Quite possibly the most absurd article of all time....

I kinda needed this today..

From The Superhero Journal

You are exactly where you need to be.

You are not missing out, falling behind, doing it wrong,not trying hard enough.
You are doing more than enough.

Whatever opinions you have about it,however imperfect
This is yours.

Where you are right now.
Sitting here surfing the internet even.
Is perfect.

Back home and it feels so good

Well, I'm back from Australia, with all kinds of stories to tell!

OK maybe not that many stories to tell, but better than normal weekdays. The flights to Sydney were super-smooth: we weren't delayed at all, and we made it through Customs and our 6 hour layover in Vancouver no biggie. We met all kinds of fun people in the Vancouver airport and I had TONS of fun asking people what they thought of Americans and the US in general. The consensus: that we're a little misguided and in deep, but that they have faith that we'll find our footing again. I thought that was pretty interesting.

We left Vancouver at midnight on Saturday night and arrived after a 16 hour flight at 9:30 AM on Monday morning. I only slept for about 4 hours total, so I was feeling like major death warmed over on Monday. However, we had all kinds of stuff to do and needed to stay awake until at least 9 or so to adjust my body to the time change, so we headed to the Sydney harbor for lunch and a zoo outing.

The Sydney Opera House

The Taronga zoo is across the Sydney harbor from downtown, so we took a ferry over there. The zoo is located on a hillside, so we took an air gondola up the hillside to the top of the zoo. Then we walked down the hill, working our way through the zoo. It was so great, seeing all kinds of crazy animals! Mike teased me, saying that they probably had animals that they thought were crazy, like North American bears and cows and such, but they did have a whole area called "Wild Australia" that we spent most of our time in. There was even a kangaroo walkabout where you could walk around and feed kangaroos and such. So cool!! Except for the kangaroo that jumped right at me. It was just a baby little guy, but I still screamed bloody murder like a little girl and got the heck of its way!

I just loved the Koalas. They were so cute that I wanted to cuddle them. I've heard they can be kind of vicious, but whatevs!

Giraffes, with Sydney in the background

That night we headed to the Opera House bar to have a few cocktails, then hit up dinner in an area called "the Rocks". Our ferry tour guide told us that there are a lot of weddings in that area, because you can take pics there on the harbor with Sydney in the background. He also said that Australians joke, "Look, another marriage on the rocks!" haha.... the area was super cute with all kinds of nice restaurants and shops and such. After dinner we were pooped, so we headed home to the hotel to cash out for the night.

The next night we headed down to Darling Harbor (a pretty happening area right near our hotel) for some dinner and fun. We landed at a restaurant called Kobe Jones for sushi. The sushi was super-good, and my one co-worker ordered the "dynamite roll." You could customize the spiciness level by telling the waiter 1-5, and we settled on 3 since we liked spicy but not too spicy. The stuff was so spicy, it got all of our noses running and was like a little explosion in your mouth. I got two chews into my one piece of the roll and then it suddenly felt like some liquidy spiciness exploded in my mouth. I almost spit it out, it was so surprising. After that, we ended up at a swanky bowling alley that played mostly old-school Christina Aguilera and Beyonce. There, my boss almost broke a 200 game before the Christina Aguilera video "Dirrrrty" started up on the video monitors right above the bowling lanes.

The bowling shoes reminded me of Marty McFly from "Back to the Future" Wednesday night, we all headed out to a team dinner at the restraurant Wildfire. It was not a part of the Wildfire chain here in North America, but it was a seafood and steakhouse.

Thursday night the guys headed out to see smashing pumpkins and my coworker and myself hit up an italian dinner in Bondi Beach
Friday was the happy hour that never ended.... well, you can see how that went:

The boss and I throw down IT gang signs

Let's just say it was fun.... I liked Australia!

Pulled pork recipe

Tonight I made pulled pork and it was soooooooooooooooo good....

3 pounds boneless pork shoulder roast, well-trimmed or boneless pork loin roast
1 package McCormick® Slow Cookers BBQ Pulled Pork Seasoning
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup cider vinegar

I switched some things up - I used 1.00 pounds of pork roast pieces (not a whole roast) and first browned them in the dutch oven (in about a tablespoon of olive oil). Then I put all the ingredients in the dutch oven and added a half cup of water (in addition) and put it on low heat to simmer for about 2 hours. It was sooooo tender and yummy. I put a couple spoonfuls over a piece of wheat bread, and made a side of coleslaw from the coleslaw cabbage mix and just a teeny bit of low-fat mayo. ;c) It was super good!!!

Plane - off the runway

Plane - off the runway, originally uploaded by agstratt.

Check this out... pilot tried to go down the "small plane path" instead of the "large plane path" to get to the terminal. Realized a little too late that this 777 didn't have the turn radius that he thought it did!

P.S.

Oh, and I colored my hair (and by "I" I mean my stylist AnnaMarie). Just a bit darker, but I love it!

Update

It's been a VERY busy few weeks... here are some photo highlights!

Jay moved to Chicago.... this is us at Jack's for the IU vs. Purdue basketball game

We hit up Prost! for Mike and his pals' b-days. This is a pic of another night at Prost, and a Das boot of Schlitz... ew....
We were walking across the street to go to the train this week and saw this semi. We're not sure how it collapsed in half but it looks pretty cool!!

I hit up Adobo Grill and 2nd City Comedy club with Emily and her coworkers this week, and got off the El at the new Sedgewick station. They have installed this beautiful mural/mosaic in the new station.

Just walking down North Avenue to Adobo....

Cheaptickets.com

Check out this article I wrote on Cheaptickets.com about my Little sib, Gracie!

http://www.cheaptickets.com/App/PerformMDLPDealsContent?deal_id=volunteer

Good eats

Tonight's domestic accomplishment - Homemade pizza!

My side: asparagus and goat cheese
The boy's side: Pepperoni

both sides.... YUM!

Recipe

I would say that I would like to do a recipe-of-the-week type entry, but I have been a bit sparse about the updating.

So here's a recipe that I tried tonight and Mike and I both liked:

Kettle Goulash from Cooking Light
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 pounds lean, boned bottom round roast, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 cups diced plum tomato
1 1/2 cups vertically sliced red onion
1 cup diced green bell pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups cubed peeled red potato
1/3 cup dry red wine
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 (14 1/4-ounce) can fat-free beef broth
Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add beef, browning on all sides. Remove from
pan. Add tomato, onion, bell pepper, and garlic; sauté 10 minutes.
Return beef to pan; stir in potato and remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat,
and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beef is tender.

I also sprinkled like three tablespoons of flour in at the end to thicken it up and make it more like a gravy than a broth.

As an aside, Cooking Light is one of my favorite websites..... I get the magazine, but find the website to be much more fun... I am just not the type to read a magazine and think "Oooh! I will make this next week!" and then follow through with it. The problem is that I usually buy whatever meat is on sale and then put that cut into the search engine in Cooking Light or BettyCrocker.com to try and figure out a tasty way to cook it. I like that Cooking Light publishes the nutrionals per serving as well.

Guitar Kid Hero

Check this kid out!!

Meme of Us

Stole this from Miss Zoot

How long have you been together? Officially, as boyfriend-and-girlfriend, we've been together a little over four years. Mike asked me to be his girlfriend watching Elimidate on the Wednesday of Thanksgiving 2003.

How old is he? Mike is almost exactly nine months older than me, and turns 2-9 tomorrow!

Who eats more? Uh, yeah, Mike for sure. Last night we hit the Hoagie Hut after going out for his (and his three friends') birthday, and he ate a cheeseburger there and got a corndog and fries to take home. hahahah

Who said ‘i love you’ first? He did. I could never say it first.

Who is smarter? I think we're both smart in different ways. But I sometimes think that maybe he is overall smarter. He definitely has a patience to learn that I do not.

Who does the laundry? ME, for sure.

Who does the dishes? Our dishwasher

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? As you're laying on your back, I do. I used to sleep on the other side, but then he had surgery and we had to switch sides. Something about laying on the other side made him want to sleep on his injured side. Plus then I couldn't try to sleep on that messed up shoulder

Who mows the lawn? No lawn was included with our condo

Who cooks dinner? It's about 50/50

Who is more stubborn? Oy, we are BOTH so stubborn

Who kissed who first? I made him kiss me first, we were on his rooftop deck and he was hemming and hawing about it. I grabbed him and made him kiss me, which I am sure he hated (sarcasm!)

Who asked who out? There wasn't that much "asking".... I told Mike that if he didn't ask me out on a real date then I was walking. So we went to Second City for our first date and had pizza and beer

Who proposed? Mike - it was so sweet, he did it on his rooftop deck, where we had our first kiss.

Who is more sensitive? Me, for sure

Who has more friends? I think we both have quite a lot of really great friends!

Domestic accomplishment

Tonight for dinner I made goat-cheese stuffed chicken. I put a few sun-dried tomatoes in mine, but I knew better than to do that with Mike's. He ate it all and then proclaimed "Where did my dinner go?!?"

Now if I could just get the time to clean the condo, I would be a domestic goddess!

Best picture Monday

My little sib, Gracie, surveys the scene at the bowling alley
I had such a good time with little Gracie on Saturday. She is really coming out of her shell with me - we played hangman the whole way to the bowling alley on the bus. It helps that I am REALLY bad at hangman, so she won almost every time!

Voting fun

Tuesday Mike and I made our way across the street to the used book store to vote.

The place was a mess.

The guy who checked people in, paged through one whole book before finally realizing that he had the M-Z book and that K would not be in that book. Then he flipped to J in the other book, and started going forward into the alphabet from there. Noticing this, I proclaimed "But K is before J!"

Hubs gives me the raised eyebrow and an eyeball that says "If this is what it's like at every poll, our nation is screwed."

Once I get done voting, I go to put my ballot in the protective/private sleeve and notice that he's given me two - and I wrote on the front of the first and the back of the second. I exclaimed, "Oh no! I have two!" and the guy taking the ballots comes over to "help." He basically tried to take the second ballet from me, and we had a little pulling match over the thing. I kept saying "but I need to transfer my votes from the other one!!!" Finally he just let me transfer the votes and give him the one I wanted voided. What a pain.

Just another day at the polls... and around Chicago.

I also saw some guy at an El station yesterday rolling a joint. How is that for Chicago fun?

Sad News

The General Retires

I remember the day that IU fired Bobby Knight (or General Robert Montgomery Knight). It was September 10, 2000. We had been in class just over a week, maybe not even that. Jay had just started at IU, it was his freshman year and he was living in Foster Harper just like I had. When we got the news Bobby was fired, I remember a lot of milling about and heading down to the heart of campus. Some people ran down to the center of campus to riot and be rowdy (Jay certainly did). Some of my girlfriends caught a ride down to the main plaza, by the Lilly Library and Showalter fountain. I don't remember why I didn't go down, but I am pretty sure I can blame it on too much homework, even that early in the semester.

It was my last semester of Spanish, and I was in a conversational Spanish class to finish out my minor. Those classes were the biggest time-suck of all time. They were held 4 times a week and I had hours of homework every night. Either that, or I was just too freaking lazy to walk the mile to the fountain.

I don't regret not heading to the center of campus... but it did sound like it had been alot of fun after everyone filtered back to the sorority and started telling stories. IU's huge Showalter fountain is in the center of campus and whenever anything REALLY big happened at IU, everyone ran down and rioted around that fountain. On the really big occaions the giant fish were wrenched out of that fountain and paraded around down there. The last time it had happened IU had won the National Championship in 1987, and one giant fish was still missing. The legend was that it was hanging in some frat somewhere. I never did see it. The fish were ripped from the fountain that night - luckily they were all recovered. The student body got several thorough lectures via the student newspaper regarding the cost of reposting the fish in the fountain, which was fun.

As an aside, I remember thinking all day on September 10, 2001 that I was forgetting someone's birthday, or not remembering an anniversary of sorts. Since the next day was 9/11 I obviously didn't put much effort into researching it or thinking of it much - everyone in our country had other things on the mind. Only now, looking up information to write this, did I realize that that day was the anniversary of the General being fired. The next day on September 11, 2000 he stood in front of a group of students and asked the student body not to hold a grudge against the kid that got him fired. And he said goodbye. I always thought Bobby was a really great guy - an old school coach that just didn't put up with anything. Yeah, he was a little fly-off-the-handle, but he was a genuine good old boy. Growing up in Indiana, the man was a legend. Hoosier country was Bobby's country, and we laughed that he ran the school more than Myles Brand (the president at the time) did.

I read today online that he is only one of two men that has both played on and coached a National Championship team. He is the winning-est coach in NCAA Division 1 history, and I think it's very sad that Indiana did NOTHING to celebrate that. I know that he didn't leave on the best terms, but he was a valued and revered coach for a very long time and I was very sorry to see that he was not recognized at all by the school.

All that said, I'll miss cheering on two teams in the Dance every year: one that plays for my school, and one that plays for my coach.

February already!

Well, it's been a busy few weeks! Here is the recap:

• Been to the gym AT LEAST once a week! Holy cow
• Drinking - OK, but gonna tone it down in the next coupla weeks. Chad was here, after all!
• F-bomb.... well, let's just say I could improve

And here are some pics from the last coupla weeks!

My car pigs. I got these pigs when I first got the Shadow when I was like 16. And they've been with me ever since, even when I got the Corolla

Will it ever stop snowing? We're supposed to get another 6 inches tomorrow night!

Chad and I visit with Tony at Taco Burrito Place los Tres Panchos. We walked to Durkin's earlier that night and as we passed the taco place, Chad yelled "I will see YOU later!!!"

On Saturday night we all headed to Fogo. This is a shot of our group of 19. We played a game, each throwing in a dollar and hazarding a guess regarding the final tab. And I won! woooo hooooo!!!

Check out the awesome picture the guy took at first. hahaha....

Kimmy, Me, and Jay!

Weekly recap

Picture of the week: My friends Justin and Kim got engaged! Congrats guys!

Here's the resolution update:

1. Drinking - Does it count if you "kind of" went out two days in a row? It WAS MLK weekend, and I got Monday off, so I guess it qualifies as a special occasion
2. Gym - Went once. Then my cold got in the way. Stupid cold.
3. F-Bomb - Did pretty good on this one until Saturday night. You know how stupid it is to try and argue with someone while using the word "freaking"? You sound like a third-grader.

Random

So I was watching this completely awful reality show the other day (Crowned, the Mother of all Pageants, if you must know), and saw this!
Yeah, that handsome face delivering gifts to the winners of some random challenge just happens to be a guy John that my friend Melissa used to date. How funny is that? I wonder if this means he has "made it"? Somehow I doubt that the pretty boy delivery guy role pays all that well

Wednesday!

Man, last week just flew by! I can't believe how fast it went.

Here's the resolution recap:

• Gym - I went once last week. It was early in the week, and all week I was like "this recap is gonna rock. I am going to say that I didn't go once... I went four times!" Alas, my best-laid plans did not work out and I went only once. But I was so sore that it was hard to walk around. Does that count double?
• Drinking - I didn't really drink AT ALL last week. I had one beer at dinner on Friday (we got some Pequod's pizza, yum!) and a couple glasses of wine with Mike and my friend Beth on Saturday. But it was a nice good weekend in, which I totally needed.
• FBomb - Mike says that this week was "pretty good" although he did notice me put in the s-word somewhere where it was completely NOT needed last night when discussing a subject I became all fired up about and thought "Oy, we still have some work to do!" Hey now, I didn't say I was working on that word too!

On Friday we saw "Charlie Wilson's War" which I thought was good and entertaining. I enjoyed it. There were some great one liners "That's why you're the Press Secretary, Boo-Boo!!!" and the overall story was very enlightening and cool about things that were going on in the 80's that I obviously had NO idea about. So that was pretty cool, plus I dig Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts (even though I don't know how great the role was for her, she played it well).

Oh and no picture this week. I have been straight up awful about taking pictures, I think I have been straight up revelling in the not-having-to-take-pics-every-day freedom. I'll get back on the horse sooner or later.