St. Patrick’s Day Weekend Things

Last week felt weird.  Mostly, working from home is sort of strange.  After sitting on the couch in my own living room all day, I shut down my computer and wondered how people who work from home transition from “work mode” to “post work mode” when the location doesn’t actually change.  Joey came home and I said, “I feel like I’m supposed to leave the house and go get a drink??”  Without missing a beat, he responded, “you’re right, we should go to The Family Jones!”  I was in.

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The bar was full, but we promised to be done by the time the next reservation came in for their table.  I know my drink looks really pretty, but man, was it alcohol-forward!  Our waitress had already asked me if I’d had it before, because it’s “not for everyone” and I really thought it was the same drink I’d ordered last time I went in, so when it turned out to definitely not be the same, I felt like I couldn’t admit it at that point.

Back at home, we kept it chill with leftovers, the Top Chef finale and a few episodes of Russian Doll.

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Saturday morning, I made us Greek Yogurt Pancakes and a bit later we headed out for a matinee showing of Captain Marvel.  They were showing a bunch of Captain Marvel history beforehand, but our waitress was talking to us in the middle of it and then I was just confused but it seemed interesting.  I liked the movie!  I thought Brie Larson was great, I thought the 90s of it all — especially the music! — was great, I thought the cat was great and I thought the stuff with Maria Rambeau was unexpectedly emotional?

Not going to lie though, Annette Bening in a space suit is not great and aliens are not great.  Sorry, but please don’t try to make me care about an alien dad reuniting with his alien wife and daughter.  Mostly though, Joey ordered a cheesecake milkshake halfway through the movie and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so happy!

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The rest of the day involved a trip to the grocery for me and yard work for Joey and then we reunited to make pasta.  But not just any pasta… GREEN PASTA!  “Make colored pasta” was on my list of things to do in 2019 and St. Patrick’s Day weekend seemed as good a time as any to make it happen.  The dough was greener and also stickier than we had expected, so it maybe wasn’t our best batch but all homemade pasta is good pasta, so we still loved it.  I could actually taste the spinach, in a good way!

We added it into this recipe for Creamy Carrot and Herb Linguine and it tasted all light and fresh like spring!

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What can I say about Sunday except that I took this one picture, so I guess I’m back to being the same old me?  Just to fill you in, the rest of the day involved breakfast, finishing Russian Doll, — hold please for my thoughts — Power Salads, Joey running 7 miles (he’s training for the Colfax Half Marathon!) and me… not running any miles, making dog treats for our pup, and then we picked my sister up and went to 4 Noses Brewing for pre-dinner beers.

Over at my parents’, our traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner!  My mom bought two pieces corned beef from the same store and cooked them side by side and one was bright pink and firm and the other was pale pink and fall-apart?  Isn’t that strange?  Anyway, they both tasted great!  We made it back home by 8, just in time to watch “Beyond the Wall,” and I don’t know, Daenerys showing up with the dragons is an amazing moment and Viserion getting shot down is a heartbreaking moment but that episode just doesn’t live up to the greatness of the penultimate episode in basically every other season.

How was your weekend?  Did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

Some Life Updates

Even though I write in this space pretty consistently, it still feels like some stuff gets skipped over.  Like how we booked a spontaneous trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras or how the other day, I put on my pajama pants and one of Joey’s socks fell out.  How long had it been there??  Okay, just kidding about that second one, but I wanted to take a moment to mention some larger life happenings that aren’t Oscar-related 🙂

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I honestly don’t know if I ever even mentioned it (HOW?), but after our first renovation venture went bust, we took some time to think, then decided to scale the project WAAAAY back and try again.  Sadly, the EXACT same thing happened.  After many reassurances that the budget we were very upfront and clear about was doable, we were given a number almost twice that.  We were so mad and disappointed and mostly, really ready to wash our hands of that design/build company, who obviously don’t know how to price projects.

I think we’ve mostly recovered again.  But since a renovation of any size apparently wasn’t in the cards, we decided to at least get ourselves a new garage (which was going to be part of the renovation).  One that actually fits Joey’s truck!  This also meant having to take down a few trees in our backyard, including this pretty big one that we’ve always loved.  It’s feeling very open and exposed back there now and it was honestly sadder than I expected to lose the trees, but hopefully when all is said and done, we’ll have a nice garage and we can forget the disappointing stuff that came before it.

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This little pup! ♥  For as cute as he is and as much as I love him, I have to say, his behavior is sometimes not the best.  Mainly, he’s suddenly nipping at me!  Like all the time.  I thought maybe it was a jealousy/protective thing — he is VERY attached to Joey — but he does it even when I’m home alone with him.  It seems to have something to do with my hands??  It is honestly so strange and confusing.  He will come sit in my lap, nudge my hand until I pet him and then when I do he tries to snap at me.  When I pull my hand away, he frantically nudges at my hand to pet him.  “What do you want from me??”  I’ve become very good at discerning when he’s “in a mood” so I’m not really taking it that seriously but it is sad when he’s looking so cuddly and cute and I just want to pet him!

In “good dog” news, we recently got Andi to stop sleeping in our bed and it has been life changing!  Every morning, Joey asks me how I slept and I say “REALLY GOOD!”  It was also surprisingly easy, considering we’d tried to lock him out of our room several times to disastrous effect.  Turns out he just needed a big blanket on the ground to burrow in, ha!

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And the last bit of news is that it’s official, we’re putting our homebrewing career to rest.  We’d been doing it so infrequently anyway and though Joey still drank our brew, I much MUCH preferred to drink something we bought.  Very proud of what we made but look, a professionally made beer just tastes way better.  Also that kegerator was taking up room in our small house.  Joey cleaned it up and took it all to the basement — he carried it by himself backwards down the stairs and it gave me next level anxiety — and that’s that.  It’s sad but it’s also not sad.  It didn’t really feel like part of who we were any more, plus we have plenty of other things we enjoy doing together.

Okay, that’s really it, you know everything about me now 😛