Friday, July 29, 2011

Old and Young

I hired a maid service this week to do a good thorough clean in prep of my mom, who is allergic to my cats and short-haired dog, coming this week. It made me feel really young, because I felt like I did not know what I was doing and I did not feel confident to tell them what I wanted done etc. Then, the maid service arrived and the two girls looked way younger than me, like 20 yrs old or so, and then I felt old because here I was, a home owner, telling some college kids what to do.

Weird.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

5 Years

As of Friday, July 22nd, DH and I have been married 5 years!!! Good golly that is a longtime!

To celebrate we went out to dinner at a new restaurant - Park Creek Kitchen. I wanted something that was good, unique food, but not too formal/uptight. We definetly have been to some VERY fancy places in the past for our anniversary - like Hyde Park and The Refectory. They were nice, great food, but we are just not comfortable sitting there, if you know what I mean. So anyways, Park Creek Kitchen seemed to fit the bill based on its website, so we headed there. The atmosphere was just what I wanted. Not too fancy, not too casual. DH had fried chicken over macoroni and greenbeans. The macoroni was wonderful! I had a heirloom tomato salad which was very fresh and tasty and a burger. Both were very good. The tomatos were so fresh and delicious (both in the salad and the one on my burger), they must get local fresh produce. It made me crave more! So overall, great food, but not sure it is worth the prices... especially the chicken.

After dinner we went to see Friends with Benefits; a new romantic comedy that is out. DH pointed out the irony that we celebrated 5 years of monogamy by seeing a movie about casual sex. LOL. We enjoyed it, quite funny.

Heres to five years!!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Pregnancy Update

Just wanted to update everyone on how the pregnancy is going.

The biggest news -I am pretty sure I have been feeling the baby move! I felt it first late late Thursday night (also known as 4am Friday), When I was going to bed after seeing the midnight showing of the Harry Potter movie. DH has decided this should hence forth be described as "the baby clapped at the end of Harry Potter!!"

People love to ask a pregnany woman how she is doing, and I hate answering. I don't really want pity, or to go into the nitty gritty of it every five minutes, or be described as a whiner. DH and I came up with a great answer for me to use recently, which is "Physically feeling like crap, but in good spirits".

However, on my blog I do want to go into nitty gritty. On going symptoms include:
(1) ongoing morning sickness (to be really detailed... I have not had as much nausea, but my gagging is out of control)
(2) cramps, aches, pains
(3) heart burn
(4) emotional basketcase... tear up at anything, get mad easily
(5) lack of self control... I used to never voice the million of judgemental or mean or controversial things I think every day, now I can't seem to help it... I think this is tied in with the emotional basketcase part.
(6) can't get comfortable to sleep at night, or sometimes to sit
(7) ongoing shortness of breath
(8) difficulty getting up int he morning/fatigue

I think that about covers it, maybe??

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Last Weekend

I wanted to write a lot about this past weekend, but I have been busy and have not gotten to it and now I am afraid I may not have that much left interesting to say about it. Lets see...

MOVIES: I already posted about the bad theater and mediocre movie of Friday night. Well, Saturday night we rented "Machete". You may or may not remember a series of three movies coming out a few years ago jointly called "grindhouse" that paid homage to the old B films that would go straight to certain types of theaters known for their violence etc. Well on those movies they had a bunch of fake previews, including one called "Machete". Then they actually went and made this movie. When we rented it, we were expected basically another Grindhouse movie - lots of fakey gratiuitous violence w/some outlandish plot that did not make total sense. Well, the movie had its fill of gratuitous violence, but we really were both stunned by how much plot and character development it had. It had some serious political commentary. Its plot was somewhat outlandish but ultimately made sense. Very odd outcome. In other "movie" news. I had people over at my house last night to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. It is the seventh movie. The 8th and final movie comes out tomorrow night at midnight. We also watched "Confessions of a Shopaholic" on Monday night. It was a bit painful really. I mean, it had its moments and ultimately served its role as romantic comedy, but you just wanted to smack them all sometimes. Also, we are currently debating our future with netflix. It has been announced they are drastically raising prices on their DVD service. Its more of this nonsense where they are trying to force people into streaming. The problem is while they do have 20K streaming titles, they have over 100K titles on DVD. The streaming service frequently does not have a specific movie that we want and we are annoyed they are trying to force us to use it more as if our DVD use is costing them so much money. We are mad, maybe mad enough to cancel all of our service with them. We will see what happens. We are talking about it.

SPORTS: We went to Roosters, a bar/restaraunt, both Friday and Saturday midday this weekend to watch U.S. Women's soccer in the World Cup. First, I wanted to comment that the prices at that place are great. Feels like prices from 10-15 yrs ago! What actually happened is that we went on Saturday thinking it was the U.S. vs Brazil game, but when we got there and had ordered drinks we figured out it was actually France vs England. We just stayed and watched it. It was very relaxing. The game was slow/laid back and we talked a lot. Then on Sunday we went again, same time same place, this time for the actual US vs Brazil game. Unless you live under a sport-resistant rock you probably have heard that the U.S. won in dramatic fashion. It was much more fast paced game. the refs played a bit to big of a role for comfort unfortunately. The questionable reffing on one play swung the game from the U.S. being up 1-0 to it being a 1-1 game w/U.S. playing a player down and totally demoralized by how it all occured. Luckily they have tougher resolution than I do because they actually played better down a man. Brazil did eventually score again during the first half of overtime, though upon review it should have been called offsides. Somehow, in extra time of overtime (like the 122 minute of the game), U.S. Had a beautiful beautiful cross and header goal to ties things up. So dramatic and awesome. Then the U.S. won in penalty kicks. They play France tonight. It hopefully will be on when we go for Trivia. We may hit up Roosters more often now, unless we decide to get cable again.

Car Show. We went to the "good guys" car show at the Ohio State Fairground. It rocked, but I so don't have energy to post about it Recap is we were smart to go in the morning (8-10AM) to beat the heat, and we want a late 60's Camero (for DH), a 55' Bel Aire (as a family car), and a Shelby Cobra.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Top Ten Reasons Not to Go to Screens a the Continent

Last night we visited Screens at the Continent, the dollar theater that is closest to our house. We will not be going back, because:

10. Lights are not on in the lobby.
9. Two people sell tickets and vending at one register at a snail pace.
8. Its hard to figure out what theater your movie is in.
7. Their concession products are highly questionable.
6. The movie reels are poor quality and they cut them off before the credits finish.
5. There is no music, ads, or even lights between the movies. You sit in the dark until it starts.
4. No one is cleaning up the theaters.
3. All of the above makes the theater creepy as hell.
2. There is something in the theater that aggravated my allergies, and I don't usually have bad allergies.
1. There is a perfectly good dollar theater at Carriage Place that is the same price and is way way way way nicer and less creepy.


The movie we went to see is Priest. It stars Paul Bettany, who for whatever reason has become a trigger/signal for me to see a movie. The movie was OK, probably 5/10, maybe 6/10 depending on my mood. The concept itself was really interesting and could have been great, the execution was not as great. Some of the acting was poor and characters were not as developed as they could have been. The movie is steampunk/vampire/dystopia. Yeah - that's a lot to combine! I will probably see the movie again sometime, or would be interested in seeing the comic books it was based on.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Red White and Blue

I was thinking about how the U.S. is far from the only country with red, white, and blue as their flag colors - the other obvious ones are UK, Australia, and France. However, the U.S. is the only country to become so fixated, but that is relatively common. We are one of the most patriotic countries in the world. This has its benefits and its downfalls of course. As this is my Independence Day post - I will stick with the beneficial side. The biggest benefit of course is that it feels great and we have this wonderful celebration of some really great things our country did. America really is an amazing place in so many ways. We may have a lot of issues, and a lot of things that need resolved, but the Bill of Rights, and our constitution, along with the lack of a true class system (i.e. - anyone can rise), have made America a great country.

So how did I spend my 4th of July weekend?

On Saturday I went to the farmers market w/my aunt and cousin. Then I headed over to http://www.andersonsstore.com/ off of Sawmill to get some brats, as I was told they had a good meat counter. In the evening I made potato salad and spinach dip for my Sunday plans.

On Sunday I spent pretty much the entire day getting ready for and then executing a BBQ at my Grandma's house in Mt Vernon. DH road his motocycle up there, which was exciting for him. The menu included the potato salad, brats (multiple varieties), spinach dip with hawaiian bread, marshmallow salad (very midwestern to call this salad :-) ), and for dessert - Rhubarb Crunch! It all was tasty and the company was good. Nice to get some family together and have brats, helped some with my homesickness.

On Monday, I was exhausted! I had spent most of Saturday and Sunday on my feet. So, I spent most of Monday laying around. I did get moving in the afternoon, put some laundry away, and headed off to a 4th if July celebration with my friends down in Hilliard. We met at their appt for snacks and drinks, then walked to the Hilliard fireworks about 20 minutes away. It was a good show, and we were sitting ridiculously close. The finale was an assault on the senses -both hearing and eyes. It was a lot of fun!! The walk back felt like a million miles, LOL, but I made it and we enjoyed some more time with our friends before heading home.

It was a nice, relaxing long weekend with lots of friends and family, lots of good Independence Day traditional activities.