Monthly Archives: May 2011

Guess what’s officially booked?

A HONEYMOON.

That’s right. A honeymoon/Ted’s birthday/Lara’s birthday vacation extravaganza.

Is there a better way to spend your belated yet much-anticipated honeymoon than far far away from work and on a rad vacation during your joint birthday week? No. No, there is not.

In other seemingly less exciting news given the current circumstances, I made my first Pad Thai dish for dinner tonight…although I did do it the weenie way because I used a pre-made sauce instead of making my own. But the rest of it was made from scratch and it was absolutely delicious. Those will be some tasty leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Come visit and I’ll make it for you :-)

Because Duke Energy gets such a kick out of charging a near fortune for basic heating and cooling needs, we tend to leave our unit set to “off.” Lately, this means that when we arrive home after work the main level of the house is between 78 and 80 degrees while upstairs is nearing 90. We retreat to the basement where it is in the 60s or low 70s. Using the stove and oven to cook dinner heats the kitchen to a muggy 85+ degrees. The last thing we want to do is sit down to a hot meal. Since one can only handle so many varieties of salads and sub sandwiches a week, and I don’t specialize in gourmet chilled soups (um, yet), I’ve been at a loss for cold dishes worthy of a suppertime meal. I have a few new cold recipes up my sleeve that I’ve bookmarked, and hopefully some are keepers. But there is one cool recipe that Ted and I both really like. I make a mean chicken salad and it is so good! There’s one special ingredient that I think really makes this recipe stand out.

In my chicken salad I toss random and totally unmeasured amounts of freshly cooked chopped chicken, cut up red or green grapes, thinly sliced celery and onion, fresh parsley from my herb garden, some dried cherries or dried cranberries, a small amount of low fat mayonnaise, some lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to flavor, and – for that special touch – a hearty teaspoonful of ground ginger (the thick paste in a little glass jar found in the produce aisle). I serve the chicken salad cold, spooned atop a bed of fresh romaine lettuce leaves and sometimes sprinkled with almonds slivers. Use the lettuce leaves as a wrap – works great! If you want to jazz it up or really turn it into a feast, serve with a croissant and fresh red apple slices.

It seems really simple, and it is. You have to try it and don’t you dare leave out the ginger!! I’m convinced that’s what makes it so yummy. It’s so unexpected and refreshing that I actively seek out recipes that call for ginger.

Enjoy! :-)

P.S. – How perfectly ironic. Thank you to the genius who put two and two together. This. is. beautiful.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you want a closer look at those monstrosities?

Now those, my friends, are two ugly hats. Am I right or am I right?

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.

I’m a tidy, detail-oriented person – almost to a fault, but my great organizational lapse of 2011 takes the cake. Yesterday HR called to inform me that I had an outstanding paycheck from March that hadn’t been cashed yet.

Um, what? I apparently forgot to cash an entire paycheck you say? Oh, look at that. I sure did. There it is, all signed and ready to go, but somehow left un-cashed in my “old pay stubs” file. Yeah, no wonder our March finances seemed so tight and it felt like we had no money that month. How the actual cashing of this paycheck so we could…you know…eat, pay bills, and live got past me, I have no idea.

But what a pleasant surprise it is to get paid twice this week and suddenly have money to contribute to our budget that we definitely weren’t expecting. It’s like finding a neglected and forlorn twenty in your back pocket from three weeks ago, but 20 times better. A welcome treat indeed!

Maybe I should lose my mind more often.

Our first conversation this morning went something like this:

“Hey dude, there’s these little black bugs all over the bathroom…”

” (crunch, crunch goes the Cinnamon Toast Crunch) Like, ants?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. They’re tiny little black bugs. I guess they could be ants. But they’re everywhere.”

” (looking) Oh hey, look at that. Yup, those are ants.”

“But they weren’t here last night before we went to bed. It’s like they literally appeared overnight.”

“They did.”

“Ummmm?”

“We turned on the a.c. for the first time last night. They’re like me. They like the cold.”

“Huh.”

Spraying the walls, baseboards, windows and cabinets in the entire house for ants, it’s how everyone likes to spend their Wednesday morning before work. Am I right? We expect them to make a hasty and non-returning exit from our residence by this afternoon. I reopened my bathroom cabinet about 30 minutes later to find a pile of a dozen or so dead ants at the base of my Listerine bottle. Tasty.

On a slightly less critter-infested note, I was awarded Employee of the Month yesterday. Likely for being the least offensive person in April. A real shock, I know. Most enticing is the fact that this honor comes with a prize of the “treat of your choice,” for which I chose Oreo truffles (recipe here).

These are more than easy enough to make on my own, but if someone else wants to do it for me, so be it. Award happily accepted. These balls of magnificence are truly awesome. I suggest you make and devour them immediately. Girl’s night anyone?

Also, have you seen today’s Google image? A tribute to dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, mother of modern/contemporary dance, on the celebration of her 117th birthday. I always get a little giddy to see artsy achievements properly boasted and celebrated in our society. I danced in Orchesis, a modern dance company, for three years at Texas State University. I instantly recognized this morning’s fun animation as that of dance and was pleased.

To keep you updated, same old same old. More working for both of us – jobs, road cases, job hunting, arts ed. work – more honeymoon research. More anticipating the arrival of summer and all the fun things that will happen. In keeping with my recently-started tradition, I’d like to enlighten you with some open letters to the public. My favorites!

Dear Cincinnati Drivers:

A red light, especially one that has been red for several seconds already, means STOP. To the two fools I witnessed zooming through an already red light on Beechmont Avenue this morning at about 8:57…what were you thinking? I stopped. You should have too. Furthermore, FAIL. Learn to drive without endangering the rest of civilization or get off the road.

P.S. A chihuahua is not an appropriate driver’s side window accessory.

Sincerely,

Lara

Dear Cincinnati Weather Gods,

Let’s talk about this humidity for a minute, shall we? See, Texas is hot. Ohio is humid. It may only be in the upper 70s or low 80s, but the humidity makes everything sticky, my skin shiny, my hair unruly and my husband grouchy. Please tone it down a bit. This is just one of those things nobody warns you about when you move to a new place. On a positive note, thanks for not snowing!

Sincerely,

Lara

Dear Modcloth, Lulu’s, 6PM, GoJane, ShopRuche, Dillards, Macy’s and Nordstrom Rack,

So many adorable dresses, so little money!! Please send me free dresses.

Sincerely,

Lara

Dear Ross stores,

I appreciate your cute dresses too. But mostly I appreciate the fact that you are cheap and therefore I could probably afford a few new frocks for our honeymoon vacay. Why are you not in Ohio again? Please franchise to Cincinnati. See you in Texas!

Sincerely,

Lara

Dear Blackberry crop,

You are fantastic this year. I eat about a bag of you for lunch daily. Keep up the good work. In fact, if you stay this delicious I’ll award you a Berry of the Month certificate and the obligatory Oreo Truffle prize as well. I think that’s fair incentive. I mean, worked for me.

P.S. I love you!

Sincerely,

Lara

Did you watch the Kentucky Derby? We did. All that money, hype, and lengthy preparations for a little over two minutes of race time. Impressive, isn’t it? A few months back we were actually considering shelling out the fairly minimal entrance fee for the standing-room-only section at the Derby grounds where you don’t actually see the race live (though TV’s are positioned throughout) but you do get to stand and line the pathway that the horses and their jockeys take as they parade toward the starting line. Unfortunately work intervened with that plan, but there’s always next year. We’d love to go to the derby next year just to experience the excitement of an event of that caliber. I was rooting for the female jockey and her horse “Pants on Fire.” We should take a moment to discuss the names of these horses. Who names them and WHY? Pants on Fire, Mucho Macho Man, Animal Kingdom…those poor horses. At least they look fantastic! So muscular and such shiny coats! Oh, and the hats! Did you see some of the hats at this shindig? With the close timing proximity of the Royal Wedding to the Kentucky Derby this is without a doubt ludicrous hat season. Major works of art, to say the least. My glamorous floppy-brimmed black sun hat that I’m planning to don on our honeymoon (because, let’s be honest, where else is it an appropriate accessory?) absolutely pales in comparison to the other creations out there. Good stuff, my friends!
 
Meanwhile, Ted (with a little bit of my help) has been putting together his workshop in our garage. He got a road-case building gig for a band from Wisconsin that he’s working on right now and last year he built a bunch of them for MSU’s theatre department as well. He makes fantastic road-cases! Really top quality, great looking, excellently fitting, sturdy cases to securely transport and protect tools, cables, lighting and audio equipment, etc. It would be a neat side business for his company TOR Ventures, in addition to his lighting designs and light rentals. He enjoys the work and it would turn a respectable profit if he can get his name out there. But even with the plethora of tools Ted already owns, it takes some heavy-duty machinery to construct these things. Enter the new chop saw with extending stand, bench drill press, and tool cabinet that have recently made their way into our home. Good investments indeed! Ted’s finally on his way to a fully functioning shop of sorts, which is something he’s wanted for a very long time. I occasionally miss a lot of the set-constructing work I used to do as an intern at BoarsHead – drilling, sawing, bolting, painting – so having the tools around is kind of fun for me too. Last night I helped Ted make a wooden table top for his new drill press and at nights I’ll probably help him with other stuff too. I’ll try to remember to post a picture of Ted’s new in-the-works shop.
 
We had a cold snap last week, but with the weather finally starting to clear up and the surprising absence of rain lately (I may be jinxing myself here), we’re finally getting to enjoy the great outdoors. Our lawn in still growing by the minute, so most of that great outdoors time is spent mowing, but we went for a short bike ride yesterday evening (Ted’s reminding me how to properly use bike gears on a hilly terrain because I was like, 10, and on flat ground the last time I used bike gears) and there’s hope of bonfires, cookouts on the grill, and bike riding and rollerblading in our future as well – probably in June once the CCM students are out for the summer and we both have some free nights and weekends again.
 
But we do have some really exciting things to look forward to this summer! For Memorial Day weekend at the end of May my sister and her family will be visiting us in Cincinnati. Four days after that I’ll be heading to San Antonio for the first weekend in June to see my family and friends. Ted’s sister and her family are slated to spend the 4th of July weekend with us in Cincy, then there’s a hopeful quick weekend trip to Lansing sometime in July (if we can get away!), our fabulous honeymoon at the end of August, and our 1-year anniversary weekend in Door County that will likely take place in September instead of October because of the CCM production schedule. Christmas will be in Texas, New Year’s Eve in Wisconsin and the jury is out on Thanksgiving, again depending on how much time we can get off for Thanksgiving. All perfectly excellent things to look forward to! And a lot of fun planning coming our way.
 
What are you looking forward to in the coming months?

There’s a lot going on in the world – in our own little one and the world at large. I’ve been neglectful. Do you forgive me?

Patriotic emotions run high lately, with the devastating tornado outbreaks in the south (I have a very close friend attending grad school at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the hardest hit city. Fortunately, she and all of her pets were okay, but her house was literally right outside the line of the monster tornado – as in, she could see it and feel it because it was just one street over. A close call indeed), the announcement of the capture of Osama Bin Laden, and let’s not forget the Royal Wedding circus. There’s an awful lot to be thankful for.

In our little corner of the globe we’re still seeing rain nearly every day. You’d think we’re living in Seattle or Alaska. It rains so much that the earth is constantly soggy and our lawn needs to be mowed at least once a week or the grass gets too high for my optimal bunny and cat spotting preferences. It grows inches every week. On the rare free nights when we actually decide to try to keep up with our elderly riding-lawn-mower-and-gardening-fanatic neighbors so we don’t have the most embarrassing lawn on the block, my job is to run around the back, side, and front of the house and collect all the tree branches that have flowed into our yard or been ripped off the trees in our nightly storms so that Ted can safely mow. We have quite the system going and an excellent pile of impressively large branches gathered by the side fence. I smell a bonfire with peep s’mores coming up any day now!

In addition to us both working full-time jobs and keeping up with the house, I’ve been actively and often applying for permanent theatre jobs in the greater Cincinnati area as they come up and just recently began serving as the Education Outreach Manager for this fantastic non-profit movement-based performing and educational arts company’s new education department while Ted secured himself a road-case building gig for a band from Wisconsin. We’ve been busy. To top it all off the honeymoon research and planning has officially begun, with all its fun excitements and discoveries, and budgeting heartbreaks and headaches. Slowly but surely, we’re making decisions and getting there (we think).

I’d also like to take a moment to thank the U.S. government for charging an outrageous $180 for me to simply change my last name on my perfectly valid and completely un-expired passport so that we can actually have a honeymoon. Thank you, government, for that totally asinine and utterly ridiculous policy of charging so much to do so little. My sincerest, most heartfelt appreciation for that lovely wedding gift.

In our limited spare time, we’ve still managed to squeeze in a little R&R. A few nights ago we drove over to Olive Garden for a date night to use up the rest of an Olive Garden gift card we received last Christmas in the family gift card exchange. While it poured outside we sat warm and dry inside, serenaded by romantic Italian lilts, and dined on the infamous soup, salad and bread sticks meal-extraordinaire. In between bites we snagged two of the kids’ “keep busy” booklets and a pack of crayons from the basket right by our table (as you can see, this was entirely their fault for placing it within our reach) and filled out cheesy Italian vacation postcard mad-libs, word unscrambles, and maze puzzles. It was glorious. Another night we tuned in for an episode of one of our favorite TV shows then got the urge for a late-night malt & milkshake run. We hopped in the truck, while it rained, and ended up at Steak & Shake for a chocolate malt and strawberry milkshake. I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that I created fabulous placemat artwork there as well. Click the picture to enlarge the genius that is my handiwork.

On Thursday night we were invited to attend an invited dress for Cincinnati Ballet’s Infamous Love Songs dance production at the Aranoff Center. Since the Aranoff is downtown we hit up Potbelly’s sandwich shop in Fountain Square and witnessed a truly first-class freak wind and rain storm (are you noticing the pattern here?) that sent students, businessman, and sightseers scrambling for cover. We enjoyed the great work of the dancers, designers and live Cincinnati-based band and singer called Over the Rhine (named for the inner-city suburb of Cincy). The production was a hodge-podge of ballet, modern and jazz to some really nifty songs. Definitely worth seeing!

Somewhere in between all of that we used a Groupon and took both vehicles for a thorough interior and exterior washing, vacuuming and polishing and I’ve taken a few bike rides through the upper-crust Markley neighborhoods by our house on my occasional day off. I’m wishing the weather would clear up for longer than a few hours or a day at a time so Ted and I can pack the bikes and our roller blades in the truck and head out for several hours to Bass Island for a respectable bike ride.

I’m off work today and tomorrow, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, grocery shopping, preparing some (hopefully) really delicious meals, starting in on the education outreach work, and doing some vacation planning. We’ll see what comes of it all, but I just wanted to drop by to ease fears that since I haven’t blogged for three days that I’m probably dead.

We are alive and well and thankful for it.

P.S. – I do intend to get back to blogging more regularly during the summer. As in, not this week. But I’ll be by every few days to enlighten you with all manner of random nonsense.

P.P.S. – The picture of our finished, clean, organized, and shelved basement I promised. Disco ball not included. You have no idea how hard it is to get a great picture of a disco ball in motion.