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I don't have any idea what this is other than it's something about my blog that Jason created.



Pretty polka dots.

Chocolate deprivation is a form of torture

Went to Austin for the wedding, had fun. See:





The rest of the pictures from the weekend are here.

The trip home was interesting. We arrived at the airport 4,596 hours early (actually it was about 3 hours early but it felt like 4,596) because Jason got our flight times confused. After spending the day at the airport I was very ready to get home, but God didn't have that in his plans for me. He did seem to have it in his plan that our flight from Austin should leave late, we should almost miss our connecting flight in Dallas, and our luggage should disappear for awhile (it missed our flight and was delivered to our apartment at 12:13 am. 12:13 am! No really, American Airlines I wasn't tired from flying all day and I totally didn't want to just come home and go to bed. No, I wanted to stay up and wait for you idiots to deliver my crap.)

Today I was supposed to go shopping for work clothes, but instead I was asked to come into work. So I had my first day back with MOD. In khaki pants and flats. Sigh. Maybe I can make a better impression tomorrow.

And finally, tonight Jason started back on the South Beach Diet. Which means I've started on it as well, you know, for support. The worst part about this is while in Austin I bought a bunch of fancy chocolate bars that I've been waiting patiently to enjoy in the peace and quiet of my own home. And now the South Beach Diet has stolen that chance from me! There will be no rest for Jason until I can enjoy those chocolate bars.

It's okay to feel sorry for him, I would if I weren't me.

You should see it, I'm doing a happy dance

I got a job, I got a job!

I received word when we arrived in Austin that I am now the campaign coordinator for March of Dimes in Silicon Valley. This means not only was I rehired by MOD but I was given a promotion! Sweet!

I know I neglected to mention I had a job interview and stuff on here, but it seemed like bad luck. Plus what if my potential boss googled me, and found my blog? She'd see me bragging about how I had a job interview and that might make her think I'm cocky and then she might not want to hire me. Yeah, it wouldn't be the nake male butts that would have turned her off of me, it would have totally been my bragging.

So a new job means, wait for it, wait for it, shopping for new work clothes! And not just clothes but the kind of clothes I love, office appropriate attire. High heels, skirts, and other girly things! eppp!!! I can't contain myself!!! Thank god the new 2 story Banana Republic is about to open in the mall by my apartment. Perfect timing.

and away we go

I'll be leaving in a few hours for the land of big cars, high temperatures, messy BBQ, and republicans. In other words I'm heading back to Texas for the weekend. Specifically, I'm going to Austin for Jeff and Aim's wedding on Sunday. Stayed tuned for pictures from the festivities.

tv, movies, and laundry

Tonight's the big season finale of Lost and I've got some catching up to do with past episodes. I'm a little apprehensive about this episode since ABC has been promoting it as the episode to answer all of our questions. Okay, well maybe not all, but at least a lot of our questions. But this all has a eerily familiar vibe, kinda like last season when ABC swore we would find out what's in the hatch during the finale, and all we got was a shot of darkness. Thanks ABC; it's all crystal clear now. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this season's finale clears up a bit more than that.

Other than getting excited about the Lost season finale, not much has been going on around our tiny apartment. We saw Over the Hedge last night. It was funny and worth seeing. Definitely better than that other movie that opened this weekend.

And I've saved the best for last, the most exciting tidbit of our daily lives. Yesterday I washed the blanket that Lily burrows into while sleeping on the couch. I scooped it off the couch, without shaking it out, and threw it in the machine. When I pulled it out of the washer the next day it smelled foul. Way, way, way worse than when it went in. It seems that Lily left her dried bull penis in the blanket and they were washed together. While Lily was excited about the newly scented blanket, I was less than thrilled. Moral of the story: dried bull penis does not make a good fabric softener.

Learning the Bay to Breakers traditions

Today was Bay to Breakers. Jason and I completed the 12K (7.64 miles) in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Not bad, but not great either. I wanted to run the last four miles of the race but by then Jason was having some issues and couldn't run. Maybe next year I'll leave him behind and end up with a better finishing time.

We learned that there are lots of odd traditions associated with Bay to Breakers including a giant tortilla fight at the starting line. People bring bags of them and just start tossing them over the crowds. My plan is to next year bring cheese and refried beans to throw as accessories for the tortillas.
If you look closely at that picture you'll see a few tortillas flying overhead.


Another tradition: Salmon! Okay, people dressed like salmon, running from the finish line to the start (you know, upstream) all the while yelling "SPAWN!" and handing out high fives.




And let's not forget the oddest of all traditions: Bare to Breakers! This tradition is not for the faint of heart. It involves some people you would happily pay to stay dressed taking off all their clothes and running the whole race naked. Nude. Au natural. My favorite naked guy was the one that had his race numbers pinned to his chest using his nipple rings. Sweet!



After we got home from the race, Jason declared he was exhausted and collapsed on the couch with Lily for a while. I wonder how sore he's going to be tomorrow



There are more pictures from the race including costumes, floats, and naked men posted here

Lauren's Birthday CrawLobster Boil

Lauren's birthday was Wednesday and to celebrate we decided to boil lobsters as if they were crawfish. The thought process was: Lobster= crawfish on steroids. Crawfish on steroids= flavor x 1,000,000= delicious. How could we possibly be wrong with those calculations?!?

The first thing we didn't consider was that Jason wasn't going to be around and we would have to handle live, angry lobsters. After trying to pick them up with tongs and failing at it, Lauren suited up in what she felt was appropriate Lobster protective gear:


We managed to get them into their pots, but just barely. This guy wasn't going to die without a fight:


When we were done boiling them we set them up for a romantic photo op complete with roses. Look it's true love, they're holding claws.


Getting the meat out was hard work. It took a meat mallet, hammer, and brute force to just break through the shells or exo-skeletons or whatever the correct word is. At one point lobster juice was flying everywhere, like a bad Gallagher show. I'm pretty sure this is why they give you bibs in fancy restaurants.



In the end, I hate to admit it, but the lobster was a bit of a let down. They are way more work then crawfish to peel and they didn't absorb any of the crab boil flavor. Plus I think we boiled them too long and the meat was a little rubbery. But the biggest disappoint is that since lobsters are huge and mean you can't race them like you can with crawfish before you cook them.

There are a few more pictures from our boiling adventure posted here if you're interested.

angel food cake from heaven

Monday night I made Angel Food Cake and it was one of the best things I have baked yet.

Here's the batter, which consists of about 8 or 9 egg whites and a butt load of sugar:



It was light and sweet. Good enough to eat like a mousse, you know except for that raw egg white part.

Here's the cake coming out of the oven:



It fluffed up so nicely. It did fall some as it started cooling but not so much that I didn't want to eat it.

And here it is all plated up and ready to be consumed:




Stop licking your computer screen.

I topped the cake with strawberries that were soaked in sugar and a skosh of water overnight and a dab of french vanilla cool whip. Damn it was good. Really, really good. hmmm, maybe I'll go eat more right now.

True Love is...

Not sleeping on the couch even though your partner had such ragingly bad gas last night that even the dog wrinkled her nose in disgust.

a word of advice

When registering for a race make sure you know how long it is.

Jason and I registered for Bay to Breakers thinking it was a 7K race when in reality it's a 12K race. We are so not prepared for this. And let's not forget that the race is in San Francisco, the hilly-est city in the whole wide world. Great.

At least we'll be able to see the Katamari that some people are building to push through the race. And Better Than Ezra is playing at the end of the race. It'll be fun to see BTE, assuming Jason and I are still alive at that point.

Living like it's 1994...

...or some other year before the internet.

We moved into our new apartment on Monday and by Tuesday we were supposed to have cable and internet. Supposed is the keyword in that sentence. Jason didn't want to pay the instillation fee for internet and told me he could take care of it himself. The problem with this is Comcast, the local cable/internet provider, wants your money, especially $100 for internet instillation, because according to Jason it's the easiest $100 they can make. So when he tried to install our internet, it didn't work. Figures. Stupid Comcast.

After spending a half hour on the phone with the Comcast representative we still didn't have internet, but they promised to call us back within 24 hours. It's now 20 hours later and we still haven't heard from them. I'm also willing to put money down that we don't hear from them in the next 4 hours. I'm also willing to go double or nothing that we'll have to call them back and that we won't have internet in the next few days.

But at least we'll have saved our $100 set up fee. We'll need that money to buy blood pressure medicine for Jason, because I guarantee he's going to need some after talking to those Comcast reps again.

And how am I posting this you ask? Well, if you go sit in the middle of the field in our complex there are some internet connections you can borrow. Thank you to my fellow residents, keep paying those internet bills on time, I depend on you!

The one thing I did this weekend that I'm a little ashamed of

Last night I did it. I did the one thing I swore I would not be convinced to do with Jason. I did it and afterwards I felt dirty. And shameful. And wishing I could go back to the land of never have done it in the first place.

We saw Mission: Impossible III.

I have some really mixed feelings about this movie. Some are based on external forces, i.e. Tom "I'm going to rename Katie Holmes Kate because she's a woman now" Cruise. And some are based on internal forces within the movie, i.e. In some scenes Tom Cruise is standing next to a fellow actor and they appear to be the same height. Come on Mr. J.J. Abrams, everyone knows Tom Cruise is a tiny, little man, you didn't need to resort to camera tricks to make him appear not hobbit-like.

And yes, I do realize that the external and internal gripes both revolve around the same person. Deal with it.

Let's start with the good. M:I 3 did provide a lot of explosions for the ticket price. My diet coke was cold. The popcorn was tasty.

And now the bad.

I didn't find anything about the movie overly Mission: Impossible-ish. Of course I've never seen the television show, I saw the first movie once 10 years ago, and I never saw the second, so my perception of what's Mission: Impossible-ish could be way off. I kinda felt this movie could have been any other action movie; it could have starred any other action hero actor.

And while I didn't find it overly Mission: Impossible-ish I did find it incredibly, monumentally, whole-heartedly Alias-ish. It's like J.J. Abrams wrote an episode of Alias and presented it to the network but it got rejected. And J.J. took that episode put in a few more pricey stunts and viola, it was a movie.

It was so Alias-ish that there was even a Marshall Flinkman type character, played by Shaun from Shaun of the Dead. Once again I need to scold Mr. J.J. Abrams, please excuse me. Come on J.J., if you're going to have a character that IS Marshall Flinkman the least you can do is let Kevin Weisman play him. It's the right thing to do. Really, it's the only thing to do.

There were a few scenes that looked like exact replicas of Alias episodes, which makes me really wonder about J.J. Abrams directing ability. The engagement party was so similar to a party Sydney Bristow hosted that I was expecting to see some Alias characters in the background. Oh wait, an Alias character was there, and he even had a talking role. Good for him!

I'm not telling you to not go see M:I 3. I'm also not telling you to leave your dinner to burn on the stove because you have to go right now to see it. NOW I SAID! It's one of those movies that I could have seen or not seen and been a fully functioning human being either way.

I probably should not have seen it just out of spite for Tom Cruise's brainwashing of Katie Holmes, but oh well. It was a sign of pure weakness on my part that I gave into Jason's carnal male need to see cars explode and things burn. Ah well, it was probably better than sitting through R.V.

It smells better than one of those little cardboard trees, that's for sure.

Today they cut the grass and trimmed the trees in our complex. Afterwards it smelled like sun, pine, and green. I am officially making this one of my favorite scents. I hope the landscaping team comes out frequently.

On another note I've discover an effective weight loss plan. It's called the food poisoning diet and it works really well. On Tuesday night I ate some bad shrimp and spent the rest of the night hugging a toilet. Wednesday I could only consume a bottle of Pedialyte, which is by far the most disgusting fluid ever. It's just thick enough to coat your throat on the way down and the taste lingers so you wish for death before drinking more. Mmm, mmm good. The label says do not add water, but adding water was the only way I could choke it down.

By Thursday the desire to wrap my body around the cool, calming surface of the toilet had disappeared but my appetite still hadn't returned. Score! Chicken soup was about the only thing I wanted. Even thinking about anything more than that made me feel like locking myself in the bathroom again.

Today I feel better but I'm still not hungry. I wonder if your stomach can shrink in 2 days. I wonder how much longer I won't want to consume all the food in the house.

Oh and Happy Cinco de Mayo. Go out, have a margarita, live it up a little.

The rent prices may suck, but damn I love the music

Living in the bay area is like living perpetually in the 90's. And I LOVE THE 90's! And what was the best part of the 90's? The music of course. Which is why I'm twitterpated over the concerts coming to this area in the next few months. Counting Crows! Toad the Wet Sprocket! (assuming we can still get tickets) Radiohead! Dave Matthews Band! And oh so many more!

Living in California is turning out to be great. Assuming I don't get trapped under a bookshelf in the next few months during an earthquake. I would hate to be trapped and have to miss one of the concerts.

Falling prey to the beast that is my space

So I've fallen to the power of my space.

It started with Sara pointing out that yes; you can find musicians on my space. When I told her I didn't have a my space account Sara kindly pointed out that she searched for me and yes I did have an account. Apparently I blocked it from my mind that I had created an account at some past point in time. But the promise of new music was not enough to get me onto my space.

Jump ahead a couple of days and Jason and I have dinner with Chris and Alicia. Alicia is a teacher of junior high aged kids and we had a discussion about how my space is ruled by tweens and I feel too old to be on there. Alicia pointed out that it's great for everyone as a way to keep in touch with old friends. That was the deal breaker for me because lately I've been trying to google, very unsuccessfully, some friends that I've lost touch with.

So now I have a my space account (grumble grumble grumble). If you have one too you're more than welcome to check me out, although my page is pretty basic. I don't plan on making it fancy or adding backgrounds and I really don't plan on making mine play music because nothing drives me more insane than that.