i wish i'd stayed asleep today

Last night jparks, a group of friends, and I went to see some new, unsigned, indie band called The Cure. Perhaps you've heard of them? If you haven't, just wait, I predict they'll be huge.

Anyway, we went to the concert and beforehand, at dinner, I had one beer. Not one huge ass beer, just one normal sized beer. Then I proceeded to chew on ice throughout the whole concert. (HP Pavilion has the best ice in the whole wide world in their suites. Seriously.) And yet, this morning I woke up feeling like I had been on a frat boy sized bender last night. How is that possible? Could one beer really be the death of me? Or am I getting sick? Or, even worse, old?

Of course, feeling like crap or not, I've got to go for a run this evening. I'm hoping that getting up and moving at a fast pace, in spandex, will somehow make me feel better. Maybe knowing that I stuck to my training plan will magically make my head stop hurting. Or maybe the idea of being able to tell jparks the next time he whines about not feeling well "I went for a run the last time I felt sick, so suck it up you pansy" is the real cure to my illness.

That's the crappy thing about actually training for something, you've got to train. You make your plan and then you stick to it. You hope that you don't have days where you'd rather chew on a broken glass bottle covered in blood from the bum fight it was just used in than go for a short (snort) 7 mile run. And when those days do arrive, you grit your teeth, throw on your shoes, and hope that you iPod can play just the right mix of music to make the trek bearable.

Please iPod, don't let me down.

a play, in one act

Setting: Living room in a California townhouse. The wife is lying on the couch watching tv, the husband enters from the kitchen and sits on her feet.

Husband: What're you doing up? I thought you were still in bed.

Wife: Did you just fart on my feet?

Husband: Uh, no. That was, uh, Lily. (cue small dog entering from upstairs)

Wife: Really, because I felt it through the blanket. And Lily was upstairs. And I think you did it.

Husband: Well, I didn't think you'd feel it! Sorry!

Wife: Wow.

end scene

thank you for being my friend

I'm just about caught up with everything on my tivo and, since most of the episodes were season finales, it's time to find new and exciting ways to fill my nights until summer ends and the fall tv season starts. Perhaps I'll hit up Barnes & Noble for all of those books you guys suggested. Or maybe it's time to pack my netflix queue full of tv shows on dvd that I never got around to watching when they first came on! Yay for tv! Boo for books!

Kidding. Well, kinda. I am trying to read all of your suggestions, but it's been slow going. I've been so drained when I get home from work that I lack the attention span required for me to read a really great book. (That's the snobby English major in me talking. Certain kinds of books I can't casually read, I have to devote myself to them.) But tv requires no brain activity and therefore I lurve it. Yay for mindless entertain! Yay for turning my brain into mush!

But when it comes to tv viewing, I have rules. The biggest, most important one being that if I don't watch a show from when it premiers, then I can't start watching it mid season, or at the start of the second season, or really at any time. Which is why tv on dvd has been such a blessing for me. This rules is also why my tivo hates me every fall. I must record all the new shows, otherwise I might miss something GOOD! But inevitably I miss something that turns into a great show and when my Entertainment Weekly arrives I have no idea what they are talking about. Neil Patrick Harris wants me to suit up? I don't get it!

And this is why I wait all tv season long for the summer when I netflix the hell out of tv shows, watching them obsessively so I can start watching the show in the fall. This was how I watched Gilmore Girls (that was a hard one because I had something like 5 seasons to catch up with), Friday Night Lights (easy peasy, one season), and Grey's Anatomy (mid level, 3 seasons).

This summer I think I'm going to queue up Pushing Daisies and How I Met Your Mother (not knowing why I'm supposed to suit up is KILLING ME). I've also had a really bizarre desire to watch the first season of the Golden Girls (stop judging me) lately so maybe I'll throw that one in. What's not to love about Golden Girls? It's entertaining and it'll drive jparks crazy, I call that a win-win situation. This summer is going to be awesome!

bay to breakers? not so much.

Last night jparks and I went up to San Francisco so I could run Bay to Breakers this morning. We left our house last night and had to turn around to get my hydration pack, which I had left on the couch. We got to our friend's house in SF and went to dinner, where I had a second serving of rice covered in coconut milk (got to carb load! Okay, not really for a 12k, but mmm coconut milk rice) and then we promptly went to bed so I could get a full night's sleep before my big race day.

This morning, before my alarm went off, I sat up, turned to jparks and said "I don't have a sports bra." Not sure why that thought didn't occur to me the night before or why that was the very first thing I thought of in the morning but let's say I wasn't thrilled with this realization.

I know B2B wasn't a super long race and it's not what I'm training for, but I was really looking forward to running it. It's one thing to run 7.46 miles on my own, but to run it on a course, with other runners, and people that are cheering (not necessarily for me, but I can pretend) is something special. It's fun. It's motivating. It makes getting up 5 days a week at 6am and running around my cold neighborhood worthwhile. And thanks to my absent-mindedness I couldn't experience any of that. Stupid boobs.

After deciding that I wasn't walking the race (I only had my spandex running capris and wicking mesh shirt with me. And while those are okay to run in, I have no desire to walk the streets of SF looking like a total tool) I told jparks that bacon and mimosas would help ease my pain. So off to Crepevine we went where I indulged in some therapeutic bacon and a sweet crepe that was served with ice cream. Yes folks, I had some ice cream for breakfast. And a glass of fresh squeezed oj mixed with some bubbly. Missing the race sucked, but brunch really did help it suck less.




Ice cream!

Nom nom nom

Let the real healing begin!

making groceries

One time I sent jparks to the grocery store while he was hungry and when he brought back a bunch of random items I made fun of him for the rest of the evening. (He bought salad dressing, but not anything that you could throw together to make a salad.) Well, this evening I went to the grocery store while I was hungry and I'm willing to admit that I deserve whatever jokes he throws back at me.

Here's what I bought:

• 
  Frosted Flakes (a huge box. And I hate sugar-y cereals)


• Saag's British Bangers (the only time I've ever had bangers was in London. I've never even considered making them, yet somehow they ended up in my basket. Oddly enough I bought no potatoes to make them into bangers and mash.)


• Frozen rolls (because buying fresh rolls would have meant the oven could stay turned off and why would I not want to heat up my kitchen when it's only 100 degrees outside?)


• Corn Pops (I don't think I've ever eaten Corn Pops. But it came with a free glow in the dark Indiana Jones spoon!)


• Frozen Fish Filets. Actually these didn't make it home with me. Somehow my brain kicked in and I put them back, because eww.


• "Fresh" Tortellini. This was the only thing that made any sense as I actually had stuff at home to make this a legitimate dinner.


• 2 Bottles of SoBe Lean. They were on sale! And who doesn't love fake sugar beverages?

Jparks is never going to let me hear the end of this. Although he may see the sugar-y cereals and forgot about the rest of the crap. That boy sure does love him some nutritionally void foods.

Jazz Hams!

OMG! Jazz Hams! I love them!



Can't you hear them singing a show tune in their little hamster voices? Ack!

On an unrelated to hamsters note, jparks and I are thinking of buying the Flip video camera. Do any of you kind folks out there have an opinion about it? Love it, hate it, totally indifferent towards it?

morning hair is worse than morning breath

If you have me as an iChat or gtalk contact then you might have noticed that recently I've changed my icon picture to one that is not quite professional. This is totally perfect since my company does 90% of its communication via iChat. And I wonder why I don't get pay raises or advance from my current position.

How about some more build up before I post the picture? Sure! Disappointment is fun! This was taken one morning right after I woke up. I usually fall asleep on my stomach but, judging from my delightful hair in the morning, I must roll over during the night and dedicate myself to making it very uncomfortable for jparks to sleep. I guess even when I'm asleep I like to screw with my husband.

Enough words, picture time!



Jparks says he laughs every time he sees this picture and I hope you do too. And if you didn't laugh at the hair, maybe you could laugh at the bags under my eyes. I tend to do that because laughing at them makes for a great form of denial.

please pack your knives and go

I've always said I can bake a mean cookie, but if you want a real meal before it you'll have to go someplace else. I like baking because it's an exact science; you learn the rules and your cupcakes will be awesome every time. If you mess with the amount of baking powder in a recipe, the cake won't come out right. Aren't precise when measuring the flour and you'll end up with a dense brick of a cake.

Cooking, however, is a beast that I can't quite tame. There's no science involved, no rules for me to learn. You're working on a recipe and find that you don't have an ingredient? No problem, just substitute something else for it! Cooking is a process that's much more fluid and free form than baking and I just suck at that. sucksucksuck.

Not only do I lack the ability to know how to substitute ingredients, but I also lack the ability to be able to read a recipe and see that the end product will be inedible. Which is why, last night jparks and I ended up with stuffed bell peppers that resembled vomit on a plate. (trust me, I know vomit). A normal person would recognize that bell peppers cooked in a crock pot would be horrible, but not me, I soldiered ahead wasting ground beef, rice, bell peppers, and my sanity.

The only good thing to come out of this string of cooking failures is that I've learned that jparks is willing to eat whatever I put in front of him, without complaining, and will only say something negative if I say something negative first. Who in the hell knew he was capable of this?!?

This is the boy that sometimes can't help but blurt something, anything out right as I'm falling asleep for no reason other than he couldn't stop himself. This is the boy that makes 'your mom' jokes to his brother, while his mother is standing next to him, because he doesn't realize they might hurt her feelings. This is the boy that doesn't understand that telling a girl she might not want to eat dessert could seem like he's hinting that she might want to watch her weight. Yeah, he can be a bit blunt. And dumb.

I may not be able to make a decent meal, but my crappy meals are making jparks into a thinking-before-he-speaks adult, so maybe it's a fair trade. And really, who wants to be known for her meatloaf and mashed potatoes? Not me, I'll take cupcake fame over that any day.

i scream, you scream

Recently I've noticed that my kitchen is starting to resemble an ice cream parlor. (or is the correct term scoop shop? ice cream bar? ice creamery?) It started slowly with some vanilla to top a cobbler, expanded into some small pints of extra rich haagen-dazs, grew a bit more when someone left hot fudge and caramel toppings at my house, and now it must end because I can't handle the line of people on my porch that are demanding better mixins or else they'll find another ice cream emporium to frequent.

How much ice cream is too much for one house? 2 large cartons, one square carton, 3 pints (in all fairness, 2 of those pints are soy cream, ice cream's bastard child from her one night stand with that vegan she met at a Phish concert), one pack of skinny cow peanut butter ice cream sandwiches, one box of skinny cow fudge dipped ice cream bars, one jar of caramel, one jar of crushed pineapple, 2 jars of hot fudge, one large tub of cool whip, and a jar of maraschino cherries. And honestly, I don't even like ice cream enough to warrant that much of it in my freezer.

Don't get me wrong, I like ice cream a lot, but mostly if it's paired with something, like a brownie, some pie, or cookie dough. It has to be an earth shattering flavor for me to go for it all on it's own (a perfect example is gelato from Whole Foods, but only the flavors they make in store. Hello avocado gelato, I want to mouth kiss you)

So here I am with a enough ice cream to easily make me 3 clothing sizes bigger and a strong desire to not just throw it away. Aren't we in the middle of a global food crisis? It would be criminal for me to waste all of this frozen cream. I think my best disposal option is an ice cream social. You in?

And, in case you want proof of ice cream before committing, here ya go (click through for notes if you can't locate all the ice cream in the pictures, which I bet you can't do. Some pints are hiding better than Waldo):