oh baby!

baby shower memoirs

the guest of honor, leila
my favorite guest.

quote of the day

oh, you hate your job? there's a support group for that. it's called EVERYBODY and they meet at the bar.
-drew carey

college reunion and other good times

last saturday was my college reunion. i know, i'm old. so the entire experience was certainly surreal, because i'm sure i knew more people in college than it seemed. at least, i hope i did!

my only college pal that i talk to on a regular basis.












the girls from back in the day.














my girls, the best ones ever, that i met up with after.













this guy ripped his pants at my wedding.

finally, some recognition!

well, this could technically be interpreted in a not-so-great-way. you know what i mean.

my first dinner party

i must say, all went well. i served an all-vegetarian mexican dinner. on the menu:

appetizers - salsa verde, salsa caliente, guacamole and chile rellenos.

main course - avacado enchiladas, zucchini and portabella tacos and rice and beans

dessert - vanilla coffee and a sample tray of desserts from tiffany's bakery
all that was left after the party was over. we used my great-grandmother's china. but that was mostly because we only have placesettings for four from our wedding dishes.

salsa caliente. los tried it, then nobody ate it. he now thinks i was trying to kill him. hmmm... death by salsa? i'm changing the name.

death by salsa:

6 large tomatoes, seeded, cut into chunks

1/2 large onion,in large chunks

1 cup red pepper, seeded and diced

juice from one lime

1 cup cilantro leaves

2 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 fresh, seeded habanero chile

toss everything into the food processor. process until well combined (not necessarily smooth). enjoy!

amen, sister

it's cold

therefore, i'm posting a link to the livecam at the monterey bay aquarium so that everyone can visit the penguins. pic is also from the bay's website.
http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_splash/splash_cam.asp

three is the magic number

our favorite little boy turned three over the weekend. here are a few highlights.

yay metro!

finally. the dc metro has finally done something good.
the vienna metro station has installed gates for smarttrip users only. this is a wonderful progression. this means that i don't have to wait for stupid people (i.e. tourists) who don't know how to insert their little paper metro cards into the gate, i can just go to the speed gate and slip right through.
yay metro!
now if they could only get it to run on time.

About Me

Lindsey is: 32, even if she's 25.

Lindsey says: 'Like' waaaaay too much.

Lindsey does: the environmental reviews for FEMA preparedness grants. Seriously! FEMA really does do preparedness! Truly. This is not a joke.

Lindsey can: play the baritone, touch her tongue to her nose, get lost while driving anywhere, plan a trip using exclusively the metro, run in 4 inch heels, draw the chemical reaction creating acid rain.

Lindsey can't: whistle, time travel, do math in her head, make it snow (although to make it rain she only has to wash her car), spell supercalifragelisicexper- expi- expy- oh never mind.

Lindsey loves: her husband, her babies, her dogs, her fish, her lizards, her gardens. And spicy food. And cardigans. And shoes, although that's on an entirely different level that might not be called love anymore, and is probably clinically unhealthy and may require treatment including a white jacket and a padded room.

Lindsey hates: crocs, mustard, collard greens, disorganization, unmade beds, dirty dishes on countertops.

Lindsey eats: fish, eggs, cheese, fruit, vegetables, grains.

Lindsey doesn't eat: red or white meat, and hasn't in 17 years.

Lindsey smells: like Light Blue from D&G or like No. 19 from Chanel. Mostly she smells like a refugee from the Body Shop.

Lindsey watches: Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Hell's Kitchen, LOST, the original CSI, House, Handy Manny, Deadliest Catch, Hawaii Five-0, and anything with Clive Owen in it, except for Shoot 'Em Up becaust that was reaaaaaally bad. Marathons of the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits, pretty much everything on the Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, or National Geographic.

Lindsey reads: the Washington Post, a million blogs, and whatever it currently says on Goodreads.

Lindsey can't leave the house without: making her bed, making sure all bottles and containers are facing the same direction, making sure all the towels are folded correctly, letting the dogs outside to pee.

Lindsey believes: in karma, that she who dies with the most shoes wins, in affordable healthcare for everyone who wants it, in caring for things that can't care for themselves, in preserving what's left of this world for her children's children, that ignorance is more expensive than education, that she's smarter than a fifth grader, in finding solutions instead of band-aids to difficult problems, that the only way to regulate integrity is to have government and businesses open all of their records to the public, and that even then it's questionable.

CHCI reyes of comedy

it's national hispanic month! and since we as a couple are 1/2 hispanic (bet you can't guess which half i am) we went to the reyes of comedy last night at the warner theater, after a dose of fish tacos at baja fresh. the comedians were hillarious... i especially liked bill santiago (premium blend) and darren carter (latino laugh festival). i also liked that one of the comedians was a congresswoman from california - linda sanchez. i guess people from california are more laid back, because i could never imagine a congressperson from virginia putting themselves out there like that.
http://www.chci.org/events/2005HHM/rcn.htm to see CHCI events in dc.

apples!

this weekend, we made the trek to charlottesville to visit two of our favorite people, ben and noel. this included a trip to the apple orchard near their house, and lots of picking, eating and all other things related to apples.
ben and los even waited in a 30 minute line to get apple doughnuts, which i have to admit are awesome.

these apple trees are pretty tiny. which means no climbing. :(

great view.

ben and noel.

us.

gray's (caution... spoiler!)

finally had time to watch the dvr'd gray's anatomy. which has been in my top three favorite shows since episode 1 (prison break and lost round out the picture). and some moron scheduled it at on a new day, which happens to coincide with school. idiots.
i liked how they dealt with izzy breaking down because of denny's death. i think it was the perfect expression of a person dealing with the death of someone close. it's not quite that you shut down, your brain never stops. it's that you don't know what to do, so you don't do anything. and nobody else knows what to do either, so they cook and try to talk to you, which doesn't help. sometimes you just need to be.
the whole der/mer thing can't be resolved, otherwise the biggest plotline of the show will be gone. the show needs the conflict there or we wouldn't watch it with bated breath every week. but derick always gets the best lines. he made tad's whole 'throwing his hat in' speech seem pretty weak. and if i were in tad's position, i'd be so pissed that i'd just be done, none if this 'choose' crap. btw, i think it's ironic how addison and mer's personalities are so different. addison is stronger, more forceful, stands on her own, where mer is needy and whiny. complete opposites.
i was slightly disappointed in addison. she had the opportunity to make a big scene with the underwear, instead she chose to be passive agressive and post them on the bulliten board. and speaking of which, didn't those panties seem awful large for mer's tiny little behind? kinda reminded me of the ones in 'road trip'.
george, oh george. how messed up are you? he can only tell the girl that he knows doesn't love him that he loves her, but can't get into the mess of actually having feelings returned. but callie was right, they're all still 17.

what's your type?

my saturday was devoted to a seminar on the myers-briggs instrument determining personality type. for all who are interested, i am apparently an intj. stereotypically, this means that:
i believe in change for the sake of change, it leads to learning.
i eat, sleep, drink and breathe complexity, competition and love puzzles.
i constantly ask 'why?'.
i perceive the person i view as the most competent as the leader instead of the person with the job title.
i tend to have extreme impatience for people i view as incompetent, and things that i view are a waste of time.
my dirty little secret is that i have a massive internal critic, and i'm always raising the bar.
my challenge is how to cope with never viewing myself as being good enough.

hm.
check it out for yourself - http://www.myersbriggs.org/

...still printing...

who would have thought it would take this long? but i'm almost finished. then i have to put the pictures in a book.
picked up the 2 cameras from costco - the first was from my parent's table, pictures were good but not great, a little dark. the other camera was from the will/jane/dana/marcello/mandi/ed table. those pictures were all great! except for the finger covering the camera lens. in almost every picture. no more disposable-cameras-during-the-open-bar for you guys.

printing... printing... printing

i have decided to get off of my kiester and print/develop our wedding pictures. so here i am, printing, for hours. i dropped off two of the table cameras (i picked them at random, so i can't tell you which ones they were, table #3) at costco for the one-hour while i shopped last sunday. of course, i forgot all about them and still haven't picked them up.
but i did buy grapes.

ecological footprint

i stumbled across this website - http://www.myfootprint.org/ which tells you about how much of the earth's resources you use. i consider myself to be an environmental person: i recycle, don't eat any animal products besides egg, dairy and certain kinds of fish, i take public transportation most of the time, i donate money to environmental charities. and if everyone lived like me, there would need to be 4.8 earths to sustain us all.
looks like i'm not very environmental, after all.

the perfect present.

mmm. the aston martin v8 vantage. breathtakingly beautiful, 380 horses and 0-60 in 4.9 seconds. now that's hot.

the bathroom war - interior decorating

www.fishandflush.com

Alas, the Los says no. But I'm working on it.

if only...

i present the smithsonian castle. if only my office/broom closet had a window, this is what i would see.

my.brain.is.tired.

i knew that grad school classes involved a lot of reading. i swear i did. but 150 pages per class? that's (for my part-time 2 classes) 300 pages a week. plus assignments, papers, and other stuff. not to mention working full time. and having a life.
i think i might have to give up the life.
sniff.

gelman library, where i have a premonition i am going to be spending a lot of time.

rub the hippo's nose for good luck. i'm going to be doing a lot of that.

book signing

on saturday, we went to a book signing by brad meltzer for his new book, the book of fate. he's one of my favorite authors, and also signed my copy of the tenth justice. other great books by brad are the zero game, first council, and dead even. i didn't really care for the millionaires that much, and he also writes graphic novels which are out of my scope of interest.
the signing was at wegman's in sterling, and we only waited in line for about half an hour. he was very nice, and seemed like kind of a dork, which i had already assumed. you can't write books that require this much research if you aren't a dork. sorry, brad.
we had only been to the wegman's in fairfax once, but i have to say this grocery store is huge. we ate lunch there from the deli part, which consists of about thirty different counters offering different kinds of food. we both got sandwiches, french fries, and cookies. the problem with grocery stores that are too big though, you think you need everything. which of course you don't. and then it goes bad in your fridge.

visiting the alpacas

obviously, no trip involving any member of my family (yes, including me) is complete without at least one trip to visit some kind of animal. this trip, we went to an alpaca farm (just like the ones on dirty jobs a couple weeks ago!)
what are alpacas, you ask? alpacas are a domesticated south american (from peru, bolivia and chile) hooved mammal having long, silky fleece, related to the llama and believed to be a variety of the guanaco.

this is the alpaca farm that was kind enough to let a bunch of strangers roam around for a while. visit them on their website, www.epfalpacas.com

vacation?

man, i need a vacation from my vacation. here's a recap:

tuesday - flew from virginia to indianapolis, drove 3 hours to decatur. ate at steak'n'shake for lunch, el rodeo for dinner.

wednesday - drove to mattoon, checked out some things for that pesky job, drove back to decatur. ate at monicals after a brief cry that the mongolian garden has gone the way of the dinosaur.

thursday - hung out with the parental units, drove to mattoon, ate at little mexico, went to a meeting, drove back to decatur (nearly ran a horse and buggy off the road), hung out at albright's bar (block's) with mandi and ed.

friday - ate lunch at steak'n'shake, went to my aunt's in bethany, went to torment my baby sister at her place of employment (texas roadhouse for all those who would also enjoy tormenting said baby sister).

saturday - ate lunch at o'charley's with jamie, ryan and austin. jamie is about to pop, she's due december first. played frisbee with my parents (yes, i know) then went to dinner with a different aunt at the international buffet.

sunday - went to my cousin's in cambridge. ate chili at her house, went to see some alpacas, then drove back to decatur and ate at la fontina or something or other.

monday - went to my uncle's fish farm, ate at ruby tuesday's, drove to indianapolis to catch a plane that never left. went to a hotel in indy.

tuesday - (i'm supposed to be home by now) went back to the airport, caught a plane that did leave, went home.

whew. i'm exhausted. and i think i gained at least ten pounds. i think all that we did was eat. who knew there were so many mexican restaurants in illinois???

holy praying mantis, batman!

woke up the other morning, and this was on my wall. outside, that is.

guys don't make passes at girls with glasses

ta da! the long awaited, brand new, much anticipated coach annabels have finally arrived!

check out my dragonflies! that was the major selling point for me. sooo cute! maybe i'll actually wear them out - i usually wear contacts.

drool on my shoe

prison break was all new last night. which meant i got to spend a whole hour... watching.
it's one of los's fave shows too, but he actually follows the plot line. now i just have to wait for lost, then my world will be complete.

it's always sunny in philadelphia

we spent the better part of the weekend visiting some friends in philly. hit the nats phillies game, a little bar, and just generally had a grand old time.

Check out the house swing!

trip to d-town

baby, i'm comin' home. no really. i am!
august 29 to september 4, i will be visiting and los will be, well, counting stoplights and asking if adm always smells this bad.
see you there!

update on the bathroom war

for those of you who haven't been to our place in awhile, you may not know about our Bathroom War.
our bigger bathroom (in the hall, not off of the master bedroom) is, well, old and honestly kinda ugly. this is the bathroom that guests use, and is my bathroom.
above the bathtub was a beige colored plastic lining thing. ask anyone who has had to clean said plastic wall covering, it's a royal pain. the floor tile is okay, but not particularly my taste, and whoever did the floor tile didn't really know what they were doing. the vanity is old. and for some reason when i specified what color i wanted Los to paint the bathroom before we moved in, it translated to 'sad, sterile gray' in his brain.
fast forward to last march, early in the month. Los comes home, all excited because he has come upon this very pretty tile (pale blue, glass) and wants to use it in the shower. okay, i'm all for it. he proceeds to rip out the nasty plastic wall protector, and the nasty walls behind it (didn't protect very well).
and left it.
like that.
for months.
until (angels singing in the background) wednesday. i come home from work, and find -ahhh!- progress!!! the tiles have been set into one wall of the shower.

disgusted and appalled

did you know that the most effective way to fight rabies is to gather up all dogs within the county of the person who was infected with (and died from) rabies and beat them to death? silly me, i thought that was why rabies vaccinations were so popular.

apparently, in china, they have not heard of vaccinations. twice now, chinese officials have ordered mass culls of dogs in the surrounding areas of rabies outbreaks. obviously they are not aware that other animals also spread the disease, or there would be no animals of any kind in those counties presently. these were not only stray dogs, either. ALL DOGS.

dogs were taken from their homes after searching, taken from owners walking them on leashes, owners were told that if they did not do the deed themselves, officials would come and do it for them. there was no euthanasia, no humane exit from this world. they were brutally, cruelly beaten.

these articles need to be read. people need to be made aware, and people need to step up and take a stand.

BBC NEWS
CNN NEWS
YAHOO NEWS

DO SOMETHING.

SIGN A PETITION

WRITE A LETTER.

Chinese Embassy
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
(202) 328-2500/01/02

it only takes one person to make some noise.

a moment of silence

for reasons unknown, God has chosen to take a shining star from here on earth and give her a proper place in heaven.
we remember you with joy, smiles and laughter, just like you would have wanted.

the time you had too much wine at thanksgiving and got the giggles,
how you love flowers, plants and your cats (even though you feed them too much),
you dancing up a storm, even in a conga line, at our wedding,
the pure, unadulterated joy when you look at your grandson,
how you only want happiness for those you love, regardless of what that entails,
the pride so easily read in your face at your son's graduation.

there is a magnet on your refridgerator:
live well
laugh much
love often

we will always miss you.
we will always love you.

i hate tourists.

if you are visiting my part of the country, please keep in mind that i have a normal life to live, which includes getting places, including work, on time.

please:

• do not walk down the sidewalk five people abreast, then look at me like i shouldn't be coming from the opposite direction. normal people leave enough space on the sidewalk for other people.
• do not walk slow, or stop completely, in the middle of the sidewalk, where you and your whole family are taking up the entire sidewalk. i do not want to get hit by a maniac taxi while attempting to get around you.
• yes, i know the speed limit sign on route 66 says 55. but they meant 85. and on i495, they meant 95.
• if you decide to drive slower than the speed of traffic, drive in the right lane. the left lane is very dangerous for you, considering that if you are rear-ended you will cause a ten car accident that will take days to clear up. and it will be all your fault.
• if you cannot drive in precipitation (such as rain), reflecting sunshine, or other weather hazards that are apparently unique to the dc metro area, take a taxi.
• no, i do not know where the duck tour starts. i live here. i don't take tours.
• iwo jima is in virginia. so are the national airport, dulles airport, the manassas battlefield, the jefferson memorial, and arlington cemetery.
• when attempting to ride the metro, do not stop for a chitchat at the bottom of the escalator. there are people behind you! do not talk to the locals. they are on their way to or home from work, and do not care about your vacation. and if you're on the metro when i'm on my way to work, the museums are closed.
• FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHEN ON ANY ESCALATOR, YOU WALK ON THE LEFT, STAND ON THE RIGHT.