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Shrimpy Lessons

July 30, 2008 By

I have never cooked shrimp before.  I sure know how to order it in a restaurant, though.  So the other day, I bought some shrimp at the store to have for dinner.  I knew how I wanted to cook them, and the cooking part was really easy.  The before the cooking part was a pain in the arse.  Here’s a tip – when you are buying uncooked shrimp, make sure that they are peeled and deveined.  Trust me, the last thing you want to be doing is spending a half hour disemboweling your dinner so that you can cook it.

Needless to say, I will be paying more attention to what I put in my cart.  Labels are there for a reason.

Filed Under: Food

UtopiaVille

July 30, 2008 By

This past weekend Mister and I went to the San Francisco Bay area.  He grew up there, and we’ve been a few times before, but this time he brought me to a new place: his parent’s house.  We were scheduled to have a luncheon in the garden with his parents and a few friends who live in the area.  On the way up there Friday afternoon, and well into the evening (it’s a long drive from Vegas), we took a slightly more scenic route so we could take a quick tour of the town he spent many summers at.  The tiny farming community hadn’t changed much, except for the truck stops, but it was cool to see.  Mister was so animated as he was going through pointing out what used to be where, and showed me the family farm (it’s still in the family).  It was pretty cool, even though it was dark out.  We want to go back during the day so we can visit the tiny museum and actually see the place in the light.

We got to the bay area rather late.  Checking into our hotel, we had to sign a no-party disclaimer.  Kinda strange, especially considering that it’s not situated that closely to any sort of establishment that would attract a partying crowd.  After not sleeping very well due to the world’s softest bed, (this was not some fleabag motel, either – we stay at Marriots) we checked out and went on a tour of Mister’s hometown.  He showed me his schools, his first apartment, some properties his parents own, and a few other places related to the History of Mister.  His town is such a charming little place – the kind of place you see in the movies, with lovely houses and sidewalks that people actually walk on and all sorts of stuff like that.  But then we drove down to San Jose to visit the family business.  San Jose is a grittier, rougher place, but fitting for a trucking company.  Mister showed me some of the stuff he worked on and I got to meet Hilda the watchdog.

After the tour, it was time to head back to Utopiaville for the luncheon.  My in-laws have a home with character that doesn’t look like all the other homes on the block, like here in Vegas.  They have trees and a lawn and plants that need water, and you can find the front door.  I got the tour of the house, saw Mister’s old boy-cave and my MIL’s artwork.  She does such awesome watercolors.  Mister was trying to go shopping to accessorize our house, but his mother would have none of that.  In the backyard, with its water feature and real goldfish, we set up the table on the covered patio for our luncheon, then we picked lemons from the lemon tree and made lemonade.  I’m totally serious!  My MIL has a lemon tree with the biggest freaking lemons I’ve ever seen.  We made lemonade with real lemons, not a container full of powder.  It was awesome, as was the luncheon outside on a day that was a tiny bit warm but had a gentle afternoon breeze.  Yes, my husband apparently grew up in a fictional land.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there, then headed to a hotel closer to the city with the intention of meeting up with some more friends, but that hotel was overbooked, so we went 10 miles south (away from SF) to a room paid for by the overbooked hotel.  Score!  It killed our plans on going into San Francisco, since it was so late and we had a long drive ahead of us on Sunday.  But that’s ok.  The sleep was much better.

On Sunday, we wanted to go down to the truck yard to get Mister’s toolbox.  He has 2 toolboxes there, and we were to get the smaller one, which would barely fit in the bed of the pickup.  But, we got a later start than we wanted and there was traffic on the 101 Freeway due to an accident, so we ended up missing my father-in-law.  That’s ok.  We were wondering how the heck we (as in my strong, manly man of a husband and me, a weak girly girl) were going to unload an incredibly heavy toolbox from the truck after driving 10 hours back home.  Another time, then.

My mom sent me the pictures she took at my wedding.  You can see those on my flickr page if you are on my friends list there.  Now I need to send her the good pictures and send my dad and my sister the pictures.  My sister has no idea what her brother in law looks like.  For now, though, it’s back to the grind.

Filed Under: Family

A Lazy Post

July 22, 2008 By

The Aussie Blogger’s Blog came out with a great new blogging tool – the Lazy Blogger’s Post Generator.  There’s lots of options for coming up with a post.  Here’s what I got:

Holy Snapping Duck Do! I just got a bajillion whiny emails saying I have not updated this since Hammertime was in the charts… You would not believe the amount of people that are totally stalking me. I hope you still love me!.

I am going ahead with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, being distracted by the shiny, just generally being a terrible burden to every Lost Boy that crosses my path, my day is filled with fluorescent light from 4am to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am plotting and planning. can’t they see I am blogging.

I will try to remember I promised you if one more person emails me to ask why I haven’t posted today I will start posting pictures of toe fungus, or fecal murals. Seriously! What do you mean you don’t believe me?

If you want to post, and don’t know what to say, head over to the Lazy Blogger’s Post Generator today!  And while you’re at it, check out the Aussie Blogger’s Blog and the Aussie Blogger’s Forum.  You don’t even have to be Australian or pretend to like vegemite, you just have to like blogging.

Filed Under: Funny, My Blog

Travel Horror Stories

July 21, 2008 By

Absolutely Bananas is starting a new weekly writing project, in which she gives a writing prompt to help us find something to write about. I like the first topic, and I hope I’ll be able to keep this up on a weekly basis, so here goes!


I can’t say I have any truly horrendous travel stories. My first real trip was to Europe in February of 1996, when I decided to visit a friend who happened to be from my ancestral homeland, Sweden. Since I was so close by and had no plans for my life, I decided to take the opportunity to visit Paris, since I had studied French in high school, and London, since I just felt a calling to go there. My month at Cilla’s house and various European youth hostels was great. So, my travel horror story does not happen on this trip.

Nor does it happen on my next trip to London, a year later. Nope, that was a wonderfully uneventful trip, 1 week in London. It doesn’t even happen on my 3rd trip to London in November 1998. That time I went with my college roommate, and we took the opportunity to visit Edinburgh, York, and Bath in addition to London.

On all these trips, I loved shopping. It’s so much fun seeing what’s available in the shops that we just can’t get at home. One shop we visited is Lush (which has since made its way into the US). After travelling for a few weeks, I knew I’d need a nice relaxing bath when I got home, so I got myself a bath bomb. Little did I know that this would almost get me arrested.

My luggage had a habit of not wanting to travel with me. On my first trip to Europe, because of some last minute flight changes due to the weather (I would have missed a connection), my luggage never made it to my new flight and decided to spend an extra day in London. On my second trip to London, I stupidly packed my travel alarm clock in an effort to lighten the load in my carryon. This caused an intense inspection of my checked luggage, which again spent an extra day in London. Even on a bus trip to Toronto, when changing bus drivers at the bus station in Buffalo (they changed drivers, which signified they changed companies, but the actual vehicle did not change). When they were changing, they emphasized that if we were continuing on to Toronto that we were to stay on the bus. DO NOT GET OFF THE BUS IF YOU ARE GOING TO TORONTO. So I stayed on the bus. When we got to customs a few minutes later, I realized that they forgot to tell us something. If we were going to Toronto, we were to get off the bus, claim our luggage and re-check it, then get on the bus. So, I went thru Canadian customs without luggage. I filed a report at the bus station, and it was put on the next bus so I only had to wait about 3 hours for that one. Overall, that’s three times that my luggage has chosen not to travel with me.

This particular trip to London, I was determined to do things right. I made sure that the weather cooperated so that I would not have to change my flight after checking in, I was a pro at packing for security, and I didn’t have anything packed in a way to warrant a search. We got back home to Boston, and I had all my luggage with me. The customs officer put it through the x-ray machine and as it was coming out the other end, picked up my carry on and began to open it. I was certain that I did everything according to the rules this time, so I couldn’t think of anything that would have raised suspicion. The customs officer said it looked like there was an orange in my bag, but I knew not to bring fruit into the country. He pulled the “orange” out and emerged with a white, powdery ball in his hand. Oh Fudge. My mind raced. I tried to tell him what it was without using the word bomb – I told him it was an aromatherapy alka-seltzer like thing for the bath. I encouraged him to smell it, then remembered that I had the flyer from the store with me. I showed him the flyer, he smelled it, and luckily, I was off the hook. It took me quite some time for my heartbeat to return to a normal pace, since I’d never been in trouble before, and I was nearly panicked at the thought of getting busted for trafficking. Thank goodness I’m a souvenir hound and saved the flyer, especially since the store didn’t mark the packaging at all.

So that’s it, my travel horror story. Not too bad, really, just a close call with a federal prison. But now I know not to pack unidentified bath products when I travel internationally.

Filed Under: Travels

Get Your Kicks on Route 66

July 19, 2008 By

Today, Mister and I got up a bit early (for a Saturday) to head down to Prescott, AZ. He had some work to do there, and today was the best day to get it done so we decided to make a road trip out of it. Things started out as an ordinary trip through the boring desert, though it was nice going over the Hoover Dam before all the tourists got there. We got down to Kingman and saw an electronic message board stating that I-40 east was closed due to a crash. Darn, because we needed to go that way.

We stopped at a truck stop to fill up on junk food and get something to drink, and we asked a bit about what was going on with the crash on the freeway. Another customer said there was a truck on fire and the freeway was in fact closed; he recommended following Historic Route 66 to Seligman and rejoining I-40 there. He said it was 2 lanes but fairly straight with a 60pmh speed limit, and only about 30 miles extra. (Side note: here in the wild west, there are not a lot of options when a main road closes down. We were lucky that there was an option at all.)

Though it was a bit longer, it turns out that Route 66 was a pretty nice drive. And we got a bit of a time traveling feeling: we saw Burma Shave signs along the road! I was definitely wishing we had brought the camera with us, but Mister and I are planning on doing a more leisurely drive on that road at some point. And here’s a side note from the KirstenL4W history files: My Dad’s business, Salem 66 Auto Sales, was named because he started out in a rented Phillips 66 station in Salem, NH. Phillips 66 can no longer be found in the northeast, but Salem 66 lives on, currently in Pelham, NH.

We rejoined I-40, then headed down AZ 89 towards Prescott. I know that northern Arizona is a bit more lush that the Vegas area is, but I was surprised at exactly how lush. Except for the hilly terrain and the mountains in the background, it looked a lot like the midwest. It was refreshing to see something other than rocks and brown scrub brush. Once we got to Prescott, Mister did what he had to do, and we turned around to head back. We stopped to gas up and have lunch at Dairy Queen, which I love, before heading back to Vegas. Another KirstenL4W history sidenote: Ever since I was a little kid, my dad has owned a 1968 Ford Fairlane convertible. There were no cruise nights then, so we only ever took it out on Sunday evenings in the summer down to the Dairy Queen. Dad still owns the “ice cream car” today.

On the way back, Mister and I were treated so something we don’t see very often here in the desert: rain. Lovely, cool, beautiful rain. I had to be careful driving on the freeway because of so much water, but other than that it was nice to actually get some use out of my windshield wipers. Usually I just replace the dried-out, never used wiper blades every year. Mister stated that because of the rain, he was more relaxed than he had been in a long time, and then took a nap. All in all, it was a very, very nice drive.

Filed Under: Car, Travels