Okay, yeah, if it could go ahead and be Friday now, THAT'D BE GREAT.  Our weekend has slowly been filling up with plans and after a weekend of doing absolutely nothing last week, I'm kind of looking forward to a bunch of fun stuff to do.  Also, it's supposed to "warm up" into the 40s!  Wee!

We're making our first appearance at the Hershey Italian Lodge tomorrow night with Miah's Aunt Gretchen and Uncle John (and Sally, John's mom, my favorite white-wine-drinking-lady), and I have to say, I'm totally looking forward to it.  I love "members only"-type places and I'm really glad they asked to tag along as their guests for the night.  Saturday morning/lunchtime-ish, my mom is coming down for "light shopping and heavy lunch," as she called it.  I'm hoping to take her to The Boro for beer, wings, and soup - our shopping-break lunch of champions.

Why am I using so many quotation marks?

Saturday night, we're going with our usual crew to Bube's Brewery to celebrate our friend's 30th birthday.  I've never been there before, but I've heard it's a pretty cool place.  And of course Sunday, I'll be at the church across the street from our house, praying for a Super Bowl win by the Broncos.  I'm kidding about church, but not so much about praying for the win.  I semi-invited people over to watch it, but no one has mentioned anything about actually coming...either way, I'll be too busy wearing my lucky jersey, with my lucky Broncos blanket and my lucky Broncos pillow, screaming at the television, to even notice if there are other human beings in my living room with me.

Here's to Thursday, almost Friday...

Brrr.

I am really, really sick of winter.  The "real feel" temperature this morning is -10 degrees.  I think I read somewhere that it's actually warmer in Alaska.  Weather like this makes me want to exactly nothing, and that's what I did ALL. Weekend. Long.  It was glorious; I left the house once between Friday night and Monday morning, and that was only to go to my sister-in-law's house to commence the same activities on her couch instead of mine (movie-watching, beer-drinking, junk-eating).  We watched This is the End, and while we both heard it was dumb, we were cracking up throughout the whole thing.  Probably because of the aforementioned beer-drinking.

We also have pretty much nothing going on this week, which is also lovely.  When I got home from work last night, Miah had dinner ready, it seriously made my day.  I'm so miserable by the time I get home from work, from dealing with stupid people all day.  It's really quite exhausting.

I start carpooling on Thursday with my new friend who is not a serial killer nor is she weird.  I'm interested to see how much money I save on gas with only driving a few days a week, or every other week...we haven't decided yet.

Something else that begins on Thursday is a 30-Day Squat Challenge that my co-workers and I are trying.  A week or so in, we're supposed to be doing 120 of them.  Should be fun.

I'm already looking forward to the weekend, and it's only Tuesday. 

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

I was in such a miserable mood for the better part of yesterday.  I don't know if it was because we didn't have a delay and I was really hoping for one, or if it was just due to massive amounts of stupidity I'm dealt every day.  I'm in a better mood today though, so yay.

I had an appointment with an orthopedist this morning, in hopes of figuring out why my upper back/neck hurts 24 hours a day, since ohhhh, 2008-ish.  He's sending me to physical therapy (shocker) so we'll see what that does for me.  Probably nothing, considering I sit in the same position for 8 hours a day, plus the 30 minutes I spend in the car twice a day, neither of which is helpful to the pain.  I'm really hoping I can just go a few times and try and replicate the exercises at home, because that shit is FREE.  Oh, and he did write me a prescription for an "ergonomically correct chair" for work, so there's that.

Last night for dinner, I made a recipe we saw over the weekend on The Sandwich King, and it was AH-MAZ-ING.  I didn't follow the recipe exactly, and I actually used smoked sausage instead, but whatever.  It was still delicious.

I also made a cheese sauce (from scratch, not the Velveeta he uses in his recipe...I have a weird thing about buying fake cheese), which you'll see here, drizzled over the frozen waffle fries I spent lots of time and effort on.

Miah has been asking me to make these little egg cups, so we made those last night too.  They turned out pretty good overall, I just wish I would've chopped up the monstrous mushrooms beforehand.  It was nice being able to throw one into the microwave this morning for 30 seconds and BOOM breakfast!

Happy hour with the potential carpooler is tonight, so I hope she's not weird and/or a serial killer.  That would really be a bummer.

Weekend Recap

Welp, cue the "Did you hear we're getting out early?" rumors.  It's currently snowing pretty hard, and we're due to get anywhere from 3 to 873456 inches, according to all of the various forecasts.  Therefore, I will alternate staring at ABC 27's Twitter feed and the window, for the duration of the day.

We had such a great weekend in Delaware - the weather was nice (for January), we ate some delicious food, drank some fantastic beers, and hung out at a couple of really cool bars/restaurants.  We arrived earlier than anticipated, and thankfully were able to check-in early into the Blue Water House, our first B&B stop in Lewes, DE.  This place was SO. FREAKING. COOL.  Such an eclectic blend of decorations, without screaming tackiness. 

This guy greeted us upon entry into the house.

There were a lot of great "word signs" throughout the whole place, our favorite of which read: "The best things in life are not things."  I smell a Pinterest craft coming our way.

After spending a few minutes looking around and settling into our room, we decided to head down to Rehoboth and go for a drink at the Purple Parrot, the establishment where we celebrated our engagement back in June of 2012.  We ordered a few Sam Adamses (is that the correct plural?) and some spinach, artichoke, and crap dip, which was quite tasty and held us over until dinner.

Jerry's Seafood was our dinner destination, as we ate there a few years ago and remembered it being amazing.  It was good, it didn't blow us out of the water, but it was definitely decent.  I ordered a cup of the cream of crab soup for an appetizer, and that was really good - but the tuna I ordered for dinner was only okay.  Part of the reason was because I thought I was ordering something totally different than what came out, but whatevs.

I spent most of Sunday in a nervous panic due to the impending AFC Championship game that was set to start at 3 PM.  We found ourselves at The Greene Turtle for kickoff, with a pretty cool view of the ocean in the backdrop.  Thankfully the majority of the clientele was also rooting for the Broncos, so that made for a very enjoyable experience as opposed to the alternative.

We headed home pretty early yesterday morning after breakfast at our second B&B stay, the Rehoboth Guest House.  This place was very nice, but not quite as "comfy" as the BWH.  The homemade, from-scratch cinnamon rolls that Steve made for us were one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten, however, and I would probably go back solely for one of those!

We were home by noon, and it was nice to relax at home for once.  I made this and also this and they were both delicious - below is a shot of the baked oatmeal I can't get the stupid picture to load; the French onion soup wasn't quite as pretty, since I don't have any ovenproof bowls (how this is possible, I have no clue). 

Hopefully I'll be on my way back home in a few hours...time to go check the window.

Shits and Giggles Friday

My favorite day of the work-week has finally decided to show its face!  Definitely looking forward to this three-day weekend and trip out of town ahead of me. 

SHITS

- I really wish it were acceptable to wear a football jersey to work.  Instead, I have to settle on wearing blue, orange, and white, and have people probably thinking that I got dressed in the dark.

- I had every intention of getting up early this morning and using the elliptical, however, that did not happen.  I will now spend the rest of the day thinking, "I'll do it after work when I get home!" and then when that time comes, I will instead sit on the couch and drink a beer.

- One of duties at work is to manually update "employee history cards."  WITH A MOTHER-EFFING TYPEWRITER.  As it is the beginning of the new year, consequently, I will spend most of my day updating approxmiately 400 employee cards with their new salary.  It actually makes me physically ill to complete this task. 

- I've been using the MyFitnessPal app since the beginning of this week, in an effort to fit into my work clothes a little more comfortably.  Here's how I did, in reference to how many calories I had remaining at the end of each day:

Monday = -3
Tuesday = -600 (perhaps because I had a cheesesteak and fries for lunch)
Wednesday = -207
Thursday = -426

In the words of the MassAcoustics, I'm an Underacheiver...

GIGGLES

- The Broncos are playing in the AFC Championship this Sunday.  The last time they were here was in January 2006, when they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champs, the Steelers.  Please say a small prayer that Peyton can beat Brady and make it to the big game for the first time since the 1998 season.

- Next week, I'm meeting with a potential carpooling buddy.  Not because I'm super green or anything, but mostly because I'm poor and gas is expensive.  I was glad that she was receptive to my idea of meeting for happy hour instead of coffee, so we at least have THAT in common.

 

- I am SO beyond excited to give Miah his anniversary gift tomorrow!  I usually am the worst at gift-giving when it comes to him, mainly because I know he's going to outshine me anyways, but I feel like I did pretty well on this one.

 

- I've been reading Orange is the New Black over the past few weeks, and it's quite entertaining.  Also, I would never survive in prison.

 

- We're going for dinner tonight at one of my favorite local places, the Boro.  I'll probably order a salad a dozen wings and cheese fries.

 

Welp, have a great weekend, kids - peace out, homeskillets!

Back in the Blogging Game

So, yesterday, I deactivated my Facebook account.  This is a big deal, as I was probably spending a good portion of my day checking it, reading links from it, stalking people, etc., and it was really doing nothing for me.  Honestly, it was getting to the point where I really couldn't stand what about 90% of the people on my friends list were posting.  You and your child are on your way to the emeregency room?  And the first thing you thought to do was tell 300 people about it?  Seriously.  I deleted the app from my phone and removed the link from my bookmarks on my work computer.  As I posted on Instagram yesterday (not nearly as annoying/addicting as FB): #byefacebook #itsbeenreal.

Also, I realize that it's been a hot minute since I've posted anything on here, but we're going to ignore that tidbit and pretend that I never left.

In two days, Miah and I will have been married for a YEAR.  I still remember the day we decided, "Hey, what if we just got married next week one day and didn't tell anyone until after it was over?"  We were a little concerned that our family and friends would be upset with us, but once we started to spread the news, overall, it was pretty well-received. 

Doing it the way we did allowed us to celebrate several times, which was awesome - that day and following weekend, it was just us.  A few weekends after that, we celebrated with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and some of her family with a simple champagne toast on a lazy Sunday watching football at their house.  Later that month, my whole immediate-ish family all went out for a nice dinner together.  One of my favorite celebrations happened over the summer, when my sister-in-law put together the best surprise party ever for us at our favorite local winery and brewery.  The most recent and probably the most memorable of the wedding festivites was going to Mexico with some of our favorite people on the planet, and doing a vow renewal ceremony right on the water.

This weekend will conclude the year of partying with a weekend in Delaware, just the two of us, staying at two different B&Bs in the town where he proposed.  I am SO looking forward to it - the last time we went on a solo getaway was our sorta honeymoon, which was, hey, a year ago!

I will do my best to report back with some food and wine pics - I'm glad to be back.