something delicious, P.E.

Christmas Vacation

Joe and I drove the puppies across the country for a down-home Wisconsin Christmas with family and old friends.  Everything about the trip was great except for the cold virus I picked up on the drive home.  I was at work for a day before I had to call in sick for two.  I'm debating if I want to do the responsible thing and go in this weekend to catch up on a few things, or if I should stay home and catch up on housework.  It's a lose-lose either way.

After sleeping roughly 30 of the last 48 hours, I think it's safe to say that the cold is gone and I'm healthy again.  No more excuses for procrastinating on the Christmas clean-up.

Here is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.  We found the old dog harness in the garage and hooked it up to my parent's dog Oscar who is kind of skittish.  He took a few unassisted steps pulling the sled, but mostly just wanted to sit down and whine.  I love that because of the angle of the shot, my sister looks like she's 5 years old.

But what can you do? Medicine's not a science.

Abby's formula for the perfect evening:

• got out of work a few minutes early tonight and went to the drugstore to browse birthday cards for a good fifteen minutes, minimum, without Joe breathing down my neck asking me if I had to take that long to select the perfect card (answer:  yes, I do...and I found one that played the chicken dance song). 
• Then I went home, played with the dogs for a while and
• took a long, hot shower; with the drain plugged and bath salts. 
• Several minutes of primping followed and we were on our way to meet our friends at a new restaurant downtown to celebrate a 30th birthday. 
• A couple of glasses of really good Cotes du Rhone, an orgasmic medium-rare grilled beef tenderloin with lobster Bearnaise, and chocolate mousse birthday cake with a side of champagne, followed by the belly-laugh worthy animated comedy of the now 30-year-old guest of honor
• I love my friends.
• Get home and find out The Office is on late tonight so I will get to see it after all.  It's a rerun, but so what?  I missed most of this one the first time around (prison Mike).
• Now, 30 Rock is on and I have one dog curled up on my feet and the other one leaning heavily against my side.  Oh, this is the one where Tracy sees the "blue dude".  The very episode that made me fall in love with the show.

It's going to be 25 below (BELOW!!) zero tonight.  I will be slumbering beneath a perfectly heavy down comforter next to my hot-stuff husband in a wine-induced coma in just about 10 minutes.  I might wake up with cotton mouth and a small headache tomorrow morning, but it will have been worth it for my perfect evening.

november 1

My November resolution is to post something every day.  It's not really a resolution because I don't intend to continue with that kind of schedule after November 30, it's more of a challenge.  I'm always making little challenges for myself to blow off, so odds of completion are 38 to 1.

Last night was Halloween, and despite a light drizzle, the trick-or-treaters were out in force.  The bunches of smaller children are all kind of jumbled together in my memory as a big blob of cuteness, but what I do remember is the one parent whose metal "pipe" fell out of his jacket pocket when he bent over to pick up his dino-toddler who started to cry because Joe was wearing his scary werewolf mask to hand out candy.  I suppose even stoners take their kids trick-or-treating.  It's kind of sweet, really.  "What do you want to be this year Raindog?  A dancing bear?  A magic mushroom?  A woodland fairy?  jerry garcia?"

best weekend ever

...coming down after an excellent long weekend.  I decided to skip fatty friday #3 because I didn't have time to write, we'll resume this week.  Yesterday was a holiday that my company celebrates called Columbus Day.  Joe calls it Native American Genocide Day, which is fitting.  Our new windows were delivered yesterday, because this holiday is generally only celebrated by government workers, and the delivery truck drivers do not get the day off.  Joe took a vacation day and we installed two of the four windows.  My favorite part was taking out the old windows and seeing that the weights inside actually look like giant salamis.  I giggled about this to myself all day.

Sunday was my second 5K in two weekends and it was absolutely gorgeous.  The Ripton Ridge 5K was held in the mountains a little bit south of here.  The weather for the race was sunny and in the high 60s, and the leaves were falling like snow.  The route was annoyingly hilly.  This is what happens when you run in the "mountains" I guess.  The first 1.5 miles was nearly continuous uphill action, varying from tolerably steep on the flatter end to walkably steep.  Being an out and back route, the last 1.5 miles was DOWNHILL!!  From the information I've gathered, most runners hate downhill running, but I, having quads the size of most people's waists, LOVE LOVE LOVE the downhill running.  It doesn't hurt me, and it's something that can be done with minimal effort.  Basically, it just takes the motion of lifting your leg forward and gravity does the rest.  Sadly, I couldn't make up all of the time spent walking up some of the hills, so I came in a hair over thirty six minutes:  36:02 I think was my official time.  I didn't really care though, the day was amazing, and the views from the ridge lines were breathtaking...but that could also be attributed to the uphill running.

We took the dogs with us this time because it was a small-ish race and they were able to frolic and greet people pre- and post- race.  This race also had a goody factor of plus ten!  Long sleeved t-shirts, a water bottle, smelly home-made soap, smelly home-made chapstick, AND a post-race chili meal (with brownies), in addition to the yummy apples they had at the finish line.  This is something that I will definitely participate in again next year, perhaps even trying my hand at the 10K option.

I think my next race will be a Turkey Trot in early November, because there's nothing better than walking home from a run with a giant frozen turkey slung over your shoulder.

a series of very unfortunate events

A quiz:

Which of the following has happened to Abby on her 27th birthday:

a) Backed into Joe's car in the driveway this morning, possibly having been distracted playing with her new SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO RECEIVER!

b) Left her wallet at the grocery store

c) Had her project denied the prior evening

d) Birthday was forgotten by husband

e) All of the above

If you answered e) all of the above, you get an A+ forever.  The day can only get better, and it already has because an e-mail from a friend reminded me of a camping trip I have coming up shortly which instantly cheered me up.  Also, my coworker brought in a chocolate cake for me.

Last night was a full moon.  I guess that explains Evvy's abnormal desire to scratch at the door at 2AM this morning and frolick in the backyard for a few minutes.  I've decided that when my birthday and the full moon are in alignment, very bad things can happen (see above quiz). And when Jupiter aligns with Mars, peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.

Tonight we will be entertaining Joe's cousin, her husband, and their adorable 11-month-old son for dinner.  So does that make them my cousins-in-law?  I'm not that good at the family naming thing, for example:  are my husband's sister's husbands my brothers-in-law?  Or are they just my sister-in-law's husband?  The other thing that makes me bad at being married is that I still don't know how to address my parents-in-law.  I feel that, coming out of my mouth, calling them mom and dad would sound really fake because I'm not that comfortable with it.  I'd like to call them by their first names, but on his side of the family, this may be construed as disrespect.  I grew up calling my aunts and uncles by their first names, their family makes the kids say "Aunt" or "Uncle" before the names.  I asked my mom what she does, and apparently she's gotten through 30 years of marriage addressing her in-laws as "excuse me" or "um" or just making eye contact before conversation so they know to whom she is speaking.  But this is getting off the subject.

I am excited to have guests over to our home tonight for dinner. So excited, in fact, that I am going to leave work a couple of hours early to get the house ready.  I'm going to do hibachi steak kabobs -- or meat sticks on the grill, and a few vegetables.  I think that saying "hibachi kabobs" sounds A LOT cooler though, and you kind of have to bow forward quickly when you say it.  Try it, it's fun.  hibachi kabobs.  Hopefully the rain will hold off so we can use my favorite outdoor dining set.

I'd rather be here right now.