Miscellany

[fullygoldy]

• Woke up this morning from a pretty weird dream. My boss from 10 yrs ago was telling me to be prepared to be assigned to one of two projects happening next year in FL. One was in Pensacola, the other at Ft Bragg (which is actually in CA). But I was still doing my present job for my present company, and the region I work in does not support projects in FL. I am in the "North" region which supports all of Central US and Canada <shaking head>. So geography and personnel aside, the weird thing was that DH was really against the move, temporary or permanent, and also against me "commuting" for it. In RL, DH has stated he'll follow me anywhere at this point, as quid pro quo for the past 7 yrs. His dream attitude though was very similar to his attitude 10 yrs ago. Hmmm-maybe that's why it was the 10 yrs ago boss in the dream. In RL, the furthest away project I'm contemplating now is in Tomah (2 hr drive), so not so bad.
• Last weekend, after some shopping, we stopped at Vintage Brewing for a snack and a couple pints. I had the Schwarzfahren, a Schwartz or black lager. Very tasty, and much much better than the guest Black IPA from nearby One Barrel Brewing. That Black was an unfortunate example of what-not-to-do with a black beer.
• While at Vintage, we saw an hour or so of the FIFA Championship Cup.
  • I am not a footie fan, so I knew nothing, and the sound was off. BUT! every time they went to commercial break, they flashed up a rotating view of the trophy. OMG. Hilarious. Especially later on when someone who could only be a team owner, was rubbing the trophy against his cheek and kissing it. Exhibit 1:
  Just imagine this twisting slowly around in front of your face. Do you blame me for laughing so hard I was leaking tears? I couldn't help it, I had a running commentary ala Stiles Stilinski in my head the entire time we were in front of that TV. Seriously, the person who designed this had to have been cackling with glee. "I will make you kiss my giant bulbous penis on TV!" And the winners are all " We are so secure in our masculinity, we will not only kiss it, we will NUZZLE it!" And if the championship is a Cup, shouldn't the trophy be a, well, you know, a CUP? Inquiring minds, dudes. Inquiring minds.
• Also at Vintage, I finally had what my brain has for years been telling me "White Chicken Chili" should be.  This was rich, creamy, delicious chicken meat stewed in a creamy chicken broth, with white beans, and apparently a ridiculous amount of pepper jack cheese melted in to make it creamy and thick.  I am going to figure out how to make this at home.  The bowl was $5 and well worth it (which is not really true of about 90% of the menu.  The food's mostly good, but it's always over-priced in my opinion).  Another "White Chicken Chili" recipe in this town, at a very popular retro-diner, is actually red chili with chicken breast instead of ground or shredded meat. So not what my mouth gets ready for when reading that title.
• Tuesday is the first day of my week off.  We are driving to Nashville, TN for a family reunion on DH's mother's side.  It's being held at Gaylord Opryland Resort, and I am way too cheap to stay there.  Everything, and I mean everything was ala carte.  Rooms, wi-fi, breakfast, parking, plus the usual taxes, and a $13/day "resort fee" (what's that for? the pool towels or something?").  Instead, we rented a cabin on a lake (in Lebanon, TN) that sleeps 7 for the price of 3 fully expensive nights at the resort, thinking the adult kids in SC would drive up and share.  Nope.  The girl and one of her girlfriends will drive down on Wed night arriving in the wee hours on Thurs, but that's it for the roomies.  We have tickets to hear Alison Kraus at the Grand Ole Opry one night, and two nights (Fri & Sat) are devoted to the reunion.  We plan to visit Antique Archeology, the distillery in the same building, and find super excellent BBQ while there.  Other than that, we'll be laying around the lake soaking up the sun (I hope).
• Let me ask you: if you were going on a 10-hr road trip, what time would you leave?  I was thinking, since it's vacation, and I'm supposed to be relaxing, that I would like to get on the road between 9 and 10 am, with arrival probably by 8 pm.  This would generally keep us away from any type of rush-hour traffic, morning and afternoon.  DH has announced that he wants to leave at 2 AM to arrive no later than 1 pm on Tues (Originally, I was only going to take off half of Tues).  We were getting irritated with each other this morning while discussing it, so I said, "fine, let's get the car packed up on Monday, and then whatever time you actually feel like getting on the road, we'll get on the road."  I figure it will be closer to 4 am when we leave, but we shall see.
• I am having technology issues.  Since the last iTunes update, I have been unable to get my music to update. I have new music loaded on my hard drive that I want to put on my phone, but every time it syncs, it only takes all the same music it already had.  This used to be easy.  What the hell am I doing wrong?