2 Things Found...

My mom found my headphones (that I was so worried about last night I almost cried), they were in her office... don't ask me how they got there. She thinks it has something to do with how she sometimes wears my clothes and I sometimes leave things in my pockets. Anyway....

JJ found his little tiny iPod that he uses for the gym! You'd never guess where it was... his gym bag!

Let's just say I have a forgetful, loses-things-all-the-time husband.

Which is why he's not getting prescription sunglasses 'til right before he absolutely has to have them (for work).

It's also why we only have 1 car key and he's had to get new keys for our apartment (where he's lived for 10 months) twice.

Silly boy. I love him.

I Had A Really Good Day Yesterday

...despite some bad news.

I got some bad news yesterday, but that's not something I really want to blog about. Actually, I did want to blog about it, but then I took the post off, because it was potentially offensive. For those of you who were lucky enough to check my blog at like 12:35 PM, you were blessed with my ranting and raving.

I spent all day yesterday (my day off) boiling about this situation while watching crappy TV.

After that, however, I had the best talk EVER with JJ (as soon as he got home from work). We finally agreed on how we feel about the situation, which we hadn't before, and had quite the fun time laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing is, and how it's something that would only happen when completely contrived on some kind of awful British sitcom.

Following that, I decided to take a bath to go out with JJ and forget about our situation. JJ then surprised me by jumping in the bath with me (mind you, we're both not tiny people, and our bath is one of those bath/shower combos that 1 person barely fits in)... and then he got stuck! I almost peed the bath, and he got out. I'm sure it was meant to be kind of romantic, but it ended up just being way hilarious.

After that episode, I got dressed, and we headed out. We had decided to take a walk and then go to dinner. We rode the Metro to Rosslyn, then walked across the Key Bridge, down on the riverwalk, and then ended up going back up to M Street and picking a restaurant at random.

We ended up eating at a place called The Guards. It was pretty good, but they were out of both the salad and pie that I wanted. The Crab Cakes, however, were GOOOOOOD!


We then walked to the Foggy Bottom Metro stop and rode home, where I fell asleep watching a new episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

Such a good day. I'm going to miss days like this when I go back home--8 days from today.

My Meaty Man

This story was just so funny I had to tell it.

Today JJ and I decided to go to Costco and stock up on some meat. We grabbed some backpacks and off to the Metro we went! For those of you who have never lived in a big city without a car, you'd know a trip to Costco as something pretty different. We get on the Metro, go 3 stops, get on the next train, go 2 stops, get off the Metro, walk 2 blocks, then we're finally there.

So we go shopping, and, since we were there for some meat, we headed right to the back of the place. We go to the meat coolers, and I leave JJ to look for some steaks. When I look back, I see that he's struck up a conversation with a man that was very well-dressed and neatly trimmed. Hmmm....

Apparently, the conversation went a little bit like this:

"Excuse me, is this a good price on this meat?" says the stranger.
"Yeah, it looks like a pretty good deal to me." responds my husband.
"I just usually shop at a butcher's in Dupont Circle"
*Note that Dupont Circle is where most of the gay bars are located*
"Oh, yeah, well Costco generally has really high quality meat at a good price... for example, this is a USDA-Certified Prime New York, at a price that you could pay for Choice somewhere else."
Then I walk up just when the stranger says.....
"Well, I'll get them then... You look like a guy who really knows his meat!"

.......Gay guys love us.

And yes, JJ really does know his meat. As in steaks. What a dirty mind you have.

A Very Shady Maple

Every Christmas Eve, JJ's whole family goes to a buffet in Pennsylvania called "The Shady Maple Smorgasbord". This year, we're going to be at my parent's house (side note: This blog may be called marikaandjohn. etc... but I think we've all realized that JJ likes me writing, he never gets around to it) for the Holidays, and JJ said the day he'll miss the most is Christmas Eve.

That's what got my new brilliant surprise plan in the works. I decided to make our own version of Shady Maple for dinner tonight (he always gets up too early for me to surprise him with a breakfast). So I went to the grocery store, bought all of the stuff, and got started at 3--since JJ was going to be home at 5.

I made biscuits and gravy first, then I made the bacon (a whole package, because Shady Maple is all about eating copious amounts of fatty meats and eggs). Then I got working on the pancakes. One of them became quite a pain in my rear.

Here's the story of the epic pancake:

Number One: I'm allergic to bananas. Like, eat-a-banana-and-die type allergic. But JJ's favorite is banana and walnut (I'm also allergic to walnuts). After figuring out how to get a banana open, I started making a GIANT pancake, pictured here:

The pancake filled up the whole pan! I swear I didn't start it this big--It GREW. Good thing I have a GIANT pancake spatula:
It's almost as big as m'face! So I go at the pancake with the flipper, and....
I think you can tell how I feel about this:
I decided just to put it in the oven with everything else while I made another of JJ's favorite pancakes, Peach and Brown Sugar. I made a peach, brown sugar, and pecan one for myself.
Then I decided to make our house look more like Shady Maple...

Seeeeeeee? Almost as awesome as my Christmas decorating scheme.

JJ was very happy with the dinner, anyway, and here he is after he ate his first course, a biscuit and gravy with eggs:



This picture is of the bacon after we were done:

And JJ after he's done eating 2 giant pancakes, a few strips of bacon, and 3 biscuits with gravy... and more than half of the 4 eggs I scrambled:

It was so much fun to see JJ happy! It wasn't the same as regular Shady Maple, because there weren't any whoopie pies, shoo-fly pies, doughnuts fried in LARD (which is a word you hafta capitalize always), plethora of soda machines, or millions of fat people, but... I made it feel more like Shady Maple by wearing a soup strainer on my head (like the Mennonites that own the place...okay, they wear traditional hat-thingies. But they look like soup strainers!).


...I'm officially Shady Maple Crazy.

What exactly....

What exactly did Zack and Miri do? I don't know, because I live in Utah.


Yes, this was actually outside of the theatre. UGH. Let's move, JJ.