Day 273 - September 30

The rain falls, and 5 minutes later, it enters my classroom....

Day 272 - September 29

Oops.  It's upside down.

But you get the idea.  We get lots of video game magazines around here.  The two that came today are the Xbox one and the PS one.  I don't believe we've ever received 2 different magazines with the exact same cover before - especially on the same day.

Day 271 - September 28

I thought the sunset looked particularly awesome tonight, and from looking at random FB messages, lots of other people in the area feel the same way.  This is the sunset from the inside of our front door.

Day 270 - September 27

All the rage in our area ... starting today.  So far, the traffic in the cornfields has tripled and the place has been open for like 8 hours!

Day 269 - September 26

This is an example of the way our house looked before it was our house.  It's in the powder room and has a topiary friend just a few feet away.  I'm sure it took forever to do ... but it isn't really my style.  The only thing keeping it around is the fact that bathrooms are a pain in the butt to paint. :)

Day 268 - September 25

I'm currently reading this book & really enjoying it.  It's a little choppy and not the best literary example in the world, but it's a behind the scenes look at how a technical hour long TV show gets made.  I've learned a ton of random stuff about the actual show House and then lots of things about general television production.  It would probably be pointless to read it if you didn't want House, especially since they reference lots of episodes, but I am enjoying it.

Day 267 - September 24

Recently, I found out that my mother bakes and mails my brother cookies.  This is done in an attempt to make him call her, because he is guaranteed to call to thank her.

Upon making this discovery, Mike requested that I stop calling her immediately in a ploy to get us some cookies.

Cept I let her in on the plan.  By phone. :)

She spent the last few days at a friend's house, and that friend likes to bake. So now we have cookies!

Day 266 - September 23

See that sign?
(I wish I had my real camera with me all the time.)

It's a giant billboard advertising Shop Rite.

Know why it's genius?

It's directly across the street from the other grocery store in town.  The one that doesn't double & triple coupons.

*Disclaimer - The car was off and I was in my parking space when I took this picture. :)

Day 265 - September 22

Headed to Duclaw for the monthly freebie night / beer release today.  I was anxious to try the "re-imagined" pretzel sticks.

Observations:
1 - As shown in the picture, they aren't really "sticks" anymore.
2 - We had *6* of these things as opposed to 3 of the original sticks and 4 of the most recent incarnation of sticks.
3 - The "goo" you see is cinnamon butter. Heaven in a cup.
4 - These are almost better for dessert than an appetizer, but boy are they spectacular.

Day 264 - September 21

After a long summer of watching random TV shows on DVD, real TV started this week.  Tonight - it was Glee!!!

And the surprisingly hilarious Raising Hope that came on right afterwards.

Day 263 - September 20

We bought this picture yesterday at the local art festival, and found time tonight to hang it up.  It's hard to tell from this iphone shot, but it's 4 photographs of a beach & sand dune. 

Made an interesting observation about our differing likes & dislikes in the world of art today. 

I do not understand why people buy winter themed art.  To me, it would be just plain silly to have a New England village or Rocky Mountain ski village or a snow covered tree and lake picture hanging up in the middle of July.  I feel like if a picture has snow in it, it can only be up in a cold month.

However, I do not feel this way about summer artwork.  I don't have any issues with looking at a summery picture in November.

Mike's the opposite. :)

This set of pictures is a compromise - it's a beach, but it's sort of black and white, sort of sepia, and yet still has a hint of color.  Mike says I can't put beach and ocean on every wall in every room.  I said I wouldn't need pictures if all of our windows opened up onto a beach!  :)

Day 262 - September 19

This is this month's read for book club.  I enjoyed it somewhat, however, I have a really hard time reading memoirs ever since the Million Little Pieces debacle.  Whenever there's a moment (good or bad) that is emotional, I think "awwww. TOO BAD IT PROBABLY ISN'T TRUE!" This is not fair to memoir writers around the world, but it's just how it is for me now. :(

Day 261 - September 18

Tonight, we went to Parkville to have Mexican food at El Salto.  It was a case of a restaurant being almost too efficient ... we waited a couple minutes for a table, and we were still out of there in 25 minutes.  Of course waiting forever for a meal is not a good thing, but when it takes less than a half hour I feel rushed.

Since I didn't want to turn around and run right home, we walked across the parking lot to Wockenfuss Candies and picked up an Apple Pie Caramel Apple to bring home for dessert.  (I forgot to take a picture before it was sliced, so you can follow the link to see how pretty it was.)

Verdict? I think the ones with milk chocolate are a little better, but this one was good too. Dipped in caramel, drenched in white chocolate to give it a crust and rolled in cinnamon & sugar. Yum.

Day 260 - September 17

This is our handy, dandy single stream recycling bin.  Check out that paint job.  I downloaded a clip art of the recycle sign, printed it out, and cut it to make a stencil.  We did an ok job, I think.  I wish it could have been a different color than our regular trash can, but this is all Home Depot had because everyone else in the area needed a second trash can for this week as well!

Day 259 - September 16

Tonight, we slaughtered a pig.  Ok, so we really just cut up this hunk of pork loin that I got on Tuesday, but when we were done it looked like we had slaughtered a whole pig.  This turned into 7 portions of meat, each of which is enough for a meal and some leftovers.  Yum.

Day 258 - September 15

The mums are blooming, the mums are blooming!  They're coming in oddly, because each bush is blooming on a different side.

And the bees are EVERYWHERE.  They like mums, big time.  They also like the mystery bush that I call "lettuce" that started flowering this week.  I seriously need to learn about these things...

Day 257 - September 14

Since I had off today for primary election day, I met Mike for lunch at Wegmans.  Wegmans is a great place to eat lunch because the options are limitless.  Today, he had sushi (freshly made by those people in the middle there - I watched them make sushi the whole time we ate lunch) and I had cooked food from the Asian bar.  There was also a salad bar, pre-made subs, to-order subs, fancy ceasar salad bar, pizza, a wing bar, and a bunch of other stuff. 

Granted, by the time he filled up on sushi it cost more than eating dinner out, but my share of the lunch was really filling and affordable.

Day 256 - September 13

It seems like every few weeks around here, Mike gets excited for a new video game.  It appears that sequels never go out of style in video game land.

But today, it was my turn.  This Professor Layton series is always full of puzzles and logic problems. They're really fun, and I have even recommended it to a few of my creative thinking students. Yeah, that's right, a librarian talking up a video game. I'm a well rounded nerd, what can I say?

The best part is that the game was really really cheap!  When Mike pre-ordered his new game that is coming tomorrow, it came with a Best Buy gift card that we used to buy my Layton game. AND, Mike went to Best Buy and bought it for me today while I was at work so it was here when I got home.  I don't know when I'll have time to open it, but at least it's here. :)

Day 255 - September 12

When I got in the car after getting gas today, I noticed the triple 0's on my odometer.  When I got this car last August, it was a few miles over 35k.  I drive too much.

(And as you can see, the car is turned off - so this picture is legal.) :)

Day 254 - September 11

In preparation for the Ravens game tomorrow and friends coming over to hang out, Mike spent the day making chili.  It's like 20 ingredients!  The bowl is full of the random veggies that had to be diced, and in addition there is a pan with 2 pounds of ground beef and a pound of sausage that didn't make the picture.

My prediction is that I will eat 3 bites...Why can't chili just be meat marinating in the sauce? Why must this vegetable group infringe on a perfectly good meal? :)

Day 253 - September 10

Lately, my grocery store has been having a bonus sale from Wed-Sat each week.  I rarely remember to go now that we don't live across the street from the store, because I do the weekly shopping trip on Sunday at the beginning of the week.

This week we stopped by after a trip to the local ice cream shop, because this deal was too good to pass up. (Yes, I know it's almost all junk food - but he's anticipating eating it while he watches football for the next 8 weeks, and who doesn't love a good crappy pizza once in awhile???)

Grand total: $2.63 (The cantelope was $0.99 of that, too!)
Savings: $18 something (I don't have my receipt near me at the moment.)

Day 252 - September 9

Sorry for the darkness - I didn't get home until 8pm tonight because it was open house.

But I was SO EXCITED to see the recycling bin sitting out next to the trash can. 

Why??

Because today is the LAST DAY EVER that we had to pay attention to whether it was paper/cardboard day or glass/plastic/bottles/cans day.  Starting next week, our county is switching to single stream recycling.  I'm so excited!  Even now, we're down to less than a trashbag per trash day so I imagine it'll get even better now that they're taking steps out of the process!

Day 251 - September 8

My local library has an awesome perk - a drive through window.  It's like having my own personal book concierge.  I request books online, they send me an email when they're ready, and I drive through and pick them up.  Sweet!

But, nature doesn't enjoy this perk as much as I do.  This is a chunk of the horribly unhealthy bushes that line the drive through area.  The constant exhaust from the cars has killed all of the bushes from 3 feet down.  It's just the very tops that aren't near the exhaust pipes that are still green.  It's kind of sad.

Day 250 - September 7

My mother speaks of moments where she absolutely must have liquid or else she will perish in that very instant.  It makes me look forward to getting older...but then again, she lives in the desert so maybe that plays a role.

I opened up the fridge this weekend to discover that my husband suffers from the same symptoms - but from the looks of the shelf, his "need-to-drink-this-instant" cravings must demand options.  3 flavors of Gatorade, 3 flavors of Snapple tea, and 5 flavors of beer right there, ready to grab at any moment!

Day 249 - September 6

Mike has been passing a sunflower patch on the way home from work all week, and then today the sunflower fields of Harford County got a write up in the paper.  We hunted one of the big ones down to snap some pictures today.  The place was hopping with people armed with cameras!  There was a Royal Farms across the street where everyone was parking, and we (along with everyone else, it appeared) stopped in to buy a soda in return for hogging the space.  Since the field is out in the middle of nowhere, I bet that store is enjoying the surge in people!

Day 248 - September 5

You see that caterpillar?  The yellow and black one?

It just made me fall over from my weed pulling crouch, jump to my feet, shudder, scream, and take many many steps away from the weeds.

You see, there are several in this weed patch.  And they happened to be waiting in line for something, and when there are 6 all in a line, they look like a snake.

But they're not. They're just a whole bunch of caterpillars.

If anyone happened to be sitting at their front windows watching me pull weeds however, they might think differently.  Mike says he's sorry he missed it.

Day 247 - September 4

We have two parties to go to this weekend, so we made our pretzel-chocolate-M&M snacks in mass quantities.  This is the peanut M&M cookie sheet, and we also did a sheet of plain.

Day 246 - September 3

This weekend is the first annual Bel Air Hot Air Balloon festival.  The actual festival with rides and all that jazz is tomorrow, but tonight they had a "Balloon Glow" to go along with an expensive fundraiser.  We (along with several other couples & families) had the idea to go catch a glimpse of the balloons all lit up by going around the back of the fairgrounds and walking on the trail.  50 pictures later, this is the only one that even shows what we were trying to see. :)  This balloon was having the most gas bursts, so it was lit up the most often.  It's celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz. I wish we were going to be around tomorrow when they all take off!!!

Day 245 - September 2

Proof that fall is coming - it isn't sunny when I get to the park 'n' ride anymore. :(

Day 244 - September 1

We've all seen "Xanthan Gum" in the ingredients list of foods.  But this caught my eye as I was running into the grocery store for super cheap ground beef today. Turns out xanthan gum comes as a powdery substance in a bag. I never would have guessed that!  Got lucky and got a bunch of 93% beef for really cheap this week.  The bad-for-you kind goes on sale all the time, but this is the first time we've been able to stock up on the lesser fat kind.