You know what shouldn’t be allowed? Eighty degrees before 6am. Hell, eighty degrees before 9am. The only reason I’m getting up this early (5:15 today) is so I can run in the cooler temperatures before the sun comes up. Sure, 80 degrees is not as hot as our high of 102 yesterday, but I’d hardly call it cooler, especially not when I’ll be warming up while running anyway. Back in the AC I go.
I made crepes for dinner, filled with mushrooms, spinach, mozzarella, garlic, and garlic mayo. I say it was only kinda successful because they looked awful. The crepes I bought were a little too thin, so they didn’t fold well. The first one turned out more like sauteed mushrooms and spinach with bits of crepe throughout. The third one looked pretty good. They tasted fantastic. I think next time I’ll use tortillas and call them quesadillas. Screw crepes. Unless they’re filled with strawberries, like the crepes I didn’t use for dinner will be very soon.
(My spellcheck has issues. It’s okay with crepes and mayo (and spellcheck!), but not quesadillas. What’s up with that?)
It’s a topsy-turvy day, with eggs on toast and cantaloupe for dinner, and I’m not going back to my hair stylist again. Her prices went up, she didn’t do exactly what I wanted her to do with my hair (it looks fine, but it’s not what I asked for), and ohmygod she talks and talks and talks and talks and talks. I can’t take the pressure. And she’s a little heavy on the “God has blessed you” and “you should thank God” for me. She’s welcome to think that and say that to whoever she wants, but you’d think that in a small business like that, you might hesitate before assuming everyone shares your views on religion.
But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came here to talk about eggs. The most perfect way to eat an egg (other than hard-boiled and chopped into bits with celery, mayo, and tuna on toast) is fried over easy on lightly buttered toast. With another piece of toast to get all the extra yolk that ends up on the plate no matter how careful I am. All the egg needs for seasoning is pepper. Love it.
I could have been happy with biscuits and gravy for dinner, too, but we didn’t have any in the house. And that’s a little harder to fit into my eat-healthy plan than eggs. Sometime this week, I plan to try to recreate the most delicious crepes ever. Salmon one night, and stir fry another…I’ve got the week all planned out.
Thanks, Internet, for helping me think!
For real. We went this afternoon, and now there’s nothing left. It’s all at our house. Such a dangerous place for us to go. “I need new running shorts.” “Me, too, except I need running shirts.” “Okay, let’s go to Target.” “Hey, light bulbs!” “That reminds me; we need a new lamp.” “Weren’t we talking about getting an everyday tablecloth?” “Hangers! We’re out of hangers with clips!” We managed NOT to buy a new vacuum cleaner, even though we need one. We’ll give Target a chance to recover and restock and then we’ll be back for that.
After Target, I dropped John off at home and went to Wegman’s, where I bought out the produce section. Oh! Then I sliced my first whole cantaloupe. I’m very proud of myself. And I ate two slices immediately. I think that’s all I’ll be eating for the next two days ’cause this cantaloupe is that fresh. I need to learn more about picking them out. But it’s so good!
I wore the dogs out today. We went for a two-mile walk around mid-morning and they came inside acting like I’d asked them to run a marathon, and this evening I brought them to the block party where John’s band was playing. Roxy laid down at the end of her leash and pretended we weren’t there, as usual, but Riley got a little nervous and spent the whole time trying to crawl into my lap. While drooling. He was mostly okay as long as I had my hands on him, but heaven forbid I let go so I could clap for the band (who did really well – John was awesome during “All Along the Watchtower”).
We’ve never really made a big deal out of the 4th of July. I think we’re too lazy. A couple or three years ago, we had some people over and played with sparklers, but that hardly took any effort. Last year, we tagged along with other people’s plans and spent the afternoon at the pool and watched the fireworks in Falls Church (really good fireworks). This year we had tentative plans to do that again, but then the band got a gig, and that ended up taking up pretty much the whole day.
Tomorrow will be all about trying to keep cool. It’s supposed to get ridiculously hot, but I don’t have to do anything that’ll keep me outside. I think I can safely skip running.
I can be organized, but I’m usually not. Our book collection is one of the only exceptions. Maybe the only exception. A few years ago (maybe four?) I created a spreadsheet with details of every book we own, and now it’s terribly out of date. Yesterday, I started going through the shelves and updating that list. It’s going to take a while, but I’m already about 25% done with the fiction after just a couple hours spread across today and yesterday.
I know, this is fascinating. My point might be that I always want to be organized, and I can be about most things, but only short term. You can see where my priorities lie. Everything else takes more effort that I want to put in.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Possibly nowhere. And that seems like a good place to stop.
I bought wasp killer (and crabgrass killer – we’re don’t believe in nature in this house) and after rehearsal, John humored me by putting on long pants, a sweatshirt, safety glasses, and leather gloves, and then he went out in the dark, sprayed the hell out of the wasp nest, and sprinted around the side of the house when he saw something drop to the ground. I think I freaked him out with my speculations about swarms of angry flying venomous insects. But they’re dead! He went back out after a couple of minutes with a flashlight to check out the carnage. I’m thrilled they’re dead. He feels kinda bad.
Today was the first day of my new job. Same company, new boss, loads of new (and higher) responsibilities, and I think I’m in a little over my head. It’s a good thing (right?), and I certainly won’t be bored. The best part is the complete and utter lack of anything resembling travel. Or even a commute. I’ll have the occasional meeting in DC, and there may be a time in the fall when I have to spend a few days in a row down there, but the majority of my time will be spent in the office that’s only 20 minutes (max) from my house. SO much better.
Enough about work. I performed my adjunct-to-the-band duties tonight and put their set list together for them. They’ve got a 4th of July gig nearby, and tonight was their last rehearsal before the big day.
Ricky Gervais is doing stand-up in the other room and I can’t concentrate anymore, so I’m off.
We have a wasp’s nest just outside the garage door. A baby wasp’s nest. A nest for baby wasps. (Not really. Actually, that, too.) It looks like it’s just the beginning of a nest, so it’s still really small. There were about five wasps crawling on it and I refused to get close enough to find out what kind of wasps they are. I looked up how to get rid of them and that’s almost as scary as leaving them there. Apparently, the first thing you’re supposed to do it go make sure you’re not allergic to wasp stings. If you are, call an exterminator. If you’re not, go buy a pressurized can of wasp killer/poison, wear multiple layers with long sleeves and long pants, tuck your pants into your shoes, tuck your sleeves into your gloves (wear gloves), and wear a hat and goggles. Oh, and it’s suggested that your top layer be something non-permeable, like rubber. Wait until dark and spray the hell out of the nest. You’re also supposed to make sure you have an escape route just in case you don’t aim very well or the poison doesn’t act fast enough and you end up with a swarm of angry wasps chasing you. I wish I were making this stuff up. Just google it. I want nothing to do with this.
In other news…am I fixed? It looks like it on every browser and every computer I have access to, but I no longer trust that. If it looks weird to you (no picture, tag line in the wrong place, etc), please let me know. John found a way to make it work again, but it’s not the right way. Of course, it is, it works, but we can find no earthly reason why it wasn’t working before. I’ve compared my CSS file to the original one, before I tinkered with it, and we don’t see any differences. But hey, it works (I think), and I still might tinker with changing the look over the weekend. This whole thing started because I wanted to change the picture, and I still want to do that, so we’ll see what happens.
So John is wonderful (I don’t say that enough), not only because he fixed my website, but also because he came home with flowers for me today. He stopped to buy wasp killer, but the store didn’t have it. Instead, he bought ice cream (for himself – I swore off ice cream when I quit eating pound cake) and flowers for me. ‘Cause that’s what you do when they’re out of wasp killer. Or that’s what you do when you know you can’t immediately kill the wasps that are threatening your wife. I love flowers.
