A Lovely Evening

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Frog

Last night we had a great time at the Emmylou Harris concert at Wolf Trap. The weather threatened to open up on us, but instead we saw a rainbow, some far off lightning and only a sprinkling of rain. The music was outstanding. The opening act were Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Klein. Emmylou came out and sang one song with them.

At one point some women were camped out next to us during the opening act and they would not STFU. It was during the opening act when Emmylou was singing. All of the women were old enough to know better. I was ready to whirl around and crack skulls together, but they settled down and then started making grass whistles. Their skull fracture crises was averted by grass whistles.

This morning we ate breakfast at Anita’s. We both ordered the Famous Breakfast and cleaned our plates. There’s something wonderful about starting your day with chips and fiery salsa and then moving on to burritos filled with eggs and chorizo covered in red chile sauce. Don’t forget the refried beans and the home fries. Oh yeah.

We made stops at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and then came home. I’ll be so glad when both of those stores open for business nearby.

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On Bloody Marys and Birthdays

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Frog

Today is the better-half’s birthday and for breakfast I made bloody marys. The infused pepper vodka really punched up the drinks.

We ran some errands today to pick up things for our picnic dinner tomorrow night. We’ll be dining under the stars at the Emmylou Harris concert at Wolf Trap. It looks like we could get wet according to weather predictions. A little drizzle I can handle, but thunderstorms are right out.

Tonight we’re going to Julep’s for dinner. Neither of us have been there before but have both heard good things about it. I’m just hoping our car doesn’t get towed which is what happened one time we had dinner down in the Bottom. Of course that was ages ago, but it still smarts after all these years.

Posted in Eating, Generic Thoughts | 1 Comment

Push It

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Frog

I have had the ooh baby baby, ooh baby baby section of this song stuck in my head this morning. I’ve also been singing it to Simon with the switcheroo, ooh kitty kitty, ooh kitty kitty. He went out on the porch–I don’t think he appreciates my singing.

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Very Quick

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Frog

The vodka is infused.

We ended up putting a habanero in the mix on Saturday. We taste-tested a wee sip yesterday and I have to say there’s a green flavor like peppers have and, of course, the heat. We can’t wait to mix some drinks.

Also, you’ll notice the squash and zucchini–first vegetables from the spring garden!

We made shrimp and orzo, also a recipe from Bon Appetit, yesterday. It was another recipe for the make again pile. I need to look through other recent magazines for recipes because we’ve really gotten into making something new and tasty instead of the old standbys. I should mention the basil garnish and the pesto were from our “crops”. Next time we make this recipe, I fully expect we’ll be using more of our homegrown ingredients.

Posted in Eating, Gardening | 1 Comment

Whirlwind of Thoughts

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Frog

To the guy in my neighborhood who drives the black, late model Volvo. You are a prick. Driving too fast for starters, stopping at the main road to get out of the car–um, you couldn’t have pulled to the side? Then you pawed around in the trunk for your cell phone and then you didn’t even acknowledge the fact that your idiocy held me up all qualify you for prick status. A simple hand wave would have stripped you of the title King Prick, but no. You are King Prick. Also, you aren’t so important that you need to be on the phone before 7am…I know, because you live in my neighborhood and not next door to the president. He’s the only one who needs any advice before 7am–”Should I wear the blue socks or the brown ones today?”

Why is it that Hallmark has the lamest cards for little kids? I know a two year old could give a crap what a card actually says, but some of us hate buying sappy cards. Especially ones that rely heavily on the word cute. I nearly threw up in the Hallmark store today. And that was before I dropped $14 on cards.

Congratulations to all the gays and lesbians in California who got married today and will continue to get married because they live in a state not inhabited by backwater, slack-jawed yokels. Virginia, I’m looking at you.

The women’s bathroom here at the office is again a horror show. We went a few days in a row of relative calm but today we’re back on the stink train. Someone should see a doctor.

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The Fix

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Frog

Comments are back open and the spam catcher is working. I just deleted 186 comments that flooded in since late last night. All those comments went into the spam catcher! W00t. The better-half is working on a migration plan to Movable Type 4.1 so you may see odd things happen to the site over the next week or so.

Posted in Generic Thoughts | 3 Comments

Duck and Cover

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Frog

Comments are open again. I’m hoping the spammers have lost interest.

Updated 6/16/08: As Liz pointed out, comments still aren’t working. I’ve made sure all the switches are switched and the site has been republished. I have no idea what’s going on. Hopefully tech support will figure this problem out soon. I guess this explains why the site hasn’t been under attack. Friend and foe can’t get in. Awesome.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | Comments Off

Project: Study

Posted on June 14, 2008 by Frog

Since we’ve moved in to our house, the room that most people call the living room has been filled with boxes of books, our wonderful leather chairs and various pieces of furniture that are in stages of fixing, putting together, home finding. It’s the first room visitors see when they come into the house so it’s always been a bit embarrassing to me to have such a craptastic room. But our plans for the room are big plans and time consuming. We’re going to turn the room into a study/library and so that means lots of bookcases need to be built.

Since I have only a couple of weeks before school starts back up, I decided that this weekend was the painting weekend. The first coat is on and I’ll finish it tomorrow morning. The color is a butterscotch khaki color and when I stand in the corner of the room and look into the dining room the two wall colors work well together. I’ve really tried to pay attention to color tones downstairs so nothing seems jarring to the eye.

The better-half wanted doors to the room so we ordered folding French doors and I’ve stained them. They are drying out in the garage. The days I stained were some of the hottest days of the year and let me tell you, I got such a headache after staining the doors. Even with the portable air conditioning unit plugged in and the dehumidifier going, it was hot and fumy work. Luckily, the afternoon I put on the final coat was wonderful and I did that coat outside.

Stay tuned to watch the room come together–hopefully this project won’t take terribly long now that we’ve started.

Posted in House Proud | Comments Off

One More New Meal

Posted on June 14, 2008 by Frog

It was kind of late last night when we started making dinner. I hadn’t felt exactly right all afternoon and, well, we had to swim in the pool for a little while last night. Had to. I drank a bottle of San Pelligrino while paddling around and that seemed to settle my stomach.

Of the recipes we prepared this week, this one took the most time but the resulting broth made the extra time well worth it. We agreed the next time we make this dish we’ll substitute mussels in for the clams in this recipe as we both prefer mussels. For rustic bread, we enjoyed slices of Flour Garden’s baguette (the better-half went to see his friends at the Belmont Butchery yesterday–he brought home some usual suspects and some of the best cured salami–I don’t remember the name but it was sublime).

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So Delicious, So Spicy

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Frog

We’ve been on a try-new-things-for-dinner kick this week, as you may have ascertained. Last night we made Grilled Asian Flank Steak with Sweet Slaw. We served it with soba noodles.

We used two jalapeños from the freezer and I think we can now say our pepper plants were really pissed off last year. I’ve heard that the more hardship a pepper plant faces, the hotter the pepper. Our plants must have suffered mightily and became just short of hellfire.

The slaw was sweet but our peppers sort of overwhelmed the slaw. Not that I wouldn’t make this dish again, oh hell yes I’d make this again. I’ll just use one pepper instead of two. Or hope that our plants this year don’t feel so enraged.

Update: The better-half went out to meet some friends tonight so I had this dish minus the soba noodles for dinner tonight. I didn’t heat anything up, just took it out of the refrigerator, transfered it to a plate, cracked open a beer and dug in. The pepper didn’t catch up to me until the very end…their heat had definitely mellowed overnight. The second time around was quite tasty.

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