Put on the Glasses

Got tea in the mail today for the Reddit Coffee/Tea exchange. I'm excited to try this green tea:

Brian and I have branched out from doing the typical Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange and are now doing other exchanges on Reddit  You are provided with the address of a redditor who also signed up for the exchange, and you ship a gift to that person. A different person gets your address and info and ships something to you. We have had a lot of fun doing the Christmas exchanges the past couple of years, and it is cool to get things you wouldn't expect from people across the country. Brian has already gotten some packages for the Coffee/Tea Exchange and I am jealous.  First, he got a package of Hawaiian coffee, and a laser pointer (because the gift-giver noticed his birthday was coming): Then, he got these in the mail today: I'm green with envy, and I can't wait to see what I get from the exchanges. In addition to the Coffee/Tea Exchange, we also signed up for the Book Exchange and the Snack Exchange.

It's been too long since the last cat picture. So, here is a picture of Leela being her cute self:

My closet is wide open, visible to everyone who enters my bedroom, and there are no drawers. There is no room in my bedroom for a dresser, and this has bothered me for months. It has made my closet a mess of socks. A weekend trip to IKEA gave me the solution I had been looking for. I bought two Helmer drawer units , put them side by side beside my bed and I finally have the storage I wanted. Though they were intended for office storage, they are the perfect height next to my tall bed. I now have a little dedicated drawer for everything, from socks to headbands. My husband is so jealous, he went out and got two for his side of the bed too. He's excited to have a place for belts and ties.

I went to an Oscar party at my friends' apartment last night. It was a lot of fun. They made themed food and decorations for the party. On the walls, they had handmade posters for all of the Best Picture films. Here are a couple of the movie posters: Also, they made a poster with the Vegas odds for the Oscars, which were incredibly accurate:

I hit a book sale at the Nokmis library this morning. While the selection was small, I still managed to grab $5.00 of books to read, including two Preston & Child books. I've been really getting into their Pendergast mysteries lately. Also, Tim O'Brien has never done me wrong. I'm excited to get reading.

Brian picked up a book on famous chess games, The Mammoth Book of The World's Greatest Chess Games. He sat with the book and board, working out famous games.  He showed me the first one on the book, because it is a striking example of how important pawns can be. It's from a game between Alexander McDonnell and Louis Charles de Labourdonnais in 1834. White has captured black's queen. You would think it was all over for black but look at that line of black pawns. White didn't know what hit him.

The bulb garden from Costco has grown even bigger over the past week:

Brian and I went to Matt's Bar in South Minneapolis for Jucy Lucys tonight for dinner. I firmly believe that Matt's has the best Jucy Lucys in the city. For those who don't know, a Jucy Lucy (aka Juicy Lucy) is a burger with cheese inside the beef patty. Some restaurants have different types of cheese available. At Matt's there are no choices, you just get straight american cheese in your burger. Brian and I always get two Juicy Lucys, two beers and an order of fries to share. Pro tip: when the waitress tells you to beware of the hot cheese, listen to the woman. She knows what she is talking about. Otherwise, you risk burning your mouth on the molten cheese hidden in that burger. Here's a clip from Man vs. Food about the battle between Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club, who both claim to have created the Jucy Lucy:

Our Halfmoon Betta has been named: Hootie. Yes, as in the 90s band Hootie and the Blowfish. He also got a new home, the fish hotel by Umbra. I am hoping he lasts longer than a week, outliving the majority of the fish Brian and I have owned.

Meet our new betta fish. We haven't picked out a name for the little guy yet. Ideas are welcome. Some of our top contenders so far: James Van Der Betta David St. Fishins Fish McBites Milhouse Liquor Village (that was when we started calling out things in our line of vision while walking to our car)

Went to Mickey's Diner for lunch. Hit Half Priced Books and bought some cheap used mysteries. Got a Chai latte at Dogwood and a couple of beers at Republic in Uptown. All in all a good day today. Here's a shot of Brian while we enjoyed our beers:

A while back Brian got me this Nanoblock set as a gift. I finally put it together. It's of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, and the bricks are remarkably tiny. While it is neat to have this Lego alternative that fits nicer on a shelf, the bricks are hard to get together and even more difficult to take apart when you mess up. I like the idea but they are no match for classic Legos. I put a regular 2x4 Lego brick next to the Nanoblock set for comparison:

For Valentine's Day, Brian bought me a flowering tea set. He got it at World Market, and it came with a glass teapot and five dried blossoms to try. Today, I tried the Starlight Rose blossom. It smelled like roses while it steeped, and even tasted like roses (not in a bad way either). I was shocked at how good it was. I don't claim to know a lot about tea, but I really liked this. Here is a picture of the glass tea pot while the bloom steeped: Closeup of the alien-looking blossom while I waited for my tea to be ready:

Brian and I had our first date eight years ago today. I made the poor guy watch Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead. I didn't know he didn't like horror movies yet. Brian cooked me dinner tonight: Curry chicken and spinach salad. After eight years, the man knows what I like. Here is the card I made him: It's a joke from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, one of Brian's favorite movies. The main character, Scott, gets confused when he tries to tell a girl, "I love you." Instead, he says the other "L" word: lesbians. I drew the card myself, but stole the idea from the internet .

Brian and I decided to beat the restaurant rush and celebrate Valentine's Day a day early. Because it is such a big occasion, I managed to con Brian into taking me to Travail , a cutting-edge restaurant up in Robbinsdale. It was a crazy experience. Never before have I had food in foam form or a reuben that came to me on a spoon. It was delicious, it was fun, and while the price tag was high, it was worth it for the labor and experience. We showed up a half-an-hour early (they open at 5pm), which turned out to be perfect for securing us first place in line, right before the rush. We took a spot at the bar and were able to look in on the bustling kitchen throughout the service. Actually, one course we had required us to walk through the kitchen, gathering ingredients from cooks. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. Here are some shots from our dinner: Happy Brian (you can see the kitchen a bit behind him): This was the egg dish we walked through th

So, I had this awesome frame from IKEA , but I had no idea what to do with it. Anything I put in the frame looked dull. With my lack of painting skills, I wasn't about to make my own artwork in there. For a long time, I simply hung it as an empty frame. While out on a trip to Staples I discovered a roll of cork and I realized that I could just turn the frame into a bulletin board. I used the cardboard from the frame as backing and used glue dots to adhere the cork to the board. It isn't the best bulletin board I have ever used (there isn't much for the pins to stick into) but it looks a lot better on my wall. Plus, I now have a place to stick important notes.

In November, I pine for snow. In February, I long for Spring. To help me feel better about the winter doldrums, I bought one of those bulb gardens from Costco. It started blooming the second I got it home. Totally worth the $17 just to bring some color into the house while it is still so cloudy outside. 

It's snowing hard outside, so Brian and I have been enjoying some Scotch and playing games. It only took me about ten times to finally beat him at a game of chess. Winning is awesome. Here is Brian when he finally lost:

I'm teaching my sister Stacey to knit. Here she is peeking out from behind her first scarf. She learns fast.

Today I finished the fourth week of my couch to 5k program, Zombie 5k. I'm now halfway through, and I feel terrific. Here's a sweaty me, post-workout: Here's a screenshot from my phone as proof:

I finished knitting a scarf recently. It's the Windy City scarf out of the Stitch n' Bitch knitting book Brian gave me as a gift a long time ago. It has a hole in it to pull the opposite end of the scarf through. My work parking lot is usually gusty and threatens to steal most of my scarves. This scarf fended off the gusts and stayed on my neck. Hooray!

One of my favorite new recipes came out of Cooking Light a few months ago. It's for Mongolian beef , and it is delicious. It's super easy to make and it tastes better than take-out Chinese food. Bonus: it's relatively low in calories. Here's Brian enjoying my work:

Brian is working late tonight, so I had to make dinner for just myself. I discovered I have turned into my husband. Apparently, when left to my own devices I choose steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. Next thing you know, Brian will be eating mac & cheese, and then the marital mind meld will be officially complete.

Brian and I have a book club, if you can even call it a club with two members. One of us will make a list of books, the other will select the book we'll read. Brian picked Snow Crash off my short list this time. I was excited to read it. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it. It had some fun elements, but those elements were only interesting when I remembered that it was written in 1992. If you read it and liked it, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Maybe I missed something.

Fun watching the Super Bowl with the Berns.

Brian made me breakfast this morning. It was delicious.

I got a sprout kit on sale at Crate and Barrel around Christmas. I just started growing in my office window.  I can't wait for them to be big enough for me to start snacking on them: