Fan Girl Wannabe

• 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. ( Technically safe for work, but JIC )
• 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?

We had a lovely 4-day weekend.  I banked some extra hours so I could take Fri off too.  

Wed. night we made the cranberry jello mold, and prepped pie crust and ate chinese food.

Thursday we lounged around in jammies all day, reading and playing dominoes, watching parades and football, cooking and eating.  There were lots of yummy things from the eggnog pancakes and bacon for breakfast, to 5 kinds of cheese, pate de foie gras, grapes, pistachios, and a fancy relish tray from Whole Food's olive bar for snacks, to Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, oyster dressing, cranberry relish and asparagus for dinner, and finally cherry and pumpkin pies for dessert.  There were also interesting beverages - sparkly juices and Jones soda and wine.  Survivor and CSI were fun things to watch in the evening.  That Hodges is such a geek.

Friday I cleaned and organized a chunk of the basement.  DH and I went to "The Garage Project" on University to see the latest and greatest in organizational systems for your garage and/or basement.  I'm interested in the basement applications.  DH wants to adapt a few items to the kitchen, specifically to his baking center he's dreaming about.  For dinner, we met up with 

bzdchris

busman1994

bzdchris

busman1994

If you put M&Ms into a half-empty tin of Altoids Dark Chocolate Dipped Mints, teh M&Ms will take on a minty flavor!

I'm finding that I like Mavis as a person very much.  Of course, I already love her very much as a daughter, but it's heartening to know that she's a person I'd want to know anyway. (I think Rupert is finding his way to this place too, but it seems slower because he's a boy *and* she's had a 3 year head start).

Almost, but-not-quite catching a cold is good in two ways - the not catching the cold way, and the giving yourself permission to take the day (afternoon/evening) off way.  Also, DH's cold tea kicks ass! And colds!

Finding Fat Tire Amber in the supermarket in Joliet almost makes up for having to sit here alone in my undies (or should I say 'small pants'?) drinking it. It also goes well with salad bar salad and minty M&Ms.  Dinner of champions. What?

Although I would love to have read HP7 all in one go, we're only at chapter 21 now.  First the boy read it, then the girl, then I finally started reading it aloud to DH.  I won't be the last to read it either - our copy is already promised to the neighbors.  My voice doesn't last more than 2 chapters at a time, so the most we'll do in a day is 1-2.  With me being out of town 3 days/week, it's really slowing us down.  OTOH, he says he prefers the way I read it to the idea of getting the audio book.  I try to do some voices, but nothing major, and I do try to get some of an English lilt into the phrasing - years of watching BBC and now listening to podfic made by foreign fans helps me get the emphasis on the right syl-la-ble. heh.

I've been having a lot of kissing dreams lately - at least once a week.  Just dreams of sweet sweet kisses.  I wake up all smiley from them.

The Great Taste of the Midwest is the all time greatest beer festival! Of course, I haven't been to the big one in CO, but I know people who have, and they didn't have nearly as much fun as we do. This was our 2nd yr to volunteer, and it's just so much fun helping the brewers unload their cars, and then getting to drink for an hour and a half before anyone else gets in.

Other fun things - running into particular people annually:

• Rob, the brewer/owner of Tyranena, who knows how to apply a mean temp tattoo. My inner left thigh is still tingling.
• Wendell, the cute jamaican with the pretty hair, and sexy accent who did not have tattoos this year, but hugged us anyway.
• Toni, aka Ms. Sassy, bossing the cars around.
• The breakfast burrito guy - yum!
• Mark M., volunteer coordinator extraordinaire, who rsvp'd DH automatically.
• B&N of the colorful hair, who are now 'small with child' - way to go, guys!
• Pat, founder of Mt Horeb brew pub (now the Grumpy Troll).

Beers we drink annually:

• Flossmoor Station - always has good belgian styles
• Three Floyds - for over the top hops
• White Winter - actually mead and related things, and not to be missed
• Appletreow Winery - more mead and yumminess, particularly the fortified Peach dessert wine. OMG

We're much pickier than we were when we were paying to get in - now we just try what looks good and keep going back to the faves.  Let everyone else see how many beers they can consume in an afternoon.  Instead of starting at one tent, and trying to do something at every brewery, we scope out all the faves and interesting things first.  We did make both sides of all 3 tents, but we maybe hit 30-40% of the exhibits.  This year, we even left before closing time (sure it was only half an hour, but still). 

 There were many choruses of the Beer Song, and many "Beer Goddess"es to meet and greet.  It totally cracks me up that last year we had at least 7 polys on our volunteer shift, and this year we traded out one, but still had 7 (I'm only counting the ones I know personally).  The weather was really pleasant, even though there was a shower in the afternoon.  I'm glad it wasn't scorching the way it's been for most of the summer.

After the fest, DH & I got a chance to debunk that whole "erototoxin" myth, when a good friend showed up.  We thought about dropping in on a play party we knew about, but decided to make our own instead. ~smile~ Later on, we decided to sleep in the tent (still up from the dinner party weekend).  It was perfect outdoor sleeping weather, which meant it was perfect for outdoor myth debunking too.  Because, you know, the scientific method requires repeatability.