Celebration!

I think we're trying to make up for our absence by overwhelming the blog with new posts. But we just couldn't help ourselves. Mr. Wino and I are now the proud uncle and aunt of a beautiful baby girl!

We are celebrating by drinking a sparkling wine and smoking a cigar (Mr. Wino only).

This sparkler was unusual. Usually you see a bubbly clear or pink champagne. This tasty sparkler was made of shiraz, a red wine. Nonetheless, it was absolutely delicious. It was very sweet and flavorful, with fruity/berry undertones. It's not an everyday champagne/sparkler - it might be best split amongst more than two people, because it's heavier than your normal sparkler. Definitely a break from the usual.

*insert Rocky theme here*

I've been telling everyone I know that I signed up for a 5k in May and that I'm training very hard for it. That's my way of making sure I do it, because otherwise, my coworkers and customers will publicly shame me.

Now, loyal reader(s), you all know too. Bring on the potential shaming!

Today I reached the halfway point in the couch-to-5k program I'm on (this one), which has been a good choice for me. The challenge right now is to muscle past the point at about one minute of solid running where my lungs and calves refuse to run any further. I walk, and then I start it over again. Mr. Wino, the consummate runner, comes with me once a week and cheers me on - today I was dehydrated and loopy and tried to sing the Rocky theme for the last three minutes... you know, maybe that isn't something I should share with the general public.

This meme seemed appropriate.

In other news, I got a raise today! I celebrated... by buying more clothes for running in. It's an endless cycle, y'all.

This kinda got away from us.

Sorry folks, life has gotten crazy for us. I'm working at a five sided building in DC now, and between the work, the commute and my running, I have about enough time left over for maintaining our marriage and about six hours of sleep.

Excuses, excuses.

There's lots of stuff to catch up on! The other half just got a small raise and is weighing some career options that could make our life and finances go a little easier. My Dad gave me an entry into a 50 mile race this summer as an early birthday present, and I'm super stoked. We've just celebrated our third anniversary, sadly our first one together. Winette is training for a 5k and kicking ass! She's been counting calories and keeping us healthy and I'm proud of how much she seems to be enjoying herself (plus she looks even more amazing than before. You other ladies don't stand a chance!)

We've been waxing a bit existential lately. We both feel like we're not living up to our full career potential, and boy howdy that's depressing. On the bright side, we're both stable and working out of our college debts.

On a total tangent, I work with a guy who has been photographing the highest levels of our government for about 36 years. His name is Jerome. He's a very charismatic guy, he tells great stories, and his cubicle is right next to mine. Behind us there's a tv that's almost always tuned to either cnn or fox news. The other day we were watching some inane argument between senators, and I made a comment about how ridiculous it is that people buy in to some of the garbage politicians say just to attack other party.

Jerome immediately blows my mind. He starts telling me stories about how bitter rivals on tv usually are best friends. I won't go into details, because I feel like it would violate his trust, and it's all second hand anyways.

At first I'm pretty upset. Here's this old hat, been around the block DC figure telling me our government is an oligarchy and the whole system is a show. But then I started thinking about it, and it would be a really smart way to run a conglomeration of governments like our own. I tried to type it out in detail but it's pretty convoluted, so in summary, my thought is if you want to keep a large population with a variety of local governments stable you have to divide them against each other just enough to keep them bickering and out of the real details of governance, but not so much that things get violent. It saves you the trouble of having to rule with an iron fist, and all you have to really ensure is that you keep the middle class sustained enough to maintain a tertiary economy and by extension global influence.

Or maybe it's a load of bullhooey. But it's been on my mind. Feel free to comment.

The Obligatory Resolution Entry

So, we did diddly-squat for Christmas. I'm even still procrastinating on gifts. I need to send those out, preferably yesterday, so the dear husband stops needling me about them.

2011 was a pretty good year for us personally. We went on our first cruise; Mr. Wino ran his first marathon; I got a promotion and a (teeny) pay raise; we adopted a second cat; and at the very end of the year, Mr. Wino got to leave the unit he hated so much. Sayonara, suckers!

So what's left for 2012? Lots. We have resolved to:

• Tighten our budget. We finally figured out a way to probably make it work, and we'd really like to have enough money to buy a house when Mr. Wino gets out of the military.
• Tighten our belts (literally). As much as we love the vino and the delicious food, it's not doing either of our triglycerides any good. I'm making it a personal goal to minimize the processed foods we buy in an attempt to make us both healthier.
• Tighten our booties (okay, that one doesn't really work). Mr. Wino ran a marathon last year and this year he wants to run a 50k, because he's crazy. I walked/ran a 5k last year and this year I will run at least one.

 Are all of our goals cliched? Yes. That's because they're classics. And a classic never goes out of style.

Happy new year!

Fish Tales

A few weeks ago, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas, and now we wish we could go back.

 

That's about all that needs saying about how awesome it was.

Fun story time!

Wino and I went snorkeling - me for the first time. Which was awesome, and also hilarious. Wino and I had gotten out a little bit far from the rest of our group, so when we heard the tour guide calling, I assumed he just wanted us to come in further to keep an eye on us. After looking at all the pretty fishes, I started paddling back closer to the catamaran, and then the tour guide threw a piece of food right by where I was swimming. 

About two hundred fish swarmed around me to get the food, so I did the natural thing. I screamed, flailed wildly, lost my snorkel, got nibbled by fish, and swallowed a giant gulp of saltwater as my life jacket got pressed against my cheek and began to deflate. Meanwhile, both Wino and the tour guide, who had seen the entire thing, were laughing hysterically. I told Wino later that I should have just thrown up the seawater then, because it made me feel sick for a few hours afterwards, and he laughed. "The fish would have seen it as food!" he said. "You'd have just started a cycle."

Feeling thoroughly embarrassed, I paddled back to the boat. Adding insult to injury, the tour guide threw the little life-saver donut at me! I sniffed, set it aside, and swam back to the boat myself, goddamit, and pulled my own mortified ass back on board.

That night, I had dreams of tiny fishes dragging me underwater to their sea dungeon. And that, folks, is my fun (and funny) story from the cruise!

Cajun Chicken Pasta and Cruz Alta Chardonnay

Today, Wino and I went for our very first walk. We're getting a head on our New Year's resolutions; we've started walking in the evenings, and we've worked out a "tighten-your-belt" budget that we've already started. Crazy!

Since we burned all those many, many calories walking, it was a good night to make Cajun Chicken Pasta.

Basically, it's delicious. Wino tells me that if I made it every single week, he would never get tired of it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I could eat it every day, and he would never complain... although we would both get extremely fat. It's the kind of meal that is so good you feel obligated to have seconds.

So, if you get a chance, try that recipe. Or come to our house, and I'll make it for you!

With dinner, we had Cruz Alta Chardonnay.



It's the white wine little brother of our "house red", the Cruz Alta Malbec, and we enjoy it. It's sweet, but it doesn't linger on your tongue. It's also perfect for chicken (I cooked with it as well as drinking it with dinner).

Now if only I would do the other things that I meant to do today: laundry, cleaning the guest room, video games... but I'm just so content and full of pasta.

Happy Thanksgiving, Belated.

This is what was happening Thanksgiving morning, about 8 AM:

Let me back up and explain. (That isn't our oven in the picture, I just found it because pictures are worth a thousand words.)

Wino and I were asked by his unit on Wednesday to cook a turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner. He agreed, but since I was at work all day Wednesday, it was left to him to actually cook the sucker by himself.

Which he did, and by all accounts his turkey was delicious. It was also, however, extremely juicy. He told me that it dripped into the extremely deep roasting pan and overfilled it, spilling all over the oven floor. But lest you think that's what set the oven on fire, remember - it was only Wednesday.

After a delightful Wednesday evening with friends, we both woke up at about 4 AM Thursday determined to clean the entire downstairs and get a dinner cooked up for our friends coming over for Thanksgiving. So, at about 5 am, I scrubbed out the oven (which was covered in some pretty nasty burned-up turkey drippings) with oven cleaner. This smoked a little, but we got the house aired out, and at 7:45 am, I began to preheat the oven for a pie. Unfortunately, after the house got extremely smoky, we checked the oven... and IT WAS ON FIRE.

Let me reiterate.

We're very lucky people, folks. Wino immediately doused the fire with a fire extinguisher, we called the housing company for the neighborhood we live in, and we had a new oven in our house in two hours. On Thanksgiving.

And then we had to clean the kitchen of that nasty fire extinguisher powder.

So, what do you think it was? The oven cleaner, or the turkey drippings from the day before? We've settled on the third option - the oven was extremely old and was going to go anyways (we've had issues with it for almost a year) and we just gave it the opportunity.

Why I can't take Wino anywhere.

Do you really hate grocery shopping? Not as much as my delightful husband. It doesn't matter how disgusting the kitchen is; he will always opt to clean the kitchen rather than go with me to the commissary. Today, though, I managed to "convince" him to come with me. Also known as whining.

Things my husband does in the commissary:
1. Complains about how fast I walk.
2. Walks really slowly.
3. Eyes every tasty looking thing that isn't on the list.
4. Sighs heavily.
5. Convinces me to pick up things for him (and me) that I would normally never get.

Basically, he's a large, mostly well-behaved child.

Today, he had managed to talk me into getting some nut/fruit/granola mix and a bottle of green tea for him, and a glass bottle of lemonade for me. I was actually a little excited about the lemonade, which is why it will surprise no one that while loading the groceries onto the conveyer belt, Mr. Wino dropped the glass bottle onto his foot, where it shattered.

His foot is, thankfully, fine. Our dignity was bruised pretty hard; almost all the friends I have who work at the commissary witnessed it, and my subsequent sigh of, "THIS is why we can't have nice things!"

So, the moral of the story is that I should probably shop alone.

Caramels and Beer

Mr. Wino and I both have our vices. Mine is anything crunchy and salty - potato chips, pretzels, goldfish crackers, you name it. My dear husband, however, has a beast of a sweet tooth. If we buy a pint of ice cream, I will eat three spoonfuls, and he will devour the rest. He confessed to me recently that he can eat himself sick on his favorite sweet, caramels.

I didn't believe it. So while we were in a Godiva store, we bought some truffles (for me) and a bag of caramels (for him). In four hours, the caramels were gone. I'm still savoring my truffles.

Now that he had proved his addiction, he asked me to not buy them for him. So naturally, I went to Trader Joe's on Wednesday and bought some for him.

Mr. Wino did a really good job that night - he only ate three, then asked me to "hide them". But since I'm pretty sure he could sniff them out anywhere I stuck them, I tucked them right next to my chair. And amazingly, he had the self-control to not go looking for them... but tonight, I pulled them out, and we ate a few, and again he asked me to hide them.

I was determined to find a better hiding spot for them this time. So I sauntered into the kitchen and tucked them somewhere I was sure he wouldn't go looking, then (kind of smugly) sat back down.

A few minutes later:

Him: You know what I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow?
Me: What?
Him: A peanut butter and banana sandwich.
Me: Well, crap!
Him: What?
Me: I have to find a better place for the caramels. I put them between the peanut butter and the bananas! Damn it!

Of course, he laughed hysterically. He's a wizard, y'all.

On a boozy note, we went out to an early dinner tonight at a restaurant/brewery called DuClaw's. They make many very tasty beers, and we sampled a few. I had their Euphoria, which tastes a bit like toffee, and is very smooth. It's my "usual". Mr. Wino had both the Twisted Kilt, a typical Scotch ale that he said was strong but a good choice, and another seasonal, 31º, which was "double spiced" and which we both thought was delicious.

Now we're at home, hanging out with some new books we treated ourselves to. Happy Friday to us all!

P.S. Tomorrow, the Suit Project begins. Dun dun duuunnnnn...

Wine Wednseday, aka Pour Decisions

Aperitif de choix: 2010 Angelini Pinot Grigio Veneto (delicious), 2007 Kestrel Falcon Series Syrah, (more delicious-er) J.K.'s Scrumpy Hard Cider

First off, get yourself a glass of the aforementioned hard cider. Second, hey everyone! Just a quick update, don't have much to talk about tonight. Bottled my various boozes, I'm particularly excited about the stout. The mead will be ready by... December 2012?

Right, well this wine won't drink itself. Cheers!