Posts Tagged ‘Santa Barbara’

Well, I guess it's time for my monthly update! ;p Finals went pretty well. My semester grades were acceptable. School continues into the summer. I just finished a 15-day online physical anthropology course. I'm so glad it's over! A semester's worth of material from two books was pretty demanding for two weeks. I passed, though not happily. Too much work? … or I'm too lazy. I started an 8-week art appreciation course online as well. It seems more interesting and should be considerably more comfortable than my anthro class. Matt met a guy at ALS in April, a cop named Jason. They play World of Warcraft together and apparently get along pretty well. Jason has a long-term girlfriend, Becky, who just moved out here. The four of us went out for an Italian dinner last Saturday and had a blast! I love meeting new couples, since we're so antisocial and have no one to hang out with! The evening was a jumble of the boys talking together about video games and work while the girls talking about other random things and getting to know each other. We invited them over for dinner at our place on Thursday, which occurred last night. What a great time! I spent all day in the kitchen preparing almost-from-scratch spaghetti sauce and meatballs (the awesome recipe can be found at spaghetti sauce and meatballs .com !) Everyone enjoyed the food — the dinner was definitely worth all the effort! We played guys versus girls Scrabble, in which the girls BEAT the guys by a whopping two points! They stuck around for almost five hours chatting, eating cake, and trying to encourage the cats into being more sociable. We'll definitely have to do it again soon! Matt and I celebrated our first anniversary last Sunday, June 11! It has been such a wonderful year! We spent the day in Santa Barbara, visiting the zoo (I had to observe primates in action for an anthropology paper), having lunch, and going to a concert. Concerts "near" us are generally in L.A. or San Francisco, neither of which we like to frequent. We saw that there was a show in Santa Barbara, which is so convenient for us, and snagged a couple tickets. It was a radio station thinga-ma-jig with four big bands and two openers. The only ones we were interested in was Franz Ferdinand and (slightly) The Strokes, and hadn't heard of any of the others. No worries, it was cheap and bound to be a good time! We got there at 3 to discover that the concert goes for 7 hours. Well, we hadn't been anticipating that (though we should have realized it, considering there are six bands playing). We sat through the first two acts, Hard-Fi and She Wants Revenge, which were so-so. The show was at the beautiful Santa Barbara Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater overlooking the ocean. It's almost five thirty by now and we're getting a little overwhelmed by wild and crazy obnoxious girls. I think in general we're okay with groups of people, but crowds of pushy, high, noisy people get to us a bit. We watched Panic! At the Disco perform, which we had never heard of before but were pretty amused by. They drove all the crazy girls around us wild and we listened to a bunch of screaming and singing, but that's okay. What I liked about the band was their sort of skit performances. As the band played, they had a wildly costumed troop of dancer/actors perform along with the song. We didn't have amazing seats, so some of it was a little hard to see, but a lot of it seemed pretty neat. Panic! did perform a Smashing Pumpkins song, Tonight, Tonight, which I thought they did a great job with. And they had their dancers dressed similarly to those in the Tonight, Tonight video waving large fans. I was really waiting for Franz Ferdinand, but they wouldn't go on until five hours into the show, and we were both a little grumpy at the audience and the length of time we were sitting on stone benches, so we decided we'd be better off leaving anyway. We've yet to sit through an entire concert together! I think this one bummed us out a little bit because they aren't bands we really care too much (or know anything about) anyway. So we went to Borders and blew some money on Neil Gaiman and R.A. Salvatore novels! Overall, it was a nice anniversary celebration! Anyhow, I've written this blog four times today because of recurring power outages. What's going on out there?! And Matt just got home, so we're going to play some WoW (our level 10 mage & priest, woohoo!) then hopefully go out to see The Lake House tonight. Ta ta!

Jen, Matt's sister, spent some of her Spring Break with us last week. We only had four days with her, but they were a blast!

Day 1: Took some time off school to pick her up. Met the kitties. Looked through photos of her Martha's Vineyard internship. Listened to recordings she and friends did there. Cooked dinner. Watched Alias. Chit chat. Day 2: I had to go to school. Matt and her hung out and played Halo 2, Monkeyball 2, and some other games. Mystery Science Theater 3000. Went out to Sugar Magnolia's for dinner. Watched more Alias. Played with the kitties. Relaxing and more chit chat. Day 3: Turned in keys to the old apartment. Early Bird miniature golf special at Boomer's. DDR (man, are we out of practice!) Ordered pizza. Watched more Alias. Day 4: The self-proclaimed cat-hater falls in love with our kitties. Gabby didn't want Jen to leave (or she wanted to go with her!). Drove down to Santa Barbara. Walked along State Street. Watched some guy play the drums. Saw the beach. Strolled along the pier. Ate enchiladas and burgers at Ruby's. Saw her plane off. Spent half an hour watching the cool clock at the Santa Barbara Airport.

Jen is such a cool chickie. I wish we could have spent more time with her or at least see her more often. We'll fly out to New York for Thanksgiving this year, so we'll have some time then. Matt and I had an awesome time visiting with her. I think we're a little boring to come and visit, but she argued that we aren't. I'm glad she enjoyed herself. My mom and Ron are out on the east coast spending time with my sister and cruising around the little states. I'm so jealous. From the sounds of everything, Andrea and Michael are doing pretty well. Work is a bit of a strain on her eyes (being that she just sits and looks at screens non-stop), but it sounds like she enjoys it enough. Michael is working at Olive Garden now and it sounds like a good job. I found out what dates I'll have long weekends this summer when I'm down in Georgia so we can coordinate a time to visit. Andrea needs plenty of advance notice to apply for leave and I need to get plane tickets to Virginia whenever she gets it approved. I'm not especially looking forward to six summer weeks in Georgia, but having a weekend to visit with Andrea and Michael will be worth it! My classes are canceled today and I've been a bit under the weather anyway, so I'm taking the day off. So far I haven't done much: a little bit of math studying, chatting with my brother for a tad, updating my photo gallery, watching part of The Squid and the Whale, and hanging with the cool cats. It's nice to have lazy days. School is school. Still haven't heard back about my second math exam, though I don't have high hopes for it. I'm trying to get a head-start on the third exam at the end of this month because I hear it's the toughest and all this doesn't exactly come easily to me. It's getting more interesting/fun, though. I'm just having my doubts about whether or not I can handle future math classes. Physics is fun, as usual. The school is hiring a new full-time physics professor and they're in the interviewing stage right now. The picked ten candidates to do a short teaching demonstration of Gauss's Law. I attended three of them yesterday to give my feedback. It was actually a lot of fun. I'm not really allowed to discuss the candidates … physics teachers are just funny people. It was kind of neat because I aspire to be a physics teacher one day (high school preferable, then possibly moving on to college eventually) and I got to hear critiques of how all these teachers presented the material. It was pretty informative and hopefully somewhat helpful when I'm up there one day. Matt is almost finished with his first week of Airman Leadership School. He was really dreading doing this class, but it seems like things aren't nearly as bad as he had expected. The material seems pretty easy and he can get all his homework finished during class breaks. I wouldn't say he's making friends, but there are a few cool guys in there that he chats with and maybe could turn into something more. It would be nice to have some couple-buddies to hang out with. Today he had to attend in full service dress, which is very uncomfortable. It seems men have it worse than women on account of their neck ties, but they look much more striking than women do in blues. So he's at work right now getting choked, then in a few hours he'll have to do his PT evaluation. We've been pretty lazy lately and haven't run all that much, so he doesn't expect to do so well. But come the end of the month when he has his final exam, the difference will be quite significant. I'm sure he'll do perfectly fine, as he has long legs and is built to run; he'll probably just be sore this weekend. That's all for today. I'm off to download some more MST3K and lounge around lazily. Woo!

Last Thursday morning Papa flew in to Santa Barbara from Dallas. Not much else happened that day, we just kicked back and caught up. It had been a long morning for him. He took us out to dinner at Saletti's as Matt's belated birthday gift. I had the fettuccine alfredo again and it was superb as usual. We had a bottle of 2002 Beckman sauvignon blanc, which was okay. We're still experimenting with different wines. Matt and I haven't really found much that we like yet, though. Friday Matt had to work, but Papa and I ventured out to the Solvang area. We had a pastry breakfast at the Danish Mill Bakery and picked up a box of goodies to go. We explored the town a little. I got to visit two yarn shops, but I didn't purchase anything. I figure I'll get $18/skein yarn when I've graduated from the learning & mess-up stage. Papa thinks I should spin my own yarn rather than buy it. We saw quite a bit of spinning materials, but I'm not going to buy a wheel! It would be fun someday. We had lunch at the Solvang Restaurant, which is really the only place I eat in town. Yummy Tilsit cheese sandwich. Our reason for going out that way was to visit the wineries, though. We headed up to Los Olivos, which is a short but gorgeous drive. We passed vineyard after vineyard as well as orchards and a farm of miniature horses. We decided to go the Beckman vineyard since we had a wine of theirs at Saletti's the night before. There aren't any grapes on the vines in January, but the vineyard was really pretty anyway. We hung out in the tasting room for about an hour, trying six different wines and learning all sorts of facts about wines. I learned about growing vines: clones and rootstocks; how all sorts of flavors can come out in wines even though nothing is added: tobacco, vanilla, strawberries, chocolate; and that wines have nose and legs, too! It was fun and educational. We stopped by the Babcock vineyard on the way to pick Matt up from work. That one wasn't quite as exciting, as our host was kind of "okay, let's get this over with" about that whole thing. We pretty much just stood in silence sipping bit after bit then headed out. Overall, I think it was a very interesting first time in the tasting rooms. The weekend was really mellow, though. We didn't go out anywhere to do anything exciting. We rented a lot of movies, played on the computer and [I] crocheted. It's nice to just sit and visit, but I always felt a little anxious, that I should be entertaining more. Matt and I are getting used to saving our money and just sitting around inside, but I don't want to appear lame and boring to my dad. I don't think it bothered him, though. I made my chicken parmesan dish for dinner on Saturday and it was a hit! I'm glad someone other than Matt enjoys my cooking. We took him down to Santa Barbara Monday afternoon to catch his 6:30 flight. We went early so we could cruise around State Street and go out to dinner. Matt and I received Chilis gift cards for Christmas, but there is only one Chilis anywhere within three hours of us and it's by the Santa Barbara Airport. So we had a nice, although rushed, Chili's dinner. I had forgotten directions and thought I'd just feel my way around town, so after driving around in circles for a while, we were a little pressed for time. But Papa made his flight and we returned home. Everything's pretty much back to normal, now. Matt's been playing World of Warcraft, I've been crocheting, and we've been watching quite a few movies. My dad and I moved melandmatt.net from my friend in Fort Collins' server to a DreamHost server. They offer tons of space and goodies. Matt and I have moved our blogs off of Xanga and LiveJournal to keep them here. We installed a new photo gallery and I've spent hours customizing and editing that. It's all been fun. I picked Melissa up from school on Tuesday. We worked on her math and vocabulary homework. Doing homework often takes up a lot of our time for the night, but I enjoy it. I like helping her out, sometimes re-teaching it, but not just feeding her answers. I suppose that's part of why I'd like to be a teacher someday. Melissa and I have a good time. We picked up Subway for dinner. The employee making our sandwiches always gawks at her whenever she orders a bread-and-meat-only sandwich. They have to ask her a few times just to make sure she doesn't want any mustard or vegetables. She gets all embarrassed about it, but hey, she can have whatever she likes. I was crocheting granny squares while she was doing her vocabulary homework. I had picked up some yarn and a few hooks for her the other day in case she wanted to learn. She was all excited to get to crocheting! She'd been bragging to her friends and family that I can make scarves and hats and whatnot and really wanted to be able to for herself. So we got her started with holding the hook and yarn and making a foundation chain. It's … really cute. I figure the first lesson is that and she took her yarn and hook home to practice. Saturday we'll do the single crochet stitch. I'm just glad that she's all hyped to learn. I'd like it if we can sit around and crochet cute purses and hats together. I feel accomplished, having only been learning to crochet for three weeks now. I made that ugly scarf that Matt apparently likes (but I don't think Tal does much!) I've been making coasters, since we needed them for our coffee table anyway. I have two afghans going right now, but I think they'll take some time. I made my first hat, but it's really strangely shaped and looks ridiculous on Matt (and to a lesser degree, me). I have all these creations that are kind of ugly, but I am very proud of. I'm working on another hat right now. I want to start making chemo caps and donating them through Head Huggers for people with cancer. I guess they're in high demand and aren't really all that difficult to make. There's no better way for me to practice my crochet than for it to benefit someone else! I set up an album in my gallery to keep a photo-collection of all my projects. Well, Matt's off at work and I need to do chores. I've been lazy since my dad left, so the apartment's gotten a little wild.

Well, happy 2006! Yah, it doesn't feel too different. More laid back, I guess, but that's because I'm still on my super-break away from school. (20 Dec – 23 Jan break, woohoo!) Last weekend my mom and Ron flew out to Santa Barbara. On Friday they came up to see the casa de Conklin. We went golfing on base (Ooooh, I am so terrible! It's only my second time out playing 9 holes, though. Matt promises he'll really teach me.) and then out to a nice dinner at Lompoc's finest, Saletti's. Mmm. They returned to Santa Barbara and we drove down Saturday morning to join them on a whale watching expedition. Well, it's been ten years since my mother or I have set foot on a boat, and Matt's never been ocean-bound (Ron practically grew up at sea). The four-hour tour took us out to the Santa Cruz islands and three of us spent most of it asleep or on the verge of losing our breakfasts. We were so miserably sea sick and no one even saw a single whale. It was pretty stormy and rainy out, so maybe the whales were afraid to come up (and get wet??). It seemed like a great idea and we were all really excited about it, but just couldn't stomach it. No worries about not seeing whales though; we got four free, non-expiring passes to go do it all over again (this time, with Dramamine)! (( Whale boat pictures are up here! )) Saturday we also celebrated Matt's and Ron's birthdays. After recovering from the boat trip, we perused the (closed) stores on State Street until our 9pm dinner reservation. Still raining. The restaurant was great, though. We had a classy band and were seated on the patio (it had stopped raining by then, thankfully) and a terrific dinner! Matt's first experience with lobster bisque or filet mignon. Neither of us care much for lobster. Anyhow, it was an experience for Matt, but not really his style. We decided to celebrate his birthday Matt-style on Monday. Sunday was mostly just sleeping in, kicking back, hanging out. My mom and I went out to see Fun With Dick and Jane because the boys just wanted to sit in the hotel room with their new books. :p That's all right, it's nice to hang with my mom! Despite unfortunate weather and motion sickness, it was great to see her and Ron! Since then Matt's gone back to work and I've been playing it lazy. Well, sort of … I took down all the Christmas decorations and reorganized most of the apartment. I couldn't just be a total bum all week! Mostly I've just been crocheting, though. Last weekend my mom got me a Crocheting for Dummies book, and I've been yarn-wild since! Yesterday I finished my first project: a scarf. I didn't go by a pattern, just flew by the seat of my pants with it. It's hideous and I think I'll mail it to my sister. All day today I've been working on an afghan. I think it will take some time. I ordered the spring semester's school books online rather than bother with the bookstore lines. The arrived today and got me all excited! I have a piano book, a physics book, and a linear algebra book and they just get me all giddy to jump right in! It's not that I don't like sitting around at home crocheting and watching movies, but I'm just psyched about school. I looked up my fall grades yesterday. Bragging time. All A's! Well, I'm just pleased because it's my first 4.0 college semester. So now I want to see if I can do it all over again! I really need to work hard to bring up my horrific CSU freshman GPA — at least now my cumulative has broken a 3.0! =\ That's about all in the wonderful world of Mel. Today ends my "weekend" (so what if it was nearly three weeks?) I have to work tomorrow and Sunday. Really, my job seems interesting, and I'm sure it will be someday, but guard drills are the most boring things ever! I can't wait to get my security clearance and go to school this summer so I can actually do work and not just sit around once a month trying to look busy. Argh! I hope you all enjoy your weekends! :p Ciao!

I closed down my Xanga account and my MySpace account. Just tired of all that. I’m back home, now. It’s just you, LJ. (edit: When this was posted on LJ.)

Well, Christmas was pleasant. It our first married Christmas together, which is special. We were both a little homesick, though. It’s just hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you’re wearing shorts and a tank top and haven’t seen family in months. It was fun, though. We got a nice plastic Walmart tree and picked out cute ornaments for it. We went out with Carol on Christmas Eve to church and out to dinner. Matt and I debated whether to open gifts on the 24th, my family’s tradition, or the 25th, his family’s tradition. We ended up opening them very late on the 24th, but it wasn’t due to any of my coaxing! My mother broke Matt down. :p Carol came over on Christmas day to exchange gifts and cook a feast with me. It was all very nice. I’m thankful to have such a good friend as Carol. We’ve just recently grown closer, and now she’s about to move away in a few months.

Our Friday night parties have fallen apart; I guess it’s mostly my fault. I suppose I just feel that we’re being used by our new friends. I don’t know if I expect too much from my friendships that they’re hard for me to find, or if friendships just aren’t important enough for me to want to keep. With the exception of Carol and Erick, I feel everyone here has disappointed me. I feel like we just haven’t found the “right friends”. Maybe other married couples? Getting together with 18/19 year-old boys for movies and video games is fun for a while, but really shallow. I guess I’m just happy to hang out with Carol … I don’t need a gaggle of superficial friends.

My mother is flying in on Friday morning and I am just too excited! She and Ron are coming up to Lompoc that morning to see our home, hopefully meet Melissa over lunch, some golf, and a nice dinner. They aren’t staying up here because Tal would drive my mom crazy (she’s allergic), so they’re staying in Santa Barbara. We’ll drive down there Saturday morning to stay with them for a few nights and celebrate New Year’s Eve / Matt’s birthday / Ron’s birthday.

It’s been quite a relaxing break. Matt pretty much got two weeks off work for free without having to take leave. He’s on standby, but nothing really happens (except an early morning, random urinalysis today) where he needs to go in. It’s been nice to just hang out with him and not do much. We started new characters on World of Warcraft that we got up a little bit (he’s a druid, I’m a hunter, both night elves). He’s been playing Dragon Quest VIII, one of his Christmas gifts. We got weights and tennis rackets to play with. I got a CD from Matt’s parents, Gabby La La’s “Be Careful What You Wish For …”, that has pretty much been on repeat for the past three days (Matt really like it, hehe). I’m learning how to crochet (goofing around, I made a pretty blue bracer/arm-warmer/sleeve thingy). I’m going to attempt an afghan on this break.

Aside from all that excitement, I’ve just been burning a lot of CDs and dinners. Well, I guess the dinners aren’t so bad, but I’m still learning. Today is just cleaning and tennis and watching CSI Season 5. Woohoo! I love Christmas break! Just two more days before until family visiting, woohoo!

A bunch of people just left. It’s amazing; we actually have semi-regular visitors! On Halloween we had a little party (games, movies, and grub) for my buddy Marc, two of his friends, Carol, and Erick. Matt and I were the only ones to dress up, though. Matt was an 80′s rock star and I was his groupie! It was much more fun than I had anticipated! We decided to have a regular Friday night get-together for the crew. Tonight Marc and his buddies and a sister of one and Carol hung out for an MST3K and an episode of UCB. A blast! It’s good to hang out with people … I’ve missed it.

The spring school schedule came out today, so I’ve been figuring out what classes I want to take. I want to apply for Westmont, a small Christian college in Santa Barbara, and it’s not too late to get in for the spring semester. I have my application, but I still think I want one more semester at the community college to prepare for transferring in the fall. So one more semester in Santa Maria and a little more time to save up for tuition (private school, ugh). School is getting a little bit tougher. Next week I have a quiz and two midterms, which I don’t feel 100% ready for. I still have time to study, though.

This weekend is a guard weekend. Hopefully it’s not too boring. If so, it’ll give me a little bit of time to study while getting paid. Speaking of which, this will be my last weekend as an A1C (woohoo, SrA!)

That’s all for tonight. More to come later. Ciao!

Well, you haven't missed too much. I spent ten days absolutely miserable, you really wouldn't have wanted to hear me rant. Having poison oak is definitely in my top five worst experiences in my life thus far. It spread. So. Much. And really, it wasn't from scratching (the doctor I saw confirmed this), but from not showering and cleaning everything immediately following exposure (I had no idea for days). Remember this if you ever know you were exposed! I thought I could handle it. Oatmeal baths thrice daily, applying calamine lotion on almost everything from my knees up even more frequently, cortizone cream … no, they were no match for this infection. I finally went and saw a doctor. Prednisone has been my best friend. Really, it's that easy. I should have gone two weeks ago. I still have small, dry, red patches in various places, but I'm not finished with the medicine yet either. Thank goodness that's over! I know, I know, you wanted to hear all about it … So my father called me up this morning to remind me it's Jerry Garcia's birthday. He would be 63 today. Just, you know … so you know. I'm not baking a cake or anything like that, but I will put on CD and make a new LJ icon. ^_^ Last weekend was a good one. My (adopted) little sister just got back from a month-long out-of-state vacation, so we got together for an exciting Saturday in Santa Barbara. Real quick if you don't know, she's not really adopted adopted, just through the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. She's thirteen now and her name is Melissa, so it's a little confusing when we're introduced out in public. People are so silly: "Oh, you're both named Melissa? Wow, are you real sisters then?" What on earth? Anyhow, enough of that. We drove down to Santa Barbara and just kind of meandered around the shops on State Street. Then we headed off to the Santa Barbara Zoo. It's a very pretty zoo and I was psyched because I haven't been to one in ages. It's kind of small, so we didn't spend all day there, but we saw it all. Melissa's not too young where she wants to spend too much time looking at anything in particular, so we made it sort of a photo safari. She just got a camera for her birthday, so we'd go up to a cage "click", move on, "click", move on. I took a few myself for the fun of it which are posted hehe. The highlights of my zoo trip were the red panda (how cute! I'd never seen one before and he was way cool!) and the capybaras. I had no idea what a capybara was before Saturday, but they're pretty neat. Like 150-pound guinea pigs with funny legs. I loved them! After the zoo we went to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Matt took me to see it when it came out, but Melissa was dying to go, so I saw it again. I like it mostly. There's things about the first movie I enjoyed more, and the same with this one. I adore Johnny Depp in almost everything I've seen of his, but I personally enjoy Gene Wilder's Wonka better. I know, the movies were very different, but still, Johnny Depp's Wonka kind of irritated me sometimes. But it was a blast and I enjoyed it thoroughly anyway! Other than that, I've just been schooling still. I finished up my logic class and my human sexuality class. The logic I worked pretty hard for and got an A. I'm still very disgruntled about the teacher, though. And not just for previously mentioned reasons. He maybe knows his topic, but he's horrible at communicating (typos everywhere! Not just spelling, sometimes I wasn't sure he learned how to put together a sentence correctly.) And don't judge me, this is blogging not teaching, so I'm allowed to type improperly! :p And he had no idea how to use the online program. He just uhm, wouldn't post things correctly or post them five times or there would be delays because he couldn't figure out his computer. Sheesh. Okay … Sexuality, well that was okay. It was 80% test, 20% essay and I didn't really do so well on the essay portion. It's not that I can't write when I want to. It's that all his discussion topics (and they were set up to be class discussions) were pretty personal. And on some things, my opinion is the minority and it was just uncomfortable. I know it's part of the class, there were just some ethical/personal views that I didn't want to discuss with a bunch of strangers (or be called closed-minded or anything like that). So eh, it doesn't really bother me. The grade was good enough and I didn't need the credit for anything other than GPA points, and the class was somewhat interesting (though I felt our book was strongly biased towards certain moral views which I don't necessarily agree with). So, now all I have to work on for the next nine days is history. Oh joy. It's not so bad, though, I'm just not at all a history buff! Speaking of school, I guess now I'd better get cracking. Enough wasting time! Don't fret, you'll get another dose of my oh-so-exciting life soon enough!

So it’s been a few days and I have little to report. School started on Monday, so that’s keeping me kind of busy. I’m only taking nine credits and they’re all online-courses, so it’s not so bad. I can do my psychology homework in my pajamas! I’m also taking World Civilizations and Logic, then I’ll have all my “core classes” out of the way finally. I really just do a lot of reading and that will last me all summer.

Matt and I are considering getting another cat. Tal is four months old now and extremely playful and it’s nice that I’m home all summer to hang out with him. I was reading that a kitten’s best toy is another kitten and maybe he would have fun hanging out with one of his own. Carol and I went out to see The Perfect Man on Wednesday (which was pretty cute!) and stopped by the shelter just to peek. There were so many kittens there, I was amazed. And so cute! When we adopted Tal the shelter told us he’s not very good with other cats. I don’t know if that’s just because of the environment he was subject to, if it’s something he’ll grow out of, if they were just the wrong kinds of cats, or if he’s really just anti-social. If we do look for a playmate for him, I think we’ll bring Tal along to see how he interacts with the shelter kitties and see if he can sort of pick his match. Hopefully that will go well!

My mother got home from the hospital yesterday, which I am very thankful for. She spent seven days in there and it sounded horrible. From what I hear, things aren’t too much better, though. The only thing she “can” consume is water and tea, and neither of those will stay down for her. She claims to be in more physical pain than she has ever known and I wish there was more I could do to ease that for her. We will just keep praying her pain subsides soon and she can get on with her day-to-day life.

So I’m all happy I found some new music! I stumbled across some Tea Leaf Green and Jack Johnson (awesome!) mp3s and now have CDs on order. I’m enjoying both tremendously and you should go check ‘em out! TLF is a San Francisco band, and I’m going to try to make it up to their next local show in September and Jack Johnson will be in Santa Barbara in August (going to buy tix now woohoo!) I haven’t been to any sort of concert for a while (well, Switchfoot up in San Fran a while ago, but it was late/far away and we didn’t stay through the whole thing) and it will be nice to go see one.

Well, here’s my promised recipe of the day! Last night we had a pseudo-Steak Diane. It’s more quick-and easy and there’s no setting anything ablaze, but it’s our favorite dish we’ve found so far. Serves 2 with wild rice and green beans!

2 (6-ounce) ball tip or strip steaks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons minced shallots
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon minced fresh or frozen chives
1 Tablespoon Cognac or brandy

Season steaks with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, melt butter. Add shallots and cook over medium-high heat 1 minute.

Add steaks and cook 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. Remove steaks to a warm serving platter.

Whisk lemon juice, Worcestershire, mustard, and chives into drippings in skillet. Cook 1 minute; stir in Cognac. Pour sauce over steaks and serve at once.

Tonight isn’t quite as exciting: just playing with my kinda-new crockpot and making a roast with veggies. Mmm! Matt and I are just going to chill out, play some Ragnarok Online and watch some Rayearth tonight. Ahh, this is the life!