Food Map



I love this Food Map because Nevada isn't actually a food, but "buffets".  So true.  But what the heck are Knoeplah (North Dakota) and Ramps (West Virginia)?  Anyone?

Agree/disagree with your state's assigned "food representative"?

Ummm... awkward!

The truth is, life is really just a series of awkward moments.

Allow me to present...

Exhibit 1:  I started my morning with a quick Starbucks run before work.  I place my order and then eagerly await the arrival of my drink at the pick-up counter.  30 seconds later I see the barista start to call out the next drink, and because I am in a hurry and I am supposed to be next, I hurtle myself towards the counter, tripping over myself on the way.  One embarrassing trip behind me, and then comes Awkward Moment #2: the barista looks at me and says quite loudly "That's not yours" as I'm grabbing the drink.  The man who the drink does belong to reaches beside me for it and gives us Awkward Moment #3 in which I bump into him in my hurry to step away from the counter.  At this point I looked like completely whacked out to everyone in Starbucks, but I apologized to the man and went back to waiting patiently.  My drink arrives and on my way out I am maneuvering through the door, drink, keys, and muffin in hand, and you can probably guess what happens next... the extremely heavy door shuts on me, nearly toppling my coffee from my grasp.  And there were people sitting on both sides of the door to witness my grand exit.  It was only 6:30 am.

Exhibit 2:  I managed to inform my boss today that I have never had explosive diarrhea.  Don't ask.

Exhibit 3:  After work I had an appointment for an ultrasound on my chest, and as the tech gets started, I start giggling and jerking around because I am so ticklish.  She says "It's okay, you're doing great."  And for some reason, this little gem comes flying out of my mouth: "I've had people feel me up so often, you think I'd be used to it."  Now, from a medical standpoint, this is true.  But when you say it to a complete stranger,  it makes things uncomfortable.  Especially when you're naked from the waist up.

Case closed.

Forced Spontaneity

[Disclaimer: I am not intentionally "vague-blogging" in this post.  I'll be letting you all know about the changes I'm referring to within the next couple of days.]

Recently I have found myself wishing I could go back to a different time in my life when things were stable, unchanging, and utterly predictable.  Like when I was stationed in Monterey.  I was in one place for three years and every day was pretty much the same.  The monotony drove me crazy.  I woke up at 5, formation at 7, work until 4, PT until 5, dinner, and in bed by 9.  Every day.  Over and over.  For 3 years.  The only difference is that for the first year "work" meant class, and for the second two years, "work" was work. 

And now, a year and a half later, I want it all back.  I want to go back and live in that same ugly little room, with a steady rotation of increasingly psychotic roommates that threatened to kill me or didn't bathe.  But when almost nothing changes, you can be sure of what comes next.  You can make plans and keep them.  You can start projects and finish them.  You eat at the same time every day because the chow hall is only open at certain times.  (And because it was an Army chow hall, you would most likely be eating the same thing every day.)

I'm clearly glossing over the unhappy parts to my time in Monterey, and there were definitely some unhappy times:  a 9pm curfew at age 22 (not that I had anywhere to go, but if I DID...); not living with K; being told more than once by my superiors that I was not only failing myself, but I was failing my country because of some medical issues that were not my fault.  Yes, tech school can be rough, but it's the only time in the military where your life is really stable.  You know you aren't going anywhere until it's over and what each day will be like.  I just want that stability back. 

There are a lot of changes coming our way in the next year, and I feel like they are forcing me to be spontaneous.  I'm all for spontaneity, and going with the flow, but not when it's forced.  I want to CHOOSE to be spontaneous.  Change makes us grasp for the familiar and cling to it, which is probably why I find myself wishing to be back in tech school.  And no person in their right mind that has done it would actually wish for this because it's one step up from boot camp, which is also not fun. 

I need to keep being angry about these changes for a few more days while they sink in, but if the crappy part of tech school taught me anything, it's that I can grab these changes by the cajones and show them whose boss!

Home Office Wish List

As a result of living in an apartment for about two years (and dorms for four years before that), I spend a lot of time daydreaming about having a home.  I dream about having a home office, or at least a little nook that I can call my own to keep all of my project stuff in.  I am in the dreaming stage where I am designing this space in my mind and it requires MANY hours of internet surfing on my wish list sites.  (I define "wish list site" as a site where mostly everything they sell is stuff you wish you could have; a site you could surf for hours, drooling over everything.)

One of my sites that has prime, drool-worthy goods is West Elm.  They have a clean, modern style that is great for small spaces (aka "apartment living") and a lot of their stuff is 100% green.  I was wasting some time on their site and found these adorable beaded boxes which would be great for holding craft supplies:

  

Another one of my wish list sites, Pottery Barn, has this "Daily System" home office organization set that I love.  It's a mix and match deal so you can create whatever "system" of different pieces that you want:

I also love this Trash Bucket from Urban Outfitters.  It would be perfect for catching scraps and other little bits:

And this cute flower lamp from Mod Cloth:

Oh, someday... I'll just keep dreaming for now.  And wasting far too much time on all of these sites.  Does anybody else have good wish list sites that I should check out?

Fruit and Nut Breakfast "Cookies"

I've never been a big breakfast eater for 2 reasons: 1) I don't like most breakfast foods, and 2) I would feel sick if I ate too soon after waking up.  But while K was in ALS we spent 6 glorious weeks having breakfast together every morning.  We would get ready and then sit down for a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit while watching episodes of "The Office" or the news.  It was a peaceful start to the day, and those six weeks came and went too fast for my liking.  I also realized that eating breakfast makes a BIG difference in my day.  Mornings seem to go by faster and I am hungry for lunch sooner (sometimes I wouldn't even feel any hunger until noon... not good for the metabolism), and I'm spending a lot less money at Starbucks at 10 am.  I just needed to find breakfast food I like, and eat a light breakfast in order to avoid that gross, full-stomach feeling I would get from eating early in the day.

A week and a half ago, I stumbled across this awesome recipe hiding in the front of my Better Homes and Garden Cookbook in the "Breast Cancer Awareness" section.  That sounds weird, but the recipe is pretty amazing.  It's full of yummy stuff like fruit and nuts, and good-for-you stuff like oat bran and flax seeds.  It felt a little weird to be chomping on a cookie during my drive to work, but it makes a great breakfast to just grab and go.  So, without further ado, here is the recipe:

Fruit and Nut Breakfast Cookie

Ingredients:

2 lightly beaten eggs

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup dried fruit (I use dried cranberries, the recipe
recommends apricots, dates, and figs... yuck)

1 cup flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup oat bran

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/3 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, or sliced almonds

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper 

and set aside.  In a large bowl combine eggs, brown sugar, butter, vanilla. 

Stir in dried fruit and set aside.

2. In medium bowl combine flour, whole wheat flour, oat bran, flaxseed, 

baking soda, and cinnamon.  Add flour mixture to egg mixture, stirring 

until moist.  Stir in nuts.

3. Use scant 1/4 cup measure to drop mounds of dough 2 inches apart on 

cookie sheet.  Bake about 12 minutes until edges are golden.  They 

will end up about the size of your palm when baked.

4. Let cool and enjoy!

Yum!

If you're like me, you probably don't have things like oat bran and flaxseed in your pantry, but you can buy a small bag and it will last you a long time.  The cookies are also surprisingly moist and will keep all week in a sealed plastic bag.  Let me know if you try them out!

Bumps and Bruises

If you look in the dictionary under "klutz" you might find my picture.  If there's something for me to trip, stub my toe, bump my head, bang a knee/shin, fall, get caught, or scratch myself on, I will do it.  More often than not, that "something" seems to be nothing more than air.

When I was a teenager I worked at a summer camp where I was outdoors all day.  This was dangerous.  I seemed to spend entire summers falling on my butt, scraping my legs, hands and arms, getting stung by bees (of which I am very allergic), getting caught in blackberry bushes, and just generally hurting myself.  I might have used more band-aids than all of our campers combined.  The other counselors frequently had to practice their first-aid skills on me.

My parents have a set of stairs in their house that I am constantly falling up.  Maybe I run up them too fast, but my feet are constantly getting caught and I fall face first.  Usually nobody sees me do this because the stairs are in the back of the house.  Luckily I've only fallen down the stairs twice.

I was walking through Target once and after tripping twice in one minute, my friend started counting.  I tripped three more times within five minutes.

My T.I. in boot camp always yelled at me for dragging my feet.  Apparently I didn't lift up my feet enough when walking and my boots would leave black scuffs all over the floor in our dormitory.  He would walk into the dorm and yell "AQUINO!  PICK UP YOUR DAMN FEET!"  After I graduated he made me wax and polish the floors in the whole dorm by myself.  This might be why I stumbling all the time, but I think there are tiny, invisible gnomes running around my feet tripping me up.

On Monday my klutzy-ness reached an all-time high.  Try not to laugh when you read this... I was getting out of the shower, and in an effort to NOT trip on the shower curtain, I was ATTACKED by the towel rack.  It smacked me right on my head, just above my right eye.  When I went to bed that night I had a pretty big knot on my noggin.  Yesterday it hurt, but the swelling was gone.  Today I woke up and it hurts to move anything on the right side of my face.  My boss thought this was really funny, and when I told him not to make me laugh because it hurt, he sent me this in an email:

"Beware of the..."

And of course I started laughing, which only made my head hurt more.  Maybe I should invest in a pillow hat for some cushioning around my dome...

2011 Bucket List

I'm pretty excited about this new year.  I have a lot planned for myself, as well as a lot coming up for K and I.  I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but I felt like I should set some goals for the year.  So instead of resolutions, I will share with you my 2011 Bucket List (which is kind of like making resolutions, but more fun).  Here it goes:

~

2011 Bucket List

-  Visit my dear friend Amanda in Portland.  She's been living there for years and I still haven't made it up there to visit her.  I want to, I promised her I would, and I already have a ticket.  I just have to go.

-  Try one new restaurant every 3 months.  And I'm not talking about some new Chili's/Applebee's type of restaurant, I'm talking about some actual GOOD food.  The amount of options we have here in Vegas is ridiculous and just about every famous chef you can name has a restaurant (or two) here, so why not take advantage of that?  Obviously this can get a little expensive, hence the every 3 months rule.

-  Go to a concert.  I can count on 8 fingers the number of concerts I've been to in my lifetime.  Pathetic, I know.  I love live music and I don't know what my issue is, but I'll do something about it at least once this year.  And if you're wondering about those 8 concerts, they were Britney Spears, The Calling, Tina Turner, N Sync, Rancid, Vonda Shepard (from "Ally McBeal"), Sixpence None the Richer, and Julio Iglesias.  (Wow, you might think I was a little bit schizophrenic based on my concert history.)

-  This is sort of a resolution, but I really, really, REALLY, want to clear out our storage unit.  Most of it is K's stuff he had put away before he was supposed to deploy in 2009 and it's just been sitting in storage.  I want to go through it, get rid of stuff, and most importantly, stop forking over money every month.

-  Go 4-wheeling in the desert.  There's a bunch of tour groups out here that take day trips to places like Red Rock and the NV/CA border.  K and I tried to go last year, but they booked our reservation for the wrong day, so when we showed up they didn't have a spot for us.  We're going to try again once it warms up.

-  Take a photography class.  This one is already in the works!  I am signed up for a class at the College of Southern Nevada, paid my tuition this morning, and class starts January 24th!  We have a lot going on this year, so I want to be ready to take lots of pictures.

-  This is the big one: take our belated honeymoon in the fall.  We've been talking, dreaming, planning, talking some more, researching, and saving, but we have to make sure we actually DO it.  We've saved all the money we received from our wedding and put it into a separate savings so that we wouldn't be tempted.  The plan is to spend a few weeks backpacking through a few countries in Europe.  We could go sit on a beach somewhere for a week, but we want adventure and this is something we won't be able to do once we decide to start a family (which won't be for awhile, don't get your hopes up).

-And, of course, continue to pursue my happiness.

~

And I know I said I'm not big on resolutions, but I do have one real, important one for this year:

Make my plan for going back to school full-time.  I want so badly to go back to school, but the majority of the problem is the fact that the foundation of our life here, the Air Force, is very shaky.  It's provided a great opportunity for us to get on our feet as a couple without having to worry very much about money... but it is an incredibly unstable foundation.  We can count on K having a steady job and paycheck, but the problem is that we can't think long-term.  I can take a class or two here and there, but I can't bring myself to sign up for a full schedule when our life could be flipped upside down at the drop of some orders.  Especially if K gets deployed this year, which is looking like a very real possibility.  I also can't bring myself to live here in Vegas by myself for 6-8 months, so moving back home would throw a major wrench in my studies.  After some major discussion, we've decided that no matter what, I will go back to school full-time next January when K will only have a year and half on his contract, and it is highly unlikely that he will be sent anywhere.  Which means I have to start planning: getting my GI Bill and VA assistance in order, deciding what I will study and where, and making sure we will be financially set to live off of one paycheck.