Wow, I've been extremely remiss in keeping up with this journal. That's truelly a bummer because I've done some fun things since I last made an entry and I"m sure I'm not going to remember everything.
Last Weekend
Last weekend seemed to last many more days than it actually did. I went to Houston on Friday to meet Deon, my sister's "friend". We spent a couple of hours playing pool at my Aunt Margaret's house, then got all dolled up to go see Guy Forsyth play at the Continental Club. I was feeling kinda tired when we started out, but I ended up staying at the club with Mom and Margaret until well past 2am...way past the the time my New York sister gave up the ghost and went home to go to bed. Does anybody really wonder who the "old married woman" is?
On Saturday, I missed out on going to the new Aquarium to drive back to Austin in time to take Homer to Walnut Creek Park. Afterwards, all three of us went to the O'Reilly house for dinner and a movie. Homer is great about hanging in the backyard when we go out - we never feel guilty for leaving him out there all day - but it's even better to be able to visit friends in the evenings and take Homer with us. He always has a great time with the O'Reilly dogs.
Sunday we were suppose to go to the Zilker Kite festival, but it was postponed a week due to the weather.
This Weekend
Yesterday, Stepan tricked me into buying lunch for him at the Alamo Drafthouse. We watched Old School, which wasn't nearly as bad as I thought would have been. It was actually fairly entertaining. Saturday evening, we went to Selected Shorts on Tour - a Celebration of the Short Story. It's a weekly programmed aired on our local NPR station that tours through Austin every year. We always have a great time. This year, the selections included "Popular Girls" by Karen Shepard and read by Fionnula Flanagan, "Nightingale" by Tobias Wolff read by Stephen Lang, and "Part of the Story" by Stephen Dobyns read by the host, Isaiah Sheffer. They had a reception following the reading where we could have met the readers, but they didn't have any pastries or refreshments this year as they did in years past, so we just went home to our puppy.
Today, we met Carlos and family at Schlotzski's for breakfast, then went with them to the Zilker Kite Festival. The day was beautiful, but there wasn't much wind. As an extra bonus, Danny and Joanna joined us for an hour or so. They were on their way back to Ft. Worth after seeing Mama Mia in San Antonio with Joanna's family. We had a very relaxing day, but we spent way too much unprotected time in the sun. Step and I are fairly sunburned.
It's been crazy busy at work this past week. It seems like every project that's been put on hold during the past 6 months suddenly became due last Wednesday. Some of the deadlines got pushed back to next week, so I don't anticipate it letting up until Wednesday at the latest.
On Thursday, I started thinking about the last time I was this busy at work. Stepan surprised me with a trip to San Francisco where he proposed to me on the Golden Gate Bridge. Now I'm all excited thinking about where he'll be taking me this time...Varekai is playing in Atlanta though it's moving up to NYC in April. We've been talking about taking a trip to Washington DC and I think the cherry blossoms should be blooming soon. The Caribbean is always a good choice for a surprise romantic get-away....
Sadly, I don't really think he's planning anything, but I'll probably continue to dream...
I've been keeping fairly busy though I seem to always have time in the evening to walk the dog and watch my shows. Work is much better this week than last - I think I may even get to leave early tomorrow!
I'm pleased with my efforts to give Stepan a pleasant birthday (it was Monday). I left a present in his car (new sunglasses) when I left for my AM workout. Later in that morning, I stole his car from work and got it detailed (I'm not completely happy with the job they did and they took way longer than they said they would, but overall I think he was pleased). In the evening, he got to open a new electric razor and a framed picture of his lovely bride (me) for his office. And, finally, on his pillow when he went to bed was an envelope with a gift certificate for an hour and a half massage which I've already scheduled for this coming Saturday. Possibly this weekend, I'll make a cake from a cookbook we received as a wedding present...since it may or may not be successful, we may or may not invite others over to share.
I've finally signed up for Camp Danskin. I hope I haven't waited too long to do so; I sent in my reservation a couple of days ago and haven't gotten a response yet.
Preparations for Team Danskin are progressing nicely as well. Gina, the head coach, is very well organized. It's going to be a joy working with her as a workout leader.
I'm looking forward to starting my swim regime again. Poor Stepan is going to be highly disappointed in my performance this year. While it's entirely possible that I can beat my times from last year (which is my own personal goal), I doubt I'll be able to beat Meredith O (which is Stepan's goal for me) since she's been swimming all winter with a master's swim group and has a new road bike. Maybe if I don't make it into Camp Danskin, I'll put that money towards a new bike...
It's 11:30pm- way past the time I usually start fighting to stay awake - yet I find myself wide awake. I've been reading a novel based on the life of Cleopatra...I think I'll take it to bed with me.
But first, here are a couple of things I've been meaning to blog about...
On Sunday, I went to a tapas wedding shower for our friend Kat who is getting married in May. The shower was hosted by a bride's maid and her mother. I had a great time. The food was superb, the spirits (of the alcoholic variety) were plentiful, and the company was entertaining. I especially enjoyed the company which was entirely comprised of people who could generally be considered Stepan's friends. I've known them all for a while, but they all know Stepan though Madrigal and share a comraderie/experience with him and with each other that I've only ever been able to admire from afar. In any event, it was great fun and I can't tell you how much we're looking forward to the wedding.
Stepan's been wanting me to write about my pathetic attempt at baking him a birthday cake. After the Shower on Sunday, while Stepan went to dinner at Double Dave's with the O'Reilly clan, I attempted to bake a chocolate roulade from my Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home. I'm not quite sure what I did wrong, but it certainly didn't end up looking nearly attractive as it did in the pictures. Stepan took pictures of my version - no doubt he'll be posting them sometime soon. Sunday night, I didn't think it tasted very good either...there was something about the texture of the cake that really put me off. However, after having set in the fridge overnight, the cake was much more palatable on Monday.
It is no small consolation to my cooking ego that the Strawberry Chocolate Truffle Pizza I made for our pot luck at work today was a raging success:-)
I spoke with my Dad tonight. He confirmed with my Aunt Bea that her daughter's husband (affectionally known within the family as "Kevin with a K" and who is an Air Force reservist) has been deployed. Diana, my cousin/his wife, doesn't even know where he's been stationed.
The war is definitely closer to home tonight. I find I'm paying closer attention to war news than I have been this past week...I just hope he comes home safely.
I've had a great weekend...but I always do when my mom comes to visit. She came this weekend to walk the Capital 10K with me and Step.
She got here on Friday afternoon. The first thing we did was enter rush hour traffic to pick up our race packets down at Parmer Event Center. I've never had so much fun in rush hour traffic! I think maybe she should move to Austin and ride to work with me everyday :-) Friday evening, we met Stepan at NXNW for drinks and appetizers.
Saturday we had grand plans to do all sorts of things. We were going to shop, plant trees, do Spamorama, and make ice cream take to Elizabeth's for dessert. Well, Stepan dug the holes for the trees (3 of them) while Mom and I went to the store for ice cream ingredients. Of course, once we started on the ice cream, I realized I had forgotten the rock salt and ice (I should know better than relying on a mental list!) so it was back to Albertson's for me! Making ice cream was amazing! You just prep all the creams (5 cups of heavy whipping cream, 2.5 cups of half and half, and 2 cups regular milk), put it all in the bucket and plug it in. It churns for about 40 minutes, then you lift the lid and there's ice cream there! I'm still amazed it works.
Elizabeth fixed us a wonderful pasta dinner on Saturday evening and as always I enjoyed playing with Jonathan and visiting with Cynthia, Brian, Joy, Elizabeth, and Dale. Dale has lovely parents. I think it's fantastic that they can spend so much time here every year, and I know that Jonathan (and his parents) love it as well.
Today was race day. Since our start time wasn't until 9am, we didn't have to get up too unreasonably early. It's been years since I've done this race - since I committed to walking the course, it was a very stress free event for me. I got to really enjoy the company, costumes, and the live bands playing every mile or so. We all completed the race about 3 minutes faster than the Cowtown 10K. We didn't sign up for the chip timing, so I don't think we'll get official race times....so our actual placing don't matter so much...
Well, you would have thought that the 10K would have been enough walking for us. But Homer didn't get his walk last night or this morning, so we decided we had to take him for a walk this afternoon. The O'Reilly's also needed to exercise their dogs, so we all went to Walnut Creek Park together at 5:30pm for a nearly 2 hour hike. Today has been absolutely gorgeous, but my leg muscles aren't too happy with me right now. I've already tried to massage them and I've been stretching them fairly regularly, but I don't think any of that is going to stop them from cramping up on me in the middle of the night...the things we do for our dogs!