So, our trip to P.S. went really well. Drove through a MAJOR monsoon on the way there, saw a snake on the side of the road ( I presume, still alive) and we saw a bobcat cross the high way right in front of us. Got our carpet, dreamt about snakes in my house, and came home.

Today I got to spend the morning with my friend Rebecca! That was a good time. It’s always a good time.

And the rain came. I miss Colorado summers where you get rain every day. And the forecast is for rain and COOLER temps tomorrow!

I think I’m pretty much in heaven now. 🙂

I can relax a little today.

My job is to clean up the house, do laundry, and pack for a trip that will last less than 24 hours. I do find much comfort in the fact that I will be sleeping on a Tempur-pedic bed tonight.

Usually the drive down to Pagosa is something similar to playing the old IBM Oregon Trail…

You are driving.

It is sunny warm weather.

Uh oh, it looks like a blizzard.

You made it through the blizzard.

Sunshine everywhere!

Be careful of the wild life!!

Oops, another blizzard!

Your provisions and fuel are low!

One of your family members is ill !(usually me with whatever my school has to offer)

Congratulations! You made it!

I am sure I’ll have SOMETHING to write about tonight, once we are there. Something interesting always happens en-route.

In other news, I plan to see Angels and Demons next week. I finished the book before the movie came out. I think Dan Brown got it pretty right this time.  It’s definitely something I can picture happening. One man going absolutely insane to prove something (what??).

And I have to see Star Trek again. Actually, there are quite a few movies I want to see in the near future. I’ll keep you posted…

First of all,

After three years of searching, I finally found a way to watch sumo tournaments online!!!! The only catch is you have to watch it LIVE. Which means watching in Japanese time. Which means watching it from 12am – 2 am.

And second,

God gave me a snow day today.

I am so happy.

We attempted to go to breakfast this morning, but we got there at 11:15… they stop serving at 11.  Which was a bummer since the only time I get to Taco Cabana is when I come to Texas. We’ll go tomorrow,

So we got yogurt parfaits at McDonald’s… which were good.

Then we drove downtown to this HUGE mall where I spent a $40 gift card on ridiculously expensive chapstick.

We were going to go to Red Lobster but we had a chick-fil-A sandwich. We are going to go to Red Lobster tomorrow.

Then Barnes&Noble to spend another giftcard.

Tonight I made dinner… lemon chicken and fried rice. Rana helped.

It was really good!

Again, closing the night with The Office Season 2 and dessert. AWESOME.

So, I finished that last post and read a bunch of posts from when I lived in Japan. I ended up going to bed at 5:00 AM.

Which was fine…

I was startled awake around 9:30 am… thinking it was Rana’s dog (Radar) that had jumped on top of me on the bed. It was actually Rana. 🙂 And actually, kind of a fun way to be woken up, since that is how we used to wake each other up when we were younger.

Rana made a “‘Texan” breakfast of eggs, venison sausage, and optional salsa. ( I opted out, and instead put shredded cheddar cheese… that we found to be slightly past it’s prime…. ) But all still good.

Since we’d left the “universal gym” in the cars overnight, we set out to carry everything up to the new workout room. Around 11:00 Rana and I started to scramble to get ready for a baby shower that we needed to leave for at 1:00 to get a present. As we were ready to walk out the door at 1:07… Rana looked at the invite again and realized it wasn’t until TOMORROW.

So we went shopping!! …after we helped Garrett take down an ancient/absolutely impossible to remove ceiling fan, install two fans, help Rana recover from a slight shock from hot wires… (she is fine) oh, and all this on a second floor with no air conditioning… which, oddly enough, has not started working again.

So, around 4:00 we finally went shopping! ( Considerably less fresh and certainly a lot sweatier than we had been 3 hours prior)

We hit up Ross, Walmart and the Dollar Tree. It was a GREAT shopping experience!! We got some really cool stuff, like scrapbook stuff, dinner stuff for me to cook next Tuesday. And we (read : Rana) got gifts for the baby shower that we will go to tomorrow after church. 🙂

Then we came home and Rana made spicy-venison-sausage with cheese running through it. (“Spicy” being an understatement, since I think there were 3 jalepenos per square centimeter.) And we topped the evening off with Season One of “The Office”.

The AC is still not working.

I revisited my college days yesterday. I showed another teacher at school homestarrunner.com. She has a college aged son. It was pretty great getting to laugh over the silliness that is that website.

I turn 25 on Sunday. It’s crazy how life can suddenly zoom at light speed.

Changes are ahead.

Red Lobster is tonight.

I have been craving crab legs ALL day.

Bring it on.

Heath Ledger died this afternoon.

Somehow, a part of my teenage soul is grieving.

We bought a house yesterday!!!

Let the fixing-up begin!!

Dear Short-Sale-Pre-forclosure- Contract-Signing for the House People,

I am tired of waiting for a yes or no answer.

It is a SHORT sale for a reason.

You have made it LONG.

Please decide ASAP.

yours Truly,

Aris

What a day!

For the first time in my life I made pie crusts from scratch.

Now, while I admit this doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, please consider the following:

– As I began to pull out all of the ingredients for the crusts, the
apple, cherry and pumpkin pies… I notice the flame on the stove that
is heating my teapot. It is low. Which wouldn’t have been bad, IF I had
set it to low.  So I check both pilot lights that we have in the
house. OUT. OF COURSE. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, I am
responsible for making homemade pies that have to be baked TODAY and
(incase you didn’t know it already) the Propane is GONE. Which poses a
pretty significant problem since our stove is run by propane. ( Not to
mention it snowed almost all day and the next two days are highs below
freezing. YEAH our heating system in our house is also run on propane,
so is the hot water… you get the point.) So, I call my loving
husband, to let him know that his efforts of preventing the current
situation had failed. ( He had called a month ago, two weeks ago, and
last week to remind the propane company we were getting low.)  In
case you didn’t catch my first couple entries after we first got
married, being without propane is NOT FUN.

Of course my loving husband comes through for us, and he calls to tell me the propane is coming soon.

-So I begin making my pie crust dough. And I look up to see Prize (a 22
year old whitish-gray horse) walking by. Not an uncommon occurrence.
What was uncommon… was that I saw red on his lower stomach. So I take
off my apron, put on my boots and go outside to Prize’s stall. Sure
enough… a HUGE wound the size of my palm, is dripping blood. I’ll
spare the rest of the gory details.

I called Ian and Sally to let them know, hoping that they were still in
town (because they were supposed to go out of town till Sunday). Ian
came down to check it out, and as I thought…. it was bad. Here is the
blessing in all of this… had I not looked up, had the wound been on
his other side, we would not have found it until tonight when I fed
him. (Or IF that, because the angle is such that I may have not seen it
then either.) I am just very thankful Ian was home and able to call the
vet.

After I regrouped from that, (being the animal lover that I am…
seeing a wounded animal is painful for me. I mean, I mourn every
unidentified road-kill we see on the interstate) I came back inside,
put my apron back on and continued working on the pie-crust dough.

Somewhere between my no-sugar-added cherry pie, made with splenda (the
ONLY non-homemade item, and which coincidentally tastes like bad baby
food- which I only bought because the other cans of normal cherry pie
filling were sold out at Walmart last night, AND of which I only found
out how bad it tasted once it was in the oven.) and my totally from
scratch apple pie… which I peeled all 8 granny smith apples and
madethem fit into the tiny pie shell that barely fit …
               
            a knock on the door.
Propane lady and Ian were standing there. Ian asking when we think we
will be leaving the guest house and me trying to explain how we really
don’t know for sure until the bank signs our offer. Then the lady and
her husband/Propane guy come back into the house. She wants a full tour
while taking pictures on her cell to show her sister to see if she
might want to live there. I don’t even know if Ian had offered.

               
         Did I mention I was in the
middle of cooking? Oh and Charlie was going BERZERK!
But we got the propane and the nice propane people finally left. And I returned to my baking.

Finally, I was taking my last pie… my perfect pumpkin pie… out of the oven.

Exhausted I decide to have a glass of apple juice. (From the
concentrate I had used in my apple pie recipe.) It tastes like it was
on the verge of being fermented. Not exactly bad and NOT good.

So… great. My splenda cherry pie tastes like very yucky nastiness,
and I made an apple pie with possibly fermented apple juice. My only
saving grace is the pumpkin pie…

               
              
              
     of which, only 3 people coming to Thanksgiving
dinner tomorrow, will even try.

I will never be asked to make the pies again….

            
           
           
           
           
           
           but at least my crusts were from scratch.