Faux-versary.

It's been exactly one month since H. and I tied the knot, and life has been perfect. H. isn't working for Memorial Day, so we have a three day weekend to spend with each other and hang out and pretty much just be lazy for once.

After work on Friday, H. and I watched the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, called Red Dragon. It starred the Hannibal guy, the guy from The Illusionist and Fight Club who is very famous but I can't think of his name right now, and some other people we recognized but couldn't place. It was ... interesting. I wouldn't say that I liked it, but I didn't hate it either. I wouldn't watch it again, but at the same time it was cerebral and enticing to watch, because you wanted to figure out the plot and everything. I told H. we can watch Silence of the Lambs, but we might hold off on that for a week or two. Don't want too much horror crowding my brain waves whilst I sleep.

Saturday was the bulk of our lazy day, and Sunday we went to JcPenny's to buy H. some work shirts and pants. He wanted some short-sleeved dress shirts, so he can look fancy but still be comfortable in the heat. I thought the store was in the nearby mall, but I was wrong, and we drove to the next nearest store.

The nearest store was in another mall, some fifteen minutes from the first. The parking lot was fairly empty, but then it was Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. We walked through the entrance, and about fifty feet later came to the main hall of the mall. In front of us was JcPenny's, but what was more interesting was the complete emptiness of the main hall. Immediately, both H. and I said something about a post-apocalyptic zombie attack, and we hurried into the department store. The store itself was nice; kind of old, but filled with new merchandise and wares. We noticed an escalator leading downward - this was odd, as we walked into the mall on the main floor. Rather, it's the main floor of the earth, and the thought of seeing the underbelly of the store was thrilling. Taking the escalator down, we passed by the children's section and headed for the home section, walking through the lamps and frames first. We were the only two people down here besides the workers, and it was nice having it all to ourselves. Even if there was the feeling of being buried alive (it's been a long time since I've been in a glorified basement, and I felt a little claustrophobic). We looked at window treatments, heavy curtains, and sat down on every couch they had set up to test for comfortableness.

When we were done goofing around, we went back up to the main level and out to the main hall. As we were walking around, we noticed that there were only four stores open, and one was having a store-closing sale. Everything else was either wired shut or boarded up and desolate. H. commented that it would be neat to buy the whole building, move out the remaining stores, and convert it into a paintball course. He'd have some old car overturned at the entrance, open up all the stores and put objects to hide behind and whatnot in them, then rent out the building to random people or teams for them to use. There were a lot of windows, so we'd have to treat those with black paint, otherwise it would be easy to see people running around. Neat idea, as long as it makes us money (cha-ching!).

For our fancy faux-versary dinner, we had Chip-o-top-lays, Chipootles, Chipotle. I tried to pick the least spicy ingredients, and it was very tasty up until I got one mouthful of something so spicy it made me nauseous. Thank goodness we decided not to eat at the restaurant, and we had milk on-hand in the apartment. I just hope that the other half of my barbacoa bowl doesn't have a spicy surprise for me during lunch today.

I forgot to show you how our pot roast turned out! I think I cooked it a little too long, because it was falling apart a little too much for me, but the taste was great.

Bad picture, but here's the remaining half that we didn't eat the first night. Underneath the brothy liquid are some potatoes, carrots (need to add more of those, so good!), and onions. I underestimated the amount of salt needed to flavor the amount of liquid, so we just sprinkled some on before eating. I have a chronic fear of oversalting things, but I'm trying to remedy that.

Today we're planning to pick up a Costco chicken and turn it into either chicken salad or chicken enchiladas. Deciding between the two is never easy, but I doubt H. and I could two whole chickens before they went bad. C'est la vie!

Baker's Man.

Upon receiving our care package of wedding goodies, the first thing on our list to do was make ravioli. Probably because it was lunchtime and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. Our ravioli endeavors were hindered only by one ingredient that we didn't have: semolina flour. Having never heard of it before, I was unsure whether a regular grocery store would carry it around here. In fact, Fry's does! H. set to making the dough while I mixed up the fillings.

 

The process starts off with H. rolling out the dough to cover the frame of the ravioli maker. Then, H. gingerly picks up the thin dough and places it on top of the metal frame. That white portion H. is holding in the first picture then gets placed on top of the metal frame, making a ravioli maker sandwich. Pushing down on the mold creates little pockets for the filling. As you can see our first filling choice was mushrooms, spinach, and feta cheese. It smelt so good!

 

Our second filling consisted of ground sausage, smoked sausage, olives, and mozzarella cheese. Yeah, that was one deliciously fragrant dish. Once the fillings are nestled in their little pockets, another strip of rolled-out dough is laid on top, and I set about to sealing the raviolis.

The last step is letting the ravioli dry on a heavily floured pan for a couple of hours. Seeing as we live in a desert, it only took an hour or so total to dry. You see those marbled raviolis? Well, some of the ravioli dough ripped the first time we made them, so H. just rerolled whatever we couldn't pick out of the dough (spinach is surprisingly stubborn). I kind of cherished these ones; I think they're chef-like.

Next, you plop the dried ravioli into a pot of boiling water for a few minutes, and BAM. You have fresh ravioli! I would show you a picture of this, but they were too delicious to think of photographing them. Super delicious.

Over the weekend we also dabbled in the art of crepe making. I was in the mood for a mid-afternoon snack, and I suggested we try out a dessert crepe recipe in the cute little crepe book we have now. An egg, some milk, a little salt and sugar, and a touch of flour later, we had some gorgeous crepes. But that's not all! I also made those brandied apples for an added kick. When we sat down to eat them, I couldn't decide which I liked more, the crepes or the apples!

I'm definitely making these again over the weekend in larger quantities. Maybe I'll add strawberries! I'd also like to try the non-dessert crepes, so perhaps crepes will pop up in our meal plan for next week.

Tomorrow, I'm intending to make our first pot roast using our new slow cooker. I'll be trying out Brittany's recipe, and I'm pretty darn thrilled about that. In somewhat related news, I found avocados for 0.50c each! Pot roast and guacamole don't usually go together, but tomorrow they will!

Day Four.

Quick health update: I has none. It's day four of this "wicked cold", as H. puts it, and it's gotten bad enough that H. went out and bought me a whole slew of medications. Nasal spray, vapor-rub, mucinex pills, peppermint tea, spiced chai tea, and beer. The beer is a medication that H. uses to put up with my grumpy self when I'm sick. His three words to describe me are cute, pathetic, and grumpy. I think the first one is supposed to cancel out the other two, even though they are pretty true to form.

Remember when I made hamburgers (when I thought that the cold would go away with a hard dose of Nyquil)? Well, I had some leftover meat mixture - ground beef with chopped onions and mushrooms - and after receiving my care package containing the remaining wedding gifts, I'm thinking of making ravioli on Sunday. There can't possibly be two days worth of cold left in this virus (fingers crossed), and H.'s been itching to try out the ravioli maker we got. I think he might be almost as excited as I am for this contraption. He's already thought out his first ravioli: bacon and mushroom. I'll probably make him add something else to make it a little more sustaining. Personally, I can't wait to try spinach, mushroom, mozzarella raviolis.

Another item in our care package is a crepe maker from dear E. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have more energy (I feel like all I do is take naps and drug up) to make dessert crepes with brandy apples. Since we happen to have both brandy (it was on sale at Costco!) and apples. And sugar, but that's a staple. The recipes for the crepes and the apple topping are in this cute little recipe book E. got me to go with the crepe maker. I didn't know that crepes could be used for so many things!

Once I'm right as rain, I'm intending to pull out the dead gladiolas sitting in that planter box. In my twisted mind, I figured that since I didn't have the new flowers to plant, there was no rush to pull out the glads. I'll most likely need a large garbage bag to aid in throwing those plants away. But, once it's done, I can put new flowers in - specifically, the flower favors from our wedding! I'm particularly excited about them, because they say on the back they don't need direct sunlight, which is what our apartment lacks. So expect to see oodles of pictures of sprouting seedlings.

One recipe I found on the interwebs recently (yesterday) is for something that looks so tasty it could be used as a bribe.

Caramel Pecan Brownies | Lemon Sugar

I've made something like this before from a box, and while that was pretty good, I can't wait to try them made from scratch. The recipe is over on a blog called Lemon Sugar, and I might have bookmarked her website so I can look at tasty things every day. It'll be like tightrope walking between good and evil, trying to not eat all of the brownies before H. gets home from work.

Now if you'll excuse me,  I'm going to go rip out my throat.

Cough Cough.

Apparently it is easy to catch a cold in the desert. Three days in, I've got a scratchy throat and plugged ears, and I think my sense of taste is all but gone. The last part is particularly sad, seeing as how I made burgers last night for dinner and couldn't really tell if they were any good. I was kinda proud of them (along with the homemade chips), and H. liked them, so that's good. The only thing I'd change is I would make them thinner. I thought they would shrink vertically when they cooked, but instead they shrunk horizontally.

Tonight I'll probably have something that's easy to make, something like soup or pizza. Who am I kidding, I'm definitely having pizza.

One thing I've learned from being married is that you really get to know the delivery man. Even though most of our wedding gifts were delivered to the front office, he's been diligently delivering the stragglers for the past three weeks. It seems like he comes by every other day, but it's probably more like twice a week. In particular, I've learned not to say Thank You more than twice in the entire greeting. It gets awkward when he says Thanks, then you say Thank You, and now you've just thanked him for thanking you for accepting packages. One Thank You is enough to cover the physical exertion of bringing a package up a flight of stairs. Also, if he offers, get him to move the packages into the apartment. At first, I was all Stranger Danger!, but then I realized that he's being a gentleman and knows that the boxes are heavy to lift. And people said chivalry was dead!

If this post seems flighty, chalk it up to cold medicine. Seriously, I feel like my head is detachable and floating in the invisible clouds in the apartment. Which makes me feel quite tall, if I do say so myself.

Dangit.

Somehow, I managed to slam my elbow on the pointiest corner of my nightstand last night. I was reaching for my water bottle, and ended up with pain. Also, I managed to dig this pointy corner into the muscle that attaches at the elbow. I woke up many a time last night because I had rolled over and bent my elbow and the pain just woke me up. The worst part is that despite the amount of force I used to slam my elbow into that corner, there is no visible bruise. Nothing! Now I feel like a cripple and I don't have anything to show for it. Except that empty bottle of Advil over there.

This afternoon, I discovered a huge bug in the corner of our laundry room, on the ceiling. This provoked the creepy crawly feeling, and even now (hours later) I feel like another one of them could appear out of nowhere. Thank goodness we have a vacuum (HUGE thanks to J&E), because there was no way I was going to actually squish it with my hand or a kleenex. Although, now I feel like the bug is alive inside the vacuum. I'll get H. to look at that when he gets back.

I feel like I need to add something girly to this post. It needs something springy as well. Enter gorgeous dress that I will probably dream about. If only I wore more dresses, I could purchase this and wear it all day every day.

Ready for Ranunculus | Modcloth

Here's a look at what's for diner: tuna casserole. This time I didn't use chicken broth to boil the noodles. Now H. won't stop inhaling it.

Absolutely Not About Food (Much).

That's right, nothing I say here will include food. You're not even going to learn about the kick-arse chicken soup I made last night for din-dins. From now on, no talking about food!

H. and I were taking out the recycling yesterday like responsible people do, and our pile happened to include a very old and unyielding coffee maker. It never made coffee the way we wanted it to, and now its time had come. H. was walking in front of me, carrying said coffee maker, and just when I thought, Hey you know what? I bet that coffee pot could fall right out of the plastic grooves, it did. It fell to the ground at ten times the pull of gravity and shattered into a million pieces. I told H. to go throw his stuff in the recycling while I picked up the larger pieces and put them into a cardboard box I was carrying. He told me to be careful as I gingerly placed each piece onto the bubblewrap from one of our wedding gifts.

When he came back to the scene of the crime, I suggested we hike down to the front office and get maintenance to pick up the shards of glass on the ground. The pot broke in the middle of the road, there was no way we could pick up all the pieces without some help, and we figured it was in their job description to take care of stuff like this. H. stood watch while I drove over to the front office. I opened the door and ran into a little old woman.

Me: "Hi there! I've got a problem. My husband and I shattered glass all over the road."
Oldie: "Oh dear, is anyone hurt?"
Me: "No, we're fine, but we were wondering if maintenance could clean it up, since it's in the middle of the road."
Oldie: "Oh dear ... Um, well ... (turns to adult male coming out from behind a door, wearing a shirt with a stitched detail of the apartment complex's parent company) ... Oh hello. Can we ask maintenance to clean up some glass?"
Man: "What?"
Me: (tells story about glass) "... but we can't clean it up, because we don't have a broom."
Man: "You serious? You don't have a broom?"
Me: "For shizzle my nizzle we ain't got no broom-dizzle."
Man: (condescending tone) "Wow. You really need to get a broom."
Me: (perturbed) "Well, we don't have one, so we can't clean up the glass."
Oldie: "Oh! I do believe we have a spare broom here you could use!" (leads me to a janitor's closet)
Oldie: (hands me a broom - just a broom)
Me: "Um. I'm going to need a dustpan. To sweep the glass into."
Oldie: "Oh of course, dear." (searches around for a dustpan, hands it to me)
Me: "Thanks! I'll be right back."

The guy left the office after me, and I wonder who he was and what he was doing there. We rarely hear anything from the parent company that owns the apartment complex, so he must've been called in on something serious. At least, that's what I would like to think. There's no way someone is that rude to a stranger just because they don't have a broom. And for that matter, why would we need a broom? The only linoleum we have is in the kitchen - four feet by six feet of linoleum, most of which is covered up by the fridge and the oven. So you can take your broom advice and sweep up the remnants of that awful life of yours. Shoo!

Anyways, we cleaned up the mess, returned the broom, and went on our merry little way. Until we were at the grocery store, in the 15 Items Or Less line, and one person in front of us decides she wants to buy patio furniture. Really. Who the hell buys patio furniture at a grocery store? In the 15 Items Or Less line?! Yeah, it took forever as our cashier went outside with the lady to see which one she wanted, came back to look it up in a booklet, call over a manager to approve the order, call over a strong young lad to carry it out for her, and then the final straw was that her credit card wasn't working and she threw a fit over that. The only reason H. and I didn't hop out of that line like a cat out of water was because we already had our 15 items on the conveyor belt, and there was someone behind us. Talk about ridonkadonk.

Today, H. and I are looking for a slow cooker to call our own. We'll be kind to it, and treat it with love, and it will produce bountiful feasts for many years to come. Amazon has a couple that look interesting, but we're also going to shop around locally to see what the products actually look like in person. We're also wondering what size to get (4 quart, 6 quart, 18 quart). I am looking forward to making roasts and such in it, and H. is looking forward to me making him food.

I finished that book I was reading, To Serve A King. Without ruining the book for you (as I know all of you will run out and purchase this fab book immediately), here's how the book goes. Reader meets heroine, reader follows heroine around, heroine gets tangled up in medieval action, actual interesting stuff lasts two pages, book ends. I wouldn't be so angry with the ending if it weren't for the misleading number of pages in the book. I like to know where I am in a book percentage-wise by seeing how many pages there are. In this book, there are roughly 400. The last fifty are split up into biographical information about the heroine (she was a real-life figure in France at the time), a few pages of questions for people in a book club, and two chapters each from two of this author's other books. It's not like the author could've written a couple more pages to lengthen the ending. She claims that's how it ended up in the history books. Hey lady. If I wanted to read about actual historical crap I would go buy a nonfiction book about the historical feud between King Henry VIII and King Francois. So disappointing.

Want something not disappointing? Here's a video for you. It's got a statue.

Nonessentials.

Blogger's been down the past couple of days. Which is good, because I had nothing to write about. It was a surprisingly slow week here - turns out if you plan your meals for the week you don't have to waste time going to the grocery store every other day. Speaking of meals, I recently made a lasagna that gave us three days worth of meals. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we ate lasagna. Okay, okay, maybe we had smoothies and waffles and french toast for breakfast. But the point is, here's my beautiful lasagna:

 

Things I learned from this lasagna: (a) don't put a Béchamel sauce into a lasagna because it just doesn't work; (b) any white wine you used in the first few steps of deglazing the beef-containing pan will stick around in the beef no matter what else you add, and will taste odd when everything is put together; (c) use more pasta sauce. While the end product was delicious, I wish I had thought about the pasta sauce before I cooked it. At least I've got experience for next time!

Oh, and you guys remember those Red Lobster biscuits that I made about a month or two ago? I made them again, and instead of real eggs I used egg substitute in an attempt to be healthier. The biscuits ended up flat and mushy, and I had to cook them for a ridiculous amount of time just to get the mush out. They weren't big and fluffy at all, but we'll still eat them because they are pretty darn delicious.

For dessert (read: anytime snack), we've been having spritz cookies.

 

I am aware that these are traditionally a Christmas cookie - or at least in my parents' house they are - but you have no idea how delicious these little guys are with just a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top. It's insane how addicting they are. It's also insane how many cookies the original recipe makes. Seven to eight dozen cookies. I had to halve it, then halve it again just to get a reasonable amount of cookies. Turns out if you quarterize it, you get exactly one tube's worth of cookie dough (here, tube refers to the tube in the actual cookie press). Very manageable, but you need 1/4 of an egg. Thus, the egg substitute.

Aaaaaaaand now I can't stop thinking about dessert-like things. I guess I'll just have to bore you with some super-cute recipes.

Mini Boston Cream Pies | Design*Sponge

How cute is that? And it looks like it would be super easy to make ... if you had nine arms and a ton of counter space. But I'm sure it tastes divine.

Pulled Pork Sandwich | Design*Sponge

No, this isn't dessert, but I dare you to tell me this doesn't look mouth-watering. Maybe it's the fact that there's no barbecue food out here, or maybe it's because I almost considered Jack In The Box and their new Bourbon BBQ Steak Sandwich for lunch. One day, when we're not living in an apartment that prohibits barbecue, I'm going to make the best darn pulled pork sandwiches ever to grace the desert.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls | Design*Sponge

These have a high degree of difficulty to make, which is enough to ward me off from actually attempting them. They do, however, remind me of the Thai restaurant nearby my parents' house that makes absolutely delectable spring rolls, accompanied by a peanut sauce that disappears fast.

Yes, it is lunchtime. Yes, I am going to go eat the rest of the lasagna and biscuits. No, I can't share any tasty things with you. Not until they invent smell-o-vision, that is.

Groovy.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I hope those flowers that H. sent you lasted until today. : ]

Before I get to the rest of this post, H. just showed me something that I think you will all enjoy. Especially if you've played Portal. (Someone show this to Dad!)

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming. 

I would like to point out that on the right-hand side of my blog there is now a section called "Labels", with a sub-heading of "Recipes". If you click on the word "Recipes", it will bring up any post I have written that contains a recipe. So have at it!

H. and I are getting into a groove with planning out what we'll eat for the week, then buying groceries to support those ideas. On the menu this week we have lasagna, pizza, and soup. Each of those should last for two days, excluding the pizza. We're gonna gobble that up.

I learned how easy it is to make french toast yesterday. Eggs + milk + vanilla + cinnamon = french toast. I thought it was loads harder than that! Turns out H. has a fondness for french toast that I didn't know about, but will now exploit. Recipe found here: French Toast Corners.

GO MAVS GO! I willingly accept that I might be a bandwagoner. I never really cheered for the Mavs before, although I never cheered for any basketball team before, either. Heck, I haven't even watched a full basketball game in my life. This is still true - I usually miss a couple minutes here and there of these play-off games. It's just not in my Em-Oh to watch an entire sports game unless it's the Rangers (swoon!). Or the Stars. Hockey makes for great entertainment. And I suppose I did watch an entire football game at some point. ... okay okay, so maybe I just don't want to watch a whole basketball game. It's the constant back-and-forth that gets me.

As I look at my Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox, I see links to sites that I will probably never visit again. Looking at wedding websites just isn't fun anymore, now that I've experienced the best wedding evar, mine. I realize that I'm extremely biased, but so is everyone. Whenever I look at posts picturing other couples, I just don't get as excited as I used to. I suppose that's a good thing, but now I don't have a lot to occupy my time with in the apartment. Yes, I could clean for the eight or so hours that H. is at work, but who realistically wants to do that? If it weren't so hot outside, I might go for a walk or something. I will admit that I'm a little nervous being in the city alone, though. There isn't much crime around where we are, but you never know.

When I'm not looking for a job, or figuring out how to become a US Citizen (more on that story when I talk to the Social Security people), I would like to paint. I started sketching out those mountains, and I bet it's time to put brush to canvas. I need one picture of the mountains with the light that I sketched them in, and then I can be on my merry way. H. keeps asking when I'll finish that, too.

I cannot wait until I get some of those wedding favor wildflowers! My gladiolas are definitely dead, and while I'm a little sad that we couldn't make it work, I'm going to blame them for growing so tall. Would it have helped if I had staked them? Maybe a little, but I would have had to really take care of them to ensure that they never toppled over. This time, I'm picking non-fussy wildflower seeds. Those couldn't possibly grow to be as tall as gladiolas, right?

Oh that reminds me! Now that it's full-on springtime and the earth has moved slightly on its axis, we get the slightest bit of sun on our balcony. Not a huge achievement, but if I wanted to, I could plant something outside that loves shade and a little bit of sun. I hear direct sunlight is good for things that grow. Previous to this, the only sunlight we got was the early morning sun coming through the office window. We'd have sunlight for about three hours, and then nothing. And don't'cha'know, that little bit of sun heats up that room like a sauna? Even with the blinds drawn closed? It would be marvelous if I could put plants outside on our balcony and seal off that nasty, temperature-increasing sunlight. I'm thinking fitted sheet with an elastic outside seam to cover up that window. All of the heat would stay inside the sheet, wouldn't it? And I'm sure Walmart has a cheap sheet.

And if gardening on the balcony doesn't work, I could always do this:

"Kokedama" String Garden | Design*Sponge

Yeah, I don't really get how that works, either. How does the dirt not end up on your floor? Well, at least it looks fancy. Probably smells like earth, too.

Have a great Mother's Day!

Hi-ya!

Hey guess what? I'm dual-wielding dinner and dessert!

Hamburger Helper, yo!

Bananas dipped in chocolate and walnuts (pre-dip).

Misuse of the term "dual-wielding", check.

A to Z.

Hello there! My name is Anna, and I would like to educate all of you on the benefits of living in Arizona.

1. Hot towels. We haven't started running the air conditioning yet (ie: crazy), so the air temperature is somewhere around 80 degrees, or at least it feels like it. The great part about this is after a shower, you have a hot towel to dry off with. It's like a luxurious spa day, every day!

2. Super-dry dishes. Due to the incredibly dry air, water evaporates at an accelerated rate at any point during the day. To save on our electricity bill, I skip the dishwasher's drying cycle and just leave the door open to let the dishes dry. Incredibly effective, and very little energy usage.

3. TV schedule. Since Arizona has its own time zone, television shows have to be pushed back in order to match up with what time it is here. This not only applies to evening television (which starts at seven instead of five to sync up with the east coast), but also applies to daytime television. There is always something on every hour of the day that I could watch, which is a blessing and a curse.

4.  What dirt? Because of the lack of water anywhere in the state, there is absolutely no mud. This means it is very nearly impossible to drag dirt into the apartment, into the car, into anywhere. It also means that I never have to worry about stepping in mud. Even if the apartment complex ran sprinklers (which they don't), it would all evaporate before I walked out the door.

5. Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. I haven't decided if this is a benefit to living here, but I swear there is alcohol everywhere. I'm not just talking wine and beer, I'm talking hardcore liquor bottles in grocery stores all across the state. I've chalked this up to the fact that there isn't much to do here.

6. The whole enchilada. Living here has given me a surge of confidence in attempting to cook Mexican food. This is mainly because there are exactly one thousand kinds of tortillas in every grocery store (I counted), millions of avocados dancing down the aisles (doing the cha-cha), and twenty-three kinds of salsa (I guesstimated). Makes you want to mix 'em all up in a hundred different ways to make something tasty.

Some Honorable Mentions.
- I know what the surface of the sun feels like. Now I don't have to go through with that space mission.
- The sun comes up at five in the morning. It makes you feel like you've slept in too long, which gives you a kick in the pants to hurry up and start the day.
- Flowers mean so much more to me now that there isn't grass for them to naturally grow in.
- I can drink butt-loads of water and never have to use the bathroom. It all evaporates through my skin.

And now for the downsides to living in Ay-Zee.

1. There is no barbecue. There's just a lot of Mexican food.

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering what the population was over here, it's roughly 520,000 people, with a population density of 2,800 people per square mile.

Tallyho, I'm off to make frozen banana bites covered in chocolate and walnuts!

Packages!

As a child, my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it. ~ Buddy Hackett

I realize that most of you are studying for finals, but I figured you all will want to take a five minute break at some point and look at some post-wedding pictures. So follow me!

Cookie to anyone who guesses how many
trips it took me to get this all into the apartment.

 I picked up seven boxes from the front office yesterday morning, and another three arrived in the afternoon. Add that to the one we got before we left, and you have 11 boxes total. H. suggested that we only open three or so a day to maximize our wedding present joy, so here are the first couple presents.

Beautiful flower serving bowl!

Divine glass vase!

Cookie press for making cookies! Guess what I wanted to do after opening this.

That's it for now! Mavs game tonight plus dumplings for dinner!

Wedding Bliss.

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry the only individual you can't live without.   ~ James C. Dobson

These past few days have been the best of my life, Saturday being the highpoint for suspiciously obvious reasons. I don't think I could tell you what the best part was - I've got a tie between the rings, the first kiss, and the first dance. And everything else that happened. So here's the question: what was your favorite part? Even though some things didn't go exactly as I planned, I felt little attachment to the mistakes, and sort of felt like I was floating above it all, but still placed firmly in the moment of marriage. Hopefully that makes sense to somebody! I'm just happy that everyone I love could be there to share that day with H. and I.

And now for the plane debacle. Our flight back was scheduled for 5:25pm Sunday night, and we were there around 3:30 to go through security and wait for the plane to arrive. Here's a quick bulleted list of what happened next:

• flight delayed to 5:45 pm
• flight delayed to 7:00 pm - waiting on two pilots
• flight back on track for 5:30 pm - pilots arrived
• flight delayed to 7:15 pm - waiting on a plane to arrive that was diverted to Austin for several reasons (weather, needed a new crew, fuel)
• flight delayed to 8:15 pm - plane is available, waiting on a crew
• 6:15 pm - H. and I grab Dickey's for dinner
• 7:20 pm flight canceled - supposedly for the weather, possibly for the crew
• total time spent at the airport = 4.5 hours

Once the flight was canceled, all of the passengers formed a line at the gate we were to depart from to get rebooked for the next available flight. Someone asked if we knew whether we could book at a different gate. H. turned to me, asked me to check the next gate where two people were in line instead of thirty, and I ran on over there. Turns out you can (if you're ever in the same situation), and the next available flight for me was 5:10pm, and for H. was 7:15pm on Monday (trust me, that's an important detail). We asked to both be on the later flight, and inquired as to where we could pick up our one suitcase that we had checked. The lady helping us said it would be on the next available flight - they would send it on the 9:00am flight Monday morning. H. told them that was ridiculous, asked why they couldn't just get the bag because everyone's luggage from the flight was going to be in the same place, and got a cold response from the other ticketer at the counter. "Well, I haven't been down there myself, but I hear that there are a lot of bags going to a lot of different destinations."  H. told him something clever, and then we left, tickets for the 7:15pm flight in hand.

We spent the night at H.'s parents' house (shoutout to J- and E-sko!), and hoped that the rainstorm would not be hanging around tomorrow evening. Monday morning I checked Facebook for the first time since Saturday, and went crazy commenting on and liking everything wedding-related. I was very excited. I got to play Boggle all day, and H. told me to stop after a while because I had apparently "Boggled my brains out", and we watched the Rangers game instead.

We got to the airport at 5:20-ish, went through security, and grabbed some dinner. When it came time to begin boarding the plane, the ticket lady scanned my ticket and said, "Hold up, I need to get this checked." We were in Group 2 for boarding, and if you know anything about flying you know that the first couple groups to board get all the overhead space. We waited and waited and waited while every other single person boarded the plane for a second lady to check my ticket. H.'s scanned just fine, but he waited with me, which was a very smart idea. Somehow, I was supposedly booked for an even later flight, and someone else had taken my seat beside H. Here's another bulleted list as to what happened with the ticket:

• lady #2 prints me a new ticket somewhere not adjacent to H., says that she will ask someone to move so that we can sit together.
• lady #1 says to lady #2 that she just had a family "misconnect", and that we can have their seats. 
• lady #2 books us for these new seats, prints out our tickets
• lady #1 says to lady #2 that she has already given another couple the family's seats, and that she moved the "misconnect" seats somewhere else on the plane
• the two ladies discuss which seats to give us
• lady #1 asks if we are carrying a pet with us onto the plane. I almost laughed out loud while H. said "No."
• lady #2 prints us the same pair of tickets where I am not adjacent to H., and says again that she will ask someone to move.
• lady #1 takes over our ticketing process, rips up those just-printed tickets, and prints us a new set of tickets at the very back of the plane. 
• we take the tickets and run.
• total time spent at airport this time = 2 hours.

As soon as we were past the door and into the little walkway connecting to the plane, I couldn't help but laugh at her question of if we had a pet or not. H. and I mused that we would have lizards - no, chameleons - or maybe some mini giraffes. And if you've seen the commercials, you would know that mini giraffes mean opulence. If we had mini giraffes, we would've bought the entire first class section for ourselves. But anyways.

We were finally on the plane. Our seats were the second-to-last row, on the left. The couple behind us were old, and asked if it would be noisy back here ... ... ... ... next to the engine. They eventually moved up a couple of rows, but we stayed. Our seats were directly behind the place where they keep the food cart, which means that we got an extra foot of leg room. Neither of us slept on the flight; H. played Boggle on his phone, I read a book. Apparently I was having motion sickness from leaning over to play Boggle with H.

The plane landed, and we asked the first available person where to pick up our lost baggage. As we rounded the corner into the room of lost American Airlines luggage, we saw our little floral suitcase hidden away in a corner and wheeled it out of there like we were never coming back. Or at least, we tried to roll it out of there. Apparently the airlines had damaged one of the wheels such that it was only half-working as a wheel, and made an awful thunking noise as we walked. H. was angry that they had damaged the suitcase, and while I was quite a bit miffed, I was still incredibly thankful to have my luggage back.

When we got back to our apartment, H. dropped all of the bags he was carrying, told me to do the same, then swept me up in his arms and crossed the threshold into our apartment. It was very romantic, and I'm thinking of making it a permanent action. We turned on the Mavs game and cheered on the only basketball team that I can name players off of, and H. was extremely happy when they won. Then it was all lights-out and pass-out, because H. has a full workday in the morning.

I had forgotten that things go bad, even if they're sitting in your fridge. I'll need to empty out our reserves and purchase some new food items to get us back on track. Poor H. doesn't have a lunch for today, but if I can figure out what to get for dinner, by golly he'll have one tomorrow.

One other task today is to pick up all of the packages (at least three, don't know the exact number) sitting in the office of the apartment complex. We did tell them we were getting married, getting married back in Texas to be exact, so I'm unsure as to why they called and were angry with us for not accepting packages all week. I might wait to do that until the afternoon, just to have an ounce of power over them for the day. At least they finally fixed their over-the-internet rent problem, and we can pay our monthly rent online.

I need to start Thank You cards ASA-Now, but that will have to wait until after we open everything. That gives me enough time to do all the dishes and take out the trash and laundry and whatnot.

For those of you who aren't FB-friends with my new brother-in-law (how fun is that to say?), here are a couple photos that he and his girlfriend took at the wedding. Mom, even though he doesn't have a beard, you might be able to figure out who I'm talking about.

Walking down the aisle - I almost, almost full-on cried.

H. pointed out that he doesn't look quite as excited as I am to be married.

Wonderful family picture.

Bubbles are my new favorite thing.