Month: March 2006

Day Before Judi’s B-Day!

Today was a nice leisure day for all of us. (Well, until Elsa cooked supper – then she worked her butt off). After faffing about in the morning (because the garage was off-limits from 8am til noon), we headed off to Jewell to buy all the ingredients that elsaf and I didn’t bring in the car. Of course, after all that food buying, we, um, went out to eat for lunch. Heh.

Elsa drove judiang and I to Chinatown for lunch. We ate at Penang (a Malaysian restaurant & sushi bar) and filled up on sushi. I ordered ebi sushi plus the Maki Combo plate. More sushi than I could eat, but there ya go. 🙂

Afterwards, we shopped in Chinatown. We picked up some key pastries from a bakery and then visited several shops that sold lots of tat. One of the first ones we visited had a Lucky Cat who waves. YAY! I have wanted one since I saw the one our local Japanese place has. It was only $9.99, so I had to get it.

I priced several Mah Jongg tile sets in several of the shops, but nobody had one cheap enough for my cheap self. So I’m still without my Mah Jongg tile set.

After shopping, we stopped once again at Jewell to pick up the things we’d forgotten to get. And even managed to forget one of those! Whoops!

We rested up from our shopping before Elsa began her tutorial on Lamb Curry. Judi and I watched while she cooked & explained stuff. She was almost as good as Justin Wilson! (Without the thick Louisiana accent, that is.)

During the 1 hour simmering time, we just listening to music, chatted, and geeked. Elsa’s just added the cream to the curry, so we’re just about ready for supper. Yay! Smells wonderful!

Bangers & Mash

elsaf and I left Detroit this morning at 8:41am and drove to Chi town. Like we’ve been doing, she drove the city bits (start & end of trip) and I drove the straight bit in the middle. A stop at Taco Hell for lunch and a couple of restroom breaks weren’t enough to slow us down too much. We wound up at judiang‘s ahead of schedule (arrived 1:15pm local time). Yay us! We didn’t take any wrong turns or missed turns – we rock!

After decompressing for a bit, we walked with Judi to Howie’s, a nearby coffee shop. She had lunch while Elsa & I had muffins (mmmm, chocolate & cheesecake muffin!) Back to the Grant Hotel (heh) where we played around a bit while Judi napped. (Poor dear – she actually worked today!)

When suppertime arrived, we headed off to the South Loop Local, aka Grace O’Malley’s. I bought drinks (amaretto sours for me & Judi, diet Coke for our designated walker, Elsa). We all had Guinness & Irish Cheddar soup for starters & then moved onto pub grub. Elsa had shepherd’s pie (peppered with actual shepherd on top). Judi and I had bangers & mash (mine without the sauteed ‘shrooms, thankyouverymuch). It was yummy!

Now we’re back at the ranch, Elsa watching tonight’s Smallville (taped on Judi’s DVR), me typing this, Judi doing – well, not sure. Anyhoo, it was a fun day and we’ve got a fun weekend planned. I love hanging out with my friends!

Celebrity Dreaming

It’s official. I’ve been watching too much Bewitched.

Now, the number of celebrities who have appeared in my dreams are few. And mostly Doctor Who or Tomorrow People related. But last night, Elizabeth Montgomery showed up. And in an unusual manner.

See, what happened was that Sylvester McCoy was filming an episode of Doctor Who. (I think it was being filmed in the US – in a big office building). As he’s racing out of the door of the office building during a scene take, he collides with a blonde lady coming into the building while wearing a trechcoat (and little else – I wonder what that says about my thought processes???) Anyhoo, the woman turns out to be Elizabeth Montgomery on the run from evil producers wanting her to film a nude scene she doesn’t want to film. But Sylv is more than happy to help her escape from the evil producers. (I wonder what THAT says about my thought proecesses?)

There was a scene that took place in a boat too – probably during the escape sequence. But I must admit, the dream was pretty bizarre, even for my standards!

On the Way…

I’m currently in elsaf‘s living room watching Mirrormask and typing on my laptop. And tomorrow morning, we’re off to Chicago to hang with hergrace & judiang at Judi’s apartment. Should be lots of fun. This weekend marks Judi’s birthday, too, so we’re bring presents for the soon-to-be birthday girl. 🙂

I think I remembered to bring everything that I needed to bring (yes, Judi, I remembered your presents). I fed Leo 2 days worth of food (which he had mostly eaten before I headed off to Elsa’s). The drive was uneventful (my favorite kind of drive) and I listened to Chumbawamba the whole way (their new album twice). And once I arrived, Elsa & I went out for Thai food. I had pad thai, as usual and Elsa had Drunken Noodles. Both were tasy.

The goal is to get up early in the morning and head off to Chi Town. We’re going to try & avoid the bad rush hour traffic. And once we arrive? Hopefully lots of fun, fun, fun! 🙂

Goofing Off

I had intended to do more useful stuff around the house things this weekend. But you know, it’s Spring Break, so goofing off has been my priority. And my main goofing off point has been playing City of Heroes. Yesterday, I did two Task Forces (which are big long-ass missions that you do with multiple players) with two of my heroes and got a lot of badges for my BadgeWhore, Icy Hot Man. Today, I’ve mostly been working on my MP3 database/tags. I hope to have the correct album art and song release dates for each of my MP3s. I have over 30GB of MP3s from my music collection.

I’ve noticed that I love having catalogs of my collections. I think it’s the anal in me. But I have a database of my MP3s (thanks to MediaMonkey), a database of my DVDs (thanks to DVD Profiler), and even (the start of) a database of my books. I still don’t really understand why I like having catalogs of my stuff, but I live with it. 🙂

Spring Break, Boo-Yah!

Well, I’m on Spring Break now – woohoo! And after I get back from watching Doctor Who with the parentals, it is my goal to stay up playing CoX until I can’t stand it anymore. And tomorrow I hope to do some mahoosive spring cleaning in my house. And Wednesday, I’m off to elsaf‘s so that on Thursday, the two of us can drive to judiang‘s. Should be fun, regardless of what Mother Nature throws at me. 🙂

Spring?

So, what’s this I hear about it being Sping? All the snow on the ground says otherwise. In fact, they wound up having an early dismissal for the students today due to promised inclement weather (it did look pretty bad for awhile there). But then the weathermen were wrong in their estimates. By the time students were dismissed, the roads were already clearing. The weathermen have barely been right all season regarding snow. But hopefully, today will be the last of our winter weather. 🙂

Teachers were allowed to go early too, but I had a 2:30 appointment in Troy that I had to go to, so I worked on chemistry quarter exams and stuff until I drove off to Troy for the meeting. The nice thing about being in Troy was getting to stop & pick up season 3 of Bewitched, just out today. 🙂 Watching it now.

GIP – CoH/CoV related

Instead of cleaning house and doing other useful things this morning (hope to rectify that shortly), I’ve been making/improving some userpics. I’ve now got all 10 heroes that I regularly play (OK, so I haven’t actually made one of those heroes yet, but that’s what I intend for Mr Alabster to look like) into two icons (5 per). And I have my two villains in another icon.

Main Set of Heroes

These are my top 5 heroes (for now). Icy is my main with Evah & Dom in their 20s.

Second Set of Heroes

These are my smaller heroes. Some of them very small indeed.

Villains

And finally, my two villains. Jack is my main villain, but poor Chrysanthemum just hasn’t been played all that much. I do prefer being a hero, which accounts for the few villains that I play.

Yup, definitely more than you wanted to know about my gaming habits. But there ya go. 🙂

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Hope all of you Irish-Wannabes have had a great day. And the rest of you as well!

Since I work in a public school, I wore green today. (For those of you not in the know, on St. Patrick’s Day if one doesn’t wear green, one can get pinched! Of course, this isn’t a tradition everywhere, but it’s very popular with young schoolchildren. And some high school kids too, heh heh.) I wore the nice hooded jacket that’s Kermit the Frog green – Amy & Rachel gave it to me for Christmas and today was my first day to actually wear it. It’s cute, green & fuzzy, just like Kermit. And warm, too.

In all the excitement of St. Patrick’s Day, I almost forgot that Doctor Who debuts on Sci Fi Channel tonight. Yay! I’m going to go next door & watch it with the parental units. They never liked the original series, but they did like the TV Movie. I’m hoping they like the new series. It would be fun to watch it with them as the season unfolds. (If not, there’s always Leo. Heh heh.)