Saturday, October 2, 2010

I Don't Like Mexican Food

There is only one kind of food that I can honestly say I don't like.  I do not like Mexican food.  With the exception of fake Mexican food like nachos and taco bell.  I think a large part of this is that I simply hate beans.  Any kind of beans, I don't like them.  When they're in chili or some other kind of dish I can deal with them.  I'm not the kind of girl that picks something out of anything; with the exception of ripping the crust off of my sandwiches.  I do not like black beans, I do not like re-fried beans.  I can deal with the occasional fajita because I like grilled vegetables, but that's about it.

Chris' parents own a beach house in Ocean City, MD.  I swear to God they only go there to eat Mexican food.  Sure, they go to the beach or whatever.  Bruce will go around to hit golf balls and leave his wife sitting around doing nothing, but really, I think they only go for the Mexican food.  Every other weekend, if Bruce doesn't have to work Saturday, they drive down to the beach.  Mind you, even though both of their houses are in Maryland, the two of them are about three hours apart because you have to go around the Bay.  Anywho... Every Friday they head down to the beach and go to their favorite Mexican spot, La Hacienda, affectionately known as LaHa's.

As is every other restaurant I have ever been to with the in-laws, LaHa's is rather expensive.  Most of the entrees are over $20, the nachos are probably $15, and a side of guacamole is about $7.  The real kicker is the margaritas.  If you order a margarita on the rocks at LaHa's it costs a whopping $8.50.  But that's not all folks. 
Papa B usually drinks manhattans, but he makes the exception to have margaritas at LaHa's.  That being said, they don't just have one or two.  I've seen each of them drink up to four of these $8.50 margaritas.  This alone would be pretty ridiculous, but Bruce likes to get a little carafe of Grand Marnier on the side.  He probably adds about two shots of orange liquor to each of these margaritas.  I have no idea what that costs, but it's probably quite a bit.

The other thing is... if you know you're going to have upwards of 10 margaritas in one sitting.  Why not order the pitcher?  Wouldn't that make sense?  Hmm I think not.  The in-laws never order pitchers of anything, nor do they order bottles of wine even if all four of us are drinking the same kind of wine and have upwards of two glasses each.  I'm not quite sure what the rationale behind any of this is, but there you have it.

So a few months ago we went over to the in-laws for dinner.  What were they having?  Mexican!  They made chicken fajitas.  Not my favorite, but okay, whatever.  Also, they do not just make a bunch of everything and have a couple little fajitas each.  They make at least one chicken breast per person and you are supposed to fit it into one monster fajita and eat it all at once.  Also, I think why we are always having Mexican is that B&N just plain really like tequila and don't have any other outlet for it.  They are far to classy to just announce that we are having margarita night for no goddamn reason and you're gonna like it.

Now I'm not going to begrudge any girl her day with tequila.  But why not mix it up a little?  Have margaritas with pizza, have them with veal parm, hell, just have them just because you fucking feel like having a little tequila.  It really doesn't matter to me, you never need a reason.  In fact, just the other day my mom drives into a massive puddle and basically totals her car.  Her response?  Calling my sister to ask if we have any margarita mix in the house.  That's my mama.  I guess it runs in the family.

We had some fajitas.  No biggie, I filled mine mostly with vegetables and fed most of the blackened chicken to the dog.  The next time we go over for dinner we're told to bring Cynthia along.  So we arrive, and what is sitting on the table for us?   MARGARITAS!  In none other than the famed cactus margarita glasses.



I love those fucking things.  So we have a few drinks and I start to forget that we're going to have fajitas.  The next time we go over to the in-laws for dinner?  It's fajita time!  I mean come on.  They had chicken going bad in the fridge.  Obviously there is nothing else you could possibly do with chicken that might allow you to drink tequila out of cacti so we have to make fajitas out of it.

Fast forward to today.  Here I sit at the kitchen table of the in-laws.  We got a call from Mama N at around 10:30 a.m.  We are still in bed, not dressed, it is a Saturday.  Not only is it a Saturday but it is the first Saturday I have ever had after a week of working a full time job.  On top of that, Chris is having a minor apocalypse at work and did not get home on Friday night until about 8:40 p.m.  So I'm like oh crap, it's time to go to the in-laws and put together their new desktop computer.

Easy right?  Hmm no.  It is 5 p.m. and I am still sitting at said kitchen table and said computer is still not working properly.  At this point N has been on the phone basically the entire afternoon trying to sell her parents' house.  They've been back and forth with the grandparents, her two brothers, and the Realtor and there is still really no deal in sight.  She suggests that we stay for dinner since the computer still needs a few hours and guess what they want to have for dinner?  Oh yes, the infamous chicken fajitas...

Currently we are striking a compromise for Italian instead.  Maybe I can get them to have some margaritas too.

Julibean <3

Wedding Touches I Love

I really love this new take on the traditional guest book.  Maybe we will use it at our wedding.  Also, usually the trees are a dark color and you use a colored ink for the fingerprints, but this one is in negative and I think it makes it so much more interesting.




I also really love this idea for a save the date!  I think we might be going a bit more traditional when it comes to our wedding paper products.  But I guess only time will tell.  Plus.. I love board games!!



Also I got all the addresses for our wedding guest list for Chris' side of the family, so we're getting somewhere!

loveeee Julibean <3

Friday, October 1, 2010

New Weekly Posts

If you have any ideas for other weekly posts.  Please let me know in the comments section!

Julibean<3

A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie - An Engaged Couple #2

Alarm goes off

Julie:  It's time to get up
Chris:  One more snooze
Julie:  Okay

ten minutes later..

Chris:  I have to get up, I need to shave.
Julie: (touching Chris' face)  You shaved yesterday morning.
Chris: No I didn't.
Julie:  Yes you did.  You don't remember this conversation that we had about how you were out of shaving cream and how maybe we should get a Sam's Club membership because then it would be cheaper? 
Chris:  I just woke up.  You can't expect me to remember anything you say.

A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie - Engaged Couple

I'm trying to think of interesting posts I could do once a week, kind of like news segments.  Elise already has the monopoly over Manjoyment Mondays, Wedding Wednesdays, and Dance Party Fridays, so I'll have to try to come up with some of my own.  So here is the beginnings of a post series called...

"A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie"

...in which I am going to re-enact a scene from this week in which we did something insane, funny, so mundane that it hurts, or just plain drunkenly ridiculous. 

So here we go:

Setting - The condo
The Scene - Thursday is our big TV night in which we try to watch everything on DVR including; Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Project Runway, and The Jersey Shore.  I am falling asleep in Chris' lap on the couch.

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No

ten minutes later...

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No
Chris:  You're totally sleeping!
Julie:  No I'm not!
Chris: Why don't you just go to bed?
Julie:  What time is it?
Chris:  It's only 9:30.
Julie:  Okay I'm getting into bed, I didn't even see any of what just happened.
Chris:  You said you weren't sleeping
Julie:  No I didn't
Chris:  Yes you did
Julie:  I don't remember saying that
Chris:  You just said you weren't sleeping and then got offened that I would even ask
Julie:  Well I was lying, obviously.  I'm going to bed.  I have period week fatigue.
Chris:  Fine.
Julie:  I want some chocolate.
Chris:  I don't have any chocolate here
Julie:  Why?  Do you have some at work?
Chris:  Yes but you wouldn't like it.  It's butterfingers and reese's
Julie:  But...why wouldn't I like those?  I love peanut butter.
Chris:  Oh, well I don't have any here.
Julie:  You have candy in your desk?
Chris:  I couldn't stop myself.  Halloween candy was $2.50 a bag.
Julie:  Okay fine, goodnight.

ten minutes later...
Julie:  You want to go to the store and get me some chocolate? 

Chris walks into the bedroom and hands me a bag of chocolate chips from the pantry.

Chris:  Goodnight snugglemuffin.

I Can Haz Job?

I am employed! I am now working as an administrative assistant for LBC Solutions, LLC, which is a government contractor that comes up with ways to implement new initiatives of CMS which is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The work is dull. I spend most of my time sitting around proofreading extremely boring and seemingly insignificant articles on the Medicare Learning Network website. However, I will be getting a paycheck next week if the payroll goes through, so I can't really complain. The pay is decent, the working environment is nice. It's quiet, I sit alone for the most part and can play music on my new computer. No one calls and no one really comes into the office either. The upstairs office is new and we spent most of this week putting together furniture and hanging walmart pictures on the walls. Those would be pictures bought at walmart, not actual pictures of a walmart building, for those of you who were wondering.

I'm finishing up my first week here and so far so good. LBC Solutions is owned and operated by Cynthia's grandparents. They have fewer than 10 employees and the owners mostly work from home so there's not really anyone in the office except Cynthia and me on any given day. Hopefully this isn't the end all be all job for me, but it has benefits and pays really well for my first full time job, so I will be sticking it out here for at least until after Chris and my wedding.

Speaking of which... our wedding has officially changed dates to Sunday, January 8th, 2012. It still sounds really far away, but I suppose it will creep up on us ever so slowly. Since Chris was baptized in a Christian religion we were required to be married in a Christian church. We were thinking that my church would not be an option because it was almost an hour from the wedding reception area and I had given up on it being there anyway since we agreed to have the ceremony in the reception hall. Once we realized that getting married in the Thatched Cottage wasn't going to be a legit Catholic wedding (which is required by my mother), I put my foot down and said that if we had to get married in a church anyway, I wasn't going to get married in just any church just because it happened to be closer to the north shore. That just seemed silly to me. I have a really great connection to my church, I have been going there since my mother had me baptized there, I'm a well known parishioner, and I wanted to be able to include my Folk Group buddies. Also, did I mention that it's beautiful? Here's a picture.


This is what the alter looks like on Christmas.  I'm hoping there might not be quite that many poinsettias, but the trees and lights are really beautiful that time of year.  


Here's one of the outside.  It's actually quite a large church.  If you ignore the red traffic light, it's rather nice.  So our ceremony is scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. then we'll take pictures and everyone will be able to return to their hotel for an hour or so.  We will be chartering a nice bus to pick everyone up from the hotel and take them to the reception hall.  This way, no one gets lost or hurt driving if it happens to be snowing, and then whoever has been drinking will have a sober right back to their room.  The reception starts at 6 p.m. with a cocktail hour, and then a 4 hour party ending around 11 p.m. 

I'm pretty excited in the first place that the wedding isn't going to be in the afternoon.  I want my college friends to be able to get completely drunk and have an awesome time and I don't really expect that to be happening at noon.  Well I'm sure some of them would hit it pretty hard at 10 a.m., but not everyone. 

The next thing on the wedding planning agenda is to look for a photographer.  There are a few in the area that we could definitely take a look at if we ever actually took the time to sit down and decide on a few.  Word on the street is that Chris' parents will be paying for the photographer and we're going to try to keep it around $2,500.  That sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to wedding photography, it really isn't.  Both my sister and Jaclyn's wedding photographers were in the ballpark of $5,000, but Chris and I didn't feel the need to go that crazy with it. 

Today is the first day of October and later this month Elise and I have an appointment to go look at wedding dresses at Kleinfeld's in the City.  I think it is going to be a lot of fun.  Elise is losing a lot of weight and looks great, I am not really.  They say that they have a really great selection of plus sized dresses, so hopefully we will be able to find something that I feel good in, nothing has really been fitting or looking that good lately.  It's really discouraging to try to fit in a wedding dress sample that is clearly like 3 sizes too small for you and then try to make a decision based on how you think it will look if it was the right size. 

Elise is hitting the job applications pretty hard and will hopefully have a few things to look at in the next couple of months.  She is really needing to get her stuff together and move down to Virginia to start helping Jason out.  Chris and I are really happy in the condo.  We could use a little more space, but in a few months or however long Cynthia will be staying with us we will not have use of one of our bedrooms and half of our living space.  Once we have that taken care of we may decide to get a puppy, which would be really exciting. 

Our tasks for this weekend are to install the Ensor's new family computer, pick a few photographers to make appointments with, and get the addresses filled out on our wedding guest list.  If we can get all of that done it would be great.  I am really loving all of the fall air around here and hope it starts to get cold soon.

Until then

Julibean <3

 
template by suckmylolly.com