Happy Birthday, Cooper!

Cooper, Cooper, you are SUPER!

Happy 7th Birthday to the Greatest Dog Ever. You make us happy everyday. Here's to 7 more.

Yes, that means he was born on 2-22-02. Cool birthday for a cool dog. :)

Delicious crock pot beans

While cleaning out my cupboards I found 4 open, half used bags of beans. I won't even tell you how many different varieties of rice and pasta I found. Anyway, for obvious reasons, I made some seriously delicious crock-pot beans while I worked today.

I still don't know how to post pictures from my BlackBerry and our computer is having issues so there are no photos. Anyone who has an appreciation for a simple meal for under $10 that's nutritious and delicious that practically makes itself will enjoy this recipe.

Any combo of beans will work just as well.
All added to warm crock pot, cooked for 8 hours.
I used red, garbanzo & pinto beans and a few lentils, totaling about 4 cups. Soaked overnight & drained.
1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 green pepper, 2 stalks celery, all medium diced & 1/4 c minced garlic.
1 T each of chile powder, cumin, paprika, bean seasoning. Sprinkle of red pepper flakes, 3 bay leaves & 2 dried peppers.
1 pound ground turkey (or beef) and 2 links sausage peeled & crumbled.
1 32oz. can diced tomatoes, plus 3 cups water.

Joseph made cornbread and rice to go with it. Nice to leave a home cooked meal for him before work and come home to one after work, and a delightfully aroma filled house. Everyone wins with the crock pot. Season with salt after cooking.

Hey Sprint, Kiss Off!

A joyous day it is to finally be rid of that despicable company! We have been eagerly awaiting the end of our sentence (service contract) which seemed to last forever.

I won't go into why we so vehemently hate Sprint, but it has to do with seriously shitty customer service, mysterious and re appearing bill charges and a dropped call percentage of about one in four! Right, Mom? Think about that, every four to five calls cutting out, everywhere but mostly at home, for four years! You would have smashed a few phones or windshields too!

We haven't decided quite what we're going to do with our old p
hones, but it will be ceremonious and destructive! We are almost as happy to be rid of Sprint as we were are Bush.

Cheers to BlackBerries and Verizon and Sprint can suck it!

The Storm Lives!

I am posting this from the car, on our way to dinner, on my new BlackBerry Storm!! It is the most exciting thing I've done in months. Almost there, more later. Thank you, Matthew for hooking it up! The Marshigleys have gone mobile. Xox

ACE!

Joseph shot a hole-in-one today! It was on hole #2 at Burnet. He had two witnesses to sign the disc and pay him the $5 that every witness owes the hole-in-one shooter (per disc golf code). Then he signed and dated the cage.

This is the third time that Joseph has shot a hole-in-one. The first time was on hole #7 at Burnet on Friday, June 13, 2008. Today is Friday, February 13, 2009. That is CRAZINESS, folks, craziness!

Thirteen is his lucky/favorite number. Apparently so. He is pretty thrilled with himself today. :)

Way to go, Joseph!

(I will get a photo of the basket and disc when I'm there on Tuesday)

It's a Beautiful Day

Elizabeth recently asked me, after I complained about Texas, "when do you love it in Texas?"

I had a 45 minute business meeting driving around on a golf cart this afternoon. It was a sunny, glorious day that topped out at seventy-seven degrees! So lovely. (PS. The meeting was to plan the garden that we're planting at the club, to grow some vegetables and herbs, as well as a means to reduce our waste by creating a need for a compost pile. All things I am really really excited about getting to be involved in. More on that later.)

As I drove home about 4 o'clock with my windows wide open and my left arm hanging out, I realized that days like today are the reason that I live here.

When I have to wear sunglasses and it's almost 80 degrees on a day in the middle of February ... that is when I LOVE living in Texas.

It's offically spring. It may get cold again for a day, but as far as everything around me is concerned, it's springtime, which is my very most favorite time of the year.

When I got home we took a 3 mile walk (in tshirt and shorts) with Joseph, Cooper & fatass Marshall (more on that later too). It was A Beautiful Day. :)

Feeling Good Again

I feel so much better. I am still trying to take it easy and I'm lucky to have today off, on top of the three days I missed, to fully recuperate. I'm going kind of stir-crazy stuck in the house, but that's how it goes.

I sat on the back porch for a while, throwing the frisbee for Cooper. It's sunny and super windy and my hair was all over the place. I had my camera, because I always have my camera, but lets face it, the dog pictures are only so cute. So... It's no secret that I kind of love looking at pictures of myself. Naturally, this is what I ended up doing with my camera and lots of free time between throws.

These pictures are kind of rediculous. Besides cutting off my own head several times, there is charcoal and dead plants in the background and dog slobber on the glass door. Oh well. Good photography isn't my thing. Food is my thing.

And Kate, you don't even have to comment about how much dorkier this is than the Winter Fashion Show I did last year. I know it already. :)

in bed with the flu...

I caught the nasty flu bug that had been circulating at work. It hit me like a sledgehammer late Friday night. I got up and went to work on Saturday morning, although Joseph and my better judgement told me not to. (I used to pretend to be sick a lot in my youth, so I have a hard time believing that I am actually sick now as an adult) I thought perhaps the vomiting and cold sweats had come from something I had eaten, and I'd feel better in the morning. In the morning though, I found my arms too weak to wash my hair in the shower and my legs too weak to stand to iron my pants. I still tried to tough it out but only lasted 90 minutes at work. Most of those 90 minutes I spent shivering and quietly moaning in the break room. It was quite pathetic.

It was a unanimous decision that I was an idiot for even getting out of bed. I drove home wishing I'd just called in sick (lesson learned), took advil, drank a vitamin water and crashed hard for about 6 hours. My weekend went something like this... advil, 7up, sleep, movie, vomit and repeat.....

Luckily, we had just gotten new movies from Netflix. I watched Charlie Bartlett (A, the main character is darling and so enjoyable to watch), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (C, made me want to go to Hawaii but that's it) and The Heartbreak Kid (A-, stupid and gross, but really funny). I fell asleep during the Express, about the first black man to win the Heisman, Joseph said it was sad but good.

It's Monday and I'm finally starting to feel better. I'm going to stick to the chicken soup and dry Life cereal diet for another day. I'm still a little queasy and weak, but just being able to sit up at the computer and having the motivation to type or read something is a complete turn around from yesterday. I haven't felt that awful in many years.

Disc Golfing all Afternoon

We spent the afternoon in Burnet with the dogs on the disc golf course. I walked with the dogs while Joseph played 36 holes. It was really windy today, but otherwise sunny and beautiful. The wind made for some difficult play for Joseph at times, but he continued to impress me with his skill, control, aim and technique with various discs and throws. The dogs had a blast, running around in the woods for 2 hours is their idea of a good afternoon. They even got to see cows face to face! I was happy to spend time with Joseph, get the dogs out of the yard, have everyone get exercise and enjoy the sunshine for the first time in a while. I like days like today.

Cooper loves to ride with his head out the window. Who doesn't?

They walked with us for a while. Then something else caught their attention!
<
Big Black Cows!

Marshall was super interested in the cows. He got right up to the fence and stared intently. I had to keep Cooper on a leash near the cows because he would have jumped the fence and let his cowdog instincts take over. Chasing cattle will also get a dog shot in Texas! After a couple of minutes the cows noticed Marshall, and they were all quite intrigued by the little fluffy cow on the other side of the fence. I'm glad I had my camera.



The wind made play a little difficult. And Joseph didn't appreciate that I took these pictures of him retrieving his discs. It's all part of the game though. :)


He made some awesome shots, and played well overall. I got a few good photos of him putting. He made both these shots, if you can't quite see.

two things

I have just reread a few of my recent posts. It appears that I occasionally forget how to spell. We ate chicken wing from a turkey fryer in an alley, not an ally, duh!

Also, my broken ass stove is going to be replaced with a shiny new one! Yeah yeah yeah, we're getting a new stove. This bunk POS they've got in here now is like 35 years old. It has already been 3 weeks since it blew up on me, and it may be another 3 before it's installed, but bring it on. A brand new oven to bake in is the very next best thing to my own new oven in my own new house to bake in. It'll due for now!

21 oz. NY Strip

Here's how it works at Costco, I have a list of all the non food stuff we need, which we walk around together picking up. Then I leave him in the meat and wine section with a budget and occupy myself in other areas of the store. He likes to pick up every piece of meat and read every wine label, which kind of irritates me, so I wander around gathering produce, cheese, lotions, looking at cameras & jewelery & such. He always makes great choices, so it works better for us that way.

In the meat department he decided on $20 worth of tri-tip (Joseph's favorite cut of beef), four pounds of ground turkey and a 3-pack of Prime NY Strip steaks that weighed 4 pounds!, one of which we grilled "to perfection" last night.



I got home from work early so we were able to go up to spend 2 hours disc golfing before it got dark. I walked with him, occasionally putting or jogging, for 36 holes. It was nice, super quiet, beautiful sunny weather, a 4 mile hike. It had been several months since I had seen him play, and I was impressed. He is really good! He knew I wanted to get some exercise but was pretty tired, so he ran with me. We jogged up all the hills together and from baskets to tees, and even ran down a big hill holding hands. It was really cheesy, so much so that I pulled my hand away at the bottom of the hill and said that I hoped no one was watching. I really hoped that no one had seen us, but I knew for sure that if any one had, they would have been jealous.

We had worked up an appetite so... We used the remainder of the shrimp cocktail, that we made to take to the back ally shindig (I kid, I kid, it really was pleasant and the people were lovely), and added it to a salad to accompany the steak and shrimp. We drank a bottle of "Nob-lee-oh", which is actually spelled and pronounced Nob-il-o, but for rude and facetious reasons we call it Noblio or Nolibo or Nobilio. It was yet another memorable, delicious and happy meal shared at our table.




Before I left for work today I put 4 chicken breasts and the leftover quart of enchilada soup in the crock pot on low for 8 hours. When I got home it was this... Not really, it had to be shredded to look like that, but it only took about 90 seconds. Today we had it over white rice and tomorrow for lunch it will be in burritos. Nice use of leftovers, if I do say so myself. :)

Date Night

Monday has become our new date night. Every other week we go into Austin on Monday to run errands and have a nice dinner. Two weeks ago it was Ruth's Chris, this week we decided it was time for a Korea House fix... Mmmm, yeah! First we went to Old Navy so I could buy some $6 pants, then we loaded up at Costco. That store is still awesome, we love it. Next we stopped by the flying saucer for a cheese plate and some a few beers before heading to Korea House. We had beef ribs and pork on the barbeque, a Diana 2 roll and a seafood pancake. My last meal, should I ever have to request it, would include that seafood pancake and Diana 2 roll.

Superbowl Sunday

Last year we had a Superbowl party. I served crab legs with drawn butter, cheese and crackers and fettucini alfredo with chicken, bacon and peas. We drank white wine.

This was fun too. Seriously, it was fun.

Eating chicken wings out of a tailgate with a dead Christmas tree

Frying chicken wings in an ally

Serving chicken wings on an 80s tv tray

Watching Bruce in 3D

A patriotic garage

Naughty Dog

Cooper had an exciting weekend. I got a call from strange number on Saturday just as I was pulling out of work, it was some woman I've never met calling to tell me that Cooper was in her backyard! Oh shit, where's Marshall?

The latch on our fence had broken. I bought a new one and it was sitting on the kitchen table to remind Joseph to go put it on. Without the latch we had resorted to putting the grill in front of the gate to prevent it from opening. Not surprising that Cooper wasn't fooled by that. After all, this is the dog who jumped out a moving jeep window in the dog park parking lot, rolled down the same jeep window (not automatic, the rolly kind) and jumped out in an Albertson's parking lot, jumped over a six foot patio wall to follow me, snuck out of my condo screen door a million times to go hang out with the neighbors (and once that I know of to the pond to swim) and so on and so on...

I drove fast all the way home and was relieved to see little black Marshall sitting front and center on our porch when I pulled around the corner. Good dog. I put him in the house and drove to the house where Cooper was, about half a mile away on our normal walk/run route. Cooper was happy to see me when I got to the huge ass house where he was running around contentedly with the two frilliest looking blond cocker spaniels I've ever seen. The lady told me where they had found him and I thought she was mistaken. I had assumed they had found him near our house, or at least on our street! Nope, he had apparently felt like he was due for a walk, so he went for a walk! He was half way around the 2 mile loop that I take with them every day. She said he was just walking along when they came upon him, he turned around and walked with them to their house. They brought him in, fed him dinner and waited for me to get there. First, what nice people. Second, what a naughty dog?!? Thank goodness he's such a sweet dog, or I'd have a real problem. I can't have him getting out though, it's too dangerous out here. Rednecks in Texas shoot dogs in their yards.

Joseph put the latch on when he woke up on Sunday. But not before I caught Cooper sneaking out one last time that morning. Seriously! I put them out when I got up and then got ready for a run. It had only been about 20 minutes when I headed out in the yard to get them. I found Marshall but no Cooper. I ran into the front yard and called his name. I went around to the side of the house to just catch the back of him hauling ass around the corner of the fence, way down by the road. He was going to run around, sneak in the gate and pretend he had never left. I got him to come back to me and I did my best to make it known that he'd misbehaved. I pointed my finger and said his name as mean as I could and he laid on his back at my feet. I said no no no, you don't leave the yard. Then I took him inside, put his leash on and went for a run. My "punishment" was most likely, very unsuccessful and will in no way deter his out-of-yard adventures. Cesar Milan would tell me it's my own fault.