are you aware of the girl cell in you?

julie and julia

tonight i just finished watching julie and julia. i think it might be my new favorite movie. so cute.

look what's new

i'm not a "new year's resolution" type of person, generally. i am all too aware of the fact that i'm just as likely to stick to or not stick to a new idea, diet, regiment, etc at any point in the year. so i tend to just skip the ceremony on the 1st of the year.

but this year, it suddenly hit me, i'm not getting any younger. well, duh. and i'll just say right here that i don't think that i'm particularly old. that's not the point.

i had a lot of driving time to think to myself over the holidays. and i realized that if not now, then when? there are a lot of silly little things, and some bigger not-so-silly things, that i've been wavering over for years. so i'm going to try to make a concerted effort this year to charge ahead and do some things that i've been wanting to do for a while, despite what i might fear people will think about me.

so, today, after 10 years of wanting to do it but feeling silly about it, i went and got my nose pierced. such a trifle thing to spend so much thought on. and, in the end it was just so easy. but here it is, my new nose ring (and my little (big) kitty):



and a close-up:

wtf

i seriously love these guys. i mean, their videos are amazing.

when they first came out with this a few years ago i thought they were great.

then i saw this one. and i was mightily impressed again.

then, when we were in chicago erica introduced us to this one. more brilliance.

and tonight, she posted about them again on her blog and linked to this video. seriously, people? it made me so happy. i got teary.

can you give?

man, this haiti stuff is really upsetting. that country just can't catch a break can it. so devastating. since last night when i first heard about the earthquake i just can't get it out of my mind.

if you can donate anything, now's a time to do it. i'm partial to partner's in health. but npr has a good listing of other reputable places to give here.

post holiday holiday party recap

i'm still behind on posting pictures from our trip. but i wanted to get these few shots from our party up before too much time passed.

this years party was a blast, as it always is. this past saturday we had friends come from as far as the upstate to take place in the festivities. the hubby and i haven't done a count, but we guess we had maybe 35 people show up throughout the course of the night. and the cold did not deter some people from enjoying the fire in the back yard and having a s'more or 2, though we didn't get any outside shots.

thanks, everyone, for the great times and for making the holiday party a success!

christmas in chicago

even though the holidays seem long gone in some ways, we're still in the christmas mode here in our house. tonight is our annual post-holiday holiday party. (7:00 tonight at our place. please stop by.)

and in honor of our holiday spirit, here are some shots of our christmas in chicago.

we broke our drive up into 2 days (well, more accurately an evening and a full day) so the drive was much easier. and it was a very scenic landscape to watch pass by as we went from mountains to plains. very beautiful. so we pulled into chi-town around dinner time on the 23rd. speaking of dinner time, big shout out to team gerdes for making such fantastic meals for us! steaming hot red beans and rice awaited us upon our arrival. yum, comforting.


what's a visit to the gerdes house without playing with toys?

christmas eve was great. other than a little grocery shopping, we mostly spent the day hanging out around the apartment. then that night everybody went to evening mass and then out to the most delicious ethiopian food! yowza!


check out my man toasting with some chai.


the family at ras dashen


ok, i know it looks like doody here, but seriously, folks, that stuff is good eats!

christmas day was really fun. santa was good to everyone. and we had another fantastic home cooked meal. we spent much of the afternoon playing the wii. that was hilarious. we played rayman raving rabbids and me and the hubby spent the next 2 days with sore "wii-arms." we also did some of the wii fitness stuff and i got my wii age. i was the youngest in the group, i'm proud to say, and i clocked in at 38 years old. guess that's still not great considering that i'm 6 years younger than that. we also watched a few movies, because what is christmas without a christmas story?


erica and tricia excited to open presents!


opening gifts


dinner, yum!


the siblings playing the wii


me and fuzzy in a serious competition

when people hear that we were in chicago for christmas they always ask, didn't it snow? so, yes, it did snow. see:



the day after christmas we took a trip to see goober, the dog that tricia gave away to a man in chicago. we also had another fantastic lunch, this time at an algerian crepe place.


goober, the snow dog


outside the crepe place

and on the last day that we were there, erica and fuzzy threw a party in our honor. it was so sweet. a bunch of their friends bared the cold to come and see us. what an honor!


the kitchen was the place to be because it had the mulled wine!


of course, the array of food was delicious


megan especially liked the pickled okra


katie and rine-stone chatting it up


the kiddies running wild in the house full of toys!

more pictures from chicago in my flickr photo set.

spicy tofu bento bowl

thanks to vegetarian times, last night i made one of the *best* meals ever. my original thought in making it was so that the hubby could utilize the mae ploy thai sweet chili sauce (which was a christmas gift to him from yours truly). but the meal was so good, he didn't even use the sauce. truly yum.

make it tonight:

spicy tofu bento bowl

spicy tofu
1/4 c. soy sauce*
1/4 c. chile-garlic sauce**
2 tbs dark sesame oil (i used light)
14 oz extra firm dofu, drained and cubed
5 green onions, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 c. plain yogurt
2 tbs lemon jice

salad
1/4 c. soy sauce
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs mnced fresh ginger
1 tsp. chile-garlic sauce
2 c. cooked brown rice
4 1/2 c. mixed baby greens
2 carrots, peeled
1 cucumber, sliced (1 1/2 cups)
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
1 tbs. toasted sesame seeds***

1. to make spicy tofu: whisk together soy sauce, chile-garlic sauce, and sesame oil in bowl. heat skillet over medum heat. dip tofu in soy sauce mixture; place tofu in skillet and cook 10 minutes, or until browned. cool 10 minutes. add green onions, yogurt, and lemon juice to remaining chile mixture, toss with tofu.

2. to make salad: whisk together soy sauce, lemon juice, giner, and chile-garlic sauce in bowl. mound rice in serving bowls. top with greens. shave carrot strips over top with vegetable peeler. top with tofu, cucumber, and avocado. sprinkle with sesame seeds; serve with soy sauce mixture.


*surprisingly, this was the only ingredient i did not have in my kitchen. but i didn't realize it until i already started cooking. so i had to cut open all the little take-out packages of soy sauce that we had in the cupboard. guess we eat take-out chinese a lot because i had more than enough packets to make this recipe. (i used about 10 packets, if you find yourself in the same situation as me)

**i don't know if they had a specific chile-garlic sauce in mind, but i just happened to have kikkoman thai style chile sauce in the fridge and that worked great.

***i actually forgot the sesame seeds when i originally made this. i put them in the toaster, but forgot to turn it on and then totally forgot they were there until after dinner. it was just as good without the seeds, but i'm sure they would've made a tasty addition.

professor reid

congrats to the hubby who just got an adjunct teaching gig at the university in town!

i'll revel in a few days of celebration for what an amazing, talented, and smart husband i have before i start to freak out at how much work he has ahead of him.

christmas past

we finally returned from our cross-country family road trip. i didn't explicitly state on the blog that we were going anywhere. i'm always a little overly cautious about putting too much info on the blog before or during a trip saying we're out of town. i'm just a little paranoid that the information will be used against me and someone will rob our house. too many robberies growing up in philly, i guess.

we drove to chicago and spent 4 days at chris's sister and brother-in-law's place. and then we drove from chi to mississippi to spend some time with the extendeds. then, we returned on saturday. it was a whirl-wind trip but we had a fantastic time in chicago, and got a lot of visiting in and a lot accomplished in mississippi. i'll be posting pictures and sharing stories over the next little while.

before we inevitably head out of town each year for christmas, the hubby and i always open the presents from the other side of the family, those gifts that are not coming on the trip with us. here are some shots of that sweet little mini-early christmas.

getting nice and cozy to open gifts


baldman opening a gift


he got a target gift card which also doubles as a cool board game from my brother and his family


he also got a pepe the king prawn book. he's infatuated with that muppet these days.


mokey got a catnip shaker that she LOVES! (you're supposed to use it to shake catnip on things and let her roll on that. but we just put the whole shaker on the ground and let her go to town.)


a tired me models and shows off the waldie family gifts (the book was written by my brother)

there are more pictures of our pre-christmas christmas at home in columbia on our flickr page.