for me…at least that’s what the treadmill tells me. The better-half wore his sandals and the illustrious City of Richmond recently top-dressed the route. We had to stop several times to shake out rocks. If there is one thing I despise is top-dressing instead of real paving. I thought though it was a thing that only rural areas did. I’m glad to know that ritzy neighborhoods have to contend with flying rocks too.

We had two motivators during our walk. One was a kid in a stroller who was screaming–kind of like a dinosaur and the other was a group of people talking about “carving out Sunday afternoon time” for sex. A couple in the group just recently had a baby and apparently they don’t want any phone calls on Sunday afternoon. Again, the things I overhear.

The walk itself was splendid and for a good cause.

My friend was manning the Stephen Ministry booth so we stopped by to say hi and hear her pitch. Sounds like something we should consider for the MIL.

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