Ravioli Time!

We wanted to have dinner with John and Paige, so we decided on a house dinner on the front porch-- probably the best thing about getting along so well with our neighbors! Jeremy invited Nandan and Anu over and we had a make your own ravioli party!

Paige gets excited about her first ravioli!

Jeremy's up next!

Curried potatoes, butternut squash, spinach, bacon, gruyere cheese, ricotta cheese, and walnuts were on our ingredients buffet-- YUM!

Nandan and Anu sample the options

John takes a gander

Paige and I toast to a lovely evening-- that's the kurta Nandan brought me back from his last trip to India. Ignore the random lady in the background...

Violet was obsessed with Jeremy's marathon medal

AND my high heels! We had to distract her just to get her to leave them here!

Fall is Here!

We grilled out steaks and Paige made a fantastic salad! It was a lovely night.

Garden- Week One

Jeremy and I started a little potted garden a couple of weeks ago and I've decided to take weekly progress pictures-- while a week may not seem like a lot of time, these plants sure seem like they're ready to take off! Here are the ones from the first week, I'll take the second week's pictures tomorrow when I get home and post them shortly afterwards.

Our sad excuse for an herb garden-- nobody has any herbs!

Lemongrass for curries and chicken soups

Impatiens to add a little color

The leaning tower of cilantro

The whole gamut

These guys are from the same pot as the failed jalapeno from last year-- there are living plants in it! Two out of three remain as of now.

Golden bell peppers-- AWESOME for curries and stir fry!

Red and yellow currants-- I'm going to train them up the posts on the porch

Purple Tomatillos-- for making salsa purpurpla (as opposed to salsa verde)

Cayenne pepper! First flower to bloom!

Poblano pepper-- can't wait to roast some on the grill!

A giant green bell pepper hybrid-- the flower looks like it will be huge, so we'll see if I have to cage it or not

These are all seeded-- mostly with hot peppers, some green beans, cucumbers, basil, that sort of thing. I can't remember which has which, though, so we'll just have to see when they grow in...

Let it snow!

I know that we didn't get THAT much snow, but it was still fun! I remember when we used to get a decent blizzard every year, one that actually warranted a snow day! The snow we've had this year has been sadly short lived, but very pretty-- since it goes away so quickly, it never turns in to that mushy dirty slushy stuff. This was from the snow in February, just some pictures from around Mom's house.

I like picking a marker to show how much snow has fallen, and this candle holder developed in to that marker-- there are several more pictures later!

My collards peeking through the snow-- they loved it!

Looking up through the big tree in the back yard

Candle holder + Hat

Where did it go?!

It got so heavy with snow, it toppled!

One of those days...

It's strange, I never really have those days where I sit down and look at my life and think, "Man, this isn't all that bad after all!" but today I kinda did. Work's been getting me down lately, as I'm sure you could tell, but I'm glad I had a good night tonight-- I could sit down and look at my photos from this weekend with a clear head and realize that I'm really lucky to have the life I do.

Living in Decatur is an absolute privilege, one I hope to give my child/ren some day, and one of the things its given me is access to a strong learning community and one that appreciates literature. Two of my favorite authors, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, came to the Decatur Public Library this weekend, and Jeremy got to go with me. They write popular novels, but are both very intelligent, very funny, and very witty. Their talk was great and then they signed books and took pictures!

This one's a little blurry, Jeremy was holding the camera weird, but from L to R is Lincoln Child, me, and Douglas Preston! I've been reading Preston's books since I was in middle school!!

After that, we walked around the square and looked at the artists booths, and we stopped in this great little shop called Taste on the back side of the square. LOVE that store so much. If you're local, you can get me a gift certificate there any time!! We poked around there a little extra because it started *pouring* down rain and we didn't have an umbrella, but Jeremy found some yummy chow chow to take back for his sandwiches and I found the most hilarious card to send to Shelby-- a print of Barack taking his presidential oath with the caption, "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear to turn this mother out."

We wandered back to the car, and since I hadn't been able to get in touch with Meg or Michael, I decided we'd "swing by" (shoulda known better!) before going home to take a nap. We got there and Michael was hanging out with Sarah (a girl Meg and I went to high school with, but I haven't seen in who knows how many years!) and trying to get Vi to sleep and Julian was running around... being Julian. He took to Jeremy like nobody's business (not surprising, kids LOVE Jeremy) and took him on the grand tour of Casa de Julian and the costumes in his closet and all his toys. We fed Julian Altoids to see his reaction and he actually liked them, then he attacked Michael like a wild man, then he decided he was going to play with Jeremy some more and continued to use him as a jungle gym. Meg and I decided he's going to be one of those grandads all the little ones use as a jungle gym whether he's actively participating or not. Then we walked up to dinner and met Meg's mom and her sister Della-- The Matador in Oakhurst was pretty decent, and not too expensive. It waited until we got inside to start raining and didn't rain on us on the way home.

Today, I went up to Apres Diem for lunch and to see Adam and Erin in from Seattle. There were, of course, tons of other people there for fantastic company and the food was to die for-- and totally one-upped Fresh Slices which is a little funny. Apres Diem is a chic type tapas place in Midtown Atlanta, and their sandwiches range from about $8-10. With these sandwiches come a side salad AND home fries, whereas at Fresh Slices you don't necissarily get fries, even! Anyway, I got to see Aihanh and Igal, and Greg was there with his new girlfriend, and Hetal and Hugh and some other Tech people I vaguely know. Erin was asking about where Jeremy and I would be when he was done with school and it turns out... they have a house they're trying to rent! It's a three bedroom, soon to be two bath, and while it's not in the bestest area ever, we could get it for about $900 a month! And since we'd know the landlords, we could probably do most anything we like to the house which would keep Jeremy busy and would be at least half funded so we could afford to do it! Yaaay!

So, uploading those pictures to Facebook and Flickr, I looked at my life and realized that there are some really amazing people in my life-- I have a fiancee I love and sometimes still can't believe, there are a couple of pretty cute kids who think I'm swell and I love them to death, I'm re-acquainting myself with friends from high school who are wonderful people, and I feel kind of like I'm a part of a big family here, which is what's so great about Decatur in the first place. We'll be a little farther away, about 20 minutes, if we're at Adam and Erin's place, but we'll still be ITP and we'll have room for folks to stay the night which they just might.

Memphis was where I lived for five years, and I think I almost forgot what home meant while I was there. Now, I'm remembering it and I couldn't be happier.

Ciao for now.

Twofer

Spent the day catching up on laundry, have my delicates (knit dresses, nice shirts, etc) to do tomorrow since they have to hang up to dry, but just about everything else is done! Yay!

I'm almost done with Season 1 of Bones, and I'm not really sure why I didn't like it in the first place. I absolutely love it now, especially the episode "The Man in The Wall". It's about the rap industry and I find that geeks + the rap industry (at least in TV) equals hilarity and awesomeness. Don't believe me? Check out this one or the NUMB3RS episode with Three Six Mafia-- both are classics, and actually give the rap industry its due through the geeky main characters.

I did pick out a china pattern, I went with the Mikasa Cameo Platinum-- I thought the little details added enough cuteness without being overly done. I liked the Parchment one E liked, but it was just a bit too much, I think. With a simple design, it won't take away from whatever I'm serving, but it will be enough to stand out on its own. Plus I don't have to be paranoid about whether or not the raised dots will come off... I also picked out good silverware, Oneida "Jackson" which is quite reasonably priced for the quality you get with Oneida (fun fact, they were originally a small company of silversmiths out of Pennsylvania, I believe Quaker) and they've got a little bit of the curve from the plates.

Work was slow tonight, only one table, but it was a really fun couple from the neighborhood who came in and had a couple bottles of wine and talked to us for like three and a half hours. We talked about airline stuff, dentists, cars, silly things we did when we were younger, living in Atlanta, living other places, college, just about anything you can think of. I don't expect this week to be too busy, since Valentine's Day is Saturday. I brought Jon the cards I did up for Amy (one from him and one from Carter), and though I forgot to take pictures of them, they'd be easily re-doable. I need to remember to send Valerie's card tomorrow-- though at this point it'll be late, so I might just wait and let Jeremy sign it for himself!

That's about all for now, I'm going to pop in some Six Feet Under (since I have seriously under-used my Netflix potential for the month) and keep plugging through my room. I won't have my chest of drawers or vanity back up for another month or so because I'm going to sand them down and re-paint them before I bring them up. I haven't decided what color I'm going to use since I'd like to keep them around for my kids and obviously I don't know if I'll have girls or boys! I'd really like to do red, but that's a given, so if anyone has suggestions other than red let me know and I'll gladly post pictures of the finished product.

Workin' my way back to you, babe

I play 50's music in my head. No, really, on my way back from Memphis the radio didn't work, so I ended up singing "Don't Stop Believin", "Jesse's Girl", and various oldies including "Fill Me Up (Buttercup)" and "Stop (In The Name of Love)". It would appear that the oldies have a corner on the parenthetical song titles.

Today was low-key enough. Accidentally overslept; I'm still not used to having to wake up without light queues, so Jeremy's going to give me a wakeup call tomorrow since he gets up at 8a which is 9a my time. I got some stuff over to the storage unit today, but not nearly enough, and it's almost all the way full so we're gonna go over tomorrow and re-organize some things, and I'm going to ask her if she wants me to maybe get things set up for a yard sale this weekend and put up an ad on Craigslist to try and kick out as much crap as possible. She says she can donate it, but it'd be really nice if we could make a few dollars, especially since I can't find a job to save my life and we're trying to find a new place to live. I'm putting in more applications tomorrow, some for seasonal work, some for temp work, some for part time work. I really hope I get something. At this point, even $50 a week would at least help me pay down my phone bill and send a few bucks to the GI and Rhodes.

As for the future, Jeremy said that WyoTech indicated they would start trying to place them about three months prior to graduation, which means I'll have more than a few days of scrambling to find a job and find us a place to live. I'm really glad he's doing this, he sounds excited, and his roommate found them a 2 BR apartment close to campus that is totally reasonable, so maybe he'll be able to sleep at night now. If you have any suggestions on fairly temperate climates where people might be inclined to ride bikes year round, let me know-- we're starting our list of possible places so that both of us have a better chance of getting a job. I think we're aiming towards Austin or Atlanta areas, still, but you gotta go where the jobs are, right?

Keep your fingers crossed for me over the next few days-- I'm putting in at PierOne, Starbucks, Best Buy, several restaurants, Grassroots Campaigns (I applied for a job with them in Austin, but couldn't accept for financial reasons), and a couple of box office positions with theatres in Atlanta. I guess I should also get mom to print off a bagful of my resume; could get pricey since I'm so desperate I'm handing out the whole CV!

For now, though, I'll be thankful to be back in the real South. Inside the Perimeter, the real Atlanta, life is calm and happy. People might be in a bit of a hurry, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying a beautiful day, walking to work, or honking and waving to someone you know on the street. The weather is beautiful, and the people are nice-- if I get too bored, right up the street is the square with trees, picnic tables, and people I know. I know I sound a little bit like the Cheers theme song, but it's true. Big city feel, small town heart. It would be really nice if Jeremy could find a job around here-- I think he likes Decatur a lot, and since everything's pretty accessible through MARTA, he wouldn't have to deal with the traffic.

Here's to home, the place where you feel comfortable enough to take your shoes off and stay a while.