Exploring…

So the other day I went to go see Lindsey’s band Over The Line play at Auld Shebeen’s in Fairfax. First off, the concert was awesome, like always. I’ve been to every show that they’ve had in the last two months. I feel like a major groupie/roadie. Yes folks, I’m that cool, I’m with the band.

Second, the bar was great. Typical Irish bar. Food looked good. (We ate before the gig.) And they have an Irish band play upstairs in the dinning room too.

But that’s not what this post is about…

Next door to Auld Shebeen’s is an ice cream shop called Woody’s. We had some time to kill before and I wanted something sweet so we went. And Oh-Emme-Gee it was so good. This super thick, very creamy, yummy yummy delicious goodness that feels like heaven on your tongue.

According to the t-shirt that Woody was wearing it is “Voted Best Ice Cream In The World By The Kids In Fairfax County”. Now, isn’t that the cutest thing in the world? I thought so.

Anyways, if you are ever in Old Town Fairfax by George Mason or Auld Shebeen, be sure you hit up Woody’s.

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

The other day I was sitting at my desk cleaning it out when I noticed some notecards that I have.  I started to wonder, “Who in the world actually writes letters anymore?” Now, I mean the old kind of letters.  The ones with a stamp to a friend just because.

Out of nowhere I decided to write a card to a few of my friends.  I’m sure I would have done it to a lot more but I don’t have people’s addresses either.  (Does any have an address book? I know my mom does but she’s old.)

Any who, I got a huge thrill out of writing the cards to my friends.  Letters are personal, unlike email, sentimental, and take time.  They carry an Old World touch.  My friends were able to see it and feel it in their hands.  They are even able to see where I messed up.  I love it.  Now if more people wrote letters, I wonder if that would keep the post office in business?

Sweat Ceiling

So when I moved to the mid-Atlantic almost a year ago I thought I would be greeted by snow in the winter and milder summers than what I’m use to in Texas. BOY WAS I WRONG!!  DC and the surrounding areas have broken records today.  This is how it right now…

Yes, the feels like is 117!!  In case you have never been in that heat, it’s like an oven.  No seriously, it feels exactly like when you open your oven to put in a tray of cookies and you get all that heat in your face.  Just like that.

I have no problem with the 100+ degrees.  Come one, happens all the time in San Antonio.  I worked outdoors for a summer.  I can deal with it.  But living in an oven not so much.

So now, my plans until the Sweat Ceiling is lowered will be to stay indoors with the A/C on the coldest setting ever and cuddle with Bailey on the couch.

Disclaimer: I did not come up with the term “Sweat Ceiling.”  I’m not that creative.  The Washington Post is calling this heat wave that.  You can imagine why…

Book Review: The Glass Castle

This past weekend I read Jeannette Walls wonderful memoir The Glass Castle.  I pretty much stayed in bed Saturday and Sunday reading this amazing book.  I just couldn’t put it down!!

The memoir goes through the childhood, teenage, and early adult years of Jeannette Walls.  With a free-spirit artist mother, Rose Mary, and a big-thinking alcoholic father, Rex, the Walls family traveled for much of her early childhood.  Jeannette, along with her older sister Lori, younger brother Brian, and little sister Maureen endure neglect, hunger, and abuse on a regular basis to the point where they believed they have a normal childhood and are the lucky ones.  They would “scaddadle” every few months from a different town out in the California or Nevada deserts after money got tight and Rex Walls lost his job.  The parents would spin it each time as an adventure that the children more than happily partook in.  Eventually the settled in Phoenix, in the home that her mother inherited from her mother, for some time but the stability was only temporary. 

Once again Rex loses his job in Phoenix, the family moves to Welch, West Virgina, where Rex is from.  In Welch, times are even harder.  During her teenage years, Jeannette works hard in school but lived on the “other side of the tracks.”  The little house her family finally finds to live in has no running water, no indoor plumbing, and seems to be falling apart.   Eventually her life changes when two film makers from New York visit her school.  She decides that the only way out of the life she’s been brought up in, is to move to New York. 

Lori first moves to New York after she graduates high school and Jeannette follows her after her junior year.  In New York, they find an apartment, jobs, and live the city life but in their absence life for Brian and Maureen become even more unbearable so they too move to the city.  Once all the children are together, Rex and Rose Mary soon arrive as well to a surprise to everyone else to “be a family”.  Even though the parents stay with their children, they return to a life of poverty on the streets as homeless people. 

The hardships and struggles the Wall children endure during their life due their parents are astonishing.  Through it all, the children stood by each other and by their parents.  One of the things Jeannette was able to do was accept her parents for who they were.  They might not be the “best” parents in the world but at the end of day, they do love their children very much.  I’m not saying love is all you need (Life really isn’t like The Beatles song.) but it does help.  The language and voice Jeannette uses for the memoir is real, true, and sincere.  You become so involved you forget it’s a memoir and think it’s a novel.  You forget this is the first hand account of one individual.

The most important thing I took from this is that everyone has a story to tell.  You will never know what a person has been through, their personal trials.  But the story that each of us has, makes us who we are.  If isn’t always how you expect it or how you want it to be but all you can do is take it one step at a time because it can always be worse.

A Delicious Tasting

This past week, I got to go to a food tasting for an annual gala held in September.  My COS, chief of staff, was unable to go, mainly because it takes about 2 hours of your day, so he nominated me from our office because of my LOVE for food, especially desserts.  I, of course, was very appreciative of this and accepted to attend.

So I get to the Convention Center to meet up with the other people from the organization at noon.  They take us through everything.  The tables, the center pieces, the linen.  I feel a bit of an outcast.  Mainly because I’m the only one from a participating Member’s office but I’m familiar with the event and know that it means a lot to a lot of different people.

Finally we get to the tasting room which is set up beautifully with different center pieces and the ways the tables can be the day of the event.  I was more concerned with the food.

This is all the possible dishes as they would be served.  I would have been okay eating each and every one of them.  I’m like a cow, I have four stomachs.  At least I like to think so.  I, of course, was interested in the desserts.

I would have had them all right then and there if could have.  Yes, there are SEVEN different options.

First, the salads came out…

Upper left was some sort of red snapper.  The fish was a bit rubbery because it was out for a bit so we nixed that option since salads would already be plated once guest arrive.  Upper right is a red and yellow beet salad.  This was honestly my first time eating beets. Is it just me or do they kind of taste like corn?  Not my favorite.  Lower right was a duck and bean salad with a mango salsa on top.  Mango salsa, amazing.  White beans, amazing.  Duck, tasted Chinese.  That’s the best way I could explain it.  Tasty but for a Latino oriented event, may not be the best. My favorite was the lower left, “Love from Peru.”  It has a marinade shrimp with a great “potato salad” made the way it’s made in Peru.  I loved it!!

Next came the main course.

Excuse me for starting to devour my food before I took a picture of everything.  There was, from upper left, filet mignon, rib eye, crab stuffed chicken, and halibut in a wonderful cream sauce and capers.  The chipotle mashed potatoes with cijotle cheese served with the chicken was melt-in-my-mouth amazing!!  I could have had a bowl of just that and been perfectly satisfied.  And the filet mignon, wow.  No words.  Very tasty but I was so ready for….

DESSERTS AND LOTS OF THEM!!  There was chocolate, mocha, cake, pie (not pictured), and others.  (I’m drooling in my mouth just looking at this picture.)  Everything was so delicious.  Of course, some were better than others.  The mocha cake, lower left, had a very strange texture and the banana cake, upper left, well, tasted like bananas so that was a no go for me.  But I loved everything else.

Of course, my wonderful lunch had to come to an end and I had to hop in a cab to get back to work.  Needless to say, I had the best lunch EVER!! (Sure beat the left-overs I was going to have that day.)  And my job rocks.

Taken Back

After being in a few break ups, you know when you are starting to get back on your feet and into the single swing.   You start having a spring in your step again, feel okay with everything that occurred, and start to bounce back.  Of course, this takes time, weeks, months, even years.  But every once in a while, right when you think you are getting back to being you instead of we, something happens that takes you back to that place you were right after it all happened, right after it all ended, right after the breakup.

For me, this happened yesterday.  After making plans and having them fall, I was stuck with torturing thoughts about my last relationship.  It’s never easy.  And every one goes through it.  All those “what if’s…” washed over me like a tsunami and took hold.   It’s hard to get out of that hole once it’s been dug but escape does happen.  Friends help and having a cuddly little fur ball like Bailey lick my face makes all my trouble melt.

In the end, break ups are not easy.  It takes time for you to grieve, to heal, and to get to being you.  I’ve been trying to do all this the last few weeks and even though there are bad moments, there are a lot of good ones too.   And it’s the good ones that help to get you through when there are bad one.

It May Be Raining Cookies

Today has been a crazy office day.  With the talks about the debt ceiling and budget cuts, the mood/atmosphere in the House is pure mayhem.  It may not be Monday but it sure feels pretty manic.  (And I’m sure this is what it’ll be like for the next few weeks.)

Any ways, cookies and sweets are always greatly appreciated and greatly needed in my office, especially by me.  Sugar is what makes the office go round.  This is how the raining cookies began:

Went to staff my boss at an award presentation where cookies and brownies were served. (I got a brownie.)

Intern comes back from a briefing with diet coke and a cookie.  (MAJOR SCORE!!)

Girl Scout group takes a meeting in the office and gives me a box of Thin Mints.

Needless to say I’m on a HUGE sugar rush and give the fact that my lunch consisted of chili cheese fries, I definitely need a work out tonight.  We shall see if that really does happen…

Palm Reading

A few weeks ago while walking around in Georgetown, my bestie Lindsey and I saw a sign for $5 Palm Readings.  So excited we climbed the stairs to the office only to find that they were closed.  We were very disappointed, called the number on the sign and complained that they shouldn’t have the sign out on the sidewalk when they were closed.  Total false advertisement. 

This past weekend, we decided to give it another go since we were in Georgetown again.  To our surprise, not really surprise but whatever, the place was closed!!  But then Lindsey remember of a place up in Dupont Circle that does palm readings.  We were determined to get our palms read so decided to give it a shot.

So we got to Dupont Circle and met with Charley who read our palms.  I only did one while Lindsey did two.  Supposedly, two palm reading let you see a little more into the future.  Any who, Charley told me some very interesting things.  Some of it had to do with my job, others with my future, and one about a previous relationship.  She said I had a good heart and life line even though I’m not too sure what that means.  Oh and that I’ll have two kids.  By this, my initial thought was “Does Bailey count as one?”  I hope she does.  Me and children just don’t get along. 

Afterwards, I took some time looking at my own palm and started to wonder if it really held the truths to my future.  I’m sure it does, to some degree but who knows.  I used this website for a little help even though I think I ended up getting more confused.  Why are there so many lines and stuff?  Can’t this just be simple…

Even though I like to take things like horscopes and palm readings with a grain of salt, it’s always fun to indulge.

Book Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

So lately, I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands.  And I’ve had a lot of reading from that free time. Any who, in my collection of “Books to Read” was this little gem by Mitch Albom.  Now, I haven’t read any of his other works even though I’ve wanted to, especially Tuesdays with Morrie.  (I don’t have it in my collection of “Books to Read” but it is on my list.)

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a philosophical fiction novel centered around Eddie, his birthdays, his death, and the people he meets.  There are some he knows and some he doesn’t but they all impacted his life, in a positive and negative way.  All the people also teach Eddie a lesson about life.  About patience, about love, and about hope.

It’s an easy read but by the end of the book, the reader is left to wonder, “Who will my five people be?”  Truth be told, I was crying in about half the book because I found it so personal and real.  Sadly enough, I wonder about my own dad who were his five people and if he would be one of mine.

Anyways, I highly recommend it.  It definitely makes you reassess your previous, present, and future interactions, acquaintances, and relationships.