Randomness

Tonight I was talking to my Dad, and after I hung up the phone it immediately rang again. I thought it was my pops, calling to say something he forgot, so I just picked it up.

Me: Helllllo!
Girl On Other End: Um, hi. I bought an ipod mini and your number was in the contact info.
Me: Uh.... ok.
GOOE: Are you April?
Me: Yeah. Where did you buy it?
GOOE: Ebay.
Me: What kind of ipod mini is it? Is it black (I'm thinking I dropped my mini somewhere and someone else picked it up and sold it. I don't use my mini that much since I have my iphone, so God knows how long it would have to be gone before I realized)
GOOE: Uh, no, it's pink. It came with an iTrip.
Me: (realizing it's the mini I gave Katie a few years ago) Oh. I gave that to my sister about 2 years ago.
GOOE: Well, it won't take a charge and says the battery is out
Me: Well, I hate to tell you, but that was the issue with it when I gave it to my sister. It would mostly work when it was plugged in, so I gave it to her to use in her car (at this point I'm thinking my sister sold this ipod, so I'm like OH GREAT). I mean, that's a fairly common problem for 1st generation mini's, I mean, the thing is like 5 years old.
GOOE: Uh, OK, well it doesn't work.
Me: Well, you need to put through an inquiry on Ebay so that you can get your money back. How much did you pay?
GOOE: 40 bucks
Me: (wondering why anyone would pay 40 bucks for a 5 year old ipod) Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be able to reimburse you because I didn't sell it to you. Why don't you put a complaint in through ebay and I'll call my sister and see what is going on and why she didn't say it was short on battery life.
GOOE: Uh, OK. Thanks.

So I call Katie:
Me: Dude, so some chick called me about that pink ipod I gave you that sucked.
Katie: Oh no way! That thing got stolen out of Drew's truck last year!
Me: Holy sh*t, no way! The chick who called me bought it off ebay!
Katie: Uh, that sucks.
Me: Yeah. I'll have to call her and tell her it's stolen. Awesome.

Then I call this random chick, who by the way is from Rockford, IL:
Me: So hey. That ipod is stolen. My sister said someone took it out of her fiance's truck. So you need to put a complaint into ebay that the person who sold it to you is selling stolen sh*t.
GOOE: Holy crap! OK, thanks.
Me: Please put in a complaint
GOOE: Well, it's my dad's account, so I'll have him login and, like, put a bunch of bad comments on there.
Me: Sounds great, thanks

5 minutes later this chick calls me back:
GOOE: Did your sister report this as stolen? Because I don't want to, like, get arrested for having this on me!
Me: I don't think she did. I mean, the ipod is 5 years old.
GOOE: OK, I mean, I just don't want to get ARRESTED.
Me: I think you're OK.

Somehow I think cops have better crap to do than search ipod serial numbers to see if they're stolen. I mean, I'm just putting it out there, I could be totally wrong.

HOW TOTALLY RANDOM?!?

Hair update

My hair is brown. The bags under my eyes are large.
That is all!

Back home again....

So I'm back! I'm dragging a WHOLE lot and have my sister's wedding on Saturday, so things are going to be a bit quiet around here. Check out what I'll be up to:

• Working out every day and eating lean protein and veg (I am fat, and not with PH-AT).
• Haircut and color tonight (stay blonde or go brown?! the question of the century)
• Milly gets a shot tomorrow. So sad. Hopefully they use a kitten needle so she doesn't fuhreak out
• Wednesday need to pack!
• Finish table tents (I'm doing the calligraphy on them) for the wedding
• Make a mix for the dance portion of the wedding evening
• Head off to Evansville on Thursday for wedding festivities

And a funny story: My mom called me and left a voicemail yesterday saying that Gracie was toddling around their house yesterday, pointed the couch that was Milly's favorite place to sit when we were there last, and said "ARF! ARF!" So cute! It's funny that she remembers Milly :)

Dust storm!!

Check out this crazy dust storm we woke up to this morning!!
Here's a whole photo album of pics of it, which is where I yanked this image from. http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/environment/dust-turns-sydney-sky-red/20090923-g0tw.html

I guess it's a pretty rare occurrence here.

Points to ponder from Australia

• NOT a good idea: Buying brand new high heels before going somewhere where you walk a lot and need to wear nice shoes, and then ONLY bringing those as nice shoes. I was under the impression that Cole Haan heels were super comfy - but that must just be their NikeAir line! Ow, ow, ow. But they are the cutest pair of shoes EVER
• China jasmine tea is very yummy and good-smelling, but sounds like a lady who works a pole for a living. China Jasmine.
• A lot of the bars here, you have to order food and drinks at the bar and you don't have a waitress. I'll be far more appreciative of someone bringing my stuff to my table once I get back to the states!
• I'm in the bathroom at a local pub on Friday night and hear a familiar accent. I turn around and ask the two girls behind me where they are from. "I'M FROM AMERICA!" one screams. Shaking my head, I say "Yeah, I know. Me too. What part?" What I wanted to say was "Please don't talk to anyone else while you're here, you're giving us all a bad name"
• Darren and I got hokey pokey ice cream last night. The waitress told us it was vanilla with caramel ribbons, but really the ribbons were honey. So we walked around Darling harbor eating our ice cream and I turned myself around when I said "Hokey pokey" :)
• We had dinner at Cafe Sydney on Thursday night. Amazing view and amazing food! I would highly recommend!!

Sydney....

Well I'm here in Sydney and just slightly worse for the wear. Somehow I managed to use the time-change to change my habits: instead of rolling out of bed around 7:30, I've been waking up at 6 and relaxing in the morning. One morning I even got out of bed and worked out, but I haven't been able to give up the time with Mike the last couple of mornings. It's fun to just lay in bed and watch the Discovery channel!

Here's a quick rundown of how the trip has gone:

Thursday Chicago 5PM - departed. We landed in LA around 7:30 LA time, and proceeded to sit at the bar and make fun of some guy in the bar for a couple solid hours before we departed for Sydney. Our flight to Australia left LA around 10:30 LA time... I was in business, Hubs was in coach. I felt bad for him, but we didn't switch back and forth like I'd planned - I slept a bunch and by the time I woke up and was going to swap there were only like 4 hours left in the flight. Sorry Hubs, I am a bad wife! I sat next to some chick on that flight that was moving to Sydney so her daughter could go to a performing arts high school... her ex had bought her a three bedroom condo overlooking the Opera House. I considered asking how it felt to wipe your butt with $100 bills but decided against it.

We arrived in Sydney, went through customs with no questions asked (my boss was asked if he had golf shoes or beef jerky... he was like "How did that chick know I like to golf and eat beef jerky!?!?") and grabbed a cab to downtown. Luckily we could check into our hotel early... by that time it was 8AM Saturday in Sydney. We unpacked and took a short nap, then showered and headed to the Rocks area for lunch. We hit up a little pizza place right by the Circular Quay and then meandered around a really cool street market where we purchased boomerangs for the older nephews and stuffed kangaroos for the 2 year old nephew and Gracie.

We headed back to the hotel to relax a bit, and fell asleep. I woke up at 10:00 PM, shaking Mike awake, a little panicky that we'd totally messed up our time change. I made him get up and go to McDonald's with me, scared that if we didn't get something to eat we'd wake up at 3:00AM starving with nowhere to eat!

The next morning I woke up at 4AM, so I definitely didn't do as smooth of a time change as I did the time we were here before. Oops. Hubs and I watched TV and then walked around downtown waiting for Starbucks to open. Another nap, then we headed for lunch at the Rocks again at a little cafe. After that we hit up Darling Harbor and the Aquarium, which was pretty cool. I don't know if it was $32 worth of cool, but they had a couple tanks where there were tunnels through the bottom that you could walk through and see the sharks swimming RIGHT over your head. That was kinda freaky!

We headed back to the hotel to clean up for dinner at a nearby Malaysian/Italian place (yeah, it was as weird as it sounds), then headed home for an early bedtime.... the weekend went by so fast with all the sleeeeeeeping!

I got a fevah for more Opera House!

Hubs and I leave tomorrow for a week down under, in Sydney, Australia! I am getting super excited, but will definitely be glad to be home and settled back in for a while in a couple weeks.

Mike is going with me the first week, then flies straight to Vegas from Sydney, and then onto Detroit for a week of work. We both get back on the same day. Being gone two weeks, we weren't sure what to do with Milly, and then his Mom and Paul offered to keep her. They already have a dog, two fenced-in acres for beagle frolicking, and nephews around to tucker her out... such a godsend! So we took Milly to Indiana over Labor Day weekend. It was so hard to leave her, I totally cried as we pulled out of the driveway and I saw my puppeh at the window whining and crying to go with us. And now back at home Mike and I constantly talk about that silly dog. Seems like no matter how much work Milly is, she has made us even more of a family, and we miss her like CRAZY!

Regardless, we'll have a great time in Australia, and I'm sure we'll be a little less mopey about Milly once we're in a hotel room far away and not being reminded of her by her hallway empty and toys strewn about.

Mad at the litterbugs

Mad at the litterbugs
Originally uploaded by agstratt

Milly hates people who litter!!

Gah.

I mean, seriously? Could this guy be any more of a jerkwad??

All this guy's bellyaching about what a shrew his soon-to-be-ex-wife is annoys me. I mean, yeah, she is controlling and sometimes shrill, but A) You kind of have to be a dictator with 8 young kids if anything is going to get done and B) YOU MARRIED IT! You knew she was that way when you got married. You get what you pay for, blah blah blah.

Ahem. OK, I feel much better. But I would still want to give him a good kick in the shins if I saw him on the street. What a weirdo.

Baltimore Girls Weekend

This last weekend was a reunion with my girlfriends from high school! We started this last year when they all came up to Chicago... this year we decided to all head to Baltimore to visit our friend Jill!

We coordinated our trips extremely well, and Jill picked us all up between 4 and 5 PM at the Baltimore airport. We all piled into the Ford Flex (big square SUV type thing) that she had rented for all of us and headed to her house in the Baltimore suburbs.

That night we had so much fun, looking up stuff on facebook, drinking wine, and laughing. Jill and her husband Chris made tacos with steak and chicken and fresh guacamole and salsa. It was all so yummy! The girls wandered off to bed and Jill and her husband and I stayed out on the deck with a bottle of wine and lots of good conversation.

The next morning we all got up, got showered, and headed to DC. We drove a bit closer in to the city and then parked and rode the Metro. Here are a few pics of us on the train! They were SO much cleaner and nicer than the El!!

Sara, Kacey, Karrie and Erin. Sorry Sara, this was the best one!

Me and Jillybean

First we decided to see some sights....

White House

Playing with that color accent again. As I took this picture some lady turned to her husband and said "You realize that is OUR house, right Clive?"

Washington Monument... by this time I was missing my DSLR... I was tooooooo lazy to pack it!

The Capitol and national Mall area

After walking around seeing sights and the First Ladies exhibit in the Smithsonian, we headed to Georgetown for some QT at Anthropologie, H&M, and Paper Source. I also made everyone duck into Dean & Deluca for some white truffle oil - yum! I got new pajama pants at Anthro (I have one pair from there and wash them every weekend so I can wear them for the upcoming week!), and picked up placecards for my sister's wedding at the Paper Source (green or ivory... couldn't decide so I got both!). After that we took the Metro to Filene's basement where I scored a few fake pairs of Sevens (I like the material and pocket design so I don't really care that they are knockoffs/lookalikes) and a shirtdress that I've been scouring the Earth for. All in all, it was a great shopping trip!

We ended up walking around so much that we had to drive directly to our 9:30 PM dinner reservation at Woodberry Kitchen. We were a bit out of place in our walking-about clothes b.c the place was super-trendy. But oh well. Seriously, if you are EVER in the Baltimore area, try this place. It was AMAZING, one of the best meals I've ever had! A bit hippy dippy (The waitress actually said that their cows are happy and you can taste it) and she gave a bit of bad wine advice to my friend, but the food was amazing.

I started the meal out with a mint julep and every intention to photograph everything I had.
So yeah, I would be a really bad food blogger because the food comes and I don't think "Picture!" I think "OM NOM NOM how can I get this food in my mouth faster?"

Jill and I couldn't decide what to get so we split the heirloom tomato plate (with jalapeno oil and aged balsamic), the crab mac& cheese (omg so good) and the seared tuna with caprese-peach salad (seriously, on the plate it went like this tuna-heirloom tomato-fresh mozzarella-slice of fresh peach-repeat four times... something about the peach in there just made the whole plate)

With dinner I also had a really good glass of Cabernet Franc that I kind of wanted to kiss.

Dessert was a glass of Muscat and a dish of basil ice cream. When you see something that weird you HAVE to order it. And it did NOT disappoint. Now I need to find somewhere in Chicago that serves basil ice cream.

At the end of the dinner, we were all a little punchy. Sara and Erin had bought us candy Grillz (like ring pops, but better... the grill part was plastic and the part you put in your mouth was a sucker) in Georgetown and Sara got hers out and started fooling around.
Jill was none too pleased. "YOU GUYS! I want to come BACK HERE! Behave!"
Once we got back home almost everyone went to bed but me and Jill. We stayed up a little later, hanging out in her office and fooling around on her computer, checking out blogs and home decorating ideas, discussing deep thoughts about life in general.

The next morning we had to get a few shots of our grillz. Yeah yeah, Bosse girls!

Me and Jillz Grillz

So yeah, the weekend was amazing. It was so much fun to see all the girls and to hang out with them - I had such a great time and I am so glad I have these girls in my life. :)

Topolobampo!

I've either been really busy or busy relishing being NOT busy lately - we have a very busy month of September coming up, so I'm trying to drink in all the time I have at home with my puppy on my couch. I'm going to Australia for work from Sept 10-Sept 25 (we have a wicked awesome security system, Internet, don't get any ideas), so I'll be gone for most of September. Bossman wants to go kangaroo-boxing, so I'll be sure to post pics of that if we do it, hahaha...

So, anyways, when Michelle and I went to BlogHer and met Rick Bayless, we immediately made plans to dine at Frontera Grill. Those plans got messed up by the Australia trip, so we rescheduled for October. Then, Rick won Top Chef Masters, and Michelle learned that they were serving some of his winning dishes. She emailed me one day asking if I would like to accompany her and her husband to lunch at Topolobampo to sample some of the grub. OF COURSE I said yes! It worked out quite well because I wanted to try Topolo's cuisine, which is slightly different from Frontera, but Hubs is a picky eater and wouldn't have found anything there to be edible. Thus, we got our Topolo and will save our Frontera experience for a double date in October!
We got to Topolo right at our reservation time, and only had to wait for a few moments as they readied our table. We walked in, put Samantha's carseat on a stand (where she proceeded to snooze the entire hour and a half meal), and sat down. I noticed everyone around us had the guac and definitely wanted to try it too - they brought a bowl of it with some chips to the table, gratis. Excellent! The guac was perfect - mild but tasty, and the chips were the perfect combo of crispy crunchy but not too tough!

We quickly decided to order the black mole dish with mini tamales and seared tuna for an appetizer to share, then set about to decide what to each have for an entree. It was so hard, as the food ALL looked soooo good! Andy and I ended up getting a sort of sampler platter called Cuatro Cositas Oaxaqueas (descriptoin from the website: Oaxacan sampler: empanada with chicken and yellow mole; grilled Oaxacan chorizo; roasted chayote salad with lime and green chile; roasted Maple Creek Farm pork loin with red mole). Michelle got the fish tacos (description from website: Baja-style fish "tacos:" mahimahi two ways (poblano seared, beer-battered), with fresh-made tortillas, homemade lime mayo, Tracey's pea tendril salad, pickled vegetables, avocado-tomatillo salsa, lime-Corona "air.")

I was a little confused when Michelle's dish came and the fish was one big piece of mahi-mahi that she had to break up herself, but it was cooked perfectly and and looked very good. They brought a containter of fresh tortillas to the table and she made some tacos, and we also put some of our pork and other fixings into a taco shell to try that out. All the food was so tasty - the pork was cooked perfectly and had a perfect not-too-spicy but savory sauce.

The best part of the meal for me was far and away the tamales - we had a few tiny ones with our appetizer and a bigger one came on my plate. So amazing. The perfect consistency, not too dry and not too soggy, and the perfect ratio of filling to corn-type-crust-thingy (a very technical term). I will seriously dream about those tamales forever.

At the end we couldn't pass up the chocolate cake someone at the next table had gotten, so we ordered one to share for dessert. Also amazing - chocolate cake layered with chocolate mousse, layered with a shiny chocolate ganache and and a chocolate wafer on top. A scoop of mint ice cream on the side complemented it... it was all so tasty.

OK, now I'm making myself hungry. But seriously, awesome meal!