New Hair Day

My friend Karolina used her photography skills to snap some shots of my new hair at work today.


Let's try to ignore the fact that I basically stole the hair stylings of Suri Cruise, shall we?

We're off to Lima for Thanksgiving this evening as long as Chicago traffic actually lets us leave the city. Happy Turkey Day!

Oh, and Milo is now a lolcat. Once he starts acting like a diva and forgetting his people and where he came from because of newfound internet stardom, blame Andy.

So long, hair!

Going to Twisted Scissors tonight for my biannual hair butchering.

Watch out, world. I'm thinking bangs.

P.S. Andy and I bought this laptop.

How to wine

Found a really basic and fun article about some basic wine serving basics on Serious Eats.

Now I can't wait to head home and open another bottle of Beaujolais while Andy and I customize and order our new laptop.

Happy Beaujolais Day!

Get it while it's fresh!

Meet Rover

Red Rover to be exact. Thanks to Sister Judy for the kickass car and the kickassier name.

2000 Oldsmobile Alero with only 89,000 miles and 80,000 of those miles driven by a nun.

For a thousand bucks, I couldn't pass him up.

Butternut Squash & Caramelized Onion Galette

I made this tonight for the second time.

Smitten Kitchen told me how.

Yum. my.

From Japan to an NFL Tie

Had a great relaxing weekend that started Friday night with a call from Jenny in Japan. Even though it was already Saturday morning for her, she wouldn't tell me anything from the future that I could use to make myself extremely rich or powerful. What good is time traveling if you can't use it for personal gain?

After two hours of catching up and a couple glasses of wine, I noticed Andy staring at me with the look Milo gives when I forget to feed him. I said "Sayonara!" to Jenny and Japan and we headed out to a local restaurant, John's Place, for a late dinner. (Meh, it was decent and we'll try it again, but nothing incredible. You can go see my Yelp review if you're truly interested in the gritty details.)

Saturday we had our usual lazy morning with lots of "family time" (aka laying on the floor with Milo, chasing Milo around the apartment, throwing toys for Milo, trying to get Milo to skid into the wall while chasing toys, making Milo jump over Andy while chasing his toys, walking Milo, begging Milo to eat his food by hand-feeding him one piece of kibble at a time so he doesn't throw up from forgetting that he's hungry).

Saturday afternoon we headed up to Lincoln Square to see the new Bond movie at The Davis with Pat and Caraan. The movie was pretty good, though there wasn't NEARLY enough topless Daniel Craig for my liking. I still think the new Bond movies are WAY better than any of the others I've seen.

We headed back to Pat and Caraan's place after the movie so they could make us dinner and feed us cupcakes before a few more-intense-than-necessary games of Sorry and Euchre. Very fun night (espcially since the Sorry and Euchre gods were smiling on me... I am a WINNAH!).

Sunday came too early with Milo acting as the alarm clock and too much time spent watching pre-game football analysis and many fantasy team adjustments.

The highlight of the day was venturing out for lunch and some "lunch dessert" from Bleeding Heart Bakery around the corner.

Snickerdoodle (*meh*) and Bananas Foster (*drool!*) cupcakes.

We settled in to watch footbal while Milo and I assumed our normal Sunday football positions.

Milo's not dead, I promise. He is slowly being swallowed by the couch, though. I blame my sleepiness on the sugar coma from the cupcakes and my boredom at NFL football now that I'm satisfied with a tie from the Bengals.

Lazy Sundays are my favorite.

Mondays are not. Hello, Grind, nice to get back to you.

Cuckoo for Catholicism!

And people still wonder if separation of church and state is a good idea.

Let's hear some crazy from Rev. Jay Scott Newman:

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

I love the smell of radical ignorance in the morning.

THWUMP!

3:54 A.M. Monday Morning...

THWUMP!

Sitting straight up in bed I hazily realized I was no longer involved in the highway car chase from my dream (in which I was also trying desperately to call 911 on my cell phone, but in my dreams, cell phones NEVER work correctly, so I just kept dialing and dialing and dialing. Maybe I have some innate fear of technology?), but positive that had definitely just heard a loud thud on the bedroom floor.

The empty bed told me all I needed to know. I leaned over the side of the bed and saw a sleepy ball of fur that was even more dazed and drowsily confused than I was.

When Andy's out of town, I let Milo sleep on the bed with me because 1)it makes bedtime less lonely and 2)because he'll let me sleep in if he's on the bed. (Okay, it's about 90% because of the letting me sleep in thing.)

Our apartment has radiators that tend to be a bit erratic so the temperature in the bedroom is in a constant state of flux. When it's hot, Milo rolls onto his back and when it cools down, he rolls back onto his belly again. Apparently this regulation of body temperature made him roll himself right off the bed.

Though it's a bit of a fall for such a small body, he seemed unharmed and mostly just annoyed at having the "OH-MY-GOD-I'M-FALLING!!!" dream become reality.

Maybe he's hoping for an upgrade to a king size bed since his sprawled limbs on the queen is only proportinal to me sleeping on half a tennis court.

Chow Time

Andy and I had a date night on Friday that consisted of a free beer tasting at In Fine Spirits followed by dinner at the Korean BBQ, Cho Sun Ok.

The beer tasting led to some Unibroue purchases as well as some Robert the Bruce from Three Floyds and a crazy beer recommended by the guy running the tasting, Brasserie Lebbe's L'Amalthée.

We had the Three Floyds as part of the tasting, and it came to dinner with us since Koreans are awesome and have BYOB restaurants.

Like anyone who has ever traveled with me will attest to, I like to be prepared. So I hit Wikipedia and Yelp to get as much info on Korean BBQ as possible.

My preparation was almost all for naught. I did know what I should order, but had no idea what it really was other than unmarinated beef strips to be cooked on the stone pot on the table.

About 10 small dishes came out first.

I still can't identify much besides the few veggies I recognized. The server wasn't interested at all in explaining anything to us, though when we started cooking our meat, she jumped in and showed us how to eat the tasty grilled beef (dipped in the salty, peppery sesame oil then with a bunch of the shredded scallions and some marinated onion/jalapeno things). It was yummy.

When we couldn't eat anymore, they came out and made fried rice with a lot of our leftovers in the stone pot. The bottom got nice and crispy.

I would've liked to have tried it, but my stomach was already bursting with unidentified appetizers/sides and thinly sliced, marbled meat strips.

The meal ended up being super cheap, so I understood the line out the door and plan to go again, even though we spent the rest of the night reeking of Korean food. (Seriously, don't ever enter a Korean BBQ with anything that you'd have to have dry cleaned.) Next time we'll have to go with our friends when they are not both home sick for the weekend like they happened to be Friday night. Feel better!

The down side of my new love of Korean food was some serious heartburn on Saturday. That's what I get for scarfing down unidentified foods, though I think it was the large amounts of onion and garlic that did me in.

I had to take Andy to the airport today for some business in New Jersey, so tonight I stuck with a heartburn-free favorite, homemade chicken soup.

Now it's off to sleep with Milo who gets to snooze on the big bed in Andy's absence.

Don't worry, babe, I only let him use your pillow if he promises not to drool.

Light 'Em Up

(Andy wore his Ohio shirt in the hopes that our home state would turn blue. Good work, Buckeyes!)

Happy Election Day!

I woke at 6:20AM this morning and like a kid on Christmas, asked Andy if we could go vote yet.

He agreed, so I hopped out of bed, ready to head to the polls in my pajamas.

I noticed Andy brushing his teeth and decided that as a consideration to the poll workers, I should probably do the same. While scrubbing away at the chompers, I thought that I might as well switch from my glasses to contacts and wash my face as well. Seeing the ballot clearly would certainly come in handy.

I figured fleece pants were a bit too casual for voting, so I changed into my "Lucky" brand jeans. (Couldn't hurt, right?)

As I was putting on my shoes, I realized I hadn't put on a bra and the idea of casting a ballot without a bra was a little too scandalous even for me. Would I really want to look back at this possible history-changing moment and think about the fact that I had neglected to wear proper undergarments? That seemed disrespectful somehow.

Changing the full outfit let me reconsider my clothing choices, and I changed into my bright blue fleece to showcase my inner Democrat.

So much for hopping right out of bed and racing to the polls... At 6:45 AM we were off!

Fully and carefully dressed, we got to our polling place around the corner and this magical sight greeted us.

Up and around the corner of that brick building is the entrance to the church. I was happy to wait. There are people who have waited and fought their entire lives for the opportunity I've been freely given since my 18th birthday. An hour of my morning is nothing.

I connected the arrow next to Obama/Biden and thought about taking a photo to commemorate the event, but worried that it might be against the law in some way, so I refrained.

No sticker, but I did get a ballot receipt that I considered pinning to my shirt for the day. Right now it's pinned to my cubicle wall, waiting to earn me free Starbucks coffee this afternoon. Mmm, I can practically smell the sweet, dark-roasted and robust scent of democracy.