Like the Elusive Black Panther

It's really hard to capture a picture of the elusive Kara. She hates her picture taken, even though her work ID badge photo is the best I've seen in our office. Her birthday is on Sunday but we celebrated it today by showering her with flowers, balloons, Funyuns, a special edition "Freddy says Do the Right Thing" tote bag, and other prezzies. Here she is, working hard:


She was too quick for my camera... I tried to get her blowing out the candle on her birthday flan. Yea, if you say "any" as your cake preference here, you get FLAN. Baked by BK. He makes a yummy pumpkin soup too.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KARA!!!

Happy "G" Day!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GABRIELLE!

This little Princess turns 4 today!!! Can you believe it? Wishing you lots of yummy cake, ice cream and prezzies to celebrate your special day!

(And yes, I lifted this pic from Moreno Bee's flicker page. Baby G isn't looking very happy in the pic I had. Maybe if I had asked her to smile instead of taking a candid shot... drats!)

OC Summer of '84

Back in the day, somehow I managed to get my parents to OK a trip to Ocean City, MD with just my friends. It was senior week and we had just graduated high school. We were 17. SevenFreakin'Teen!!!! What were our parents thinking letting us go to the beach by ourselves????

Karen rented a little 2 bedroom cottage for the week. It cost us something like $25 per person. For the week! I think there were about 8-10 of us in the house. And we didn't really do much except lay on the beach during the day and trolled the boardwalk at night. I'm sure someone procured some beer for us, but I was never much of a beer drinker (and still not), so I didn't end up passed out on the hood of my Mustang (like Karen did).

Top: Ellen, Karen - Middle: Yvette, Neita, Jeanne - Bottom: Me, Cathy.

Twenty-two years later, even though most of us ended up going to Maryland together after high school, I hang with a completely different crew. That's what happens when you're thrown into a bigger fish pond... you meet more people and develop new friendships. And life moves on. I'm really glad to be in contact with some of the girls I grew up with but sad that I hadn't kept up with others. Especially the ones who passed away too young.

This beach picture is from one of those mini view-finder things. I can't believe the scanner did such a good job on the little slide. I have two of 'em. In the other picture, we're posed in a pyramid. Whenever I look at these pics, they make me smile. I think about how goofy I was. And how carefree I was. Good times.

GM Cures What Ails Ya

Yesterday was spent on the couch, pretty much. I read some e-mails and ate a bowl of cereal. And watched "The Sure Thing" and "One Crazy Summer" on cable. I can't believe those movies are 20 years old! John Cusack was so young and cute. Still one of my fave actors.

John got home from work later than normal (with a bottle of Nyquil! My hero!). After chowing down on lolo burger and chicken, he had to head out to an elevator emergency (he was on call again). I finished up a knitted gift and checked knit blogs.

Last week, one of my favorite knitty reads, Claudia, asked for easy pasta salad recipe submissions. I e-mailed her my Cellophane Noodle Salad recipe, just so she'd have something a little different to think about, and she decided to give it a try! Sadly, she e-mailed me Friday afternoon to ask me about cellophane noodles (she bought rice noodles) but I didn't read e-mail during the weekend. She made it with the rice noodles and said it turned out yummy. Claudia blogged about my recipe and so begins the nationwide cellophane noodle salad revolution! OK... I'm geekily amazed, especially after being such a lurker. I'm glad the recipe worked out for her and her book club party.

I finally slept through the night last night (pretty much). Or maybe I should actually refer to it as "passing out". John likes to reminisce about how Nyquil used to contain 25% alcohol. It now only has 10%. Before I went to bed, I made a cup of orange spice tea. To make up for the lower Nyquil alcohol content, a couple splashes of Grand Marnier were added. A shot of Nyquil followed by a bojangled cup of tea works wonders on a summertime cold! My head feels a little stuffy, but my throat is a lot better. Off to work now...

Uneventful

It was a pretty blah weekend, not that there weren't lots of things happening. Friday, we went to dinner at my parents' and my bro and his family were there too. My nieces are getting so big! They'll be taller than me very soon, I'm sure! Saturday, John was on call, but luckily, the two calls he had were local (Laurel and College Park) but each call took a few hours.

I hear we missed a great crabfeast at Dave J's annual family party. I was planning on going with Freddy or William, but the cold I developed since our return from Montana has gotten worse, so I decided to stay home. Sunday, we went out to run errands and bought a 4-drawer filing cabinet. A couple of the guys went to the Nats game (thanks for the invite... rat bastards!) where they were giving away beach towels or shirts or hats. They were doing some big weekend promotion, selling tickets for $3.00 and giving away something each day.

Today, I'm home. Still sick. I didn't get much sleep last night. I should have taken a shot of Grand Marnier before bed! I woke up before 2:00 AM and pretty much tossed around until 5:45 AM. I hope John got enough sleep with me coughing all night!

That's it for today. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Random Montana

This is the view from the plane before we landed in Great Falls:


Highway 87 - looks like a road to nowhere, doesn't it?

A bridge near the hotel that goes towards the wedding site (and probably where Val's bat lived):

Another bridge near the hotel. It's now just a footbridge but doesn't lead to anything. Once crossed, it's fenced up on the other end and all you see is someone's farm.

Some barn on the way to Shonkin. I thought it was funny how it sat out there all by its lonesome. It looked really huge from gravel road too.

This is the bridge over the creek where the gang went swimming the last time they were in Montana:

View from the Scenic Overlook on our way back from Borrie's:

A cute painted bug, probably belonging to someone at the flea market next to our hotel:

Great Falls State Park:

Some random thoughts:

[1] Always bring plenty of water, chapstick and hand lotion with you on an airplane. It gets awfully dry up there!

[2] Even if you've only fallen asleep for 10 minutes on a plane, you do get morning breath! So if someone offers gum or a mint, take it! Don't make me slip a Listerine Mint Strip in your mouth while you're snoring with your mouth wide open.

[3] I didn't see any black folks in Montana. I hear there were two light-skin black guys walking by the river near the hotel though.

[4] Montana folks are very friendly. Or maybe it was just that everyone in Fort Benton knew everyone else and knew we were from out of town. Or maybe because they hadn't seen anyone Asian in town. Ever.

[5] At night, it gets pretty chilly (in the mid to upper 50's) but a weird warm breeze will hit you. No, this isn't Freddy breaking wind. We were told this blast of warmth is a "Chinook".

[6] Cowboys wear jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, boots and a hat at all times. Even when it's 95 degrees out! Most women wear jeans or capris. I didn't see many people in shorts. Our group stuck out pretty good walking around the county fair in shorts, tevas/flip flops!

John and I somehow managed to get sick since our return from Montana. Having a cold in the summer really SUCKS! Happy Friday and have a great weekend, everyone!

A Montana Wedding - Part IV

So, where were we? Oh, right... bar hopping, bats...

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We got up and had breakfast on Saturday morning and decided to just mill about for a bit and meet around 11:00 to go back to the fair. The AC in our room wasn't working. It had been a cool night and I had the window open, so I didn't really notice until the sun came out and was warming up the room pretty quickly. We reported the broken AC to the front desk in hopes it would be fixed before we had to dress for the wedding. It's rough getting dressed up (John in his suit and tie!) in 90 degree heat! Val reported her attack bat, but the hotel people didn't seem too concerned.

.

William was AWOL, so we went to the fair and saw more steer competition, mini ninnies, food stalls, etc. The rodeo was going on today and we caught some calf roping. There were some horse-running-around-the-barrel competitions too. I know I'm butchering the official name of these competitions!

In between rodeo events, a Zamboni-like machine came out to smooth out the dirt. Who'da thunk it?

We headed back to the hotel after grabbing fair food (hot dog, pizza, Indian fry bread) and found William chatting with Heidi's cousin. The AC guy was still trying to figure out the problem, so we hung out in the guys' room for a bit. Those guys are messy! Clothes, belts, towels everywhere!

We decided to just bite the bullet (for convenience) and get dressed in our sweltering room, although Val did offer the use of her room too. Off we went to the wedding... everyone looked good in their East Coast finery. William and Freddy in tuxes (they were ushers in the wedding), John and Mike in suits, me and Val in summer dresses.

We got to the house to find they had put up the tents with lights underneath, set up the arch, placed plants to mark the aisle, put up lattice to cover the oil/water tanks and set up all the tables. The gift table had these adorable bears:

And mints for the guests:

A beautiful setting for a wedding!

Most guests gathered in the shade of the tent and we were worried folks would stay under the tent instead of taking seats by the arch. As soon as a few took seats, they began filling up and the Montana Wedding was on. Here are the Matron of Honor Heidi and Best Man Tom, along with Flower Girl Sophie and Ring Bearer, Trey:

Freddy and William roll out the white "carpeting" and little Sophie creates a flower petal path for the bride. OK... actually, it didn't go off quite that easily. Sophie's two and a half. Once faced with having to walk down the aisle alone, she threw herself down on the ground. Dad John (behind her with the camera) had to pick her up and go with her, while spreading petals along the way:

Dad Merle and Bride Tiffany, who wore her mother's dress (from 1970 something?):

It was really windy (and HOT!). Freddy and William had to reel back the "carpeting". Eric got very teary-eyed, which Tiff said (later in the evening) was "the sweetest thing".

The food... what a feast! Mike was not shy about being one of the first ones in line for food. There were about 15 different kinds of pasta and jello salad (courtesy of wedding guests) along with two huge pans of roast beef (for bbq beef sammies).

About 150 people had been invited, but per local custom, the family ran an ad in the paper to announce the wedding and were expecting 100 more to show. I'm not sure exactly what the count was, but everyone had a good time. We quickly discovered we were well over-dressed for a Montana wedding. Apparently, showing up in shorts and sandals as if it were a regular 'ole picnic is the norm. But we looked good, as evidenced by the "Napoleon Dynamite" pose:

After a lot of eating, drinking and merriment, the wedded couple take their first dance:

I don't remember what song it was, but when the bride and her father danced, the song was something about a "Montana Girl":

Random pics... Baby Izzy and Heidi's friend, Terry:

Silly Sophie:

It was a long, hot day but a great wedding in a beautiful setting. John, Val and I headed back to the hotel as we were partied out at 10:30 PM. William, Freddy and Mike hung out and caught a ride home with Heidi and Tiffy's aunts around 1:30 or so.

OH! So, Val's bat story didn't end just yet. We walked her to her room and she opened her door and turned on the light. BAT!!!!! It's coming right for us! I screamed like a girl. Hey! Better me than John! Val went to the front desk to report the bat and that she now had witnesses. Again, they didn't seem too concerned. They finally got the bat and gave Val another room to sleep in. However, there was good news for us... the AC was fixed!

The next morning, we all had breakfast one last time, packed our gear, checked out and headed to the Heidi & Tiff's Grandma's house to drop off William's tux. She lives in Fort Benton close to the hotel.

With a few hours to kill, we did a bit of sight seeing in Great Falls and grabbed a bite to eat at a little diner downtown. At the airport, somehow I was the only one with an assigned seat. The other 5 were getting a little nervous they'd be knocked off the flight. Finally, after everyone had boarded, the airline dude passed out the seat assignments. What an ass! Why didn't he just give out the passes when Mike asked 3 times and Val asked about her seat?

Heidi, John J and kids were on our flight and we had a few hours to kill at the Denver airport. John J led us to this yummy Tex-Mex place, but John and I weren't very hungry. We grabbed a few snacks for the plane. Uneventful flight from Denver to Dulles. We landed a bit before 1:00 AM and by the time John and I reached Laurel, it was about 2:45 AM. I'm so glad we took Monday off!

I was thinking how lucky I am to have had this opportunity to see Montana. It's a good thing William stays friendly with his ex-girlfriends and their families! That's the end of our trip. I wish I had taken more pictures. Maybe the next post will be just scenery. Till then, have a great Thursday!

A Montana Wedding - Part III

Have you tried those Clorox Gel Bleach Pens on the grout in your bathtub? It's like a miracle product! There was one stain I couldn't get out with Tilex (which normally eats through all crud!) in our green bathroom, so I put some of the gel bleach on it and left it there for a bit. Came back and it looked like I had just re-grouted that area!

Oh... so you didn't come here for bathroom cleaning tips? OK, OK! Day 2 in Montana began with continental breakfast (included in the price of our room at the Grand Union). You know the fare... sticky buns, hard boiled eggs, cereal, juice, toast, fruit. I'm almost thinking we should do that at the beach instead of cooking 5 lbs of bacon and getting splattered with grease. Anyway, after breakfast, Val headed back up to take a nap and the rest of us went down the street to the Chouteau County Fair. As it just opened, there weren't too many events going on except for the Steer Competition:


The guy in the middle (red shirt) won. We went into the barn to check out the other animals. Mike stepped in cow poop. Or was it lamb poop? Freddy made a new friend and wanted to take this baby mini-ninny home for Molly:

We went back to the hotel and headed out to the H family house to help set up for the wedding. Everyone was on hand to set up the chairs:

Here's Mike and Aaron (Heidi and Tiff's brother) setting up the tent:

The wedding rehearsal was at 4:00, followed by the rehearsal dinner at the Grand Union for the wedding party, hosted by Eric's dad. Since William and Freddy were the only ones from our group in the wedding party and the rest of us were not invited to dinner, John, Val and I headed to Great Falls to see the town and have some dinner. Mike stayed at the rehearsal.

(crickets chirping - tumbleweeds rolling by)

The three of us roamed the streets of Great Falls looking for something to pop out at us, but ended up at Borrie's Family Restaurant. This was one of Bart's recommendations and was also listed in the little Great Falls guide we picked up. The restaurant was a steak & Italian joint, very reasonably priced for what we got. Each meal included soup (minestrone or chicken broth), salad, and breadsticks. The minestrone was yummy! John and Val both ordered the smaller 12 oz. tenderloin/filet and I had the rib steak ($21.50, folks!):

It was GINORMOUS! They said it was 20 ounces, but I think it had to be much more than that! I was already getting full after soup and salad. I ate a small 1" chunk off the end that was hanging over the plate and boxed the rest. Little Susie (pictured above left) was amazed at the size of this Montana steak! After dinner, we headed back to Fort Benton. We stopped at this Scenic Overlook to see the Missouri River and valley:

When we got back to the hotel, the wedding rehearsal dinner was just beginning. The original plan was for the dinner to be held between 6:30 - 7:00, but it was almost 8:00 and they had just finished ordering. Merle invited us to come back down in a bit for dessert.

I was too tired and headachy to go back out for bar hopping with the rest of the group, so I just stayed in and watched Batman Begins. John headed down to meet with everyone around 9:00 PM (and he missed dessert - NUTS!). Everyone had a great time at the Banque (bar across the street). John came back to the room while everyone else headed to another bar and stayed out till 3:00 AM.

Poor Val came back to her room after a couple drinks, opened up the door and a BAT flew at her! Apparently, bats hang out under the bridge and occasionally, they somehow make their way into the hotel rooms. The hotel staff didn't seem too concerned about it, but Val was a little distraught. More on this story later.

Stay tuned for Day 3 details tomorrow!

A Montana Wedding - Part II

3:00 AM comes around waaaayyy too quickly. John and I stayed at The Estates (thanks, William!) on Wednesday night so we didn't have to get up as early had we slept at home. We left out and met Freddy and Val at Val's around 4:00. Then we had to pick up Mike in Reston (at William's office) where Mike was leaving his car. Our 6:00 AM flight left without incident and the first stop was Chicago and then on to Denver. After grabbing a bite to eat, we chilled out at the gate for our flight to Great Falls by playing Hearts, reading and knitting (me, of course!):


We ran into Heidi's hubby, John, who was on our flight and on his way to a business meeting in Helena before joining his family (and us) later in the afternoon. On the plane, I was seated next to a guy who kinda looked like Ronald Reagan with very gray hair and was in the funeral home business. He was an ultra conservative living outside of Denver and was NOT happy so many Prius-driving ultra liberals were moving into his neighborhood. Are all conservative republicans this cranky???

We drove about 40 minutes or so from the airport in Great Falls to Fort Benton. We stayed at the Grand Union Hotel, which first opened in 1882. Here's a view of the Missouri River at the park in front of our hotel:



After checking in and chillin' out for a bit, we headed to the convenience store to get some (LOTS) of beer and then drove out to Shonkin. Once we turned off the main road towards Shonkin, it was all gravel. Here's Freddy enjoying the beautiful Montana scenery:

We arrived at the H family home just as Tiffy, Heidi, mom Nancy and a some of Tiffy's gal pals were heading off to a bridal shower in nearby Geraldine. Although Val and I could have gone to the shower, we decided to stay with the guys back at the house, where dad Merle had a few hats available to keep the sun off our heads:

Bart, one of Heidi's childhood friends, was helping with the wedding and brought his brush mower to clear some of the grass around the perimeter. Freddy took over the mowing, so Bart enjoyed a beer with William:

It was getting close to 9:00 PM and we wanted to get back to the hotel (and to get some dinner) before it got too dark. We ate at Bob's Riverfront Restaurant, where Val had her first Montana steak (yum!). I was so tired, I can't even remember what I had to eat. Should have taken a picture! Some type of sandwich? I think I wrote it down in my little notebook.

Thus ends Day 1 in Montana... stay tuned for more!

A Montana Wedding - Part I

Fresh mountain air, BIG sky, sunshine. It was an awesome weekend. More details to come, but here's a teaser...


John, Val, me, Fred, Eric, Tiffany, Heidi, William, Mike

(click for a wee bigger). The pic was actually taken quite late in the evening. It doesn't get dark there until almost 10:00 PM! I had to lighten it up so you could see our faces, which left this pic a little grainy. A great time was had by all. Congrats, Eric and Tiff!

New Blog

I've been reading food blogs for a while now and decided to create one of my own. Not sure what it will have in it yet but I'm hoping to start with our trip to Montana. So check it out when you get a chance!

Visor Night

We'd missed 2 Friday Night Dinners with my parents, so a homecooked meal is how we started off our weekend. My mom and aunt have been trying to come up with new dishes for John so he doesn't get bored eating rice and some type of broiled meat (chicken, pork, steak). They stir fried some shrimp and green beans (one of the few veggies he'll eat) for him. A "Jungle Curry" with beef and some turkey and crab patties were also served.

Afterwards, we headed to Target to pick up household supplies like TP and paper towels. You can never have too much TP in the house! Saturday, we tried to go to the AAA Antiques Mall off 175, but they had moved near Savage Mill. I'm glad it's closer now. We ended up at Arundel Mills so I could get some work pants and then to WalMart for curtains. They're going into our bedroom at the beach cottage.

We got home to find a message from William to see if we were interested in going to the Nats game with him, Mike and Freddy. We hadn't been to a game yet, so after a much needed nap, we met up with them at the Park 'n Ride and headed to the game. It was a very nice summer night -- much different from the past few Orioles games we'd been to (hot and humid).

Even Little Susie made an appearance at the end of the game:

The Nats lost to the Padres, but it was a nice evening and Soriano hit a home run to begin the Nats' first bat of the evening. A woman in the section next to ours was introducing herself to all the gay men her row. I happened to notice a bunch of groups of gay men at the game. Maybe they all came out for Free Visor Night? Anyway, for some reason, William was rather annoyed by this woman. She had that leather-strappy tan, bleached blonde hair pinned up, and seemed like the kind of person who would be really loud at a party. We tried to get William to introduce himself to her, just to be obnoxious, but he wouldn't.

Sunday, we had breakfast at Silver Diner (yum!) and John headed to his mom's to move the fleet of vehicles around in the various garages. Mike made off with the Chevelle, which was something John had in mind too, but got beaten to the punch.

This will be a short week as a bunch of us head to Montana on Thursday for Tiffy and Eric's wedding. I've only heard good things about the beauty of Montana and it will be great to meet Heidi and John's new baby, (Isabella) Izzy, as well.

Have a great week, everyone! I probably won't post again until we get back from the wedding with lots of pics, I hope!

11 Years and the Power of Words

I could go outside and take a more suitable, season appropriate photo, but then I'd have to download it, crop it, etc... 11 years (and a few days) ago, I brought Jackass home from a now defunct Gaithersburg dealership. He was shiny and new. Now, not so shiny, but still running pretty well. Oh, Jackass... you've been good to me. I'm hoping I can get a few more years out of ya!

My friend, Bill, the U of D English Department dude, has often emphasized the power of words. This is evident on his blog, as he definitely has a unique talent and flair for words. I try to emulate that in my blog at times. Not so deftly, but occasionally I throw out a phrase or two worthy of being considered a Rock Band name (hi, Bill!)

Recently, my words were written out of a bit of hurt, a little tongue-in-cheek, very sarcastic and definitely TMI. I need to keep that in check. Although I don't put up a disclaimer like some folks do on their blogs, not all content you see here at Chez Beans is gonna be sunny or kid-friendly. I often blog about my feelings at the time, but some things don't need to be public.

There's that old internet thing about how you can't read emotion in an e-mail (something like that). Although there are ways to convey frustration or happiness in words, as a writer, you have to assume the audience may not always read your text the way you intended. Everyone has their own interpretation. If you mean something to be funny, you almost have to state it implicitly. Especially if that person doesn't know you.

I apologize to those who were hurt or offended by anything I've written, recently or in the past year.