Hi it's Jamie. You might remember me from this picture *cough cough* years ago. I was the little girl holding the red toy truck.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I won't be expecting any gifts this year. Scott and I have decided to celebrate our anniversary and Christmas "off the grid" with no gifts. Money is tight, and we have what we need and can wait for anything else we want.
Whatever extra money we do have this season is going to be donated to our two chosen charities. This year, we'll be giving to the Alzheimer's Association (and not just because their ribbon color is purple!) and the Wounded Warrior Project. We know our friends and family will understand our desire to "pay it forward" rather than give and receive trinkets, and we hope that they consider making a donation to a charity of their choosing instead of buying anything for us.
It's nice to know that our money will be helping those who deserve not only our help, but our gratitude. And I'm not going to lie - not having to fight the holiday shopping crowds is a gift in itself!
Merry Christmas to you and the Mrs., and feel free to stop by for some cookies. We'll be sure the save you some!
You may have seen this t-shirt or at least heard the comment before. It's a concept Scott and I laugh about a lot. Watch enough food/travel shows, and you're going to see all sorts of animals - from cows to fish - killed and cooked. Everyone knows that meat used to breathe and think.
I, of course, am more of a supermarket murderer. By the time I get my food, it's long-dead. I never saw its face, never watched it breathe, and certainly didn't help kill it. Heck, I've never even caught a fish that didn't get released back into the water!
The Story:
Scott and I were told a perishable food-related thank you gift was to be delivered to us yesterday morning. We were expecting an edible arrangement. After all, the thank-you was for something we genuinely didn't expect to be thanked for! And so, imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find a very large box under the welcome mat. (about that: the UPS driver often "hides" our packages under our doormat. it's always obvious - even a small package makes the mat look like a cat is hiding under it - but yesterday's was just-plain comical. the box was at least a foot tall, and about the same other dimensions as the mat that was covering it!) The box had a big logo on the side - LobsterGram!
No way!
Yes, way!
So I hauled the box into the house and put it up on the dining room table, grabbed Scott's pocket knife and pulled out the shipping manifest. Now having some clue about the contents, I though I should probably open the box. So I did. And inside was a giant styrofoam cooler. I opened that lid, pulled off a layer of bubble wrap, and saw a wax paper sort of thing. I picked up the corner, enough to see a rubber-banded claw that was definitely not bright red. I put everything back in, closed the cooler, backed away slowly, and took the shipping paper upstairs to Scott (who had been in the shower).
He came back downstairs with me and agreed that yes, there were two lobsters in the box. That were moving. In our house!
In retrospect, I think we both probably made the face new parents make the first time their precious miracle has an explosive poo. You know you should DO something, and quickly, but all you can really do is stand there frozen and staring. It was really a "umm...what do we do now" moment. Scott then covered the lobsters back up and closed the cooler. I should mention that neither of us really has a humanitarian hang-up about lobster. Like all sorts of other creatures of the sea, they also fall into the "tasty, tasty murder" category. But I think maybe because I had fish tanks growing up, the sight of a lobster in a tank at the grocery store is really no different to me than the sight of fish waiting to come home with you and live in your house.
We of course knew right away that we weren't going to look a gift-lobster in the mouth, and started reading their enclosed cooking manual (how's that for a "To Serve Man" type fate?). The paper that was on top of the cooler suggested that we pose our lobsters for fun pictures before cooking them. I thought that was pretty mean-spirited, though did have a momentary flash of "Mary and Richard playing with lobsters?" that quickly passed. Scott also read in the manual that sometimes the lobster tails will splash boiling water when you put them in the pot. Yikes! So we followed the sage advice of Alton Brown and put them in the freezer to stupefy them while the water came to a boil.
When the time came, I held the pot lid, Scott deposited them into the water, and I put the lid back on. And the worst was officially behind us. I guess the freezer trick really worked, because this scene from "Julie & Julia" certainly didn't happen to us...
(coincidentally enough, I just saw this movie for the first time this morning. oh how I laughed!)
Nine minutes after the water came back to a boil, they were cooked. Scott did the ripping and rinsing, and I got the clarified butter, a few glasses of chardonnay, and all the appropriate tools together at the table. While Scott was still working on cleaning his lobster, I grabbed one of the legs off my plate and sucked the meat out of it. And in that moment, I had a food-piphany. Lobster is so good that it gives you lobster-prep amnesia!
The parts of the meal where we were able to extract actual big chunks of lobster meat from the shells were even more amazing. I might have shattered-claw-shell shrapnel buried in my face (came close to getting my safety classes out of my work bag...for real), but that's half the fun of eating crustaceans. I barely touched the butter. The meat was just so perfect without it!
I get it now - why foodies are so willing to kill and eat lobsters in their own homes. I don't think I'm at the point emotionally where I could go to the store and pick one out of a tank... but I could probably give someone else the money to go buy one for me!
Epilogue:
We had sort of a weird schedule yesterday, and actually ate the lobsters for lunch. Tonight, we're having the rest of the stuff that came in the cooler with the lobsters. It's the gift that keeps on giving! And now I can add lobster to the list of things I can cook...with a little (ok, a lot of) help from my hubby!
Anyone who follows me on Twitter might have noticed the following tweet a few days ago:
Just informed TODAY by JCPenney.com that gift I ordered for @mob308 on 12/14 is no longer available. It took them 8 DAYS to figure this out? 9:15 AM Dec 22nd
I spent a day whining about there being a GIANT HOLE OF DISAPPOINTMENT IN MY CHRISTMAS to anyone who would listen. It didn't occur to me that there were tons of retailers offering free shipping upgrades on the 21st and 22nd and that maybe I could find a replacement elsewhere. In short, I was being an ass.
Yesterday morning, I went online and found a different item in the same genre, plus a sweet bonus gift (and something for myself) for less than the cost of the one item that JC Penney screwed me out of. They offered very reasonable 3-Day UPS Ground shipping, which meant that it wouldn't be here by Christmas, but that I would get it next week. That was fine with me! (The alternative - overnight shipping - was $20. Since it wasn't a "Santa" present for a small child, that wasn't going to be worth it to me.)
I came up with creative ways to package "future gifts" so that Scott would still have something to unwrap tomorrow. I came to the computer just now to do some creative photo editing, and went into my email to pull a picture from the original order. The package shipped yesterday afternoon, and I decided to check the shipping email and see whether it had really shipped, or if the company had done one of those "notified UPS to pick up package" things. Imagine my complete and utter elation when I saw the following:
What's completely shocking about this is that I've followed packages online before, and have seen a shipping company (I'm thinking FedEx) HOLD things in their local hub in order to not deliver before the promised date. To think that there was room on a truck and that UPS said, "hey - she didn't pay for the quickie shipping, but we have the space!" just absolutely blows my mind.
I'm not getting my hopes up too high... I'm betting that my package has the lowest priority on the delivery truck. But for now, I'm holding off on doing my creative packaging. I might not need it after all!
And so, I'd like to wish a VERY Merry Christmas to the UPS drivers and warehouse workers out there delivering Christmas to children (and grown-ups) everywhere! I'd also like to wish a Merry Christmas to the people at an internet retailer whose name I cannot reveal at this time. I'm a fan for life!
For anyone out there who doesn't know who Paul Bocuse is, he's basically the original celebrity chef. He's the first chef-owner to name a restaurant for himself and step out of the kitchen and into the spotlight.
The Bocuse d'Or, an international cooking competition dubbed the "Culinary Olympics," is named for him.
He is a living legend.
Last month, my friend Gayle went to France with a friend who had won this really cool river cruise vacation, and one of their stops was Bocuse's restaurant in Lyon. She had e-mailed me before she went and asked if I had ever heard of the restaurant, and I basically sent her back 500 words with no punctuation breathlessly explaining who Bocuse is, and how freaking lucky she was. ("oh yeah, and I hate you.")
Upon her return, she sent me another e-mail about her lunch, and how her friend had told everyone about how Gayle used to work at The Restaurant. She struck up a broken-English conversation with one of the waiters, who had worked for a time at Chefs de France at Epcot (which is run by Jerome Bocuse - his son), and was familiar with The Restaurant as well as The Chef. My name came up somewhere in there, as in "my friend Jamie works there..." And when the waiter asked if she'd like a signed menu to take back to her friend, she jumped on it.
Gayle says she guesses the waiter didn't understand as much of the conversation as she had thought, and she debated whether to send the menu to me at all. I'll call it a happy accident, that my husband and The Chef should share the same first name, and therefore HE got a really cool gift from France. It's actually better, because Scott loves cooking so much more than I do. I think he almost misted up a bit when he pulled the menu out of the envelope.
Plus, the menu is cool enough looking (all those circles are the same shiny gold as the edge) that I'd actually consider framing it and hanging it in our kitchen...when we have a kitchen with actual wall space! Our autograph from a living legend definitely deserves to be seen!
I've been PMSing pretty madly for the past few days, so apologies for not writing anything warm & fuzzy. Honestly, I was watching stories of people stranded in airports and yelling at the TV. Sometimes it was, "you're having a WHITE CHRISTMAS! be HAPPY!" and other times it was, "this wouldn't have happened if you had just stayed at HOME!" Of course, the latter came when I was pissed off about work. Every year at this time, we have the same diners who have come in for the last 5-10-15 years to have Christmas/Eve/NYE dinner here. Repeat diners give The Boss stress, and stress, much like shit, rolls down hill.
That said, Scott and I did have a lovely Christmas (Eve) together this year. We opened gifts in the morning, had Japanese for lunch, and since it was just the two of us, we decided to have steaks for dinner instead of ham or turkey. We each knew what our "big gift" was going to be, having picked them out ourselves. But neither of us really had a list this year, so the other gifts were a surprise. And I think we both did pretty well.
By far, my favorite unexpected gift was a pastry bag with multiple tips. I actually used the classic Jamie phrase, "I didn't know I wanted this!" But it turns out I totally did. He also bought me all of Scalzi's "Old Man's War" books and "Agent to the Stars" in paperback to complete my collection. I've already read one, and am about to start on the others.
When I asked Scott what his favorite unexpected gift was, he had to pick two: the 2009 Chick-Fil-A calender ("Cows in Blue" - if you like cop shows, you need this calendar!) and the DVD of Airplane, "Don't Call Me Shirley" edition. These were two of the last things I bought, and were both impulse buys. Much better than the year I bought him the plastic yellow bell pepper!
Oh - and the most unexpected gift of all (for both of us) was a Pennsylvania care package from my Grandpop. It has Tastykakes and Goldberg's Peanut Chews (which don't go by that name anymore) and some other stuff in it. How wonderful! ...and I was touched when he sent an old picture of "Mullet Jamie With Clown" in the Christmas Card earlier this month. (yeah - I totally need to scan and post that!)
I'm working really hard on focusing on the positive right now, but work really is kicking my butt this week. So please enjoy the remainder of the Month of Holiday Cat Photos. I'll be back when I have something else nice to say!
I don't usually have it. But this morning, I got it right.
Scott left the house before 8 am for a very early doctor appointment (of the standard "come in or I won't refill your prescriptions" variety). And since I had a chiropractor appointment scheduled for 11 am, I decided the best thing I could do was wake up early and wrap presents. That way, I could do some damage and then go at my appointed hour and have him UN-do the damage.
The chiropractor was amused. He told me he gets at least one call every year that goes something like, "I'm sitting indian-style on the floor and I can't get up." I thought of that, and figured Scott would be able to fold me into his car and drive me if anything really bad happened. (that did happen to me one year - except I bent over and couldn't stand back up)
This year, I was fine after wrapping everything. Of course, then I came home and scooped a ton of stinky cat litter and now my back is a little stiff. But that's just old muscle aches. Nothing to worry about.
And in case you were wondering, I can now turn my head more than 90 degrees to the right and almost 90 on the left. And the sound of the popping in my neck when I get adjusted still makes me want to vomit!
And on an unrelated note, Scott and I met up after our appointments and went to Crispers for lunch. If you do the cup-o-soup and half sandwich combo, your sandwich options are somewhat limited. BUT you can get corned beef and swiss on rye and substitute thousand island dressing for mayo and it's just like a Reuben, but without the sauerkraut. It was delish! And their chicken & dumpling is a decent soup... even if they are cheap on the chicken.
Word to the wise: avoid the crowds of rabid discount shoppers at the mall and do your shopping online. I am now a HUGE fan of Google Shopping. You tell them what you want, and they provide you a list of retailers selling your product, their price, and the shipping cost. That saves a lot of comparison-shopping windows at the bottom of your computer screen!
Of course, I'm not going to tell you what I bought. But I am going to tell you I got a great price, and picked up some additional stuff from the same store. The total was less than I'd expected to pay for just that product.
And so, today I leave for work knowing that my holiday shopping is now about 80% complete. Can't beat that!
Scott bought me a Whitman's Sampler heart-o-goodness for V.D. this year. I haven't had one in a million years, and was so excited to have good chocolate for a change (as opposed to the crap we bring to work to share).
I was a little surprised when I opened the box and discovered there was no map. I didn't know which were caramel, nougat, or coconut. I still don't! We managed to figure out the cherry cordials without much ado, but I'm constantly getting frustrated with the different truffle flavors. Luckily, I'll eat just about anything covered in good chocolate (but NO BUGS), and can handle a little "white mystery filling" in my life.
But it's so true: You never know what you're gonna get!
So, in case you missed it, Wednesday was the day formerly known as Secretary's Day (or is it secretaries' day? well I guess it doesn't matter because now it's "Administrative Professionals" Day instead). It's the day where umm... I don't really know what happens. It's not like bosses give their "administrative" people the day off. Flowers? Lunch? Maybe that's it.
Anyway, apparently I rate as an A.P. in this job. I came in yesterday to flowers and a card from our Chefs. Actually, the flowers are fake and they live in a really neat looking vase, which is good because it means Scott won't eventually have to scrape a layer of slime out of the vase when the flowers die and the water turns stagnant.
Speaking of work, I had two nearly identical conversations with two different management-level people yesterday, both of which started, "don't tell anyone but..." Amazingly enough, both proceeded to tell me the same thing that I was stressing over on Monday. So yeah - apparently in this job I am officially IN the loop. That's a strange departure for me. Apparently, I am also perceived as someone who can keep her mouth shut (silence from the peanut gallery!!!) and who can keep a secret (really - stop - I can hear you laughing from here). That's an even stranger departure.
Such is the life of an administrative professional. I guess.
I am not asking for anything for my birthday this year. Scott and I are going to see Wicked in less than two weeks, and that's all I really expect. Well, that and a nice meal somewhere, although I'm having trouble picking a place.
If you really want to spend money on me, come on over and take me out to eat. I never (ok, never say never) refuse free food.
But if you're one of those people who insist on buying something, wrapping it, and making a grand presentation, here's some things I'd be happy to own:
* Movie Soundtrack: The Phantom of the Opera (yes, I did used to own this. just like I used to own a dozen other CDs. they were lost in the great car CD heist of '05)
I forgot to grab the disposable camera when I left on my exciting journey of oil changes and gift purchases. So perhaps we'll remember it tomorrow when Scott and I go out yet again to shop until I drop.
I do have the newsletter text written. I need to have my editor check it out for objectionable content and glaring omissions. I just haven't decided what pictures to include, and whether to put them in with the text (logical, but a pain in the @$$) or at the bottom of the page, or in slide show format.
Anyway, after my morning at Target, I came home and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. The result? One measly box of gifts. There are five different wrapping papers visible in this photo, and one more you can't see. Obviously, the collection is red-heavy right now. We're going to have to stock up during the post-holiday clearance sales. We also need ribbon. (couldn't load up all of the boxes into the box with bows on all of them... that part comes on Christmas morning)
So anyway, that (along with ridiculous amounts of TV watching) is how I spent my day. I feel productive.
Last night after we left MGM, we stopped at Target. Lunch with some of "the gang" was on the agenda for this afternoon, and we wanted to give Chris and Cathi their wedding present when we were all together. Of course, gift giving is much easier after you've bought the gift!
So we bought the gift, came home, and I decided to watch TV instead of wrapping. I had to do it this morning when I woke up. I managed to get it all wrapped, but didn't have time to curl the ribbon before we left the house (I may have had time, but the darn cats think that ribbon is a toy). So I grabbed the scissors and we headed out and I curled the ribbon in the car. Looking back, I should have just left the ribbon slightly curled like it is in the picture. The final result was a little more jerri-curlesque than I would have preferred!
After our trip to Sand Lake to get Scott's bloodwork taken, we drove to Downtown Disney and went toy shopping before lunch. So we threw the gift and the scissors in the trunk.
We gave the present to Chris and Cathi (btw, someone should compliment me on how creative and pretty my wrapping is. I'm getting tired of complimenting myself!) and then had a big ol' lunch at Stinky Shoe. mmm... beef and broccoli and crab rangoons... drool...
And after lunch and another trip to Downtown Disney (this time window shopping on the West Side), we went grocery shopping. The trip was going swimmingly right up until Aisle 10. Scott picked up a bag of cat food, and it wasn't sealed, and the w h o l e bag poured out into the floor. OMG, I thought I was going to pee myself right then and there. We, good citizens that we are, told a cashier that we dumped out a bag of food before running off to Aisle 11.
In the parking lot, we were loading the groceries into the trunk and Scott told me to throw the scissors into one of the grocery bags so that we'd remember to take them upstairs. So I threw them in the bag with the cat food.
Oh cat food, why have you forsaken us??
As we were unloading the groceries at home, two of the bags were stuck together. My first thought was that something sticky had opened up and it was going to be all over the trunk.
Nope.
The scissors had poked through the bag with the cat food and lodged themselves in the bottom of a styrofoam tray of pork chops in another bag. And for the second time in less than an hour, I had a near-pee laughing experience involving cat food.
Scott's birthday present (aside from the cake and balloons and the TV) from me was a 600 thread count sheet set. Sadly, they were white. But I guess clearance sale beggars can't be choosers. Almost immediately after opening his gift, Scott had thrown them in the washer so that they could go straight onto the bed. We put them on yesterday afternoon and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was in love.
It's not so much that the sheets are unbelieveably soft (we'll blame Scott's brain fart and lack of fabric softener for that). They're thick. And they just feel so luxurious. Yeah - luxury - that's the word.
In case anyone out there was wondering, it took trips to 3 separate pharmacies to find one that could fill my pain pill prescription. And did I mention that Panlor SS isn't covered by my insurance? It's a mild version of Tylenol with Codeine. WHY would that not be covered??? Well as soon as I got my prescription filled, I popped one of those suckers.
Never take a new prescription when you're out and about and you don't know how it will affect you.
We were on our way to Epcot for dinner when I took the pill. And it kicked in right about the time we were being seated. I started to feel a little shaky, like my blood sugar had dropped. And then I just felt drunk. The pain never really went away, but I didn't really care anymore. Of course, I had worn flip flops and (who didn't see this coming?) had blisters between my toes. That pain didn't go away either.
After dinner, as soon as we got out of Epcot, I took my shoes off for the walk back to Boardwalk. And of course I came home with black feet. Well I certainly wasn't going to put those black feet on my brand new white sheets! (oh my GOD! the story has gone full-circle!) So I filled up the tub with about 3" of soapy water and did my own imitation of that I Love Lucy grape-stomping episode. I scoured my feet on the astroturf mat in the tub for almost 15 minutes. And though my feet still aren't completely foot-colored (even after today's shower), no black came off on the sheets. Hooray for me!
What's that? Is that a birthday cake with Mr. Incredible on it surrounded by millions of little "30" confettis?
I so lied to Scott and took today off from work. I ordered a cake earlier in the week without him knowing, drove around in circles today without him knowing (sadly, the dentist appointment was not a lie). I picked up a cake and balloons and loaded them all into my car and decorated his office without him knowing.
Actually, he must have known, because I can not keep a secret. But I didn't tell him. But I still think he knew somehow.
Of course, ultimately I think I got more out of the deal. I got the ultimate pleasure of watching his co-workers sing Happy Birthday to him... at least 5 times!
I also took those little confettis and put them all over his desk. It's nice that I can walk into the Investigations office and say "I'm here to trash Scott's desk" and no one gives me a second glance. hahaha
Anyway, of course my darlin' isn't really 30 until tomorrow. But I figured this was my chance to bring him a cake at work and celebrate his birthday with a proper embarassment. Isn't that what birthdays are all about? So here's a picture of Scott on the last day of his 20's. Try to go easy on him tomorrow!
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As for my mouth, it still hurts. The dentist gave me a prescription for a pain killer, a prescription for amoxicillin (why oh why can't I have the bubble gum liquid anymore?), some anti-something mouthwash, and a referral to an oral surgeon. I filled the antibiotics, but the Publix pharmacy didn't have my pain killer in stock.
I have an appointment to get tooth #32 extracted at a different office on Monday morning. And I have a plain old dentist appointment in a month. And then I'm sure I'll see them regularly for the next 6 months. That's just a hunch... but I bet $1 I'm right!
Scalzi's Weekend Assignment this week deals with one of my favorite things: gifts!
So, here's the missus. She's got a birthday coming up, and honestly, I haven't the slightest clue what to get her. So I am utilizing the incredibly awesome might of AOL Journals to get me out of a scrape!
Weekend Assignment #106: Suggest a really cool birthday gift for my wife. By which I mean -- if you're a woman, what would you want for a birthday gift, and if you're a man, what would you get for your significant other?
Now, here are the ground rules: 1. Money is not necessarily an object, but, come on, be reasonable. 2. Don't suggest anything that Krissy couldn't unwrap in public. 3. Your gift idea doen't actually have to be something you can buy -- if you want to suggest something intangible, go ahead. 4. Don't tell Krissy I'm doing this. Like, shhhhh.
I must say, this necklace is the only piece of jewelery I've ever lusted after. OK, maybe lusted is the wrong word. But I love it. It featured prominently on Elle Woods in the beginning of Legally Blonde, and I saw it up close and personal on a woman when I was doing bag checks about a year later. I actually said "hey - that's the necklace that that girl wears in that movie!" And she knew exactly what I was talking about.
Anyway, it's from Tiffany & Co. and for the very un-Tiffany price of $295, it could be yours... or Krissy's... or mine. Actually, I'm not a jewelery person. And I know I would never wear it enough to make it worth the price tag. But I still love it and hope to some day go to the Tiffany & Co. at the Millennia Mall and try it on.
*sigh*
Extra Credit: How good of a job do you do in getting your spouse/significant other gifts they like? I'm way too random. I find things like foot massagers and subscriptions to online games and think "ooh - perfect!" I'm blessed to have a spouse who pretends to love everything I buy for him.
