Yay BIRTHDAY!!!

I'm so happy. I love birthdays. So far it has been a fantastic day! I have had lots of texts and calls and FB messages. As much as I joke and "celebrate" early the best part of my birthday is knowing that I have so many people that I love in my life. Ok, enough of the sappy stuff. I haven't posted in a while but I thought I'd let y'all know what we're doing today. Matt made reservations for us to go to dinner at Kanki, a hibachi-style Japanese restaurant. We *might* stop by the book store for a minute to pick up a new book. Then on Saturday Steph, Linda, Matt and I are going to a fabric sale at The Scrap Exchange in the morning. Saturday night the four of us are going bowling and then back to our place to play some Guitar Hero. Yay! Mira made this picture for me as a birthday present. I think its kinda hilariously adorable.

The yo-yo of weather

The weather here has been incredibly unpredictable lately. Well, actually weather.com predicted it but if you didn't have the tubes you would never guess what was coming next. The day we were at Steph's it rained cats and dogs the whole day. It had really started the day before. Then when we woke up on Monday morning, SNOW!!!! It was so beautiful. That was a week ago Monday. On the following Saturday it was 80F outside. WTF? I don't know how that makes sense. Today its 80F again and tomorrow its supposed to be 50F. It makes me wish that Matt's parents could have visited last weekend instead. Especially since its supposed to be in the low 50s, high 40s and rainy-- only a little bit higher than what they would have had at home. *sigh* Oh well, I just have to make sure that my food is really good when they all come over and eat. I'm still not sure about the menu. I'm going to consult Steph since she's had all of the meals I'm thinking about. Matt thinks anything I make will be good, but I want it to be great. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

I almost forgot, Matt and I think these are bunny tracks leading away from our stairs.  I wanted to go find the bunny but we had to catch the bus instead.

 

Sometimes ethinic food is better in groups

A couple of Sundays ago, March 1st to be exact, Matt and I went over to Steph and Linda's for a pierogi party. Steph's mom was in town and Doug has been dying to learn how to make them. Its one of those things, much like tamales, that is only good to make when you have a large group of people and you make a ton of them. Steph said that the last time they made them it took all day and they were ready to kill each other by the end of it. After having done it, I can imagine that. I was on rolling duty for most of the time and Matt was putting the filling in the pieces of dough that I rolled out. Doug, Steph, and Steph's mom took turns joining me rolling or filling. Linda had the unenviable job of boiling the pierogis. She said she liked it the best. Most of the ones we made were traditional mashed potatoes but there was also a small subset of saurkraut ones as well. I hadn't realized before but I love saurkraut. I guess that shouldn't have been surprising since I love just about everything that is made in brine. Steph sauteed the saurkraut with a little bit of onion and those went into the dough too. I know some of you are thinking, how could they do all that work on empty stomaches? Not too fear! I made a delicious cheddar jalepeno bread that I brought with us and they had made soft pretzels right before we arrived. The pretzels were divine. There was also this lovely dipping sauce from Southern Season that I'm going to have to get. To round it all out they had also made a key lime coconut pie.  All that food talk makes me hungry.  We left in good spirits, lots of pierogis and full tummies.  I think we made somewhere around 225 pierogies

There is an update around here somewhere

I know I've been bad about the updates recently.  I apologize.  I'll try and be better, probably.  I'll update a little at a time since for somethings I have pictures.  So I'll update until that point and then I'll track down Matt and steal his sd card so I can upload the pictures.
Let me think back, way back.  Hmmm, interesting things that have happened.  Well, recruitment time is almost over with and we've participated in exactly nothing this year.  Last year it was a group effort and this year the Biology Department was left out of the whole thing.  We weren't allowed to help plan or organize and subsequently most of us didn't participate.  I don't want any of you to think that we were all being petty but we actually didn't get invited to help with almost anything and the few times we were they said something to the affect of "if you volunteer to clean or drive we're more likely to choose you to come to the event".  I thought that was kind of rude because we probably would have done it either way.  Oh well, Matt and I have been pretty busy lately anyway so I guess its ok.  Actually we volunteered to present posters on the first weekend and they never had the decency to respond and let us know if we were or weren't presenting.  Maybe next year we can do more. 
Speaking of being busy, I think I mentioned before that Matt and I have going to the gym.  I don't remembered if I said that we were going to step up our routine and start going even more often (read daily).  That didn't work out so well.  Not because we didn't have the resolve but I was feeling really run down and just sore all the time.  At the same time, meat on tv was looking pretty tasty.  It took a while but we finally put one and one together and realized that I needed to ramp up my protein intake.  I think normally the amount I eat is fine but when I'm working out and trying to build some muscle I need more.  Which makes sense.  So now that I'm eating lots more protein I feel awesome and we can now go daily without wanting to die.  I'm going to have Michelle Obama arms in no time. 
The Oscars were a couple of weeks ago.  I always love to watch them, although it was a ton easier when they started at five and ended nine.  This was the first year that we got to watch it in HD.  It doesn't help a lot of people.  The dresses looked lovely but the faces, yikes.  I made fondue for dinner.  We did a Guinness and Irish cheese fondue with this awesome dense twelve grain bread, apples, and peppers.  Yummy!  I love cheese.  Matt really liked it too, which is good.  He made us a tasty salad so that we didn't only have cheese for dinner.  It was a terrific evening, even though the Oscars website kept going down. Ok, I need to get back to reality.

Tune in next time to hear about snow and perogies.