To continue my focus on the wrong thing

Today I was on the phone with a water proofing company. They answered the phone It's a beautiful day at pioneer (which I thought was slightly amusing). I was so wrong though, the amusing part of the conversation came when I was put on hold, the hold music was singing in the rain! I am not sure if it's them who sings because of all the work the rain drums up, or if it's us, the customers singing because we're so confident that our waterproofing will work, but either way I thought it was an amusing choice. I was hoping I'd be on the phone long enough to hear if the next selection was rain drops keep falling on my head.

In less amusing news (also slightly related to rain), our family cat died this week. Ok, so in our family's dark humor sort of way, it is sort of amusing, but also sad.

What did I do to deserve this?

My boy is over and I promised to make dinner, while it's baking he started playing some football video game he's played repeatedly. Being a semi-supportive girlfriend I have sat through several games while he "plays" football even though I detest video games and I am not terribly fond of football.

Tonight, I went into my room in theory to pack for the retreat this weekend, but getting bored with that and with the prospect of folding and putting away all the clothes I should I turned on MASH and started reading my email.

My boy came in and said "What?! You're not going to watch me play football?" I said "You're not really playing football. It's a video game. Maybe if you were actually playing football with your brothers or your nephews I might actually watch, but I've put in my time watching you play a video game."

He rustled around in some videos that he had brought over awhile ago (I thought that they were all Iron Chef Japan) and put in a video. I said do you see that I am already watching something, he said you said you want to watch me play a real game of football. He started the tape and left.

I am currently watching blurry high school football dubbed with terrible 80s music. I have no idea which one he is or which team I'm "cheering" for.

There's no point to this post. I thought it was semi-amusing, but coming to the end of it, I am not sure it actually was. I have to go now. I am going to flag a play.

We're not having kids.

I realized the other day that my boy makes in three hours of overtime the same amount of money I make all day at regular pay. I was telling my best friend this in the middle of whole foods (while my boy was working overtime). I said, "so my plan is to marry him and quit my job and make him work three hours of overtime every night. It's perfect, then I get plenty of alone time AND we lose no money in the deal!" At just that moment my boy's friend walked by the end of the aisle. I don't think he saw me, but it did make me laugh.

A few days later my boy and I were in Marshalls scoping out baby items on sale because I have several friends currently pregnant or newly enjoying babydom so I try to see what I can get. My boy, not being terribly interested in green booties (because NONE of my freaking friends can find out what they're having ahead of time!!) wandered over to the toy section. He found an elmo vidoe camera. It was the most obnoxious toy ever! I can't remember all the phrases that elmo giggled out, but they included: "Smile!" and "Ready for you close up? HAHAHAHAHAHA" and "Cut that's a wrap HAHAHAHAHAH" the last phrase coming at the end of far more phrases I've blocked out.

I told my boy we were never having that item in our house if things should get so far as us having kids. He turned to me, perfectly straight faced, and said, "Oh, I am stocking up on these kinds of toys, the more noise the better. If you're going to be home alone with the kids all day and make me work three hours extra every night, we're going to have a house full of loud toys." It made me laugh, but out of fear that he'll follow through on his threat, I am not having kids. . . . .or, perhaps, I'll just take the batteries out of all the items all day and have a mad rush "game" with the kids where we put them back in before daddy gets home. Then he can play with the kids and the obnoxious toys and I'll go to my soundproofed bedroom and read a book!

I hate elevators

There's so much that should be written here, stuff about 800 gallons of water being pumped out of the elevator pit of an elevator that's taken twice as long to be installed as they originally promised. And yet I am simply hung up on the floor. This floor (which I found on a website warning about items containing asbestos):

REALLY?! REALLY?! THIS IS THE FLOOR THAT THEY THINK IS UNOBRTRUSIVE? ONE THAT WILL BLEND IN WITH THE LOBBY?! Our lobby is mahogany pannelled, with beautiful tile, the elevator has nice faux mahogany walls (because we picked them out -- we picked out the flooring at the same time sadly THEY DIDN'T WRITE IT DOWN).

I realize that tiles are a minor problem (and even if I didn't at least three people have told me numerous times). The thing is, the tiles are representative of so much more to me. I feel like we played the game right. We planned ahead, we paid on time, we fulfilled our end of the bargain, IT'S NOT FAIR THAT WE'RE STILL LOSING!

Happy Valentine's Day

My boy went way over board for V-day. He got me two bunches of daffodils and two giant chocolate hearts (one had chocolate that's good and was decently sized, the other one met my size criteria -- the biggest possible heart you can find -- 40 ouncess of chocolate baby!!) He also got me a pajama gram. Apparently he's making up for all those years when I was single. Because we had our one year anniversary on the 13th, I didn't get him anything for valentine's day (when I told him this he just sighed and said of course not, guys are always expected to get stuff, and girls never are).

The other valentine's surprise, our friend John Doe (he hates that name) sent us a shared valentine's day card, that was terribly amusing!

It's hard to read, but it says, "May your romance never fade!"on the inside.

I hope you had just as lovely a valentine's day!

One Year!

So my boy and I have been together one year. We didn't take a picture of our one year anniversary, so I am including a picture from this summer when Suzib my boy and I went on a mini-adventure (I've got the cool puppet on, my boy is in the middle and suzib's got a mini-hard hat -- she got a better one for her birthday).

For our anniversary, my boy and I (we left SuziB at home) went to Clink the restaurant that's in the liberty hotel (formerly a jail). The lobby is really amazing. There's a pretty mosaic between the escalators, but don't be distracted. LOOK UP!!! It's GORGEOUS. They have the original wood work and beautiful chandeliers. They have pretty (and I believe original) windows. It's just lovely. That's where the real joy in the place ended.

Below are my favorite moments from the night (the comments my boy made :)):

"Usually you don't name the salad after the garnish" (referring to the blood orange salad after I'd asked if he'd eaten all the blood orange leaving me two tiny pieces -- turns out he hadn't, he had two tiny pieces as well).

"This is on the sharing menu, can you imagine if there were ten of us and we were at the end of the table when this came around?" (talking about the silver dollar sized piece of monk fish and duck confit garnished with green lentils that we had to split -- and I don't have to try hard to imagine that situation, he and I went to a party at dali where we were in just such a position, luckily the tapas to share at dali are slightly larger -- though not much).

"It's not every night you go out to dinner and the salad and the soup are the larges part of the meal!" (in summation of our dinner).

I think if you go, stick with the bar, it's in the lobby and a better atmosphere and probably the same food if you want it. . . .

I have more comments, but I'll save you all my ranting :). Know that my boy was a perfect gentleman and did everything in his power to make it an incredible evening.

Open House

So we went to the most fun open house on Saturday! It was a chocolate factory tour, a printing press/card making open house and a t-shirt screen printing tour/open house all in the same building.

I don't think they were expecting the turn out they got, but it was sooo fun. Everyone was so keen on each of their separate projects and it was so neat to see so many entrepreneuers all in one building.

I liked Taza's Mexican chocolate except it was slightly too cinnamony for me -- I loved the texture though. They're talking about developing more flavors of the mexican so that's something to look forward to. They also sell chocolate nibs (an ingredient which, oddly enough, was used in several iron chef america dishes in last night's chocolate challenge). Nibs are apparently the roasted and separated cacao beans. I like to think of them as chocolate nerds. I bought a small bag just for munching.

Our tour guide was apparently giving us an off the cuff tour and mentioned that they use the husks that they've taken off the cacao beans as mulch and they give it to various places. We asked about it when we were leaving and they just gave us some bags. Very light and slightly chocolatey smelling so nicer than fertilizer in a lot of ways -- can't wait for tomato season :).

Albertine Press/May Day Studio/ Someone else who was really friendly and who's card I forgot to get had an open house too (oops) had a joint open house, just down the hall from Taza. Their handiwork was so fun! May day studio had really quirky and great valentine's day cards. Albertine Press was kind enough to let people try out their letter press. Anyone who wanted to could go away with a valentine they made themselves! They also have REALLY cool cards. My favorite wasn't one of their letter press cards (though I couldn't resist some of those either). I like the circus one below:

It says "Dear mom and dad, I joined the circus. Love, me" They also had a letter press save the date that had all the information in a postmark and lots of other cool stuff (a card that said smarty pants and had a doodle of Einstein). The woman who I forgot to grab a card from made the neatest little books. Tiny little books perfectly bound.

Finally, the last tour/open house we took advantage of was QRST's open house. They have a screen printing shop and he explained the process to us then took us back to the two dark rooms and through the paint room out to the floor where we could see the machines doing several shirts at once on sort of large horizontal windmill machines. They also have a huge digital t-shirt printer where they can inject the ink right into the fabric. You can't even feel the ink on the t-shirt and the details are incredible. He talked about various printers on the market and even answered some tough questions (like are wrap around designs possible -- turns out they are if you make your design right). He even let us take a free t-shirt in the end. Fun stuff. I totally want to get t-shirts made for my next event!

So a fun Saturday indeed. We ended the evening at Midwest Grill. A Brazillian restaurant in Inman Square. It was so good. The staff (other than one rather odd woman) was incredibly friendly and the food was good. I LOVED the Garlic beef (soooo garlicky) and the garlick bread which they grill just like the meat was lovely as well. They had chicken wrapped in bacon that I thought was perfect. There were other delicious options as well, but I would stay away from the strawberry pudding (and probably the chocolate pudding while you're at it).