Peer pressure post

I know I've neglected the blog this week, and my co-worker Michele just pointed out that it's been a week without a post. Apparently she's as bored at work today as I am.

The reason for the lack of posts is that I have been volunteering this week to teach vacation bible school at my church. Every night from 6-9 this week, I have been doing a little lesson on God for 4-10 yr olds. Our lesson plans are built around this chipmunk, Chadder. He is at the Avalanche Ranch and he's trying to learn to be a cowboy, and teaching others about God along the way. The lessons are good, if not a little over the top with the preparation you have to do some nights. Luckily, I am doing the DVD portion, so each night we watch a little and talk about it. I've also had "experiments" to show the kids (balancing a ping pong ball on a hair dryer to show that when we're 'connected' to God - plugged in - we can do amazing things). The lessons are adapted toward the Catholic faith in small ways, but it's clear that the original designers are adding that in as an afterthought to market more materials.

So, kids say the darndest things. When I asked them to tell me something God created, my littlest student told me, "taxes." When I asked them to tell me about a time they were afraid but they knew God was with them, one girl started with, "Well, once when my mommy and daddy were trying to make a little brother or sister for me to play with, the lights were out..." I stopped her right there. She also informed me one night, apropos of nothing, that "Jesus just didn't get on that cross by himself, you know." It's amazing how kids with older siblings have such large vocabularies, but such little mouths. Their speech patterns aren't fully developed, but they're trying out these big words. It makes for a long evening, but it has been fun.

In other news, I'd rededicated myself to Weight Watchers this week, switching my plan over to Core. I know you're all too nice to tell me, but since getting married I've let myself just get fatter and fatter. It's time to slim down, for various reasons, not the least of which is I'm tired of buying new fat clothes when I have a closet full of perfectly good skinny ones. Wish me luck!

Look what boredom cooked up

Alas, another night alone, widow to baseball. Kevin is at his internship and out of boredom, I created this. It's a great solution to all the bags of sliced almonds I have in my baking cabinet (I never think I have them in stock and always buy a bag when a recipe calls for 1/4 cup) as well as the light corn syrup I had from making s'mores in the last summer for a Bonner function, where they also were a big hit. It's in the oven right now, but the prelim taste test tells me it's delish!

Friday = quiz time

I feel like this is pretty accurate on some points, and also odd because it was while watching this movie that Kevin and I first kissed. AW!

Your Love Life is Like Titanic

"Promise me you'll survive. That you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless." You think that you only really have one true love in your life. And that you better to anything and everything to be with that person. You tend to be very nostalgic about past loves that didn't work out. There are many secret feelings that you keep to yourself. Your love style: Deep and emotional Your Hollywood Ending Will Be: Bittersweet

What Movie Is Your Love Life Like?

Pineapple in Papiamento is...pineapple

So tonight, I cut up a pineapple.

I know what you're thinking, "wow, she's so much fun." But I worked until 7 p.m., on a scrapbook for work no less (that's why I get paid the big bucks) and then when I came home, I ate dinner, read my book and decided to deal with the mass of fruit on our counter.

Post-vacation, I realized that I can't miss out on all the great fruit we had while we were away. I am catching up on all my summer favorites: plums, peaches, pineapple. The cantaloupes I got leave a little to be desired. Maybe watermelon next time.

Anyway, growing up, me madre always bought the pineapple that comes already cored by a machine of some sort - it's bathing in its own juice in a tall plastic container. The juice always kind of bothered me b/c it ended up making the fruit REALLY sweet, and after a few pieces, I had to cease and desist or my tongue would petrify and become a fossil. I also couldn't help feeling like we were getting ripped off - I mean, how much of the pineapple were we missing here? Obviously the already prepped pineapples are a bit more expensive because they save you time (it's time or money, as the economic man would say).

So it's time to tackle the real thing. I picked up a nice prickly pineapple this week at my local bodega and when I was about to go at it samurai-style, I realized I had no idea how to tackle it. So I hit the Internet. Who knew, but cutting pineapples is similar to skinning cats - it's a hairy mess. Just kidding.

There were a number of different ways, and even a site dedicated to the art, http://www.howtocutapineapple.com/. This was good because it had pictures and I'm tired of reading. There was also About.com's version , which I generally don't file much credence in because it just looks like a bunch of junky ads, and this site that looks like a local professional who knows his stuff. By then, I'd had enough of the Internet and decided to just have a go.

That was when I noticed the tag on my beautiful porcupine pineapple had instructions. It's not called a Del Monte Gold for nothin'. Unforch, it's not online. You'll have to buy your own Gold to see these detailed instructions.

I did a hybrid method of the first Web site and the Del Monte tag, trying to cut the prickly skin as close as possible to maintain as much of the flesh as I could. (I love when food writers use the word "flesh" for the meaty part of anything that's not really meat - it makes it still sounds like such a meal.) In the end, I netted pretty much the same amount that my mom did when she bought the already-ready-already version, but mine was minus the saccharine broth and full of the pride of a job well done. I can't wait to eat some tomorrow.

Bon Bini!

Well, we're back from vacation. You must have wondered why there was not much blog activity. I didn't want to announce the vacation, in case sneaky 15-year-olds could hack Blogger, exploit the Internet, find out where I live and steal our TV. But now next time you don't see a lot of blog posts from me, you'll assume I was away. Or not...maybe I am just laying a trap for a sneaky 15-year-old.

Anyway...

"Bon bini" is "welcome" in Papiamento, the native language of the people of Curacao. The people of Curacao learn to speak four language - Dutch (as they are a colony), English, Spanish and Papiamento. They speak Dutch at home and school, but Papiamento everywhere else, unless they need to communicate with a lower-life form, such as an American. I have to tell you, we witnessed folks from many other cultures on this trip, and never have we felt so utterly inane and uncultured. We speaky only Americanese. Geesh, we're dumb. Must review 5 years of French and brush up!

Our expedition to this little island, which sits 35 miles off the coast of Venezuela, began last Friday at 4 a.m. Our flight out of Philadelphia was at 6 a.m., and having stayed a local hotel the night before, I missed my alarm and had 15 mins to get ready. Needless to say, this resulted in a hastily thrown together look which I caught in the mirror at the Miami airport and was horrified about. I almost fell off the people mover. I'm surprised Kevin didn't just leave me on a curb somewhere and abort.

So, early flight, ginger ale on board (as is my custom) and we land in Miami around 9:30 a.m. at which time we discover that Miami airport is the most God-forsaken location to be marooned for two hours EVER. We hiked ALL OVER the place, which is undergoing construction, in search of any type of breakfast food. Finally, we found a halfway decent sandwich for $8 which we split and then hiked back to our gate. At least we got the blood moving and the time passed. Next flight from Miami to Curacao International (hahah). We landed on the tarmac around noonish and hopped the shuttle to our hotel, Breezes. We stayed at the all-inclusive Sandals on our honeymoon and decided to try another one - the only real big difference here is that Breezes welcomes families, so there were kids galore (which actually wasn't bad at all, they were busy doing kid things).

20 minutes later, we were checked in and finally able to relax, although we were both tired from 8 hrs of travel. This was the off-season for Curacao, which we learned later, so the resort was blissfully under crowded and quiet (which also meant that not all the options were available, nor was the nighttime entertainment so thrilling). The following days were mostly full of lounging on the beach, reading, snorkeling, a little site seeing, some drinking, board games, spa time and ESPN2. We also kept up on the Denver news, which was oddly the cable news available in our room.

We did note a few oddities. This was our first interaction with topless bathing. I had read that this was permissible in Curacao, especially in a private resort area, but was still surprised the first time I walked by a lady with her top off. Ouch, sunburn. But we got used to it.

Another funny episode occurred when we noticed a group of four obnoxious Americans turning purple and drinking their faces off in the sun. We ended up sitting behind them one day on the beach and were constantly reminded of our not-so-quiet neighbors at home. Ironically, we were looking for a little peace and quiet and the brashness of our neighborhood followed us south. Later, we were seated next to this same group at dinner, only by then they were hungover and sunburned, conducting loud, uncouth conversations and one of them bolting from the table to throw up a few times on the way to her room. We continued to see them and inevitably, eavesdropped on their conversations to learn that they were from Philadelphia. Go fig. Two of them were getting married at the resort - in fact, on our last day we saw them getting their wedding pictures taken as we were on our way to check out. At the Miami airport again on our way home, I was chatting with a girl who had also been on our flight down, and she said, "how about those people who got kicked off the flight?" I though, oh no, it has to be them. After verifying with physical descriptions, sure enough, two of the four were too inebriated to fly (were laying on the floor of the airplane) and the flight attendants kicked them off. I guess they sobered up by the next flight because they all ended up in Curacao one way or another.

On our site seeing tour, we went to the Curacao liquor factory. I'm sure you've heard of blue Curacao, which is a liquor that tastes like oranges and is made from laraha (oranges) that are native, since the Spanish brought them when they discovered the island. The Valencia oranges grew green and bitter in Curacao, good for only one thing - liquor! They now make a few colors of Curacao of Curacao (the official name) liquor, as well as a few flavors. Kevin boldly had a few shots and pronounced the chocolate and coffee mix "not bad." We bought a bottle and I'm sure will have it for years to come.

We had a very relaxing trip, a nice anniversary, and upon arriving home found a new storm/screen door installed on our back door, which will help ventilate our sunny back room and the kitchen, as well as giving us some cross breeze through the whole house. THANKS DAD, again, you are the best!!!

You know you're a homeowner when...

Kevin finally convinced me that it was time to buy an actual lawnmower. You know, one that runs on gas rather than manpower. So our little comic-strip whirl-a-blade mower went out with the trash (but was probably scavenged by our neighbors) and was replaced by a new mower. We also bought what I have to refer to as a panic room, a la Gilmore Girls, but what is really a plastic closet to keep the mower in and any other lawn accoutrements.
Here's the evidence.

Life update

I have been slacking a bit this week, comparatively speaking, on the blog front. Not much is happening, save Kevin's hours on end spent at the Camden Riversharks stadium for his internship.

Last night he altered his schedule so we could go to see Blackthorn in Collegeville with many members of my extended fam. Tonight I have all kinds of errands to run (gym, craft store for a work project (hard to believe, right?) and Marshall's because next week we are on vacation and I have really no summer clothes in the proper size. Ahem. I should spend double the time at the gym and skip the store, but at this rate, that's not really a reasonable solution.

Tomorrow I will be volunteering at the Strawberry Festival by pushing the residents around in their wheelchairs and helping them out, and then we are headed to the WST to see Carousel before the end of the theater season. Sunday we are heading downtown with Kevin's family to see a Phillies' game in honor of Den's birthday. So another crazy weekend for us!

The good news is that...

You Probably Look Younger Than Your Age

You live a healthy lifestyle and know how to take care of yourself. You'll probably have a youthful glow for many years.

Do You Look Your Age?