Sliding into insanity: Online Package Tracking

So I mentioned in my last post that I had ordered a new pair of shoes as the BDay present from Me to Me.

Aren't They Pretty?

Shortly after publishing that post I got an email confirming that the shoes had shipped. This email included the oh-so-convenient UPS tracking number. Now every couple hours or so I pull up the UPS website to find my package. This morning while procrastinating getting out of my warm bed I pulled up the route from Indianapolis to Ypsilanti to see approximately how long it would take the truck to get into the nearest UPS distribution center. 

I do realize I'm a little nuts. Possibly more than a little. But this is an issue with the internet. With so much available instantly, we begin to lose our patience with the things that take a while. So this is probably an excellent opportunity for me to exercise patience and contentment. Instead I'm going to hit "refresh" on the UPS tracking page until my package arrives.

Now into the School year

For most of us school started on the 7th of September. Of course before the semester began there were a hundred thousand things to do. Packing, moving, making arrangements with room-mates, catching up with friends, checking the location of classes...etc. Since I rarely do things the easy way I compounded my Labor day/Moving in weekend with working at the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Go me!

Despite my mother's insistence to concentrate on the upcoming semester, I can't  not work Festival. Especially Labor Day weekend because Monday our booth manager takes the day off every year and I get to be the boss lady. Plus festival is good for my soul and my confidence. It is only there that I get hit on, and frankly I enjoy getting the high that you get from someone appreciating your appearance. It's probably left overs from being an extremely late bloomer. In the wrong outfit I still look like a 13 year-old boy in drag.

But it's not just the compliments that keep me coming back. Everyone their treats each other like a huge family and we all look out for one another. For example when I had a shitty day I was able to go to my friends at festival and be greeted with hugs and assurances. Even the people I knew only as acquaintances were loving on me just because I had a horrid day. The other reason I love festival is because there is a an attitude of acceptance. No one cares about your race, your background, your family history, or even your religion. It is one of the few places I have seen an atheist, a pagan, and a Christian discuss their individual beliefs without anyone being offended or even annoyed. The final reason I return to festival every year is Men in Kilts

The Guys of Tartanic

In other news my final year of School is off at a ridiculous high speed. Currently I am on top of things and being good. I got all my reading done for the week because I decided to go dancing last night at Cafe Habanas weekly Salsa night! Sooo much fun even though I'm not a great dancer. I can dance but I have a bad habit from my martial arts training that I try to anticipate the moves of my partner and react before they occur. This ends up with me trying to lead but still doing the follower's steps. And everyone ends up confused. Luckily by about 11pm the dance floor is so crowded I can blame my missteps on the people knocking into me.

Another part of prepping for the semester was moving into my new apartment. Hopefully soon I will be able to borrow a camera and post pics of my new room. Not gonna lie, it looks kind of like a bachelor pad since it's decorated with all dark colors (black and chocolate brown) and posters of city skylines. But I brightened it up a bit with silver accents and tea lights. So it works. And I love it. Plus I have a full size bed which takes up almost all of my pocket sized room so I can stretch out when I sleep or have a sleep over with the girlfriends scheduled to come visit me.

Finally it was my birthday over the weekend! I celebrated my B-day all weekend long while working at festival. There is a tradition at festival that if you pin a dollar to your shirt to indicate it's your birthday then people will give you more dollars to add to the collection. I made 18$ and determined that since it was my birthday money I decided to spend it on something I absolutely don't need:

I have noticed that one of the big trends this fall in footwear have been clogs. This worries me since even back in the 90's when all my little friends were stomping around in clogs I only pretended to like them and behind every one's back called them Herman Munster shoes. I'm willing to give these a shot for 3 reasons. 1) on sale for 20$. 2) With the open toe and the heel strap they look a little more streamlined than the old school pump. 3) My rocker style is attracted to the studs.

Hopefully they will arrive next week and be comfortable enough to rock to class and/or work.

I really need to start posting more often so I don't have these ramble-y posts.

Succulent Sustenance - Dinner Party!

This is a couple weeks late. I have excuses: allergies, end of summer, packing to go back to school, leading a summer day camp for kids (ages 6-12, and just precocious enough to make me want to remove my uterus), Renaissance festival. But those are just that, excuses. So rather than blathering on and on, or making lists of the things I have been doing instead of blogging let's get right on to the good stuff.

So two Thursdays ago I had an End of Summer dinner party for several of my friends in the area. I had an entire menu planned out but since all the recipes were new I only wound up making one of them. That was probably a good thing since it took so much longer to get everything finished than I had planned. Of course the best laid plans get disrupted and all the careful list-making did nothing to prevent everything falling apart and me driving all over town trying to gather ingredients.

Since dinner was a little later than I planned I did a little appetizer. Sliced French bread toasted with goat cheese and sliced fresh basil. Unfortunately they never got pretty plating and thus no pictures.

For the main course I got a recipe from a weekly email called Tasting Table They send out two recipes a week. Any foodie who appreciates experimenting with new stuff should sign up for it. One of the recipes that showed up in my email was Grilled Lamb Skewers. Since this came at a time I was craving red meat, I was eager to try the recipe and foist it upon others. I made a few changes to the recipe. I doubled the recipe (11 dinner guests) and I cut the ground lamb with ground chuck. Since lamb is so flavorful the mutton overpowered the beef  and the fat in the chuck made the skewers extra juicy. I also made additional wine reduction and added about a tablespoon of honey and melted 2/3rds of a stick of unsalted butter in the reduction to make a sauce. For side dishes I made wilted spinach and sauteed red bell pepper salad and saffron flavored rice.

Prep work

The Skewers pre-grill

Ravishingly Red Bell Peppers

A dinner plate for one lucky guest

My sister played co-host for the evening and her major contribution was dessert. I don't have links to the recipe she used but as soon as I do I will post them. She made individual Raspberry Creme Brulees for each one of my guests.

It may look like a basic creme brulee but at the bottom of the ramekin was a layer of raspberry preserves and fresh raspberries.

The dinner was a hit! Even my friend who is a notorious picky eater cleared most of her plate (and all of her dessert). I love entertaining like this when everything gets to come together even though things were delayed.

PS. The Picky Eater is the reason the photos in this post look so amazing. She brought her giant camera and took all the pictures for the evening. Unfortunately most of the pictures of me are before I was able to shower so I am not posting any featuring me. I love her to death for making my food look amazing and plan to invite her and her camera every time I make a good meal.

I Won!

Most people in the world have luck of one kind or another. Not me. For the most part I tend to be rather luck-less, suffering from neither good or bad luck. However every once in a while I am given a sample of luck (sometimes good, sometimes bad) just so I can have the experience. 

Last week I received a taste of good luck: As I may have mentioned the amazing and creative Carly J. Cais of Chic Steals was one the of the bloggers who participated in New York Design Shop's Create Couture Challenge  Since she is a major overachiever and puts my little projects to shame (I have three shirts I keep putting off even though summer and my free time is coming to a swift end) Carly submitted 12 DIY projects within the time constraints of the contest! As a rabid follower, of her blog I voted for her (though ...Love Meagan has some of my loyalty as well). Carly won the contest by what I hear was a very narrow margin (cue applause!) 

Thats where things get a little confusing, at least when I try to explain it. Seriously, I had to tell my mom three times why I was giving my home address to a random internet celebrity. NY Design Shop had a drawing for the voters who participated in the Create Couture Challenge. The winning voter got to choose a prize from the DIYs of the winning blogger. And I won!!!!11!!one!!

The prize I chose was the beautiful Double-Fringe Necklace Which was awesome since I planned on making one anyways. Instead I got to have one made for me by the designer! (Excuse me while I have a complete and total fan-girl moment) 

Of course no good luck comes without it's constant companion Bad Luck. I was sick with crippling allergies for the better part of the rest of the week. Anyone with allergies can attest the the attractiveness caused by swollen sinuses and runny noses. In order to prevent permanently scarring any future generations I avoided all cameras until my face returned to a semblance of normalcy. 

Finally I have a picture of me in my newly won necklace!

I'm freshly showered in this picture my hair is not normally so well behaved. 

I wore the necklace out shopping today and got tons of complements. Even my mom liked it and she prefers jewelery to be understated. I'm thinking I will pair it with my cute navy blue dress and cork wedges for the first day of my final year of school! May as well carry my pinch of good luck into the school year.

Working on my movie review....

But i'm busy and I have been knocked on my ass by allergies. So rather than leave this space empty for today I present the only kind of poetry I am capable of, Haiku:

Allergy Season

A Symphony of Sniffles

Trumpets in F-Flat

Monday Lust - Boots

I love boots. I love the way they make me feel like I can conquer the world. The last pair of boots I got have a five inch heel and little gold buckles. I call them my boots of Doom. If I could find a picture of them I would post them.

But today the lust has been re-awakened by the most gorgeous pair of boots.

Now they look very basic from the front. But the back is where the real beauty is.

The red zipper detail is just the right thing to perk these boots up from basic to sexy. So if any one wants to purchase them for me they are available at Nordstrom for just shy of 275$ LINK


All Images from Nordstrom.com

PS. In case you have never heard of the Blog http://www.chic-steals.com/ she has some of the best DIY's on the internet. Recently she participated in the Create Couture Contest sponsored by New York Design Shop and won! (I was one of the many who voted for her designs. I had to. She did a bajillion projects with the materials supplied) Anyways,  NYDS had a drawing for voters that awarded the winner a creation by the winner of the contest.  Guess what. I won!!!! I never win anything and I'm getting to be getting a beautiful fringe necklace created by Carly. I plan to wear it at every opportunity. As soon as it arrives I'm posting pictures!

Succulent Sustenance - Deep Fried

With the extra time to sleep in and/or work out the weekend is the best time to have awesome food. So here is Succulent Sustenance where I recount the best meal of the week (which usually occurs during the weekend) and indulge my illicit love of alliteration.

This weekend after a straight week of cravings this dish, my mother and I made her world famous Southern Fried Feast.  It seems to be a tradition below the Mason-Dixon Line that the Sunday dinner is the big one. As a reward for going to church that morning (and no offense to any Southern Baptists but I feel like I need some kind of payment for attending your services) the average Southern family starts their week by  indulging in the sin of gluttony. This saves the other six deadly sins for the remainder of the week.

While mom peeled and butterflied the shrimp I prepared the French fries. Though we have this dish about once a year this is the first time I remember using red potatoes for the fries.

Start with a potatoe:

Slice:

Chop into strips:

And they are ready for the oil!

For the rest of the meal we prepped chicken, shrimp and oysters in an seasoned egg-wash. It's no Colonel Sander's eleven herbs and spices but I find it delicious. (Could have used a pinch more cayenne in my opinion)

From Left to Right: Oysters, Shrimp, Chicken Tenders

The best part was when we finally had all the food cooking.

Left to Right: Fries, Chicken, Shrimp

Lured by the scent of the oysters and shrimp we had an extra helper. 

By "Helper" I mean: Tripping Hazard (aka Ollie)

Finally dinner was served:

Hot Sauce for the shrimp. Ketchup for the fries. Honey for the chicken.

Several servings later...

Nothing but the shrimp tails.