The Fridge

Our new refrigerator was delivered today. Can you say HOORAY! They also hauled the old one away to be recycled, and I am so happy to NOT have a fridge in the dining room. But anyway, its big and pretty and unfortunately quite empty at the moment. I wasn't buying too many groceries with the other one threatening to die at any moment.
One thing that surprised me....magnets don't stick to stainless steel. LOL. I had no idea. I'm not disappointed about that though. It will help keep things neat and tidy without a million little bits and pieces stuck all over the fridge doors. Its funny how your eyes get used to something like that and you don't even "see" the chaos. But when its gone, and things are clean and stream-lined, you wonder how you ever lived with such a mess. I won't miss the clutter stuck to my doors for sure.

So, Bruce's friend Jeff (from Seattle) is here in NC for a visit. The guys are all having a "MAN weekend" down at the river. I probably don't even want to know whats going on down there right now. LOL. Meanwhile, Jessica is coming here tomorrow for a "girl's weekend". I am not sure what we will do. Maybe shopping, maybe a movie, and definitely dinner out somewhere. She is spending the night to get away from the overload of testosterone at their house. Sunday we are all congregating at the river for a seafood feast to say good-bye to Jeff until we see him again. My contribution is going to be twice-baked potatoes. Yum. I love them and yet won't make them very often due to the high butter, sour cream, and cheese content. Haha. Delicious but deadly. I can feel my arteries clogging just thinking about them.

And then....Vegas on Wednesday. Yay! I am getting excited. We have lakeview rooms at the Bellagio, tickets to the big Halloween celebration at Fright Dome, tickets to see "O", and Penn and Teller. And reservations for Emeril's restaurant, Table 10 for one night. I forget which night that is......but I am really looking forward to it.
Now if luck will just smile on me and let me win some huge jackpot so I can retire and spend my time traveling and lavishing gifts on my family. It won't be easy, seeing as how I only tend to play quarter slots and even do that sparingly. I don't mind blowing about 20$ at a sitting. I figure the entertainment and free drinks make it worth at least that. But much beyond that? Probably is not going to happen.

Also, send some good happy vibes to Erica for the first part of this coming week. She is going to spend a couple of days at NIH in DC doing some interviews and a brief presentation of her work (which was so not cooperating when I talked to her earlier this week. She sounded really frustrated because she had a firm deadline for this). I haven't heard an update from the work front. She did send me a brief email just to let me know she was alive but swamped. So.....I wish her luck. She seems to think that working for the NIH after graduation would be something she would like to do. I hope it all goes well for her.

Set to Defrost

I have spent a good portion of my day switching our meager food supplies between fridges. Our new one is set to be here on Friday. We moved the old one into the dining room temporarily so as not to have to slide it across our new flooring. It began to die almost immediately, so I was trying to save as much as I could by stuffing it into that little dorm fridge that we use for drinks. When Bruce got home from work, he managed to track the problem to a stray piece of cardboard that was hanging the fan up. Once he pulled that out from underneath it, it started working again. Still....we lost some food. Its wasteful, but I couldn't help it. I am going to hold off shopping for too much until the new fridge is here. I don't want to go through a day long shuffle-fest again. Our pantry is still not painted, so the shelves are down. All of that food is spread out on the dining table that is sitting in Stephen's room until we are finished enough to put the kitchen back together. I am not shopping for much until I can put it all away in its proper place. We are living in a little slice of chaos right now, but it is slowly coming together. If I wasn't stuck in the darn boot-thing or if Bruce was able to take a couple of days off....we could easily finish this up. Oh well.....it will happen eventually.

So, Bruce just finished watching a Starz original show called "Spartacus". I watch very little of what he orders from Netflix. I am not a real "movie" person for whatever reason. I would rather watch episodes of House Hunters, or Design shows on HGTV than sit through a 2 hour block of fiction. Some movies hold my attention enough to be worth it, but it has to be interesting or I am going to pick up my laptop and see whats going on on Facebook. But Spartacus was actually pretty decent.
It was well done, characters well developed. The plot was engaging through out all of the many episodes that we watched. The one complaint I had was that it was so bloody and gory. What is with that? Every single thing we watch has violence and blood and guts. I have to look away because I feel my flesh crawl with revulsion. And I love horror movies, you know? Like I enjoy being scared, but the best ones have implied violence. Not a bloodbath laid out with no subtlety whatsoever. That part of Spartacus disappointed me. Not only was it one of the bloodiest things I have ever watched, but a lot of the scenes were done in slow motion so the blood splatters could be viewed in graphic detail. Why is that necessary? Oh well, we finished up that season of it. Maybe that was the end of it, I have no idea. I don't access our Netflix account so I don't really know whats on our list, whats coming next or anything else about it.

The boot!

I had another appointment with the podiatrist yesterday. She did an ultrasound and my ankle hasn't healed yet. Apparently thats not unusual as the achilles tendon heals very slowly. Honestly she could have skipped the ultrasound and just let me tell her its not right yet. LOL. She strongly recommended another couple of weeks in the boot. The alternative if I waltz off too quickly is an 8 week minimum stint in a full cast with crutches. She said its sometimes the only way. I am going to cooperate and comply in hopes of avoiding that at all costs.

So, 2 more weeks out of work....but the kicker is that in 1 week we have a trip to Las Vegas planned with our friends Chris and Jessica. This thing has been booked for months, my time off work approved way back in August.....so no matter what I am going to go. I am straining my brain to try and figure out a way to NOT drag the boot with me. I know you can buy these ankle support straps that are supposed to help with this injury. Would that work? Unfortunately its a week of a lot of walking. In the boot, my walking is not restricted. Neither is it painful. I am a bit slow and awkward, but thats it. Out of it....well having a small troll follow behind me and slice into the back of my ankle with a white hot sharp knife is what it feels like. Actually thats what it felt like. It is better now. Not completely but much better than it was. Maybe a troll with a plastic knife. LOL.

I don't know...I am so torn. I am scared to leave the boot home and get there and have this all flare up all over again. I am also scared of having to take this off and on through airport security. I do NOT want to end up in a cast and crutches, but neither do I want to go to shows and restaurants without cute shoes. Such a pain. I wasn't even considering that it would still be ongoing for this trip.

Good Friends

Good friends are priceless. Chris and Jessica spent the whole entire weekend (working 12 hours at a time) helping us install this kitchen floor. The guys did such a good job with the tricky cuts and oddly shaped areas. They worked so hard for so long but finally gave out around 7pm this evening. We have about half of the hallway and 2 closets left, but its 85% done and it looks good. Chris's skills as an engineer came in handy in calculating the best ways to lay it out. We owe them big time....and will make our services available next time they have a big project. I took pictures of the progress and will try to post some of those later. There is still a bit of painting to finish up and then we will tackle the problem of the countertops. Right now, we are all so tired that I don't even want to think about it.