Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

As I think I’ve mentioned something along these lines in previous posts, but 2007-2009 seem to be the “wedding years” for us. In 2007, we attended weddings of our friends that got married in February (Mary and Frank), May (Sabrina and Andrew), and November (Vanessa and Brian) - not to mention our own wedding our own wedding in August, and two other sets of friends that got married in March (Amy and Erik) and August (Amy and Steve). This year, we have weddings to attend in April (Ray and Donel), July (Valerie and Bill), and October (my cousin Jerilyn and Dave), and we already have weddings in June (Samantha and Davis) and July (Gwynn and Mark) of 2009 that I already know of. All this before my co-worker and friend Charlotte, with her fiance` Jeffrey, decided to elope this coming Monday, March 3rd, in Las Vegas! So we have and will be doing a lot of traveling and partying.

This year I’m much more involved. I’m already a bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding in October, and I’ve been asked to be part of another friend’s wedding as well. I’ll be helping plan and attending bridal showers for Valerie (in April to coincide with when we’ll both be in NJ) and for Jerilyn (which will be in July when I’ll be in town again). I’ve already got outfits planned for all three weddings this year, and I just placed my order for my bridesmaid’s dress for Jerilyn’s wedding. I’m really excited because it looks like a really cute dress that I’ll be able to wear again - perhaps even to one of the weddings in 2009! (These pictures are all of the same dress she has chosen for us to wear, just different views. And the one that’s not black is the closest color I could find that would match the description of “cranberry.”)

I also found out that two people I know are pregnant and expecting their first child in August of this year (Marisa and Amanda). I want to wish everyone who’s planning their weddings and pregnant the best of luck with everything along the way. I’ll see you all soon!

Kris has had a homebrew kit he’d received as a gift almost two years ago, and we’d been trying to figure out the best time to get it started. With the downpour rain and cold that came on Friday, he finally decided it was time.

Earlier in the week, I’d started a sourdough bread starter, so it was also time to take some out and bake a loaf in our breadmaker. We always love making bread, and since it was raining, it was a really great day to make a loaf. So I got all the ingredients together in the breadmaker’s loaf pan while Kris started sanitizing the kitchen and organizing all the things he would need to start the homebrew.

The process is fairly simple - crush some grains, steep them in a big pot of water, remove and add the malt, add hops and boil for 30 minutes to an hour. I keep trying to make it into a scientific process - exact measurements and temperatures, which is the way I usually cook - but it’s more of an art and a “whatever” laidback process, which is certainly more along Kris’s terms. Every time I get panicked about how long it’s been, or what temperature the wort is at Kris has to remind me of the homebrewing motto - Relax, have a homebrew!

Jason joined us for an “inside look” at the homebrew process, and we were able to share some fresh-baked sourdough bread with him. Finally, it was time to strain out the hops and dilute the wort to a total of 5 gallons and lower the temperature. Unfortunately, our cold water isn’t really cold from the tap, and we don’t really have room in the fridge for either the giant tub OR pitchers with enough water…so when Kris got to this step, the temperature didn’t drop as much as it needed to. So we brought the whole thing outside. It took a while, but eventually the temperature decreased enough and we brought it back inside for the start of primary fermentation. (Eventually we had to bring it back outside because it just wasn’t cool enough inside…)

Another part of the weekend was making some homemade vanilla extract! Kris had been searching Make Instructables, and came across this great one for DIY Vanilla Extract. It’s quite easy - all you need is a dark bottle, some vodka, and a few vanilla beans. We actually have a whole bunch of vanilla beans that we got on our honeymoon - a gift from the hotel - and since we’d changed rooms we got twice as much. We’d been wondering what the heck to do with the vanilla, even while on our honeymoon because it was presented as a “specialty item” to buy and bring home. I wonder what most other people do with the vanilla beans since it’s so expensive… Those thoughts aside, Kris also showed me that once you strain out the vanilla bean and pods, you can use them to make vanilla sugar, ala Alton Brown.

I was super excited when Kris showed me the instructable thing, because not only was it something to DO with the vanilla beans, but then we’d have homemade vanilla extract AND vanilla-flavored sugar made with vanilla from our honeymoon. The fact that these things will be homemade and reminders of our honeymoon in years to come make the whole thing extra special.

Christmas this year was very weird. As it was the very first Christmas I haven’t spent with my family, it was understandably a bit disappointing - but it’s not like I haven’t seen them all year. With the wedding stuff (mostly ours) from 2007 and more coming in 2008, we’ll be traveling to the East Coast more than we have since we moved out here! But back to Christmas…it was happily our first married Christmas, and as with most things in this first year of marriage we’ll be looking to perhaps make some of our own new traditions.

Let me back up a little…About a week before Christmas, I came home to find the room divider up in the living room (we usually use it to separate the “dining” area from the rest of the living room, but it hadn’t been up for a while after Thanksgiving), so I was a little curious as to what might be hiding behind it, especially since all the lights were out and I could see a glowing behind it. Kris had bought a tiny 2-foot tree, green and red tinsel, and a small string of lights, and had it set up for my arrival home from the lab! It was so sweet, even though I didn’t really want to get a tree and start accumulating the million holiday decorations yet - since we’re living in a small place without a lot of excess storage space and we don’t have room for all sorts of tchotchkes. Of course I still loved the tree and Kris’s effort to make our holiday more homey.

In the meantime, packages had started arriving. There were two big boxes from Tupperware (presumably the remainder of our Tupperware registry, but pre-Christmas I had no idea what might be coming from or where). We received another package from my Aunt Linda with some cute Christmas decorations, which we placed around to put ourselves in the holiday spirit. My mom had sent two packages - one full of tins of Christmas cookies and presents, and a second which she told us to open right away. It contained two small candy cane ornaments with our names on them, which fit perfectly on our little tree. I also received a package which I had forgotten was coming - the preserved flowers from my wedding bouquet! It turned out so lovely, the colors are darkened, but still beautiful. I’m so glad I found a company to do what I wanted (in case you’re wondering, I went through Keepsake Floral - they’re located in Florida, but you can ship your flowers there from anywhere, and they have all the pricing and everything right there on the website - it’s not hidden like with other companies). What a nice Christmastime surprise!

More packages - a huge box from Kris’s family - and Christmas cards arrived in the following days. We started wrapping presents for each other, and soon there was a pile of festive presents waiting under our Christmas tree on the table. We made some last-minute plans to have our neighbor/couplefriends Jason and Andrea over for dinner on Christmas, and our own plans for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, we prepared a traditional dish of pasta fagioli and enjoyed some holiday tv specials before getting ready for church. We decided to go to the 6pm mass on Christmas Eve at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the church we had done Pre-Cana through. The church itself was decorated really nicely for the holiday, and mass was the same as it usually is on Christmas Eve, except they did the readings for the Christmas Vigil (Mass at Midnight), which was weird because it was only 6pm and they had another mass scheduled for midnight. There was a band and choir who provided wonderful music, as well as a last-minute “nativity walkthrough,” which was basically a whole bunch of families from the parish who carried the baby Jesus around the church, reciting short passages from the bible as they passed the doll onto the next group, and finally placing him upon the manger display in the front of the church. I think it sounds stranger than it actually was, but I’m not sure how else to describe it! Afterwards, we took a drive into Tustin, where, Kris had found out, they have a holiday decoration display contest every year. This was a GREAT way to continue my family’s Christmas Eve tradition of driving around looking at holiday lights and decorations. Kris had printed up a small map of the area with the greatest concentration of holiday displays - because you can login and post that your house has lights - so we found that area and drove around. Let me just say - these people go ALL out! Some of them empty their garages for a whole big display of Christmas villages and train sets. Other people did a whole computer coordinated music, light, and anamitronics show, while everyone else seemed to either A) not bother or B) buy the same giant blow-up snowglobe things and NOEL signs with penguins from Costco that everyone else did. It was still a lot of fun, but also kinda strange since the temperature was pretty mild (Kris and I laughed after mass when someone outside said “It’s so cold!”) - at one point we just parked the car so we could get up and personal with some of the more outstanding displays. I think the funniest part was that a lot of people had gotten that cotton stuffing stuff and staked it into their front yard to make it look like it had snowed! Ha! Snow in Southern California!

We tried to cap off the drive home with some holiday Starbucks, but it was closed (even though all the lights were on!), so we made our way back for some hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. I had to make a small detour to look in on my friends’ cats while they were away in Utah, and while I was gone Santa came! Kris had brought down all his presents and more that he’d been hiding all December, and there were two stockings hung by the chimney….I mean TV. With our tree lit and cocoa in hand, we sat and watched another short Rankin & Bass “animated” classic Christmas movie before heading off to bed.

On Christmas morning we slept in as long as we could before getting up to start the turkey prep, same as we did on Thanksgiving. As soon as we finished that, we got down to some gift exchanging! We took some pictures, and then gave the families a call. The mystery of where the “other” Tupperware had come from was solved (it didn’t come with any shipping info or notice), and we got to share the holiday in a small part with our families. The only thing we were missing was a white Christmas - the weather out here that day was so mild and warm it seemed like it was almost Christmas in July!

Before we knew it, it was time to finish prepping the rest of the food - green bean and sweet potatoes - and Jason and Andrea had arrived with salad, rolls, and potato gratin. The turkey was done by this point, but I still had to make the gravy, so we enjoyed some wine with our friends and then proceeded to dig in. After dinner we played a game of Triominos - a childhood favorite of mine that I’d played with my Grandma and Grandpa. We cleaned up dinner, exchanging leftovers, and then enjoyed a dessert of apple pie and a variety of Christmas cookies, all of which we’d received from our families from back east.

A week later, we decided as a last minute plan to have Jason and Andrea over again. We all decided it would be best to have a small thing - get together after dinner and possibly celebrate before midnight. However, we got all involved with another round of Triominos, and a card game that they’d brought that roughly translated as “Not for Oxen” and before we knew it was five minutes til midnight. So we turned on the tv, did the countdown, kissed our respective spouses, popped the champagne, and toasted the New Year! We played another round of the card game, finished the bottle of champagne, and said good night. It was a great way to finish and start the year.

Well, it doesn’t really get cold and snowy here in Southern California, but that doesn’t mean we’re not getting into the holiday spirit out here…and lots of my happy memories are smell-based - apple pie with the lovely cinnamon scent, cookies with the sugar, melted butter, and nut scents, the lovely pine smell from wreaths and trees, the pasta fagioli and myrrh on Christmas eve, and the turkey baking in the oven…

So I thought I’d start this post off with a description of our lovely Thanksgiving, because that is where the “smells of Christmas” start. This year, Kris and I decided to make Thanksgiving for ourselves. We got ourselves a 13 lb. turkey - because we wanted lots of leftovers for both sandwiches and dinners. And we decided on side dishes - mainly things I felt I couldn’t live without - stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes. We also decided to make apple pie, as it is one dish we enjoy preparing together and is so traditionally Thanksgiving. The pie actually came together before Thanksgiving, as we were expecting company that had to reschedule. The whole day that day the house smelled fantastic. Yum….apple pie….

On Thanksgiving we got up and started preparing our feast for two. Kris cut the onions and then washed off the turkey while I melted the butter and sauted the onions to prepare the stuffing. The stuffing mix called for adding “liquid” and one of their suggestions was wine. We both thought this was a great idea to try and luckily we had a small bottle of white wine in our liquor cabinet. Once the turkey and stuffing was cooked the extra flavor of the wine made it SO tasty! Back to the prep - Kris stuffed the turkey while I cut the green beans and cut and peeled the white potatoes. I have this big pasta pot with a built-in strainer and steamer basket, so I boiled the potatoes (both kinds) and steamed the green beans all at the same time! This made the cooking and clean-up a lot easier. Kris and I were then able to enjoy the Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv (they time-delay the Macy’s Day Parade for us on the west coast…which is a little weird, but kind of makes sense otherwise it would be on way too early in the morning) while everything was cooking. Later on I cooled the sweet potatoes to peel and cut them, and then set them up in the casserole dish with butter, maple syrup, and brown sugar - yum! Then I worked on mashing the white potatoes - using some of the water from the boiling/steaming pot to add back some vitamins and cut back on the milk content (see my post about lactose-intolerance!). At this point the turkey was done, and I worked on making gravy from the pan while Kris started carving the turkey. Everything tasted so great that we had seconds, and then much later on we enjoyed another round instead of making the traditional Thanksgiving evening turkey sandwiches. After that we enjoyed some warmed apple pie with whipped cream. I love having homemade food - I think that’s what really made our Thanksgiving so special.

A week later I made turkey soup in our crock pot with all the boned meat from the turkey. What a great smell that made throughout the entire house! So yummy!

Another week after that, we had some vegetarian friends over for dinner, so we made another apple pie. I love baking.

This past weekend we enjoyed making some cookies at our place on Saturday, while on Sunday we went to a cookie-making party for sugar and gingerbread cookie cutting and decorating.

It’s almost time to make yet another apple pie, for our first Christmas together as a married couple. We’re not going back east this year, which I’m pretty sad about because it is the VERY first Christmas I won’t be spending with my family. We’re saving the money to instead attend three weddings next year on the east coast, and enjoying the holidays the same way we enjoyed Thanksgiving - with the smells of home and new traditions.

About three years ago, I started to suspect I was lactose-intolerant. I’m not going to get into all the gorey details - as most people know the results of this condition where basically you drink normal milk and it goes “right through you.” I finally begrudgingly admitted I had a problem when I suffered severe cramps after drinking a Starbucks Frappucino at two rallies (thankfully I was working at them and not competing!) in 2006. A bit later that year I gathered info about soy milk (the other white drink…) and other milk-alternatives (rice milk, almond milk) from talking to some vegetarian and vegan friends, and started to try them out for myself. I’ve found I love the taste of rice milk - but that’s because it’s mostly sugar and has no basic “added benefits.” I also really like almond milk, and it has a little more added benefit with the protein content - but it’s not as readily available, it’s a little more pricey, and it’s still full of sugar. I really wanted the extra protein boost from soy milk, with much less sugar content, though it does not taste as good. My favorite is Trader Joe’s Vanilla Soy Milk Extra - because it has even more added vitamins and minerals. This leads to one final tangent before getting to my real story - Kris and my name for soy milk. Kris wanted to try it one day just to taste the flavor. I warned him - as I warn most people when trying it - not to expect it to taste anything like real milk, with a hint of oatmeal aftertaste. He completely agreed with me, and in an effort to shorten the name, called it “silk.” Well, Silk is a brand-name for one company and their soy milk products, and that doesn’t really describe it best. So in our next best “soy milk” name shortening combination, we came up with “moy.” Believe me, somehow “moy” is a MUCH better description for the taste (it seems “oatmeal-like” to me), and it’s a laughably short & cute name for soy milk.

Back to the real story…. Needless to say, for the past year and a half or so, I’d been avoiding those Starbucks Frappuccinos and other similar milk-made products unless I happened to have a lactase pill on me to take with said beverage. One day about two months ago, I met a friend for lunch at one of our favorite places and saw on a sign “We can substitute soy milk in any of our drinks.” Yay! I could finally order some of my previously favorite tasty drinks! And I thought, well, why can’t OTHER places substitute soy milk in their drinks? Especially in California, where there’s so much focus on health? So I’ve started asking if Starbucks and the like can use soy milk instead. The answer is yes, but unfortunately most places will charge you like 60 cents extra. Earlier this week, I was at Panera Bread and ordered a Chai Tea Latte` after asking the requisite “can you make this with soy milk” question. Since it was slow, and I was annoyed when the clerk took my order and told me about the extra charge, I said, “So you’re going to punish me for being lactose-intolerant?” Surprisingly, the guy was really nice and said he’d make it with soy milk and not charge me extra for it. Wow! I think more places need to get on the bandwagon of the first place I’d gone that was super accommodating and not charge extra (Cha for Tea in Irvine) for people with different needs. Being lactose-intolerant is on the same scale as being allergic to something (it almost is an allergy in itself), and you wouldn’t purposely serve something with peanuts to someone who just told you they have a nut allergy - without thinking you might be sued. You don’t usually charge extra for that - you just leave the nuts off the salad! So instead of just assuming I’m vegan and you’re “doing me a favor” by having soy milk on hand - stop punishing me for a condition my body has imposed upon me. There shouldn’t be a difference anyway!

Yay! We finally had some time this Thanksgiving weekend to go through our formal wedding photos, and I uploaded them today! We also finally ordered our wedding album, which won’t be delivered until January, but at least it is done!

Here is the link directly to the new Our Formal Wedding Photos Album!
Enjoy - but keep in mind there are almost 600 pictures in this new album.

In addition, we recently uploaded pictures from Our Celebration of Marriage.

Feel free to download the low-resolution image that we’ve posted. However, if you would like a high-resolution digital image of any of these pictures, please email me or Kris, or leave me a comment, and make sure to include the photo number (Example: FILE 4/589)!

I have a post-it above my computer in the lab that says in all caps “DTMS.” Most people don’t know what it really means, I’m assuming that anyone who just takes a glance will think of it as some chemical I need or need to order. In reality it is my little way of being able to say “keep out” without actually saying that. It means “Don’t touch my stuff.” I don’t care if people ask before using my things, although I am still rather particular about them, but it’s usually cool as long as they actually ask first. I really don’t like if anyone tries to use my pipets, not just because they have been calibrated recently, but also because they are not generic and are difficult to master, ie, most people don’t know what the heck to do with them and run a large risk of breaking them instead of actually figuring them out.

Why rant today? Well, I’ve been away competing at the Laughlin International Rally, and I just realized today that my box of P-20 pipet tips was missing. Why do I care? Because the stock room is about 5 feet away from my lab bench. Because they are the special filter tips. And really, because they were the only P-20 box with a shiny silver label that finally matched the other box tops on my lab bench. There, I’ve said it, and I know I sound about five years old…but I want my shiny back!!!

Ok, ok, seriously though. Why would anyone do something like that? The only shared piece of equipment on my bench is the spec, which has its own set/supply of tips. In addition, the stock room is RIGHT THERE! I know most of the people in my lab don’t know how particular I am with my things, and I’m not going to tell them (hence the “DTMS” post-it), so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t done on purpose to annoy me. Or maybe it was. In either case, it still annoys me. /end rant….

Kris and I headed out early Saturday morning to Las Vegas where our friends Brian and Vanessa were to be wed. The drive wasn’t too bad, since there usually isn’t much traffic going out on a Saturday morning. We arrived early enough to have plenty of time to change and relax after finding the hotel to check in early. After finding our room in the hotel in Old Downtown Las Vegas (near Fremont Street), we headed out to find the Wee Kirk O’ The Heather Wedding Chapel. We realized it was much closer to the hotel than we’d thought, so we spent some time driving around the block to check out the rest of the area. While driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, we spotted Brian and a bunch of other people headed down the street to the Chapel, so we found a parking spot. I didn’t have much change for the meter, so we sat in the car as long as possible before I fed the machine as much change in as I could, figuring the ceremony would be pretty short.

Click here for our pictures from the wedding!
And here’s the link for Brian & Vanessa’s gallery!
(more…)

Last night Kris and I had an appointment to fulfill our bridal registry from Macy’s. We were able to utilize a special 15% completion discount, in addition to a Macy’s giftcard and some American Express Gift Cheques we received for our wedding. We had a good time going all over the home store finding the items we still needed, and trying to figure out if there was anything else we wanted to use the 15% discount on. Last time we had our friends over for dinner we realized we did not really have any wine glasses, so we picked up a simple set of six wine glasses with a very cool decanter. This was the only “extra” item we decided on, but we’re very excited to now have everything we wanted from Macy’s, compliments of several wedding guests. And now we have the picture frames we wanted so much and we can spend some time deciding which professional photo prints we want to order (once we get back from Laughlin, that is…).

We still have a few items left on our Sears registry and our Tupperware.com registry, so I think we’ll be requesting those items or giftcards to Sears for Christmas. I’ve removed the links to the Macy’s and BBB registries because they are now completed. Thanks again to everyone who made this fun shopping trip possible!

Well, it’s taken a bit of time, but we are MOSTLY done with writing a heartfelt note in each of our thank you cards. There’s still a few we have left to do, a few that need updated addresses (hey people you know who you are!!!), and a few that need stamps. I’m about to go to the post office today, but please don’t be upset if you don’t get the expected card in the mail in the next week or so. We’re about to go away for the weekend for Brian and Vanessa’s wedding and when we get back we’ll only be home for one day before we leave for the Laughlin International Rally. Since we’re still waiting (mostly) for those updated addresses, hopefully we’ll hear back from everyone we need to by the time we get back and then the remainder of the cards will go out.