What Would Jen Do

Archive for the ‘love’ Category

today we went out for lunch to joe’s farm grill. I’ve been meaning to go there and unfortunately we waited until after the place was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, so the place was packed. I’m pretty much in love with this place. I want to eat my next ten meals there. The menu is awesome and the atmosphere is even better. We already have plans to go back next week for breakfast. WAFFLES AND RIBS!!!! And hit up the produce stand. There is also a housing development out there that we have decided we must live in.

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Today I’m baking cookies again! This time it’s peanut butter and milk chocolate morsel swirls. I hope these turn out better than the stupid oatmeal raisin.

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We also picked up my engagement ring today. I had anxiety all week about it. whether or not I really liked it and if it was the ring I really should have gotten and what if it looked stupid with the diamond I picked………… it was all pretty irrational because the ring looks awesome. It’s pretty much the ring i imagined in my head if i were to ever get an engagement ring.  and then i got one, so that worked out.  it’s a size 3.5 and it’s still too big, i’m going to wait to see if i still need to get it sized after the wedding band is next to it. They resize your ring for free for two years or something, i think that’s because they think people get fat after they get married.

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I’m also supposed to go shopping next weekend for my wedding dress. It’s not going to be some big white frilly number. It’s going to be more like an evening gown or bridesmaid dress. and NOT strapless if i can help it.

Still going strong with the cookie baking.  I finally got good at it and know how long to bake them and what size to make them. And it takes me practically no time at all.  Last weekend was coconut chocolate chip and I’ve had a request for oatmeal raisin this week.

Spring cleaning is coming late this year.   We’re going to start working on organizing the house and getting rid of some furniture and misc crap we don’t need.  I still have wicker furniture from the 90′s hiding in the guest room.   Anyone want a wicker nightstand, or shelves????  Queen sized comforters anyone?   Would anyone like to buy a smith cage or a recliner?

The gym has been overrun with kids since school got out, they are mostly going to the pool or kids camps but they are ALL OVER the locker room.  and there’s really nothing more annoying than a group of teen girls all texting and giggling about boys while standing right where you need to be.   but one good thing about school being out is clear roads and my car getting 33mpg this past week.

oh and also, Icey and I decided to get married.

no srsly, I mean it this time.

I guess you can’t win with me because Fred the neurotic vertical circular swimmer now just lays at the bottom of his tank and blends in with the glass beads.  and that makes me mad too because i spend half my day wondering if he’s dead.   Every half hour or so he swims around and says hello and then goes straight back to laying on the bottom.  

I hope everyone had a good mothers day, including those of you with the four legged fur babies.   I had a tasty steak dinner made especially for me, with roasted potatoes and fresh green beans.  it’s time like that when having a boyfriend who can cook, really pays off.  We also got these tiny chocolate lava cakes that were TO DIE FOR.   especially when i saw that this tiny little cake that was about two inches around and high was 450 calories.   It was worth it.

I recently bought ANOTHER roomba, because again, I’m a glutton for punishment and did not learn from the two previous roomba’s that I do not have good luck with them.  I gave Roomba technology a few years to catch up and decided to try again.   Plus I got it cheap at Target.   It’s by no means replacing my Dyson, it’s just for quick pick ups, mostly on the tile kitchen floor so i don’t have to drag out the big vacuum.   And so far so good.  

What’s really fun is putting dog cookies on it and seeing who will get them.  The voo has no fear so he just takes them and runs. mojo is terrified of the roomba and you can see it in her eyes that this is the worst thing to EVER happen to her.   A cookie she cannot get.    So now when you turn the Roomba on, Voo looks at it to see if there are any cookies on it.  there was a sticker on it that said they welcome software programmers to make their roomba’s do something fun.  I think what Icey needs to do it make it into a remote control roomba and send drinks to me on it.

 The other day I thought I saw this ultimate fighter at my gym.  I’m sure it’ s just wishful thinking but if i see that guy again, i’m getting closer, just to make sure.  

We had a great anniversary, or at least I did. I took the day off and bought sheets for our present to one another, which is a king sized bed that we don’t have yet. But I wanted to be prepared for when it finally arrives. It gets made when you order it (fancy). 400 and 600 thread count, i’m going big time. Nothing left to do but go for the 1000 thread count next. It’s a super thick mattress and half the sheets I wanted to buy wouldn’t have fit it. So we still don’t have any flannel sheets, which are our favorites.

I also finally found a nintendo DS, it’s blue and fun and I got it at Wal-mart. Watch out, I’m busy playing Brain Age and am going to be real smart soon.

We went out to lunch and then we went to AJ’s and bought some nice steaks, potatoes and asparagus for dinner. I got a tiny little bottle of champagne for myself and a wee bundt cake. It was called a bundtlet and it was very tasty.

We’re going out for dinner next Friday to keep celebrating to a restaurant we’ve been meaning to try for a really long time. It has something like 10 tables and is ‘french fusion’. I may have to buy a new outfit.

Today the dogs get groomed, FINALLY and tomorrow we’re hopefully going to join the gym. I am still gym scared, but as with anything, once I get comfortable, i’m fine. I just have to form a new habit with going to the gym and trying something new and learning not to be afraid of scary new things that are out of my safety zone.

Last week it was so hot we had to turn on the AC and for the past two days it’s been effing freezing in this house, we can’t win. I had a fire going last night and am wearing a sweat shirt right now.

Also most wordpress themes don’t work properly in internet explorer.  Apparently you all should be using Mozilla anyway, according to popular geeks, anyway.   That’s why if you’re viewing this in IE then the sidebar isn’t’ a sidebar anymore but a bottom or part way down the page bar.

out of all the guys I’ve ever gone out with who have the nickname Icey and were born in December and had a black dog named mojo, i like you the most.

I know you are confused, is this WWJD? this is in honor of my boyfriend, because it’s our 6 year anniversary this month and that makes me moist in my bad place.  Don’t worry, once February, or possibly even the day after our anniverary, I’ll go back to girly stuff.

I’ve been meaning to add some music to my page and I finally remembered to resize the box so that I can have it in my sidebar. Of COURSE it’s Bon Jovi to start, but it’s not your ordinary hair metal band Bon Jovi. It’s the same music player people use on MySpace so of course it’s apt to stop working for no reason and stutter.

Much to do this weekend. I got all my tax refunds back and momma needs a new bed, maybe some shoes, has to pay rent even tho she thinks she should live here for free, and has lots of misc shopping to do. And I need to get these hairy beasts in for a grooming because the big one is walking around dropping tufts of hair all over my house and his face still stinks.

The place where I had my first date (it was a date, get over it) with my boyfriend was torn down.

Of all the quirky dives that once called Tempe home, there was only one with a Beer in the Face Club.

That was good ol’ Bandersnatch, where people actually paid waitresses to commit the greatest alcohol foul of all time.

The iconic brew pub came to life in 1975, the brainchild of five friends who either made or salvaged just about everything that went into the bar. It was dark, gritty. A mass of brick and weathered wood meant to look like a Middle Earth watering hole.

It even had a fantastical name, based on a character in Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky.

For nearly three decades, Bander, as it affectionately came to be known, was one of Tempe’s most popular hangouts. Everyone, from Arizona State University students to police officers to seasoned townies, mingled in those meager digs at Fifth Street and Forest Avenue.

It had a laid-back vibe. A sand volleyball court. And beer. Lots of glorious, handcrafted beer, produced in-house at one of the state’s first microbreweries.

If walls could talk, they would tell stories that could make the most frumious of Bandersnatches blush. It was just that kind of place.

But the heralded Bander eventually lost its appeal. Some blame it on the smoking ban. Others the weak economy following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Still others say Bander and its compatriots couldn’t compete with the chain stores and swanky new developments that flooded into the Mill Avenue District.

Whatever it was, people stopped voting with their feet.

Bandersnatch untapped its kegs in late 2003. It opened for a few game days last year but then went back behind lock and key.

Now, the walls are tumbling down to make way for an 11-story Marriott Residence Inn and parking garage.

It’s easy to mourn such a passing. Bander was one of the last surviving dive bars, the embodiment of everything Tempe once was.

And that’s gone now. Maybe forever.

Then again, maybe not. If anything, Bander is a state of mind, an embrace of the offbeat, the unsanitary and the off-kilter. People take that with them no matter where they go to drink.

I don’t quite remember that place the way they described it. We called it BanderS, I had no idea that they had a brewery. A sand volleyball court?  where was that?  and this beer in the face club………….?

maybe I was drunk most of the time that I was there or maybe we were just the final generation to go there.  But I remember the one stall bathroom, the outside seating, (i think i sat inside once) having our first and second music for a cures there, watching my friends bands play and parking at the police station across the street.

either way, it doesn’t matter, I spent 5 or so years of my life going there. And funny story about the date. he’s all ‘there’s this place called Bandersnatch………………..’ apparently i pretended like i’d never heard of the place, but I know for a fact I sat there and said I’d been there before. it’s not ladylike to say. “oh hell yeah i go there all the time I know tons of people there” and it’s not my fault that everyone i ever met showed up. on our first date. that was pretty much the last time he tried to impress me, what with thinking he’d been set up and all. right, because i made secret phone calls in the bar, having never left your side, to all my friends “hey i’m on a first date, come crash it”

you must not have been too bothered, it’s been 5.899999999999 years and you’re still here.

thank you.

We played poker the other night and my boyfriend got a ROYAL FRUSH!  i don’t think enough oohing and ahhing was done.  I should have taken a picture.

I got my ’24 chair’ that Icey bought me for my birthday.  Thanks to Phrainq and his big truck we were able to pick it up Saturday.  I  need Voodoo to spend a little more time in it, wearing it in for me.   I can’t believe that when I was picking it out,  my biggest concern was whether or not my dog would fit into it. 

i am VERY excited about our halloween costumes this year.   It was something we thought of last year but didnt’ have time to put together.  it’s definitely not a last minute type of costume.  It’s HI-larious and i swear if anyone else shows up dressed like us……  

In the 5.5 years we’ve been together, Icey and I have been apart approximately 1.5 nights.    I’m not bitter at all about the .5 part, it’s the 1 full night that I’m probably going to be angry about for the rest of my life.   when you get married, do not expect my boyfriend to spend the night in VEGAS with you for your bachelor party.  EVER.  it won’t happen, it’s not a good enough excuse for me to be all alone in my big house with scared dogs who don’t understand why their daddy is gone.    and do you really want me mad at you for that?

so in about 6 months he’s leaving me again, this time for multiple nights, for work. But the worst part is, it’s VEGAS again. Vegas is taunting me.   Pretty soon i’m going to stop believing that all these things just ‘happen to be in Vegas’.

it’s almost my birthday and i’ll be three to the three and phrainq is pretty happy that i’ll be a whole number older than him again.    some friends brought me an early birthday cake over the weekend because i love CAKE!    i’m really hoping phrainq bakes me a spongebob or winnie the pooh cake.

 the tiny dad was busted for DUI.  Icey says he was probably drinking Coronitas.

Every day I Tivo, How Clean is Your House? I had to stop eating when I was watching it because it often makes me want to throw up. I sometimes sit there with my mouth hanging open because I literally cannot believe how some people live. The one I watched today was especially bad. He said he hadn’t cooked in his kitchen in 8 years, but he had old food caked onto cooking pans that he admitted had to be about 8 years old. there were so many bugs and so much trash and mold that they actually went in wearing masks, to clean out the house. his house was literally making him sick. his headboard has E-coli (poops!) on it and his faucets were covered in salmonella. there was literally no room to walk in his house .
he said the decline of his house was his long term relationship ending. he just kind of gave up. i think that’s what would happen to icey if we broke up. i keeeed i keeeed.

Cat is gradumajating from collige next week, HOOORAY!!