Friday 5: Repeat

1. What’s something you are repeatedly asked to prove? I can’t think of anything, really.
2. What’s an album you can listen to on endless repeat? Ooh, this is tough, because I really, really don’t like repetition, so even with albums I really love, I’d never do this. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is a solid one, though.
3. What’s a story you’ve told several times? I can’t think of specific ones, but I know I have my go-tos. Everyone does. A lot of my mother-in-law stories get repeated, particularly ones about wedding planning.
4. What’s something you always order at a certain restaurant? I am notorious for finding a dish I love and rarely, if ever, straying from it, while also always talking about how I need to try something new. At Mad Mex, a local Tex-Mex chain, I always get the tofu tacos, although the last time I was there, I did branch out and get a wrap. It was good, but I ended up kind of wishing I’d gotten my tacos. And then at Green Mango, my favorite Thai place, I always get the pad thai. In fact, I almost always order pad thai in any restaurant that serves it. I always get the same sushi, too, although that’s also because I’m a vegetarian and the options are limited.
5. In what way do you hope this weekend will be exactly like last? The downtime. It was our last weekend to empty the apartment, which took a lot longer than planned, but we did have some time to chill. We made our Sunday trip to the coffee shop in town, I went to the movies with my mom, we had dinner, all that fun stuff. So more good times, please! At least I know I won’t be cleaning out the apartment, so the odds are in my favor on this one.

As always, from Friday 5.

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Friday 5: Acromony

1. When were you recently SOL? Probably cleaning out the apartment. We still have over a week to finish doing it, but my father-in-law came over with one of my husband’s brothers today to move furniture and I hadn’t made nearly as much progress cleaning and hauling shit out as I’d hoped.
2. What was a recent SNAFU? My first day working from home, which was last Friday, I made a few pretty dumb mistakes on a show. I chalk it up to being distracted by getting thrown on a rush job in the middle of it and just not being super attentive to it.
3. From what social gathering were you most recently AWOL? A couple–my best friend’s brother and his wife did a brunch at a coffee shop in Pittsburgh, which I always enjoy going to, but it was moving day. We did have time to make it out there, but we were exhausted. The other is the family reunion, which we missed for like the third year in a row. This year was potentially moving day and that ended up not being the case, but a friend of my mom’s wanted to get together for lunch, so she opted to do that instead and so the rest of us didn’t go either. And last year, we were deep in wedding planning, and the year before that, we were deep in planning my brother’s wedding.
4. When has someone reminded you to MYOB? Not recently! Look, I’m nosy as fuck–where I come from, we call it nebby–but I’m not obvious about it. Although one time, my best friend did call me a “neb shit.”
5. What might get in your way this weekend as you TCB? My body. I completely wore myself out at the apartment last night–my whole lower body aches, and I’m not sure if it was the cleaner I was using in the bathroom or kicking up dust in the whole place or both, but I was sneezing and sniffling a ton. It happens sometimes and normally is fine a little bit later, but I haven’t slept it off yet. It doesn’t feel like it’s turning into a bigger problem, fortunately, just one that’s not going away, and with bad timing–tomorrow is my company picnic at Kennywood, followed by an Erasure concert. At least I took Monday off.

As always, from Friday 5.

Friday 5: Happy ASLIRT

1. What are your favorite and least favorite nuts? Favorite is peanut. I’m not sure that I have a least favorite, but I also don’t really eat a lot of nuts. I tend to stick to peanuts, and when they’re in food, walnuts and almonds.
2. What are your favorite and least favorite berries? Favorite is raspberry, by far. Least favorite is probably blueberry. I don’t dislike them, I just…don’t really care.
3. What are your favorite and least favorite tropical fruits? My favorite is…all of them? I love mango and pineapple–like, they’re my go-tos if they’re on any menu. Least favorite might be papaya, but like blueberries, it’s not so much dislike as it is indifference.
4. What are your favorite and least favorite varieties of M&Ms? Peanut is my go-to, although strangely, I think I like the crispy ones better. At this point, plain might be my least favorite.
5. What are your favorite and least favorite raisin-containing foods? I like oatmeal-raisin cookies. I can’t think of a least favorite, mostly because I don’t come across raisins in a lot of things, but I will tell you that I recently heard putting raisins in potato salad is a thing and I find this deeply offensive.

As always, from Friday 5.

Fridy 5: Korea Guidance

1. What would be a better name for the color of goldenrod-colored paper? I don’t know that I have any better ideas!
2. Where did you get your silverware? I think I bought it at Target, and then my husband brought me when he moved in with me.
3. It is a weird tradition in America (and possibly elsewhere) for parents to have their children’s baby shoes bronzed.  What artifact from this past week would you have bronzed as a keepsake and heirloom? Our sales contract for our house!
4. What was the most recent ceremony you attended? Church, for Christmas.
5. What east Asian cuisine is good for your Seoul? Man, practically all of it? But my go-tos are sushi, particularly cucumber rolls, and basically any noodles.

As always, from Friday 5.

Paul and I decided to go out for dinner Friday night, and while we were finishing up dinner, he was getting weird texts from one of his sisters, who seemed to be in the middle of a panic attack. So we decided to drive out to her. She calming down when we got there, and after a little while of dicking around, she was hungry and felt up to going out, so we took her to Chipotle. Since Paul and I were still full of sushi, we skipped eating there but did decide to get milkshakes across the street.

We’d intended to run a few errands after dinner, so they got pushed to Saturday–mostly all hair-related. I wanted some dye to spruce up my pink until I can go get it professionally re-done and Paul needed a haircut, so we tackled those and went to Mardi Gras with my parents and some extended family for the night. It was a real good time. Much good food and dancing. We went a few years ago but didn’t really like the food, and they opted for a buffet this time, so we decided that was worth another shot. Definite improvement from the last time we went.

Rather than drive the hour back home, we decided to just spend the night at my parents’ house, which meant a lot of lounging and Seger time. My cousin Adam stopped by with his wife to drop off tax stuff for my mom and had their baby with them, so we got some time hanging out with them. From there, we swung by Paul’s parents’ place, especially biggest his youngest brother’s 16th birthday was the next day, and had dinner and ice-cream cake. It was a good visit, too, with his mom doing really well.

 

Now that I have a newfound life as a baker, I figured I’d use my skills to make cookies for the annual work Halloween party. That sentence is about 99% sarcasm. Sure, I’ve baked some cookies, but I’ve done it a handful of times and it’s definitely not something I plan to do regularly. But hey, might as well use that for said Halloween party.

Office potlucks are great for day-long grazing. I ate some of my own cookies in the morning, but it was pretty nice to see they were quite picked over by the afternoon.

We’ve had our usual routine of work and the gym during the week, and then Friday night, we took in the last weekend for the evening glass exhibit at Phipps and had a nice night out. Saturday, we went out for Brandon’s birthday to lunch at Fat Head’s on the South Side, then an escape room–and we did indeed escape this time, with a few minutes left. Ten people doing a room together might be a bit much, though. I’d recommend smaller numbers. We were supposed to follow it up with the casino, but I discovered I’d left my wristlet with my ID in it at home after using it at Phipps the night before. So the good news is we probably saved money, but the bad news is like someone who comes from a long line of gamblers, I was annoyed thinking about the possibility of having won.

Paul’s mom’s birthday was Sunday, and we did good this year by getting her a really pretty wooden advent calendar. We spent a couple hours hanging out at the house, which went pretty okay, except for the part where we started talking about the shooting in Texas and the Vegas shooting before it and his parents seemed to believe some of the conspiracy theories about it. I can’t with conspiracy theories. I just can’t.

Back when we met with the music directors at church about choosing music for the wedding, we were pleasantly surprised to find that having the choir sing is an option, and we decided to spend the money and spring for it. So Saturday, we snuck in the back of church–at the invitation of the choir director–to sit in on the ceremony of one of the choir members herself so we could hear what it sounded like.

I knew if we didn’t do it, we’d regret it as soon as we heard the choir the first time after the wedding, so I don’t really think it was a matter of deciding whether we really wanted them so much as it was what song choices might work best. But sitting in on the wedding reaffirmed our decision–that choir’s gonna sound damn good.

Also, attending the wedding ceremony of someone you don’t know feels so weird. I mean, the choir director asked us to and it’s pretty unobtrusive–we just sat in the back–but it’s still so strange. I felt like I was breaking a major etiquette law.

As for today, we made it into Pittsburgh for the last weekend of the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival and enjoyed walking around checking out the vendors and eating. Normally, I find some kind of handmade jewelry or something, but lately, it seems like a lot of that kind of stuff is all looking the same and is a style I don’t really like, but that might be a good thing–keeps me from spending money on things I don’t need just over two months out from my wedding. But Paul found some art he really liked, so we did spring for that.

We did a little shopping on our way home, mostly just taking advantage of stores in South Hills Village so I don’t have to make a special trip out when I inevitably run out of shampoo and conditioner from Lush.