Yay!

Today was such a good day.  Entirely better than last Friday, that's for sure.  I have to at least blog about where we ate lunch.  It was seriously THAT good.

My dear friend and co-worker Amber celebrated her 24th birthday today.  Birthdays at work are always fun for me, since I can't resist obliterating the birthday person's office, as well as buying them their favorite cake.  Amber is no exception!  She truly rocks as a human being, so I wanted to make sure I got her the cake she loves most in the world (a Tres Leches from Luby's - hey, don't knock it till you've tried it.  It's to DIE for!), as well as a gift or two that would make her smile.  On top of this tradition is the ever-popular birthday lunch.  (And that's where the most fun came for me, naturally.)  Her birthday was made double-good by the fact that it was a payday Friday, then triple-good by the fact that 95.5 FM started their Christmas music marathon today.  Amber, like me, loves Christmas music so it was all too fitting that they should begin their yearly tradition of 24-hr Christmas music on her special day.  I love when days go this well for my friends.  She's topping off her evening with a new outfit, a group of friends, and a limo that's going to cart them all around so no one is driving drunk.  Smart!  But, since most of you don't even know Amber, I will stop spewing about her day, and get to the good stuff ... lunch.

This place has been around for a few years, but I personally had never heard of it.  This is probably because it is VERY trendy, and I tend to avoid things that make the Austin Chronicle's "best of" list.  Boy, am I glad she chose this place, because it would have been a shame for me to have never experienced food this delicious right here in our own town!  Most of you know my love of food, so the fact that I'm about to dedicate a few paragraphs to my lunch shouldn't shock anyone.  The place I am speaking of is South Congress Cafe.  Amber went there a few months ago and came in to work the next day talking non-stop about a) how good it was, and b) how much I would love this place.  Yeah, she was spot-on, because I can't wait to go back.

From the outside, you would never know what goodies lie inside.  It almost blends in with all the other drab buildings on South Congress.

I have never really been a fan of this side of town, probably because I'm old-school Austin.  I can remember the days when South Congress was a place to avoid & the only noteworthy thing down there was the porn theater.  (Ok, and Lucy In Disguise.)  But, over the past 10 years, it has gone under a massive transformation.  It's turned into boutique after boutique, all offering quirky clothing & furniture to help "keep Austin weird" [gag] and overpriced trinkets.  But, Amber was the birthday girl, so it was her choice where we went, and wow, I'm glad we did.  I started off with a cup of the soup de jour, which happened to be a sweet onion chipotle soup.  Holy mother.  I thought I had died & gone to culinary heaven with the first spoonful.  It was a thick, creamy masterpiece with the absolute perfect amount of heat.  All the people at our table were laughing at me because I was licking the spoon when I was done, just to make sure I didn't miss a drop.  I ordered the charbroiled beef tenderloins for lunch, which was served with garlic mashed potatoes and a spring mix salad, tossed with a citrus vinaigrette.  My God, it was divine.  Three medallions, perfectly cooked, sitting in a pool of gravy goodness.  Amber knows about and shares my love of potatoes, so she had me take part of her smoked gouda potato pancake that came as her side dish.  Can we say fantabulous?!  I wanted six more of those things to take home with me.  To finish things off, Amber ordered one piece of their carrot cake french toast, served with cream-cheese pecan syrup for us to share.  [eyes rolling in the back of my head]  That was one of the yummiest things I have ever eaten.  E-v-e-r.

I may be a late bloomer to this restaurant, but better late than never.  I highly suggest trying this place out, but of course, as with every other damn place in this town, beware of the crowds.  We didn't hit a big one because it was 11:30am when we got there, but apparently evenings and weekends are insane.  Everything about this place was fantastic, and rarely can you find a restaurant these days where that is the case.  The food, the service, even the plates they use are all incredible.  I told Amber and the gang that I just may have to pick this place as my birthday lunch pick in a few weeks!  No one seemed to mind.  ;)  I'm glad I'll at least have that chance, since Aaron hates the South Congress area even more than I do, and it'd be a small miracle getting him to go down there.

Speaking of "the gang", I just have to add in here how much I love my co-workers.  I know this job tests me often, and ends up pissing me off about three months out of every year, but it's so uncommon to find a job where you genuinely like the people you work with.  Amber, Daniel, Simon, Jessenya, and Jaime are a great bunch of people and I'm lucky to know them.  They are one of the top reasons I stick around, aside from the fact that I like to eat and I like having a car.  Thank you guys, for being so darn great.

I will now list my three things I'm grateful for today, before I forget.  I bet most of you can guess at least two of them before you continue reading:

1.  South Congress Cafe!

2.  Christmas music.

3.  Kick-ass co-workers.

I will close this up for now, because I'm taking Z to see Wall-e at the discount theatre tonight.  

It will be my second time seeing it, his third.  But for now, it's time for me to start getting ready & find something warm for us both to wear.  A drastic cold-front is moving through right about now, and it's going to be quite chilly when we get out of the movie in a few hours.  Aaron has to close tonight, so it'll just be me & my pint-sized date for the movie.  I must say, I like Wall-e quite a lot, so I'm excited to be seeing it again.  Until next time ...

Peace & pastries.

Short lists

So, I forgot to come back last night and give my three things for Wednesday.  I'll just go ahead and do six now, so I don't fall behind again later.

1.  No humidity.

2.  Free speech.

3.  Perfume.

4.  Laughter.

5.  Legos.

6.  My job.

More later - promise!

My short list

Gah! I forgot to post the three things I was grateful for yesterday, but I wrote them down, so here they are:

1. Cashews.
2. The Office.
3. iTunes.

More later ... still at work now.

Monday, Monday

Z had his first official crappy day at school.  Awww, it broke my heart.  He wasn't sad, so much as annoyed, but he learned a valuable life lesson today.  Turns out he told a girl in his class, whom he said is usually a good secret-keeper, that he liked another girl in his class.  I guess this juicy tidbit was more than good-secret-keeper-girl could stand.  She told EVERYONE in the class, including the object of Z's affections.  

Ouch.

To make matters worse, a group of kids from the class ganged up on him during recess to chant "Z likes blankety-blank" over & over again as they closed in on him.  Running to his defense came Koah, his first friend in the class at the beginning of the year . Koah jumped inbetween the group and my kid, then apparently told them all to back off.  Nicely done!  [high five Koah!]  Z said he was very grateful for Koah, but still wanted to shrink and disappear after all was said & done.  He kept telling me that he didn't understand why good-secret-keeper-girl told everyone, he was so sure she would keep it to herself.  I told him that no one could resist information that juicy, so she probably meant to stay quiet, but couldn't control herself.  He then didn't understand why him liking someone was so interesting to anyone else.  I told him people feed off of this type of information, so remember that down the line.  He made a face like everyone is crazy, then moved on.  Poor kid.  So much to learn about the world.

To make him feel better, I told him a story about how I split my pants wide open on the playground during recess in the 4th grade.  I bent down to grab some sticks from the ground, and RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.  With that sound, my whole world came crashing in on me.  I can remember feeling the heat rise up in my face from blushing, and how my underpants were hanging out for God & everyone to see.  I, literally, wanted to vanish.  The whole class was pointing and laughing, and I broke into tears from humiliation.  Z was then quick to tell me that he didn't cry today, so I told him he was already better off than I was when it came to embarrassing recess days.  His mouth was wide open by the end of my story, and he had his hands on both sides of his cheeks, as if to hide FOR me as he listened.  After I was done, he said, "today was embarrassing, but at least it wasn't THAT embarrassing!"  We got a good laugh, then sat down at the kitchen table with some cake and a couple glasses of milk.  A few bites of cake later, he had already moved on to talking about an X-Box that Koah has, and how cool they sound.  Since he had endured such a crappy day, I didn't have the heart to tell him he'll never get one.  But, mission accomplished ... he forgot about his ordeal.

He's now outside with Daddy, since Daddy is off today, and they're running around the front yard like wild men before the rain hits.  It's the strangest shade of gray and green outside, as well as eerily calm.   I think we'll keep things low-key tonight, and try to keep his mind off of the drama of the day.  I'm hoping the kids don't razz him tomorrow, but if they do, I've prepared him with several responses to choose from.  Hopefully, they'll forget about it pretty quickly, as they do most things, and life will go on.  He said he has learned not to tell people secrets unless you know you can really trust them.  Poor thing just doesn't realize yet that knowing who you can really trust is the hardest part.

Today was super busy for me at work, so it's nice to be home doing a whole lot of nothing.  Aaron had a relaxing day alone, measured the screens around the house for me (we're going to finally replace them!), and is changing the oil in both our cars.  Aren't we just the portrait of domestic bliss?  Since it's supposed to be rainy later, I'm sure we'll all get cozy & drowsy pretty early tonight.  Getting up at 4:45am was quite tough on me this morning, so I'm not expecting to last very long past dinnertime.      

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and that Monday was kind to you.  I will close this blog with a habit I hope to keep going, even if it ends up being the only thing I write each day.  I heard someone talking about this on a wellness ad today, and it seemed like a good idea.  I want to log three things I am grateful for each day, no matter what my mood.  I can already warn you that my three things will revolve around music or food a lot of the time, but hey, I gotta be me.  Here's my list for today:

1.  Being a Mom.

2.  A healthy family.

3.  My elderly dog.

There, that felt good.  Now I'll always be able to look back and see all the things in life I have to be grateful for, instead of the negativity.  Until next time ...

TGIF

This has been a crazy, draining week.  Wow.  Who knew that by today I would become the subject of a blog by my old friend Tracey (and not in a favorable way), as would my husband by a couple of other friends.  All of this nonsense was because of the recent election results, and our disappointment with it all.  Apparently, we're "close-minded", we think "dangerously", I'm "ridiculous", and we don't have our facts straight.  [sigh.]  In total, I have had four people drop me from their friends lists on Myspace, and one on Facebook too, all because I have become seemingly intolerable to them.  I won't go into details here, because frankly, I'm tired of thinking about anything having to do with politics at this point, but I will say that I never knew people could get so bent out of shape so easily.  And I've never been so openly discriminated against by my peers.  Amazing.

Other than that crap, the week flew by pretty fast, but was relatively uneventful.  I've been stalking Conn's service department for updates on my camera, and have finally found out that they were not able to fix my baby.  [big sigh]  Instead, they have put in an order for a replacement camera, and I'm supposed to get a call when the paperwork is completed and it's ready for pick-up.  Yeah, right.  I haven't received one lousy call from anyone this entire time, even when they've said they will.  I'll just keep stalking them I guess, but I still vow to not buy anything from Conn's again.  Ever.

Aaron was supposed to go off on a "man trip" this weekend with Matt, but it fell through at the last minute.  Bad for him, but good for us!  This means he has Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off from work and we can get some precious family time.  I know he was disappointed at the trip falling through, because he was really looking forward to unwinding guy-style.  But, he was excited at the silver lining of not having to be at work for the next 3 days.  If we do anything noteworthy, I'll try to document it with the crappy work camera I'm still borrowing.

I guess for now I will give in to my yawns and achy back and crawl into bed.  I spent the evening with Z out at my sister's workplace (which is a UT country club) dancing, playing, and sitting by giant open fires.  It was actually a very nice way to end the week, but I'm wiped out now.  I know this blog wasn't very entertaining, nor informative, so please forgive me.  I'm just feeling a bit "blah" now.  I was hoping it wouldn't rub off on this, but I think I blew it.  I wanted to post since I hadn't all week, but gave it minimal effort.  My bad.  Better luck next time, and until then ...

Peace & pastries.

Election '08

Well, the election is over, thank God. Needless to say, I'm disappointed in the outcome, and am finding it hard to be optimistic. I certainly don't want to turn my blog into a political debate, so I will keep this brief. I just have to vent a little, and if you wanna pass on this one, feel free.

I can understand why people voted Obama into office, it honestly doesn't surprise me. Bush was condemned as the root of all evil, from everything regarding gas prices to Hurricane Katrina, so of course the masses are going to pick what they see as the polar opposite of Bush - a smooth talking, younger, bleeding-heart liberal black man. But, what IS surprising to me is how all these same people who were just filled with venom for our President and the whole establishment are now preaching bipartisanship because they got their way. I've had to endure 8 years of listening to people trash this country, trash our President, and had to look at 14,000 "I hate Bush" type bumper stickers - especially living in this town. I hit my limit with all the self-loathing, blame America first types. Now that these people have finally gotten what they consider to be their Messiah, the rest of us who aren't on board with Obama are supposed to take it and keep quiet. If we voice any disdain or disappointment, we first are racist, then we get lectured or read blogs about how we should just TRY to put our differences aside and trust this newly elected man who has nothing in his past to back up his word. Personally, I don't trust any politician, because they're all just saying what they have to say with their eye on the prize. I just find it amazing how easily people were snowed. Some random guy comes along out of Illinois, saying all the right things, looking as if he could've been on the Real World, & hanging with Oprah, so people jump on the bandwagon. How could everyone not see that he, too, is a politician and will make the same empty promises all the candidates have made before him, just to get elected? It's mind-boggling to me.

Democrat or Republican aside, I just don't think people see that Obama is in over his head. Granted, he'll have a savvy team surrounding him to make him look good, but this man has bitten off more than he can chew. I just hope we don't pay the price for his arrogance and ego. "Yes we can" ... do what? Pull out our military forces and in turn, have every man & woman who has died in the Iraq war now have died for nothing? Make big promises to the lazy masses of this country, and then mask tax increases? Be a piece of political silly puddy and mold answers to please whomever is asking questions? Since that's all I've heard and seen from Obama since the election process began, I guess he's right. Yes he can.

November ... already?

Here I go again, marveling at how quickly time is passing. Ever need time to fly without stopping? Give birth.

Halloween was a good time, as always, though we didn't hand out nearly as much candy as years past. I think everyone went trick-or-treating at the same exact time we did, so by the time we were ready to hand out candy, no one was around. We only had maybe ten kids stop by, and Z was disappointed about that. (He has always loved handing out candy, not sure why.) But, overall, it was fun and Z looked adorable - although he'd be crushed to hear me say that. He was trying to be a tough Transformer, and as you know, Transformers are never to be described as adorable.

Don't be alarmed ... yes, you see what you think you see on my face. But it's fake blood, and fake bruising. Aaron and I never got around to buying costumes for ourselves this year, so he had the idea to just put blood on ourselves, but dress otherwise normal. It worked out well, and Z loved it.

Nothing like Daddy bleeding out of his eyes, and Mommy looking perky but just like she got her ass kicked. Ahhhhh. Z ended up getting so much candy, he was giving some of it away to me & Aaron yesterday. He said, "you guys can have some of this, because I'm never going to finish it all." Um, is he six? Or twenty-six?

Our next day consisted of watching that horrendous UT game. Argh. What a disaster! It was difficult to watch without pacing, cussing, or hurling things at the television, so it was a draining evening. Ken came over to suffer with us, and we all went to bed licking our wounds. For the first time all season, Aaron didn't stay up till midnight watching ESPN. It was so depressing, we just went straight to bed. (Becca, you say one more damn thing about that game, I swear I'll disown you as a friend.)

Lastly, I got up very early Sunday morning to go participate in the Race For The Cure 5k downtown. This year they had over 25,000 people turn out, so it was interesting trying to find your friends before the race! Amy met me there, and our intention was to run it together, while Becca came too and walked it with her hubby & babies in tow. Too bad Amy smoked me and had to leave me behind to walk every now & again. (Way to go Amy!) I didn't take the crappy office camera, because I didn't want to carry it while running/walking, so I don't have any pictures to share. But, imagine lots of people, lots of pink, and lots of good energy - that would just about sum it up. I was rather disappointed in myself that I couldn't run the full 3 miles without breaking to walk, but I guess it just gives me something to work towards next year. The worst part was watching 10-year old boys and girls lapping me, seemingly with minimal effort. I had the urge to either trip them or cry on the inside ... I opted for crying on the inside. I did learn from this experience though, that I desperately need a new pair of running shoes. My feet, ankles, and legs are still paying the price for this "brilliant" idea of mine as I type. But overall, I'm glad I did it, and hope to do better next year. There is no change without challenge, so I need to up my workouts and better prepare for this venture next year. I may complain about my sore muscles today, but at least I'm not contending with cancer. It was emotional to see the hand-written signs on the backs of everyone's shirts, stating whether they were running in memory of someone, or in celebration of someone. Almost everyone had one of these signs on, and many people had multiple names written on them. It was humbling and made me grateful that I was only there to challenge myself, and not because I or someone I am close with is fighting for their life. Cancer is a bitch, and I pray I never have to go down that path.

All in all, it was a fun, but emotional weekend, on many levels. It wasn't the normal, slow-paced, relaxing type of weekend, so I don't feel quite as refreshed today as I sit at my desk. Hopefully next weekend will be better - I'm pretty sure it will be, as far as the game ... then again, I guess you never know. I'll just say this -- if we get beat by Baylor, I'm going to fling myself off the Congress bridge. Hope everyone's Halloween weekend was safe & lots of fun. Until next time ...

Peace & pastries.