Silly Humans

This week at work has been fairly slow, which has been awesome! I've been sick with a cold all week, the worst of it manifesting itself yesterday. I could barely hold my head up through work and when I got home, I crashed on the couch and did not get off of it for 4 hours. I kept thinking about eating something for dinner, but I didn't have the energy to get up and go to the kitchen. I sneezed so much that I made my back sore. I couldn't move without wincing. Finally I convinced myself to move to my bed, before which I popped 4 Ibuprofens for my super-sore back and a Sudafed for my cold. This morning I felt a bit better, so hopefully I'm on the up and up.

Anyway, so since this week has been slow, I've been surfing around the internet a lot. I ended up reading Midnight Sun - which was awesome! - and have been doing my best not to do any online shopping. Today I decided to go to The Onion online. I always get a good laugh out of the newspaper, and decided I should check the website more often. Well, one article caught my eye and reminded me of my road trip with Richard down to Tami's house for Thanksgiving. Read it (click HERE!), have a laugh, and then continue on with my post.....

Of course the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a heavy traffic day. After picking Richard up from the Greyhound station in DC a few hours earlier, we headed down I-495. Everything was going alright until we connected up with I-95. Dead stop. Serious. Nobody was moving. Just a parking lot. I started feeling really thirsty at this point and wished that I had brought my water bottle with me. Then as time went on, I really wanted a slurpee. Mmmmm. A nice cold cherry slurpee sliding down my dry and parched throat. I HAD to have one. I started looking at the exit signs for a 7-11. I saw several, but didn't want to get off the freeway and then have to re-merge in with the very slow-moving traffic. 60 miles and 3.5 hours later, we finally got up to the speed limit and traffic cleared out. Now I could really get my slurpee!

I kept my eyes peeled and found another sign, but it was the same exit as Kings Dominion. No way am I getting off at that exit. That is too out of the way. So we travel on. Richard and I would be talking about random things, and I would just interrupt and blurt, "Seven Eleven!" and point to a sign. Serious ADD. The next 7-11 notification was right before merging on to I-295, so I decided to just wait for the next one. The next one came, but I couldn't get over fast enough to make the exit. Another came a long, but it was right before the merge on to I-64. So I waited again. The next one looked like it was an exit on to another highway, and I hate those exits; no easy way back to the freeway. The next one seemed like it must have been 5 miles off the exit, because I couldn't see any civilization off the side of the freeway. A no-go on that one. So by the time another 7-11 sign came around, I decided it just wasn't worth it since we were so close to our destination. I never did satisfy my craving.

Gotta love the internal debates you have with yourself. I don't like telling myself 'no', but it's good to practice patience and not give in to my every whim. I should apply this to online shopping and eating more frequently.

Hard to believe, I know..

I've gone domestic. At least for today..

Even though I was only assigned mashed potatoes and corn for the Thanksgiving feast, I got ambitious and decided to make some Apple Toffee Tartlets. The recipe called for normal ingredients; apples, brown sugar, butter, flour, etc, as well as a couple out-of-the-norm ingredients; refrigerated pie crusts, toffee pieces. Well, turns out that since I NEVER cook or bake, I had a big grocery run to do. The good news is that I will have flour, sugar, brown sugar and powdered sugar for the rest of my single life. :) However, I couldn't find toffee pieces, so I spent a good 10 minutes this morning hammering (yes, with a hammer) Werther's Original candies into tiny crumbles. I bet the people downstairs really LOVED that. Oooh, and I even bought a rolling pin and one of those cool apple corer/slicer thingies. I sure am moving up in the cooking world! (But still much more comfortable working with tools and building things)

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the result! And even more happy that a couple of them broke apart so I could sample without guilt. YUM!!

Twilight movie - not the most exciting part of my weekend

During the time of the writers' strike, my roommates and I became obsessed with the Twilight books. I believe I have mentioned this in another post. When we found out that the first book would be made in to a movie, we were all thrilled and promised we'd all see it together. After what seemed like FOREVER, the movie finally was released this past weekend! I didn't have a ton of expectations going in to it, which was good because it did not even REMOTELY capture the greatness of the book. I won't go in to too many details just in case there are some reading that haven't seen the movie yet. I think the thing that saved it for me was the audience. Sitting in a packed theater with a bunch of squealing 12 year old girls was priceless. Every time a new male face came on the screen, it was clapping and screaming. They kept me laughing through the entire film. I almost wish I were that young again so I could think it was the greatest movie ever. :)

The rest of my weekend was good. I had an affair with my tv most of the time. I discovered I had On Demand, so I spent a good amount of time watching commercial-free tv. It was a good time. I also spent several hours on Saturday cleaning my bathroom, as the bathroom ceiling was FINALLY fixed on Friday! Hooray! Besides almost passing out in my tub from the chemicals, it was good to get it all spic and span. Saturday night included a viewing of the BYU vs Utah football game at a sports bar with a good group of people.

Sunday was probably the highlight of the weekend. Travis and I decided to go for a bike ride along the Mt Vernon trail, even though the temperature didn't warm up past the high 30's that day. It was sure cold!!! My fingers went all numb and I couldn't feel anything from mid-foot down to my toes. The greatest part was when we finally got back to Trav's vehicle and I was braking to stop my bike. I had unclipped my left foot and was about to set it down when for some reason I suddenly decided to put BOTH feet down.. As I started tipping to the right, I remembered that my right foot was still clipped in to that pedal. Too late. I had no choice but to let gravity take me down. How embarrassing! My first crash on my bike was just because of a dumb change of mind.... when I was completely stopped. Nothing cool like avoiding a squirrel at 20 mph or something. :) I was stunned once I found myself on the pavement, but Travis helped me up and actually asked me if I was ok without laughing. So props to him. Afterward though, we both had a good laugh about it. I wish I could have seen myself. I think people falling down is hilarious! Almost 2 hours later, I got full feeling back in my toes. Seriously. They were numb for that long. I think maybe the hot pizza helped.

Here's to more yummy hot food later this week!