Yes, I live!

Things that happened:

• Got in trouble at work about my Facebook page, so I deleted it and started a new one, vowing not to speak of work on there. So far so good. I deleted my MySpace page too, because I needed an excuse.
• Got supplies for Christmas crafts. I'm trying to make things to avoid spending tons of money, but strangely have spent a ton of money on craft supplies. Oops.
• Put up the Christmas decorations. Now we have the bin filled with autumn decorations to put back in storage. That plus the various Christmas gifts in flux mean the mess is a place again.
• Speaking of Autumn, Erin and Jeff threw her a first birthday party last Saturday at our parents' place. It was fun, though the little kids were crazy (good birth control, spending time with a bunch of little kids! o_O) and Autumn reacted to the birthday cake with tears. Oh well, she was tired from not napping all day. Too much excitement.
• My Saturdays are booked! This week is the Shepard (Garin's mom's side) family Christmas get-together. Next weekend is my Aunt Glennys's (my dad's sister) family Christmas get-together (and I promised to bring my completed wedding album this time for everyone to ogle). That Sunday I go shopping for Garin with Kris, then I have that week off for Christmas! @_@ Somewhere in there I have to bake gingerbread cookies or risk making Courtney sad.
• Oh yeah, Christmas cards. I have everything I need, we just need to sit down and do them.
• Garin got up at 7am today! :o He's in bed right now! He may get up for a bit later but still, wow! He said he was really productive too. Loving it! :D'
• It's in the 30s all week with snow forecast, but little to no accumulation. Loving that fact, at least. Saturday night was our first real snow that stuck. Of course we were driving back up from Southern NH in it, right? >_<

Wow

Someone is really fucking stupid (and no, that's not actually my e-mail address in the "to" field either):

Honeymoon in Estes Park, CO Day Two: Tuesday 10/6/2009

Day Two: Tuesday 10/06/2009

Why does anyone skip breakfast?

Maybe I’m too easily impressed, but my first day of breakfast seemed really posh. Maybe it’s how they had yogurt with fruit and granola waiting for us on a nice little corner table with a great view, maybe it’s because the almond-filled croissants were so delicate and delicious, or because mushroom and spinach omelets with parmesan on top looks nice, but I really wanted to take a picture of it. I got over it in the next couple of days but I felt really pampered.

Garin had pretty much his ideal breakfast going on: tea and a croissant. I told him if I was a housewife I’m pretty sure I could whip that up for him daily (I’d have to learn how to make croissants first though).

We went to the visitor’s center across the street, which wasn’t open for another half hour or so. To pass the time, we went to the gift shop next door. It was seriously the best gift shop we went in the whole trip, and ended up being where we bought most of our souvenirs. When the visitor’s center opened, we browsed around there and asked a ranger about the status of Trail Ridge Road: due to a recent snowfall of four feet up in the alpine zone, it was closed after Many Parks Curve. We decided to drive up as far as we could and take in the views.

Winter Preview

I actually took photos of an iced-over puddle just to, I dunno, prove it to people back home? There was snow on the ground. It was freezing cold and windy (thank God we thought to bring winter outerwear with us on this trip!) Meanwhile, back in NH they were having a nice Indian Summer of 60 degree sunny days. Now that we’re back, it’s in the 40s. Yay.

Still, the views were breathtaking. Snow blowing off the peaks, amazing views. The mountains are so pointy, not like at home.

Photos

Shopping!

Eventually we got our fill of photos and decided to go into town. Much warmer there, nice and sunny and less windy. It’s such a gorgeous little shopping district, with gazebos, streams, bronze statues and bridges. Lots of public bathrooms, which is always a plus. We bypassed the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for the time being and went into an Indian gift store to poke around. I dragged Garin through just about every such store looking for turquoise jewelry for my mom, but also admiring the many other crafts and jewelry pieces.

Photos

We ate lunch, got burgers because I had a craving. I had an elk burger; it was a little different, not bad. After a bunch more shopping, walking around, and photo taking we went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory… and saw yet another sign of the tourist season winding down; it seemed like half their displays were empty. Granted it was during the week but it was disappointing. Also, I made the mistake of being on a single-minded quest for dark-chocolate-covered pretzels, which they didn’t have. We scoured the other candy stores. I got chocolate-covered strawberries, Garin asked for something called “trolls” but the lady gave him some nut- and toffee-covered truffle bars instead (we didn’t realize until a while later). I finally found a little bag of six pretzels, two each covered in dark, milk, and white chocolate. It served.

We came back to find a plate of four cookies on the shelf outside our door. We asked and yes, they were for us. Apparently before the chef leaves for the day, she bakes cookies and puts them outside the guests’ rooms. Being hungry, we gobbled them up. I think they were coconut with powdered sugar on top.

Who doesn’t like garlic bread?

That night we went to The Dunraven for dinner, which is an Italian restaurant. It was pretty cool; the ceiling in the lobby is plastered with dollar bills people have signed, and the prevailing theme is the Mona Lisa in varying altered states like fat, with different hair, etc (one showed the normal painting with the caption “traditional” and one with her bulked out for “chunky style”).

The waitress was so weird about the garlic bread; she asked us anxiously if we liked garlic bread before bringing some. Do people sometimes not like it out there? I’ve always gone to places where they take it for granted. Maybe there’s a secret sect of vampires in Estes Park! Of course why would they go to an Italian restaurant in the first place?

We stuck to our “healthy plan” of having at least one salad a day. Too bad I had eaten those cookies, because the salad and the garlic bread filled me up so much that I barely put a dent in my lasagna. We brought the rest of it back with us and stuck it in the communal mini fridge on the third floor.

That night we decided to make use of the DVD collection and watched Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. Yeah, I’ve pretty much decided that Riddick is my guilty pleasure. I too thoroughly enjoy sci-fi Vin Diesel kicking ass.

Honeymoon in Estes Park, CO Day One: Monday 10/5/2009

Flying High

I was the idiot with her face pressed up almost right against the tiny airplane window, oohing and aahing as I watched the ground turn into a model and then one of the aerial photographs I work with every weekday.

“How many lanes on that road?” Garin teased. “What’s the divider type?” I laughed. I would have to stop thinking like that; I wouldn’t be in the database for a week. I would be on honeymoon in Colorado with my new husband (how cool and weird does that sound?)

The wedding went off as well as we could have hoped. Everyone told us they had a great time, there were no major stumbles, the cake was gorgeous, the flowers were perfect, and the only snag was that it rained all day (and poured in earnest later on; thankfully we had a room there for the night). We wondered if we’d used up all our luck on the wedding; there were forecasts of snow for Colorado later in the week.

Checking bags and going through security was easier than I expected. Garin got nabbed for a random search (he thinks it’s because he didn’t remove his baggy Broncos sweatshirt) but came through all right.

I witnessed my first example of human stupidity on this trip as I watched my fellow passengers try to shove “carry on luggage” the size of the suitcase I checked into the overhead compartments. This was the single biggest cause of delay in boarding and leaving the airplane. Forget pre-boarding people with small children; pre-board the people with carry-ons small enough to fit under the seat! Garin had my laptop in its bag, I had a canvas bag with our books and my prescriptions, my purse, and we both had our jackets. I know people are terrified of losing their luggage, but I had everything I really needed with me: medications, my glasses, the clothes on my back, all my IDs, money and credit cards. It would certainly be inconvenient to lose my luggage, but not an emergency.

Flying is fascinating only during takeoff and landing; once we got to cruising altitude, the ground was either too far down to make out details or it was shrouded in clouds. Most of the flight is like riding a bus. The bumps were no worse than riding a bus either, though the worst turbulence only reminded me of a roller coaster. I love that weightless stomach feeling that makes many others sick, so I was having a great time even when things weren’t so smooth.

Luckily, there was SkyMall! I can’t resist catalogs, and this one is like every damn catalog rolled into one, including the ridiculously expensive and unnecessary gadgets of Hammacher-Schlemmer. It’s the true “Everything I Never Knew Existed or Was Necessary” compilation.

We had a layover in Baltimore that gave us enough time to buy some water and Pepsi, then a four hour flight to Denver. We ran into our first problem at the rental car place: Garin’s debit card wouldn’t allow the charge because it was too far over its daily limit. My decision to get a credit card is frequently proven wise: I put my plastic down and we were on our way. Almost.

Car Trouble

The fact that I was now listed as sole driver of the car was no problem; Garin’s my spouse now, so he could still drive us everywhere as he usually does. We were reserved a PT Cruiser, which the girl at the desk judged woefully inadequate for the coming snowstorm. “We can get you an SUV,” she said. Garin and I looked at each other. We’re used to driving a Corolla and a Caliber, respectively; a huge tank of a car would probably be just as hazardous. We declined, and the lady disappeared for a while only to return saying she got us a Corolla instead, a 2010 Corolla that turned out to be annoyingly featured and without any scraper or snow brush whatsoever. I’m glad that Garin won’t be looking to get the newest model, and miffed that a rental car place in snowy CO expected us to check snow gear or buy some on arrival. Luckily we brought snow wear and our gloved hands worked all right at clearing the windows.

The drive was so interesting… the scenery is much different. Flat, flat fields and then pointy mountains. Driving through roads cut through red rock instead of the granite we’re so used to at home. Definitely worth seeing. This was the furthest west I’ve ever been!

Houston, we’ve lost contact…

Della Terra turned out to be right across the street from a visitor’s center and a mile or two down the road from one of the entrances to the national park. The driveway was like a mini version of a mountain road, all switchbacks. We checked in and found out we were the only ones there that day. We also found out that they had (we discovered later) overlooked the fact that his parents said the stay was a gift from them, and expected us to pay the difference for the rest of the nights (only two were paid for).

“We should call them,” I said.

“Do you have AT&T?” the guy asked as we pulled out our Verizon wireless phones. “Yeah, those don’t get service until about two miles down the road,” he said. Funny, up around us it’s the AT&T phones that don’t get as good service as Verizon. Garin tried to use the phone at the front desk. Straight to mom’s voicemail. They told us not to worry about it for now and showed us up to our room.

It was very lovely and romantic. The bed was memory-foam, we had a gas fireplace, a two-person hot tub, a “walk-through” shower, a fountain, and a TV with DVD player which we could use to watch any of their little library of DVDs upstairs (which we did a couple of nights).

Photos:
bed
next to bed
fireplace
windows
table
chairs
paintings
hot tub
view 1
view 2
fireplace on
tub
fountain

We decided to go to dinner at a nearby place we saw on the way in, Nicky’s Steakhouse. We sat in the lounge, perused the menu, and realized that seafood out there was wicked pricey! Now it makes sense that lobster isn’t as readily at hand as it is in New England, but over $80 for a filet and just a lobster’s tail was enough to make me swear off of any seafood for the duration of the trip. “I’ll leave that for when we’re on the east coast,” I said.

Another oddity that repeated itself was how expensive chicken was. “Why does the chicken parmesan cost more than the veal parmesan?” Garin wondered. Later in the week, chicken was considered to be counted as two toppings at a pizza place we visited. I guess so many farmers run cattle ranches that no one raises chickens?

I got pork chops, which turned out dry. Garin’s veal cacciatore was all right, but all in all it was our least pleasing meal and the most expensive of the week. I do not recommend the place.

After leaving, we parked in the lot of the visitor’s center nearby and tried calling Garin’s parents from his cell phone. Voicemail again, but this time he left a message for them to contact the hotel. I got a hold of my parents to let them know we made it okay.

Then it started to flurry. Already keyed up by the rental car lady’s snow warning and discomfited by our lackluster dinner and the lodging fee mixup, Garin panicked a tiny bit and we sped back to the hotel to settle in for the night.

It’s remarkable how tiring it is just traveling. I noticed that they left us packets of bath salts. “Let’s try out the tub,” I said, and ran us a hot bath. The bowl-shaped tub fit the two of us pretty perfectly, and we had a long, relaxing soak. I put on the fountain at first, but the damn thing was so loud we couldn’t hear each other talk. From then on we only used it when we wanted more privacy using the toilet, since it was just around a corner and not actually behind a door.

Not bringing our DSes was an attempt to keep us focused on each other and not little electronic worlds, and also to keep space free in our luggage. It worked, only we neglected to bring much we could do together, either. Luckily I had our little pack of cards so we played Rummy until I started dozing off, then Garin watched TV while I went to bed. He also found out that we got free wireless internet, so it was a good thing we brought my laptop after all.

They had asked us what time we wanted breakfast, since we were the only guests around to have it. Usually they have the “cold bar” open at 7 and start cooking things at 7:30. We said 8 am and decided to get up at 7.

You need to work on your sales pitch, kid

Last night I was chatting on the phone with Kris, and I got a knock on my door. Weird, I thought, since Garin would just unlock it and I’m talking to Kris on the phone. Who else would be wanting to visit?

 

I told Kris to hold on and went to answer it. A chubby kid in a Cub Scout uniform stood there with a clipboard, next to a thin teenage girl. After a pause, the kid stammers out as if he has a mouthful of cotton that his name is ___ and he’s selling popcorn for Boy Scouts.

 

Then there was silence. The pair stared at me as if I was some alien creature from beyond, and I stared at them, waiting for the rest of the pitch and not knowing quite what to say.

 

I wasn’t going to buy any regardless, but if I was, I would want to know more information: flavors, sizes, any special gift packs, gifting options. At least show me the catalogue, kid! And big sis (or whoever): give the kid a line or too, huh? Give him a little prompt, maybe? I know your mom forced you to drive little bro around and chaperone so he doesn’t get snatched by some pederast but come on… don’t just show up to my door and tell me why you’re there, and then stand there as if I’m supposed to do all the work. Convince me! Unlike with Girl Scout cookies (which I would have bought), tinned popcorn doesn’t exactly sell itself.

 

So I said, “Um, I think I’ll pass this time, but thanks anyway. Good luck!” As if activating a switch (perhaps marked “relief”) they smiled in a friendly manner and said thank you for your time as I shut the door.

 

Crimeny…

Can we all agree...

That this guy is fucking hideous?And I bet if he'd just shave and get a haircut, he'd look like a normal dude instead of some hippie nightmare. I bet that's why he looks like this, to be different. Fucking hipsters...

Bad Dream Theater

So, with the wedding coming up in two weeks (!!!) I've graduated from having dreams of returning to college and not knowing what my classes are or where they are, to having stupid dreams of things going wrong with the wedding.

We're having it up here, so there's no extensive travel for us, which makes it strange that I dreamed of us staying at my parents' house for the week leading up to the wedding. It was a Monday, and I said to Garin something about having forgotten to bring our DSes to entertain ourselves. That's when I realized I hadn't brought anything: no clothes, no toiletries, nothing whatsoever that I needed. Garin had remembered all his stuff, though.

So in the dream, I was freaking out while Garin drove back up here to get my stuff. That's when I realized that I couldn't stay at my parents' house all week because I'd only taken that Friday off.

I woke up shortly after that, and then freaked out Garin when he woke up with his face inches away from mine. I guess I startled him.

Evil Weevils

I was making an apple cake yesterday, trying out my new KitchenAid stand mixer. It works like a dream and is so quiet compared to my hand mixer. Hours later, after it cooled, I made icing for it (I wasn't going to, but Garin insisted). I had put the mixer away, and the mixture was in a pot because it's a boiled icing, so I had to blend powdered sugar into the pot. By hand wasn't cutting it (it wasn't getting creamy enough) so I hauled out my hand mixer.

After a minute, I noticed what looked like sawdust falling out of the vents of the mixer. Not only that, but those little bugs I had noticed in the seal of a bag of flour I bought once.

I pushed the pot well aside after confirming nothing had fallen into it, and whacked the mixer against the counter to see if more would fall out. It did, that dusty stuff, the little bugs, and *shudder* larvae.

A little background: I'm phobic about larvae. I don't mind earthworms, caterpillars usually get a pass depending on the type, and slugs are kinda cute. But grubs, maggots, anything falling into that category, freak me the fuck out. Even if, as in this case, they're only a centimeter long and only as thick as a thread.

So yeah, I freaked out, but in that responsible way I have of dealing with the problem while whimpering instead of running to hide and making someone else clean up. I bagged up the mixer to throw out (no way was I going to be able to clean that shit out of there. Even if I didn't have the KitchenAid I'd probably just buy another hand mixer), wet paper towels and wiped up the bugs, their larvae, and the dust.

As I was looking up "flour bugs" on Google, Garin talked about how funny it would be if we freaked out giants. Like if they looked down and saw one of our babies crying and wiggling around, they'd be all freaked out and nauseated.

So as it turns out, I had flour weevils. Apparently their eggs survive the sifting process because they're as small as the flour grains. They don't survive cooking (though apparently microwave radiation won't kill them) and would definitely not survive digestion, so it's one of those things you have to just put up with, like knowing that red dye is made of ground bugs and that they allow a certain amount of bugs to get processed into your breakfast cereal because there's no way to get rid of all of them.

The problem is when they hatch. I guess the flour that had puffed up and settled in my mixer had eggs in it, and they just kinda set up shop in there.

So with the mixer dealt with, and articles read, I realized they're probably in my flour. Luckily for my cake, the airtight container didn't have any, though I stuck it in the fridge anyway. The bag of flour that had been open did; I threw that out.

This morning while lying in bed, I realized that I had a small bag of whole wheat flour still in the cabinet. Also, I had heard that they can go after anything grain-related. The corn meal was fine, so was the corn starch (which was open). I started to unroll the top of the bag of wheat flour and a weevil fell out. I didn't have to look any further than that.

I was looking in my cabinet trying to think of anything else they may have gotten into, when I saw the box of Bisquick.

Frak me.

Sure enough, I opened the box and saw them crawling inside the bag. I took the clip off (frugality wins out sometimes) and tossed the whole box into the trash. It's sitting out on the porch for me to take out after I'm dressed.

So I need all new flour, all new Bisquick, and it's going in the goddamn freezer when I get it! Turns out bay leaves will keep them away too. I think I need some fresh ones.

Happily, they're only interested in the grain. The sugar was fine, the baking soda was all right, they didn't seem to be crawling around anything else. Thank goodness for the small favors, I guess... it could have been cockroaches, right?