Thanksgiving Eve Preparations!!!!

Twas the night before Thanksgiving and all the house,
I ate a piece of string cheese, but didn't share with a mouse (Ha, okay hardly any words rhyme with house)

My parent's house was bustling with activity last night! My mom and I were busy, busy, busy making pies and doing as much prep work for today as we could.

My mom was busy whipping up pie crusts. It was not going well. In her words, "This food processor is NOT cooperating."

I did the actual pie assembling. Here's an action shot of me putting the egg was on the crust. You wish your life were this exciting, don't you.

And even my nephew, Correy, and his girlfriend, Amber, joined in the turkey games and put together the foam turkey and place cards (I found these while waiting in line at Paper Source. So cute!!!)

My dad and Lady were content to sit and watch some TV.

Actually, I had just shown my dad real estate listings from the DC area so I think he needed to recover from seeing those 7 digit asking prices. HA! And note Lady's new t-shirt. Yep, it has a light up Santa Claus on it.

Hello, blog!

So I have not forgotten about my little blog. I promise. And I am still alive for those who emailed asking about me. HAHA!

I have been busy, busy, busy working on planning for the upcoming holiday season! Which may sound really cool, and it is. But really is not all that exciting to blog about. In reality, it looks like this:

Just envision me sitting at my kitchen counter, sifting through a year’s worth of magazine clippings that I have collected to use for recipe/craft/gift ideas, making and revising menus, brainstorming décor ideas, and seeking divine inspiration from a box of candy canes.

But I think my planning is going really well because everywhere (airports, stores, etc.) I go with my green holiday planning binder, people ask me if I am a designer. HAHAHA!

But the blogging will resume in full force shortly as we approach my one-year blog-aversary!!! Can you believe it?!!? December 9th!!!! How shall we celebrate? Cupcakes, anyone? I have some great ideas that I think want to implement as year two begins. Things that will give the blog a little more structure yet to still allow me to share my daily adventures!

I am home in Wisconsin for the Thanksgiving and Black Friday festivities! And my main objective is to just stay warm. Actual conversation with my dad on Saturday morning when I called home to whine about how cold it has been here in D.C.

Me: “Ugh, it’s 27 degrees here”
Dad: “It’s 5 here.”

I was really made for warmer climates! But for now, I have to settle for wearing long underwear.

Oh, and a plea to clothing designers. With the popularity of 3/4 length sleeves, many, many, many of you are missing a product niche by not designing 3/4 length gloves and mittens. I have found exactly one pair of gloves at the GAP (that I will be returning because the gloves make my hands look like Mickey Mouse) and one pair of mittens at Younkers (that I love).

These are a few of MY favorite things!!!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens had nothing on my Tuesday! It was the perfect combination of my favorite things.

Favorite Thing 1: A day off in the middle of the week. God bless federal holidays (and the veterans, of course)!

Favorite Thing 2: A brisk, sunshiney autumn day spent shopping Georgetown.

Favorite Thing 3: Shopping success at Anthropologie. A dress, a coat, a shirt. I am the best thing to happen to the economy in a long time. There was almost a scarf too. But it was super expensive and after a teleconference with my mom, it was decided that she could make it for me for way cheaper.

Favorite Thing 4: A pumpkin spice cupcake at Georgetown Cupcake. Autumn perfection in a paper lining.

A shot of me enjoying my cupcake on the Georgetown Waterfront (The Kennedy Center is in the background….and wow, do I need a manicure!)

Favorite Thing 5: A celebrity sighting! This never happens to me. Before I reveal who I saw, there are two caveats to this celebrity sighting. First, this is a “D.C. Celebrity Sighting.” These is not a Brad and Angelina sighting. This is, after all, a city were people go ga-ga over spotting the Speaker of the House or the Ambassador to Sassafrass. I am pretty sure that anywhere else in the country, no one would really care. Which is not to say these people are not famous or not worthy of being recognized. But I remember when I was growing up, I was far more excited about seeing the Channel 2 News Weather guy (George Graphos!!!) at Cub Foods than I ever was about seeing a Congressman.

Second, there is an excellent chance that I probably walk past “Famous for D.C.” types fairly often. I just don’t recognize them. I watch the news; I read the Economist and the Washington Post; I know the names and important things. But, for me, all of the D.C. politicky and news types kind of blend into a sea of navy blue Brooks Brothers and black Ann Taylor.

So my celebrity sighting was…Madeline Albright (Secretary of State to Bill Clinton)! She was actually the commencement speaker at my grad school graduation (she’s vertically challenged so they had to have a little stool for her at the podium...it was cute). Despite the fact that I have bookshelves stacked with books about Presidents and world changing events, her autobiography is among the exactly four titles that I have read cover to cover (Rudy Guliani’s Leadership, Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, and a biography about Abe Lincoln would be the other three). Anyway, it was exciting.

What a great day!!!

....

I am crazy-go-nuts about voting. I am not all that wild about politics but I do take my civic duty very seriously. I think it stems from my high school taking (and, I sincerely hope, still taking) its civics curriculum very seriously.

Anyway, the whole voting thing made me remember that I never wrote about my voting experience during the primaries. It was an experience that seriously tested how seriously I take voting. So sit right back and you’ll hear a tale….


Primary Day 2008 coincided with an ice storm here in the D.C. Area. Having lived in North Carolina for three years, I am well-schooled in the art of the ice storm. You can say many things about winter in Wisconsin but in the 22 years I lived there, I never experienced the power-line snapping, window-cracking, mind-bending experience of an ice storm. Quite simply, they suck.

By North Carolina standards, the D.C. ice storm was not all that bad. I still managed to slip on the ice and fall. But as I do when I fall, I busted out laughing more than I busted anything (I think actually the Secretary of Defense fell in this same ice storm and broke his hand/arm/elbow/something). So I did the sidewalk shuffle all the way to my polling place (which is right across from where I live but I was walking from the Metro station).

The sidewalk leading to the polling place is, naturally, uphill. So it was a little two steps forward, two steps back getting there. But I made it in, completely soaked (it was still raining ice) and cold. And I headed to the check-in desk and proudly stated my name to the lady working the desk. Let’s call her Betty Ballot. And that’s when the actual fun began.

Betty Ballot: You’ll only be able to vote in the school board election.
Me: Wait, what?
Betty Ballot: You are registered as an unaffiliated so you can only vote in the school board election.
Me: No, I’m registered.
Betty Ballot: No you are unaffiliated.
(Then the two above sentences were repeated at least six times. It was on the verge of becoming a play on “Who’s on first?”)
Me (getting frustrated): Okay, what can we do about this?
Betty Ballot: You can vote by provisional ballot while we research it.

So I made the Voter Walk of Shame over to the Provisional Ballot Table where I was greeted by a woman who was obviously enjoying the power afforded her by running the table. We’ll call her Polly PowerTrip.

I explain the situation. Polly PowerTrip hands me a stack of papers at least an inch thick…and proceeds to talk to me like I am five years old. I am on the verge of walking away. Instead, I resort to sarcasm.

“No Polly PowerTrip, I did NOT see the 96 point font that says ‘sign here.’

TWENTY FREAKING MINUTES later, I had completed the stack of papers and I am fairly certain I had signed over my car, my shoe collection, and at least one of my kidneys.

At this point, my provisional ballot had been completed and was sealed up. Polly PowerTrip then pulls out the Provisional Ballot Totebag (PBT) and tells me to put my ballot in. I get that the PBT needs to be secure but they have made it SO secure that when you insert you ballot, you also insert your hand…and may not get it back. And that is what happened to me. My hand was completely stuck in the bag. I shook it; tried pulling it out with my other hand. Nothing worked.

I looked at Polly PowerTrip and asked, “Um, can you help me?”
Polly PowerTrip replied, “I am NOT allowed to touch the bag.”
Me: “Then what do you want me to do?”
Polly PowerTrip: “Well, get your hand out.”
Me (thinking…though nearly stating aloud): “Thank you Captain Obvious!”

At this point, Polly PowerTrip realizes either she needs to help or I am taking the PBT home with me. She braces herself and tears the bag off of my hand…taking part of my hand with her. Yes, there was bloodshed.

Forty-five minutes after I checked in, I was finally free to go. And Polly PowerTrip offers me this morsel, “You know, I think there was a computer glitch. So many people were switched to unaffiliated voting status.”

Wonderful.

So I headed outside, doing the Sidewalk Shuffle home. Cold, wet, and now bleeding. But I voted. I still, however, have no idea if my vote counted.

Tonight's voting when much smoother. Except when I put my voter card in, it said I had already voted and they election judge immediately started interrogating me as though I committed voter fraud. Just a faulty card, I guess.

We did the Monster Mash...er, We did the Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin

Did everyone survive Halloween weekend? Is everyone basking in the extra hour of sleep? The fallback of the time fall back is that I am already for bed...and it's 7:20. But the sunlight earlier tomorrow will be nice.

Some pics from the office holiday party. The party invite asked everyone to bring in a Halloween inspired dish. And everyone did awesome! I was so proud!

We had eyes of all varieties...

( My favorite were the pus-filled pesto eyes...about the only time the word "pus" is used in a fun way.)

And a melted witch spinach (spin-witch?) pasta salad...

And breadstick bones...

And graveyard sandwiches...

How cool, right?

I brought in Dessert Grilled Cheese. Not uber-creative but still fun. It's a recipe from Everyday with Rachael Ray. The bread is French Toast. The inside is pumpkin ice cream (the original recipe called for orange sherbet...but I have never been a fan of the sherbet. And pumpkin ice cream seemed so much more holiday-appropriate.) I was kind of in awe of how much they actually looked like grilled cheese...and they were sooo yummy!

And then we played a great game of Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin. I have some great pics from that game but I think my colleagues might kill me if I were to post them.