Over the next few weeks I'm working an inordinate amount of overtime, so these blogs are going to be super duper lame. And short (you're welcome Joel).
This weekend, only 2 fun things happened. The first is that I was accepted into Kent State Universities MLIS graduate program!!!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! YAY!!! It was 90% Mitch, who edited everything before I submitted it. Seriously, she edited a resume, biographical sketch, and statement of career goals! So huge props to Mitch.
Monday I tried a Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff recipe from my sister-in-law. It was ok, but not great. I guess I like red meat in my stroganoffs:
Tuesday, I worked a full day of overtime, but was done by 6:30, so I went to see RIPD after work. It was pretty good! Not great, but not bad either. A good movie. The acting, though, was phenomenal!!
So that's it for this weekend. Next weekend I'm working a couple of third shifts, which will have me sleeping all day after working all night, so I thoroughly expect nothing to happen.
In the ongoing "creepy things in the elevator at 10:30 pm" saga, I saw this monstrosity Thursday night:
Saturday after work, I hopped in my car and made the 8 hour trek home to Philly. I made sure I got enough sleep the night before and had a really interesting book on tape to keep me awake. I was home by 6am, gave hugs to the parents and promptly fell asleep for 5 hours.
I woke up to the smell of bacon and chocolate chip waffles. Joel and Kate had made me breakfast!!
It was so yum! It left everyone smiling big ol' waffle smiles (except me...I ate too much waffle to have a smile left):
I brought home Cleveland Browns shirts (get it? Because our last name is Brown?!) and Joel and Kate were kind enough to model for me:
We played vidya games for a while, then went out to the cheesecake factory for dinner. There was a 59 minute wait, so we wandered around the King of Prussia mall for a bit. Joel found a big photo booth so he splurged and bought pictures for himself, Kate and I. The BEST part of the pictures was the fact that Joel's shirt was the same color as the screen!
'MURRICA!
Skip forward 50 minutes and we were finally seated. The food was almost as good as the people I shared it with. There was lots of laughs and even more cheesecake!! So good! Extra Love to Joel for treating us! When we got home I was still pretty tired so I went to bed shortly thereafter...but not before Playing a quick 4 hands of Rummikub with Mom Dad and Joel. Joel won twice and I won twice. Isn't that sweet of the parents to let us win?!
On monday, Dad treated us all (Mom, Dad, Joel, Kate any myself) to dinner and a movie. We went to see Despicable Me 2. The BEST part of the movie was how hard dad laughed at the minions. I don't think I've heard dad laugh that hard in a while!
After the movie, dad once again treated us all to Burger King. Did you know BK has sweet potato fries? As you can tell from previous blogs, I LOVE anything and everything sweet potato! They were soooooo super yum!!
In the evening dad made homemade pasta (with homemade red and rose sauces), while Joel bought some sweet corn to compliment the meal. Grandma, Grandpa, Joel, Kate, Mom, Dad and Aunt Gerri all showed up! It was so much fun, and, once again, SO GOOD! Afterwards Dad went over to the grandparents house to hang shelves, while Joel, Kate, Grandma and I all played Rummikub. Once again, Joel beat everyone 3 times before giving up his seat to cousin Kourtney, who proceeded to beat us.
As the evening wore on, Joel convinced Dad, Kate and myself to play Monopoly. Turns out this is his favorite game, which is funny because it is officially my least favorite game. I found myself in Jail before even making it around the board once! Stupid game. Long story short, Kate ended up beating us all by quietly amassing a fortune.
I spent the rest of the night doing laundry (yes, I'm 30 and still bring my laundry home) and raiding the parent's food storage. It was with heavy heart that I left to go back to Ohio the next morning. My biggest regret is not getting a few pics of mom and dad. How did I end up with a plethora of pictures of Joel and Kate but none of my parents?!
Oh well...Here's a video of me yelling at Joel to play the guitar:
It was one of the best visits home!! So much fun crammed into just a few days!
Sunday, June 30, was the beginning of my first week (after almost a month!) of 3 day weekends again. I was finally all done working overtime, or, done for a couple of weeks at least! I decided to splurge and drive to Columbus for some shopping, and some relaxing driving time:
I went to an outlet store called DFWH or Discount Fashion Warehouse. They have a TON of plus size outfits for SO super cheap. Any plus size diva knows that clothing can be super expensive, and, not always your style. DFWH had a lot of different styles ranging in size from 0 - 30 plus.
The drive down was a bit rainy and dreary, but the drive home was ALL sunshine!
I then spend the rest of my weekend hunkered down to watch all six 90 min episodes of Sherlock Totally worth it. It is a great show! My only qualm is that there are only 6 episodes!
This last week was the 4th of July. I got all snazzied up,
and then drove downtown with Rich to see the fireworks. We were just watching from the parking garage attached to work. My camera did NOT want to take good pictures, so here's a horrible firework and blurry street lamps:
and here is Rich watching fireworks:
Since the 4th of July fell on a Thursday, my company gave everyone off of work Friday too! I spent Friday, the 5th of July hanging out with Mitch and Dom and KW. We went out to a chinese buffet, then, came back and played scrabble.
Mitch was saying that she could turn ice cream into "soft serve" ice cream just by mixing it. KW and I called shenanigans, so, she bought ice cream, churned it up by hand and made a surprisingly good softserve ice cream!
On Monday I went to get some sweet potatoes (to make sweet potato fries/chips) and there was a car ALMOST over the over pass. One of my biggest fears is being blown over an overpass, so this was quite a shock!
I managed to buy sweet potatoes and make it home relatively unscathed. I spent the next hour or so baking up some yummy sweet potato fries/chips. You are suppose to peel the sweet potatoes, but, because I like the taste of the skin, and don't have a potato peeler, I left them on, then tossed the cut up sweet potatoes in a little oil and garlic salt and put them in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes. Here's the before:
and the delicious after:
I also managed to get thru a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this weekend (read "wasted 16 hours").
That's it! No big plans upcoming (as of right now), so if you have any fun ideas for next weekend, leave them in the comments!
