February is over in 2 hours, and my posting this month has been lackluster to say the least.  But since there is a tiny bit of time left, I’ll get one last yay/boo post in before it’s over.

• YAY!  I feel like I got a lot accomplished this weekend, even if most of it was mundane- cooking, groceries, laundry, cleaning, working out.  I live a glamorous life, yo.
• BOO!  The weekend over.  Already.  I really am missing that string of 3 and 4 day weekends I enjoyed earlier this month.
• YAY!  The past week was filled with lots of good eats- a donut sundae and fancy ding dong at Table 219 with good friends, surprisingly good deep dish pizza at Kylie’s (which was made even MORE delicious by the fact that we had a 50% coupon, so dinner was $12) and a pretty decent dinner I made for our landlord- pancetta-crusted halibut, mashed sweet potatoes with sage, roasted cauliflower with cilantro-pepita pesto and carmelized onion flatbread.  I am very full and happy.
• BOO!  I forgot to take pictures of the spread I made tonight.  Total fail.
• YAY! Even with some incongruities with the utilities (I may have forgotten one account was on auto-pay and double-paid), we successfully were able to up our savings this month.  Goal reached!
• BOO!  The trip back to California at the end of the month that I was looking forward to is looking like it’s not happening.  Utter sadness.
• YAY!  This Tuesday I get to skip out of work early because of a launch party for the new shopping experience we launched last month.
• BOO!  Tomorrow I have to skip out of work early to get a filling.  Fail.

In summary, February was stupid busy and March is promising to be even worse, but there are lots of good things coming down the pipeline.  I’ve got a new side project in the works- details coming soon- and this Friday, we have a brand new (and rather hilarious) blog-venture coming up.  I won’t share too many details now, but let’s just say it involves Lobsterfest and a very exciting first for our little blog- a real-deal giveaway!  (This is basically the blog equivalent of being able to wear big-girl panties.  We are now officially a big deal.  (Not really.))

Throughout February, Mike and I have been conducting an experiment in frugality.  If you’ve ever even talked to either one of us for about 2 miliseconds, you know that this is quite possibly the most challenging thing in the entire universe for us to do.  I mean, we are a lot more financially responsible than you’d expect- in the past year we’ve managed to eradicate credit card debt (the stuff we accumulated from fixing up our house in California and stockpiling an array of hobby-related expenses), we don’t have any student loans hanging over our head (thank god), and we do actually have a reasonable rainy day fund that will keep us covered in case of a sudden emergency- but honestly, neither of us are ever going to be poster children for the financially conservative (sorry Dad).  We like stuff- we like eating out, whether it’s the dope new hotdog place we discovered by accident last Friday night (seriously, I hate hot dogs and dug this place- it’s a total hole in wall, run by an old Asian man, decorated with random kid’s drawings and tiny plastic chairs, and they have frozen yogurt) or somewhere fancier; we like clothes and shoes; we like STUFF.  But even with those constraints, we’ve tried to be extra good this month and see if added savings can motivate us to be a little more responsible in general.

And so far so good- we have seen our savings grow, which feels good and is better for us in the long run.  And it hasn’t been TOO terribly difficult- we still ate out, though less, I concentrated on being responsible with grocery shopping (read: less “ooooh I NEED a block of pink Himalyan salt right now!” and LOTS of leftovers, which was made easier by the fact that I’m getting a whole chicken every other week from a local farm- I am getting GOOD at making that shit last); I still spent money on gym stuff, including signing up for Crossfit classes (which I need to do a post on by itself, because wow, talk about excercise that targets stuff I’m really comically bad at, like catching things and jumping), and we still saw the occasional movie and leave the house.

But sometimes when I think about ways to save money, all it does is make me think of things I want to buy.

So here is a list of stuff I’m currently obessing over.  Maybe listing it will have the opposite effect and make me hug my wallet instead.

• A good french oven.  I’ve been obsessed with braising things lately, and my craptastic stockpot isn’t thick enough to get the job done properly.  Obviously, my first choice would be an orange Le Crueset model, but I just can’t justify spending the money on it.
• Red hair.  I’m bored of being blonde again, but I’m hesitant to commit to the frequent touch-ups that dying my hair darker entails.  I’m thinking generous lowlights, but no streaks.  I’m trying to find a picture of exactly what I want, but haven’t had any success so far.
• Totally impractical, amaze-balls heels.  Like these.  Or these.  Or these.  Maybe it’s just because my google reader is jammed with fashion week slideshows, or because I’m totally obsessed with Kell on Earth right now, but my heart swoons over the though of some fantastic heels every time I walk by the display windows at Bloomie’s and Nordstroms.  Not that I would even be able to wear them anywhere ever because I walk so freaking much, but a girl can dream.
• A vacation.  This one doesn’t really fit in here because I am going to take one of these, but the details haven’t been worked out quite yet.  But come March or April, I’m going somewhere.  Maybe Iceland.  So I can sit in a hot spring, eat pickled fish and walk on a glacier.  (If anybody has any other cheap airfare/awesome vacation ideas, please share.)

• Our friend Ben sent me this picture because he knows how much I love fat Asian kids.  Seriously, I cannot look at this picture without squealing.
• A professional chef to come and teach me how to hack up a chicken.  You know how I said I’m getting whole chickens from a local farm every other week as part of a CSA?  Well, I totally love the chickens- this week I even got positive reviews from the boy when I used it to make a psuedo-chicken masala- but cutting them up into 8 or 10 pieces when you don’t want a whole roast chicken all at once is hard!  I’ve watched about 50 videos on YouTube telling me how easy and quick it is, but I still always end up in a full-on wrestling match at some point with one stupid joint or another.  If ONLY I had had some interest in this when we lived down the street from Mike’s mom, who can disassmble an entire chicken in about 30 seconds while wearing platform stilettos and telling you which plastic surgery procedure would make you look way more attractive.  Then the only cost would have been my self-esteem.

That’s everything I can think of at the moment.  There’s more, but I need to get back to work.  *Muah.

Ever since Christmas and the apparently cursed trip back, I’ve felt out of sorts.  I’m not good with change in general (it’s something I’m trying to get better at), but ever since that trip, I’ve felt like there have been too many things flying at me all at once and I hadn’t been able to catch a single one of them.  (This is a particularly good metaphor if you’ve ever actually seen me try to catch something- my lack of hand-eye coordination is not exaggerated.)

But then this weekend, sometime around Saturday evening/late afternoon, I suddenly felt like things were starting to get back to normal.  It was one of those odd moments when the tiny voice inside of me suddenly said “ah.”  Maybe it was the fact Mike, who had just picked up a book on mountain biking trails in Western Washington (at the LIBRARY no less- yes, we finally got freaking library books), was setting up the indoor bike trainer thing I got him for Christmas and I find something comforting in watching him tinker around with bikes, or maybe it was the fact that both of us had some actual free time during the past weekend thanks to some big projects at work finally wrapping up, but I finally felt like the universe was giving me a brief whisper of reassurance again.

It’s not that I think that everything is suddenly going to be easy from here on out- I’m never that optimistic.  (And truth be told, shortly after I had this nice sunny moment, we futilely tried to go see Avatar, which we didn’t know was sold out until after we had paid for parking.  Ugh.)  But I’m starting to feel on kilter again, and that says a lot.

And since I’m in such a fuzzy wuzzy mood tonight, here are some other things that make me happy.

Met a friend for breakfast on Saturday at Homegrown, where they give you a mini cup of oatmeal with every breakfast sandwich.  Mini!  Oatmeal!  What could be better?

Mike complimented my cooking.  In a public forum.  WTF.  (And in case you’re wondering what goes into these inspirational tacos, it’s leftover roast chicken simmered in store-bought salsa thrown in a corn tortilla with cheddar cheese and some so-old-they-might-have-been-icky leftover beans and grilled onions and pepper.  Yup, that’s what I have to do to get positive feedback around here.)

This graffiti by my bus stop makes me immeasurably happy.

Things I’m totally crushing on lately:

• I was excited when I finally got a Snuggie for Christmas (I think my brother was sick of me always talking about it, so he finally gifted me with one.  I’m wearing it RIGHT NOW.)  But then I saw THIS:

Hello perfect Valentine’s day present.

• When I was home for Christmas, I talked my dad into giving me his pressure cooker.  They don’t use it and I read one too many articles about how BPA in canned goods will kill me (or make me fat).  I was initially a little scared to actually use it- the idea of a kitchen appliance that could potentially blow up our house was a little bit intimidating- but then I made black bean soup from dried beans in 20 minutes and was instantly in love.

Tonight I used it to cook hulled barley (note: NOT that pussy pearled stuff).  Combined with collard greens, sweet potatoes, sausage and carmelized onions, I made the best dinner I’ve made in a week in 35 minutes.

So.  Freakin’.  Good.  Plus I have lunch for the rest of the week.

• Speaking of food, I have been obsessed with dates lately.  It’s a problem.  I can’t stop eating them.

I actually made a really good faux dessert the other day with chopped dates, cocoa powder and almond butter- it tasted like fudge and was less guilt-inducing than what I usually crave.  Unfortunately, while it’s completely delicious- it totally tastes like fudge- it also looks like poop.  So I can’t take a picture of it until I figure out how to make it look a little more presentable.

That’s all.  I’m off to bond with my Snuggie and eat some more poopie chocolate date surprise.  Night kids.

Stuff I accomplished this weekend:

• Slept in like a champion on Saturday- didn’t get out of bed until 11.  (Mike didn’t get out of bed til 1:30.  He wins, as usual.)
• Fought off an cold via LOTS of tea, generous helpings of Emergen*C and hot yoga.
• Caught up with Kate and Max at a new (to us) pizza joint, where the boys talked about cars, I ate an entire bowl of olives and Kate and I decided that pizza WITH apples is way better than pizza without apples.
• Woke up to run a 5k in 30 degree weather.  Ran the 5k.  Didn’t fall and scrape my knee like last year.  Victory.
• Scored enough Top Pot Donuts, granola bars and bananas at the goodie stations to provide Mike with breakfast for the entire week.
• Dragged Brooke out of the house for the first time since she had her kid to watch New Moon with Barrie and I.  Best part of the movie: two awkward teenage girls sitting next to us, one of whom wore her bicycle helmet into the theater and put it back on as soon as the movie was over, who were very obviously Team Jacob.  Their sighs and squeals provided the best possible soundtrack to the movie, which is basically cinema crack for teen girls.
• Knocked a big chunk of our Christmas List off thanks to my friend Cristina (yes, the one who introduced me to Caja Tio) and her awesome handmade teas!  I’m exploring some of the free samples she included as I type- check out her awesome tea at www.myteashelf.com.
• Bought supplies to make some food-based Christmas presents.

Things I have to do this week:

• Make said food-based Christmas presents.
• Prep for the dreaded drive to California- we’re leaving this Friday after my company Christmas party.  I still don’t know how on Earth mike convinced me to agree to this drive.  I hate roadtrips.  UGH.
• Participate in a yarn exchange at work !  I adore coworkers who knit.
• Somehow catch up on laundry.  I seriously doubt this is even possible.
• Figure out who is doing what while we’re in California.  I have a vague and fanciful dream of hosting some sort of get-together, be it brunch or an evening cocktail type thing, on Christmas Day at my parents’ house and just letting everybody we love stop by at some point.  (Not that I’ve ever announced these plans to anybody yet.)  Cross your fingers that this happens.
• Get in at least 5 work outs between now and when we leave.  Again, fingers crossed.

Eh, so this post is monotonous- sue me.  I’ll try and get some good inspiration going this week.

Wednesday went off successfully- we celebrated my birthday and I didn’t even break down in tears once!  Score.

It was actually a really good day.  Well, it didn’t start off very well- I missed my bus, which is something I NEVER do, after waiting 25 minutes for the next one, I saw some old lady reading the book that our friend Millie wrote and self-published!  I wish I had taken a picture, but it was early and I was trying to successfully hold my coffee without spilling, so I kept my arms to myself.  I like to think that that was God’s little birthday present to me.

Another unexpected birthday present- after reading the post about my inability to properly drink out of a coffee cup, my friend Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Chris, recommended that I hold the cup lower.  DUDE- this actually works.  I only spilled on myself once on Friday.  AMAZING.  (I understand how pathetic this whole situation is, but I’m genuinely thankful and excited.)  Just to be more environmentally friendly though, I did add an OXO Thermal mug to my Amazon wish list.  Just in case you’re curious.

The rest of the day went even better than missed busses, random book sightings and less spilled coffee.  Barrie organized some friends to come meet us for drinks at Black Bottle after work.  Besides delicious libations, I also learned about THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS TRADITION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

I present to you, Tio de Nadal.

It’s a magic Christmas log that poops treats when you hit it with a hot stick.  Seriously, I think I’m in love.  I KNOW I’m in love with the fact that Cristina, our Columbian friend who first told me about this amazing tradition, proceeded to sing sing the entire Caja Tio song in the middle of a yuppie wine bar.

Mike picked me up from happy hour and took me to my birthday dinner at Matt’s in the Market.  I was so excited about eating dinner there that I had bravely resisted snacking on a single thing during the 2 hours spent at Black Bottle.  Well, maybe I snuck a few bits of pork belly of Miles’ plate.  Perchance.

Dinner was awesome- even better than when we went there for brunch with Mary and Scott.

Flatbread with goat cheese, carmelized onions and proscuitto.  Sweet and salty heaven.

The best freaking scallops EVER.    I would sell my soul to the devil to learn how to get a crust on scallops like that.  Or maybe I could just take a cooking class.

Mike’s short ribs sitting on a bed of grits.  I warned him that he may not like grits, because he’s generally not a fan of mushy food (oatmeal, congee, porridge, polenta, etc).  I’m really not much of a grits fan- every time my dad has tried to make them they’ve seemed soggy and bland.  But dear god, these grits were so good- thick and substantial and literally exploding with bits of southern goodness. I stole some of his, even if they were basically sitting in a pool of beef juice.  (I tried to pick from the middle.)  When discussing the goodness of the grits with Barrie later, she was able to pinpoint the secret ingredient- butter.

So thanks to wine, butter and good friends, it was a good birthday.  We just won’t talk about next year yet.

It’s 11:14 right now.  In 46 minutes, I’ll be 29.  And I’m all kinds of twisted about it.

It’s nothing to be worried about- I tend to get a little antsy around birthdays no matter what.  It’s not that I think getting older is a bad thing, per se.  I mean, if you’ve had more than 3 conversations with me, I’ve probably told you about how I am seriously looking forward to being old- my current plan involves having ridiculously long gray hair, wearing large flowered hats, living in a house on a beach boardwalk somewhere with my bff Mary where we will drink vodka out of teacups on our porch every afternoon while we heckle beachcombers.  I’m actually looking forward to getting old- really, really old though, the kind of old where you can walk around and be overtly eccentric without caring about society’s opinion on your slowly deteriorating mental state.

It’s all that stuff in the middle that freaks me out.

So tomorrow I turn 29.  I keep telling people that I think that 29 is way scarier than 30.  30 is a beginning, a new start, a grand adventure.  29 is “Oh crap my twenties are almost over and what do I have to show for it?”  I mean, yes, I’ve accomplished a decent amount, I guess.  But nothing mind-blowing.  Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to accomplish anything mind-blowing.  At this point, I’d be totally happy if I just felt like I knew where I was going to live in 12 months.  Here?  Somewhere else in Seattle?  Back to California?  Somewhere else entirely?  I’ve given up on planning for that stuff.

Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  Not a bone-crushing, soul-eating black cloud or anything dramatic like that, more like a nagging poke in the back of my mind.  I’ll live.  I have good friends here who are taking me out for cocktails tomorrow, good friends back home who already took me out for dinner during our Thanksgiving trip, good parents who sent me an awesome jacket (thanks Mom and Dad!) and a good husband who knows that when I get all sad and melodramatic and such, there is only one thing to do-

Mock me.

Love.

(I’m totally singing the crap Celine Dione song right now.  Wasn’t Meatloaf in that video?)

But yeah, I’ve been in California for 15 hours.  And, like always, I immediately feel like I never left.  Trust me, I dig Seattle, but there are some things you can’t get up there.

Like this being the first text message you see when you turn your phone on:

Or this greeting you at the airport:

Or going HERE straight from said airport:

And eating this for dinner:

Yeah, some things about California are just GOOD.

Note: I am not technically on vacation until about 5:00 today, and am just staring at the warm sunshine bitterly while having a rather hellish work from home day.  On the bright side, thanks to my trusty Google Reader, I was alerted to the existence of THIS today:

Dude.  It’s $250 worth of the BEST eyeliner known to mankind.  And it’s a collector’s set- which means that somewhere, somebody is a PROFESSIONAL EYELINER COLLECTOR.  They go to eyeliner galas and auctions and buy eyeliner that appreciates in value.  THIS is obviously what I was meant to do with my life.  People, if you love me, pool your money together, email other readers, buy me this and start my new life as a freaking true eyeliner afficionado.  Trust me, I would be REALLY good at it.  I promise.

Warning: this post is insanely lame and bordering on emo.  But there is a picture of a baby at the end.

We’ll be back in California in 13 hours!  I do have to work a few days from home, but somewhere in there I have 5 days off in a row.  In the meantime, the following things are going through my mind:

• I really hate packing.
• I don’t like any of my clothes today.
• I have no desire to work tomorrow.  I will, however, make a valiant effort to be somewhat productive.  Somewhat.
• I am THIS close to finishing my only knitted Christmas gift this weekend.
• I want to see about 100 people while we’re in town, but I have yet to set any actual dates besides Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and dinner at Animal with Mary, Scott and Derrik.  This could result in either a) an extremely relaxed, easy-going trip home or b) me running around like a maniac for a solid week.  We’ll see which happens.
• Mary tried to tell me that I am required to attend our 10-year reunion on Saturday.  Current forecast: slight dread with a high probability of making an ass out of myself.
• Instead of successfully packing for a trip to Orange County I am watching last week’s epidsode of The Real Housewives of Orange County.  I wonder if this is a modern-day pathetic fallacy?
• Slade Smiley is the king of all douchebags.
• I organized my yarn today.  This was a MAJOR accomplishment.
• Last week I had a check-up and managed to fall off the exam table.  I’m still limping and I have a giant bruise on my left arm.  It’s a good look.
• And the happy news of the week- my friend Brooke had her baby on Thursday and we went to visit them today.  I successfully held the baby and didn’t even drop her. ( This is a MAJOR accomplishment.)  Check out how cute she is.  Also, check out how cute her hat is.  It’s cute because I made it:

Here is Seattle, we are in full-on winter mode.  It’s rainy.  It’s gray.  And it’s COLD.  The local ski resorts are already open, which is evidently kind of unheard of around here.  We’ve turned on our heater and we’ll eventually learn how to program the piece of crap thermostat.  I’ve whipped out the Northface jacket and Mike has started talking about finding a warm jacket FOR REALS this year.  (We even made a shopping trip on Sunday, and Mike got a bright blue vintage Lacoste windbreaker instead.)

I’m not going to lie, winter up here is not easy for me.  I don’t have much to compare it to, except for the great Snowpocalypse of 2008, which resulted in us being stranded on top of our hill and spending Christmas sans any family.  But it’s really not the threat of massive snowfall that freaks me out- it’s the fact that I’m going to be drinking hot Americanos until May, that I need to buy some special running hear so I can run outside and not get frostbite and the fact that no matter how many pairs of socks I wear, my toes will go numb whenever I am wearing cute shoes outside for more than 15 minutes.  (Okay, that last one isn’t COMPLETELY Seattle’s fault- I do have the worst circulation ever.  I suffer from Raynaud’s Phenomenon.  Or at least I self-diagnosed myself with it.)  It probably doesn’t help that work has been crazytown the past couple of weeks and doesn’t promise to lighten up any time soon, plus I’m staring down the barrel of my 29th birthday in a couple of weeks, which sounds terribly ominous to me right now.

So when I get down, I usually find it’s best to focus on the happy things.  Thankfully I am very easily entertained, so it doesn’t take too much to break me out of a funk for a few moments.  Here are some of the things that have de-funkified me in recent days:

• I found the world’s best sweater tights on sale at Nordstrom’s Rack yesterday.  Seriously- I wore them today and felt like a stuffed animal was hugging my legs.  So happy.  I really want to go buy an argyle pair, but I’m not sure I can pull those off.
• My co-worker’s twins, who were born 7 weeks early, are doing really well and rocking the awesome elf hats I made them.  Talk about swagga’:

• I absolutely love the boots I got last week.  What’s better winter therapy than boots?  I certainly don’t know.

• Even though I have to bundle up when I go outside, I can still wear awesome headbands with giant rosettes:

• The holidays are coming, which means that I can start theoretical shopping for friends and family.  We haven’t actually budgeted out Christmas presents yet, but I think I already found the best gift ever for a certain bovine-loving domestic goddess:

• The holidays also mean trips back home!  We’ll be in Socal Nov 23-30 for Thanksgiving.  It actually proves to be fairly calm, with both of Mike’s parents out of town this year.  I’m still trying to find out a way to for the Bach family to gather and bond at some point- maybe we’ll actually have a tension-free meal for once.
• Speaking of the Bachs, Amy sent me this picture today and it absolutely made my freaking day:

I cannot think of a better note to end on.  Good night.