Fooooooood, mmmmmm.

Hi people! Did you have a nice weekend? Mine was lovely, thanks for asking. I was finally able to help out around the house a bit yesterday. Did some dishes, cleaned the bathroom. And I even cooked for the first time in a while. We had chicken carbonera for dinner, which turned out okay. I should have used some more bacon though. And I was getting a little frantic at the end. I'm not the greatest when it comes to time management in the kitchen. As I was burning myself and cursing, Rob joked that I should be a contestant on "Top Chef." Har har.

But while I had all the pots and pans out, I decided to make myself some lunch to bring to work this week. I tried a new recipe. It was this chutney pasta salad with ham. I had no idea what chutney was until yesterday, but it's yummy! The pasta salad turned out great! (Better than the cabonara!) So I have a delicious lunch for the week. Guess that means no McNuggets.

Speaking of good food, on Saturday Rob and I went to the Mediterranean Cafe, which is the site of our first date. It's such an adorable little Italian restaurant, and the food is unbelievable. Here's what it looks like:





We started off with some calamari and I had a salad also. Then Rob got some seafood pasta thing with crabmeat and shrimp and I had lobster ravioli. I usually always leave a place with leftovers, but I scarfed down those raviolis in matter of minutes! So thanks to Rob's grandmother for the gift certificate that bought our meals!

By the way, in this photo from the restaurant you can check out my new glasses. I got them a few weeks ago but I only wear them sometimes because they hurt the backs of my ears a little. But they match my purple velvet jacket so well! :-)

So Immature

I am addicted to Threadless t-shirts. I can't help it. I probably have at least ten and have bought a bunch for Rob as well. Every time they have a $10 sale, I stock up. Well, I got their email this morning, and I NEED this shirt:



I know it's so silly, but I crack up just looking at it!

In other news, our big company meeting is this Friday, and I was putting together the photo slideshow that's going to run while everyone is eating breakfast. 20 minutes of photos...sheesh. Anyway, since we wanted everyone in the company represented, I had to make sure I included a photo of myself. I thought it was a great time to make a statement.



If I see one less powerpoint presentation that uses comic sans, then I accomplished something.

Inspired...

...by Devon to change my template! Fun! :-)

Can I Get That Salmon Well-Done?

I had a delightful Valentine's Day! When I went to pick up Rob at school, he opened the door holding a bouquet of roses! Okay, they weren't the freshest roses, and a lot of them were already bloomed, but he was supporting his school's science teacher, who runs the horticulture program and sold roses to raise money. That's sweet. He got me 16, just to be different.

Here they are:

After school we went right to the restaurant, with a brief stop at the liquor store to get some wine for dinner. They had a prix fixe menu with no options, other than the entree. So it was tomato crab soup, smoked salmon, a choice of mahi mahi or lamb and some crepe thing with ice cream for dessert. The waiter mentioned something about substitutions, but I didn't understand what we could substitute things with! Later I found out that they were also still serving the regular menu. Dang.

So anyway, the soup was delicious! I never would have ordered it because I'm not a big tomato person, but it was yummy. Smoked salmon, not so much. It was all squishy and pink. I know it's smoked, and not raw, but it felt raw. I'm not a huge sushi person, I only like certain kinds, and smoked salmon isn't one of them. So I made Rob eat it all! Our mahi mahi was scrumptious and we cleaned our plates. I would have preferred something chocolatey for dessert because I wasn't crazy about the crepe thing. I made Rob eat that too! I was totally coveting the spring rolls that the folks at the next table were eating. If only I knew! But all in all, it was a really good dinner!

Here's a photo of Rob checking out the bill:



And us outside of the restaurant:



Oh, and Rob made me a card! He was kind of embarrassed because he thought it looked like a six year old made it, but I thought it was really cute! I can just picture him sitting at a table with safety scissors, cutting out all those fives!





So V-Day came and went, but it was a great time! I can't wait until next year! ¡Seis años!

Happy Love Day!

So, like I mentioned in my previous post, not only is it Valentine's Day, but it's also my 5 year anniversary with Rob. Yay! As he keeps saying to me, "Cinco años!" Since it's a Tuesday, we are keeping the celebration pretty low key. At first, we weren't even going to go to dinner, but I suggested going to this little Thai place about 2 miles from our house. Rob always wants to go there. The food is delicious, and we feel bad because there are never any cars out front. We don't want them going out of business! So we're supporting them tonight.

I'm excited about giving Rob his digital camera! I want to take some photos of myself holding "I love you" signs, so they'll be a little surprise when he plays around with it. I have to give him props. Normally, he's not the greatest gift giver. He has the "guy" mentality that gifts have to be "functional." If I want something functional, I'll buy it myself. But today, I was pleasantly surprised! I had a feeling it was going to be jewelry since I know he made a trip to his step-mom's sister's jewelry store a few weeks ago. But what really stunned me was how well he knows my taste!

Check it out.



This is exactly what I would pick out for myself! I absolutely love it! In fact, I've looked at necklaces similar to this before, but I don't buy myself jewelry. I'm shocked!

In other news, my mother dragged me to get my hair done on Saturday. She took me to her Korean hair dresser. Turns out she didn't speak any English at all. The only English I heard her use was, "hi", "blowdry", and "dancing with the stars." I was a little nervous because she was probably in her late 50's, and um, not so trendy, but she did great! My mom convinced me to get some highlights and then she did this "coating" thing which is supposed to make your hair really shiny. After it was all done, I ended up with these cool coppery highlights and a pretty good cut! I feel much better.

Here's a peek.



Well, that's all for now. Hope you're all having a lovely day! Hearts to you!

No bun! No oven!

I had to post something else to move that mushy post downward a little. ;-)

My mom just called and swears that she had a dream that means I'm pregnant. Uh, no. Even when I told her no way, she was certain that I'm pregnant. Seriously, no. I think it actually made her nervous...or excited. But she fully believed it!

So I had mentioned this on the forum, but Rob's getting knee surgery. March 28th. He's going to be on crutches for about 1.5 months and in a straight leg brace for another 1-1.5 months. We're going to have to get a wide leg tux to fit over the brace for the wedding! That's really going to inhibit his dance moves. I guess that means no electric worm. He'll have to perfect his upper-body dance moves.

Speaking of the wedding, the chapel is booked! 3pm on June 15th! I've been looking into photographers, which is fun and stressful at the same time. I wish it was all free! Eh, once I get paid from Warner Bros, I'll be able to afford it! I just hope they get that contract to me soon. I have to pay the chapel deposit by next week. I suppose I should think about a dress sometime soon too. Eh.

Work stuff is moving along well, in both jobs. It's almost raise-time here at my stable job, and that's a happy time! As far as my other work goes, it's busy, but great! There's so much possibility for the future! I'm supposed to go to the Toy Fair this Sunday but now they are predicting a snow storm for Saturday night. Not cool. That will definitely complicate things. But I'm going to try my hardest to get there because what convention would be more fun than a Toy convention?!

Okay, back to work for me. Your mel update is complete.

Food. It Does a Body Good.

What a week. I'm pooped. It's pretty much been wake up at 5am, get ready, go to work, have a busy day, leave at 4:30 pm, get home at 5:45pm, cook, eat, work, work, work, get to bed around 11 pm with no down time so I can get 6 hours of interrupted sleep until I wake up at 5 am again. I know that seems lame, and normal people get less sleep than that, but I'm so used to going to work, coming home, vegging in front of the tv and getting to bed around 9-10 pm. Me likey 8 hours of sleep. I think I'm getting more used to it though. And it's all for a good cause! It's a shame my regular job is getting in the way!

So yeah, things have been crazy. And when I get busy, I tend to cut some other things out. Um, like eating. I've been surviving on coffee and pretzels and work. And at home, since I haven't really had time to cook, Rob has been taking care of it. That meant Healthy Choice frozen dinner last night! I took two bites and gave up. He's upset that I've been depriving my body of the proper nutrients. I know, I know. I gotta squeeze it in. It's tough breaking the habit of being lazy. I wish I could just carry around my mom in a backpack so she could cook for me whenever I got hungry.

Speaking of being lazy, I haven't gotten a haircut since September. Well, that has to do with being poor and lazy. Since my hair was short, now I got all sorts of lengths going on, with a full mullet kicking in the back. I bought a straightener so the mullet is a little less visible, but I'm thinking I should get a trim soon.

Here is a before/after visual aid:



I'm really looking forward to the weekend. Last weekend I was struggling to get my HOWieZine pages finished. This weekend it'll be my Save the Dates. I can't believe I haven't sent those out yet.

Well, hope you all in blog-land are having a lovely Thursday. We just got word that we are actually allowed to wear jeans to work tomorrow....woohoo!! (It's the little things that make me smile.) Bye folks!