Shopping for me...

So first off, Shannon and I joined NetFlix and our first movie sent to us was Walk the Line. I gotta say that it was a damn good movie.

Anyways, yesterday we had some shopping to do. Not only are we low on food, but I needed to replace pants that I've been wearing for almost 5 years and shoes too!

So we headed over to Jordan Creek Town Center. We were both a bit confused, thinking that there was a JC Penny's there, but we ended up going to Younkers. Which still worked out to our advantage. After trying on several diffrent kinds of pants, I ended up buying 4 diffrent colors of the same cut and brand of pants. They are comfy.

Afterwards, we headed in the way of the food court to get something to eat, and stopped by Clarie's to get some more earrrings for Shannon.

We ate some mediocre to mediocrely crappy chineese food, and then stopped by a few stores before we headed to Tradehome to get some shoes. Now normally I wouldnt' care where I get my shoes, but I generally have good luck at Tradehome (with my hugely wide feet), so I generally go there.

Shonnon got a pair of Crocs, and I got a new pair of Docs (to replace my current pair that are almost 5 years old) and a new pair of New Balence walking shoes.

Then we headed to target to get some stuff that the house needs and some food.

We cut the list short, and I do some real grocery shopping shopping Saturday, while Shannon's at work. I need to pick up stuff to make Shannon's Cake and meal for her birthday. We picked up a few things for it, but not much. I also need to buy some tools, cause I don't have them (Spice mill, Zester, etc), which are required to make the frosting or cake.

I'l be making a Devil's Food Cake w/ Butter Cream Frosting and then some Lobster Pasta...I plan to use real lobster, but I've no desire to get a whole lobster and crack it to get the meat, so I'll use extra salty fake lobster if I can't just get lobster meat fresh...

Oh and we bought a Cake holder so I don't have to have the cake sit out in the air (and I can take some leftovers to work).

catchup or ketchup?

Saturday day, we cleaned, and later in the day, I picked up Shannon's other present (diamond earrings) and the pen we ordered.

So Saturday night we met up with Josh, Lindsay, Adam and Tiffany at the Waterfront for some seafood. I had my first experience with fish eggs that night. I got an order of the dragon sushi (lots of fish eggs) and volcano. And both were good. The fish eggs are kinda weird being soildish but making it easy to kind of explode in one's mouth. Certainly an interesting experience. I gotta say that ginger is good by itself and wasabi and Soy SauceShannond tried (and liked to some extent) the sushi.

Afterwards, we thought about going out to a moive, but decided to go home and watch one instead.

Sunday, we headed off and listened to Holly play in the Des Moines Community Orchestra. It was an interesting program. I recognized more of the program then I usually do. They had a fairy tale theme with music from Ali Baba, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty. It was a good time. During the intermission Chris invited us over to watch the Oscar's at his place. The Oscar's were fun, it was nice to watch it with other people.

So I came to a conclusion, I do love mustard, and I like to sample lots of them, but it pretty much comes back to my old standby (other then yellow). Gulden's Spicey Brown...mmm...so good.

Today was busy again, I started by moving forward and looking at one place to get the Rehersal dinner scheduled...Reordered the latest contract from West Des Moines Park and Rec (since one of the cats spilled a glass all over it).

So...uh...we'll see.

I'm thinking about getting Shannon another birthday present...but...I haven't decided yet. I do need to figure out how to make her a deep dark chocolate cake this week.

Hectic...

It's been a hectic week.

Tuesday, we went to the Funny Bone with what was originally supposed to be 3 other people, but ended up being 1 other person from Shannon's work. Wednesday was laundry for me, thursday, Movie night (A Streetcar Named Desire, which was good), but work has just ben a pile of little things...I worked a little longer then normal this week and I don't really feel like I accomplished much.

A little here a little there, but the new projects haven't moved forward at all...

Oh well...next week is another week.

Starting next Saturday, it's gonna be very hectic...

3/11 - Taylor's (Nathan and Jenny's First child) big Sister Party (Can't go, Shannon works that morning)
3/11 - Jerry and Renee's Wedding reception (both)
3/12 - Shannon's Birthday (both)
3/13 - IT all hand's meeting (all day meeting for me)
3/15 - Maybe another movie night? (both)
3/16 - Xbox 360 Tour show (I'm going for Panic!) (me)
3/18 - Dave is moving (both)
3/18 - Lion King (both)

yeah...

it's late and I'm tired

So I came home today, a little later then normal for me, and I come home and the house is all quiet, so I go upstairs to change out of my work clothes gather up the laundry and start to wash my work clothes...

I was in kind of a rotten mood, the day was frantic, people pulling me this way and that, no end in sight of the newly piled on projects on top of our 2 main time consuming projects.

I go into our bedroom and Shannon's in there taking a nap, looking all peaceful, George (kitty) on one side, Gracie (kitty) on the other.

It just put a smile on my face, Shannon's face so calm, cats not trying to destroy the house (they've been on a bit of a war with each other lately).

I really do love that girl.

Of course the day ends all crappy with some work related stuff...but oh well, what can you do?

I'm going to bed..

Sometimes...

Sometimes I think on the past and remember things I have done, some good, some bad, some worse. Up while Shannon sleeps.

She has to work tomarrow, I do not.

I think...

I think...

I think...

I think I'll have another beer.

Soda...with what's this, Sugar!

So at our last trip to CostCo, we bought a case of soda...Not just any soda, but Goose Island Root Beer. It's made with real sugar! In the days where everything is sweetened with corn syrup/sweetener (even, as I found out the other day, Vanilla). It's nice to see people actually use sugar. It tastes better.

At one of the local mexican resturants they have pepsi imported from Mexico, that also has cane sugar in it, and I gotta say, it's so much better then the regular soda.

Early birthday Presents

So on the cold cold Saturday, we did a little shopping, got some things that we needed, a present for Jerry and Renee's wedding reception, and then stopped by Joseph's.

Shannon wants a tiara, necklace and earrings for the wedding. Now it doesn't make much sense to buy a realish type tiara that she's really only gonna wear once, but as far as the earrings and necklace, she can wear those with more frequency, so why not buy quality?

We started looking at necklace pendants and what not, there we a lot of really pretty things there. When she pulled out a heart shaped pendant encrusted with diamonds and I saw the price tag, I about lost control and crapped myself. It was pretty, but I was in no way looking to spend my entire tax return plus $1000 more, for just that, and not a necklace to hold it.

After a few smaller shocks (prices decreasing), we got into things that were very pretty, yet still sensibly priced.

We got a white gold necklace, with a small heart pendant with a diamond in it (picture later).

Then we looked at earrings. There were several pretty ones, but neither of us liked how they looked on. We ended up ordering a size between those are too small and those are a healthy size in diamond studs. They'll look pretty on her, adding a bit of attention getting sparkle without being too gaudy.

Then we went over and looked at pens for the wedding book (and then for me afterwards). Between a few choices, we ended up with this one. I like the way it writes, although our sales lady did let us know that it may smear more for those of us in our families and friends that are left handed...but...it's for me afterwards, so they can deal :-P Since they didnt' have the pen in stock, they ordered it for us.

Shannon should have her earrings in time for her birthday, so she'll probably debut them at Jerry and Renee's reception.

more memory

So I finally officially requested more RAM for my computers at work.

So for my desktop they added another 256 (to make it 512), but they are going to replace it, eventually, so that it will be at least a gig.

And for lappy they took out a 256 meg module and put in a gig module...(so 512 to 1256 megs)

oh the speed diffrence....mmm...alt tab works so smoothly...

I'm so happy.

Visiting Ames, The Birdman, and the rest of the week...

Wednesday night, we headed over to Chris and Pat's to watch the Grapes of Wrath, for the AFI top 100 film watching thing. It was a good movie. I brought over the bottle of white that I had chilled for valentine's day. The wine was ok, not great. The movie was pretty good. Certainly gives a few into how the whole depression worked. Good times...

As soon as I had gotten home from work, on Thursday, (Shannon had taken the day off), we headed up to Ames. We wanted to get there early enough to eat and maybe make it to the book store (I was going to buy an ISU diploma frame or two so I could put up my diplomas on the wall).

So the weather was supposed all nasty and awful, as was predicted, but it really wasn't that bad, or so I thought. The Interstate was fine, and until we turned off I35 on to Highway 30...Suddenly it was very windy. Apprenty the wind was blowing south.

I gave Seth and Briana a call and they agreed to meet us for dinner. I had been craving Great Plains Pizza for a while. It's one of the two resturants in Ames that I actually miss (The other being Battle's BBQ). So we went there. We had pizza and some soda and it was great. We caught up with Seth and Bri, which was great. I got to do my favorite part of the pizza, taking the end of the thick wheat crust and covering it in honey to finish it off. Their pizza is probably my favorite that I've had.

So being that we still had lots of time to the concert, we headed next door to the Corner Pocket. Seth, Bri and I had a Guiness and Shannon had a Bacardi Raz and Seth and I played a game of pool (which he let me win). Afterwards we said our goodbyes and Shannon and I headed to the M-Shop.

We parked, headed in, checked to see if the book store was open (it wasn't, it had closed 15 minutes before), and then, since we were still running early, headed in to the reading library (which during my 6 years at ISU I had never actually gone in), and hung out for a little while and read.

So we headed down to get into the show, and apprently because of some sort of delay, the show wasn't going to open it's doors until 8:30 (instead of 8). So we stood around and waited and waited...

and waited...

At around 8:50 they finally opened the doors. We had been near the doors, until we both started feeling a little crowded and moved more to the back of the line and less of a crowd.

It took us a while to get in and were a bit disappointed when we found out that they didn't have chairs setup...

So we took a spot to the side of the stage where it wasn't so crowded and then moved back a bit to get out of direct line of the speakers.

The first person up was Haley Bonar. She had a very breathy voice and she sang folksy songs about various things, including her cat. We both liked her, enough so we tried to buy her album, after her set...and...well...couldn't. The Andrew Bird people were not selling her stuff, and she was no where to be found...But after the entire show, we picked up both Lure the Fox and The Size of Planets. I'll let you know how much I like her albums when I get a chance to sit down and listen to them both...

Next up was Martin Dosh. Shannon really didn't like how much bass there was. But after it listened to it for a while, I kinda liked it, not enough to buy...yet...but certainly enough to see him with someone else I liked. A good example of his music and how he does it is in this video.

Then the headliner, Andrew Bird. Now this is the same guy where after I saw him in October in 2004 I went out and bought all the albums that he had. He played with Martin Dosh and Haley Bonar over his set, and he had quite the mix of the old and current (redone in the way that his music grows and changes) and the new as well. With the new really making me crave his next album, which his site says should be recorded this year. Sometimes when he was talking between songs, I wanted to whack some people on the head and tell them to stop talking and pay attention to the show. But I was impressed. By the end of the show, Shannon was getting very tired, so we prepared to go.

He did do an encore, and for that he also had everyone that had played over the night help him out on the last few songs. It really was a good time. Here's a good video from his website on how he does his shows., not the best audio quality... Over here they have an entire show, audio quality much better.

I bought Haley's CDs and then we headed home. It was really cold, but the roads were fine. We got home at around 1 AM. I had to print out maps and make sure Shannon's phone got charged up so I didn't get into bed until 1:30 or 1:45, which made getting up at 6:AM to shovel the light fluffy snow all the tougher, espically since it was windy and cold.

I was a bit grumpy until Brandon and I took a trip to La Mie and I got myself a mocha and a cinnamon roll, then my day started to look up.

Shannon's Mom was coming up to take a peek at the wedding venues, and spend some time with shannon to get a better idea of decorations, colors, and what not. So they headed over to the wedding chapel and met the caterer (Winstons/Chef's Kitchen) at the nature lodge. I met up with them and we had lunch at Palmer's over in West Des Moines.

So with discussions with the Nature Lodge and Winston's/Chef's Kitchen, we are going to have a Cash bar. The contract that I got from the nature lodge pretty much said we'd have to pay for everything, but when I emailed and asked, it turns out as long as our caterer has the license and the insurance, then it's fine to actually sell beer/wine. Of course I've now asked for a new contract, cuase the way this one is written doesn't make any damn sense, for what we want to do.

So to clarify and ask a few questions, Shannon and I went to Chef's Kitchen for dinner (through the very cold weather). They let us sample a bottle of Champagne to use for the wedding, which, for Shannon, got a "It's not to bad", which, from her, concerning booze, is more like a this is pretty damn good! from other people. It was not very strong and more fruity then dry, so I think it'll work out great for us. Dinner was good too...yes...we had champagne and french fries :) I had the muffeletta sandwhich and Shannon had the chicken alfredo sandwhich.

Aftewards we rented The Producers and Must Love Dogs, and went home to watch them. We watched The Producers, during which, since I had around 4 hours of sleep, I fell asleep once or twice, I'll probably watch it again today though. For me, around 9:PM I headed up to go to bed. When Shannon came up, I got up and brushed my teeth and actually got ready for bed rather then sleep in my clothes.

Busy at home, busy at work, it gets tiring.

Valentine's Day!

Lots of pictures!
I started by laying out the chocolate covered cherry cordials and strawberrys, purchased from Stam.

Then came cooking the bacon. I chopped it up and slow cooked it in the pan.

While the bacon was cooking I chopped up the other ingrediants. A mix of green and red onions, cherry tomatoes, and mint (as it turns out later, not enough mint).

Drained out most of the bacon grease, added the green and red onions (not all of the ones that I cut, about half of a red onion and half of the green onions.

Got the water ready for the mix of yellow and white corn (Butter, pepper, a little bit of salt (since it's a special ocassion), and some of the cooked bacon.

Added the sliced cherry tomatoes

And the fresh mint.

Stirred it up.

I had picked up a Ciabatta from La Mie, so I tossed it in the oven for a bit to warm it up.

Mmmm...lamb. From the Ingersol Dahl's (which I've been told is the best/only place to buy lamb in the Des Moines area).


Black plums...

Shannon had gotten home, so she checked out her Valentine's day gifts (The chocolate was for me too, I had them custom pack it being extra heavy on the Dark chocolate (Shannon's favorite)).

The lamb is cooking...

To add a little interesting flavor, chopped up the black plums.

In the pan they go.

Preparing the decoration...


Adding the corn to the water/bacon/butter mix.

Slicing up a few pices of warm bread.

I should've cut the bacon pieces smaller...but it's still a colorful mix...I should've trimed the fat off the lamb too...Living and learning...



mmmm....bread...

The Butter is from Ireland...

The wine I had put in the fridge wasn't cold enough yet (white), so we had milk :)

Yeah you'd think that was something special in the middle...just chocolate cool whip. I have no idea how to get the dollop look they have on the side of the container...

So that was pretty much Valentines day...

The mint didn't really show through in the mix, so I guess I should've used more....or not used onions. The taste was still pretty good. Shannon doesn't really like the strong flavor of the plums, so that detracted from the meal for her.

We played a little bit of Scene it...to end the night.