I want a pedicure, a haircut and this dress.  Or at least a dress close to that.  Today I went to two malls and could not find a little black dress. The stores are mostly into spring things right now and those don’t fit my vision.  Either that or they didn’t offer much in dresses at all.   I have one more mall to try this weekend, and i really wanted to avoid the mall on a weekend.

House painting got pushed off a few days.   which in the end has worked out better for us because we apparently need more time to get ready for them.   We are always busy doing something, but for the life of me I cannot tell you what we spend our time doing.

Icey went out to Phrainq’s bachelor party Friday night and i’m not normally the type of girl who gets sad, lonely and bored when she’s left alone.  But Friday night I got sad, bored, lonely AND pouty, so i went to bed at like 8pm.

My dogs stink.  Anyone want to come give them a bath?

This is a sous vide.  Technically it’s a sous vide cooking controller.

French for “under vacuum”^, sous-vide is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. Unlike cooking in a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 60°C or 140°F).

The gist of this is that you put your food into a vacuum sealed bag and cook it in a water bath.  The cooking controller we have works in conjunction with our crock pot.   We converted our crock pot, temporarily into a sous vide.

This is the type of vacuum bag we used.

look, the bags even say sous-vide!

These are ribs.  Two days before we made steak.  Which does sound weird, but stay with me.   Here is the vacuumed sealed meat inside the water in the crock pot.

The crock pot plugs into the sous vide controller and the temperature of the crock pot is controlled by the thermometer attached to the sous vide.   You set the sous vide for the precise temperature that the meat is supposed to be cooked at.  The sous vide’s job is to maintain that temperature over a long period of time.   I believe these ribs were in here for about a day and a half.  The steaks we made were in about 6 hours.

When the meat is done it will need to be ‘finished’.   the steaks went into the cast iron for a minute or two on each side and the ribs went into the oven with some more bbq sauce for about 10 minutes.

these ribs FELL off the bone and almost all the fat that had been on them had melted away.  The steaks were probably the best steaks I ever had.  The meat is tender, it’s perfectly and evenly cooked the whole way thru.

Happy Valentines Day!  We don’t celebrate valentines day in our house.  Which is probably obvious seeing the pictures below.

But I did buy a valentines cake from the grocery store, only because I love cake and it was cheap!

Day two of this awesome migraine I have.

I think every weekend should be mandatory three days.  There are so many things going on right now that i’ve forgotten what a proper weekend is like.  Yesterday we had the termites taken care of.  It took about 4 hours and it looked like a pretty easy process. It was just one guy who drilled holes about every 6 inches inside the garage and around the house.  then he filled them with poison and sealed them up and he was done.

Today we get to put the garage back together which is actually pretty exciting for me because i’ve been itching to organize and clean up that garage.    I’m going thru another phase where ‘omg i have to try and fix and clean and make things nice around here’, so the garage being such a big project should be enough to satisfy me for a while.

I think next we’re going to call around and get some people out for estimates on painting this house.  I sure they’d prefer doing that before summer.

Last night I had to get dressed in clothes that are not pajamas and go out in public with real live people.   Icey thinks it’s important for me to get out of the house once in a while and talk to people who are not my dogs.   Pffffft.    We went out to dinner for his little bro’s birthday and while it was nice to see everyone that showed up (Hi Erich) I was bummed that a lot of the people I would have liked to see on my one night out a month, couldn’t make it.

Yesterday when Icey was trying to do our taxes and went online to get our mortgage info, the website said we owed almost $800 in late fees!!!   We can’t possibly have late fees, we are on auto pay.   One quick phone call to the mortgage company and we found out it was an error on the website, those fees weren’t even showing up in the banks system.  ONLY on line!   so it’s nothing for us to worry about.  WHEW!!!

Petsker is slowly but surely gaining momentum.  It’s finally starting to show up on Google searches and the Twitter site has a lot of pet friendly followers.    If this site takes off then I can quit my job and do that full time instead.

Operation termite should be taking place next weekend, we just need to sign the paperwork and then clean around the perimeter of the inside of the garage and the outside of the house.  If one good thing comes out of these termites it will be the cleaning that has to go along with it.

Yesterday when I got home from work Oprah was doing her cage free chicken show and I had to to turn it off really fast, because I didn’t want to relive what i’ve seen before.

About two years ago I accidentally saw less than a minute of a video showing the condition caged chickens live in and almost threw up.

I borrowed this from another site

Cage-Free Systems

Because of public opposition to battery cage confinement, many egg producers are switching to cage-free systems. While these systems generally offer hens a higher level of animal welfare than do battery cage systems, the mere absence of cages doesn’t necessarily ensure a high level of welfare.

Most cage-free hens live in very large flocks that can consist of many thousands of hens who never go outside. However, unlike battery hens, cage-free hens are able to walk, spread their wings and lay their eggs in nests. Cage-free egg producers who obtain certification under the better welfare standards programs must provide perching and dust-bathing areas for the birds as well. These advantages are very significant to the animals involved.

While I don’t believe that cage free hens are running around smiling I do believe their quality of life is higher.   And that’s why I will spend double on cage free eggs.  I also cannot bring myself to buy white eggs anymore, but that’s a whole different quirk.

Don’t even get me started on the whole organic happy meat thing, i’m working on it and that’s another battle.

My house has termites, which apparently a lot of houses do.   And that Termite guy who randomly showed up is coming back tomorrow so we can sign the paperwork to get this taken care of.   bye bye money.   There are definitely other things I had in mind for that money.

So while I cannot buy the cheaper eggs, I cut corners everywhere else that I could.  I either cut or completely eliminated some bills and am now not only thinking twice about purchases, i’m thinking three times.  This year is about saving money, making things happen, taking care of business (figuratively and literally) and maybe a little bit of self improvement.  and so far so good.

Also today I totally repaired a leaky sink with my own two hands

Yesterday was the first day in almost two weeks that I felt good enough to actually do things.    I made breakfast, we did some shopping and then my husband cut my hairs!  After an at home Mani/Pedi it was like a spa day for free.  

The beautiful monogrammed silverware that we got turned out to be pieces of crap.  The knives started rusting after one time thru the dishwasher and slowly the other pieces started joining them.   That’s what you get when you order online and can’t see or touch the silverware in person.   I won’t be making that mistake again unless it’s from a well respected brand.   The set was easily returnable since we got it from Amazon and then we set out to buy a whole new set.  I’m apparently very silverware picky (who knew) and two malls and five stores later I finally found a set I love.   Lots of silverware comes in a service for 5 set and I just like to have more silverware than that on hand.  The one I ended up getting has service for 8 and even came with serving utensils.   fancy.

Over the weekend my husband realized there is not a good online community for asking questions about your pets.  Or if there is we couldn’t find it.  There are some boards that are run by ‘veterinarians’ but they aren’t checked often.  If you have a quick question or need advice from other pet lovers, it was hard to find a place to go.    Or maybe you just want to talk about your pet and share your experiences.    

So he created Petsker.  http://petsker.com/     It’s brand new, one day old and there’s not a lot going on, yet.   Petsker even has its own Twitter page  http://twitter.com/petsker

we finally got some rain and real weather and even a tornado watch a few miles from my house. it’s not like a Wizard of OZ tornado or anything.   But we’ve gotten over 2 inches of rain in a couple of days which is a big deal because we get like 7 in an entire year.  if that.  so everything floods and the washes fill up because we’re just not set up for lots of rain.   some jackass always thinks they can drive across a wash because it doesn’t look deep.  but the water runs fast and they’ll get swept away and then they end up on top of their car waiting for a helicopter to come rescue them.   then the news always makes fun of them.   it’s like common AZ knowledge, do not cross a flooded wash.

I have been sick for like a week and I swear every other day it’s worse. I start feeling better and think I’m good to go and then the next day I’m feeling sick again. I cannot miss any more work, I missed last Thurs and Fri.  I went to the Dr last week to make sure it wasn’t bronchitis (it’s not, at least not yet) The Dr. gave me antibiotics to fill ‘just in case’ and I’m right on the verge of filling them in the hopes that whatever it is i have goes away.   Not a smart move, I know.  I’ll wait and see if my snot turns colors first! 

As soon as Icey started feeling better he started doing all kinds of things around the house.  He replaced the garage door opener mechanism, like the whole little box thing that controls the garage door.  Ours was old and super cheap and decided that it wasn’t going to close anymore unless you used the control inside the garage.   so there was a lot of pushing the button and then running out of the garage and jumping over the sensors so they wouldn’t see you and then stop the door from closing.   or just getting out of your car, going back into the garage, hitting the button, going inside and then using the front door.  pain in the butt, but that’s done.

right in the middle of that a man walks up to the house and says “Icey?” and he says yes, and the guy says he’s here from terminix. and Icey is like i didn’t call you.   and the guy says i talked to you last night. turns out he wanted a guy by the same name one street over but the same house number.  but as luck would have it, we needed a termite guy and were fixing to call one anyway!!!  so he came back after that call and gave us a quote.

then Icey replaced the kitchen faucet which had decided to constantly leak and then replaced the track lighting in the kitchen which burned out bulbs in about 4 days. if it still burns out bulbs then we need a real electrician out.

one year ago this week I started working from home.

that was the first day when I went to take a picture of my work station and Voo ran by.

my house has been a sick house since last year.   Icey came down with bronchitis and then just when I thought i’d escaped it, I came down with something.  I don’t have bronchitis (so says the dr who gave me a prescription for antibiotics ‘just in case’) I just have a cold or something x 10.  It’s just enough to keep me at home on the couch feeling slightly miserable and full of snot.   So i’ve been home sick for two days and will probably spend the entire long weekend still sick on the couch.  can someone come clean my kitchen please?