I've been seeing a lot of advertisements for these lately.

Now, I appreciate wanting to give someone something functional and edible instead of flowers as a gift, but what do you do with this?  Is it a gift for fifty people? Does it have some amazing chemical on it that keeps it looking and tasting fresh forever? Why not just give a fruit basket? There are just so many questions.

I have this mental picture of the recipients sitting down and eating their weight in fruit to try to avoid wasting it before it goes bad.  I also have this mental picture that no one would be able to accomplish that and the arrangement would look like this in a couple hours:

 Seriously, so many questions.

I'm turning to you, internets:  Have you ever received or given one of these? Was it fabulous?  Should I go get one immediately? Will it change my life?


Yes, I did photo-shop this myself.  Can we say I have too much time on my hands due to being stuck indoors thanks to a tropical storm? K-man said:  "My wife, ladies and gentlemen--nothing but productive."

To say it's been a bad hair day would be the understatement of the year.

Tropical storm Lee has been pouring on us all day.  Crazy.  The wind is supposed to start tonight and major flooding tomorrow.

The one good thing about the moisture is a bunch of tiny frogs have emerged on our deck!  They are so freaking cute.  They range in size from smaller than a pea to about the size of a penny.  They're too active to get a good pic, sorry.

I hope you all have a good Labor day!

Back to school Sangria.

It is hot as hell in New Orleans.  Add a marsh fire that has filled the city with smoke on top of that and it's pretty miserable.  I decided a nice, refreshing alcoholic drink was in order so I made sangria. Yum!


I also wanted to tell you all about Flip-flop wines. They are a new winery that will buy a pair of shoes for someone in need (much like Tom's shoes) for the first 100,000 bottles they sell.  In New Orleans a bottle sells for 5.97 and really, they aren't bad at all.  They have 3 white and 3 red varieties. Give it a try!

Look at my new swag!

(Yelp bike bell)

Hells bells.

Normally I'm a jeans kind of gal, but the nuns that run my school expect a certain standard in dress so jeans don't really cut it.  Last week I bought a new pair of khakis to teach in. Yesterday I wore them for the first time.

During my office hours I was grading some papers with a red permanent marker.  Are you picturing Cameron Diaz grading papers in Bad Teacher?  That's really not how I grade. Usually I use a nice friendly green pen (yeah, I'm one of those teachers).  The red marker was my only option at the time so I used it.

After putting the score on the FIRST paper, the marker inexplicably fell out of my hands and landed in my lap, leaving a red line I had to teach with for the rest of the day.  Are you friggin' kidding me?  The first paper? The first time I've worn the pants? It was a sign--DON'T GRADE RIGHT NOW (and get yourself a drink).

I figured there was no chance in hell I could get the stain out.  Well, I followed what my Google search told me to do, and it worked like a charm.

I thought I'd share the method for you:
1.  Put a paper towel behind the cloth so the stain doesn't bleed through to other cloth. (This is very important. This step wasn't included in my Google search, and I ended up with a second stain on the back of my pants.)
2.  Put some nail polish remover (with acetone) on the stain. Blot with a paper towel to pick up as much of the ink as possible.
3. Gently scrub with a tooth brush. 
4. Rinse and immediately saturate with liquid laundry detergent.
5. I let it set overnight.
6. Wash.

The stain is completely gone!


side note: For some reason, blogger published a few draft posts this morning,  sorry if it littered your readers with random, unfinished posts :(  I took them down.

Saturday brunch

I tagged along to K-man's haircut in the french quarter yesterday because I knew I could convince him to get brunch at a restaurant right on Jackson Square I've been wanting to try--Stanley. I'm so happy I did because brunch was amazing! I had the eggs benedict with fried oysters. SO GOOD. Look how perfectly the eggs are poached.

 

(crappy phone pic, sorry)

Afterward we went to the Faulkner bookstore down Pirates Alley.  All-in-all it was a delightful Saturday morning.

I hope you all had a great weekend!  We're back to school tomorrow. Where did the summer go?

WTF?!

I just saw this on Jezebel:

According to Amazon, it's a children's book meant for kids ages 4-8.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Here's the blurb: "This book is about a 14 year old girl who goes on a diet and is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal sized girl who becomes the school soccer star. Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self image."

The whole premise (as far as I can tell) is this girl wants to fit into the pretty pink dress her mother bought for her many sizes too small.  When she finally fits into it, her life is perfect and she's finally pretty and liked.

Talk about promoting body issues at the age of 4. Jesus.

I admit, the second sentence of the blurb sounds good and I'm all for teaching your kids to be healthy through proper diet and  exercise, but how about doing it the old fashioned way instead of relying on superficial stereotypes?  You, know- teach by example?


side note:  This reminds me of a stand-up routine I saw a few years ago where the comedian says before having children he used to judge parents in public with screaming children, thinking they were terrible parents with no control.  The punchline was: Don't judge 'til you have kids of your own...YOU HAVE NO IDEA what it's like.

Here I am being judgey-mcjudgerson.  I'm sure I'll change my tune when I have kids.

WWDDD

K-man and I just watched the first four seasons of Mad Men in a (ridiculously) short amount of time.  It's addicting. Here's a link to a cute comic from Oatmeal about Don Draper:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/wwddd

Happy Anniversary my Love!

We're staying at the Degas House (via a Living Social deal) for two days to celebrate.  It's pretty fancy.

By the way, this is as close to "scrapping" as I get.....Picasa did it for me :)

Thursday night ceviche.

I'm a huge fan of ceviche, especially on hot nights because it requires no heat to cook.  Many people don't know how easy it is to make.  This is a shrimp and scallop Mexican-style ceviche.  Here is my basic recipe for two people, keep in mind ceviche is great because you can really play jazz with it.  Really, you can use any firm white fish.


Ingredients: 
Juice from two limes.
Juice from one lemon.
1 lbs raw shrimp, chopped into bite-size pieces.
1 lbs scallops, chopped into bite-size pieces.
Half of a white onion, diced.
One jalapeno, sliced (add more/less depending on your heat preference).
One small tomato, diced.
Half of a cucumber, diced.
1/3 bunch cilantro, chopped.
Drizzle of olive oil.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Avocado for garnish.
Corn ships/tostadas for serving.

Directions:
Toss the scallops and shrimp with the lemon and lime juice to coat well.  Combine with the rest of the ingredients, cover container and put in the fridge for two hours. If you want to leave the shrimp and scallops whole, it will take longer to cook.  The ceviche is ready when the shrimp and scallops are opaque.  Garnish with avocado and serve on a tostada or with chips.

Note:  I stir it every half hour or so, but I think that's because I'm OCD.  I don't think it's necessary.

How easy is that?  It literally takes me 10 minutes to prepare.

I've made many variations of this: omitting the tomatoes and cucumbers, using strictly lemon juice, using cod, etc.--Like I said, you can play jazz!

This was more than enough for K-man and me.  We had it for lunch the next day.

Hope you all are doing well!

Graffiti of the day. LOVE

link

Amen

I'm sure you all have seen this elsewhere, but here it is anyway. That's his mom (a teacher) next to him.


Also, if you haven't seen his full speech, watch it here.

Update!

Two things:
1. I am *finally* back in nola after over two months in Idaho. We are now starting to prep for school and are looking for an apartment in nola proper.
2. I am officially out of the stone-ages! Guess where I'm posting this from? My droid :) I finally broke down-- we changed carriers (verizon refused to give me a deal on a phone) and got a free droid*, twice the minutes, unlimited data, and a phone that I can also use as a hot spot for $20 LESS than verizon. Isn't that crazy?

Anyway, I'll post something way more interesting soon (and more often) now that I'm home.

*it was pretty funny, we actually had to pay for K-man's bare-bones, no frills flip phone

For my Harry Potter fans.

I'm a huge fan of comic writer Lucy Knisley. She is a big Potter fan, so she's had a lot of stuff on her blog lately celebrating the new movie. 


She and her room-mate did this cute video:

Prepping for Our Wizardly Voyage! from Lucy Knisley on Vimeo.

Here is her comic summarizing Harry Potter. This link has a down-loadable high-res version.

I hope you all enjoy the movie!

First World Problems

I'm sure some of you have already seen this, but it made me giggle.