I love my duck!

Today was a good day. I got lots of stuff done, and my laptop is all set up the way I want it. I did Week 2, Day 2 of my Couch Potato to 5K program and kicked it's butt. I did my pushups, and those kicked my butt. My arms still feel like spaghetti.

I got to webcam with my Mom and it was good to see her. She got her hair cut - it's really cute!

Also, I've decided I love the DVR. It records things for me. America's Test Kitchen. House Hunters. And very importantly, Veggie Tales. :) Veggie Tales is on TV here and I love it. The only thing I don't like is that they have a different opening song. :( And the episode I watched tonight? It was about rubber ducks. And Larry the Cucumber loving his duck. Oh how I missed the little French peas. Though come to think of it, one of them is named Paco. Maybe they're peas from Mexico or someplace they speak Spanish? He definitely has a Spanish accent.

I love ducks. I loved how there were lots of duck things in Boston. The Make Way for the Ducklings statues in Boston Common. Real life ducks. The Mother's Day Parade where kids dress up with ducks. The only duck thing I've seen here are duck eggs at the grocery store.

I survived!

Living in Boston for the past 3 years was kind of nice because of the public transportation. Boston isn't really a city that Jeff and I were the least bit interested in driving in. We had access to a few Zipcars (my beloved red with leather interior and sunroof Volvo S40 Shoshnik lived in our apartment's parking lot) that we could rent by the hour when we needed to drive. But Jeff was the only person who was allowed to drive. That's limited my driving for the past 3 years to visits with family when I would steal a car to drive into Ames or around Nevada. Nothing hardcore.

Today was my first real drive in 3 years. Jeff had to head back to Boston this morning. He had contemplated taking the MAX to the airport, but realized since it was a holiday he would have had to leave at 5:30am. So we drove, and I drove myself back and am still currently in one piece. I even managed to send Jeff a text while stopped at some red lights. Yay me! And a huge thanks to Elaine/Colleen/Eileen/Navi for helping me not get lost (the Garmin's name hasn't been officially decided yet).

Since I can't come up with anything else to write about, I got this from one of my Amazing Ladies blogs.

Any items that are in BOLD I've eaten.
Any items with an asterisk * means I will not ever eat them.
Also, I'm putting any random comments I come up with in italics. Please note that wikipedia is your friend!

The Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos Rancheros
4. steak tartare *
5. Crocodile (though I have eaten alligator!)
6. Black pudding (also known as blood pudding) *
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho (this would need to be eliminated if it had tripe in it)
13. PB & J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (Oh my God! These are my favorite things to eat in NYC!)
16. epoisses
17. Black truffle (once I find out if I'm allergic to mushrooms I'm in for trying them!)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (I just found out I can get these at my Farmer's Market!)
20. Pistachio ice cream (before my nut allergy days it was one of my favorites)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (uh, no, it's animal cruelty in my mind and I won't be a part of that)
24. rice and beans
25. Brawn , or head cheese *
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de Leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna Cauda
31. Wasabi peas (ask Jeff about these :))
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. salted lassi
34. sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (cognac yes, cigar no)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. gumbo
40. Oxtail *
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects *******
43. phall
44. Goat’s milk (does goat's milk cheese count?)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (YUM!)
46 fugu (Pufferfish)
47. chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. prickly pear
52. umeboshi* (I'm allergic to plums; these are related enough that I don't think I'll go there)
53. abalone * (more allergy issues)
54. paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. poutine
60. carob chips
61. s'mores
62. sweetbreads (only if the chef is amazing, and I'd probably order a 2nd meal for backup)
63. kaolin
64. currywurst
65. durian
66. Frogs’ legs *
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. haggis *
69. Fried plantain
70. chitterlings , or andouillette *
71. gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74 .gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill ******************** (heck no! WHY would anyone eat roadkill?!?!)
76. baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail *******
79. lapsang souchong
80. bellini
81. tom yum
82. eggs benedict
83. pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-michelin-star restaurant.
85. kobe beef
86. Hare *
87. goulash
88. flowers
89. Horse *************************** (is it clear enough I won't touch that?)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. soft shelled crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. lobster thermidor (no more shellfish for me)
98. polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee
100. Snake *

Bwahahahahaha!

Annoying baby is crying again.

And after this morning I never have to hear that kid again!

Please pray that our next apartment is better sound proofed or that there isn't a baby next door. Or a toddler, rather, that seems to be ignored by his mom when he's half-assed crying.

Half-assed crying is still loud enough to wake me up.

See? I told you my attitude sucks after living here in Boston. :-p

So long and thanks for all the fish!

I wish the entire Hitchhiker's movie would have been like the opening. I may have actually liked the movie if it had been.

Everything is packed.

The apartment is a mess.

The cats are in heaven.

Jeff won't let me clean. He says since he'll have at least 3 weeks in Boston with only an air mattress, laptop and a few dishes he'll need something to do. I hate leaving him with a mess. Mostly because he'll have to clean it up and that makes me feel bad. And partially because he doesn't clean as well as I do.

Stephen came over for a bit tonight, and it was good to see him.

I said by goodbye to Colleen. :( I think once we're settled in after the move I'll do some serious chocolate shopping and send it to her as a thank you for being awesome present.

Somehow I'm supposed to sleep tonight. I can't imagine how I'm supposed to do that. I'm so wired right now. I assume I'll be asleep the second my head hits the pillow.

I guess I'll go find out! :)

10+ Things I Don't Hate About Boston

Time for another packing break! Or, as the case may be, time to continue delaying packing. :)

I'm going to miss these things in Boston a lot.

1. Sunset Grill & Tap - they have an absolutely amazing beer list. It's pages and pages long and it's so much fun to go there and try a few new beers that would be impossible to get at a normal bar. Their food is really yummy, too! Especially their sweet potato fries.
2. Old Ironsides - it's a fun ship to visit. A lot of touristy places are only fun to visit once. But we've seen Old Ironsides several times and I love it every time!
3. Dunkin Donuts - they're everywhere in Boston, since they were born here. I love their white hot chocolate. And their double chocolate donuts. I'm not really a donut kind of girl, but I like these. And their new egg white flatbread sandwiches are pretty good, too. And their croissants. There's one across the street at the train station which makes it even more convenient (thankfully we didn't visit very often).
4. Summer Shack - it's also across the street from our apartment. How easy was it to run across the street during Lent on Fridays? And we've never had a bad meal there. In fact, we've liked everything there so much that we bought the Summer Shack cookbook to take with us. Actually, I did have one meal I didn't like there. I didn't realize my fish would come with it's head, tail, fins and skin on. But I've almost managed to forget that!
5. The accent. :) I like living in new places and hearing new accents.
   
6. Colleen. She's our concierge who works the afternoon/evening shift. Colleen is really nice and she's always very up to date on the new hot chocolate product out on the market. We've been surprising each other with new random chocolate things for the past 3 years. :) The most recent would be the Triple Chocolate M&Ms that we got for her.
7. The Fireworks! We've lived here for 3 years and this was the first year we went to the fireworks. It was fun to hear the Boston Pops, and Rascal Flatts was an added bonus.
8. J.P. Licks. I pink puffy heart their ice cream. I'm sooooo going to miss the Oreo Cake Batter flavor!
9. The Asgard - Jeff moved to Boston to start school while we were still engaged, and I stayed at home to plan the wedding. I came to visit him here over Valentine's Day and we stumbled across The Asgard. They have a fantastic tomato and mozzarella sandwich with pesto that I love. It was also right down the street from my Central Square CVS, so we went to eat there now and then. They also have this really yummy chocolatey ice cream Oreo crust and fudge dessert that makes me happy.
10. My pool and hot tub. Yes, I'll have a new pool at the new place. But it wasn't finished last I knew. And I don't know if it has a hot tub. And doesn't it rain a lot in Oregon?
11. Mohr & McPherson. I love their stores. If I'm ever a millionaire, I'm buying so many things from there! And I'll have a collection of copper tables. :)
    
12. My people! I've made some really great friends here that I'm going to miss a lot. :( CVS may really stink to work for sometimes, but I had lots of fantastic co-workers that are now friends.

OK, so I took a really long time to do that, so now I have to pack more. :(

Things I Will Not Miss About Boston

I'm taking a packing break. Since I don't particularly care for packing, and I'm in a grumpy mood I thought I'd post things I won't miss about living here. And in the next day or so I'll post the things I will miss about living here.

1. The crying baby next door. The smokers who lived there before were a million times better. I could sleep all night long without being woken up by the baby (and I am a heavy sleeper, ask Jeff or my Mom if you don't believe me!). Smokers were better even when our whole damn apartment smelled like smoke because it leaked into our apartment through the dryer vent. I'm an asthmatic, so that's saying something.
   
2. Should I also mention the couple that fights upstairs, the screaming children in the pool and the lady who brings her 4 year old kid to the weight room then runs on a treadmill and ignores him for an hour?
   
3. Oh, and the people below and one door to the right of us. They have this awful wind chime that sounds like someone is banging together some 2 by 4s.
4. Or the people below us who smoke on their patio. And are practically deaf and scream into the phone on their patio.
   
5. The crazy drivers. Jeff stresses when he drives. I don't think we've had one drive in 3 years where at some point we didn't think we were going to die.
   
6. The crazies that used to come into my pharmacy.
7. The attitudes of people who live here. People are generally nice, but you can totally tell when someone is from Massachusetts just by their attitude. And when they're mean, they're mean. And irrational.
8. The thunderstorms. They are so wussy. They don't even deserve to be called thunderstorms.
9. The lack of storage in our apartment. In a way, it's nice because we don't have random crap sitting around. We pretty much use everything we have, which is helpful when packing for a big move because we don't have to throw stuff out.
10. My attitude. Boston has made me a meaner person. I don't really like it. I realize every now and then that I've changed in a not so good way, and try to go back to being nicer. The old me probably wouldn't have made an entire post about the things I will not miss and hate about a place.
    

It's a Kitty Wonderland in Here!

Boxes everywhere. Open. Closed. Stacked. Some with tape, others without.

Summit and Mitzie are in heaven. Though I think I'm going to be wrapping Mitzie in packing tape shortly if she keeps pulling the tape off of the boxes and trying to open them up.

I realize packing is fairly arduous. But, I am plenty capable of packing and don't really need help from the little monstas.

This weekend was tax free weekend in Massachusetts (don't get me started about how that's ridiculous). And about a month ago Mohr & McPherson, my favorite store (which happens to be next door and has another one down the street *squee*), had a contest about guessing the origin of items. The prizes were gift certificates. So I didn't win the first place prize, which was $1,000. But I did win 3rd place and got $100. And I was sneaky and sent Mom the answers, too, and had her enter. She also got 3rd place and $100.

Since we knew we'd be leaving soon, we decided to wander down to see what options we had for our Turkish Copper dining room table that we've been eyeing since the very first day we went into their store 3 years ago. They have so many variations that we wanted to see what our options were, how long it would take to get, and how much shipping to Oregon would be.

When we got there, they had the almost exact table we wanted. When we asked about it, we found out the base is unfinished mahogany, and we want black lacquer. No worries, we can handle that ourselves. If we were to custom order it, it would take 14 to 18 weeks. And it would cost about $1000 to ship to Oregon. Blech!

But, the sales lady was really nice. She told us she would give us the discount promotion that they were running. And she would make it tax free by working some magic. She also let me use Mom's gift certificate. So we bought it. And now we just need to pick it up the day we leave. :) I'm so excited.

Chairs? Yeah. We'll figure that out later.

We also got a cool piece of pottery from the Mud Flat Gallery in Porter Square. Mom has a tradition of finding a cool piece of pottery each place we've lived and moving it with us. I've always thought it was cool, and they have some really neat stuff in there. We decided to stop in and see if there was anything we liked and we found a really cool dish. I can't take a picture of it though, because it's already boxed up. They had lots of neat pieces, but as we were buying it we realized it was made by the same artist, Cary Atsalis, that we've been noticing all along. :) And now the name is on my blog, so it doesn't matter if I lose the business card in all of this chaos.