It's getting weirder by the day

Two days ago, Tad and I received our first "Save the Date" wedding invitation that was addressed to both of us. They're good friends of mine. Tad has only met the couple one time.

A few days ago, a coworker asked me at a work happy hour, "So what does your husband do?"

Two weeks ago, Tad asked his mother to please send me this recipe for one of his favorite dishes so I could learn how to make it, to which she replied, "No way! Not until you put a ring on her finger!"

A few weeks ago, my mother asked me, "Would you and Tad like to host Thanksgiving this year at your place?" and when I responded, "Uhh, are you out of your mind?!" she said, "Oh okay, well will you be spending Thanksgiving with his family or with us?"

We're thinking we're just going to hold out as long as possible -- at least until we win the $100 bet with Erin that Tad will propose to me by my 25th birthday. She says yes, I say no way -- then elope and tell everyone a few years later.

Please remember to thaw your turkeys

I'll be filling in for James tomorrow on the Discovery News podcast, Friday News Feedbag.

I setup an interview with a chemistry professor from Georgetown to explain to us on the show why a turkey will explode in a huge fire ball if you put it in a deep fryer before it's completely thawed.

Tad promptly told me tonight that his family bought a turkey deep fryer today because they thought it might be fun and interesting to try it out.

I'll be in Tennessee for Thanksgiving so I get zero say in this and my protests are mute.

Great.

Work Moving Day

My fourth desk move in my 19 months here at Discovery was completed this morning. I think I have the most moves among my coworkers if we're going by length of time spent sitting in a single place.

A move entails having everything on and around your desk -- including your chair, computer(s) and cabinets -- moved to a new location and I have to say I've continued to be impressed with how I've never had anything misplaced. I will also say that I think this move was for the better because finally the entire digital team is on one single floor, making it much easier to track down people and things.

Most of my desk stuff is still in bins -- and I have a lot of crap. I basically took anything that I had in my old dorm room that didn't go in my apartment I brought into work to decorate my desk with. Think the flamingo lamp and Margaritaville sign.

So far I've only dived in to unpack the essentials: tissues, coffee cup, pen.

The rest will soon follow.

Mmm Mmm Good

This was full-fledged food weekend. And it was delicious.

Tad and I make an effort to try a new place to eat around our neighborhood at least once a week. We've lived in our new apartment for a few months now, but we have yet to repeat a restaurant or cafe. Usually, we try to meet up for lunch on Fridays to have this "try a new thing" date, but with the past two weeks being so crazy for both of us, we waited until today and did brunch instead.

Jackie's in Silver Spring was the place we tried. With its enormous heart-shaped, lime green and bubble gum pink sign, and thick orange curtains, Tad and I had avoided it until today. Especially after my mother had declared, "that place looks like a gay bar," when she came to visit.

It took a recent "Top 100 Restaurants Around D.C." review to change our minds and look them up online. Come to find out, Jackie's had been named a top 100 restaurant in the area three years in a row now. And, according to their website, the owners of Jackie's also own my favorite dive bar, Quarry House, so really, how could we go wrong?

What was formerly a car garage turned restaurant, Jackie's was wall-to-wall covered in the same lime green and bubble gum pink as their sign, so god help anyone with a hang over that ventures over there, but the brunch menu was rather reasonable. I sprung for an Eggs Benedict, which I never get, but was enticed with their substitution of prosciutto for regular sliced ham and toasted rye bread for the English muffin. Tad ordered a delicious mushroom, onion and some sort of exotic, tantalizing cheese omelette.

Not meaning to turn this post into a complete restaurant review, I'll just say that we'll probably end up back there again sometime in the future, once we finish making our rounds.

Aside from brunch, I spent my weekend at a sushi/karaoke bar in Dupont on Friday night for Simone's birthday -- which was sort of funny and ironic because Simone works for the KidSafe Seafood campaign -- and while it may sound like a horrible idea, it was actually pretty fun. Saturday, I met up with Sam Laz and headed out towards Eastern Market for another new food experience and farmer's/flea market fun.

We went to Spike from Top Chef's burger joint, Good Stuff Eatery, (my first time) and man oh man was it ever the best burger I've ever had. I'm not big food snob when it comes to organic vs. non... but let me tell you, there was nothing more incredible about this burger than the taste of organic beef, lettuce, tomato, onion on a soft buttery roll.

Top it off with fries served with several different kinds of mayo dips -- including Old Bay, ahh home -- and the thickest chocolate milk shake ever... oh goodness. I never wanted it to end and I was full for the rest of the day. Seriously, you know me. I eat constantly, but after that meal, the only thing I had before bed was a salad at home and only because I felt like I had to.

To sum up the weekend would be for me to say that it was calm and full-filling. I committed several deadly sins -- gluttony, drink, etc. -- and yet still feel refreshed and relaxed. Job well done, weekend.

Photos are from their respective restaurant websites. I forgot my camera :(

Never gonna give you up...

I discovered today that several of my coworkers have never heard of being Rick Roll'd. "What's Rick Roll'd?" they ask me? As if the international phone pank and then internet pank sensation hasn't been out for years.

It was even in the news today for goodness sakes... yet another justification not to have an iPhone. Sigh. Just keep telling yourself its okay not to have an iPhone.

What to do with this glorious gem of information? Become that girl who sends out horrible spam emails? Nahh, needed to be more sneaky and less annoying than that.

Being too busy to go nuts with it, and not wanting to break key work relationships, I ended up just IMing two coworkers individually saying, "Hey, can you check out this story and see if you think it's a good idea? We're having a heated debate on my team about it right now: Find out how scientists got lost in an ice cave trying to find the world's coldest spot. http://tinyurl.com/2su3q3" and then of course they said "uhh wtf!?!?" and I immediately followed it up with a classy: "YOU'VE JUST BEEN RICK ROLL'D!!!! Have a nice day."

BTW if you clicked on that link, you're a total sucker. Not you, Mom and Dad. I'll explain it to you some other time.

Oh the things that get me through the work day...

DISCOVERY NEWS IS NEW!

This is the reason I've been too exhausted and drained to blog in the past week...


It's the Discovery News site redesign! Yay! I've been in meetings, discussions, arguments, training sessions and revisions on this very product for several months now and it all came to a head at last night's launch. It officially went live at around 1 a.m., but I didn't get home until 3 a.m-ish so I apologize again for not having a more meaty post.

BUT PLEASE CLICK AROUND!

Despite my 4 a.m. bedtime, I still had to be in the office at my normal scheduled time this morning and just to give you a taste as to how exhausted I am, when I went to get dressed this morning, I spent 10 minutes staring at my clothes and asking myself, "what are these things in front of me?" Yeah, two cups of coffee and some spicy Thai food later, I'm doing much better.

I want to send out a big thank you and infinite love to my patient parents, my dear and always understanding boyfriend Tad, Kasey, Smur and the rest of my friends and colleagues who nodded along sympathetically as I bitched and moaned about how all this redesign craziness was going to kill me. It was well worth it. THANK YOU!!!

Back in Business

Phew! Nothing like the flu to knock you and all your willpower to blog right out of you for a week.

No, I did not have the swine flu, thank goodness, just the regular kind. Bizarre that a virus that didn't even give me a fever still managed to keep me bedridden for two days and make normal breathing difficult for seven. Today is the first day I can breathe out of my nose. Gross, I know. Sorry.

In other news, the Discovery Store at work had their big end-of-the-year blow out sale open to employees today and it was PACKED. Coworkers came by the droves with IKEA BAGS, you know those ginormous blue ones (and that's bags, plural), and snatched up handfuls of items. All I wanted was a mug to complete my collection of "Mugs From Media Places I Have Worked and/or Visited." Most of the stuff was for kids though -- books, games and such -- so I ended up not buying anything.

The event did get me thinking about Christmas shopping... and then made me anxious thinking about Christmas shopping. Why is it that family, those lovely people you HAVE to (and usually want to) get gifts for, are the hardest to shop for? I know a great gift idea for a former roommate of mine, or for one of my coworkers, but what to get MOM?

Sigh, this would be so much easier if I could have just brought everyone a mug.

52 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS.

The universe finds this funny

And I jinxed myself.

Been up and down since 3 a.m. this morning with congestion, sore throat, aches in my muscles and joints and dizziness. Needless to say, I stayed home from work today and of course it was Pet Adoption Day, of all days!

(see end of previous blog post to understand what I'm talking about)

Feeling Fulfilled

I would describe this past weekend as fulfilling. Yes, I had a fulfilling weekend. I think it's because I got to do many things all over D.C. in 48 hours that I normally wouldn't have accomplished at all.

Friday night, Tad and I went out to a bar in Adams Morgan called Reef. I. KNOW. We went out!!! My friend Kelvin's birthday was the occasion, but when Tad was pumped for going out just to go out, I was very excited. We don't go out together at night much. Many of you remember/know what your bank account looks like while you're putting yourself through school.

Saturday was spent at the Silver Spring farmers market, and then ducking into Redrock Cafe for lunch to escape the rain. Then I left at 3:30 to meet up with Sara to see Where The Wild Things Are. Sorry fans of WTWTA, we hated it. Well, maybe 'hate' is too strong of a word. We strongly disliked it and thought it was weird. To describe it in a word would be to say it was 'angry' and I thought it ended without conflict resolution. I did get my first Mongolian BBQ experience afterwards though (again, I. KNOW. I'm way behind on trying that staple Bethesda restaurant).

Sunday, I rose early (so early that when I said good-bye to Tad, he said, 'have a good day at work') and headed out to Foggy Bottom to watch the Marine Corps. Marathon. It was the first time I had ever seen it -- first year I knew so many people running in it -- and I was completely blown away by the amount of runners (over 20,000!) and people dressed in costumes.



Best sign by far! So hilarious.

Kasey and Betty. GO SHARKRUNNERS! (Discovery's team)

Afterwards, I headed out to Ballston to meet my friend Nick for lunch, then eventually made it back to my apartment for a two hour nap. I was so exhausted from all the marathon watching and cheering, phew! Okay, so I need to go to the gym more. Followed by more TV watching and shouting later -- damn you, Darren Sproles for being so inconsistent and ruining my fantasy score!!!

In other news, I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to get a swine flu shot. The TV says I should, my coworkers say I should, the doctor says I should... part of me feels that as a young, healthy adult, there are people out there who need the vaccine more than I do. The other part of me doesn't want to be sorry for saying that later. The internal debate continues.

First Pumpkin

The preface of this dialogue is I have a friend who has never carved a pumpkin before so she wants to throw a pumpkin carving party. And action...

Me: This is going to be some party!

Friend: Ha. I'm not sure everyone will come ( I hope not, my apartment is teeny).

Me: Word to the wise... buy lots of newspaper for people to carve the pumpkins on, like one Sunday NYT is perfect.

Friend: Good point. I've never carved one before. I have NO idea how to do this.

Me: Ha I know. Pumpkin, knife, newspaper, candle. That's all you need.

Friend: A candle?!!?!?!? For what?!

Me: Umm to make the pumpkin glow?

Friend: Interesting.