Texas Vaca

So we had a great week in Houston with our good friends S and S!  We ate a ton of awesome (and cheap!) food and visited the zoo, science museum, Battleship Texas, and the San Jacinto monument.  Best deal of the week?  St. Arnold's Brewery.  It's the oldest craft brewery in Texas and they do tastings and tours every day at 3:00.  For just $7, they pour you 4 beers and you can bring your own food into the beer hall - good times!  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

 Me and IB after visiting the Houston Natural Sciences Museum.

 IB, me, S, and S at the Houston Zoo.

 IB and me at St. Arnold's Brewery.

 The tap wall!

 San Jacinto monument.

S, S, and me posing as sailors in front of Battleship Texas.

Thanks to our friends for being awesome hosts, and to their dog Pepper for not biting me (too much!).  :)

Everything's bigger...

...in Texas!  Heading there tomorrow to visit our good friends S & S who moved to Houston last summer.  Texas is probably one of the states I could have gone my whole life without visiting, but IB and I love our friends so off we will go! 

We don't have a detailed agenda, but I do know we wil be visiting the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences - I like to compare!  ;)  Looking at their website, I'm surprised to see you have to pay extra to view their special exhibitions.  Boo to that!  I also know we're going out for steaks one night and Mexican food another...mmmm.  And we're going to visit the Houston Zoo which should be fun.  Most importantly though, we're going to go tour two local breweries - yay!  Can't go wrong with a day full of beer tastings.

I'll write a full report when we return.  Yee-haw, peeps!

Happy birthday (month) to me!

Those of you who know me in real life know that I LOVE my birthday.  I really, really, really love it.  So much so that only celebrating it for one day seems...lame I guess.  So, I celebrate my birthday the entire month of February.  Yes, I realize this makes me a brat and an attention whore, and no I absolutely don't care!

I have gone on about this so long that it has become a competition between one of my friends and IB to see who can wish me a happy birthday first.  To IB's dismay, my friend has won every single year.  This year, he wished me a happy birthday on January 26th.  Frankly, I think this is fabulous since February only has 28 days...I deserve a few days at the end of January to even my celebration up with those who have birth months with 31 days.  :)

Well...I'm pretty sure this is the most self-serving post I've ever written.  Nice...  ;)

Holidays 2010 - recap (part dos)

The other friends that came home for the holidays were S and S.  They moved to Houston in August - which I've bitched about before - and we miss them terribly.  Boo Texas.  :(  They were here for a week so we got to spend some quality time with them as well.  They were also in attendance at our Christmas Eve open house, and we met up with them at Fathead's - their fave Pittsburgh restaurant - the day after Christmas to hang out.

My Dad's birthday is during the week between Christmas and New Year's so we had fun celebrating that at our favorite place to drink in the city...Hough's.  GREAT beer selection!  Only one of the S's could make it to this party...and we missed the other one!  My Dad says he didn't get drunk...I'll let you be the judge.  :)



We did get one really great pic of my Dad and his girls before he got tipsy.  Love it...

Then it was time for NY Eve - again hosted at our house.  Lots of Irish carbombs and beer for all!  IB and I have never been happier to see one year go and ring in the next - hooray for 2011!  S and S stayed with us that night, and when they were heading home on January 1, I managed to refrain from handcuffing them in my basement, dungeon-style.  It was hard.



Holidays 2010 - recap (part uno)

I promised in my last post I'd give you a recap of Christmas 2010.  I wasn't in the best mood going into it.  Thanksgiving Day hit me kind of hard, and I was in a funk from there out.  But, it helped immensely that 3 of my BFFs were home over the holidays - I miss them all to death and seriously considered keeping them here against their will...no one ever really goes in my basement...but in the end I let them go back to their respective homes.  Hopefully they'll all move back here of their own volition some day!  :)

First, my friend K came home for a week from Nashville.  K and I have been friends since we were about 14/15 years old, went to the same college, were roommates for a year, and I adore her.  She hasn't lived in the 'Burgh since she left for the Big Apple to go to grad school around 2001 (I think).  We were in the choir together in both high school and college, and we love to go karaoke-ing with our friend B anytime we can.  Me, K, and B were like the Three Stooges in high school and we always have a great time when we get together.  Here's the 3 of us singing our anthem - Bohemian Rhapsody (it's been a tradition since riding around in K's parent's Lumina listening to the Wayne's World soundtrack...on tape), and then K, me, and my BFF C.

I also got to spend the following day with K putzing around "my" museum and having lunch.  Then she stopped by our annual Christmas Eve open house the following evening. It was great to spend so much time with her!  Typically she only gets to come home for a few days at a time, so it was nice having her here for a whole week.  Our open house was fun as usual - lots of beer and wine, food, and laughter.  We exchange gifts with my Dad and G on Christmas Eve too, so that's always fun.

That last one is my little cousin A - remember him?  The cutest kid ever?  He's at an age where he's a lot of fun.  He decided that he was going to take our one dog Harley for a walk later in the evening - she was so good with him!  She pulls me around like a ragdoll, but she just kind of stood there while A had the leash...too cute!  Harley and Heaven were completely exhausted by the party, and passed out on top of one another at the end of the night.  So adorable it makes my heart hurt!

The next morning, IB and I exchanged gifts together before heading over to my mom's for Christmas dinner.  IB spoiled me as usual with a gorgeous diamond ring, a new diamond pendant, a spa day, a new wine fridge, and a bunch of other stuff.  I got him a variety of gifts, including tickets to go see Cirque du Soleil: TOTEM when it's in Pittsburgh this spring, but his big gift this year was a new TV for manland.  I can't even explain to you how excited he is about this, so I'm not even going to try!  Then it was off to my mom's where I was spoiled some more - 'cause that's how we do it!  It was an emotional day for me - really hard not to think about the fact that I should have been sitting there with a big old belly instead of drinking mimosas with my sisters, but, on the other hand, the mimosas did help!  N and J got me an awesome bracelet that is in memory of the Shamrock - it's has charms on it that spell out the word "wish".  Indeed.  <3

Festivus...it's for the rest of us!

If you don't know about Festivus...well, where the fuck have you been?

Our friend P started hosting Festivus years ago and it's always been a good time!  We air our grievances, gather round the pole, and exchange gag gifts.  The only thing we never do is the feats of strength...I think it's because, even though we all may be a bunch of drunken idiots, at least we're smart enough to know that wrestling whilst intoxicated = danger!!!

Festivus has been on hiatus for a few years, but P (and K!) brought it back with a vengeance this year!  When we were young, we always used to celebrate on Festivus (12/23) but now that we're old, Festivus was more reasonably hosted on a Saturday night.  Good thing too since we didn't get home until 3:30 in the morning.  Whoops!

To all of you, on this most happy of days, I wish you a...

You're welcome.

New England (part 2) - NH, ME and MA again

So, to continue my recap of our New England vaca, after spending a few days at the Cape, we headed North to spend the rest of the week at Aunt S and Uncle S's house in New Boston, NH.  They have such a cute place!  And it's in the country in a great setting...the only problem was their cat Minky.  We have met before, and he never was the friendliest cat, but he used to just hide when we were there.  However, Minky is now 16 years old and is getting cantankerous in his old age.  He apparently really had a strong aversion to me and stalked me for the first day we were there, terrorizing me by chasing me around the dining room table and cornering me upstairs so I couldn't come down.  Normally I would just ignore him, but Uncle S - whom Minky LOVES - showed us the big puncture wounds on his hand where Minky had turned on him the week prior, so I was cautious!  Too bad too, because he's a pretty cat and I really wanted to pet him.  Cujo cat (as he became known throughout the week) seemed to be fine with me by the time we left.  :)

Since Aunt S and Uncle S were using our trip to visit them as some much needed vacation time for themselves as well, we decided to do some day trips.  The first trip started out by driving into Maine to go see Nubble Lighthouse - what a picture!  It was everything I had always imagined a New England coastline and lighthouse to look like.  It was a windy, rainy day so the waves were crashing against the rocks like crazy!  The winds were actually so strong they knocked me off balance a few times.  IB got some amazing shots while we were there.

We then made our way to have lunch at the second Diners, Drive-ins and Dives restaurant of the week, Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, ME.  Here I had some clam chowder - because how can you not at a place called the Clam Hut? - and a lobster roll.  Oh my lord, that roll was awesome.  Nicely toasted, buttery bun stuffed with huge pieces of lobster held together with the perfect amount of mayo...just delish!  Afterwards, we made our way to Portsmouth, NH to visit their cigar shop - IB was a fan! - and do a beer tasting at Portsmouth Brewery.  Little did we know that their sister brewery is Smuttynose, which IB loves for their IPAs, so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to taste beers from both - 10 total!  Uncle S refrained since he was our DD, but me, IB, and Aunt S thoroughly enjoyed our tasting (and maybe a couple other pints as well!).

Because we were making a day of it, we drove over to Redhook Ale Brewery and had a couple of pints there while waiting to do the brewery tour.  We had quite the character as the tour guide - we're fairly certain he was drinking their barleywine out of his Nestea bottle - but he was a good time.  And he gave VERY generous beer samples...winner!  After imbibing all we could, we headed home to have a feast of delmonico steaks and lobster for dinner.  It was a pretty goddamn good day!

The next day me, IB, and Aunt S headed to Salem, MA to check out the Witch Museum, which was really awesome!  They have a really cool interactive component with scenes that depict the trials.  Prior to the museum though, we stopped and had lunch at Triple D restaurant number 3, the Lobster Shanty.  Here IB had one of the biggest (and he says best) pulled pork sandwiches I've ever seen!  Aunt S had fried shrimp and I had lobster pie....again, so fucking good.  It was just the fuel we needed to make our way around the second museum of the day, the Peabody Essex.  This was a beautiful museum and they have a really cool traveling exhibition installed right now called Treasures from the Forbidden City out of Beijing.  They also had a fun hands-on exhibition on optical illusions and the like which we had a lot of fun going through!  I must say, there are definite advantages to working in a museum (besides the fact that it's just a cool job in general), one of them being the reciprocity between museum staffs - I got in for free at the Witch Museum and both me and IB got in for free at Peabody Essex...love it!  :)  After making our way back to New Boston, we took a detour to Aunt S's favorite local joint, Kiki's, to take advantage of $7 martini night - and they made some good ones!

All in all we had  a fantastic trip (I ate lobster in 4 different states!) and really enjoyed spending so much time with the S's.  We really, really hope they move back to Pittsburgh soon since the whole fam would love to have them around more!  When we left their house to head home, IB got Vicky out to give her one more try, and again she turned our 10 hour trip into 16 hours.  Pissed off again, IB left her on to try to compare what she was telling us to do to the GPS on his phone, and she was literally telling us to do the opposite thing for about 15 minutes - phone GPS said turn right, Vicky said turn left.  Finally, I picked her up to turn her off, and thought I would just take a look at something before I did.  Lo and behold, IB had it set to "avoid highways".  Um, do you think that's why she was telling us it would take so much longer, crazy man?  He insists he never set it like that.  Sure...

New England - CT and MA

IB and I returned from our trip to New England on Saturday - we had such a good time!  One of the best things was that our driving times were actually much shorter than we thought...less time in the car is always a win for me!  :)  We did so much while we were away though, this is going to become a 2-part post.  We had such an amazing time with Aunt S and Uncle S - we all wish they would move their asses back to the 'Burgh so we could see them much more often!!!

We left the Saturday after Thanksgiving and drove what was supposed to be 7 1/2 hours but turned out only to be a little over 6 hours to Stamford, CT.  When we left around 7:00 that morning, IB pulled out our Garmin GPS - named Victoria Jane (she's British), but we call her Vicky - and typed in the address to our hotel.  Vicky told us we would get there at 8:15.  At night.  IB swore at her and tossed her in the consol, declaring that he needed an upgrade and we used the GPS on his phone to get us there at the much more reasonable time of 1:30 or so.  (Reember this - there is a point!)

The drive was easy, and we arrived at our hotel, which we booked through Hotwire.com, without a problem.  Took some time to just relax that afternoon, and left the room around 5:00 to head out for an early dinner at the Black Duck Cafe.  This is a place that was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and it was really good!  It's an old barge that they turned into a restaurant and it had a fun atmosphere.  Since we know nothing about Stamford, I randomly decided to see if there was a triple D restaurant nearby and this was only about 10 miles away in Westport.

We left the hotel around 7:00 the next morning to drive the rest of the way to the Cape, which took about 4 hours...not too shabby!  We did try to use Vicky that morning too, but it told us it would take us about 7 hours to get there.  IB was pissed and we used his phone again.  Anyway, after checking in at our hotel (which was totally adorable and had the best continental breakfast ever!), we met up with Aunt S and Uncle S and they took us for a late breakfast to the Keltic Kitchen - yummy!  I had the corned beef hash omelet and it was awesome.  IB enjoyed his steak and eggs too!  Then we piled back into the car and spent the day driving the length of the Cape to check out all the little towns, stopping at Truro Vineyards for a wine-tasting (and buying, of course!) before heading to one of the S's favorite restaurants on the Cape, Chapin's.  The had some of the best fried seafood I've ever had, but the highlight of the meal were the fresh (as in, caught that morning), raw oysters served by the owner of the Dennis Oyster Farm...oh.my.fucking.god.  These were the best oysters I've ever had - no comparison.  They were huge and sweet and salty and just absolutely to die for.  I could have eaten 2 dozen of them myself.  Seriously.  I'm drooling.

Anyway...  The following day, the S's had to leave after lunch to go back to New hampshire as Aunt S had to work on Tuesday, so we went and toured the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory (and got some fresh chips right off the production line!), walked on the beach because it was a beautiful, sunny, 50-degree day (I even went barefoot!), and then had lunch at a new place called the Sea Street Cafe.  Again, the food was SUPER delicious.  Everything there was made in-house, including the bread.  Sadly, the S's had to leave after lunch, but IB and I spent the rest of the day touring Cape Cod Beer, and visiting the Sandwich Glass Museum.  Here we got to see a glassblowing demonstration, which was really cool, and I got to press a piece of glass and keep it as a souvenir!  That night we went to Alberto's Ristorante on Main Street in Hyannis and had an amazing meal.  We started with an appetizer of bison meatballs with porcini mushrooms, then IB had tortellini alfredo with chicken and I had the fruta de mare - homemade linguini tossed in a white wine and garlic sauce that's finished with just a touch of marinara for color, and then topped with lobster, scallops, shrimp, calamari, mussels, and clams.  I was in heaven!  They had a special going on that night so we each got a complimentary dessert with our meals - IB had the spumoni and I had heath bar pie.  Goddamn it was good. 

Stay tuned for more!

Obligatory ice cream post

Because I'm guessing my next post will not be full of puppies and rainbows like I'd hoped.

This is probably a harder question than it should be!  I LOVE ice cream.  But, my favorite flavor probably depends on where I'm getting it from.  For example, if it's Ben & Jerry's I'd probably have to go with coffee heath bar crunch.  The coffee ice cream is super tasty without being overpowering and they put HUGE pieces of heath bar in it - yum!

Now, if I were to get a blizzard from Dairy Queen, I'd have to say the banana split is my fave.  Strawberries, banana, pineapple, cherries, and a little bit of chocolate syrup...mmmm.

But, if we're talking just a scoop or container of hard ice cream, then it's a toss up between chocolate peanut butter...

...and pralines and cream...

...DELISH!

And there you have it folks.  Everything you never cared to know about me and my favorite ice cream flavors.

A leisurely life (for now!)

The last few weeks have been quite leisurely for me and IB - it's a nice change of pace!  We did celebrate J's 32nd birthday 2 weekends ago...here he is after a night of beer pong and Gentleman Jack:

We also went to a Halloween party this past weekend.  It is difficult - really fucking hard, actually - to get IB to agree to dress up.  I don't know what it is, but he hates to do it.  I, on the other hand, think it's pretty fun to try to come up with something creative.  I think I hit the jackpot with my idea for us to go as Walter and The Dude from The Big Lebowski.  Steve went as Walter and I went as The Dude - what do you think?

Most comfortable I've ever been in a Halloween costume, I can tell ya that!  What's not to like about walking around in a pair of your husband's boxers, one of his t-shirts, and a huge fluffy bathrobe?!?!  It was pretty fucking great, I must say.  Here's another one so you can see my full get-up (with party hostess E as Wonder Woman and sis E as Marge Simpson).

Also this past weekend we selected the bridesmaid dresses for J and N's wedding - yahoo!!!  N has 4 bridesmaids so she selected the designer, color, fabric, and length and then we all chose gowns that we will feel comfortable in.  Here's mine:

The bridal shop owner said it will be easy to tailor if I am pregnant (crossing everything!) and if I'm not (which better not fucking be the case), I love it all the same.  The color will be kind of a peacock blue - we're going to look stunning.  But not as goddamn gorgeous as N will look in her bridal gown.  <3  I feel kind of bad that we won't order the dresses until January so we can get a better feel for how far along I could be in a pregnancy at that point, but since it could be anywhere from 0-8 months, it's probably best to wait!  Here's hoping it's closer to the 8-month mark, ok universe?

Racing - who knew? (part 2)

Seriously - going to watch races is my new fave.  This past weekend, me and IB, E and J, and my Dad and G went to Lernerville Speedway to see the World of Outlaws race.  This is a dirt track, so it's a completely different experience than NASCAR.  The cars they drive are kind of like oversized, enclosed go-karts with these huge wings on the top.  It was pretty cool to see them race around the dirt track - they slide through the turns sideways and average about 120 mph.  A lot more potential for wrecks (which we saw a few of) and they also can lose control and kind of slide off the track coming out of the turns (saw a lot of that too). 

They start off doing individual timed trials, move to small heats with 8 cars in each, and then the top 24 get to participate in the main event, which is 35 laps.  What you're not prepared for as a first-timer is the AMAZING amount of dust that is generated by 24 cars racing around the dirt track.  We were sitting in the top row and we were fucking covered in dirt.  I pulled my hoodie as tight as I could around my head and face and held it closed around my mouth so I wasn't breathing it in.  Note to self: next time you go, take a bandana and some safety goggles.  IB was blowing dirt out of his nose for 2 days!

Of course, a night of racing wouldn't be complete without a few hours of tailgating first!  We enjoyed some sausages, hot dogs, broccoli salad, chips, and individual pies in the parking lot prior to heading in.  And beer.  You can't tailgate without beer.  It was a goddamn gorgeous, sunny (and a little windy) fall day!