Our Valentine's Day

Don't you love waiting a month for the recap of a holiday we delay for a month? LOL

The day started beautifully with a dozen tulips! Yay!  Then it was off to dinner at 1618 West!

Me outside the restaurant. Love this outfit! Rashan liked it, too!

We started with duck confit nachos.  It would've been better if there had been more duck and/or with a smaller portion with duck on each chip or more of a layered effect.  Not bad but not great.

I know it seems ridiculous to take a picture of the complimentary bread... but this bread was GOOD!  As was the basil oil it was served with!

Rashan got NY strip Oscar with jumbo lump crab, asparagus and frites.  It was pretty good.  He enjoyed it.

I had the pan seared sea bass with risotto cake and grilled asparagus.  Very yummy.  My only qualm is that I couldn't taste the advertised jalapeno in the risotto cake.  I was also perplexed about why I had one stuffed crimini mushroom off to the side.  Doesn't it look lonely?

I had the espresso martini for dessert... YUM!! I need this regularly!

We finished with the bread pudding with creme anglaise, candied pecans and cinnamon ice cream.  WHAT???  I could eat that for dessert every night and be delighted!  Soooo good!  Man!  I thought about it for at least a week!  And finally... the happy couple! :)

Monday Mindspacing Vol. 97

1) When you say you (almost) wish you had dark hair and your hair is blond... but dyed... and I can see your brown eyebrows... You sound stupid.  Just FYI.
2) I'm so not as internet savvy as you think I am.  I struggle with the teen text talk as I call it.  IKR?  I determined that was "I Keep (it) Real."  But it didn't always fit.  I asked Rashan.  He said, "I know right."  I said, "Oooooh.  That makes way more sense."  Then I forgot and 2 weeks later I asked him again........
3) Why does Rashan know teen text talk?
4) Nutella-swirled oatmeal with cinnamon-infused sugar and nutmeg?  Thumbs up.  (I love it when my meals sound somewhat like gobbeldygook! It makes me feel so chef-y!)  Shoutout to NerdGirl for the Nutella!
5) I could not care less about who hosts Top Chef Masters.  But for the record, I don't want to see you cringing over eating bugs, CURTIS.  You're supposed to be a chef.  I'ma do you like that vegetarian last week. Expand your "pallet." LOL but no really.
6) Living Social?  Not for me.  At all.  I have yet to be more than marginally intrigued by any of their coupons.  Groupon's been wack for a while as well.  Both of them need to get it together.  Please refer to my 30 Before 30 before suggesting further coupons.  Ideas include whitewater rafting, sky diving, hot air ballon ride, helicopter ride.  Get to work.  Thanks so much.
7) I think either the mom blogs are rubbing off on me or I'm getting all old and stuff but two things blew my mind.  1) A baby was crying at the wedding a week ago and I was completely unfazed.  It barely registered because I was so into the ceremony. 2) At the reception I accidentally sat next to a little boy SCREAMING his head off. His mom turned and said, "Sorry."  I said, "It's okay!" cheerily... and meant it.  WHO AM I!?!  Ordinarily?  I would have been muttering about how there will be no babies at my wedding.  Again. Whooooooo aaaaare youuuuuuu?  Dr. Seuss what's up!?  Or is that Alice in Wonderland?
8) Fashion bloggers make me snarly.  I get so annoyed by their uninclusive, incestuous worlds.  (I make up words when I'm irritated.)  I stopped following one and felt almost instantly better.  It looks like more unfollows are coming.
9) Everybody thank Jasmin for me not blogging for the last week.  Some people don't know how to act.  We all know she's much closer to having babies than I am.
10) You know how we usually only hear the cute/pretty British accents over here?  Every single time 
I'm reminded of the hideous common accents, I cringe.  Ick.  I wonder which American accents are the cute/pretty ones to non-Americans.  LOLOL
11) The term pre-poo sounds disgusting.  For my 2.5 male readers (I don't know what the half is either... claim that half if that's you), that's (I had to look it up, too) something you put on your hair to moisturize BEFORE you shampoo.  But really... do we have to call it that???
12) My left thigh is larger than my right and it looks weird...

Monday Mindspacing Vol. 96

1) I don't watch Iron Chef America if I don't like the secret ingredient. Chocolate?  Pass.  My feelings would be so hurt if I finally got to judge and that was the ingredient.  Battle milk and cream?  I was in it from the beginning!!

2) There is nothing worse than a self-righteous vegetarian. Do you know when I said I couldn't be vegan, this dude told me to expand my "pallet"?  WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO!?!  You clearly don't know me like that to say such foolishness!!  First of all it's PALATE.  Second, everything in moderation.  Third, don't try to convince me to do something YOU'RE not even doing.  You sound ridiculous.  If I'm ANYTHING, I'm an adventurous eater.  Challenge me on many things (you'll lose) but don't challenge me on my palate.  Ever.

3) I'm equally bad about people who don't know me asking what I know about cooking in a mocking or derisive tone.  Fall back. 

4) Y'all see I'm on edge and people KEEP testing my gangsta!!  I'm so not hard.

4) I PROMISE the worst tweets are about relationships. I mean extra basic stuff. Like "she can't love you if she doesn't love herself." *enter monotone* Wow. I've never heard that before. That is groundbreaking. 

-_-

5) I managed to keep stress pimples at bay for weeks. WOW!! Just one but clearly I feel like this is a huge accomplishment!

6) Have I mentioned that I haven't gotten my 8 hours of sleep in at least a week? I AM NOT A MOM!! INTENTIONALLY!!! GIMME MY SLEEP!!!

7) Did anybody see Parks and Rec? I'm in shock! But "30 Rock" is BORING. What's happened?

8) I have an urge to complain about something I don't want anyone to sell me platitudes about. I don't trust any of you people to say what you're supposed to. Instead, respond to this with something really, really jerky.

9) I finished one of three short films due by Thursday. Sunday, Monday, Thursday. #faints*

10) Another softball game tonight. The team captain is working my nerves. So guess what? I hope we lose. I'm not gonna do anything to make it happen but I just wouldn't be in the least bit sad if we did.

11) One of my closest friends from elementary school to college got married Saturday to a girl we've also known since elementary school. Collective awwww! :)

12) I've wanted oysters for what feels like an eternity. GIMMEEEEEEEE!!! 

13) I want a Sprite... or an orange soda... or a peach soda... or a Fresca. What is wrong with me? I never crave soda. If someone says I'm pregnant I'm not blogging for a week.

Laugh of the Day

It started innocently enough....

 Dear @rashanjamal, I hope you watched Modern Family.... b/c I just deleted it.... kloveyoubye

Then my line sister's sister decided to join the conversation...

@jameil u can watch it whenever on hulu.com :) I LOVE that show!

jameil 

@Sisofsis For real? What's Hulu?

@jameil It has episodes of a lot of popular shows & some old movies too.

»

jameil

@Sisofsis Really?? Is it free?

@jameil the most current episodes are free but u have to pay for the really old ones:/

Y'ALL!!!!!

At NO POINT did she figure out I was joking!!! I have two blogs, a tumblr, a twitter page & a facebook page and this girl thinks I don't know what Hulu is!!!!!! DYING!!! LOLOL

Monday Mindspacing Vol. 95

1) Ever since I learned children who have fewer words spoken directly to them (often those in financially disadvantaged families) struggle more in school, I try to talk directly to every baby/child I encounter. Every little bit, right?  Now you do it!
2) It irks me when people say every since.
3) Noooooooo!! I just saw a child's ugly velcro shoes and almost said, "Never MY ch--" until I realized it's velcro or tying laces 90xs an hour or watching them skin their inevitably adorable faces/bodies repeatedly after they trip over said laces.  :(  PLEASE DON'T MAKE MY CHILDREN WEAR UGLY VELCRO SHOES!!!
4) My cousin's doing a one-week vegan challenge this week.  She invited me.  I didn't even have to think twice.  NO.  I put myself through enough unnecessary hurdles seeing as I have more goals in a month than some people have in a year.  That sounded way more snobby than I meant it but yeah... I like food too much.  I'm not doin it.  One week vegETARIAN?  I'd so give that a shot.  Who else would be on board?  We can give it a shot.  Tell me this, though.  Can I still eat eggs?  (Pretend they're not baby chickens.)
5) My mom likes David Letterman (kinda) but HATES Paul.  This cracks me up!
6) I've been doing some crazy editing!  I get bursts and just GO!  So I think I'll be posting something online for you guys to see soon!  :)
7) My mom doesn't want me to tweet about her... Yeah... About that... Stop doing tweet-worthy stuff.
8) I'm addicted to burgers and am currently bingeing on them.  Don't worry.  It's not followed by purging.  Just delirious deliciousness.  I think I had a burger 4 days last week and almost had one a 5th day but talked myself out of it.  I think I should've eaten it... LOL>  See what I mean about this one week vegan thing?  Never gonna get it!
9) Son!  I had kim chi for the first time this weekend.  Fermented cabbage doesn't exactly SOUND appetizing but I'm a curious eater and let me just give it a rousing endorsement!  Koreans know what they're doing!  Yum!
10) We have our first playoff game tonight!  Aaaaaareeeee yooooooouuuu readyyyyyyy????
11) Have I told you lately how much I love birthdays??  I get sad when there are stretches of days w/o birthdays on fb.  No fun messages to write???  Awww maaaaan! Your birthday is the BEST day on fb!!  BEST!  Hands down!
12) Speaking of birthdays and fb, HBD you can keep.  If you're too lazy to write Happy Birthday, just leave.  Also don't be so dumb as to use D seeing as BIRTHDAY is one word.
13) Rashan is finally blogging again.  He had to put up a week of posts for me to believe it.  And I'm still not sure if it'll stick.  We'll see.

Movies 2011, Weeks 12 & 13

March 27- April 2, 2011
It's AFI list week!  Too bad I only hit up two films.  LOL
65) The Best Years of Our Lives. 1946 seven time Oscar winner about three WWII vets struggling to come to terms with their experiences and readjust to civilian life.  Really good.  It's not difficult to draw parallels to vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  4 stars
66) Platoon.  Vietnam War movie starring Charlie Sheen.  I'm really tired of war movies.  That's what I thought as the opening scenes rolled.  I only watched this because it's on the AFI list and it went offline for Netflix this week. A bit of a slow start but less than halfway through I totally got why my uncle doesn't want to talk about what he experienced there.  The narration was a bit heavy-handed.  That couldn't detract from a good film overall.  4 stars

April 3-9, 2011
There's really no good reason I didn't watch movies this week.  I read slightly more... but I don't think that's it.  It just didn't cross my mind to sit in front of the tv or computer to watch movies.  Oh!  I know what it was.  I was all caught up in season 1 of "Scrubs."  Lol.  I've seen all of the last several NBC seasons episodes multiple times but hadn't seen 70+% of season 1.  So weird!
67) Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Old movie about pod people.  Kind of funny.  Short but felt long.  I didn't mind it too much but Rashan was definitely not a fan.  I think it'd be great background for a classy Halloween party or something more ironic.  3.4 stars
68) American Graffiti. Really funny to see Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford this young.  Ron Howard I'm used to but the rest were really amusing.  Are they really gonna just drive around all night?  I was bored with that line of activity after about 40 minutes.  Meh.  3.3 stars

Old Man Moves

My boyfriend's really REALLY old in case you didn't know.  We have to get married soon because I can't marry a 40yo man.  Yes, I realize I will step on the toes of some of my readers with this post.  Wear steel toed boots.  I'll wait.  Ready?  Okay!
1) Explaining a party line.  For the rest of you youngins, you could pay approximately 99 cents/minute to call a number and talk to a bunch of random strangers.
2) Rapping "A Children's Story" by Slick Rick to your girlfriend while she prompts you to continue.  If it was a book it'd be a page-turner!
3) While we're on music, explaining all the lyrics to every song she was too young to know/understand all the words to... i.e. anything circa the late 80s and early to mid 90s.  Phrases like "cold lampin" (chilling as if leaning against a lamp post) and "run your jewels" (getting robbed).
4) Anytime he talks about songs from my childhood as hits in the club.  Guaranteed blank stare.  It's rare for me to be shocked by it but the first time I heard him talk about jammin to Biggie or Outkast or something at parties, I was like, "HOW OLD WERE YOU????"  He said, "College."  Worse is when he says I was out of college by then.  I wasn't even in high school!  You old, son!
5) Seeing classic movies in the theater... sometimes before I was born.  "Rocky III" (1982) & "Rocky IV" (1984), "ET" (1984), "Ghostbusters" (1984), "Back to the Future" (1985) .
6) He watched the Challenger explode live and is still traumatized.
7) He remembers when the world was gonna be destroyed by the Soviet Union.
8) He remembers when John Lennon (1980) and Ronald Reagan (1981) got shot... both happened before I was born.

Really, it's like dating a living history book.

April Goals

Seeing as this month I have to defend my 2nd thesis in two years, and complete two other shorts, I'm gonna go light on the non-educational goals.  I'm already at the part of the process where I have daily stress headaches and if I wake up for any reason I'm wide awake thinking about all the things I need to do.

First let's talk about March.  I've had to partially skip the finish transcription stage and get to the editing portion.  Still working on the script but I'm making some good progress.  I've read 758 chapters instead of my goal 730!  Wheee!!  I bounce around so I read parts of books.  This month I completed 5 books to bring my total up to 46!  That means I only have 20 more chapters left in the bible!  That is so cool!  I also got some non-Bible reading in-- three books!  Yay!  I went to B&N and bought 3 books.  I read 2 of them in 2 days.  It was great!  Just like old times.  I used to devour books!  Click on the books tab for details.

1) Read at least 52 chapters in the bible.  That will bring me to 810 total chapters read out of 1189!
2) Continue to work out AT LEAST three times a week.  I feel myself getting into the mode of exercise becoming second nature and something I want to do more than 3xs a week.  FABULOUS!
3) Eat better meals.  I imagine there will be a silly amount of eating out this month so if I can eat more healthily for even those meals, I'll be happy.
4) Make AND KEEP a budget.  I can do this!!!
5) Read at least two books.
6) Watch at least 4 AFI list movies.  Guess who's already done one? MEEEEE!!

Monday Mindspacing Vol. 94

1) Some dude was humming in class the other day... and it sounded like a negro spiritual.  Why?
2) I soooooooo wanted to do the best April Fool's Day prank EVER!!  I was gonna tell you guys I was engaged and wait for you to be like APRIL FOOL'S!!  But it would actually be true.  HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE!?!  But no dice.  You'll have to wait for that one.
3) TOP CHEF ALL-STARS WAS AWESOME!!!!
4) Tomorrow we have the third and final game of the softball season.  If we win this one, we go 2-1. LET'S DO IT!!
5) I love how when I put my headphones in my laptop, it automatically turns the volume down.  Awesome!
6) I kinda want an e-reader.
7) I asked Rashan if he would give me a kidney if I needed one.  Without hesitation he said yes.  BEST. EVER.
8) I seriously don't understand why or how I get so into mom blogs but I really do.  It's pretty crazy.   Sometimes they make me want to hysterectomize myself.  Really.  Sometimes it's so bad I make up words and get rid of my own uterus.  But most of the time, the ones I read are really really funny!
9) On Chopped, I always come up with what I would do with that basket... unless it's All-Stars!  Then I just sit back and enjoy!  I need them to do this again!! Stat!
10) When does Project Runway come back?  Soon?  Yes??