food

i brought this home from the store today and felt kind of weird about it; people were giving me strange looks. i mean, we're just friends, so i'm not sure what the big deal is:

continuing on the food note - last night, i and 6 of my book club friends experienced the creamy, frozen, yeasty, fiery delight known as 'baked alaska' (yeah, i know -- most baked alaskans don't have yeast, but this one was made with greek yoghurt). yummy flaming goodness!

more book club hijinks:

my day today was so exciting, i tidied up my tupperware cabinet and re-organized my underwear and sock drawers -- unemployment can be thrilling at times.

 

shake it baby

what in the hell happened to bruce jenner's lips? he's either wearing lip liner from the 80's, or he and lisa rinna have become pucker pals. yep; its sunday night and i'm home watching 'the kardashians'.

speaking of the '80's, did rompers make a comeback? i've seen half a dozen women in rompers in the last 24 hours and most of them (the women) were over the age of 8. this was not a good look in gym class in 1974 and it still looks ridiculous. however, the one chick i saw yesterday in the skin-tight black number with visible taint had quite the fan base.

yesterday morning while walking the dogs at the middle school in my neighborhood, i was flashed. i feel pretty special; i am the chosen one. this guy was quite the go-getter in that it was just past 8am on a saturday. i'm impressed that anyone can haul themselves out of bed at the crack (ha!) of dawn on a weekend and make a firm (ha again!) plan to get naked and flash people from the schoolyard. as i was innocently yanking (3rd ha!) on the dog's leashes, i hear a "hey!" -- i quickly turned around (figuring someone was going to chastise me for an unforgivable deed by the idiots), and caught sight of this guy thrusting his man parts in my direction in a jerky, little dance move. i. was. speechless. post penis-invasion, i thought of all the clever things i could have said, but didn't. highlight of my weekend.

tricia, esq.

i don't have a clever title . . .

in many ways. i think i'll just start putting "esq." after my name and see if anyone notices.

things that don't go together:

1. peanut butter filled pretzels and an alaskan ipa (personal experience from after school snack today)
2. assless chaps and roseanne barr
3. fresh smelling anything and lindy (the farting dog)
4. prunes and wine

today i received a card in the mail that said: 'we miss you!' it was personally addressed to me - how sweet; i really miss dsw shoe warehouse too.

last week i had dinner at the 'meddlesome moth' with a few of my fellow chhs graduates (something goooood is happening in cedar hill!!!!!). don't we look fabulous:

and if you haven't been, get thyself to the moth pronto.

i must confess - i downloaded a sample of fifty shades of grey the other day hoping to ignite some self love. was that written by an 8th grader? i think i got about 3 pages into it and bailed. really tantalazing if you're a college girl. us old ladies need quicker stimulus.

i've decided to go all hollywood and do a 'juice cleanse'; i'm  not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds tidy and i'm a bit of a neat freak.

gotta go shower; daisy rubbed her entire being on my hand (that sounded nasty) and now i stink.

xoxo,

tricia the temp, esq.

cher

i totally have a cher song stuck in my head -- 'if i could turn back tiiiime'.

why aren't there nursing homes for dogs? not that i'd put daisy in one (well, maybe not).

i would kill for a dilly bar right now. do they still have those? why are they called dilly bars?

might as well jump

yes, there was a jumping contest and here's the 3 second video to prove it:

i'll say it again -- white, old people can't jump. even those from tiny island nations with fabulous rugby teams.

i have to admit, i'm scared sometimes living by myself. not that some crazed mad man would single me out to follow home or anything. but i live on a creek where the wild things apparently congregate and have pentecostal services nightly. there are a pack of something outside RIGHT NOW making very consistently loud, painful, 'i'm being strangled' noises. perhaps its just a herd of melodic frogs, but they don't sing like they're croaking with glee.

no matter what, i'm always going to let people down. i think i'm having a hard time getting beyond that truth at the moment. for the 2 1/2 people reading this right now -- just know, i'm sorry. i know eleanor roosevelt said "do something every day that scares you" -- i say, f her.

back to critters - couldn't sleep last night cause i found out one of my bitches had fleas; i immediately became paranoid of an infestation in my sheets. at midnight, i bathed the dogs and powdered the carpet (which pretty much guaranteed a peaceful slumber would not arrive for hours). several law and order's later, after restless tossing of pillows, i continued to hear a repetitive 'errch, errch, errch, errch' tone. initially i thought it was the ceiling fan (none of those things are quiet like they advertise). but then it started to sound like someone crunching a bag of cool ranch doritoes. i assumed one of the dirtly little men in fur coats (let's just call them "cats") was having a 3:00am al fresco snack, but when i hobbled out of bed to explore, i found all pets accounted for in the living area. i blasted the light from the back porch and spotlighted a ginormous possum munching down on the cat chow. lesson learned - don't feed the furry beings that are not your own by placing an all you can eat buffet on the back porch.

random:

i am a compulsive sheet changer regardless of the fact that they're may be fleas. do fleas serve a purpose? if there is a god, why would he/she put them here? same for mosquitos. if you're not giving back in some way, please find another place to dwell.

once "the knees" come, there's no going back (figure that one out).

i should not write my innermost thoughts after consuming 1 1/2 ambien.

booty and bugs . . .

. . . neither of which are related.

when i was in doha last week, i picked up a couple of tawdry magazines to read by the pool at the marriott. in touch weekly had a picture of a swimsuit-clad miley cyrus on the cover, which mentioned 'beach body showdowns', so i was forced to buy it so i could feel bad about my 48-year-old flab. when i get to the showdown section of the mag, i notice that all the celebrities are wearing what looks like a ruffly, zumba skirt cover-up-thingie over their bikini bottoms. nope - turns out someone used a black marker to black out each starlet's lady-part region. can't make this stuff up; wtf:

though the reading material was trashy, the view of doha from my chaise was not:

i departed the sweaty city of doha a couple of days ago on a british airways flight to london. after the cabin doors were closed, our cockney little air hostess announced they would be quickly moving through the aircraft to spray insecticide and we should probably shut our eyes and not panic. end of announcement; thank you for flying ba.

back in big d. its hot and buggy here already -- maybe the ba flight attendant can move quickly through my backyard and make it all better.

last night heidi, richard and i had a jumping contest - video coming soon. spoiler alert - old people can't jump.

tricia (missing jeff)

p.s.:  i have a mathematical equation for you: if 'trudy' consumes 3 bowls of salted mixed nuts per day for 13 days, how many kilograms does that equal? answer: who cares; you're still fat.

appliance slayer

yep; that's me. we've killed yet another washer/dryer contraption. this is our 4th or maybe 5th -- i've lost count.  i started a washload of clothes at 11am today and at 8pm, they were still soaking wet. trying to explain a spin cycle (or lack thereof) to 3 different maintenance men was challenging. so they just brought me another. and 5 minutes after the maintenance guy left, this one stopped drying and started beeping at me. i think its hungry. i think i'll take an axe to the refrigerator now. i was also just informed that you can't actually change clock setting on the microwave; you just have to unplug it and replug it in at 1:00 cause that's what time it sets itself to. i know this is not a real problem; its just a real ridiculous problem.

its been a frustrating week here in the mid-east. in checking in for the flight back from doha, i had to check my carry-on bag because it was too heavy. i neglected to remove the valuable items from it because i figured it was safe in the hands of etihad airlines - wrong. the sparkly new ipad3 i bought jeff for his birthday is apparently magic in that it disappeared from my bag somewhere over the friendly skies. the airline says i should have locked the luggage.

tomorrow its back to doha for my final week here. which really excites me.

happy almost earth day!

t.

sandbox hopping (in continuing the easter theme)

almost as soon as we arrived back in the uae, we left for qatar. jeff is supposed to be on a project there and hopes to spend the next 6 months lounging about at the doha intercontinental beach club. currently we're staying at the oryx rotana hotel right by the airport. not a bad place to stay (the gym is pretty modern), but there's not really anything close by to walk to, so i'm bored.

the whole taxi situation here is a bit different too. in abu dhabi, they're all metered and regulated, so you know what you're going to get. here, the drivers all pretend their meters are broken and they just make up prices on how much it costs to go from point a to point b. i've attempted to haggle with them, but then they just pretend they don't understand what you're saying.

i've been to the one museum here (where i took all the pictures of the quran); been to the souk, etc. thought about going to the zoo, but its far away from the city and the taxi drivers say between 100-200 qatari riyals for the fare.

each hotel here is very big on buffets and last thursday, we were up to our elbows in all you can eat seafood night at the 'al fanourah'. we were joined by jeff's co-workers bruce, jaime, chris and chris' lovely wife joanna.

it was jeff's birthday weekend, so we strolled around the museum park, took in a movie ('cabin in the woods' - it sucked), and had a celebratory italian dinner.

birthday boy:

view of the west bay:

lonely boat:

jeff gets embarrased at 'cucina' the italian kitchen at the renaissance, while being sung to in a languange we couldn't understand:

back to abu dhabi today, just until saturday when jeff has to come right back here for a meeting. i may just go home to dallas a bit early as the visitation is not so much a visit as an endless wait.

ttfn,

tricia

another whirl through prague

wednesday, our last day in prague, we hit old town again (well, it was close by and there was a continuous street festival) -- and i met this guy (the fascination with farm animals continues):

and we saw an easter tree.

and we consumed more beers and 'trdelniks' at the easter market. this is a 'trdelnik' pastry -- sounds like turd; tastes like heaven. its basically sweet dough wrapped around a fat stick and cooked over coals.

after partaking in too much czech goodness, it was time to head back to frankfurt to have dinner with susie-mom, jake, nicole and the kids.

since jake is employed (and not on vacation like most of the rest of us), it was an early night; he had to get up the next day at 5am to hike 12 miles with a 25 lb. backpack and 10 of his buddies in the rain (the army sounds tough, doesn't it?).

thursday, jeff and i spent a rainy day in amberg searching for frosty beverages and warmth -- score!

friday, we arose early to swerve back to frankfurt where we would spend our last day/night in germany with susie-mom. we also found a great irish pub there, but my camera was exhausted. here are a few pics of the scenery surrounding our hotel and old town frankfurt before my camera fainted.

susie looks so happy with me doesn't she?

to close out our germany visit, we got susie drunk at the hotel bar then stumbled off to bed. saturday morning we headed in opposite directions -- susie back to the sooner state, and jeff and i to the sandbox.

pics of the sandbox coming soon.

hugs,

tricia

hopping around prague

tuesday morning, we arose early in order to hit the starbucks we found in old town square (queue the angels singing) and hopped on the 11:30 bus tour around the city. we had a lovely tourguide originally from poland who had about 17 syllables in her name, so she just went by kate. she had just the right amount of snark and history to make the initial walk/drive to the prague castle, which is the biggest castle (still standing) in the world and took over 6 centuries to build it (man, that guy must have been really tired). here's wiki's take:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Castle.

while walking to our tour bus, kate pointed out some interesting sites to ooooh and aaaaah her followers.

here's the astronomical clock (the oldest one, built in 1410 - wiki has more incredible info; i'm just loving wiki today - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock):

here's the powder tower (where gun powder was stored during the war):

the municipal building:

first glimpse of the castle:

en guard!!!:

OK; enough with the castle. i'm sure i'm boring you with my fabulous vacation by now. but one more thing -- we stopped at a restaurant on the castle grounds, sat on their balcony for czech beers and watched an entire pig cook on a spit. i think this place was even called 'the royal pig'. there was a painting of a pig wearing a king's coat and a crown on the wall. the middle-easterners would perish on the spot. our tour guide told us the restaurant had originally been the 'playground' for the king's lions - http://www.prague.cz/lion-courtyard/.

we finally left the castle and toddled off to see more old stuff.

vitava river:

and i insisted upon finding the funicular (i LOVE these things). we didn't ride it though cause we were short 1 cz koruna (or crown):

here's that eerie sculpture of the victims of communism (from the back);

i almost fell down these 'stairs':

this is the frank gehry 'dancing house':

after taking in the sights via autobus and on foot for hours, we did the hokey pokey back to the intercontinental so jeff could enjoy a scotch and a cigar on their rooftop balcony.

signing off with the castle in the sunset.

the next day, wednesday, we go back to frankfurt to hang with the fam, search for irish pubs and find the best mexican food in germany.

xoxoxoxo

tricia the loser