A fish out of water

Oyyyyy I haven't been in the pool for an actual workout in over 2 weeks now. How did this happen?! Unacceptable. I feel like a fish out of water. Whenever I don't leave room for swimming in my schedule, the result is always my being over-booked, over-tired, and generally less happy feeling. Of course, I have a meet on Sunday and it's the 2nd to last meet I have to get better Q times for nationals. And I'm going to be slow. Errrgggg. March and April mean getting down to business so that I have a chance at decent times when I show my face in AZ.

I spent all day yesterday in airplanes. Seriously. Except for a lovely 3 hours in Casper with the mom, sis, bro, aunts, cousins, uncle, omi...  and I am tired today since I got back to DC this morning at 1.

Too many people to fit around the birthday table

birthday cakes

sister's birthday cake

mom's birthday cake

And all I can really think about at work today is how I want to be in the water. Pool, ocean... heck it's raining outside. I'd even be willing to go play in puddles.

love always.

For my mommy

To my lovely mother,

Happy birthday! I hope that your day runs smoothly since you've conquered the garage door debacle already this morning. It is strange that none of us are there to celebrate with you. I guess that is a testament to your hard work over the years though. Plus, we'll all be together tomorrow for hugs and laughter and w i s h e s. In the meantime, I think all those wonderful women will help make this evening a fun one! Great start to the year ahead!

You have had some pretty wonderful times and adventures throughout your life. Life has also thrown at you more than your fair share of challenges. You approach each with strength and, what always seems to me like bottomless, optimism. You give us support, encouragement, and love even when you yourself might benefit the most from receiving those things. You are the person I go to for guidance, and I don't even know where your patience and insight come from, why you're nearly always right, or how all of your positive qualities seem limitless- but I do know that it's magical, and it's a blessing.

You're one of a kind. Realistic and opportunistic, l o v i n g and beautiful, smart and wise, c h e e r f u l and persevering.

...and I love you.

Happy birthday to my sister

 Today my sister is 29. No wait, let me type that out in a way that better expresses the excitement level around here...

TODAY IS MY SISTER'S BIRTHDAY, AND SHE IS 29, AND WE HAD DUNKIN DONUTS FOR BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST, AND WE ARE IN DC TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This past weekend I went to Wyoming for my cousin's wedding, and Allison flew back with me to DC for the week. We are having such fun. We went to the Washington Wizards game last night. They got pummeled, but it didn't matter to us. It was really fun, and we had great seats.

Helloooo Pacers' bench :)

Allison's birthday breakfast request was Dunkin Donuts, and thankfully I have a very sweet, understanding coworker who didn't mind that I was almost an hour late to work because I brought doughnuts back to my house for Allison, put candles in each one, and sang happy birthday with a flaming box of doughnuts to wake her up. I think that's a pretty solid start to another year of life, don't you?

A very tired, very happy birthday girl this morning!

We are taking the afternoon to go to the wax museum downtown and take birthday pictures with all of her favorite celebrities. Then dinner, by request, at Zaytinya. Lucky for me, Allison loves this place. I say "lucky for me" because this very well might just be my favorite restaurant in the DC metro area.

I can't list all of the reasons why I love Allison so much. It would be a looooong list. But I will tell you that my big sister is full of sunshine. Here is an example.

As we boarded the plane from Denver to DC on Monday, the flight attendant said, "Hello there, how are you this evening?"

Allison replied with a huge smile on her cute little face, "I am so good! How are you doing?"

This created a chain reaction, and both flight attendants standing by the entrance of the plane smiled and replied as we headed back to our seats. As the food and drink carts came through the aisle, Allison had her hopes on some Pringles. She asked the flight attendant, and I asked if they had the kind of chocolate bar with sea salt that was in the menu. Normally I don't order food, especially not whole chocolate bars, on a plane. But I really do like these. They only had milk chocolate. Bummer. Pass, but thank you anyway.

The flight attendant helped out the next couple rows with their drinks and then brought a milk chocolate bar over for Allison (I assume she thought I was inquiring about the chocolate bar for Allison).
"This is for you, sweetie," she said. "You are just so sweet."

"Oh thank you!" Allison replied. "And it is my birthday coming up, so this is like a birthday present!"

"Oh that's so perfect! Happy birthday!"

Boom. Free chocolate bar. Allison gave it to me because when the flight attendant moved up the row a little ways, Allison noted that she doesn't really like chocolate bars but wasn't that nice of her and boy, she really likes that flight attendant. I proceeded to sleep through the entire flight, waking up only about 30 minutes before landing-- right when Allison finally conked out. The same flight attendant brought almond cookies for us and wispered, "Just because she's so nice... I hope you guys enjoy these!" Really? That's a lot of free schwag.

Allison in the Denver airport. Mmmm quesadilla!

Allison cares deeply and unconditionally about those in her life- near and far. She is brave. She has taught me patience and has sometimes tried that patience. I love going on Starbucks dates with my sister. We have traveled so many places together. She is adventurous like I am.

Bunny ears... always the jokester.

I wish you a very happy birthday and a year full of blessings. I love you, Sisty.

What a show off

Ok, so, a few posts ago, I told you about my forays into pan searing a steak. I was just reading through the MSN homepage and one of their feature headlines was about perfectly cooking a steak on your stove. Too late, MSN! I'm scarred for life.

I watched it though, and the guy basically informs the viewer to do everything opposite of what I did. Look...
<a href="http://www.delish.com/recipes/cooking-recipes/taste-of-place/?v=43ea023a-ae38-3d88-5495-02da31316a5b&from=slplayer_en-us_TasteofPlace&fg=MSNlifestyles_player_delish_top" target="_new" title="Perfectly simple steak">Video: Perfectly simple steak</a>

The dude says that since it's cold he's showing us how to pan sear. That was my thinking, originally. He does say that it needs to be "ripping hot", so I had that right. He also uses only a dollop of oil, explains the benefit of slowing placing it into the pan and away from you to avoid splashes in your direction, and he turns down the heat. That's 3 strikes against my approach to indoor steak cooking. While my way of "deep frying" steak was certainly eventful, I advise you to follow this guy's method instead. Maybe I'll try this again... dun dun dunnnnnnn

Glitter rules my world. Especially today.

Happy Valentines Day and love always :)

Deep Frying Steak in a Swimsuit

I have burns on my hip. Let's just say that my cooking skills, while improving, still leave much to be desired. I'll start from the top.

I love to grocery shop. Granted, I can't go too often because of my propensity for purchasing unnecessary and, quite frankly, unaffordable items given my current budget. But I truly enjoy walking through the aisles filling my cart and looking at products. In the case of this story, I ended up with a nice, big, juicy steak for $4.

A barbecue is the only thing with which I have ever cooked a steak. Seeing as how the world is frozen right now, I didn't feel like firing up the ol' BBQ and standing outside in the dark and cold to cook. So, I inquired after a particularly culinarily (that's definitely not a word) talented co-worker as to how to prepare steak in the kitchen. I guess a bit of peanut oil - hot as hell - will get the job done. "Excellent," I thought. "This will be easy."

Oh yeah? WRONG.

Turns out, one only needs to use about a tablespoon of piping hot oil to successfully cook cow meat. I used enough to generously coat the bottom of the pan. Mistake #1.

One thing I was good at was heating said oil to excessively hot temperatures. As my mom later informed me while I recalled this experience to her, it's helpful to soak up the excess fluids on the steak prior to putting it into the pan of searing oil. Mistake #2. I took that bloody, dripping steak and practically tossed it into the pan.

INSTANT. REGRET.

The oil jumped straight out of the pan upon impact of steak. Along with dousing the pictures on the side of the refrigerator, my hip caught some of the oil splatter. Had I been practicing the behavior of a normal human, the oil probably wouldn't have reached my skin through my clothing, and I could have continued the process pissed off about newly acquired grease stains and instead focus on the mini grease fire on my burner.

However, I was cooking steak while wearing my swimsuit and light cotton pants. Mistake #3. The result was my screaming a string of profanities followed by rushing to the sink (ignoring the oil on the burner) and proceeding to splash cold water all over my right hip, leg, and basically entire lower right side of my body (and consequently creating a small lake on my kitchen floor). I ceased doing this when I thought to myself, "I'm clearly burned, but this doesn't even hurt at all! I can keep cooking my steak! Meat first! First Aid later!"

So I turned my attention to the now outwardly dark and crispy steak which was still blood red in the middle. I had turned off the burner when I saw the grease heating on the bright orange burner in order to prevent fire. In my haste, I'd actually just turned on the smaller front burner and left the back burner on "EXTREMELY HOT BURNING OIL" setting. Oops.

I managed to cook the steak to an edible form, though at this point I should have just the money on a steak from a restaurant. I sat down to eat it, and that's when my adrenaline must have worn off because YOWZA! Those burns stung! I was spotted with burns and looked like I had a skin disease. I also had grease all down the right side of my pants, so I proceeded to strip them off in the middle of my living room (remember, I'm wearing a swim suit so this is an entirely appropriate disrobing) and put cornstarch all over to help soak the oil out of the material.

It was then that I questioned myself. "Am I doing this right thing to get out grease? How do I treat these burns? Ice? Loose coverings?" I decided to consult my "Where's Mom Now That I Need Her" book. My mom gave me this when I went off to college. She must have known that I would get myself into a situation like this. I went to the table of contents.

Laundry... removing stains... oil... Got it. Nice work, me.

I flipped the page and what do you know? First Aid for burns is on the page right after removing oil from clothes! My helplessness and ridiculousness must have been a foreseeable event.

Only I would deep fry a steak in my swim suit.

Geez.

Kinda like being there

So many places have virtual tour websites now adays. It's pretty sweet. I would never use them as a substitute for traveling to an actual place, but I think they are cool tools when researching where to go and preparing for trips. Today I've had enough with rude callers, and so I'm virtually traveling here and revisiting here.

If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be? Can you take a virtual tour of your destination?

Super Bowl Super Awesome Super Swimmer

Ok, ok, I know that last time I posted I told you that I would be sharing a ridiculous story, and don't worry, I will still share that tale, but it's  

Super Bowl Sunday! 

There will be no Urlacher or Hester to cheer for though, so I'm not invested in this game. That's probably a good thing. Check out this article about overzealous sports fans and heart attack rates. I'm surprised that I didn't become a statistic for this the last time the Bears made a Super Bowl appearance (I don't want to talk about it).

Speaking of sporting achievements, Brother kicked major ass in the pool this weekend absolutely slashing his time in the 100 free. I am thrilled! He has shown himself that he's capable of taking a challenge and conquering it. All that's left of the season is Conference and State for him. I think he might wish that the season was longer, and I don't blame him! At the rate he's going, he'd be faster in the water than on land very shortly. I think he should join USMS and he and I can go to meets all over the place when he's in college.

Well, I'm off to the pool for a swim before the Super Bowl gets under way. I hope you had a happy weekend! Love always

Record Breaker

Oh the weather outside is frightful... oh wait, it's not Christmas yet this song still seems to apply. DC is expecting rain, Chicago is getting hammered with a blizzard (and so is another 1/3 of the country), Texas has insane ice, and Wyoming didn't get above 0 degrees Fahrenheit today! Goodness gracious. Welcome to February, where we have record breaking, horrendous weather.

Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day. That little booger better not see his shadow because I'm not too keen on the idea of 6 more weeks of this nonsense! I'm ready for summer... or at least spring! Despite the cold, DC has been rather pretty. Check out the sunset on Saturday after my swim!

Speaking of swimming, I had a meet on Sunday and it was such fun! I was nervous to see how I'd perform in the pool since I hadn't raced in 7+ years. I was pretty happy with the results, but I know I can be much faster. Our 200-free relay broke the meet record though. I'm pretty sure that means that I'm the champion of the universe now. Really though, I have to start pushing myself and maybe actually showing up to a real practice every once in a while so that there are others around to push my limits. Luckily, I met a bunch of fantastic people who swim for the team I'm technically on.

Oh, I realized I've become incredibly comfortable with my single life. Probably too comfortable. The next blog entry will be entitled "Deep Frying Steak in a Swimsuit". I know you're on the edge of your seat... stay tuned!