Sunday, November 30, 2008

Diamonds, my opinion on

I don't particularly like diamonds. I don't usually tell people this, because I know a lot of people who wear diamonds and every one I've seen is beautiful and perfect for the wearer, and I don't want to foist my own tastes on anyone else. But I would never wear one. I have some moral issues with them, but also, I just don't really care for the way they look. I like rocks that absorb some light, rather than refract it all. I like amethysts, and opals, and sapphires, crystals with pretty colors and interesting stories about them. The word amethyst actually comes from the Greek meaning "not drunk" because they thought it would protect you against drunkenness if you wore it or had it embedded in your cups.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Yay Thanksgiving!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving at the home of some of Boyfriend's friends from his internships. I made sweet potato fries, brown rice casserole, apple pie, and a cranberry tart. Everything was very well received, Boyfriend really liked the cranberry tart, which was nice because it was an experiment and I thought I might have burnt it a bit :)

His friends Kara and John have a really pretty house a bit south of here, and love to entertain and show off all the pretty dishes they got as wedding presents. They made a very moist turkey, awesome mashed potatoes, salad, rolls and cheesecake, and another friend provided stuffing, asparagus and pumpkin pie. I love Thanksgiving dinners like that, among friends who each bring something different. It'd be better with family of course, but since we're going up for so long over Christmas we just don't have time over Thanksgiving.

Also, poor Boyfriend had to go to work at 7 pm, and the woman who provided the stuffing was working that day until 4 pm, so we kind of had to squeeze dinner in when we could.

Kara has been doing archery for fun, she's participated in some competitions and is really getting good. She showed us her set-up, she had a very modern looking metal bow and target arrows, with about a dozen little bits of leather that you wear in various places to protect yourself. Boyfriend shot off 6 arrows and hit the target 5 times, though he was shooting left-handed when he's used to right. I shot off 4 before my arms got too tired, and I managed to hit my arm with the bow string on one shot and give myself a gigantic bruise there. I got used to a tradition of propelling pointy things at targets on Thanksgiving at my Uncle's, so it was nice to uphold the tradition :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Travel

We had a very nice trip to Nebraska. The car ride is long, but I've always liked roadtrips. We switched off driving and sleeping. We left Thursday at about 7, stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel so I could eat macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes, and arrived in Omaha about 12:15 pm on Friday.

We visited with Boyfriend's family and friends, it was very nice to see them. On Saturday we went to Des Moines for his cousin's wedding. The actual ceremony was nice, and since we had about an hour and a half until the reception we visited Iowa State University, half an hour away in Ames, where Boyfriend went to school. He had kind of mentioned it, but I hadn't really realized it: his campus is huge! Riddle was about a mile across, and then connected to the airport, but it could have fit inside ISU's campus several times. I don't know how he walked across it to go to class. We drove around it for about an hour or so, and I don't think we saw all of it. We did get to go inside his major building, and passed the dorms and apartments where he lived. It's always strange to me to see places that I personally have no connection to, that someone I am so close to has such strong ties to, so many memories of. It's odd the other way also, showing places where I have walked hundreds of times and experienced so much to someone who is seeing it for the first time.

It was a beautiful campus, full of old brick buildings and parkland. It seemed to be focused on the football stadium the way Embry focused on the airfield.

Then we went back to the reception, and I gummed some more potatoes and we danced the night away. I forgot my camera so I'll have to hope someone sends me some pictures to post. Apparently everyone liked my purple dress. Boyfriend said they don't give compliments directly in the Midwest, they give them to other people who then give them to you, which seems odd, but you know.

It is definitely a different world out there. I read an editorial in the paper on Sunday complaining that leftist college professors were leading kids into Communism, and that they should be watched more closely. Communism? Really? There are still people worried about that?

Speaking of being in a different world, on our drive back to Houston we decided that Italian would be nice for dinner, since I could definitely handle pasta by then. We were going to stop when we saw the lights in Wichita, which I still have a hard time thinking of as an actual place, but we missed it. There were no lights. I didn't have enough cell phone signal to search for a restaurant with it, so we asked for the closest place we could get pasta at the next gas station. The attendant looked confused and said, "Pasta? Oklahoma City, I guess." We had just passed a sign for Oklahoma City. It was 136 miles away! 136! I never in my life thought I would be over a hundred miles from an Italian restaurant! It was terrifying.

We ended up stopping at a very strange looking diner type place because we were hungry. There was a man wearing a huge cowboy hat sitting at a table with a straight face. I'm not sure how they do that. The food was actually ok though, I got roast beef which would have been really good on a hoagie roll with provolone but was still good over white bread.

We ended up coming through Houston at 6:30 am on a Monday, which was as much fun as it sounds. I had no idea traffic would be that bad that early, and I would never commute there.

The Kitten was extremely happy to see me, she meeped until I put down everything and picked her up and let her knead and roll around and purr on me to her heart's content. I hadn't thought to turn the heat on before I left, so it was 63 degrees when I got home, and she was a cold Kitten, poor thing. She was so cold she crept under the blankets with me and curled up against my stomach when I went to bed. She poked her little nose out so she could breathe and we slept the rest of the day. It was very nice to be home.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Solid food

So after 2 days of tomato soup, yogurt and applesauce, today I ate solid food! Yay! I had leftover raviolis for lunch, which I cut up into teeny tiny pieces. After an hour I wasn't finished them yet, but I called it a good effort. My stomach was a bit weirded out that I was suddenly asking so much of it, but it was nice to eat more than 90 calories at once.

My mouth feels ok, it was a bit sore after all that chewing but feels better now. I'm ok as long as I don't talk too much at once or chew very much.

Also, ice cream is a bad idea. It seems like a good idea, and it was even on the list of recommended foods, but it is not. The retainer in the roof of my mouth changes size ever-so-slightly with temperature. With warm foods it's fine, it just presses more securely against where the graft came from, but with cold ice cream it got a bit loose and moved around a bit and that was bad.

Aside from needing a nap, I'm doing well though.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Gum Surgery

So I survived my surgery. Boyfriend drove me around afterwards for an hour to get the drugs they'd prescribed and then home. Then I slept til he got home from work. I feel ok now, jaw a little sore and it hurts a bit to talk. I'm gonna try some tomato soup and chill on the couch. Very glad it's over with!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Ren Faire Pics!

Ben is adorable!
I got a spiffy new shirt! And I like to twirl in long skirts.
Us together, very cute:

Chad and Deedee:
Deedee, Chad, me, Ben, Em, and Alex:


It was a beautiful day and we had a really good time. I got a new shirt, which is pretty spiffy, and I'm going to build a druid costume around it I think. Ben got a very nice belt pouch you can see in the first pic of him, and Chad got a new boots and a sword. Deedee couldn't wear her corset this year, so she wrapped a cord around her belly and tied it with a bow, it looks really cute. And Alex and Em got matching bracers and belt pouches, they look very nice.