Happy Birthday Baby

To day is my hubby's 27th birthday. He is my best friend in this world and the answer to so many of my prayers! I am so blessed that he wants to spend eternity with me. I am so proud of the man he has become and I just can't wait to see what the future holds for him and our little family. Love ya baby!

We both had to work and he had a meeting to attend so we didn't really get too much time together to celebrate, but I made the best of the time we had. He asked me to make him one of his favorite restaurant meals, Linguine with Clam Sauce. I have never been a huge fan of clams unless they are in a chowder so I was a little nervous about making this dish. I scoured my cookbooks and settled on a recipe then added my own twist on the basic recipe. Let me just say the ingredients are simple, cheep and easy to find. And the flavor was un-real. I am a fan of this dish for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!

INGREDIENTS
2 (6.5 ounce) cans minced clams, with juice reserved
1 (6.5 ounce) can chopped clams, juice drained
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup olive oil
5-8 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
ground black pepper to taste
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1 (16 ounce) package linguine pasta

DIRECTIONS
Cook pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile prepare the sauce. Combine clam juice, butter or margarine, olive oil, minced garlic, parsley, lemon juice, red pepper flakes and pepper in a large saucepan. Place over medium heat until just about boiling, reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Add clams and cook 1 minute. Add cheese stir and cook 2 minutes while continuing to stir until cheese is melted. Sauce will appear thin, this is normal. Plate warm noodles and serve sauce over pasta with a side of garlic bread.

It was so good we dang near licked our plates clean. At $10 for 4 adult sized servings you should give this bad boy a try for sure.

Identity Theft & Denim Days

So late Saturday/early Sunday DJ and I discovered we were victims of identify theft. The on-line computer game we play was hacked and the individual got access to our debit card and email address/password through the account management part of our gaming account. So we spent until 5:30am on Sunday contacting banks and credit cards and everyone who had a 24 hour customer service department. Not Fun!!!!!!!!!! But the good news is that we seem to have caught it in time and our bank accounts are looking like they are ok. Boy was that a scary experience. Looks like it was a random attack using a password forcing program like "brute force" where the computer is set to continually try password combinations until it cracks the correct password. Oy, crime just keeps right up with technology.

Ok now for my second part of this post; Denim Day 2008. Tomorrow the 23rd of April is national Denim Day. It's a day to make a social statement about sexual violence prevention and education by wearing your jeans. Why jeans do you ask? Well it's in direct relation to 1998 Italian Supreme Court ruling to overturn the conviction of a rapist go because the victim wore jeans and in their belief the jeans would have been too hard for a rapist to get off so the act had to be consensual. That absurd ruling has led to an organization & movement to help bring attention to the seriousness of sexual violence around the world. So wear some jeans tomorrow and support the safety of women around the world.

Here are some reasons why I'm supporting Denim Day tomorrow:
Every two minutes, somewhere in America someone is sexually assaulted.

Two million children around the world are forced into prostitution every year.

Law Enforcement arrests for Internet sex crimes against minors are on the rise.

1 in 6 American women are victims of sexual assault & 1 in 33 men are victims.

Most importantly - Survivors deserve support and assistance, never shame or blame.

Talk to your kids about safety and predators. Keep family computers out in an open area and utilize the parental controls to restrict access to dangerous websites. And if you ever suspect a child or someone you know is a victim of sexual abuse or violence report it to the authorities immediately.

Finally

So here is the finished product. All I can say is after a year and a half of mortgage payments I'm finally starting to feel like this place is ours =) Oh and for the love of Pete please don't enlarge these cause the photo quality sucks, but my low light lens could not get enough of the room into the pictures to really see the whole effect, so this is what I could do with what I had to work with.
Here's a fun little factoid for ya'll, that green rug was the exact size of our little condo in CA! Pales in comparison here huh?

I still feel like our place is a kids house trying to be grown up. Here's the little niche (duh should have turned on the light in there huh?

My cozy spot from which I do most of my blogging.

The baby sized hall way into the master on the left and the laundry on the right.

Next on the list is the master bed and bath, woo-hoo! We are measuring for our floors this week so hopefully we will be working on those soon and I plan to be done with the inside of the house by August!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ta-Da

Good bye terracotta orange, I can't say we'll miss you.

Primer coat 1.

I already like it better then the orange.

Oh but then the color went on and I LOVE it!

Last little bit.

And here is the true color in the daylight the next morning. Not bad for 14 hours worth of work. That's right people 8am to 11:30pm, 3 cut-ins, 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of color. Whew we slept really well that night.

And here it is back to normal. The wall with the windows will be getting a coat of chocolate brown this Saturday as will the small wall outside our bedroom and the little alcove you saw in all the pictures. My curtains are almost the same color as the new walls so the chocolate brown will look just lovely. Can't wait! Next painting is the master bedroom & bath, then the kitchen, guest bath, back bedroom and the office. And after that the floors....................

Painting

It's a beautiful day, I'm painting and blasting some good ol' classic Credence Clearwater Revival (or CC&R if you're cool with them like me) and Santana, got a cold root beer and my living room/hallways are getting less and less orange!!!!!!!!!!!! Be back next week :)

Woo-Hoo

7am budget meeting - No Layoffs! I think we got very positive news that the city is not planning to lay off any employees and we are all getting a 3.4% cost of living increase for sure so that we can remain in the promised top 75th percentile of city salaries in the State. We are having our insurance increased 15% which will be around 20$ a month (given that my insulin alone w/out insurance is about $1600 a month I'm good with the 15%) which seemed to get a ton of people all ticked off. And they are combining our sick and vacation time into just paid time off but that will actually give everyone 12 additional hours of leave, you just can't roll it over at the end of the year, no biggie.

So all in all I'm feeling much better about the whole j-o-b right now. Thanks for the prayers :)

200th post and some bad news

Well I must say that it sucks that my 200th post is about such crappy news. We apparently had a budget meeting yesterday while I was home sick. In that meeting there was a discussion of no new prosecutors and no new staff at all for the city. This is really bad news given that our 3 prosecutors are so overworked. I actually think that one of them may quit and start his own law office over this all.

sSo then today there is another budget meeting where we are told that our raise is 3.4% instead of the 11% promised (really I see no problem with this because I come from the school of something is always better then nothing & having come from the Fed where you are lucky to get 1.2% annually this is great news. And really I still have a job right now and that's more then a lot of people in this country can say right now. And I still have health insurance right?). However that was followed by the news that insurance is going up 15%. Oh and they are combining our sick and personal time so we are going to be out hours.

Oh and we have a 7am mandatory meeting with the city manager and then a mandatory meeting with HR, so that sounds like great news huh? I'm really trying to be positive but I can feel in my bones that layoffs are right around the corner.

So I'm looking for all sorts of ways to cut my costs now just in case. I am actually going to do it and get rid of the cable, the house phone will be on the cuts list too, scrappy supplies are out and our diet is about to change rapidly to high fiber and very low meat. Now I'm not being an alarmist or a doomsdayer but I'm going to err on the side of caution and save for that rainy day.

Well I'll fill ya all in about the other super fun meetings tomorrow.




(I should have called in sick today too while I still had sick leave.)

Edit - If you are a fan of romantic dramady with a realistic feel that you don't have to think too much about and love those awkard family movies give this a try - it made me smile tonight.

Sick

I've been down right deathly sick since Saturday night. Boo Hoo. I had the beginnings of a great weekend and it has ended in a huge lot of icky-ness.

Friday night we had a fan-tab-ouls night at Ah-So with Amie/Danny & Toni/Brent. The food was yummy and the company was great. We got there and were seated right away, which is pretty much unheard of for a Friday night 7pm at Ah-So. I got to enjoy some of my favorite stuff; California rolls, unagi rolls and yummy miso ginger salad. Oh how I love Japanese food.

Then we went back to the Party house and broke out the Wii.

Then Saturday night I went over to Amie's house for a crop. We had a great time as per usual. I got 3 lay outs done. I'll show them off this week when I have some actual energy.

I left there at 2 ish feeling cruddy and sent the longest night of my life in agony. I slept a whole 2 hours sleeping and the rest of the night praying for a quick death. I made it to my mom's on Sunday and tried to make it through Conference but my total sicky-ness and lack of sleep made for several cat-naps and a total thankfulness for my TIVO and the fact that I can watch everything I missed this week. I had just as miserable of a night last night and stayed home today to try and recover. So far I'm still feeling just as bad and my fever is definitely coming back, so I think I'm going back to bed now.

But first I want to share some observations I had while laying on my couch today:

My dog wags her tail in her sleep - cute

I believe I may be able to prove that at any given hour there is a Law & Order episode on TV

My couch is very uncomfortable

I really need to clean my house

I really hate chicken broth

My dog also farts in her sleep - still kinda cute.

OK I need to shower and crawl into bed.

Obsession

So when does an obsession become unhealthy? I am totally and completely obsessed with the show House. I have rented and devoured season 1 from my local library and am now on season 2. I am totally enamored with the witty repertoire the cast has and the pure dysfunction of the characters. I love how flawed they all are and realistic that makes them all to me. I just love how unrealistic the actual medicine is, not in theories, but in the speed of the diagnosis and no insurance blocking. And what it really all boils down to......Dr. House is HOT, and part of me thinks the attraction is on a strange level also based on my many weird medical issues and it would be oh so convenient to have a diagnostician around! If you haven't yet met this dramady (drama+comedy) do yourself a favor and invite Dr. House and his crew of not-so-merry men/women over for the night and then give me a call, I'll bring the popcorn.