Some Days...

This afternoon I had a whole list of things I wanted to blog about tonight. But I was at work and couldn't do it.

Then I was on my way home from work and thinking about what I should write about and still had a few ideas but no way to write them down.

This evening I went out to Trivia Hell with a friend of ours (Christopher stayed at work until 8:30, so he missed Trivia) and, by the time we got done, I was completely without blog ideas.

So I give you the following:

Our pepper plants are big and bushy and actually producing chili peppers (which haven't gotten red, yet, so they're kind of hard to see). The marigolds are growing well and popping open new blooms just as fast as the old ones fade. I have finally got California poppies growing and blooming. And the willow tree is actually not looking too bad.

Some days when I look outside, I'm actually proud of how the yard looks.

Putting It Together

The past few days have been busy. My folks came into town on Thursday night, so the couple of days before that we did some minor house cleaning. Thursday evening we did a little running around, and then had dinner at "Best Steak House" -- a place which, though probably not worthy of the name -- does quite nice meals for fairly little money.

On Friday, while Christopher was at work, I took my folks to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. It's an amazing place, with walking paths that take you to themed gardens as well as walking/hiking/driving trails to go through the "showcase" acres of trees, shrubs, hedges, and the like. It was a gorgeous day, and we wandered around for a couple of hours before driving the Three-Mile Drive.

We stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home and picked up pizza crust so that, for dinner, we were able to make "homemade" pepperoni pizza using that crust, some of Christopher's amazing spicy Red Sauce (from last winter -- he only makes it during the cold months), and some fresh mozzarella.

Before Mom and Dad left on Saturday morning, we watched (in about 3 installments), a DVD of Stephen Sondheim's "Putting It Together." (There are some good pictures of the cast, including Carol Burnett and John Barrowman, here.) Oh, we also had some marvellous Buttermilk Pancakes (Christopher cooked), and incerated about three pieces of our favorite bacon (I got distracted).

Later in the afternoon, Christopher and I headed out to Stillwater to celebrate his father's birthday with his sisters and his mom. It was a really nice afternoon. Very congenial and lots of great food. And -- I only mention this as a public service -- we learned that fringe can be hazardous to your health.

Back to the title of this posting, though...

The show "Putting It Together" is a revue of a bunch of Sondheim's music from various shows. And it does include the eponymous song. The song, itself, is all about taking the little pieces and putting them in place to create a whole (originally, it was used in "Sunday In the Park with George" as George Seurat created a pointillist painting). The foci (plural of focus) of the show are two couples -- one older and more experienced, one younger and just getting started. The songs weave together to tell amazing stories of life together.

It's interesting. When the DVD was done, Mom commented that it was kind of sad. But I feel it's hopeful. I guess, maybe, it has something to do with where we each stand in our lives. On the other hand, she commented along the way that John Barrowman was very cute -- so we definitely agree on some things.

And now, on Sunday evening, Christopher and are getting to do a little relaxing. Time for us to settle in, get ready for the week and... well... let our brains put it all together.

It's the Little Things

You know how it is when you're having a not-so-great day/week/whatever and you kind of feel like the world is simply icky?

Or maybe it's just a point when you walk out to your car every day thinking "that car needs to be washed" but you don't have the extra cash to waste on such a frivolity (and you don't have the energy to do it yourself)?

It's times like that when the little things in life can make all the difference.

As Christopher and I were walking out of the restaurant after lunch last Sunday, one of our friends pointed at my car and said "Oh... Look!" I wasn't thrilled that she was pointing out the fingerprints in the dust. Until I looked where she was pointing.

There, in the dust above the back bumper was a perfect little heart. I was a little slow on the uptake, but she was quick enough to ask Christopher "Did you do that?" to which, of course, he slightly bashfully answered yes. Anything else could have been going on in the world, but at that moment nothing else mattered except Christopher and that heart on my car.

Today, because it has been threatening to rain, I drove home as quickly as possible -- cursing every cloud that looked like it might wash off the back of my car. But, since we really do need the rain, I figured maybe I should hope for rain and take a picture, instead.

I'm still hoping it doesn't wash off, though, because it makes me very happy each time I go out to my car.

(Thanks, hon. I needed that.)

An-ti-ci-pay-ay-tion

Today's post is made up of two different and disparate portions. I'm telling you that now, so that you don't get halfway through and wonder what the heck is going on.

Part one: Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (the movie). I've read each of the books (up to #6, at least), and Christopher has not. So each time we go to one of the movies we start de-briefing conversations with me asking him if it all made sense. Happily, unlike after HP#5, this time when we left Christopher didn't feel like the movie had left him out in the cold. But he did comment that it felt like a movie entirely aimed at getting us to the next movie.

For me, the movie spent too much time on niceties, and skimped on too many serious background plot points from the book. Of course, Christopher hasn't read the books and so he wasn't bothered by those. Yes, it was fun to see Harry, Ron and Hermione (and everyone else) looking older and dealing with late-teen issues (like dating). Yes, it was emotional in many of the same ways that the book was. But, I wanted to see more of what seemed really important when I was reading the book. And, well, I also felt like the movie was simply a placeholder before the next one. Overall rating: B+

Part Two: If you've been paying attention, you know that I broke a chunk off of one of my molars, yesterday. No major pain, thankfully, but a relatively constant ache and some spikes of pain when I drank anything too cold.

This morning, I called my dentist and was able to get in on one of their Emergency Slots around lunchtime. I contacted my work to let them know I wasn't coming in in the morning, and did a couple of hours' worth of work before heading over to St Paul to the dentist. (By the way, I highly recommend the folks at the St Paul Dental Center. My hometown dentist recommended them years ago, and I've come to really like them.)

My dentist was great. He reassured me that the break was about as "good" as it could have been--clean and even. Since Emergency Slots are only about 20 minutes long, he simply put a filling over the back of my tooth and explained that I probably shouldn't put off getting that tooth crowned any longer. So as I left I scheduled two more appointments: One for the "fitting" and a temporary "placeholder" crown; One for the official crown.

Here's hoping that both the final Harry Potter movie(s) and my new crown will be worth the work, the wait, and the money.

Getting a Little Nerve-y

(aka Not All It's Cracked Up To Be)

The last time I was at the dentist (about a month ago) I complained about having a strange overly sensitive feeling in one of my molars. I was informed I had a micro-fracture in the tooth. I was told that I needed to get a crown on the tooth, because the fracture could go one of two ways: 1) simply chip off part of the tooth and you're done; 2) crack off a large portion of the tooth, expose some nerve, and require a root canal-type surgery.

Normally, that would be a no-brainer for me: Fix it. Fix it now.

But upon closer examination of my insurance policy, I found out that they wouldn't pay for anything until after my one year anniversary on the plan. That's November. Since the pain was only sporadic and not all that bad, I figured I could wait. I wouldn't have to worry about anything major, unless it got worse.

Checking with my hometown dentist, I was reassured that, although having it worked on ASAP was good, if the pain wasn't a problem, I decided I could wait.

So I've been waiting. Ignoring the occasional little twinges. Watching the calendar and counting down until November. Until today.

I was eating leftovers from a really great lunch today, and bit down on--of all things--a chunk of chicken, when I felt a crack. I bit on something, which I thought was probably a hard piece of peanut. And then reality set in. A quick probe with my tongue found something sharp.

No problem, right? The little chip had fallen off, and I would be fine. Except... well... my tongue also caused a nerve twinge. Nerve twinge means that I lost more than a little chip. The sharp feeling? Most likely the edge of my now-exposed filling. Which means I'll be calling the dentist first thing in the morning and trying to get in on one of their "emergency" slots.

Ah, well. Best laid plans and all, right?

A Surprising Evening

Last night, after about 8 days of tip-toe-ing planning and surreptitious preparations, I surprised Christopher with a "Half Birthday" party.

You see, we had already been planning to have a couple of friends over for an evening we were referring to as "Jason Statham Film Fest, part deux." But, since it's been a while since we had people over to hang out and talk and eat, I decided it might be fun to invite a few more people. Friday being almost exactly 6 months after Christopher's actual birthday, I sent out the "Surprise Half'Birthday Party" invitation last weekend (after clearing it with the "official" invitees), and then waited to see whose schedules were still clear with that little advance warning. (Personally, Christopher and I almost always have open calendars on Friday nights. We're usually of the "It's Friday, let's collapse. We'll do something on Saturday" mindset.)

As I waited to hear whether we would have 4 people or 20, I started to prep. I did my grocery shopping on Tuesday, hiding bottles of soda pop in the basement bedroom, and trying to cover up the massive amounts of extra food in the fridge. Of course, Christopher came home from work on Tuesday and, while digging around for something for dinner, he came across the two rounds of Brie. I explained that one was for Friday night and one was for next week when my folks are in town. (Well... sort of...)

Luckily, Christopher is currently taking a French language refresher course, so I knew he'd be out of the house on Wednesday night. I spent that afternoon/evening baking a (box) cake, which I had wrapped up and stored in the basement bedroom before he got home. To cover the smell of chocolate in the house I ordered pizza for dinner. (Hmmm... Now that I think about it, Freud might say that I baked the cake as an excuse to order the pizza...) But the cake still needed to be frosted.

Christopher's usual night for yoga class is Tuesday, but he had moved it to Thursday this week. Even so, I wasn't sure if he would have to work late and miss yoga. If he took the class, he'd be home at 7:45. If not, he could be home as early as 5:30. As soon as I got home from work, I set about making Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (from the Wilton website) and getting it onto the cake. With a little cream cheese frosting left over from last weekend's baking, I decorated the cake and tossed it back into the basement. Then I toasted up some bread rounds (to use for bruschetta on Friday), and rubbed them with garlic. By the time Christopher got home, there was definitely no chocolate aroma in the air.

So far, so good.

But I still had all of the appetizers to make, and we were both going to be home on Friday. I cleaned the house, loaded the CD player, and gathered a few supplies as he ran errands in the morning. In the afternoon, though, Christopher decided he wanted to do a couple of desserts for the evening. I couldn't tell him "no" without blowing my cover, so I slid off into the other room to await my turn in the kitchen. Around 3:30 I started putting together some Thai Vegetarian Spring Rolls (the basic recipe is here, but the first time I made them they were really bland, so I traded out the bean sprouts for chopped radishes, doubled the ginger, and added some chopped red chilis), and their accompanying sauce (if you use the very nice dipping sauce recipe on that site, please note that it should be 2 TEAspoons of cornstarch, not 2 TABLEspoons).

I also chopped up the tomatoes, onion, garlic and basil to be put on top of the garlic toast rounds for "do-it-yourself" bruschetta. And took out puff pastry to prep it for making our baked brie. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Christopher started asking me whether I was making way too much. Luckily, I'm known for making way more food than we need, so I was able to shrug it off.

The first guests (the "expected" ones) showed up at 6 o'clock, bearing gifts and really amazing cheeses (which we put out on a cutting board, once Christopher wrote out labels for each of them). We settled in to munch on some appetizers and turned on the first Jason Statham movie of the double bill: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

Just a few minutes into the movie, the front doorbell rang. Christopher opened it to find another friend of ours, holding a small gift and a bag of ice. We chose not to explain what was going on, yet, as I pulled paper plates napkins, plastic cups and forks, and bottles of soda off of the basement stairs. Finally, a few minutes later, Christopher mentioned that maybe he should have made more dessert, at which point I said "Hold that thought" and disappeared into the basement, returning with the cake.

By the time The Transporter was in the DVD player, there were 9 people and a miniature Schnauzer named Fred hanging out in the living room eating spring rolls, cheeses, bruschetta, baked brie, half-birthday cake and Kouing Amman (which nicely served all 9 of us -- even though we've been known to eat one when there are only 2 of us).

As we trundled off to bed, Christopher commented that maybe it's a good thing that he's sometimes a little dense. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief that the subterfuge was done and I didn't have to deal with my stomach being in knots any longer.

Either way, to quote Lewis Carroll, via Walt Disney: If there are no objections, let it be unanimous! A very merry Unbirthday to us!

Closer? No. Not really.

Waiting to hear if anything is going to happen with my job is beginning to feel like a day of waiting for the cable guy to show up. You know how it is -- They say they'll be there between 8am and 5pm, and you can't do anything about it.

Worse, yet, you also can't do anything during that time period. God forbid you decide to run to the store or have a shower, because you know that's when they'll show up. So you spend the day kind of oddly tense and on edge. Frustrated, even though you did agree to the cable company's rules.

That's how it's been at work all week.

I mean, I got the "new offer" on Monday, and when I went in on Wednesday (yesterday) my boss was really busy. So I sent him a nice little email saying "Yes. I definitely want the job, but I have a few questions." I thought it was only right to get a few things on the table before we went much further.

You know... As-yet-unanswered questions, like: "Will I be hourly or salaried? Will I be eligible for insurance and vacation/sick time?" Fairly minor questions, in the grand scheme, but also rather important when starting any job. Oh, and I also asked this: "When does the new position start?"

I sent my email, and went back to work. I waited. I did some book orders. I waited. I did some proofing. I waited. I came home at the end of the day.

Today, I went in to work at my usual 10am (enjoying it as long as I can since the new schedule will be 9-5). I did some book orders. I dealt with some authors. I waited. I checked my email. I did some book orders. I waited.

At about 1pm, I got an instant message from the boss saying "I haven't forgotten about your email. I need to talk to A about it, first." ("A" is someone who is between him and me in the chain of command.)

Here's the thing... He's the boss. He basically does whatever he wants in the hiring/firing realm. But on this matter he apparently needs to check with someone down the ladder from him? I'm very confused.

So... I left the office today for the weekend, with no more solid answers than I had when I left work on Monday. For all I know, I'll go in next week and find out one of three things: 1) I should have come in at 9, because they thought I was starting the new gig; 2) the offer is off the table; or 3) that I've got more time to wait.

At least when you wait for the cable guy, if he's late you can bargain for free HBO.