Dreaming of a North Carolina Christmas

I just got back from my first North Carolina Christmas.  And, other than the too long drive in the too small car, it wasn't too shabby.

First, the weather.  Let's talk about the weather.  Mother Nature is clearly drunk, and it was hot as molasses while I was there (although I'm told it was pretty warm here, too), and pretty damn humid.  And it rained.  Like.  Every day.  But, in the brief moments between rain, the warm weather allowed for some unexpected fun.

Beyond that, we can (mostly) sum things up into Highs and Lows

The Highs

• Family time.  Because who doesn't love that?
• Bacon at breakfast at the hotel every day.  Both me and my dog were fans of that.
• The beach.  Took Coop to the beach for the first (and second) time.  He seemed to love it.
• I learned what the shuffles gonzalez is.
• We drove through a blow up decoration and Christmas light display at a trailer park.

The Lows

• Drunk Roger.  Oh, Drunk Roger.  I returned to the hotel one night and Drunk Roger was by the back door smoking.  The smell of booze on him far outweighed the smell of the cigarette.  Somehow, I managed to run into him MULTIPLE times after this.  Often in the early morning, and he was never without beer.
• My step dad had a run-in with some wet ground and slick leaves, and took a spill on his bike.  Ouch.  This derailed plans on Saturday.
• I just missed seeing 4 of my nephews.  They stayed with my parents for a few days, but left the morning that I arrived.  Boo.
• The hotel had a dog walking area out back.  Next to a small pond.  With a sign that said "beware of alligators" that apparently wasn't a joke.  Awesome.

The... Uncategorizable

• I realized that my parents are turning into the Seinfelds.  Quickly.

All in all, a pretty good time.

Cooper Did the Shuffles Gonzalez!

We have a family tradition that I continue to force on my parents because, well, I love it.  I’m not entirely sure how they feel about it, but… I don’t really care (sorry not sorry).  Every year for Christmas, I get them a new game so we can have some family game night fun.  I love playing games (because I’m kind of a dork) and I think I have this hope that as they continue to amass the games that I force on them year after year, Christmas game night will maybe turn into random game nights sprinkled throughout the year.

(This hasn’t really happened yet, but fingers crossed that one day it will….)

To keep with tradition, I got the Urban Dictionary game this year, and we played yesterday.  There were moments where it could have been a slightly awkward thing to be doing with my parents, but overall, it was fun. And, I learned possibly the greatest phrase I’ve ever heard:  Shuffles Gonzalez.  My immediate life goal became to somehow work this phrase into my daily life.

Luckily, I got my first opportunity today.

We took Coop to the beach for a long walk.  This was his second trip ever – we hauled ass to the beach attempting to outrun sunset on Christmas eve.  That trip was pretty short lived, as the sun did set shortly after we arrived, forcing us to leave.  Cooper seemed amazingly happy, so we planned to take him back today because the weather looked like it was actually supposed to be rain free (spoiler – it wasn’t, but it didn’t rain on our walk).

I knew Cooper would have to poop when we got there because that’s just what he does.  He gets so keyed up and excited/anxious about anything new or generally fun that it immediately impacts his GI tract.  His need was evident as soon as we stepped onto the beach.  However, he was so OMGSMELLSANDPEOPLEANDWATERTHATEWICANTDRINKANDOMGALLTHESTUFF that he wouldn’t actually take the 30 sec to stop and just go, so he shuffle Gonzalez-d his way through an hour and a half walk up and down the beach.  How do I know this?  Because he would randomly drop a small piece of poop here and there as he failed at holding it all in.  So I had to go our entire walk carrying a slightly poop-filled bag in my hand.  Awesome.

When we got off the beach and were headed back to the car, I tossed the barely used poop bag in the garbage because I wasn’t sure I’d find another trashcan between there and the car, and I knew I couldn’t just toss the bag into the backseat with me.  I went to the dog cleanup station to grab and new bag and was horrified to discover that all three bag rolls were empty.  Yeah, because it was almost 80 degrees on Christmas, and everyone and their brother was at the beach.  Awesome.

Not 45 seconds after I threw away my bag and discovered that there were no new bags to be had, Cooper gave in and finally squatted to poop.  Of course he did.  Luckily my mom had a bag in the car, but I had to stand guard by the poop and wait for her to get back.  Awesome.

BUT, despite the horror of having to stand guard over poop while a million people walked by, I got to use shuffles Gonzalez.  And Coop had a ton of fun.  Overall?  Big win.

Little Blue Box of Happiness

Why... hello there, Tiffany blue.

It's extremely rare that I ever treat myself to things... like really treat myself.  I don't get mani/pedis... I do that myself at home.  I rarely even get haircuts.  I go to baseball games (ok, a lot of baseball games...), and I got myself a partial season ticket plan last year and this year with birthday/Christmas money from my parents.  But, other than that, I never really go all out and treat myself to things.

Until today (well.... yesterday).

This year, I decided to buy myself something extra awesome.  I took the birthday and Christmas money my grandpa was kind enough send me and added the money I made unpacking items in the kitchen of a $10mil home, and I splurged.

Why?

Because sometimes, a girl just needs a little blue box.

And I couldn't be happier.

Craigslist is Amazing... Sometimes

While watching basketball with a friend, I was perusing craigslist gigs, which, let's be honest, is mostly just a collection of porn jobs.  While wading through the modeling opportunities, an offer to poop on camera (hey, I can hide my face!), and a chance to become friends with Water and Ivy and play with them on their webcam, I found a wonderfully bizarre, non-porn listing.  To unpack a kitchen.

Um... what?

Apparently, these people's unpackers hadn't shown up (that's a thing?), and they were in need of 2 people to help them unpack their kitchen, and maybe another room.  So, I bugged my friend and he eventually caved.  He looked at the area these people were located in, and said $35/hr.  Each.  I laughed and thought there was no way in hell people would pay $70/hr to have people unwrap things from boxes in their kitchen, but I sent the email.  And BAM! about 20 minutes later, we were hired and were headed off to their house.

When we got there, my first thought was holy shit, followed by well, at least the last place I'm ever going to see is freaking AH-MAZE-ING (because, ya know, craigslist... possible death....).  Seriously.  This house was out of control ridiculous.  We joined Paul, the man and cook of the house, in the kitchen, and spent just shy of 2 hrs unwrapping things from boxes and placing them on an island the size of my bed while he organized things.  I think the best part was Paul's feelings about many of the things that we unwrapped.  It was clear that Paul was a newly wed, and they were for the first time combining items in their kitchen in a real, meaningful way.

While unwrapping items, I was asked to put a few things in the sink.  This gave me my first glimpse at the view, and holy.potatoes.  I had to stop for a second to catch my breath.  Amazing view of the Potomac.  People actually get to look at this every day?!  Bananas.

After we left, we grabbed some dinner because traffic back to my friend's place was awful.  We guessed that the house cost about $10mil.  Thanks to the wonderment that is zillow, we were about right.

We stood in the kitchen of a $10mil house and unwrapped items from boxes.  There was an indoor pool on the floor below us (which isn't the bottom floor of the house).  OH.EM.GEE.

It was nice to see how the 1% lives... if even for a few minutes.

Winterfest!

For the first time ever, I decided to go to Nats Winterfest today.  Truth – I’ve never wanted to go before because tickets aren’t the cheapest, and on top of that, you have to pay for autograph session vouchers.  And those sessions are a total crap shoot as to who you are going to get, so, OBVI, you want to buy as many sessions as you can.  So now we’re looking at a pretty expensive day.  No thank you.

So what changed?  This year, I was offered tickets to the free autograph session that was reserved for the fancy season plan holders.  When this past season ended, the season plan holders that sit around me and Lulu made our new found friendship facebook official.  One of these lovely people was unable to go to this particular plan holder event, so he offered me his tickets.  Score!  Since I was going down to Winterfest anyway, I decided to get tickets to the actual even and check it all out with a friend.

This autograph session was ass early at 8:30.  How they got players to agree to this, I’ll never know.  Krissy and I exchanged a few texts about the unknown players we would be up close and personal with in just a few short hours as I was getting ready to leave my house, and I specifically said that as long as it wasn’t Bear, I’d be good.  As we anxiously stood in line for our table (there were 3 total), we saw freaking Bear walk up and sit down.  You’ve GOT to be kidding me.  On either side of him, however, was Zimm and Joe Ross, plus Charlie and Dave from the radio, so, overall, huge score.  We scoped out the other tables, and we think we ended up with the best one.  I managed to be nice to Bear (almost killed me), and enjoyed getting to talk with Zimm about UVA.  I ended up gushing all over Joe Ross, which I apologized for (ha, he told me I was embarrassing him), but I just couldn’t help myself.  I also told him to tell Rizzo that we should trade for his brother.  Because… I think we should trade for his brother.

We got to go into Winterfest itself an hour before the general riff raff (yay! for season plan holder perks!), and we listened to a Nats Q & A with Mark Lerner, Rizzo, the head marketing lady, and Dusty.  We then stood in line to try and get a photo with Espi, because Krissy has been mildly obsessed with him ever since dreaming that he was an endocrinologist.  Unfortunately, his photo time was over before we got to the front of the line, but he got sucked into conversation with two older women as soon as he left the photo booth, so we saddled up and waited for him to finish talking to them.  I was able to ask (translation – BEG) him to bring back his amazing handlebar mustache for photo day at the start of spring training.  He laughed, and told me he was going to go with his full beard.  As awesome as his beard is, it’s so not that amazing handlebar stache, so color me disappointed. 

I was able to get his autograph, and Krissy got a (blurry) picture with him (sorry about that…).  We stalked Clint around and were finally able to catch him without much of a crowd, so we scored his autograph as well, and we watched Anthony and Max square off in a pretty entertaining lip sync battle.  Anthony did an AMAZING ‘bad to the bone’ while Max showed the world that he didn’t know any of the lyrics to ‘livin on a prayer’… he still rocked it, though.  I also got to catch up with in game host Mike Ploger, managed to win a Nats yoga mat, and a chance at PNC diamond club tickets (fingers crossed!), and I got two game used balls in a grab bag for a good price (Anthony vs Teheran and Det (as a Nat) vs someone).  All in all, pretty damn good day.  Exhausting, but fun.

Too Stressed to Even Bake

Normally, I really enjoy baking, especially when I’m stressed.  I find it relaxing and a good escape from whatever is stressing me out.

Last night, however, I learned that there is apparently such a thing as too stressed out for baking.  Who knew?

I was making two double batches of some brownies that I’ve made a million times before, and I tried nine ways from Sunday to screw them up.  First, I started browning the butter and then realized that I should have pre-measured the dry ingredients.  So, while stirring butter to keep it from burning, I started measuring out sugar and cocoa powder.  Then I remembered that I was doubling the recipe, so I had to add more butter.  After getting the full amount of butter browned, I added in the cocoa powder and the sugar.  Thankfully, I decided to taste it at this point, and wow – it wasn’t good.  Why?  Because I didn’t double the sugar.  Oops.  Somehow, the rest of this batch went off without a problem, and I managed to get the brownies into the oven.  They even tasted good when it was all said and done.

Then came batch 2, and this time I had help…. From someone who was…. Compromised.  I browned the butter while telling him how much cocoa powder and sugar to measure.  After getting the butter to the right point, we mixed in the dry ingredients and found that things looked extremely dry.  Um… what?  Oh, right – because I hadn’t doubled the damn butter.  So we had to melt it in the microwave instead of browning it in a pan.  Then we tasted it, and…. There wasn’t much flavor.  Um… what?  Oh, right – because I didn’t double the cocoa powder when telling him how much to measure out.

What.a.mess.

After everything was fixed and the rest of the stuff was added, once again everything tasted good when it was all said and done.  But wow.  I swear I can bake.  Really.  I swear I can.  Apparently last night, however, I needed the supervision of a compromised individual in order to make something I’ve made a million times.  I’m going to choose to blame it on work stress.  Why?  Because that sounds a helluva lot better than I was just too stupid to double a recipe.

Major Warm Fuzzies About my Wahoos

Yesterday, I did my second activity ever with the local UVA alum association, and it was much fun.  With Justin Anderson and the Dallas Mavericks in town, we went to watch them do their thing vs the Wizards, and I did it with a hokie friend (gasp!).  I was pretty angry with Justin last year when he announced that he was leaving UVA early and declared himself eligible for the NBA draft.  I wished him well, but damn I was bitter.  I thought I’d be over it by the time this season started, but nope.  My feelings are much more subdued, but I’m still a little mad at him.  Happy for what he’s got going on, but selfishly mad.

We got to go into Verizon early to watch pre game shoot around, which was kinda cool.  Mark Cuban was front and center, which made me wonder who was managing his empire while he was traveling with his basketball team.  After shoot around, we wandered upstairs to our nosebleed seats.  I got to say hi to my Nats Park usher friend, and we randomly came across a kid’s petting zoo (!!!!).  They had silkie chickens (!!!), the largest rabbit I’ve ever seen, and a tiny adorable pig that I strongly contemplated stealing.

The game itself was …. Ok…. But only because I don’t love NBA basketball.  Justin got in the game in the first quarter, but after running into his teammate and knocking him out of the game with bruised ribs, he sat the rest of the game.  The Mavericks ended up winning, and after the game ended, we went back downstairs for a Q & A with Justin.  This was pretty awesome.  Justin is one of the nicest guys ever, and he gave me a major case of the warm fuzzies for my basketball program.  Justin spoke about how Tony stresses the importance of being good people in addition to good basketball players.  In a world filled with stories of athletes getting into trouble for terrible things, it was heartwarming to hear that Tony puts together a winning basketball program with good guys that I can be proud of both on and off the court.  So much love for him and UVA, and so happy that Justin is contributing to his team as a rookie.  After listening to him talk for a few minutes, it was hard to stay mad at him… although I do miss seeing him in orange and blue.