Black Friday 2009

Oh yes, we did it. Sometimes I find a reason or two to "heart" the recession. Mainly just this one. Black Friday started at midnight. I worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Staying up wasn't all that hard. After an incredible Thanksgiving Dinner at The Matheson's and Pie Night at Ariana's Parents' House, I took an hour power nap, and Brad and I gathered up all our coupons and headed to Chandler Mall.

Silly me thinking it wouldn't be crazy. Oh, no, it was crazy. The entrance to the mall looked like some sort of end-of-the-world exodus in a disaster movie. The thing about the midnight crowd is it's pretty young. With a few smoking grandmas thrown in.
We really didn't know where to start. But Banana Republic had cashmere sweaters buy one get one free! Unfortunately, they were ugly, so, I didn't get one. And so were mostly all of the GAP sweaters and pajama pants on the same deal. So we headed onward. We ended up getting a couple shirts and a pair of pants at Express. But the line was so long, I hid all my stuff in a pile of untouched sweaters and we came back 45 minutes later (We saved about $50 there). The Body Shop made me the happiest. I love this video because I've actually never SEEN myself so excited about anything. My purchase should have been $175, but with my birthday discount, love my body card discount, and the Black Friday discount, it was $87!!! !!!
I talk about the line to Bath & Body Works in the video, but I forgot to tape it. Let me just say the line to PURCHASE anything went through the entire store and out to the hallway. I guess thank goodness for honesty! Even though I had 3 coupons for free stuff, we abandoned that endeavor for another day or time. Oh, and they had to make a TWILIGHT fragrance? Really?!
The other stores were actually not as exciting as we had hoped, and maybe Brad is getting sick because he got tired, which never happens, so we took him home.
At 3, Old Navy opened, and it's only 1 mile away, so I went. Our Graduate program is buying homeless children jeans for Christmas, and all their kids' jeans were $10, so I totally stocked up! And I bought socks for myself for $2.50.
I came home again, chilled for a little bit, and then went to Target at 5, simply to watch a store like that open. I'd never ever done it before, and I had so much fun. Mostly because I wasn't fighting for anything. But really, everyone seemed really polite. The first 500 people in line got special reusable bags, and I was #493. (And someone else had abandoned theirs, so I took it. Which seemed very "crazy shopper" of me. But nobody else seemed to care.) The line was INSANE!! People were checking out before I even got in the store. I got a bunch of movies and all the seasons of Friends for $9 each. I might take some of it back, but it just seemed to be too good of a deal. And because I spent over $100, I got two $10 gift cards. Sweet.
I think I'm going to bed now for a little bit.
Long live Black Friday!

Delicious Fall Cereal

This cereal is called Kashi U. It has walnuts and black currents and is the perfect fall cereal. It is also a pain in the butt to find. As in it's only at ONE of the Whole Foods nearby. Hiding in a little box on the bottom shelf. But I love little indulgences like this, so I bought two boxes for the season. :-)
p.s. Other Kashi cereals make me feel like my insides are being stabbed by a fork on the way down. I've decided to stay away from them so I don't have to focus so hard on chewing thoroughly. :-)

Caprese'

I go through phases of my favorite foods; they last quite awhile.
My favorite food was ice cream from about age 6 months to age 22-ish.
Then it was peanut butter. But I may actually at some point in the last six months have OD'd on this a little bit. Not that I don't still eat Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches at least three times a week. Just not toast every morning.
But I digress.
When I was 26 I started working at a place called Murphy's. They had a mozzarella, tomato, basil salad that was amazing. I ate it whenever it was available.
And then I realized sometime this year or last that it was often called Caprese'. And it is available all over the place. So I order it pretty much every time I go out.
And then. I found a recipe. Consisting of these ingredients:

I love it. I love that Fresh & Easy makes balsalmic glaze and round balls of cheese that aren't expensive. I love that there is a meal involving vegetables that I literally adore. I have gone through three basil plants eating this meal. They keep dying. Luckily they are only $1.98, so it seems kind of worth it. I would like to figure out how to keep one alive, though.
I have a new favorite food. Maybe I should have made this discovery when tomatoes were in season.
Oh well!!

Expectations

Isn't it funny how we get mad when we start to get flabby after a month of not working out?
But after working out and eating well for about 5 days, we'd like to see the body of an athlete staring back at us in the mirror?

Gross. Part II.

Once again I'm letting you all know a product to never ever buy. Last summer it was Trader Joe's Essential Greens. This week it's Rachel's Flavored Cottage Cheese. I'm really always up to trying new things, and I was so excited to try these pretty little cups of flavored cottage cheese and all their 14g of Protein healthiness. I love Tomatoes and Salt and Pepper on Cottage Cheese, so tomato basil seemed like a great choice. So did all the other ones. I bought 6 of these cute cute little cups, even though they were $1.69 EACH.
And they were terrible. I choked down two, thinking they tasted a little like perfume. Brad refused to try them. John ate a bite or two and declared it tasted like "acidic vomit." I felt validated.
I took the other three and my receipt back to Whole Foods and the super nice guy there gave me my whole $10.52 back (I think that included tax). So I bought some delicious milk and yogurt and will never ever do that again.
Now you know.

Where The Wild Things Are

I didn't like this book as a kid. I just didn't. The story wasn't that interesting. The book was kind of dark. It was okay, but I never was like, "Oh! Read This! Read This!"
But I couldn't get away from this movie. I mean, not only has everyone been talking about it forever, it looked beautiful. I just had to see it. And it was playing at 11:30. So we went.
Now, I think there are plenty of people who can relate to this Max's childhood. I am not one of those. My world was a much more rose-colored one than this characters. I think those who grew up in rose-colored worlds tend to distance themselves a little from Max's world and were a little disenchanted by the movie.
These are the things that I loved about it:
I loved the ocean
I loved the child who played Max. It could not have been cast more perfectly.
I loved Karol. I cried at the end. The "monsters" were very real and the relationships were powerfully emotionally charged.
The thing I love most of all was the element of escape, which I think appeals to all of us. I think at some point every person needs a few days to be in a whole new environment. Without family. Without familiar crutches. Without life. With total permission to just be yourself. And maybe to discover who you are a little bit more than you could otherwise.
When Max first stands on that cliff with a monster on either side, I felt that feeling again. And was once again grateful for all the experiences that have made me who I am today.
With that said, I would never take a little kid to this movie. But I really liked it. A lot.

The Best $6 I never spent

It's always kind of a shock to my system to wake up and be ready to go party on Saturday night. But. A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do so I do.
Case in point:
Last Saturday I'd been up for about an hour when John and I were on the phone and he mentioned that Kelly Clarkson was playing at the state fair. Then Brad mentioned he had bought advance tickets to any show at the fair for $6. And he still had two left. Whoo-hoo!! (John had other plans anyways...)
Let me be clear. I may have made fun of Jessica for going to see Kelly once. I really don't follow her music. I do know more of her songs than I think I do. I rarely change them if they are on the radio. And I totally followed the scandal when SELF magazine airbrushed her cover a couple months ago.
She is a sensation. I get that. And I wasn't about to waste free tickets!
We first got funnel cakes (seriously, by far, the best I'd ever had). And lemonade. We got to the concert about five minutes before it started. And she totally rocked. It was packed and there was so much energy. Seriously...one of the most excited crowds I'd ever seen at a concert. We had so much fun. The best were "Since You've Been Gone" and "My Life Would Suck Without You." I was all kinds of jumping up and down being silly. And I've caught myself singing her songs in the shower everyday since. And I don't sing in the shower!!

An extra little insight: So she's put on a few pounds since this performance in 2005 (which is still stinking awesome), but what made this concert great was that she honestly didn't seem to care. It was kind of like, "Guess what? I still have my voice. I'm still freaking amazing. And if you still want to show up and think I'm cool, that's fine. I don't really care if you don't." It made her very. very. real. Like she was totally breathtakingly talented and she would still go have a brownie at Applebee's with you after the concert. I think every girl there felt like she was their best friend. And the 8-year old next to us rocking out with her dad was awesome.
My OTHER favorite part was her mash-up of Kings of Leon and Alanis Morrisette. Brad recorded it, but there are better clips of it on YouTube. That song probably really made me her fan.
After the concert, we rode the ferris wheel, watched the hypnotist, and went home and then.... well, that's the next post. The night doesn't end at 10:30!!



As a side note, look at the ground in this ferris wheel picture. Is this the cleanest fair you've ever seen? It shocked me!

A "Just Right", Interesting, Up & Up Night

I'm such a blogging slacker! Quickly: about Halloween. I had the night off, but you all know I work nights and didn't get up until about 5 when it was basically time to get ready to go out. I was just going to wear my Goldilocks costume from last year (I was in Salem!! Nobody saw it here!), John was going to be "The Most Interesting Man in the World", and Brad had no idea what he was going to be.

So Brad and I went to the store to get white eyeliner and a curling iron while John went to the liquor store to get a bottle of Dos Equis to carry around all night. Brad and I brainstormed for a while until he finally said, "I thought a little about being the house from the movie "Up." Sweet!!

We ran to Party City where we got 12 bright balloons two minutes before they closed (it was 8:30). Brad got to work building a cardboard house. (Note: this is a project that Brad could easily have worked on to perfection for three weeks had I let him. In this time crunch, it just involved rulers, a Sharpie, chalk for perfect shingles, and printed windows. He acknowledged that he knew how sad it was that he just drew the porch instead of actually building an extension. I love how dependable his OCD is.)

We just went to a party that ended up being quite big and pretty fun. My favorite costume of the night was a couple who went as Kanye and Taylor Swift, but peeping tom, the Mad Hatter and the Chesire Cat, and Kramer and Elaine were pretty great.

Brad was the center of attention and loved how many random girls asked to take pictures with him. I loved my curls, but missed the Udy family being my three bears! I had to carry three stuffed ones around all night. And John gave a few people a heart attack at this non-drinking party with his empty beer bottle. Which we all found hilarious.

Happy (way belated) Halloween!