weekend whatnot

I'll refrain from the usual, "I'm working, I'm tired" boring tripe today.

The weekend has been busy, as usual. On Friday morning the CHECK ENGINE light came on in my car. This freaked me out because, well, engines are important. So of course it must have meant that my car was only moments away from catching fire. So I did what the stereotypical wife would do. I pulled over and called my husband. Ken talked me down an assured me that it was okay to drive to work, and the engine would most likely not explode. But I did take my car in to the dealership on Saturday morning to find out the what-what.
The Honda place told me that I need a new ftp sensor, which has something to do with emissions. I declined their offer to fix it, because we can't spend another $300 bucks on my car right now. Not after just sinking 500 something dollars into my car a month ago. I'll have to find out if this sensor is something Christy's husband Jeff The Mechanic can fix for me at a later date.
Last night we had dinner with my friend Malia and her husband Alex. We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant that served us a mighty fine pan-fried rice and vegetable dish with tofu and a light tomato kind of sauce. Very tasty. The conversation is always good with those two, even if I feel a little bit dumb in the presence of super-smart people. I mean, in addition to being a biology professor, Alex is also a publshed author.
And we found out that Malia is working on a book herself. A couple of smart cookies, they are.

Let's see...what else? Oh, Sunday I did another one of those research study dealies. I got paid $75 to watch a pilot of a crappy new television drama and give my opinion in a round table type of discusssion with a bunch of strangers. The whole senerio was pretty funny. A weird selection of people were there, including a woman named Cloreesha who had too-long orange fake nails and kept referring to watching a t.v. as "looking at t.v.". There was also the classic one-sided mirror, as well as video cameras recording our comments. Funny stuff, eh?

Other than that, we have been busy little bees working on new products and such for the store.
check it out, won't you? Please! For fuck's sake, I would like to quit my silly job and be somebody! Hehe.

vegan parenting

I got this from Tony @ the TARP blog. I think it's cool and inspiring. Don't worry, I'm not pregnant.

and you know how much I like cupcakes

Sorry it's been a while. Between work and the store, there's just not as much internet free time as I would like. I'm all behind on my diary reading, it's awful. We are bringing in a shitload of new products into the store this week and next week, so I'm going to be busy posting, taking pictures, etc. this weekend, therefore I probably won't have time to update then, either. Just know that overall my life is pretty boring, and you're not missing much!
I did find this awesome cartoon today at Super Vegan. It really cracked me up. But then, I'm easily amused.

Pizzer

Oh, I forgot to post pictures of the kick-ass pizzas we made last weekend. I usually get frustrated with making my own pizza dough because it takes so long and because it gets so sticky. But this time I followed Isa's dough recipe and it turned out wonderfully. I know it sounds like I'm all up this cookbook's ass, but I really do love it! Everything I've made from it has been fantastic. Anyway...
The dough recipe made enough for two thin crust pizzas. I even broke out the old pizza stone to bake one of the pies. The first one was topped with fresh tomatoes, tempeh "bacon", purple onions, and Vegan Gourmet mozzarella. This was before it went into the oven:



The second one I took from Vegan With A Vengeance. It's the Isa Pizza, topped with freshly made pesto, tofu "ricotta" cheese (which I added spinach to), and black olives. Here it is before baking:



Here are the slices after baking:



Both pizzas were good, but I really enjoyed the pesto ricotta one. I've never made fresh pesto before, and it was fun to see the bright green basil all crushed up with the garlic and oil. So pretty!

who did who to the what now?

Man. I'm still so tired. I'm finding that juggling my time between the new job, doing store stuff, sleeping, eating, etc., has been pretty difficult. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't so dead sleepy! I would be able to get much more done if I didn't have to sleep. Ha. Forget about house cleaning and cooking, that's been at a minimum. I haven't been to the gym all week, either. I need to get my shit straight and figure out how to manage my time better, like normal people do.
Mr. Christy, our "family" mechanic is doing some work on my poor little car this weekend. I dropped it off tonight, all sad and covered in pollen. My car is doing okay I think, it's just tired from all the driving lately. It's mileage is over 100,000, so it's well past due for a new timing belt and water pump. I need it to last for many more years, and since it's a Honda I have high hopes for it. My car needs some TLC, like me.
Ken and I are going to get ourselves some new clothes tomorrow. We both really need to. My self esteem has been so low for the past few years because of my crappy clothes. I feel like I look just awful. The bad thing is, I'm not sure if I really know how to dress myself in a way that's flattering anymore. I feel like I either look to casual and bummy, or I dress too young. I used to love clothes shopping, but I think I'll probably get frustrated. We shall see. My hair has been annoying me since I got it cut too, because I haven't been able to get it to look right. It looked okay today, and Christy gave me a compliment on it, so I feel a bit better about the cut now. I'm weird in that sometimes I think shorter hair makes me look old.
Wow, I'm really rambling. I better go to bed. I'm so tired, I could sleep standing up.

Ahh....Saturdays

Oh How I've missed having Saturdays off! I love it so much. Sleeping in with Ken and Moe, Eating an elaborate breakfast, being lazy. How awesome. Ken being the pancake man that he is, made us chocolate chip pancakes with maple syrup and strawberry sauce this morning.



Awesome.

I'm still really beat-down tired, though. I feel like I have permanent jet lag. The pollen is really bad here right now, and I think that's contributing to my fatigue as well. Oh well, whatever.

Oh, our garage sale last weekend went really well! We made around $160. We got rid of a lot of extra junk that was taking up space in the house. It makes me feel better when the excess clutter is under control. I used to be such a pack rat, holding on to every item I owned like my life depended on it. I've gotten over that now, and I really try to only keep things that I actually use or things that have an emotional meaning to them. I used to hoard books like I was a damn library, but we got rid of an entire book shelf worth of books! We kept two other book shelves full of the books we wanted, so we aren't completely bookless.

The job is going okay so far. I hate the whole learning curve part of starting a new job, because in a production environment I like to be fast. But I'm sure I'll get used to it and be bored as hell with the repetition very soon. It's a very corporate type of environment, and they like to have lots of meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about future meetings, and problems that need to be addressed, possibly in a meeting. I've worked five days, and I've been to four meetings. It's very silly.

In other news, this guy needs to take a little trip to his local animal shelter so he can see how many animals are homeless because people like him don't give a shit about the life of a defenseless creature. Or maybe he just needs his nuts twisted off.