City Slickers: Urban Gourmet Revived

The weather warmed up over the last week so we walked over to Union Square for dinner at The Independent last Friday. On our way there, we passed by a new pizza place, City Slickers on Somerville Ave. To back up just a moment, Adam used to love pizza from Urban Gourmet in Ball Square. Unfortunately, they closed down after a fire and Adam's been mourning ever since. Turns out, the owners of Urban Gourmet opened up City Slickers with a similar menu and they even offer Christina's Ice Cream by the scoop. Needless to say, Adam is pretty darned excited that he can have favorite pizza again.

Nothing To Complain About

plasticann: I have to go home and do dishes. They're everywhere and I see them all the time now that I'm home a lot. I think Adam's stopped doing pots and pans since I finished school.
Wheezy: Do you do the cooking?
plasticann: No, Adam cooked.
Wheezy: [pause] You know, I want to take your side, but you really have nothing to complain about.
plasticann: I know you're right, I have nothing to complain about. I'm just being lazy

I still haven't done the dishes and it's 6:21pm.

All Done!

I had my last exam yesterday afternoon for Finance II and boy is it strange being "all done." I thought my exam was from 1-5pm so I showed up ar 12:30pm and ate my lunch near the exam room. There were some folks hanging around and I figured people would come in closer to 1pm since I was a little early. I stake out the room and save four good seats for my buddies and me and hang out. My friend Zeff strolls in around 12:55pm and then my friend Zara a few minutes later with her lunch. I wonder if she's planning on eating during the exam. The room is half empty so I get my hopes up that I might be able to spread out and have two seats for my exam. Soon, I notice it's 1:01pm when Zara is unwrapping her sub sandwich, munching away. 1:02pm, the room is still pretty empty and the TA is nowhere to be seen. It finally dawns on me to ask what time the exam starts. Turns out, as you may have already figured out, the exam is scheduled for 1:30-5:30pm. Good thing I got there a whole hour early.

My Feet Are Too Warm

I was trying to sleep last night, but my feet were too warm so I had to take my socks off. The following is a reconstructed conversation that occurred while Adam had my socks:

plasticann: Don't put the socks on my face.
Adam: [laughing uncontrollably]
plasticann: What?
Adam: I was going to hold them in front of your nose and make you smell them.
plasticann: [sigh] I guess I know you too well.
Adam: You used to sometimes say, "Don't put the socks in the vicinity of my face."

I think he once put them in front of my nose when I asked him not to put them on my face so I started hedging my bets by asking him not to put them in the vicinity of my face. I'm happy to report that Adam usually does comply when I put in a request.

Picardie No More

We have these awesome Duralex Picardie drinking glasses that we absolutely love. Adam likes how the big ones hold a lot of water and we both like how they're kinda old school. In fact, Adam's parents and his sister may have the exact same glasses in their homes as well. They're tempered glass, have a flared shape and are really durable. We got ours at Williams-Sonoma, but unfortunately, the manufacturer has discontinued the original Picardie glass replacing it with a new version that stacks. I don't understand why Duralex discontinued the glasses, afterall, it's caused quite the uproar in my life and in the lives of a couple of other people who've complained about the situation online.

The new ones are OK, but they just don't compare to the originals. I couldn't find them anywhere so I was super excited to see them at Crate & Barrel a few months ago. I stopped by Crate & Barrel this afternoon and saw that the glasses were on sale. While I was initially excited by the discount, I also surmised from the sale sign that Crate & Barrel was most likely discontinuing the glasses. I'm sad to report that they are in fact discontinued. They still have 5000 glasses in stock in New England, but they'll eventually run out. Since Adam doesn't appreciate how I like to stock up on things, I won't disclose exactly how many glasses I bought today. Let's just say, it was enough that my bag was cumbersome, but not enough that I took a cab home. Now that we have a giant basement, I'm thinking about going back for some more and somehow sneaking them by Adam and squirreling them away at our new place. The only problem is, now that I've blogged he'll be on to my little plan. Don't worry, I won't buy 5000 glasses...my basement isn't that big.

Short Term Memory

Conversation 1

Adam: What do you want?
plasticann: Slice of pepperoni and a garden salad.
Adam: What kind of pizza?
plasticann: Pepperoni!
[two minutes later]
Adam: Greek salad?
plasticann: No, garden salad.

Conversation 2 by way of cell phone

Adam: I'm stopping by the store, do you need anything?
plasticann: Can you get some dishwashing soap, shampoo and some eggs?
Adam: Sure!
[15 minutes later]
Adam: I'm at the store, what did you want again? Laundry detergent?
plasticann: No, dishwashing soap.
Adam: Do we need laundry detergent?
plasticann: No, just dishwashing soap.
Adam: OK!
[one minute later]
Adam: So we need dishwashing soap, eggs and what?
plasticann: Shampoo.
Adam: Oh, that's right.
[one minute later]
Adam: What kind of shampoo?

Real Grownups

Adam and I will soon be real grownup homeowners come July. We're very excited about our new place, it's a pretty pale green color on the outside, we have a nice porch for hanging out and a whole lot of bedrooms, four to be exact. I tried to convince Adam that we could each have a room just for ourselves, mine could be pink and Hello Kitty and Adam can have his Marvel comic book room, but he's insisting that we share everything.

My friends at school suggested that I offer to negotiate a 1 year lease on one of the rooms which reminds me of the time my aunt had to pay her brothers (my uncles) "rent" back when they were kids. I guess there were three rooms for four kids, plasticmom got one because she was the oldest and soon off to college so there were only two rooms left for the other three kids. My aunt wanted her own room so the boys had to share, therefore my aunt had to pay "rent" to her brothers from her allowance.

We're very excited about our new place and we're looking forward to having room for guests so if you're ever in our neck of the woods and need a nice bed to sleep in...let us know.

Prodigal Suitcase

We lost our suitecase when we flew home from Israel last month. I'd given up all hope and started replacing my stuff when lo and behold, forty days later, it made its way back to Boston. Wheezy surmised that the suitcase had been on "lots of interesting little trips." I tried to confirm whether our suitecase had wandered, but the baggage person simply said, "I don't know." I'm just happy it's back home since I really missed my stuff so rejoice...the suitcase is home. I'm going to celebrate tomorrow by wearing as much stuff from the suitcase as humanly possible.

Footloose and Fancy Free

Having just finished year two at ZYU Zilm Zchool, MGDub is footloose and fancy free in Boston for a quick visit. We went to Out of the Blue for dinner last night with Wheezy and the Zoritys where we scored some delicious fried calamari. Wheezy, MGDub and I met up for lunch in Harvard Square today and I got to see Wheezy's new place. Wheezy did such a good job picking the place, it's totally perfect for her and Wheezy's dad, Cap'n Zoby did an awesome job painting. Wheezy even has a pink room. I totally want a pink room, but I have a feeling I won't be able to sneak a whole pink room by Adam, maybe a towel, but not a whole room.

Capone Foods

My friend from school Zara raves about the empanadas at Capone Foods in Union Square so I was psyched to see a second Capone Foods open up on Mass Ave near Davis Square. We finally went in last Saturday where we tried delicious pasta samples and other treats. They even have cannoli kits where you get the shells and they sell you a bag of the filling so you can fill at home. We got the vegetarian lasagna which was delicious, some focaccia bread and some frozen empanadas. Haven't tried the empanadas yet, but I'm looking forward to them.

Happy Belated to Wheezy

Wheezy had a super fun b-day party last Saturday and I finally got to meet Wheezymom and her dad, Cap'n Toby. We enjoyed tasty deep fried appetizer snacks, listened to tunes DJed by Wheezy on her ipod and we even got cool party favors (personalized mugs, M&Ms and cookies). Sweet!

I tried to get the dirt on Wheezy's childhood and teen years, but turns out she's a model child/citizen just as I suspected. Her childhood friend said that she was super smart, excelled at academics and sports...blah blah blah. Wheezymom said that she was a well behaved child who loved to read. Wheezymom would even take Wheezy to interviews since Wheezy was super well behaved and could read for hours. Just as I suspected!

Happy B-day to Steve

It's that time of year again...Steve's birthday. Happens every year like clockwork which means Wheezy's is coming up in just three days. Since Steve had asked for Rice Krispy Treats last year, I made them for him again and to properly celebrate Steve's birth, I've eaten about five treats so far. I did add some sprinkles this year to make things a little more festive and I also upped the marshmallow count per batch to 30 which was nice since the Krispys were a little more chewy.

Modified Recipe
3 Tbs butter
30 marshmallows
6 cups of Rice Krispy cereal or the generic equivalent

Flat Patties

The weather on Saturday was gorgeous so we checked out Flat Patties in Harvard Square for lunch. The burgers were tasty, what one might imagine a McDonalds burger was like back in the day. Fries were crisp and my lemonade was refreshing. The food is freshly cooked to order which is plus and the prices are reasonable.

All Things Japanese at Fanueil Hall

Zeff, Zatrick and I (our tech strategy team for school) decided impetuously to take our afternoon meeting on the road since we didn't have a whole lot to do and the weather was insanely nice out. Our original plan was to hit Beard Papa's for a cream puff snack, but we ended up making a detour to the brand spanking new Wagamamas that opened today. I remember years ago, plasticmom and I checked out Wagamamas in London because one of my friends was obsessed with it. I can't remember how the food was, but I did remember that the place was cool and hip so I was looking forward to trying out the new Boston branch. I had the fried chicken appetizer with a delicious orange/apple/passion fruit juice, Zeff enjoyed an iced tea and Zatrick with his superhuman metabolism went all out with a full entree of teppan yaki udon noodles as his afternoon snack. All in all, pretty darned tasty and I felt special eating there on the first day to boot. Ever so friendly, Zeff congratulated each Wagamama's employee we encountered on their big opening day. Since the restaurant was pretty empty at 4pm, we even broke out the laptop and got our work done. As a finale, we each had a cream puff at Beard Papa, Zeff enjoyed his first one so much he went back for a second. Definitely a most legend [wait for it] dary tech strategy meeting.

Comment Spam

I've discovered what must be comment spam. I posted about some notebooks yesterday and I got a very strange comment from an "Alex" [better not be CADCowboy] that was rambling nonsense inserted with names of drugs. Kate commented about Alex's strange comment which was funny, but I wanted to get rid of the comment spam so I deleted the entire post along with the comments and reposted the same things again. Sure enough, "Alex" and his blog spam struck again. However, this time I figured out how to delete just the comment spam without deleting other's comments. In conclusion, I'm quite disturbed by the intrusive comment spam...it's bad enough that I have to slog through e-mail spam.

Circa Sample Bar

We stopped by the Levenger store in the Prudential to check things out. Wheezy and I happen to love the store since we love office products, but Adam find the store mildly intolerable and mostly agrees to stop in to humor me so he parked himself in a comfy armchair while I checked out the latest wares. I ended up by the Circa notebook section of the store when a salesperson, Bob, asked if I wanted a free Circa notebook sample, it's an eight dollar value. Of course I said, "YES!" so we went through 10 minute process of picking covers, picking rings, picking papers, etc. I felt kinda bad because Adam looked pretty bored on the other side of the store, but I was just so excited about the notebook. Adam finally wandered over to me probably intending to drag me out of the store, but I preempted him by saying, "Adam, check out my awesome new notebook...it was free." Bob promptly chimed in, "Yes, would you like a free sample as well Adam?" Adam started to say no, but then he noticed that I was nodding my head vigorously so he acquiesced and got himself a custom made sample as well. I'd assumed (incorrectly) that Adam would automatically hand over his notebook to me since he didn't even want it in the first place. Just because he's a super nice husband, he agreed to give it to me if it would make me happy. Yeah! So everyone, get thee to Levenger for a free sample Circa of your own.

Cafe Polonia

Adam and I finally checked out Cafe Polonia on Saturday for lunch. We've always wanted to go, but we thought it was hard to get to without a car. Turns out, it's only about a block from the Andrews T stop on the red line. We started with a basket of bread and a spread:

Adam: This spread is good, what do you think is in it?
plasticann: I don't know...probably lard.
Adam: Really?...[asking the waitress] Excuse me, what's in this spread?
Waitress: It's for the bread and it's made with spices and blah blah blah and lard. You should try it, it's very good.
plasticann: [subtly trying to push lard away from Adam] We've already tried it, we were curious what it was.
plasticann: I don't think we should eat any more of this.

We only had a little taste of the lard, but we did think of MGDub and her Ukrainian heritage as we polished off our lunch of pierogies, potato pancakes, cabbage roll, kielbasa and sauerkraut. I would highly recommend the potato pancakes...they were awesome.

Piggy

I walked into MBA admissions today and spotted this adorable piggy humidifier sitting on the receptionist's desk. Then I spotted a bunch of other cute animal humidifiers around the office as I walked through. Turns out, the head of admissions decided they should have a "spa" like atmosphere so they invested in some humidifiers. All I can say is, I love a school with cute humidifiers in admissions...take that Harvard with your fancy chandeliers and professional chalkboard washers.

Pen Pals

I was super excited to see I got some mail from my little niece Zess today. The envelope was festively decorated with Disney princess stickers and orange crayon scrawl. Inside, I received some awesome hummingbird fake tattoos. I have a funny feeling these are the very tattoos that she got for Easter and freaked out saying "get it off, get it off, get it off" when the fake tattoo was first applied. My favorite, a scrap of paper with orange crayon scrawl...love it. Don't know if it's a part of a series of abstract art, but I'm putting it up on my fridge.

Eye Doctor

I managed to finagle a long overdue eye appointment for this afternoon when I called yesterday morning. I was freaked out because I thought my right eye was getting blurry and my eyes were feeling tired. I had been trying to check my vision by closing one eye while looking out the other. Turns out, this is not how one checks their vision. Apparently, closing one eye can change the shape of your other eye and temporarily change the vision of that open eye which is why it's my left eye that's gotten worse not my right eye as I had self diagnosed. I was unconvinced that there was nothing significantly wrong with my eyesight and kept peppering the doctor, whom I had just met, with questions like

Q: Am I getting close to being legally blind?
A: No, blindness is measured by how well you see with glasses, you're very far off.

Q: Is a 10 degree rotation in my astigmatism alarming?
A: No, it happens all the time to almost everyone.

Q: How many spots would I see if I had a detached retina? One spot?
A: Not just one, a shower of spots.

Q: Will I be able to walk home once my eyes are dilated?
A: Most patients have no problem....haven't you had them dilated before?

Q: Why are my eyes aging, I'm only twenty eight? Is it the sun?
A: No, aging occurs in all ages, even 18 year olds and I've even seen it in 8 year olds?

Finally, he politely put an end to my questions with "I do this all day and there's nothing to worry about" and "why don't you do some research on the Internet, it'll be more informative than any explanation I could give you at this moment." On the way out, I asked when my next check up would be. I was internally freaked out when he said, "in two years," but then he changed his mind and said he would do another glaucoma test in a year. Woohoo! I have a feeling he was happy to get rid of me, but one has to understand that as a kid my vision deteriorated so quickly, I'd have to go every six months for a checkup so I'm perpetually convinced that I'll go blind spontaneously. I guess I should revel in my relatively good eye health rather than trying to conjure up reasons to be alarmed.

Cookies

Yesterday at work, Adam walked over to Kate and Alissa's office to offer them some sugar cookies I'd baked when he accidentally spilled them over Alissa's desk and bag. They salvaged most of the cookies, but poor Adam had to suffer through a day of, "Guess what, Adam tossed his cookies all over my bag and desk" Boah ha ha!

Everyday Food Easter

We had a bunch of friends over yesterday for an Easter potluck dinner. Adam and I made a bunch of stuff from Everyday Food magazine which all turned out great and was super simple. Our menu included (EF denotes Everyday Food):

Cheese Platter
Cheese Puffs - EF
Cucumber Dill Dip - EF

Apricot Mustard Ham - EF
Parmesan Roasted Asparagus - EF
Glazed Carrots - EF
Hash Brown Casserole
Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese and Nuts
Incredible Fried Rice

Strawberry Shortcake with Chocolate Sauce
Sugar Cookies shaped like Chicks

Namesake

We went to saw The Namesake tonight in Harvard Square and I was super excited because I really enjoyed the book. The following is a reconstructed conversation between my friends Zeff, Zatrick and me. Zeff and I have immigrant parents whereas Zatrick family lines goes back quite a few generations.

plasticann: I've been really wanting to see The Namesake.
Zeff: Yeah, I totally want to see that too.
Zatrick: What's it about?
plasticann: It's about...
Zeff: ...it's about the immigrant experience.
Zatrick: Well, I don't really know much about that, we go a few generations back.
plasticann: Well, you kinda "immigrated" to a different part of the country...Boston.
Zatrick: Yeah, where there are way too many people. I can't wait to leave and get back to the trees.

Zatrick grew up on a hobby farm with cows a milking where the land was a plenty. He finds Boston a bit constricting.

Back from the Holy Land

Israel was super hectic and jam packed, but fun overall. We visited a number of places including Jeruselum, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Caesarea, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and finally Eilat, a beach resort at the southern most tip of Israel next to the Red Sea. We're still pretty jet lagged from our trip, but we're doing our best to stay awake past 9pm. We ate way too much falafel, hummus and shwarma and we're happy to be home sleeping in our own bed and cooking our own meals.

Thurs/Fri Mar 22-23 - Travel: We flew Alitalia which was relatively uneventful. We had a stopover in Milan and the airport was not very exciting and overall the food on Alitalia was horrid.

Sat Mar 24 - Jerusalem: Jerusalem is a strangely disorienting place. There are so many holy sites and so many religions converging on one space. Then there are the contradictions between different interpretations so no one really knows what happened where and when. Thus, they call the mental insanity that ensues from this disorientation, Jerusalem Syndrome. We went to a bunch of holy sites including the wailing wall, the room where the last supper supposedly took place, King David's tomb, etc. I also bought a giant bagel from a street vendor. It was eight inches wide, that's how big. Not as tasty as an Iggy's bagel, but I was impressed by how ginormous the bagel was.

Sun Mar 25 - Jerusalem: We all suited up for a variety of business formal meetings. We visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where they confiscated our passports in exchange for visitor's badges. I even asked the guard, "Will I get my passport back when I leave?" She nodded yes and I felt pretty dumb for having asked. I mean, of course I was getting it back, how else would I leave the country? We then visited a street market where I bought some cookies that looked significantly tastier than they turned out to be. I did enjoy a small chocolate croissant that was surprisingly delicious. Next, we went over the the Orthodox Jewish quarter to look around and we were sorely disappointed. I guess we were unrealistically expecting the Amish. Basically, the folks in this neighborhood just dressed conservatively, but had cell phones, bought CDs, etc. Lastly, we went over to the Bank of Israel and heard from the govern er of the bank. Let's just say, I spent an hour digging my nails into my palms to stay awake and my hands hurt afterwards.

Gmail Paper

We got back yesterday from Israel and I totally fell for this new gmail feature when I logged on to check my e-mail. I forgot it was April Fool's Day so I was confused about gmail paper, but didn't pursue it any further. If I had clicked on learn more about gmail paper, I would have realized that I'd been had. Pretty Hilarious!