Come rock your face off

Brian's gig was rescheduled! It'll be next Wednesday, and you should come.

Here's the amazing poster that I put together with the input of my coworkers...


Brian doesn't smoke anymore, but it was a great pic and I had to use it.


There's mosquitos on the river...

20-minute chicken cacciatore

I'm not exactly sure what real chicken cacciatore entails, but I made this fake-out meal one day when I had a green pepper on hand.

1 green pepper
1 onion
1 can Italian Stewed Tomatoes
1-2 chicken breasts, thawed
handful of mushrooms
shredded mozzarella cheese
pasta
salt and pepper

Set water to boil for the pasta (whatever you want...spaghetti, penne, etc.), and cook the pasta as you're doing everything else.

Chop green pepper and onion into bite-size pieces and start to saute with 2 tbsp olive oil in a cast-iron skillet on medium heat. Cut chicken into smallish bite-size pieces. Add chicken and mushrooms to the skillet and stir every so often. Salt and pepper as desired. When the chicken is cooked all of the way through, add the entire can of stewed tomatoes and stir (I also like to use my spatula to cut the tomatoes into smaller pieces). Continue cooking until the tomatoes are heated through. Serve over pasta with mozzarella on top.

This is really really good.

Saint Stephen with a rose
In and out of the garden he goes
country garden in the wind and the rain

Being sick sucks

Woke up at 6:15 this morning with an extremely painful throat... and I went to work anyway. Eh. I think I'll be making minestrone soup tonight! Something nice and hot and most importantly, easy to make.

Nothing of note lately, just that working 10 hour days for two and a half weeks kind of steals all of your time. Oh, and Brian turned 25 on Sunday, so that's nice, he can rent the car when we take a dream vacation we can't afford. Yay!

Now I think I'll go home, and buy some ice cream as a treat for my throat.

Honey come quick with the iodine

Easter, adults only!

Sometimes, being an adult (ha!) is awesome.

For example, take the idea of an adult Easter Egg Hunt. Cleverly hidden plastic eggs which may be redeemed for lottery scratchems, mini-bar liquors, or cash. I was almost more impressed by the concept than by the actual event (almost).

How was your easter?

Julie catch a rabbit by his hair

Monday, Monday

I was thinking about recapping my weekend, but while it was extremely fun for me, it would probably be boring to hear about... cookout, hanging out with Brian, drinking heavily, etc. The usual.

Today was a typical Monday, by which I mean it was a stereotypical Monday, the kind that I almost never have to suffer through. First, I discovered that my Buick's coolant leak has progressed to require a half-gallon of coolant every day. Goodie.

So, as I was hurriedly pouring coolant into my engine in the office parking lot so that I could get to my doctor's appointment on time, I accidentally spilled some on my hands. No biggie, right? Just wash it off. I tried to do just that, running back into the office bathroom to rinse my hands. Add a little bit of soap, but- do you know how soap dispensers can sometimes get a little plugged up so that they squirt soap out aggressively at an amazing distance? Well, this one did exactly that... straight at my crotch. Literally. There was no water on my shirt or soap on my shoes, just a dark residue splashed with perfect aim directly on my lower fly. So I had to make a pit stop by my house on the way to the doctor's, to change out of my apparently peed-on pants.

The fortunate detail of the incident is that it was so funny, I wasn't nearly as pissed (ha!) as I would have probably been otherwise...

Other quick notes:
+ I'm aiming to bike to work tomorrow to save gas and coolant. Go me, if I actually follow through.
+ Box of Rain was playing at Bodo's around lunchtime. Rock!
+ Bacterial colonies proliferate even in dishwater if allowed to sit too long. Guess I should clean that up...

If that Jubilee don't come
Baby, I'll meet you on the run

"The King of Kong" rocks!

It's after Spring Break, and I finally feel like I have my life back. School still takes up most of my waking hours, but I've had time for cooking, movies, and other fun stuff. First of all, check out this awesome video from YouTube which quite accurately portrays the dilemmas I've been facing lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJyyJ2qur0

And secondly, go see "The King of Kong", a new documentary about the quest to be the world's best at Donkey Kong. It's hilarious. We hear from the middle-aged men who spend their lives in the arcade, and from their wives who don't know how to react to being called the "wife of the guy who plays Donkey Kong." (Actually, only two of the men are married, obviously.)

If an infarction causes loss of the anterior spinal artery at a particular spinal segment, pain and temperature sensation is lost, but not fine touch (since that portion of the spinal cord is supplied by the posterior spinal artery.) How amazing.

Alive! I swear!

Ok, so I've been TOTALLY slacking lately...and there is no excuse. I don't even really have time to be posting now, but I just wanted to share the following information:

It's illegal to be in a cemetary in Virginia after dark.

Good to know. I found out this tidbit by almost getting arrested on Tuesday. Brian and I were strolling around UVa to walk off an enormous meal, and I wanted to show him the monument to fallen Confederate soldiers that is in the Civil War cemetary near the first year dorms. It was too dark to see anything, so we were already almost back at the gate by the time the cops reached us. Luckily, it was pretty easy to convince them we had NO IDEA it was illegal, and that we were upstanding young citizens- it probably helped that we hadn't been drinking (what? crazy). So, they just checked our IDs over the radio and let us go with a warning.

The funny part of the entire incident was that we weren't doing anything! Or trying to do anything illegal! How bizarre...

Oh, and off topic- about that trip two weeks ago to Valley Forge PN- it snowed and sleeted the entire way home. 6 hours of I-81, staring out the windows at cars on their roofs.

Down to the jewelry store packin' a gun
"Wrap it up, I think i'll take this one"

Cause for Celebration

My car passed its Virginia State Safety Inspection today. If I believed in God, I'd be thanking her. I swear I scared the woman at the garage by yelling in delight when she called me to come pick up my car and told me that it was good to go.

It truly is a miracle. My car is a 1991 silver Buick Regal, a front-wheel drivin' snowmobile, a canoe transporter, an indestructible tank, a home away from home. I've driven it since I turned sixteen, and it has never left me on the side of the road. The A/C hasn't worked a day, the roof is rusted from my aluminum canoe, it leaks coolant at a very slow rate, the glove box is broken, and the passenger side windows don't roll down. It's such a piece of shit that I didn't even buy collision insurance this year, just liability.

And I love it. It's my baby. I love it even more than I loved the hat that I threw away. But every time it gets inspected, some stupid expensive shit always fails. Motormount, 2002: $500. Driver's side window motor, 2003: $300. Rear struts, 2006: $400. You probably now understand my glee upon learning that my Buick is street-legal one more year.

I love my car! Thank you baby!

In other news...

Today was an amazing day. First, the weather was spectacular, sunny with a high near 80 degrees. Absolutely beautiful for mid-March in Charlottesville. I took this opportunity to bike to work (also I'd dropped my car off at the shop), which reminded me how out of shape I was, but it was somewhat of an achievement, nonetheless.

After work, I picked up my car and drove to Brian's. We sat for a long while drinking beer on his front porch, just watching the sun sink lower and kids shooting hoops on the street, and enjoying the spectacular ambient temperature. I can't imagine a better way to spend the evening.

Early tomorrow I embark on a roadtrip with the rest of my officemates to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to meet everyone in our home office with whom I communicate frequently by phone. Should be a blast!

Going down the road, feelin' bad...

Cheese and broccoli casserole

I'd been dreaming of cheesy broccoli with chicken for a few days (I occasionally, by which I mean all of the time, crave and obsess about certain foods), so Brian and I experimented a little making dinner yesterday. All we knew was that our dinner needed to include chicken, broccoli, lots of cheese, and garlic. And what do you know? Our made-up recipe was tasty! Now if only I could figure out why my carrot cake turned out bright yellow instead of its usual brown.

Cheese and broccoli, etc., casserole:

8 oz cheddar cheese
1/2 pack egg noodles
2 chicken breasts, thawed
2 cloves garlic
frozen broccoli in sprigs (florets? not sure...)
8 oz. milk
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
pepper
mushrooms (optional)

Prep:
Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces. Mince the garlic. Grate the cheddar cheese. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

This part is slightly complicated because you have to do several things at once.

1. Boil the noodles only until they are chewy (not all of the way done). Drain and toss with a little olive oil to keep them from sticking together.
2. Saute the chicken with the garlic (and mushrooms). Do Not Overcook.
3. Put the broccoli into your large casserole dish, enough to cover the bottom, and put half a centimeter of water in the dish. Microwave for about 1.5 minutes, then drain the water, leaving the half-cooked broccoli in the dish.

Mix up these ingredients in your casserole dish with about half of the cheese.

4. Make the sauce. This requires concentration and constant stirring. First, microwave the milk for about a minute to warm it up. Then melt the butter in a saucepan. Once it is completely melted, add the flour and stir like crazy until it is smoothly blended. With the heat on medium, add the warm milk and stir forever for it to blend well with the butter/flour mixture. As soon as this is well mixed and slightly thickened and bubbly, add about half of the cheese and continue to stir. Add pepper and paprika. Once the cheese is completely blended, pour it into the casserole dish and stir a little just to make sure that everything is coated.

Bake at 350 for half an hour. Yum!

Look out of any window any morning any evening any day.

Vegas, BABY! Recap, part 1

I have returned from Las Vegas, city in the desert. Actually, I got back on Monday, but it's taken a few days to adjust to this time zone again and my Charlottesville schedule.
(this was the view from our hotel room in the Tropicana)
It was a fantastic trip! and we all had a great time, especially me, in my first decent vacation since I joined the general workforce. I can't describe everything, because our itinerary was jam packed, but I can share a general list of facts about Vegas, as well as events and conclusions:

1. I'm not a big fan of traveling by air. In the category of speed, planes certainly beat out all other forms of transportation, and I will continue to travel this way when necessary, but if there's a choice, let me drive. Nothing beats a good old-fashioned roadtrip.

2. Katie: $100, Las Vegas: $250. If you can't subtract, this resulted in a net loss of $150, the amount of money I had set aside specifically for gambling. The reason for a budget was two-fold: I would spend money on gambling (ordinarily I'm too conservative, aka cheap), and that I would not spend too much money on gambling. At least I diversified- I lost money at poker, blackjack, AND slot machines.

3. Experienced the funniest hour-and-a-half of my LIFE watching a drag show. We had front row seats, and I laughed so hard that my cheeks hurt for the rest of the evening. Not only! did host Joan Rivers tell absolutely hilarious jokes continually, but I had no idea that I would get to see so many celebrities while I was in Vegas, including Britney Spears, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Bette Midler, and Cher.

4. Free drinks if you're sitting at a slot machine! Our drinks of choice were vodka tonics (me), gin-and-tonics (mom), and double Scotch on the rocks (my grandmother), along with many rounds of beer.

5. I was continually astounded by the scale. Las Vegas casinos are big. You cannot simply stroll from one end of the Strip to the other. They're very confusing too, and not just the ones that look like giant pyramids or a tropical desert. Casinos are designed so that neither you or your money can escape easily. There are so many different ways to be dazzled, by rides and lights and spectacular exhibits and shows, and so many ways to spend money. Basically, Las Vegas is just Disney World for Grown-ups.

6. Vegas is a posterchild for an environmentally immoral city. For example, they do not receive electricity from Hoover dam- the overabundance of lights and the air conditioning is all powered by coal and natural gas. You only need to take one drink out of the faucet to tell that the water is hard and old, and that they are using irreplaceable (in their case) groundwater for the fountains.

7. They have awesome double-decker buses going up and down the Strip. Of course, they're $2.00 a ride, but that is chump change (literally) in the city. This picture, for example, was taken from inside the bus.

8. Parking is free at all of the casinos on the strip. The competition between the casinos is to the tourist's advantage, but it also means that sometimes it's hard to find information. It took me a day-and-a-half to find one of those kiosks full of brochures.

9. The topography surrounding Las Vegas is amazing, especially for a geologist from the east coast. You can see the rocks! because they're not covered up with vegetation. We rented a car for a day and visited Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire state park. I picked up a few samples for my collection...10. Vegas is amazing! and I love to travel to new places, especially ones with such interesting landscapes, but I sure am glad that I'm a Virginia girl. Home sweet home.

Los Angeles, give me Norfolk Virginia
Tell the folks back home this is the promised land callin'
and the poor boy's on the line

Vegas BABY! - Pre-flight post 2

No, I haven't left Charlottesville yet. My flight leaves Richmond in less than 24 hours, at 15:45 tomorrow. I'm just so excited about it that I can't think about much else! I've been even more ADD and energetic than usual, to the point that Brian and my coworkers probably can't wait for me to leave.

I'm slightly worried about my mother because there is a highly-contagious norovirus (think 24-48 hours of vomiting and diarrhea) going around Henrico County Schools. If she gets it, she'll be sick on the plane, how miserable, and then Ranny and I will probably get sick when we're in Las Vegas. I talked to her at 7 this morning and tried to convince her to stay home and not teach her sick kids, but she didn't listen. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she (and by extension, I) don't get the fucking stomach bug from hell.

Things have been pretty busy lately, and I've been slacking bigtime on the trip planning, but yesterday I made up for my procrastination by picking up the Michelin Las Vegas MUST SEES from Barnes and Noble. It has lots of information AND pictures. There are so many things that I want to do, and so many places to go! Did you know that there are roller coasters in Las Vegas (they seem expensive, though)? And there are some great state parks in the area it seems.

I'm really excited about the fact that I'm going with my mother and my grandmother (Ranny). Ranny has visited Las Vegas several times before and will be able to show us the coolest places. And she'll know where we can go to get good alcohol while we gamble (she's a scotch drinker).

Just learned that Bob Seger is playing on Saturday at the MGM Grand, that would be fun. Three generations of Virginia girls at one show... hells yeah.

Come to Daddy, on an inside straight

Vegas BABY! - Pre-flight

I'm leaving for Las Vegas on Thursday. I can't wait.

But I haven't done any! preparation with the exception of improving my alcohol tolerance this past weekend. I still have to pack and plan. Which brings me to the following question:

What do you want from Vegas? Leave me a comment and I'll see if I can oblige. Keep in mind that I'm cheap, so if you ask for a stripper, you might just get a dirty shot glass.

I promise I'll put up some pictures post-Las Vegas. And I may even take pictures of something other than pretty rocks.

Living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine

Turkish Beef

This recipe was invented by Holly in an attempt to imitate a dish made by a Turkish-exchange-student friend of hers. It's cheap and tasty, and only uses one pot!

1/2 lb. ground beef
1 cup uncooked rice
1 can diced tomatoes w/basil and oregano
fresh spinach
salt
pepper

Brown beef in a medium-sized pot. Drain excess fat and add salt and pepper. Add tomatoes (undrained), rice, and 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat. After 5 minutes, add as much fresh spinach as you can fit into the pot and replace the lid. Cook until the rice is done, then enjoy!

I prefer mine served with thinly sliced pepper-jack cheese. Also, the proportions of ingredients in this dish are completely flexible- I never use the same amounts of rice and beef. And if you double the recipe, you'll have tons of delicious leftovers.

Grass ain't greener, the wine ain't sweeter, either side of the hill.

Spring!

Ok, it's not spring yet. But it feels like spring.

I've spent the past two days cooped up in the office staring out the window at the beautiful warm weather. After work yesterday, I really wanted to do something wild, but figured the water was too cold for skinny dipping, so I got my hair cut instead. Nothing crazy, though. 6.5 inches.

When I got to my house I put on a tank top and sat outside on my patio with an Old Milwaukee, and listened to the 1977 new year's eve show at the Winterland blasting on the boombox. I think the church behind my house was having some sort of Wednesday gathering, but I'm sure the cooler church-goers appreciate the Grateful Dead. As soon as the sun set, it got too cold to sit outside in a shirt with no sleeves... but it was great to enjoy those first few moments of springtime.

Other Random things:

+ Leave comments, folks. Really. Right now I think that the only people that read this site are HMH and Bubba. And Brian, but he's probably just checking that all of my posts about him are accurate.

+ There is a concentration of cars in Charlottesville with "KAT" as the first letters on their license plates. I swear I'm not making this up.

You can shave my head clean as my hand
(especially if you're Britney Spears, apparently)

Junk Mail

Ok, it has been a WEEK since my last post. I'd like to say that I've been ridiculously busy doing important and fascinating things like saving the planet, but that's not entirely true.

Week's recount:

Sick on Wednesday with what felt like brillo pads stuffed into my throat. But on the plus side, I lazed around all day watching EMPIRE STRIKES BACK with Brian, who had the day off due to ice, and drank literally half a dozen pots of green tea with at LEAST 2 tbsp of honey in each cup. (2 tbsp honey/cup x 3 cups/pot x 6 pots = 36 tbsp honey. Yikes, I didn't realize it was quite so much.) Also, at this time I'd like to point out that Brian is a dead ringer for Indiana Jones. For starters, he has the exact jacket AND hat PLUS he's a real-life archaeologist. And by association, just like Han Solo (are you following my train of thought here?)
"Who's scruffy lookin'?" If by scruffy-looking, you mean HOT, then yes.

Thursday and Friday were spent freezing my ass off in the field, trying to sample water that would freeze after about 2 minutes. Walking from the truck to the wells and back took several minutes of baby steps and holding onto the sides of the truck bed for dear life. Ice is slippery, apparently.

The weekend was fantastic. Went wine- and CHOCOLATE- tasting with the majority of Brian's family, with no major meet-the-family embarrassments. I am apparently a "cutie", but I'm not quite sure how I feel about that verdict. Slept in like a champ on Sunday. Seriously, until about 4 pm, with only one break for breakfast.

To cap off the week, I'm learning to play the bass. Sweet!

But Back to the Point of the Entry:

I actually like getting Junk Mail. But only at work.
There is a bit of ceremony that goes along with the mail. The boss walks around, flipping through the pile, and occasionally flicks pieces of post on various desks. The majority of what we get is random shit from our suppliers, and what I personally recieve may or may not even be addressed specifically to me.

Today's examples:
"Do you have Pump Eaters at YOUR landfill or cleanup site? Viscous fluids or suspended solids? Corrosives such as chlorides or low pH? Flammable or explosive hydrocarbons, aggressive solvents, high-temperature liquids...?"
"Boiler Operation Maintenance and Safety. Day 1: Fundamentals of Steam"

I'm gonna sing you a hundred verses of ragtime