Boring update

I guess it's time to update this again since it's been almost two months.

We finally got a Christmas trip planned...two days before the trip!  We ended up taking a Wind Star cruise (the Wind Surf) to the Caribbean.  We flew to St. Maarten, then traveled over the next week to Tortola, Jost Van Dyke, Virgin Gorda, St. Kitts, Les Saintes Guadeloupe, and St. Barthelemy.  It was a great trip!  The weather was nice everywhere we traveled, but the water was still chilly for me.  It was probably in the 80 degree range.  The further south we went, the more tolerable the temperature of the water.

We did have some minor set backs the day we were to leave for the trip.  Mike's friend, who was going to watch Radar, his wife ended up getting bit by Radar the same night we dropped him off.  So we had to go back and pick him up and find an alternative place for him to stay last minute...over the Christmas holiday!  I started calling places at around 8a and finally had our kennel call us back around 11a with a last minute cancellation.  Thank goodness!  Then, Skye cut his lip and we had to take him to the vet.  We were supposed to leave the house around noon that day, but we ended up leaving around 2:30p.  Luckily, our flight wasn't until the next morning, but we had to travel to Dallas to see Mike's sister and her future in-laws.  We were quite late for that dinner, but we made it.  Once we were on the plane to St. Maarten, all the stress of the previous few days finally started fading away.  And the next week was grand!  And we didn't see him, but apparently Justin Bieber was on St. Barths while we were there....and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Lots of rich people and their yachts!

Since 2012 has begun, there hasn't been much going on here.  The weather here has been very warm and unwinter-like.  It also has been VERY rainy which is strange given that we were in such a horrible drought in 2011.  I can't really complain too much about the rain since we need it so badly, but when it rains, Radar does not want to go outside to go potty.  And he has so much energy that it's a little unbearable.  Today, when the rain let up a little, Radar and I went for a walk.  And he pooped TWICE on one walk!  He's been holding that in for quite some time!  Also, with this amount of rain, comes more mosquitoes, and if you are a follower of this blog, you have heard me complain about the mosquitoes in this area.  There are more swarms then I have ever lived around before.  It is overwhelming!

I guess that is all for now.  Sorry this has become a boring post.  It's because I'm a boring person.  Until next time...

Just a quick post

So, I just thought I would write a short something or another since it's been a few weeks since my last post.

It is Sunday night, 12/18/11 and we still do not have plans for Christmas.  My wonderful husband has vacation commitment issues.  Every year when we are planning a trip somewhere, it takes my coercing, pushing and prodding, and basically me rooting him on, to finally press the "purchase" button.  This year is nothing new.  We have found a cruise out of St. Maarten on a smaller Windstar cruise ship that we may decide to take.  This trip leaves on Saturday.  There is another similar cruise out of Barbados that leaves on Sunday.  This leaves us less than one week to figure out a plan of action.  Since all my efforts for vacation bargain hunting never get utilized, I've kind of stopped looking.  I get frustrated when I find a good trip and Mike just wants to wait "a little longer" so I've left the searching up to him.  Hopefully within the next day or so we will have a trip finalized.  Worse case scenario, we end up back in Sonoma...which isn't too bad of a scenario!

I'll keep you posted on our whereabouts once I find out myself!

Everyone have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, if I don't post before then!

Halloween and Thanksgiving 2011 have come and gone

So here I am, writing a blog post, almost two months after my last post.  I should probably work on being better about this.

We just had Thanksgiving at the Clark house last Thursday.  Of course, it was a vegetarian Thanksgiving with all the delectable items made by me.  I can't take full credit though, because I used recipes for everything I made, and my helpful husband was my sous chef for part of the time.  He did a great job chopping, stacking and cleaning.  A big thanks must go out to him for his help!

My mom and her husband, as well as my in-laws came to spend the day with us.  This is actually the second year we have had a vegetarian Thanksgiving at our house with these same people joining in on the festivities.  This year's menu consisted of butternut squash crostinis, blue cheese shortbread and cream cheese, and crispy chick peas for appetizers.  The main courses were stuffed acorn squash with feta, a root vegetable mash, wild rice stuffing with dried cranberries, roasted Brussels sprouts with grapes, and roasted garlic cauliflower.  For dessert I made pumpkin and pear crisps, Mexican hot chocolate and a cranberry-citrus cake with cranberry compote.  The in-laws also brought a pecan pie.  I also made a hot spiced apple cider to start the meal.  One point I failed to mention is that I intentionally made a "healthy" vegetarian Thanksgiving since Mike has high cholesterol and both sides of the family have heart issues.

Although I feel that this year's Thanksgiving meal was not as successful as last year's, I think this mainly is due to me using plenty of butter and high fatty items in last year's meal, and being sure NOT to use these items this year.  But I feel that everyone enjoyed the dishes I made and were plenty full when they left.  I know I am my toughest critic.

One thing I regret the last two Thanksgivings':  not taking any pictures of the food.  If we do this again next year, I will be certain to commemorate the experience in photos.

It's been two years...and I'm still alive!

Yes, I have been absent from this blog for almost 2 years now. I've had more important things to do then post on here I guess. But now, I am back to not working and trying to fill my days with something to keep me from getting too bored.

Since you last heard from me, I got a job as a microbiologist in Houston. I spent about 7 months driving 50 miles one way to work and then couldn't take it anymore...I quit. Then I got another job about 30 miles away working as a business manager of an analytical company. Good experience, but still not quite the right fit. So I quit after 1 year. Now, I'm a stay at home mother of 5 cats and 1 dog until the next good opportunity shows itself.

We are still living in Baytown, TX where the mosquitoes are still horrible. We are currently in limbo while waiting to hear if we will be moving to California or another state soon. I sure hope we get the opportunity to get out of here. As nice as it has been to not worry about money since it's so cheap to live here, I absolutely cannot stand living in Texas. If we were to live in Houston, our time spent here may have been more enjoyable, but I expect not by a large margin. I miss DC where the people are multicultural and fit! People here are grossly overweight and it makes me sad to think of what is going on inside their body...I can see what is going on on the outside.

As the weeks pass, I will try and post updates on our living status. Hopefully there is still someone out there who subscribes to this thing!

The mosquitoes are improving

This past weekend the temperature finally broke below 80 degrees. It has consistently been in the 80's and 90's since we moved down here, but the weekend my friends come down from apparently cold and wet Tennessee, we get into the 70's. Seventy degree temperatures were actually a nice break from the heat and humidity that I've found in Texas, but at night, it got a little chilly for me. I have the windows open today, and a couple days ago I aired out the house as well. I actually could probably put the A/C back on today since it feels like it's back in the low 80's, but I figure I'll wait until I can no longer stand the temperature. And, I just officially checked the current temperature in Baytown, and we are at 81 degrees. I can't complain about the warmth in mid-October.

I've noticed since the temperatures reduced quite a bit over the past weekend that the mosquitoes have not been attacking me when I leave the house. I haven't attempted to stay outside for a very long time, but the trip to the mailbox and to the car when I'm leaving the house has not been bad at all. I'm thinking about actually attempting to maybe sit outside sometime soon and enjoy the nice weather. I may wait until after I buy a couple citronella candles though just to be certain.

Even with the improvement of the mosquito situation, the fire ant problem has not improved. Last week I went into the garage to move the trash bin outside. I wasn't able to see since it was nighttime and once I realized what was happening, it was too late. Apparently fire ants had discovered something yummy in the bottom of the trash can (I haven't officially blamed Mike for this, but I have my suspicions. I sometimes notice a fast food drink container in the bottom of the empty trash can. Instead of throwing his cup into a trash can with a bag, he thinks it's OK to just put it in the trash bin. I'm sure ants would just love a little high fructose corn syrup to bring back to their mounds.) Once I started moving the trash bin outside from the garage, I started feeling my hand getting stung, and then I felt my toe getting stung. I looked down and had a swarm of fire ants trying to kill me. They failed in their attempt to remove me from this Earth, but I do have 4 lovely blisters on my left thumb, 2 nice bumps on my right big toe, and three formally pussy but now scabbed over blisters on the back of my right arm. I am so tired of that stupid species of ant. I look like I have warts on my thumb with the way they've bubbled up. It's pretty gross and quite annoying as everything I seem to touch hits directly on my ant stings. We really need to hire a fire ant guy. I just don't want to kill the other insects outside. I like the multitude of crickets out there. I think they are cute. And we also have lots of frogs and toads. And I don't want them harmed either.

So currently Mike is in Houston for a 3 day meeting. They have him in a hotel so he doesn't have to drive the hour each way to the location. We had talked about me going out there for at least a day to explore, but with him having meetings all day and then events scheduled with work every night, I chose to stay here with the cats who have thoroughly enjoyed their momma time. I woke up this morning with all three girls sleeping on the bed with me. And I'm pretty certain that at some point I had four cats with me as I tried to move my legs into a more comfortable position, but had many weights on the comforter making it nearly impossible to move.

I don't have any plans for today. I'm trying to hold off on cleaning until a little later in the week so that when Mike's parents come to visit on Friday that there will be the least amount of cat hair floating around as possible. I might make today "wash the dirty sheets" day. That is something I can do in advance of the parent-in-law trip. I've already washed all the dirty towels from when my friends came to visit so that's one thing off the list. I'm not sure what the plan is when Mike's parents are in town, but we have talked about going to the local racetrack down the street and watching a race. Mike has also talked about going to Kemah Boardwalk which we have been to a few times now. I'm sure we will also go into Houston for some good food somewhere. I think they are staying with us this time, but I can never be quite sure. I've always thought since the first time they stayed at our place in Wilmington that the cats were too much for them. Ever since that time when they've come to visit they have always stayed at a hotel. We definitely have plenty of room for them here, but I haven't gotten confirmation as of yet.

I will leave you with a picture of Mike with his birthday gift from me this year and a picture of me with a very happy shark.

Life in Texas is ongoing

So it's occurred to me that I haven't posted in a while when I spoke to my Grandmother this morning, so I thought I'd write today. I guess nothing too interesting has happened since the move, so it's hard for me to find things to talk about. We did get another car...a 2010 Toyota Prius. So now we have two hybrids. I am happy about our purchases. We are taking one step more to helping save the planet, but no, we didn't buy American. It's all about give and take.

Today I turned down my first interview for a job. This was for an analytical position that didn't even require a Chemistry degree. Although they paid decent, I don't want to get stuck doing something I don't like just because it was the first opportunity that paid decent. So I told him to keep me in mind for future opportunities, but I was going to pass on this one. I have a feeling other opportunities will arise. I've already applied to about 5 jobs myself, and this guy found me on Careerbuilder.com. So if I'm patient, I'm sure a good job will come along that I would enjoy. I definitely need to start doing something because this just sitting around the house all day long is starting to get boring.

The mosquitoes haven't gotten any better. We went to Galveston this past weekend, and after 10 minutes of getting bitten by mosquitoes on the beach, I had to leave. And a few days ago while it was raining at the house, these guys were still out searching for blood...and they got me too! I've never heard of mosquitoes on the beach OR out while it's raining. These are probably mutant mosquitoes that have super-mosquito abilities since living around all these oil refineries and chemical plants. I'm just waiting for one cold front to come through and freeze all these buggers off. The problem is that the first cold front may not come for quite some time.

I'm currently fighting a little cold. I don't think I have H1N1. I don't have a fever (or at least not a high grade one). I have some chest congestion and body aches. And I'm tired. But I think today is a little better than yesterday, so I think that if I keep resting, I'll get back to 100% soon.

Tomorrow we have the garage door people coming for the second time in a week to fix our left side garage door...again. One of the wire bands that raise and lower the door keeps coming off of the spool. And since last time they "fixed" this by just putting the wire back on the spool and the problem happened again so quickly, I'm sure there's an underlying issue. Hopefully tomorrow they will send someone who can actually speak some English so I can communicate to the guy better than last time.

So I guess I'm a Texan...

Since my last blog, we have made the two day drive to Baytown, lived in a hotel for 10 days, closed and moved into our new 3800 sq foot home, bought a bunch of new furniture, bought a new car, sold the Honda Civic since it's transmission was about to die, started putting away our stuff, got bitten about 30 times by the ferocious Texan mosquitoes, got my stitches out of my thumb, found out I can't feel anything on that spot that was cut, and eaten a lot of Tex-Mex.

We are liking our new home even though we have a ways to go before it is completely put together. Since our new furniture has been brought in, it's starting to feel whole, but we still have pictures to put up on walls and stuff to put away. The move in was pretty painless, but we had the movers dump out all of our stuff on the floors so they could take all the boxes and packing paper with them, so putting our things away is taking some time. The kitchen is the room I worked on first so that I could start cooking again. It's the only room that's really complete. The rest of the rooms will be finished in due time. I'm not one to rush anything...quite the opposite as I am the ultimate procrastinator.

Mike's 2005 Honda Civic VP started having transmission problems on the way down from VA, and when we brought it in to check it out, the estimate to fix it was going to be around $3000, so instead, we traded it in for a new 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid. This car gets 34 mpg on the highway, and 33 mpg in the city. And Mike has already said he's surpassed those numbers. Pretty good for a large sedan. We are still looking for another car to replace my old Pontiac, but so far have not purchased anything. We are going to be back in the hole again with our new home purchase, and two new cars. I hope I can get a job soon to help with all these unplanned costs. I know Mike really wants a couple flat screen LCD TVs, but right now would be difficult for us to purchase.

We now have satellite TV which gives us way too many channels. On the up side, I've gotten to view some movies I've been wanting to see for a few years now. HBO and Showtime are free for the first 3 months and Cinemax is 1 cent. The downside to all these channels is all the porn. It's pretty gross to be searching for something to watch and then you get to view some girl on girl action. Or on two occasions already, I've fallen asleep watching a movie only to wake up to more girl on girl action. No thank you. I don't think we will be renewing that service.