end of a decade

I was born in the '80s, and the '90s was full of high school drama and growing up. The 2000s is the first decade I can adequately comprehend... and it's going to be over in a couple of days. From 2000 to 2010, some highlights (and low-lights).

2000- Captain of high school swim team
2000- Broke up with first boyfriend (dated since '96)
2001- Graduated high school
2001- Moved to Oregon for college
2002- Changed college major from Computer Science to Math
2003- Started working at the college bookstore (selling computers, iPods, CD-Rs, etc.)
2004- Changed college major from Math to Political Science
2005- Sold beloved 1973 VW Beetle (after owning 7 years)
2005- Graduated college
2005- Engaged
2005- Moved to ND to start Masters' program and be closer to parents
2006- Started first "real" job
2006- Parents moved to east coast
2006- Married
2007- First new car
2007- Graduated with Master's degree
2007- Divorced
2008- Started Ph.D. program
2008- Traded in first new car for second new car
2008- New job, better pay
2009- Engaged
2009- Became a first time homeowner
2009- Married

This last decade took me from age 16 to 26, and it's been a busy one to say the least. I can't predict everything that will happen in the 2010s, but I do have some hopes:

Doctorates for me and Pink Hubby.
Careers that continue to be lucrative.
A school-loan-free life.
Good health for us and our families.
A kid or two, if and when we deem we're ready.

In 2010 though, I'm dreaming smaller (but still big):

I want to finish the coursework for my Ph.D.
I want to make a quilt.
I want to pay off one of our cars (they are both 2008 model years).
I want to take a honeymoon.

None of these are exactly resolutions, but they're still something to strive for. Goals.

What have you done in the past 10 years? What do you want to do in the next 10? Do you believe in New Years Resolutions?

winter wonderland

We has it.



This photo was taken on our drive to see family Christmas day.



This blizzard rolled in on Thursday morning and kept on going until Saturday afternoon. I took this next photo on our way back in to town from our Christmas celebration. Looks like a scene from a movie, doesn't it?



I guess the 2005 Crown Victoria isn't the standard issue for driving on 3+ foot-snow-drifted city roads. Police snowmobile:



When we arrived home from Christmas, we had this to deal with before we could get in to the garage (Got another 8+ inches after getting home I think.)



We had already shoveled this twice at this point. Anywhere from 2 and 4.5 feet of snow covered portions our back yard...



On Dec 26, some aftermath (I don't know whose houses/cars these are).

Element.


Trans Am and Cavalier.


Camry and MPV.


Civic.


That's dangerous.


Guy shoveling his roof.


Pink Hubby and I were driving around on Saturday, taking the pics above, when we realized why we love all this snow: it makes the city pretty. Before the salt, sand, and road dirt set in, for just a couple of days, the city looked like a quaint mountain town, rather than the rural-suburban shopping-mall last-stop-before-Canada sprawl it really is.



Our house on Christmas Day.


Merry Blizzardmas!

white christmas

We're gonna have one, I think. Forecasts range from conservative (3") to crazy (12-18") over the next couple of days. Check out the little icons:

Since we don't have any major Christmas travel planned, I'm kind of excited. I like snow and snowstorms. We rarely ever get a snow-day out of it, but it's kind of fun compared to the usual Just-Really-F*cking-Cold that we usually get. And, the temps are generally warmer when it snows. The highs during the storm are in the positive teens - much warmer than it sometimes is! I also don't mind shoveling. I think it's good exercise and an excuse to be outside. (We'll see if I still echo that sentiment if we really do get the 12-18" though!)

By the way: make this.



You will not be disappointed (unless you hate delicious things):

Melt 2 lbs of good chocolate in a double broiler. (I used 2 bags of Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate baking chips.) When it's melted, dump in about 2 cups of nuts (I used salted cashews) and 2 cups of mini marshmallows. Take it off the heat-source, give it a good stir (to coat everything), and pour it on to a cookie sheet lined with a wax paper or release foil. Spread it out so it's a pretty even single-layer of lumpy gooey goodness. If you want to, put some sprinkles or something on it like I did. Then cool it 'till it hardens. (If you're in the north, you can put it on your porch like I did.)

Break it up using a knife or pizza-cutter. Bring it to Christmas in a pretty tin, or just cram it all directly in to your face. Whatever works.



This literally took 15 minutes to make, including washing the bowl afterward. The cost depends on what kind of nuts and chocolate you use. I think as I made it, the batch cost about $12. Had I used peanuts and Hershey bars, it Probably would have been more like $8.

I probably won't post tomorrow (and those wedding pix are nowhere near ready for their debut), so happy Christmas to you if you celebrate. If not, happy long weekend.

stockings were hung in the closet with care

Every day we come home to something like this...



We expected some misbehavior from Rusty; he's not even a year old. We even hung the breakables high up on the tree. But still...



Also, he likes (or hates?) soft presents.



My mom sent a ton of them to us, and I didn't want to chance the destruction. So we had to instigate the Christmas tree holding zone. (A queue, if you will.)



Couldn't save them all though. It appears that mom also sent something else: a catnip mouse.



And Rusty - he's just got to have the 'nip.

survived

Well, we did it. Our first 'real' wedding photo gig. It wasn't even that scary. *whew*

She was a beautiful bride.
We filled all of our memory cards (and we have a LOT of memory cards).
I saw friends I hadn't seen in years.

My best friend of 18 years is now married; I wish her the best. I will share the pictures before New Years, if I can make it through them by then. It was a good thing I had my camera to keep me busy during the ceremony; I was choking back tears just watching her get ready. Through the years, she's been everyone's bridesmaid, personal attendant, hostess, etc. She kept saying "I can't believe this is ME."

it started with a sweater

My friend is getting married tomorrow, and Pink Hubby and I are the photographers. We are also attending the wedding as guests, however (since she is one of my best friends).

I started thinking about what I might wear a few weeks ago. It's December: it's cold. Not "put a 3/4-length cardigan over that strapless dress" cold, more like "will Uggs go with this?" cold. I thought I ought to get a nice sweater.

So, I bought one. A black and gray one with a nice scoopy cowl-neck. Since photographers tend to have to crouch and bend and climb, I wanted to wear pants with it. I figured I could wear my capri-length black pants with it, plus stockings and red heels. Basically a black and grey sweater (which has short sleeves), with a red long-sleeve shirt underneath, black pants and red heels.

Then I noticed that the capris looked stupid with the heels. And the red shirt I had in mind also did not match the sweater or the heels.

So I went out and bought a new shirt for underneath - a silver/gray one. And I also bought some gray boots, and some black corduroy skinny jeans. With skinny jeans, I could tuck in the boots. I figured I'd wear the outfit (which is very monotone) with lots of shiny jewelry. So I bought some shiny jewelery too.

Well, the boots looked stupid with the outfit because the jeans weren't 'skinny' enough. I looked like I was on my way to horseback-riding lessons. The new shirt looked weird too. I liked the pants and kept them, but returned the new shirt (and kept the boots, haha).

While returning the shirt, I spotted another that I was pretty sure would work, so I made an exchange. And while in the store, I saw (guess what), a different cowl-neck sweater.

Keeping track? For this wedding, I now have bought:

The original cowl-neck sweater
A new shirt to go under the sweater
A new pair of pants to go with the sweater
A new pair of boots a new pair of boots to go with the pants and new shirt
Big shiny necklace to make it all look less gray and drab
Another cowl-neck sweater

And I will probably not even wear the original sweater, because I like the new one more. The original red heels go with the new sweater too.

Men, this is how women shop.

first time out with our new gear

We met up with my friend and coworker, C, last weekend to take pictures of her family. C and her husband welcomed baby A to their family about 7 weeks ago. Her older brother, M, is 2 years old.

This was the first time we had used off camera lighting for anything but around-the-house experimentation.















Two things about the above photo. One: shadows. We have to learn where to place our equipment to cut down on those shadows. This photo wasn't too bad; some of the others had some very harsh shadows. I suppose we could have moved the family out from the wall a little too - they were seated only about a foot from it. Two: do you see the waviness in the bottom right portion of the photo? The cheapo trigger we bought seems to be messing with something in my E-500, causing that to happen at medium-and-higher ISO settings. Pink Hubby was experimenting with it last night: if he takes the trigger off my camera, it's fine. Puts it back on, and we get that distortion in a corner of our photos. Glad it's the trigger; we were worried it was the camera body's sensor going bad.





All in all, I'd call this a success. With a crabby little boy and photographers fumbling with new equipment, it's amazing we got a few good shots (let alone the 70 or so good ones we were able to give them). We were grateful for the practice too: we have a wedding this weekend.

another semester complete

I turned in my last papers of the term today, and Pink Hubby has his last final tomorrow. I wish I could say it means we now get to chill out and relax and just do whatever, but that isn't quite the case - we still have jobs, after all.

But at least for the next 3 weeks, we get to taste the sweetness of not having to spend every night studying, doing homework and reading. We get to taste that delicious freedom before being having it jerked away from us once again in the 2nd week of January. Woop!

It's been really cold here the past few weeks. I don't know that I've mentioned it because it's kind of cliche to have a blog in North Dakota and be all "Oh wow, its so cold here." No shit, Sherlock. I know that everyone's definition of cold is different, and here's mine: I don't know if we have seen a positive temperature in the past two weeks. No, I take that back - I think it was 4 degrees on Saturday. And in my head I caught myself thinking: "Wow, it isn't very cold today!" When I talk about numbers, I am talking about Fahrenheit, by the way. We may be 90 miles from Canada, but we're not dealing with Celsius here. 0 degrees Celsius is the equivalent of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Big deal. You might need a jacket. Oooo. 0 degrees Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is around -18 Celsius. So anyway: our highs have been in the negative single digits -- lows in the negative teens -- for a couple of weeks now.

Today on my way to work it was -11 F. The high expected is -3 F. So! Fun times with frozen pipes. That's an issue we've been dealing with for a week or so. Pink Hubby finally got our kitchen water pipe to thaw, but now we have to leave it running all the time (at a very slow rate) in order to keep it that way. Of course, the freeze happened in a place we can't reach. I need to crawl in as far as I can and see what can be done. The notion of getting under the sink (where the garbage is!) and shoving my arm in to a space I cannot see really doesn't fill me with excitement, so I haven't done it yet. For now we just leave the water trickling. There are a lot of reasons renting was easier. However, I am quite sure the benefits of owning are still far outweighing the inconveniences of having to be your own handy[wo]man.

To me, cold weather equals soup. Hearty soup. Chilis, cheese soups, and potato soup.



A few weeks ago, I found this recipe and decided to give it a go. I seem to have lost/deleted all of the prep and cooking pictures, but it wasn't that interesting really. Picture this:

1) Lots of potato-peeling.
2) Raw potatoes floating in the crockpot with some spices.
3) Cooked potatoes floating in the crockpot with some spices.
4) Smashed up cooked potatoes and spices floating in the crockpot. (I used my hand-held mixer - just a 3-speed KitchenAid - to smash it all up.)

Honestly, after I finished preparing the soup, I was not impressed. It was really bland and it was obviously missing something. I love potato soup and clam chowder (which is basically potato soup with seafood in it), so I feel like pretty much know what I want to taste. This was not doing it for me - this was not satisfying me, nor was it making my chapped and wind-burnt cheeks feel any more 'warm and fuzzy'.

So I doubled the spices. More salt, more pepper, more Lawry's, more garlic (I just threw some garlic powder in it to supplement the real stuff I had added that morning). And, did I mention that for "red pepper," I used Chipotle? That is some potent stuff. Everybody's tastes are different though: I recommend making the soup as directed, seeing if you like it, and then adding more spices if you deem it necessary.

The soup tasted a lot better, but it was still kind of watery and Just Not Right. It was lacking the creamy aspect my chilled-to-the-core ass was craving. And finally it occurred to me: Butter.

No butter in a potato soup recipe? What the hell? I tossed a half a stick of butter (4 tbsp) into the pot, and: Perfecto. It was awesome. Amazing. Add some clams and it'd rival even my favorite chowder (from the Chowder Bowl in Newport, OR).

We ate it with cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon (which I fried up quickly on the stovetop).





This made a ton of food. I have a 6-quart crockpot and it was nearly full to the top. I love making soup for this very reason: I can freeze it. We got another dinner out of it (this time with grilled cheese sandwiches on a night with a low of -15 or so) and I then froze several individual containers for lunches. We could have easily gotten three dinners and still 2+ lunches from this massive recipe. All that food for probably about $10 worth of ingredients.

Another reason I'm glad it made so much is that potatoes are a pain in the ass to peel the night before. Since I wanted this to cook all day while I was at work, that was my only option. We had to peel them, slice them, rinse them, and then immerse them in a large pot of water, which was then refrigerated over night. That was an inconvenience, but it was worth it for this tasty soup! It also helps that Pink Hubby took over the peeling process after he noticed I was slicing off more of my own skin than the potatoes'; I'm uh, not that good with sharp objects. I suppose if I made it on a weekend, we wouldn't have to do this... But when I find foods that don't burn when left for 10+ hours, I try to reserve them for weekdays.

dessert fail

This post goes back a ways, but bear with me. I've been kind of busy with finals and photography and Christmas and all that jazz.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I had a paper and presentation due. That's where these come in. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so domestically-inclined, but I am. I like to bring something yummy to holiday gatherings, and I had decided over a month prior that this year, cake balls were it.

Since cake balls need to be refrigerated for quite a while before you dip them, Pink Hubby and I made those on Tuesday evening. Basically you bake a cake and squish it together with a can of frosting, then make little balls from the gooey mixture.





They were messy, but I think they came out how they were supposed to.



So we wrapped the pan in plastic and put it in the fridge until the next evening. After giving my presentation and turning in my paper, it was time to get my butt home and dip the cake balls in delicious almond bark!

Bakerella says: "Roll balls in chocolate and lay on wax paper until firm. (Use a spoon to dip and roll in chocolate and then tap off extra.)"

Ummm. Something wasn't right.



We melted the bark as directed, and tried every method we could think of to dip those suckers (including sticking a toothpick in them for the dipping.



Let's compare: look at these.

Yeah. Hmmm. Not looking quite the same.



We were both too embarrassed to show up with these for thanksgiving. So we quietly ate them in shame. They tasted as good as defeat can taste, I guess. Maybe I should stick to cookies.

coming soon to a blog that generally isn't all that cute: so much cuteness you might explode

I said I wasn't ready for a family. I didn't say I have a problem with using other people's as photo props. :-)



Pink Hubby took this photo of me for you photo geeks out there. We've got two off camera flashes - I mentioned them a few weeks ago. This is our first official use; next week we're doing a wedding (eeep!!)

Anyway, in the left side of the photo you see two tripods. The one in the foreground - the black one - has an off camera flash (a.k.a "strobe," in camera nerd speak) on it, and it's firing through the big white umbrella you can see here, at the subjects (in this case, the big bear and baby A). The silver tripod in the back-left in the photo has a second off camera strobe on it. It's pointed at the ceiling. Then each of the flashes is mounted on what are called receivers. Our cameras then each have triggers attached to their 'hot shoe' (which is where you'd attach the flash to the camera if you were going to shoot with it on the camera). When either of us snaps a pic, the trigger tells the flashes to fire. Bam. Instant awesome pictures, even in dark settings. Pink Hubby knows way more about this than I do, but we're both learning!

Thanks so much to my friend C for letting us use her family as guinea pigs - this is the first time we've used our new gear to shoot anything other than food or the cat. In exchange, I hope I can provide them with a half-way decent pic for their Christmas cards.


We only made one child cry yesterday (one out of two ain't bad right?)