Butchering becomes an art form

We recently “upgraded” our personal lap top experiences to MacBook Pros. In order to make the transition from PC to Mac as smooth and painless as possible we chose to let the “pros” at Apple transfer all of our information from our old computers to the shiny new ones.

My husband just started cackling in bed beside me. In order to find out what amuses him he often makes me play the guessing game. Tonight is no different. I look onto his computer screen to see an email I sent to him. It was about the school board here asking me to fill out a form that’s more involved than legally required. I forwarded that to my hubby with a note telling of the action I am taking (sending it to HSLDA). ANYWAY. I start to freak out thinking that I accidentally sent that forward back to the school board. I have been known to do something like that…to Du’s colleagues at work. Did I make that mistake again?!

He just keeps telling me, “read the email”, “read it”. I’ve read it and am now in panic attack mode. What’s going on that’s so funny!? Seems that the “pros” at Apple who set up our email accounts on these machines completely butchered my last name. So, all the emails I’ve been sending out the past two weeks haven’t really been from me.

Our last name rarely, if ever, is pronounced correctly. And then to have it spelled, Lord have mercy on us. People insert letters that we don’t even pronounce. Do we really speak with marbles in our mouths? Over the phone is the worst. We end up having to use the military way of spelling things out: A = alpha, B = bravo, C = charlie, etc. It’s as if the service industry is attempting to misspell and butcher names; like they’re one upping each other all the time in some high stakes and highly clandestine game of who can alter the name the most. I’d say my pro just scored a lot of points.

I know we can’t be the only ones who go through this. Is your first or last name on the hit list?

P.S. Totally separate subject, but I’m pretty excited that Project Runway starts tomorrow!…or today…depending on when you’re reading this. I have missed you Heidi, but mostly I have missed Tim Gunn. Make it work!

A family with two kids walks into a bar…

That would be us. I follow “Arlington, VA” on Twitter and they tweeted today about a restaurant that offers 1/2 priced burgers on Tuesdays. Today being a Tuesday I thought it’d be the perfect time to try this place out. The name, for one, got my attention: Spider Kelly’s. I figured it had to be good to live with such a name, which I love btw.

I had to do some research. I found the website mainly to see how much the burgers regularly go for. If they’re normally $20 then a $10 price reduction really isn’t going to do anything for me. I’m cheap frugal remember? Regular price: $8. Hmm, $4 for a burger isn’t all that bad. I then looked for the kids’ menu. Uh oh…no menu for the littles. Not letting that phase me I found the next best thing, macaroni and cheese, which they would have chosen off of the kids’ menu anyway. And SK’s version is called Cardiac Mac & Cheese. Oh yeah. The website mentioned that it is a bar/restaurant. Hmm, wonder if they even allow kids since there’s no mention of juvenile sustenance on the menu. A possible drawback. The next check in the yes column though came when I found out where the restaurant was located. Clarendon. Only my favorite spot in Arlington (next to my own neighborhood, of course).

So, we head over there, knowing it’s a bar/restaurant and not knowing if our chitlins would even be granted access. Things weren’t looking our way when we couldn’t even find the place at first. Then it took almost twenty minutes to find a parking space. We did manage to find free parking (score!) after locating SK’s. All we had to go by was this:

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The storefront is about ten feet wide and the sign is hidden from the street behind that tree you see. Clearly it was meant to be seen by pedestrians only.

So, a family with two kids walks into a bar. I seriously thought that as we entered. The bouncer greeter met us at the door and from the look on his face I thought he was going to escort us right out. Apparently he was only worried that they had no tables immediately for us. We were seated in the “lounge” area to wait for a table. I felt so cosmopolitan. Until Ash wanted to sit in my lap and started pulling down my shirt front. Ahem.

One came soon enough, and I judge it to be soon enough because neither kid had started to cause a (major) scene. In a bar full of people without kids. In a bar full of people who probably don’t even like kids (or else they’d be at Applebee’s right?). It gave us time to peruse the menu and choose our burgers. I went for:

The Spider Kelly Burger – $8
1/2 pound secret house burger blend (this burger contains pork fat–YES!)

Heart attack sandwich! Who’s watching her cholesterol? Not me tonight! I got it with Provolone Cheese, and with the “Fridge Sauce”* in lieu of ketchup it was the best burger-that-tastes-faintly-of-pulled-pork sandwich that I’ve ever tasted. Or ever will, I’m sure. The girls’ Cardiac Mac was delish as well.

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And, as we were noshing (because that’s what one does in a chic bartaurant**), at least two other under-tens came into the bar, one requiring a high chair. We felt much better knowing that this place even had a high chair. We weren’t bucking some kind of unwritten rule that families aren’t allowed into cool yuppie establishments.

The whole experience did make us feel younger again. If only for a moment…until A started crying (loudly) because she couldn’t poke R in the head with her fork.

*My guess as to what’s in the Fridge Sauce: jalapeño sauce (and lots of it), French dressing, and that’s probably it. It really was good. On the burger. I dipped a fry into it and almost burned my tongue off.

**I thought I just made up a cool new word: bartaurant, until I Googled it and darn it if someone hasn’t already thought of it. Just like my idea for a timer on your kitchen hand mixer. I’m a little late. But, really, there’s only two people maybe that have used ‘bartaurant’ before me so I’m on the leading edge of this trend!

Status update

So many things going on. So many stories to be blogged and yet I can’t bring my sorry, tired self to open up the computer at night. I am itching to getting back to posting more regularly. There are so many funny things that happen each day. Funny to me so therefore I want to tell you about them. I think once we get the house settled and are back into more of a routine that my blogging will increase again.

So, I promised updates right up there in the title.

  • The house actually looks inhabitable now. The main level is pretty much complete. A couple of pictures to hang and one stand mixer to find a home for.
  • The upper level, the bedroom level, is almost complete. We still have to hang pictures there as well. The bunk beds are assembled (by me btw) and we now have two mattresses in there. For a while the poor girls were sleeping on blankets because we couldn’t find mattresses to fit the odd size of the bunks. We adapted and overcame and hopefully everyone will stay safe. Enough said.
  • The basement no longer looks like a home invasion victim. The guest bedroom is completely set up and ready for guests (hint, hint) and the play room has a floor that you can actually see. We’ve gone vertical in that room, as vertical as you can go in a basement room. There are shelves lining almost every wall. And they are all full. Lots of books (and since we homeschool we have an inordinate amount), lots of craft supplies (and since I have Sew Petit we have an inordinate amount), and lots of toys (and apparently since we have two girls we have an inordinate amount. That will soon change).
  • The back patio no longer has a couch inhabiting and taking up 50% of the space back there. We finally got rid of that behemoth tonight.
  • What’s left? We need to hang curtains and create more storage options outside. We’ve got ideas for both and now we can finally act on both. ALSO, I am excited about gardening, in the ground and container. Our back is shady and gets morning sun, not the ideal setting for a garden, I think, but we’ll make it work. The girls next door have a whole farm going, so I know we can get something to grow.
  • We’ve been able to meet up with a couple sets of friends.
  • We’ve been able to meet up with some of my cousins.
  • I’ve taken the girls into the city a couple of times. They love riding the Metro buses and trains. They ask to do it all the time. Last week I took them to the US Botanic Gardens, right by the Capitol. Today we went swimming at my cousin’s pool…on a roof overlooking the city.

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This is where we watched the 4th of July Fireworks

  • I’ve started running again. No, I didn’t stutter. I really am running. All of two miles, but still. I’m realizing that I’m not going to start out running 5Ks again and that I must start somewhere and build. So, right now I’m running between a 10 and 12 minute pace (in college it was around 7:30) and I pretty much feel like I’m about to die. As soon a my feet hit the pavement. I really hope it gets better soon. Consolation for me is cute running clothes, good music and a good tracking program that tells me how poorly I’m doing and then shows me the route I almost died running on.
  • I love our neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before. So you can believe me. It’s close to oh, everything. The yuppies in Arlington. The tree huggers in Arlington. The chic people and the tourists in Old Town, Alexandria. The “taxation without representation” people in DC. The monuments. The museums. The food!!! We are surrounded by international restaurants (most of them not Mexican, which is bad when you have a craving and can’t find one).
  • I love driving around here and secretly (whispering) I don’t mind the traffic. Most of the time. The traffic in Arlington and Alexandria isn’t bad. It’s city traffic. It allows me to people watch. The traffic I hate is the congestion that causes us to take 6 hours to get down to Hampton instead of 2.5 to 3. I was ready to mangle the brains at VDOT who still haven’t concluded that widening I95 and I64 would be a good idea. Anyway.

This is getting way too long. Please wipe the drool from your chin. Go take a walk and get some fresh air. See what happens when I don’t get to blog a lot? Diarrhea of the fingers.

Don’t pull a Chuck Norris on your Ikea shelves

So, we put up our second set of Besta shelves from Ikea tonight. I’ll give any of you out there a forewarning: don’t go all Chuck Norris on them. The backings of these shelves are nothing more than MDF or construction paper or something and tend to be flimsy. The back comes prefolded and you are supposed to unfold it, fit the sides into the grooves on the sides of the unit and slide the back in place. It’s all supposed to fit nicely inside the grooves. Right.

If you’ve ever put together any kind of prefab shelving you know it never works exactly as planned. For us, the backing was not wanting to slide all the way down and fit into the bottom groove. Me, being the innovative thinker and general all-around problem solver using what’s on hand, I realize that all this backing needs is a swift kick in the middle (where the prefold is not getting as straight as it needs to be) to get it into the grooves. See where I’m going? I slowly begin to tap the middle of the backing trying to force it into the grooves. The tapping turns somewhat violent as the backing doesn’t want to budge. Pretty soon I kicked so hard that it split the backing in two. I’m laughing as I write this. Are you? I guess you had to be there. Du tried to laugh in order to not scold me. All that came out was some rolling of his eyes. Oh, and the Chuck Norris comment. He did provide that.

So please, for the love of all that is pressed wood, be careful and gentle when you’re putting that stuff together.

And maybe we should all pray that I don’t get all Jackie Chan on the chandelier tomorrow when I switch the old lighting fixture out for the cute one. (A project I tried to complete today but a part was missing.)

I swear I still blog

I may be talking to myself at this point so I’ll make this brief. After all, I know what I’ve been doing. If anyone is out there: I’ve been moving from the hotel to the house and that is taking up all of my time. ALL of my time. I’ve totally quit blogging and I think I’ve lost touch of my Google Reader again as well. I barely eat and feeding the other members of the family is an afterthought. There’s something to be said about the simplicity of hotel life. Not a lot of fixing up and arranging to do. That would be called hotel damage and they charge you dearly.

Here, there’s been painting, moving furniture in, unpacking boxes, trying to shove 15,000 pounds of crap stuff into a 1500 square foot house. I’m sure there’s an easier way to have done it, but we took everything out of the boxes to get rid of the boxes and paper. Now we’re dealing with what looks likes a home invasion. Slowly but surely we’re purchasing all the storage options we can find to hide everything. I feel like we’re hemorrhaging money and am feeling like a tourniquet needs to be placed soon. There’s only so much you should buy for a rental house. In our defense, we’re going to be living here for more than a year this time (God, please let that be true) so we want it to actually look nice and feel inviting and relaxing to live in.

So, with that, I must return to the basement. It’s so bad. Bad. Bad. If ever I wished fairy godmothers existed it is right now. Where are those cleaning/organization shows when you really need them? As for the blogging. I will get back to more regular posting. What didn’t help was my computer deciding to try to hang on to dear life and barely work. It was a computer in name only as it computed nothing and wouldn’t let me take part in anything dealing with the 21st century. Mac to the rescue and I am now a technophile again (as much as I ever was one).

See you in a couple of days.

Culture, Fever and Keys

  • Yesterday we went with some friends to see a children’s ballet and an interactive opera. Both were really good and the ballet made Reagan wish she could dance en pointe and perform on stage. The opera made me wish I could sing in this huge falsetto and project my voice so far that I wouldn’t have to worry ever about getting my kids’ attention across a crowded room. IIII said coooommme hheeeeeeere!
  • Last night Ashlyn was feverish and a little whinier than normal. Du gave her Motrin and she was in a great mood when I got home (I had about two blissful hours spent by myself at Home Depot and Starbucks). This morning/afternoon the fever was back, up to about 103 degrees. Seems high to me but the lady at the clinic said they don’t worry about fevers until they reach 105. Seriously?! We’re keeping it under control by alternating the Tylenol and Motrin. No other signs of anything serious, except maybe a runny nose, so I’m thankful for that.
  • Tomorrow we have our walk through inspection for our house. And. . . if everything looks good we’re going to get the keys then! TWO DAYS EARLY!! That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s just about an eternity for us. To be able to get in early would be a dream come true. I’d be beside-myself excited if it weren’t for this fever issue. I’m praying the fever breaks tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll be packing some things up in the morning just in case. And if things aren’t good enough then I guess we’ll be back at the hotel until Saturday morning check out. I’m bracing myself just in case.

That’s all for now. Pray that Ashlyn’s fever goes away and that the inspection goes well!