Seven Things Saturday

Welcome to another edition of Seven Things Saturday. I’m so glad I’ve found something productive to do at work during Mandatory Saturdays (boo!) Let’s get started, shall we?

1. I took Woodford to the vet again this morning. I noticed this week his paws were really red in between his toes? Are they called toes on dogs? Idk… so yeah, we made a trip to the vet. Apparently he has allergies and that’s why his paws are red. So she recommended I pick up some Benadryl and that should help. After we left the vet, we went directly to Kroger so I could get some meds. I couldn’t find the Benadryl anywhere… why isn’t it with the rest of the allergy medicine? I was confused, so I left.
2. I painted my nails last night. I tried something I’ve seen on Pinterest where you paint 8 nails the same color, but on one nail on each hand you paint a different color or do something different. Well I didn’t have sparkles so I just painted it a different color. You can’t really tell from the picture but the majority of my nails are grey and the two others are dark purple. I like it, but I really don’t keep nail polish on for very long so I’m sure it won’t last long. Such is life. This is why I have a hard time paying to get my nails done – I pick at my nails and the polish starts coming off after like 3 days. However, shellac is a different story! I can justify paying for that! Amazing!
   
3. Did I tell y’all that Worm randomly dropped by my house last week one day when he saw my car? Yes. That really happened. I had just gotten home from taking my CPA exam and I had no make-up on, was in sweats and my hair was put up because I was in the process of straightening it. I was like, Oh… heeeeeey… how’s it going…? Slightly awkward. I mean, it was a nice gesture. So then I felt bad for trying to ditch him and I’ve texted him twice (casual texts, of course) since then with no response… so I’m not going to chase him. Life goes on.
4. Look what I found on my desk this morning when I got to work. Self-control, hold me back!!!!! I’m very tempted to open them right now since I didn’t eat much for breakfast. But I’m trying to hold back. I did pretty good this week with eating (thank you, Ash Wednesday aka Day of Fast) and I would hate to blow it on some Girl Scout Cookies. Why can’t they make the low-fat ones taste like Tagalongs? I would buy 85 boxes. 
5. I’ve seen this on Facebook and Twitter (thanks, Lindsay!) and I just had to share. This. Is. Hilarious. And very accurate, actually. Going to an all-girls private Catholic high school… you can imagine what our reputation around town was like. Even though the majority of us were NOT slutty, there were some. And from those, it was just assumed that we all acted like we just walked off the Britney Spears music video set. Y’all probably won’t think this is as funny as me and my friends do, but here you go anyway:
6. How’s my progress on my Lenten resolution? I haven’t cheated yet! I realize it’s only been 3 days. Leave me alone. I hadn’t even though about drinking until last night when we were all at my grandma’s house eating fried catfish and my uncle was like, I wish I would have stopped by the gas station to get some beer! I’m like, Oh man. That DOES sound good. Fried fish + beer = deliciousness. It’s okay… the urge quickly went away. And then I was fine. Ask me again next week and see how I’m doing! Ha ha
7. I had a hard time coming up with a seventh thing, so I’m going to leave you with a throwback picture from shortly after Woodford joined my family. Awwww he was such a little baby! Now he’s just my much bigger baby! More to love, right? Yeah!

Lent.

Lent.

I went back through my posts last year around this time, because I thought I blogged about giving up alcohol last year, but apparently I just made reference to it.
For those non-Catholics (actually… do other denominations celebrate Lent?), Lent is a time of reflection in the Catholic Church, a time of prayer and fasting as well. Included in those “40 days” (it’s more than 40) is the practice of either giving something up or doing something extra, as a sort of penance. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to do something extra. I find it’s easier for me to give something up, that way I can constantly be reminded of my Lenten sacrifice instead of trying to remember to do something every day. Does that make sense? Probably not.
You can imagine the horror in my Mother’s face when freshman year of college, my naïve 18-year-old self declared I was giving up alcohol for Lent. She was not happy. I thought it was a smart choice… looking back, I should have just told her chocolate. Much easier on her heart, I’m sure. So pretty much since 2003, I’ve given up alcohol every Lent. Is it easy? Not always. I also gave up Facebook a few years back. It actually wasn’t hard, or as hard as I thought it would be. I have a love/hate relationship with FB. I would love to just delete my account and not worry what people I haven’t talked to 8 years are doing or who’s married or who’s having babies or whatever. I lost a lot of respect for Facebook when it was opened up to everybody. But isn’t that true of most things – we enjoy exclusivity? I know I do. How did I get on this topic? We were discussing Lent! Okay… back to the topic at hand. So I’m giving up alcohol. And I decided yesterday Starbucks too. Anytime I think about going to Starbucks, I’m going to put the money I would normally spend on my grande caramel macchiato with non-fat milk in an envelope and donate it to church at Easter. (Side note: I typically visit Starbucks every Friday morning on my way to work and a lot of Saturdays too. So this will be interesting.)
A lot of people who are not familiar with the practice of Lent have questioned the point of giving something up if you can enjoy it on Sundays. As in, how is it truly a sacrifice if you still get to enjoy it on certain days? (My family has ALWAYS done that and I’ve never questioned it. In my 8-year-old mind, I was just pumped about getting Coke on Sunday! Who cares why?!) I Googled this yesterday and then followed-up with my Mom, knower of all Catholic things haha. And we figured the best way to explain it is this: Catholics celebrate a different “season” every Sunday – we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus every Sunday at Mass, so it doesn’t make sense to treat Sunday as a day of penance when we treat it as a celebration. It made sense to me. However, if you Google this specific topic, you will find there are a LOT of Catholics who do not agree with this practice and they are very opinionated about why. This is just what my family has always done, and I will continue this practice throughout my adult life. The caveat to this (am I using that word right? I really want to start using it more!) is that I don’t have a problem “switching days” if some noteworthy event is coming up. As in, the Jimmy Buffett concert next Thursday night. There’s a pretty good chance I will consume adult beverages at the concert and abstain from drinking any alcohol the following Sunday.
I love the season of Lent, and everything it means. I love looking forward to Easter and all of the Church activities that take place during this time. I’ve been keeping up pretty well with my daily devotional book and I picked up the Black Book at Mass this past Sunday, which has daily reflections specific to Lent so I’m going to read that every morning (or night…) as well.
Me: “Mom, what are the Mass times tomorrow?”
Mom: “7 am, 8:15 and 5:30.”
Me: “Okay, I’m going to try and make the 5:30. I might be a little late.”
Mom: “You know it’s not a holy day of obligation right? You don’t have to go, if you don’t think you can make it.”
Me: “Yes, but there are times when I skip holy days of obligation so I need to rack up some extra points!”
Mom: (shakes head)

My Week in Food

Instead of giving you my week via the view from my iphone, I thought I would give you the run-down of what/where I ate this week. Since I travel for work, and often travel to the same places, it’s nice to have a list of places I like/dislike for the next time I go.
Monday…
Lunch at Rolando’s – I had the Don Quixote burrito. It’s ginormous, but SO yummy… and we had some homemade guac too.
Dinner at Fuji Steakhouse – apparently this a chain restaurant? The sushi was amazing. Not to mention they offer this roll that has chicken strips in it. Sign me up! It was good. I was a fan. I also tried their vegetable spring rolls, which were tasty.
Tuesday aka Valentine’s Day…
Lunch at The Green Papaya – I was skeptical about this place because it’s an Asian restaurant in what was formerly a gas station. I’m not kidding. However… the vegetable fried rice (with tofu, because they didn’t offer it without and I didn’t want to be complicated.) was TDF. I don’t know that I’ve ever had THAT good of fried rice. I topped mine with soy sauce and sirachi (sp?) sauce. And I tried to eat some of the tofu, but the texture just gets me. I don’t know, I can’t do it. Overall, great food. And HUGE portions.
Dinner at Hooters – what can I say about this? It was Valentine’s Day. At Hooters. In Fort Smith. I wish I would have been able to discretely take some pictures of the other patrons eating there. Families, tables of females, tables of men. It was entertaining, to say the least. I had boneless chicken wings with teriyaki sauce. Probably wouldn’t order that sauce again, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Wednesday…
Lunch at George’s Restaurant – this place I have come to find out is an institution among Fort Smith people. It’s mainly burgers, fries, pie, etc. Kind of had a diner feel. I DID take pictures at this place, because I wanted to show you the massive portion of French fries they serve with every burger. I’m serious, I watched plates come out of the kitchen. Every plate had this amount of fries on top, and they bring you a second plate JUST for your French fries. Don’t get me wrong, the fries were delicious, but it was just too much. I felt bad wasting food, but I’d love to see how much they actually have to throw away every day. Kind of ridiculous. Anyway, here’s some pictures from our meal:

I ordered the Hickory Burger that came with barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, onions and mustard. YUM-O!
We all ordered some peanut butter pie for dessert. It didn’t trump my Mom’s PB Pie, but it was good. Next time I would probably ask them to leave the lake of chocolate sauce on the bottom off my plate.
Dinner got interesting. We started at Taliano’s (one of my all-time favorite Italian restaurants). I literally have eaten there every time I go to FS. So I begged the boys if we could go there, since we hadn’t been yet. They obliged because I’m sure they didn’t want to deal with me not getting my way. Just kidding! Or am I…? Well I can’t really add much to this paragraph, other than we ordered a bottle of wine, which we drank, and some calamari, which came out cold. I asked our waitress for some red sauce for dipping, and she never brought it. We actually ordered our dinner, which came with soup and salads, but never arrived at our table. It was really bad. Our waitress would come in the section we were sitting in and address the other two tables of guests, but completely ignore us. I don’t know what the deal was. So we left. And it felt bad, but it was the point of unacceptable. And I can tolerate a lot at restaurants. So we left and went to Landry’s – Cajun food. SO good. We ordered more wine and I had a salmon dish that had poppy seeds and some other stuff. I can’t really remember what else was in it, but the sauce was really good. And it came with French bread, mashed potatoes and…another vegetable. What was it? Oh yeah, it was just mixed grilled veggies. Very pleased with our second dining option of the evening.
That concludes my dining tour of Fort Smith last week. If you are ever in that area, I recommend stopping at one of those restaurants I mentioned – well, not one, but the rest I would recommend.

Easy Taco Soup

Last weekend when it was ridiculously cold, I was craving some homemade soup. I hadn’t had taco soup in a couple weeks so I decided to make that, while trying to keep it semi-healthy…
Ingredients:
1 pound ground turkey
Chopped purple onion
1 package Hidden Valley Ranch powder
1 package taco seasoning
2 cans corn (I used the lower-sugar one or whatever the healthier type is – mixed yellow and white)
1 can black beans
1 can Ranch style beans
2 cans Rotel (I used one “Original” and one “Mild”)
Directions:
Brown the ground turkey on the stove, adding the onion just to give it some flava flav if you so desire. Once that is finished, drain any excess liquid from the dutch oven. Then you add the rest of the ingredients listed above – including juices. No draining! Let everything simmer, covered, for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. The longer it simmers, the better the flavors meld together.

While that was cooking, I whipped up a batch of my favorite go-to snack these days: homemade tortilla chips! SO freakin easy. Cut up 2 whole wheat tortillas into 8 pieces each. Brush both sides with a little EVOO. Then, this is where it gets really exciting, sprinkle a little chili powder on the tops and bake at 400 for 10 minutes. SO delicious. I have to pace myself or I will stand there and eat every single piece when they come out of the oven.

Once my soup was ready for consumption, I laid a few chips in the bottom of the bowl, added the soup, sprinkled some mozzarella cheese and just for kicks added a dollop of 2% cottage cheese. I was trying to use up stuff in my fridge before I left town and I figured, what the hey? People add Greek yogurt to food, right? Practically the same thing. Anyway, I literally couldn’t taste the cottage cheese. It just made the soup creamier? It was good. Just a suggestion.

Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. I whipped up the soup and chips while I was doing 10 other things, so taking a picture wasn’t really my priority.

Classic Woodford

I apologize in advance to the people who read this that overlap with Facebook, Twitter and/or Pinterest because you’ve already seen this picture. BUT I just love it! Classic Woodford expression. I snapped this this morning with my iPhone while we were at the vet waiting to get his nails trimmed. Makes me smile.

SPOILER: I’m in the process of buying a new camera… So expect more pictures on the ole blog in the coming weeks! Can’t wait!

A Stroll Down Cedar Lane

Picture it: Sicily. 1928. Just kidding. Picture it: you had a long day at work, which required working later than you normally do, you’ve just taken the dog for a walk, and your stomach is grumbling. What’s on your mind? Dinner. Pronto.

Well my friends, that completely hypothetical situation I just mentioned above is actually not hypothetical at all. That was me yesterday. Or last night, I should say.

I had gotten home from work late, and it was already dark outside, so I wanted to get my walk with Woodford in as soon as possible (you know, so no rapists would be positioned to jump out and grab me!) Well that puts us at like 7:30. I normally eat between 6:30 and 7, so my stomach was not happy. I ran into Kroger, hoping to find something fast and quick (healthy wasn’t high on the priority list, shockingly enough.)

I’m cruising through the frozen food aisle and I look to my left and see what I like to call the “Weird Healthy People Food” section. Sure… why not?

Holy Smokes – 8 dollars for a tiny frozen pizza?!?! Are you kidding me? Maybe this was a bad idea…

Then I see some frozen dinner looking things that aren’t nearly expensive. Gotta love Kroger and their bright yellow price tags that let you see from far away haha. So I decided on this:

Cedar Lane Vegetable Lasagna. It’s lasagna… how bad can it be? Not to mention it only has 3 grams of fat and 180 calories. Granted the only lasagna I ever eat is homemade by my mother. So this could go either way…

I’m pleased to report it was actually really tasty. I wouldn’t normally pay $4 for a frozen entrée, but as we established earlier, this was an extreme situation. I needed food. Fast. So I would definitely recommend this to you if you are interested in eating something healthy that doesn’t take long to prepare. I think I put it on the oven for about 30 minutes. However, I also purchased some sweet potato fries and ate those while my dinner was heating. Oops. Does that totally negate the effect of eating healthy lasagna? Probably. I might even buy a few more to keep in the freezer for nights like last night. So there ya go.

Seven Things Saturday

First I was going to do a “Five Things Friday” post. Then I wanted to try for “Fifteen Things Friday” post. Then I didn’t have time in the airport yesterday, but now I’m killing time at the office so I guess this will be a “Seven Things Saturday” post. You like how well I adapt? Yeah, I thought so.

1. I don’t understand why airports are taking away free wi-fi. Really. You already charge us an arm and a leg for a bottle of water… or a beer… or anything really, so I don’t understand why you feel the need to take away free wi-fi. Whenever I first started traveling for work a couple years ago, it seemed like most airports had free wi-fi. Now it’s rare for me to find it. I’m annoyed. That’s my rant for the week.
2. I have another CPA exam coming up in a couple weeks. My original plan was to take off work the week of my test so I could study all day everyday and hopefully pass this thing. However… I was put on a job the week of my test. Out of town. So that blows my study plan out of the water. I guess I need to figure out when I will be able to re-take this part. Grrrr.
3. I recently heard about a new way to order drinks at Starbucks. You order a regular drip coffee and have them add a few shots of caramel (or your flavor of choice) to the coffee with milk and it tastes almost like a caramel macchiato. And it usually comes in under 3 bucks. Can’t beat that! I’m trying to use up a gift card I have before I go back to frequenting the local coffee shop I’ve mentioned before on here (River City Coffee & Tea.)
4. Tomorrow night is some football game or something? I don’t know… I don’t really get into NFL, NCAA is my speed. However, I’m excited about the prospect of making some new healthy snack foods to consume while I’m watching commercials. I’ll blog about them after the fact if they turn out and I want to share. Yum!
5. We were discussing the Phonetic Alphabet yesterday while riding the tram thing from one terminal to another in the ATL airport and we were stuck at “G” – no one could remember what word you use for G. Well out of nowhere this guy standing near us goes, “It’s golf.” And we were like, Huh? And another guy standing next to him was like, “Just do it.” And he recited the ENTIRE phonetic alphabet! How awesome was that? I’m going to print out a list so I can start using it when I have to spell my email address for work, which I do. A lot. Matter of fact, a couple weeks ago I was giving my email address to someone over the phone and I was like, P… as in… pickle? Yeah, I’m not good at that game. It was really funny!
6. Since I’m going to be out of town for work on Valentine’s Day with two male co-workers, we were joking earlier about going to Hooter’s that night. To look for some hopeless souls. Yeah… can you imagine? Hilarious. I can’t wait.
7. Mascara. I tried to go the cheaper route and buy a different mascara the last time I ran out. I’ve only been using it for like a month and I went back and bought my previous kind because this new stuff I was using was not good. At all. So if you’re looking for some good mascara, I definitely recommend…

 

Glam brown? Yes, please!

The Dating Chronicles: “Worm”

 

The continuing saga that is my dating life had a new development last week:

Background info: I met this guy… let’s call him Worm… a few months ago and he seemed cool/interesting/had similar interests as me, but it was a brief exchange and nothing came of it so I didn’t really pay much attention. I thought about him a few times after that, but not enough to like pursue getting in touch with him or anything.

Fast-forward to January. We see each other again, and have another enjoyable conversation about our common interests as well as the fact that we both have issues with finding quality people to date, because let’s face it… times have changed. (feelings have not) You don’t meet people the way you used to when our parents were courting. Anyway, that’s a different topic for a different post. As we’re about to part ways, we discuss maybe getting together sometime. So we exchange numbers, yadda yadda yadda and I go on with my day. Alright so he texts me the following week and we casually exchange some text messages throughout the week. Let me say this: I’m a big fan of text messaging, I think it’s nice because you can be doing other things at the same time and it’s easy to send a quick text without dragging out a whole conversation, you know what I mean? However. When are talking to someone/getting to know someone/etc, I think phone conversations are important. I mean, if face time isn’t an option. Personally I don’t enjoy talking on the phone. I think I can be super awkward. I realize it’s a necessary evil and I’m getting better about it, but like I’m not one of those people who randomly calls up my girl friends every week to chat. I’m more likely to send a quick “Hey!” text or email or something. I don’t know, maybe I’m unusual? Whatever. This isn’t a post about my oddities. Once again, I can save that for another post.

Where was I going with that? Oh yes! So we talked on the phone one night that week when we were texting. It was awkward? He acted completely different on the phone than in person and via text. Is that normal? I tried to be open-minded, because I probably act different on the phone also. It almost sounded like he was either really really tired (borderline falling asleep) OR… under the influence of something. I don’t know? Maybe that’s just how he is at night, considering the only other times I’ve talked to him it was daytime. Despite that weirdness, we made plans to go out to dinner a few days later. Harmless, I’m thinking.

DD (aka Date Day): We had discussed going to this one restaurant in LR I really like, so I was getting pretty pumped about it during the day. Oh, at some point before DD, he asked if it would be cool if he changed clothes at my house after work (he doesn’t live in LR). I was like, yeah, no problem. I don’t mind. Well at some point during DD that changed and when I called him after I left the office, he said he was at his friend’s house changing clothes and so I said, Okay, well I’ll be home around 6:30 so just come over anytime after that. He shows up at 7ish… smelling like alcohol. Were you that nervous about going out that you had to pre-party before our date? I mean, I’m all about having A drink before going somewhere. But… I had a feeling it was more than just one. Then he mentioned he and his friend had decided to play a game of pool too. Okay… So we hang out at my house for a little bit before venturing to the restaurant. (Note: He did not open my car door for me. I’m not one of those girls who “needs” my door opened for me every time, but it’s nice at first and every once in awhile.) When we get there, the hostess girl comes over after a few minutes and proceeds to lead us toward a table. Midway through the restaurant, some other guy comes up and is like, “Are you guys joining a table?” No… we’re going to our table. “What?! You can’t be seated right now! There’s a wait!” Things get really awkward at this point. So I’m like, Okay, well how long is the wait? “45 minutes.” Okay, thanks. I think we’ll head somewhere else. So we leave the restaurant. Can you tell that this date had a rocky start? So we leave. And go to a different restaurant that’s semi-close.

As soon as we get seated, someone comes to take our drink order. At this point, I’m like, WTH. “I’ll have a bourbon and coke.” He orders a double scotch. No water. (Are you having THAT awful of a time?) These people obviously aren’t well-versed in alcoholic beverages because she brings him a water glass full of scotch. With maybe 3 ice cubes? I don’t have a whole lot to add to dinner, other than the fact that we have matching tattoos? I’m not sure if it’s creepy or a coincidence. And to answer your question, yes, he showed me in the middle of the restaurant.

After our dinner, he was like, I’m not sure I can drive home yet. I might need to hang out at your house for a little bit before I drive. Go figure, you’ve been drinking for the past 4 hours. So we go back to my house, where I proceeded to make him watch DVR’d episodes of my favorite trashy MTV reality shows until he was ready to leave.

Date Rate: On a scale of 10, I would give this a 6 for a first date. There were enjoyable parts (our dinner conversation at times). And there were awkward parts to balance the evening out. It wasn’t SO awful that I wouldn’t go out with him again, i.e. I’m not ignoring his text messages or phone calls… yet.

 

If I wrote a Personal Ad…

If I were going to write a personal ad for future beaus, I would probably look to my friends Garth and Billy. (Brooks and Joel, respectively.) Every time I hear either of these songs, I like to think they could be used to describe me… somewhat. In particular, the following lyrics:

“She’s sun and rain, she’s fire and ice
A little crazy but it’s nice
And when she gets mad, you best leave her alone
‘Cause she’ll rage just like a river
Then she’ll beg you to forgive her… ”

“She’s so New York and then L.A.
And every town along the way
She’s every place that I’ve never been
She’s making love on rainy nights
She’s a stroll through Christmas lights… ”

“When it comes down to temptation
She’s on both sides of the fence”

“She’s anything but typical
She’s so unpredictable
Oh but even at her worst she ain’t that bad
She’s as real as real can be”

and

“She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes

She can ruin your faith with her casual lies

And she only reveals what she wants you to see

She hides like a child, but she’s always a woman… ”

“She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you

She can ask for the truth, but she’ll never believe

And she’ll take what you give her as long it’s free… ”

“She takes care of herself

She can wait if she wants, she’s ahead of her time

“… and she never gives out

And she never gives in, she just changes her mind… ”

“And she’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden

Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding

But she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be… ”

“She’s frequently kind and she’s suddenly cruel

She can do as she pleases, she’s nobody’s fool

And she can’t be convicted, she’s earned her degree

And the most she will do is throw shadows at you… ”

 

It’s not exactly a perfect description, but it works.  🙂

As I type this, I’m sitting in my hotel room in North Carolina watching Hoarders. If that doesn’t scream pathetic, I’m not really sure what does? I should be studying since I have another test in two weeks, but my justification for *not* studying is that I need time to wind down after flying all day. That makes sense, right? I’m not really tired so I might do a little studying before I hit the sack tonight. In the meantime, I’m missing my little guy. But I know my parents are taking good care of Woodford.

Happy Saturday!

I’ve rediscovered my espresso maker. (Yes, we are old school over here at LWW.)
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Coincidentally at the time I decided to start using it again, I found some inexpensive espresso at Target. So far I've been pleased with the results. And I'm sure everyone I have come in contact with shortly after 8:00 has been overwhelmed with how wired I am. It's a win-win!