Back to Cooking

Last night I decided to cook a whole meal because I've been lazy lately. I decided to try this from my Everyday Food magazine. Roasted chicken thighs with zucchini and couscous.

The chicken was good (although it took significantly longer than the 20 minutes noted in the recipe to be at the right temperature), but I found the couscous kind of dry and boring. There was also WAY too much fresh parsley involved. I only used half of the suggestion, and I still found it to be too much. But I always love zucchini.

I went to the butcher at Reid's on my way home from the gym to get the chicken. I got 3 chicken thighs for under $2, and it was fresh and delicious. I always love going to the butcher for chicken because it's just so much better than the stuff from the grocery store. I think I'll go back there tomorrow night and get some marinated chicken to throw on the grill to have with the risotto I'm planning to make. I was just going to have a hot dog, but the pre-marinated and pre-trimmed chicken at Reid's looked so damn good! They also had pre-made kabobs. I'm thinking I'm going to get all meat there from now on. Tasty.

Is anyone else totally bored at night now that there is basically nothing good on TV? I've been not playing Wii at night the past few days (because Blake gets lonely and whiny), and I gotta tell you, I'm tired of sports and Law & Order reruns, which are about our only options. Lame.

Stew's Wedding

The best way to make up for having a crappy job is to take the day off on Friday and head to Charleston for the weekend to partake in the glorious union of Jessie Stew and EW. The event was held at a plantation which had an Inn on in (this is key). We attended the rehearsal pig roast Friday night, did some hiking around the plantation grounds and some swimming Saturday afternoon, and then did the whole ceremony/reception thing Saturday night. It was hot as balls in Charleston, but that didn't stop us from having a hell of a time. Thanks for the fun, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Seltzer, and congratulations. And enjoy the Caribbean, you bastards.



Without further ado, the best pictures from the event:


Rehearsal dinner: groom's cake.

Rehearsal dinner: Stew's butt bow. Yay!

Ceremony:

Cake:

Cake cutting and such:

Me, the Little, and the Bride:

Me and Blake:

Blake and Jo:

And the funboys:

If you want to see the rest of the pictures, including those from our little nature hike on Saturday afternoon, here's the link. I think that should work, but because I'm awful at computers, I can make no promises.

Weekend roundup

I forgot my camera today, so I can't post my pictures until tomorrow probably, but the Stew's wedding was lovely and the weekend was much fun. Fun fact: Charleston gets hot as shit in June. True story. Anyway that's about all I did this weekend, so I'll post more tomorrow when I get my pictures downloaded :)

Weekend time!

Because I'm taking the day off tomorrow, it's almost the weekend for me! And what an exciting weekend it shall be. It is the weekend of the wedding of one miss Jessie Stew(art), soon to be miss Jessie Seltzer (we have settled on the new nickname Jessie Stew-Seltz post-wedding). Go to the website. My favorite part is the page dedicated to their cat. (I'm easily impressed by fancy looking websites because I can barely operate a computer on my own).

Most of the time when a wedding comes up, either Blake or I don't really want to go. Mostly this is Blake's territory and I have to drag his ass there. However because at this particular wedding one of my friends from college is marrying one of his friends from college, we are both equally excited. And the amount of drinking will be vast.

So tomorrow, I'm going to get up early, hit the gym, get a mani/pedi, pack, and then we're leaving around 1 for Charleston. Yay! We're heading to the pig roast rehearsal dinner tomorrow night and then the ceremony and reception kick off Saturday afternoon. I'm hoping that perhaps we can get to the beach on Saturday morning. We don't get to see the ocean much in Charlotte.

It's going to be a struggle to get through the day at work today given that such a fabulous weekend is upon me. I need to stick it out here and then hit the gym when I leave. I think that since I probably won't be working out this weekend, I will break my long lifting session, usually reserved for Sunday afternoon, into two parts and do it half today and half tomorrow. This way I'll still have time to do cardio both days as well.

Random question: I'm kind of considering getting a mystic tan before this wedding, but I'm scared because I'm so ass white. I'm afraid that I'll look orange, and I don't really want that to happen. Do any of you have some advice about this? I don't want to look "tan" per se, I just don't want the glare of the sun off of my legs to blind the other people at the reception.

Have a good weekend everybody. I'll post some wedding pictures upon my return.

Easily the most disgusting thing ever

So I'm at the gym yesterday and I almost vomit. Not because of a particularly difficult workout but because of something that I saw in the locker room. Let me lay out the scene for you.

First, I need to backtrack and explain a few things. At my fancy gym, you can pay a little (read: $16) extra each month and get your own locker where you can leave your shit AND you get laundry service, so when you're done working out, you remove your gym clothes, put them in your laundry baggie, throw them in the basket, and they're back in your locker in 24 hours. And yes, I realize how spoiled I am. I would pay $16 just to avoid dragging a gym bag with me every day, never mind for the laundry situation. But I digress.

For the people that don't pay for their own lockers, there are some lockers that you can use with a removable combination lock, etc. Also, in each little grouping of lockers, there are some long open areas with hangers, which I use for coats, high boots (because they won't fit in my regular locker if my purse is already in there), the occasional silk or linen dress that I want to hang so it won't get all wrinkly, you get the idea. Sometimes people put computer bags in there or yoga mats or whatever.

A little more backstory: I'm pretty sure I've blogged about the 50 year old fat lady who has a locker near mine before right? The one who gets completely ASS NAKED and walks around and sits on the communal leather bench with her bare behind. I mean, more power to her for feeling secure in her body, and for working out to try to get/stay healthy. But I wouldn't want to see Giselle walking around ass naked in my locker room, never mind some fat old broad.

Ok now it's time for the real situation. Yesterday Fat Old Lady was leaving the locker area to go work out as I was entering it at the completion of my workout. I see her throw her purse in a locker and some shoes at the bottom of an open hanging locker and leave. Then, as I'm getting dressed, I glance into the open hanging locker and I see her shirt and pants on a hanger. And then I see, around the top of the hanger HER UNDERWEAR. HER DIRTY UNDERWEAR, OUT IN THE OPEN FOR EVERYONE TO SEE. I seriously wanted to vomit, for two reasons: (1) I don't want to be up close and personal with anyone else's dirty panties, and (2) this probably means that she works out without panties on. GROSS. I felt the immediate need to shower.

The good news is that I upped my 4:15 snack to a yellow bell pepper and a whole grain wasa wafer with peanut butter yesterday, so I was able to get through 50 minutes of cardio and a strength training session without starving to death. I did, however, have to eat immediately when I returned home at 6:30. But that's still an improvement.

Today, as long as it's not raining, I think I'll go for a walk outside in lieu of going to the gym. Also, I am making fajitas for dinner. Yay. :)

here's the problem...

...I need to eat like constantly. I skipped yoga last night because by the time I got off the elliptical, I was mere seconds from eating my own foot. I had a snack at 4:15, and by 6:00 I was about to collapse in a heap in the locker room for lack of food. What is my deal? Here's a brief synopsis of everything I ate before I went to the gym yesterday:

7:30 am: breakfast: protein shake and a bowl of strawberries and cantaloupe cubes
noon: lunch: Baby carrots, small green salad, half turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat
1 pm: I see the remnants of the managers' catered lunch and snag a baby roasted potato and two dinner rolls (with butter, or course). I then chew a piece of gum to stop from eating.
4:15 pm: snack size bag of edamame

Now, granted, spending 65 minutes running 5.27 miles of rolling hills on the elliptical will wear a girl out, but I was of the impression that I should have enough calories in my body to keep me going for another hour. I guess I'm adding a wasa wafer with peanut butter to my pre-Monday night gym routine next week. Boo.

In other news, I now have to buy myself a bunch of Wii games because Blake is officially fed up with trying to find the ones I want for my birthday because they're on backorder like everywhere. Good news: I bet I'll be getting the food processor I've had my eye on now. Bad news: I'm going to have to spend a small fortune on getting these games for myself. I'm off to pre-order Rock Band right now. Because then instead of wasting time trying to find one at a store, it will just be shipped directly to me. Well worth the shipping costs.

Weekend Summary

First of all, Austin is awesome. While it is extremely hot outside, I can see why so many people want to live there. Next time I get to go there for work, I'm definitely spending the weekend and making Blake fly out to hang out with me. Good times.

Friday night Susan and I saw the Sex & the City movie. It was good, except for the 15 whole minutes that never got properly edited and had microphones obviously showing everywhere. They were kind of important scenes too. And the whole theatre was laughing. Not cool. Other than that the movie was good...although a bit rushed. It was basically what could have been an entire season of episodes of the TV show crammed into two and a half hours of movie. But it was good times. And apparently they're already planning a sequel, so yay. But it would be better if they'd just start doing the TV show again. Forever.

Saturday morning, we had to get up at the crack of dawn for our 7am flight back to Charlotte. As you can imagine, I was a bit tired and therefore cranky on Saturday. I think this showed most when we went to Target and were looking for Fathers' Day cards. I was in the "from the cat" section getting cards for Blake when I came across the funniest card I have seen in my entire life. I was laughing so hard tears were spilling down my face in the middle of target. It was so funny that I had to show it to Blake even though he'll be getting it for Fathers Day from Norman anyway. I may go back and buy the entire stock of them so that I can give them to him for years to come. It was just so perfect and accurate. This is what it was:

The front was a cartoony picture from the angle of a person who is laying on their back in bed. So all you can see of the person is their feet coming up out of the covers. And then there is a pudgy orange cat standing on what would be the person's stomach, backwards, so that the cat's ass is directly in the person's face. The butt hole is drawn on there. And the cat's head is like looking back at where the person's head would be. And then the inside says "I came by to say Happy Fathers' Day this morning, but you were still asleep. Love, the Cat."

This is way funnier in person, but Norman is CONSTANTLY walking all over Blake while he sleeps, sometimes he even sleeps on him. And when he does all of this he ALWAYS rubs his ass all over Blake's face. It's like his goal is to get his butt as close to Blake's face as possible before he lays down. Sometimes I'm awake when this is happening and I just start laughing. So you can imagine how excited I was about this card. Also, the cat on the card is orange and so is Norman...so it's almost like Blake designed this card with himself in mind.

After my little incident at Target, we went to Best Buy and Blake bought me Dance Dance Revolution for Wii for my birthday. Yay! but he won't let me have it until we actually celebrate the birthday. Which is fine, I can wait a couple of weeks if I know that I'll get to have it then. I pretty much played Wii for the rest of the day Saturday.

Sunday we went out to the lake. It was hot out, but the water was nice, if not a bit colder than I would have liked. Blake skied and Tim was with us so I didn't have to drive the boat, which was key. When we got home, we did chores and played Wii and I made cookies.

Today it's back to my normal schedule until I go out of town in two weeks...it's Yoga day, so I leave work at 4:30 and do some cardio and then yoga until 7. Woo.