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!

Movies

So I've been seeing a lot of movies lately, Bob. Check it out

On Netflicks

• Bride Wars - Fluffy, not so entertaining. I watched it while doing some other chores such as the dishes and tidying up the living room. It was OK, but not good and just barely entertaining. If i would have put money on one of the girls "finding her way" I would have have thought it would be the Anne Hathaway character.
  
• Revolutionary Road - Odd. Great cinematography and everyone loves Leo and Kate Winslet. I just didn't get how they were so very unhappy in the suburbs... I mean, if you are happy and you love your spouse, can't you be happy about anywhere? I am a big believer that fixes are inside yourself and not by doing any one thing. Thought it was interesting that she was pregnant and smoking like a chimney and downing martini after martini. Guess times have majorly changed!
  
• Curious Case of Benjamin Button (still working on this one!) - We'll see how this goes, so far it's pretty interesting!
  

At the Theater

• The Proposal - Super entertaining and funny, although I didn't really believe the two main characters fell in love. I don't know, there was something weird there, maybe not enough chemistry. But I got to stare at Ryan Reynolds for two hours; in my book that is an automatic WIN.
  
• The Hangover - "I KEEP FORGETTING ABOUT THE TIGER!!!" Hilarious. Seriously, I would see this one again, my friend Amy told me it was just as funny the second time around.
  
• Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince - I think to really like the Harry Potter films you have to just LET GO that they need to be exactly like the books. I didn't reread the book before watching the movie so that I would do this - not having read the book for 4 or more years, I thought the film was outstanding. But some friends I know were pretty honked about what was cut out or changed. Oh well, I thought it conveyed the important moments and emotions... you can expect a film to cover everything to a tee in a 700 page book that is super-detailed.
  
• The Time Traveler's Wife - So sad, so well done, so ahhhh Eric Bana. Such a great love story. My only beef was that they didn't include the last scene from the book. JERKS! I loved loved loved this book, and I think they did it justice. In the book, I felt like the way it went was inevitable, wheras in the movie I was all "DUCK! DO SOMETHING! AGHHHH!!!" Oh well.
  
• The Ugly Truth - Cute and entertaining. But I don't really get why they keep casting Heigl in "Control Freak Career Woman". Whatever, it was fun and funny.

The sad thing is that I haven't even seen all the movies that I want to! Still want to see Public Enemies and Inglorious Basterds.

Katie's shower

This weekend we threw Katie's wedding shower at my parents' house in Evansville. Such a long car ride to Evansville, I think it ended up being 6.5 hours on the way there and 7.5 on the way back (Chicago traffic on the Ryan has been absolutely horrendous lately). Regardless, once we got home, we hauled all the stuff into the house (had 2 cases of wine, 1 case and a Jereboam of champagne for my Dad!) and got to work on making pom-poms for the decorations. I had put them together in Chicago and we just had to poof them out and hang them. I had 10 total, we had three in the entry, three in the dining room, 3 in the kitchen and one in the living room. They made for a fun, whimsical look. I really liked them!
Here is a shot of the dining room, all pom-pom'ed out.
I had everything perfectly timed, if I do say so myself. The shower started at ten, and I had everything queued up and ready to be done at 10:15 so we could make a little smalltalk and then eat. Then people started showing up at 9:40. EEK! Luckily my cousin Sabrina was my sous chef, and she helped out so much. I got a little frantic, running around doing stuff for a minute, but it all came together and the food was delish!

I served omelette bundles, which you could top with either hollandaise, salsa verde, or basil pesto. My fave was the salsa verde. We also had brocolli salad, fruit salad, and mimosas with pomegranete, orange, or pineapple juice. Everyone very much enjoyed the food so I was excited! As everyone ate I sat down to scarf some food and take some pictures of my favorite little booboohead.

Got to open wide to meal on these blueberries!

Someone may need a nap?

Laughing with Mommy

Finally got one with her looking at the camera

Busybody

With Mom after brunch

Once we got done eating, we played a few games: How well do you know Katie, and a purse scavenger hunt. Those went pretty quickly and we moved to gifts. Everyone was very generous and Katie got some really nice things!

After the shower I treated myself to another glass or two of champagne, relaxing and being SO GLAD two major events (bachelorette and shower) I was responsible for were over. Yay! Then Mom, Sabrina, and I hit the town, shopping for paint and fun stuff at Macy's. A quick stop at Los Bravos for a late lunch, and we headed back home to get Katie and head out to the wedding DJ's house for a quick consult.

Later that night Katie headed to her friend's house for a BBQ and we watched Gracie. We had so much fun with her!

Uncle Mike thought she would look good on the fireplace

Grandpa introduces the granddog to the grandkid. Milly didn't do anything when Gracie tried to touch her eye, she just closed it! Such a patient beagle when it comes to kids!

Early on Saturday, whenever Gracie saw Milly she squealed in a mixture of glee and terror that leaned toward terror. Later in the day, it was alot more glee.

On Sunday morning, Katie, Mike and I headed to church (well, first Mike and I left and then Katie got there a little later, saying "Thanks for leaving me, guys!" I had had no idea she was coming with US to church!!) Mom said it was pretty funny when we all left, because Milly was crying and whining and Gracie started bawling. Ah, grand-dogs/-kids....

After church I got a few more shots in of Gracie, in a dress that Jay and Kim bought her!

And then we came home! Took us forever, but we're finally here!

Oh and here is the pic of the fondant-covered cupcakes. Their monogram spelled "ACK".... lol, so funny. I seriously piped all of them, then stepped back and said "Oh, sh*t." Luckily it was just funny and Katie didn't care!

Friends

So our friend, Brett, was telling us how at work they have casual days, but you have to have a sticker to dress casual b.c then you are showing that you donated to some cause in order to be able to wear casual wear. One day one of his coworkers was freaking out b.c he was wearing a button-up, jeans, and dress shoes, and didn't have a sticker. Brett said "Oh, I have a roll of those in my desk because I never wear them. You can have one of mine" The guy said, "But you dress casually all the time." Brett, in shorts and a tshirt and tennis shoes replied, "No, this is dressed-up Brett. Casual Brett doesn't wear PANTS."

Brett is really really funny and has a thing about hair. He detests hair that is not attached to someone's head. Because of this, he avoids haircuts and lets his hair get pretty shaggy. When I first saw him at my own rehearsal dinner all clean-cut, I was like "OH MY GOSH, this was important enough to get a haircut!!!" I was so touched it was ridiculous.

He and his team finished a huge project last week and to celebrate the end being nigh, he got his hair cut into a bozo-the-clown-inspired cut. Shaved on top, shaggy on the sides. It looked hilarious. After the project was over they just shaved him bald altogether. That's Brett, always taking one for the team.

One last Brett story, and then onto some backup testing for me. Like I said, he hates detached hair. He and his girlfriend were in traffic one day and the girl in the car in front of them was cleaning out her brush and threw a big ball of hair out the window. His girlfriend said it went in slow motion, the hairball blowing toward them, and then landing on their windshield, Brett freaking OUT. Poor Brett. That would totally only happen to someone with a hair phobia/hatred. I mean, I'm fine with hair and that has totally never happened to me. Poor Brett.

SHOWER!

And not the kind where you shampoo in the morning.

This weekend is my sister's wedding shower in Evansville, at my parents' house. I sent my mom to the grocery to get some foodstuffs, and she's handling grabbing some flowers. But I am bringing the 6 lbs of broccoli salad and 50-ish cupcakes (I made 48... a couple or three may not have even made it out of the condo... my bad.)

So I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Here's what I've done:

• Scoured ye ol internets for my sister's specific color of wedding green in tissue paper. On the website I found, it's called "Green Tea" but it's like a moss color. I then ordered a package of said paper, not realizing that "package" meant "one hojillion pages." Meh, whatever. I did all this to make tissue paper pom-poms to hang around the party, all whimsical-like. Mom said "I'm not repainting my ceilings, April!!!" So I made sure to get the 3M safe-to-remove sticky hooks. I'm on it, Mom!
• Hit up Target for said sticky hooks and chocolates, and then went to Joann fabrics for string for the pom-poms and tiny little bags to put chocolates in for favors.
• Stuffed all aforementioned tiny bags with chocolates. May have filched a few for myself?
• Hit up the grocery for supplies to make the cupcakes & broccoli salad. Katie also wanted to have mimosas at the party, so I bought a ton of champagne, OJ, pineapple juice, and pomegranete juice (different juices for a twist on the traditional mimosa!)
• Baked 2 dozen yellow cake cupcakes and 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes. The yellow cake guys were from a box (Duncan Hines just does it so much better than I can), but the chocolate cupcakes were from this Pioneer Woman recipe. The recipe makes a sheetcake, so I was a bit anxious about how they were going to turn out, but HOO BOY they are good. Not to toot my own horn, but TOOT TOOT. Ok, maybe I'm tooting Pioneer Woman's horn. That chick knows what she is talking about. I think these are going to be a standard in my arsenal now.
• After the cupcakes were baked, I made Martha's Basic Buttercream to frost the cupcakes with (and so the fondant would stick to the top).
• My friend Stacy came over to help with the cupcake extravaganza, so I put her to work rolling out premade fondant I'd purchased at Michael's. I have to say, I was glad it was her doing the rolling and not me. She did a great job! She cut out round disks and I put them on top of the buttercream, rounding the edges and wiping off any excess frosting. Once we get to Evansville, I'm going to pipe a green DCK monogram on each of them for my sis and her dude's first names and his last name (soon to be hers!). I'll have to take a pic once they're all piped - they look pretty impressive with just the fondant, can't wait to see what they look like all done!!
• I also cut and cleaned 6 lbs of broccoli, made a buttermilk dressing, and mixed it all up with a red onion. This broccoli salad recipe was courtesy of Smitten Kitchen.
• Tonight I went and picked up a couple cases of wine for my Dad, got some more beagle food, worked on some laundry, ran the dishwasher and unloaded it, and cut out the pom-poms and commenced on packing the RAV. Holy cow, I've been busy. All that and I had pulled pork waiting for the husband in the crock pot when he got home. Am I good or am I good?

Showers are fun but they are hard work, dude! Can't wait to get back to when the only thing I'm responsible for is feeding myself and that beagle, and making sure Dog gets her potty breaks!!!

The city

I'm starting to get pretty frustrated with how much WORK everything in the city is.

• I can't just open the door and let the dog go out in the yard. I have to take her down three flights of stairs, out an alley (where we sometimes see rats) and out to the street down the block to find the nearest patch of grass.
• Prices are ridiculous on everything. I feel like we make good money, but are constantly handing it over to The Man for everything from taxes, to the jumbo mortgage to whatever have you at any point in time. I watched HouseHunters the other day in Indy, and this 23 year old couple starting out got a 4 bedroom house for like 172K. I kind of wanted to bang my head against the freaking wall.
• Groceries are a pain. I have to go buy them and then lug them up three flights of stairs. So much fun.
• If we ever have kids, we may not be able to find a daycare and even if we do I'll probably have to sell a kidney to pay for it.

I'm feeling like a mouse on a wheel these days. Where is my cheese?

Is this why people move to the suburbs?

I am LAME

I totally put Milly in a cute dog contest.

http://www.cutestdogcompetition.com/vote.cfm?h=C92EEB48C25EA1572033D201138F0D0B

Weekend Recap

Holy CRAP I ate alot this weekend. Yowza.

Friday night we went to Flemings with Jay and Kimmy. Flemings starts out the meal with some bread and some champagne-infused brie and red pepper and basil butter. SO GOOD. I could have eaten just that and been satisfied. They also had this summer prixe fix menu, which you had to ask for. It was awesome! You got an appetizer, entree, side, and dessert all for $35.95. Such a great deal. Kimmy and I couldn't decide whether to get the filet or scallops, so I pitched the idea of getting and splitting them both. It worked out splendidly and we both had half of the scallops and half of the filet (which was cooked to a perfecto medium). Dessert was amazing. I had the banana creme brulee, below, which exceeded expectations. It was the regular creme brulee custard, topped with bananas, and then the sugary crunchy topping was over the top of the bananas. Yum. The creme brulee came with some crazy infused whipped cream, which was good. But I didn't really need it to make the dessert!
Mike got the chocolate lava cake, which disappeared in a flash. It was giving Morton's a run for their money for Best Lava Cake. Very tasty. It came with ice cream too, which was great.
After we finished dinner and headed home, Milly decided to go nutso on the pig ear Kim got her earlier in the week. She loved it all of the sudden, even though it had been laying on the floor dripping with beagle disdain for four days straight. Beagles are crazy, yo. I knew she would like it sooner or later, it was a pig ear for cryin' out loud!
Saturday I headed to the Cubs game with the gals. I disappointed even myself, opting for a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a footlong chili-cheese-dog (what is WRONG with me?) and some cotton candy. Did you know that a whole bag of cotton candy will run you about 160 calories. You're welcome. Eating the whole thing (almost) by yourself may or may not also make you sick to your stomache. I'm just sayin'.

Someone was messing with a Canon point and shoot (mine is a Canon as well) in the row in front of me and had some cool color accent setting thingy. So I decided to see if mine would do the same. Turned out pretty cool!
Girl picture! Note to self: Strange arm thing that celebrities do actually does help arm look less fat!
It was a win for the Cubs, and my friend Choater did a dance while I messed with my camera some more. Can't you just hear "Go Cubs go, go Cubs go, hey Chicago whaddya say? Cubs are gonna win today!"
Emily gets some cheese in too.
After the game, I headed home while the girls headed to Murphy's. I got this pic of the Wrigley Field sign and headed to my fave tshirt store, Strange Cargo. Unfortunately, the Cubs shirt that I liked the most was this white slub cotton with a huge blue W on the front. Call my superstitious, but I don't want to wear a Win shirt to the stadium!! That's just asking to be proven wrong!
Once home, I settled on the couch with a pillow and my favorite 27-year-old strawberry shortcake blankie. I woke up three hours later wondering where I was. Now that is the hallmark of a good nap.

I became conscious only long enough to go to dinner with the boy, then it was back on the couch again. Sunday was more of the same, with a break to bathe the puppy, break the vacuum cleaner (darn dog toy got sucked up!!) and lunch with friends.

All in all, a GREAT weekend.

Bullety Friday

• Thank the gods above for the filter between my brain and mouth. Or perhaps my brain and facebook. I always want to put these snarky status comments and then realize I am friends with my whole family, some coworkers, and family friends that would almost certainly take offense. On the downside, no one ever gets to see my brilliant one-liners.
• On that same tack, I was talking to Michelle at BlogHer and told her that it's hard to tell if I'm a nice person or not b.c I know what goes on in my head and that if I said half of it, people wouldn't think I was that nice of a person. She said she thought I was nice, so I must be doing a decent filtering job :)
• I'm planning my sister's shower next weekend. There is kind of a lot of stuff, yo! Favors, gift, and games down. Now I just need to get to work making cupcakes, broccoli slaw, and picking up stuff for mimosa. How many mimosa should I budget per person? I'm thinking 5-10 right? hahaha... hopefully it's more like 2.
• I keep worrying I'll forget to have my bridesmaid dress altered for the wedding. I need to just chill out and realize I am on top of it and won't forget.
• Tonight we're heading to Flemings with my brother and his girlfriend, Kim. Should be a good time. I am uber-stoked. If you live in Chicago and haven't tried Flemings, I would highly recommend. Love the Flemings potatoes.
• Tomorrow it's off to the Cubs game. Hopefully this weather keeps up.
• Dog has been kind of spirited this week. Yesterday she was trying to get at my retainer on the bathroom vanity (note to dog, you are NOT tall enough. FREAKING GIVE IT UP ALREADY) and put dirty puppy pawprints all over my white bathroom cabinet. Gah. On the upside, now the cabinet is Very Clean.
• On Monday I drove to work, and accidentally forgot and got on the train to go home. I heard the train doors ding to close, and realized in that moment my car was downtown. I freaking sprinted out those doors so fast, I'm sure everyone was like, "What the hell was that?" Thank goodness I remembered before the doors closed, that would have sucked to get to where I usually park the car and be like... "Oh yeah."
• Love hearing the planes whoosh overhead for the Chicago Air and Water show! Fun!

April and Baby S

April and Baby S, originally uploaded by emmylou7.

It it wrong to put a pic of me and a baby that's not related to me as a facebook profile pic?

My hair doesn't look awful and my front tooth is behaving (I had a root canal done on one of my two front teeth a year ago and it gets kind of weird-looking sometimes!)

Also, that baby is cute.