susuwatari

So we bit the bullet and bought Nadine. (I love alliteration!) So in 7 weeks my big ol’ booty will get to make first contact. OH YEAH BABY. Can’t wait. On the other hand, I can definitely wait, as in put off forever, that hefty charge that just hit my credit card. I am a responsible person though so I will pay for it and cry and rub Nadine’s lovely plush microfiber velvet cushions and then get over it. Until the dog pukes on the couch for the first time. I need a hug.

I promised to share the recipe with Mona of the chicken wings I made during the 4th of July festivities. I got the recipe from this wonderful woman’s website here: Pioneer Woman Cooks Wings!
Not only does Ree tell you how to make it in a very amusing way she provides lots and lots of pictures so you can visually see what things should look like. This is very helpful for the cooking handicapped such as me. Now for some of my personal observations making this recipe:

1. Do not be a chicken with the Tabasco sauce. USE IT! The smell from the sauce as your making it is enough to burn your nose hairs, but that hotness is not as concentrated on your chicken. The first time I made these I used only a little dribble of medium Tabasco (not even the regular type like she uses) and it was actually way too mild for even big baby me. Now I must admit that I have increased my tolerance and desire for spice in my life (I am proud to say I now get the medium sauce at Qdoba), but still I know compared to most I’m a big wimp. Long story short use the Tabasco sauce and you need to actually really shake it to get the sauce out. Phew.

2. Wait to make the sauce until the chicken is almost done as fairly soon after mixing everything beautifully together like it looks in her pictures it starts to separate a little. I still found the sauce good even if it separated. You sorta are stirring the sauce with your little chicken wings anyway.

3. I needed to stir the wings a lot while they were cooking or they would just sink to the bottom and stick making a big ol’ mess.

4. You are going to need a lot of oil to cook the wings. And don’t be like me; think about WHAT you’re going to put this oil into once you are done BEFORE you start cooking.

5. Eating wings is a messy endeavor so I guess it makes sense that making them is messy too, even if you stir diligently.

6. Have people hanging around immediately after you are done making them or you are in danger of eating them all by yourself.

As for her other recipe on there about the home-made ranch dip, It’s really good but survey says (ok my sister says) it’s not that drastically better than what you can buy at the grocery store. Unless you got time on your hands I’d stick with just buying it pre-made.

This weekend I learned that Monster Truck Races are apparently not my thing. I thought it would be more exciting but it was pretty boring. Also people watching is often traumatizing.

Tomorrow I finally go to my fabulous hairdresser Cyndi, this is her full title and she can be referred as nothing else. Even in causal conversation you can only shorten it to the fabulous Cyndi. Bossy mentioned recently in a post that you can’t see bad hair coming, you just wake up one day and your hair looks horrible. It’s quite a shock, which I experienced about two weeks ago. I got up one morning and while brushing my teeth looked up in the mirror and fell back from all the grays I saw. I get this premature graying from my Mom’s side of the family along with my food allergies, yay for crappy genes. It’s been so long now that I have developed an alter ego who I fondly refer to as Old Hag. Being Old Hag is kinda freeing as I always knew that inside of me held a crotchety old woman just dyeing to come out and whack kids on her lawn with her cane. Most woman fear turning into their mothers (hello Christina!), I fear diving bombing past Mom and heading straight to Grandma. Ah well after tomorrow night Old Hag will be held at bay for another 6 weeks. Also time to discipline the eyebrows, damn anarchists.

Ok, so we went and did some shopping this weekend which was probably the most boring 2 hours of my friend Andrew’s life. (sorry Andrew!) Crate and Barrel was kind of a bust. The cheaper sofas turned out to be hideous/uncomfortable. The one we sort of liked there made weird plastic-y noises when you sat on it. I could have lived with it but wasn’t in love.

At Intaglia they only had about 4 floor samples to sit in. We were surprisingly enamored with the Gracie sofa. However it broke the cardinal rule of no buttons. The guy working there was very helpful and showed us the Nadine sofa in a catalog. Yes it has buttons, but only on the back. And it seemed like they were very tight (judging from construction on the Gracie sofa). Also I have an arm chair in the living room with buttons on the back and I like the look I was just concerned about ripping them off with my jean pockets. (Are you bored of this yet? Because I’m not done yet so you should probably go.) I am currently trying to figure out if this is what I would like to go broke for. Nadine is deep (the Gracie met my needs and Nadine is even DEEPER, I think she has a college degree), it is stylish, modern – but not too modern, and it also has lovely low arms that I can easily reach over to pick up my mochatini. I’m also obsessing about what color to get the sofa in. I love the microfiber velvets they had. Really nice plush textures that seem like they can take a beating. I’m tempted to get a cream color to offset our green walls but I’m nervous with the dog and potential future puking babies (no I’m not pregnant but this sofa is supposed to last FOREVER). So I’m sort of torn between the cream color and a boring and safer khaki/beige. We’re also a bit nervous to buy a couch we haven’t introduced our butts to yet.

Me: Hello Butt, I would like to introduce you to Nadine.
Butt: Ooohh lala.
Nadine: *terror stricken eyes*

The Crate and Barrel trip wasn’t a total bust because we found this coffee table that I’m pretty sure we’ll get. Do you think Nadine will like it?

War hoo-ha what is it good for, absolutely nothing say it again! Well actually it’s good for destroying the egos of your co-workers with awesome trash talk. The beauty is that everyone involved knows that I do not have the skills to back up what I’m saying but we both ignore this fact; them probably out of politeness, me because your actual skill level is inconsequential in a game of trash talk. Remember kids, if you can talk the talk who cares if you walk the walk? Today is a good day for today all the teams in Genomics get to battle each other in laser tag and doing some bumper cart thing at Demolition Zone. I’m getting paid to attack my co-workers. Good times. I’m rather pumped about this so much so that I decided I should wear an awesome outfit and I asked Kristin if she would too expecting a no but getting a yes! This is why I love Kristin for she is awesome in all ways. Of course she has rejected most of my ideas but has held true to some core elements. We will be wearing our exercise clothes because Christina said when she went there she was sweating like a stuck pig. We were going to wear exercise shorts with long athletic tub socks but my massive thighs didn’t agree with this plan so we will be wearing long exercise pants. We will also be wearing pink wristbands and headbands. Sweetness! Ideas that were rejected by Kristin: Afro wigs for Team Afro, gold chains, unicorn shirts, glitter, stick on tattoos or face paint, and finally b/c she was going to be wearing the Shake N’ Bake shirt I got her I was going to cut out from a box the Shake and Bake logo and tape it to my shirt. I also wanted us to write Shake N’ Bake on our wrist and head bands. She has vetoed this as well…..but she will put the football dark bands under my eyes and put my hair up in pig tails! SWEET!

After pointing lasers at my co-workers eyes and surely being attacked by everyone since I’ve been a little indiscriminate with the trash talk (I can’t help it it’s just so fun!) I will then go home to shower and change (my sister insisted that I change out of my battle gear) and then off to drink daiquiris with my sister at Pueblo Solaris. What else will we be doing tonight you might ask? Who cares! Did you miss the whole DAIQUIRIS part. Hello! Good times indeed.

P.S. Yes my battle cry, “I regret nothing!” shall rally my team to victory or to leaving me behind as a victim decoy.

Obviously I’m not busy enough at work today. Please ignore that. Here are some sofas that I have been researching. They are kind of in our price range. (I’m laughing as I type this because the idea that we actually can spend this much without me going through lots of emotional trauma is a joke.) Let me know your opinions if anyone out there is reading this.

1. The Staten at Intaglia ($???)

2. The Hennessy at Crate and Barrel ($999)

3. The Willow at Crate and Barrel ($1699) – Note: I’ve almost struck this off the list because of the BIG ARM problem

4. The Bradford at Pottery Barn ($1099) – Note: surprisingly affordable at PB, looks comfy, must go fondle

5. The Arlington at Pottery Barn ($1799) – Note: not so affordable at PB, but drool worthy

So my sister is not homeless anymore as you have probably noticed if you’ve read below. The panic for her is over and I am happy for her. However, we have been couch-sitting (hah! a pun!) her lovely green sofa for the last six months and now that she has new accommodations she has demanded for her sofa to be returned. So now I am without the sweet comfort of the green sofa and am stuck again with my POS Weekend’s Only lumpy uncomfortable sofa. I cry a little bit whenever I sit down and my butt feels the MDF frame through the threadbare cushions.

**please give Christina a moment of silence for her sad state of booty discomfort**

Ok so the plan is to get rid of lumpy and replace it with lovely. You know what I’m saying right? It’s time to go furniture shopping! (did your heart just stop like mine did?) As anyone who has had to purchase furniture before would know, sofas are hella expensive. Our house is continually flooded with Pottery Barn catalogs and the ones listed in there are easily $2500 and up. Lumpy was a $400 sofa. We are trying to shoot for something in between these two extremes. I also have some specific desires for our new lovely sofa. I want it to be roughly the same size as Patience’s lovely green sofa (86×40x36), I want the arm rests to be low enough that I can still reach our side tables to pick up my glass of Pinot Grigio, I want it to have no buttons, not be micro-suede, and to be super comfortable and durable. I think most people in our age/income group would immediately run to Ikea but since the closest one is five hours away that is not a solution for us. Our local furniture stores usually have things that look like they crawled out of the sets of 80’s soap operas (how do they survive?!) so my options for shopping are limited. I want to be able to do the meet, greet and fondle for my new couch. Which leaves internet shopping at Room & Board or West Elm another no no. So basically I’m interested in shopping here: intagliahome.com This is the store where the lovely green sofa was originally purchased before my sister got it second-hand. So I’m thinking of starting here where I’m hoping we can go home with a new sofa for well under $2k. Pray for my success! If you see no updates soon it’s because I died of sticker shock.