Trying to Love

Things I am loving or trying to love:

1) Loving the sleeping temperature at night. The house is perfect in the mid 60s. I've been sleeping great.

2) Trying to love my crock pot. I bought a larger one last year with auto timing features, thinking I'd cook with it more. I'm generally gone AT LEAST 10 hours per day, so sometimes that just overcooks things. So, I now don't add veggies to anything, only do meat, and use the autotimer features (it switches down to warm when the 8 or 10 hour cook time is done). I have also been looking for more ethnic and interesting dishes, as I tire VERY quickly of the can of soup/bottle of bbq sauce type slow cooker recipes. I'm warming up to it (no pun intended).

3) Loving the DVR. This is the first full season of tv where I'm really using it. I could use it even more if I took the time to search for more shows I like.

4) Trying to love a few new fall shows. I'm feeling stale in my tv options. Modern Family and Flashforward have the most potential for me. I've also been catching up on Dexter via free Showtime, but that will soon end and we'll never pay more to subscribe to the channel.

So tired lately

I shouldn't be complaining, as our friend Frodis has far more reasons to be suffering from the yawns.

The one thing I hate about fall? It's dark when I get up now. It's so hard to roll out of bed in the mornings.

I've been eating more sweets than I should. I need to cut back and it's probably exacerbating my sleepiness.

I swear I only watch (via DVR-I otherwise couldn't watch it due to the 2 hour commercial fest) the Biggest Loser for inspiration to exercise. Last night I thought I'd head downstairs with the laptop to see if there were any good workout routines online. I found some very funny things. :-) Needless to say, I hopped on the treadmill after about 30 minutes of looking and trying other stuff. I did find some good ball workouts, though.

Work has been busy, but I'd say a good busy. Makes me not realize how tired I am right away.

I have a couple that are friends of ours (not super close friends, but friends we do things with ~4 times per year), and I heard they are preggers. I see the husband at work a lot, but he hasn't yet said anything. I want to ask, but I feel like they'd tell me if they wanted to.

Burrrrito....Suuuave

For whatever reason, I always think about the song Rico Sauve when I say the word burrito.

The annual chili cookoff we participate in has added a campfire dessert category this year. At the 3 Day, Breezy and I were discussing less common ways to do dessert. Lots of people will do cobblers, maybe a few pudgie pie/campfire pie/hobo pie recipes, etc. Thus was born the concept of the dessert burrito. I tested a few in quesedilla form on the stovetop last weekend. The favorite was the banana/marshmallow/chocolate chip. I still need to try a cream cheese based one and try rolling them burrito style. Maybe I'm better off leaving them as quesedillas. Not sure if I'll do it on a tripod grate over the fire, or a cast iron pan.

Fall clothes

It's that time again where I don't feel like I have money to spend, but want new clothes for the season. It's all about choices, I guess. Next month my choice will be to spend some allowance on clothes.

Last night I had the clothing bug, but couldn't pull the trigger on a shopping spree. To avoid the desire, I instead hit Goodwill where I had a buy one, get one coupon and also needed some new books anyway just in case I had some free time.

My loot:

-Three paperbacks (Nanny Diaries, The Corrections and something else a little more deep and interesting, but can't remember the title)
-One pair of shoes that look never worn from J. Jill. I know, some of you just totally freaked out that I'd buy shoes from Goodwill. I at least have the standard of nothing can look "worn" (including the printing on the inside of the shoe-a dead giveaway that it's been worn more than a few weeks).
-Gaucho or Palazzo style pants in brown.
-2 v-neck cotton shirts with fake shirts underneath. One is garnet red with a cream fake silky blouse underneath. The other is a gray casual shirt with a white fake cami underneath.
-1 tan jacket (like a blazer, only no has the asian style neckline) with some matching embroidery detail. Conservative, but easy to dress up with a cute shirt underneath and jewelry.

My total spend was $18. All shirts and the pants were in great condition (the gray casual one looked like it had seen a few washing cycles, but the others were barely noticable they were used).

Are some of you still freaking about the shoes? :-)

Taliesin

First, if you haven't read MC's update of her trip to Wisconsin, visit her blog.

Second, I'm excited about this weekend. I am going with a small group on an "intimate" tour of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's original architecture school and home for much of his life. This is an amazing deal because it's costs nothing (the most expansive regular tour is $80/pp) and it's more than any "normal" tour offers. I owe big thanks to a friend that was able to arrange this.
Taliesin

We'll also be staying at Frank Lloyd Wright's Uncle's Farm due to the amazing deal our friend got. We'll throw him a little cash for this, but he got it at a silent auction for a steal. It's just down the road from our house, so we'll probably only stay one night, but will enjoy a few nights of campfires there with others.

Things not to do

1. Pick your anniversary dinner restaurant based on having a coupon.

What's on your list this week?

P.S. I got 8 DIVINE truffles for our annivesary from this place:
David Bacco

Things I love about MC & Mr. MC

I figure I should post some kind of official recap, but Maroonclown is doing a lovely job of that at her blog. Plus, she has all the pictures.

In about 10 seconds of seeing them at the airport, it felt like our best friends from long ago had come to visit. There was none of that weirdness between us all (at least I didn't think so). They are so much fun, finding humor in everyday things and being open to trying anything. They're just all around good peeps.

Chris enjoyed playing tour guide and filling them with all sorts of factoids (well, maybe "fact"oid is an exaggeration). I enjoyed pointing out things like, "this is where I buy my cheese," and "that's one of our favorite bars."

My faovirte time of the weekend was sitting on the Madison lakefront, watching sailboats, canoes, families, students and dogs playing in the hot sun. We had beers and warm water lapping at our feet. It was summer and we were sharing it with friends that we rarely see.

We baked T-kits blueberry muffins (yum!), sat around the campfire, shot a lot of guns (shredding cabbage and chopping watermelon in the process), saw the sights of Madison and lounged on the deck of a bar on the Wisconsin River. The weather was perfecto all weekend, other than the cold nights and foggy mornings.

Our cats were not the best hosts. One puked on their suitcase while we were out.

Thank you, MC & Mr. MC for coming to visit. We had a most enjoyable time.

Get yer cheese!

I bought a lot of cheese last night. I hope MC is ready to gain 20 lbs.

More things that won't get done:
-Possibly weed trimming. We'll see about that.
-Fridge cleaned throughy
-Garage cleaned

Don't worry, at least she'll get clean sheets. And guns. Mr. MC will get to play with many, many guns. I suggest anyone considering burglarizing my home to wait. *rolls eyes* We've alerted the neighbors.