The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

My brother is in town this week for business, and flew out a night early to spend Memorial Day with us.  I invited my parents to come down too, that they might enjoy some both-kids-in-the-same-city time, and Tom and I threw a big ol’ grilling party. Yay, fun stuff! Mom and Dad came over a few hours ahead of time so we could all hang out together in the quiet, and Tom and I had been particularly diligent and finished almost all the cleaning and prep ahead of time so we could relax along with them.  My dad helped me taste-test the potato salad he taught me to make years ago.

Of course, our quiet and relaxing afternoon was interrupted when Macro brought a little friend home to play. Those of you who follow Tom or me on Twitter know that Macro has gotten particularly adept at hunting, and we finally had to put a bell on him after he brought us three animals in 5 hours last weekend- the bell is annoying, but less annoying than cleaning bird guts up off the floor.  The bell slowed down the hunting, but did not stop it, as he brought us a live chipmunk again! After a few minutes of chasing Macro, Macro dropping the chipmunk, the chipmunk running away, Macro chasing the chipmunk, etc… the chipmunk eventually ended up behind some bookshelves in our back room, and we had to slide the bookshelves out far enough to let Macro get behind them, and then Tom poked at the chipmunk with an unbent wire hanger to get it to run basically into the cat’s mouth.  At which point Macro and the chipmunk took off for the bathroom, where Tom cornered them and eventually captured the chipmunk to take it outside.

Fun for the whole family!

(Apparently Macro brought us a bird overnight and another live chipmunk- or perhaps the same stupid one- this morning. He doesn’t need a bell; he needs an air raid siren.)

But then it was just about party time, and may I just say that we have excellent friends. People started arriving shortly after 4, and our last guests left at 11:30-ish. Our backyard hasn’t been this crowded since last year around this time.  Just you wait for sangria season, y’all.

I stopped by the jewelry store where Tom and I got our wedding rings (and where he got my engagement ring) to get the battery in my watch replaced.  The cute little old lady who works behind the counter there always recognizes me by my engagement ring, which I think is adorable.  After filling out the paperwork for the watch battery, she insisted on cleaning my rings for me before I left the store.  I had somewhere to be, but who am I to turn down an offer like that?  So I let her.

People. Why do I not get this done more often? Not only are my engagement ring and wedding band now shining like the day I received them, but even the ring I wear on my right hand looks like new.  The ring on my right hand (tanzanite set in gold) is particularly difficult to keep clean, and I had forgotten how light and delicate the color of the stones is because it’s been so long since all the gunk had been cleaned off them.  Even my wedding band, which is quite simple and plain, seems to be shining more brightly.

She also explained to me how to tell the difference between cubic zirconia and a real diamond with the naked eye (because y’all know how preoccupied I am with that sort of thing):  When CZ gets wet, it loses quite a bit of its sparkle, because the material isn’t as hard as diamond is, and the corners can’t be cut as sharply.  Since diamond is so hard, the edges can be much finer, so it sparkles just as brightly while it’s wet.  How ’bout that.

So yeah. Nice people at Boone & Sons.  You should go there.

Unlike my husband, I was not especially perturbed about the sudden iPhone price drop.*  Oh sure, it stung a bit to have the price drop so quickly after I bought mine (I had been expecting the usual procedure of “Wait 6 months/a year, introduce a better one, and drop the price on the previous one.”)  After all, no one WANTS to pay more money than they have to for anything.

But I tended to fall more in the John Gruber camp: I paid $600 for an item that was worth $600 to me.  If it wasn’t worth $600 to me, I should not have paid that much for it.  And since I still love my iPhone, I adopted the “viva la capitalism” approach.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t take the $100 store credit offered to early adopters. I think it was a nice “No, we don’t take you for granted” gesture by Apple, and besides, since I’m considering my $600 gone and spent, it’s essentially $100 free from Apple.  Duh.

And as I hoped, the store credit claim process is completely painless- you don’t still need to have your store receipt, or even the box your iPhone came in.  You can complete it with just your phone number and the serial number etched into the back of your iPhone.  The process took me about 3 minutes, including waiting for the claim code to come by SMS and printing out my credit code. You can claim your iPhone credit too.

*Probably contributing to our difference of perspective, Tom’s iPhone was purchased out of our household budget- we decided that the Bridge Family Budget could only responsibly support one iPhone purchase at a time, and agreed that since Tom runs his business essentially off his cell phone and his laptop, those two items have to be the best they can be, and are therefore worthy priorities. Also, he would have to start supporting it for his clients, so we bought his first, with the idea that I would get mine later.  My iPhone, on the other hand, was purchased sooner than anticipated due to an unexpected windfall I received from one of my personal projects that I had never expected to make money from.  So for Tom, the early iPhone purchase affected our shared bank account, while for me, it just meant that my “fun money” didn’t stretch as far as it otherwise could have just a few weeks later.  From that perspective, it’s not hard to see why Tom was bent about it and I wasn’t.

My weekend was fantastic, but now I need a weekend from my weekend.  When I left work on Friday, I was mentally AND physically exhausted.  With all the goings-on this weekend, I find myself mentally rested, but just as physically in need of a nap as ever.

On Saturday, Tom and I went to the Courthouse Farmer’s Market, figuring we’d get just some tomatoes and mozzarella and whatnot for lunch.  But you see, Tom and I have been talking about trying to eat more locally-grown food, less meat from factory farms, that sort of thing.  Not as a necessarily political statement, but more as an investment in better quality nutrition, better-tasting food, and keeping more of our dollars in our local (or at least regional) communities.  I actually have a lot more to say on this topic, but I’ll save it for another time.

Anyway, the point is, we went in for caprese ingredients, and came out with something like $90 of produce.  It started when someone had a bag of peaches. I LOVE LOVE LOVE farmer’s market peaches.  And then we saw the berry farm’s stand.  And the blackberries were the biggest and most beautiful-looking I’ve ever seen.  And then as we were debating how many tomatoes to get, since there are just the two of us and we’re not home all the time, the farmer said, “These tomatoes will last 10 days.  If they don’t, I will replace them two-fold.”  That’s a strong statement.  We bought the extra tomatoes.  And zucchini.

But then we ended up with this giant sack of fruit, and the peaches were really ripe. We had to eat them over the sink, they were so juicy.  So of course we can’t expect them to last the week, and we had this huge flat of cherries, blueberries, and blackberries so we decided on the only natural course of action…

Sangria party.  But we couldn’t do it the same night because, of course, that was the night of my First Ever Professional Comedy Gig.  I got all dressed and made-up and whatnot, and Tom and I headed out to meet up with Dawn for a little pre-show dinner.  I had to duck out of dinner early because I had to work the door, so I headed into the room, where the guy who runs it suggested that I get up on the stage and get used to the light.  The lights are always directly in your eyes, but this venue is a long, narrow banquet room that doubles as a comedy club, so the stage is at one end, and a really bright spotlight is at the other, and it literally feels like an oncoming train.  So I was glad I acclimated myself to it.

But then, I stepped off the stage and headed toward the back of the room, eyes still adjusting to the darkness, when I noticed a couple of people sitting in the back. “Huh, that woman looks a lot like my mom…” and then the man with her lowered the menu from in front of his face.

My parents came down from Pittsburgh to surprise me and see the show!

Understand that this is a big deal- it’s a long-running joke in my family about how the Baxendell men hate to travel.  My dad in particular is just not into the road trip thing.  So it’s A Thing that he drove four hours to hear me do 7 minutes of comedy.

They hung out with us after the show, and then we took them out for brunch the next morning, which was really nice.  It’s nice to hang out with them in my ‘hood.

Once they were on their way home, Tom and I had to clean up the house for the sangria-consumption. So Tom chopped fruit while I tidied up in the front of the house, and then he cleaned up the kitchen and dining room while I worked on the back room and the bathroom, and by the time we were done, the house was solidly Good Friend Clean- the floors could use a good vacuuming and the shelves could be dusted, but things were put away, and the kitchen and bathroom were both very clean, which are the two key things that might skeeve people out if they aren’t.

Holding a dinner party is always a challenge to our priorities.  We have a lot of friends, and we love to have them over, but we’ve got a small place.  Our table seats 8 when extended, but extending it tends to make the place feel even smaller since it blocks the hallway access to the kitchen and bathroom. It’s not a problem when we’re throwing a big cookout like we did for our anniversary, but when it’s too hot to hang out outside and we want to have a sit-down meal, it’s a real issue. 

So as we’re cleaning the place up, we’re going over who we’ve invited, who we might like to invite, etc.  And we got to a point where the conversation went like this:  “Do we want to invite [so-and-so]?” “Well, we’ve already got 8.” “We do?”  “Yep [rattling off names].”  “Huh.  Well, we’ll have to invite so-and-so next time.”  “Yep.”

But I made lasagna (unfortunately mostly not from the farmer’s market, which is a shame because we get the BEST ricotta there), and we had that, and some shrimp some friends brought, and the zucchini, and salad, and of course the sangria… and then dessert. 

Dessert was grilled peaches with mascarpone cheese, berries with chocolate whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. 

Every time we cook for friends, I think we’ve had the best dinner ever.  I don’t know if it’s short memory or that we just get better every time.  But in any case, it was a good time, and we’re going to have to remember that sangria for the next party.

Even better than throwing a kickass par-tay for all your peeps is waking up the next morning, realizing that you finished the dishes the night before, and that your place could be clean enough to host another shindig with about 15 minutes of putting-away-and-straightening.

I’m going to put those 15 minutes into it, but there won’t be any more shindigs for a couple of weeks.  We’re tired!

(But seriously, a great thing about throwing parties is that you HAVE to clean the house.  The den is now fit for company.  Yay!)

Without getting into any spoilers, let me just say that I actually really liked the finale of The Sopranos.  I thought it was a really interesting artistic choice. 

When you’re ready for some spoilers, scroll down to the end of this Washington Post chat.  Alexandria has some information about the characters present in the final scene that gave me a new twist on my theory about the ending.

On Sunday, Tom and I are hosting a li’l shindig at our place to celebrate our first anniversary.

If you are in DC and a friend of ours and yet did not get the invitation, it’s not that we don’t love you. It’s that we’re usually in the middle of something when we start adding people to the guest list. Drop me a line and I’ll share the plans with you on Planyp.us, which is one of the coolest party/invitations/planning sites I’ve ever seen.

For the second time, Timbuk2 announced some limited edition bags, and for the second time, I am in serious lust.

I am prevented from purchasing the perfectly adorable, purse-like Eula bag, however, by the fact that the teeniest bag costs $175!

It’s cute, but it’s not that cute.

In the car, on the way home from Pittsburgh.  Tom is on the phone with his mom to wish her a happy Mothers Day.

“…and hug Tiff for me too.  After all, she IS the future mother of my grandchildren.”

“Yeah, okay… will do…”

“I bet you heard a lot of that this weekend.”

“No, actually, we had managed to avoid it completely until just now.”

“Oh, and then I ruined it!  Sorry!”

“Quite all right, Mom…”

(For the record, I’m pretty sure we had only avoided it that long because my grandparents weren’t home when we stopped by to see them.  We had been bracing for the full-court press.)

—-

And a special bonus, “How’s married life, visiting-the-parents edition!”

Saturday morning, sitting in the living room in my jammies, talking to my brother.  Tom is asleep downstairs in the guest room.  My parents come down from their room.  Dad wants to know if we’re still planning on all going to DeLuca’s for breakfast.

“So, what’s the plan for this morning?”

“Well, I was waiting my turn in the shower, and then Tom will shower, and then we’ll be ready to go.”

“You could shower together to save time.  You can do that now.”

“Um, yeah, but it’s weird to do that here.  At home, you know, sure, all the time… but it’s still a little weird to do that here.”

“Sure. I was just trying to save you some time.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

My mom shrugs as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”  My brother looks vaguely uncomfortable.

—

I really should make a category for these entries… I have a lot of fun writing them.

Not the magnitude of the news, but just the variety of life topics to be covered.  Ready? Let’s go!

- The New Job: It’s going well, thanks.  There’s significantly less comedic potential, I think, because I’m basically playing with websites all day instead of dealing with hapless jobseekers, but I’m having a good time.  I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it won’t be- can’t be, through no fault of its own- as fabulous as the first year and a half at the Major International Staffing Firm was, but it’s as good as I had hoped, maybe even better.  I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.

- Comedy: I’m taking the next level class at the Improv.  Same fabulous instructor, this time focusing on joke writing and character development.  There won’t be a formal graduation show this time, but there will be an open mic we’ll all be attending at the end.  As for more performances- now that I’ve given myself a month to concentrate on getting myself settled at my job, I’m going to start pursuing more open mic opportunities.  There’s a comedy club in the area that has an open mic competition, so I’d like to try that after I get some more stage time.  Also, the Improv is going to experiment with having a regular variety showcase for comedy school alums, so the evening will include improv, sketch, and standup.  I’ll be out of town for the first one, but watch for more news on that this summer.  I’ll probably also launch a site to promote myself as a comedienne this summer, too.

- Social: Good stuff!  My ability to socialize after work has been somewhat curtailed lately because my parking benefit hasn’t kicked in yet and I’ve been Metro-bound. Buses from the Pentagon to our place get a significantly less reliable after 6:30, so I haven’t wanted to spend a lot of extra time downtown after work.  But I get my parking pass TODAY! (24×7 access!) So my post-workday mobility should increase drastically starting tomorrow.  On weekends, though, we’ve been cooking out and enjoying fruity drinks and doing all that fun stuff.

- Travel: My job change has meant that I have to start accruing leave all over again, so there won’t be a whole lot of that this year.  But we’re making time to go to a couple of weddings in June and will probably try to hold a day free in each city for frolicking.  We’re also planning to get to Pittsburgh this month (got to call you about that tonight, Mom) and perhaps in July as well.

Does that cover it? I think so.  You are now officially caught up on my life.