The Bone Box

Here is a little known fact about Sarah. I hate skeletons and or human bones. I find them really creepy.

Once, as a child at the museum, we were looking at the mummy exhibit. I was munching on those Mother's cookies...the pink and white kind with sprinkles in the shape of little animals...I remember my mom having them in the stroller with one of my sisters and man, they were good.

Until my mom lifted me up to look into a case that held a mummy. The ladies face was a partially decayed, all sunken and shriveled and brown...and I could see her bones. It was really gross, and it made me feel sick. Suddenly the cookie tasted really bad. And being 6 or so years old I decided that the cookie tasted like mummy. Strange, I know, but I have always had an imagination that won't quit. To this day I won't touch those cookies with at 10 ft pole.

Colin has recently acquired a bone box...filled with human bones. I am scared of the bone box. I won't open it up, I'll just move it around so that I don't have to look at it. Thinking about opening the bone box gives me the same feeling in my stomach as I got when I looked at the mummy.

Last night Colin was studying for his anatomy test.

This morning I woke up to find a human skull, among other bones sitting on the desk.

I could only manage toast for breakfast.

I think we may need to make a house rule that all skulls and/or other bones must go back in their box after use.

Quick Fix

I think I just solved my sunlight deprivation problem....

Today we randomly decided to go to St. Maarten over Colin's spring break!

We are going with a couple we are friends with. He is in dental school at Penn and she is woman after my own heart. Likes to run, cook, and has a masters in biochem. The only person I've ever met who also has a fear of having a 3 armed child because of working with 33P. Not that this isotope could really have any adverse effects, but on days when I'm feeling especially paranoid I think about these things. In reality I would have to bathe in the stuff while pregnant for it to really have any sort of effect, but still, I like to freak myself out every once in a while.

It should be a fun time! I can't wait to lay my pasty self out on the beach and do nothing.

Living within reasonable driving distance of JFK is pretty much the best thing that has happened to our travel options. For instance, the tickets to St. Maarten were cheaper than tickets to fly to Colorado. Super!

Just two weeks to go!

Missing You

I miss a lot of things about Colorado. It varies from day to day, but right now the thing I really miss about my lovely home state is all of the sun. Winter in CO may be cold, but it is still sunny. Here, not so much sun. More gray. And no snow. So basically it is a bunch of gray trees silouetted against a gray sky. Fine for a while, but then it gets to looking pretty bleak. Colin tells me it's nothing compared to the gray Boston winters, which makes me think that this is the farthest north I can probably ever live.

Last Saturday it was a Colorado day. Blue(ish) skies, sunny and chilly. It made me both happy and sad. Happy, because there was sun, and sad because I couldn't go on my favorite Colorado run or call up friends to go on a quick hike close to home. The day was spent, however, in the company of new friends, making a delicious meal.

I made a goat cheese ravioli appetizer tossed in brown butter and served over roasted red peppers. I also did an arugula salad with candied walnuts, apples and Manchego. I was quite pleased with both. The meal also consisted of roasted pork tenderloin in a wine plum sauce and popovers with a wild mushroom cream sauce spooned over the top. We finished up with a carmelized apple custard dessert served warm over a bed of sugary, crispy phyllo.

It was really fun and we are going to try and make is a monthly event. Next month it is going to be at our new place, probably around Easter, which could end up being twice the fun since we may be having Colorado visitors that weekend!

Speaking of our new place, I painted the kitchen last night. Yellow. I think I love it, but I have to see it with all of our stuff in it. It is a warm, rich, kind of egg yolky/buttery yellow. For some reason the color it reminds me of the rich flavor and smoothness of butter at room temperature, but the colors aren't even close. It's not a bright canary yellow and it definitely isn't pale yellow either. Hard to explain. I tried to take a picture of the color but the camera was dead. I love bright colors, and the kitchen gets a lot of sun, so I think it will look nice, but I just don't want it to be too much yellow. It is definitely a happy space though, which is what I am going for. It reminds me of summer and lemonade and fresh flowers.

And speaking of flowers, I got permission to plant a garden and flowers in the back yard. I love the look of wild poppies, so I think I am going to plant poppies along one of the fences. I heard that they don't grow well in the east, but I've found numerous sites where people have said that they grow them no problem. I figure I'll spend $4 on seeds and if they grow, they grow, if not, I'll try something else!

Happy Valentine's Day

Sarah and I are having a low key Valentine's day. She's making me some cocunut cupcakes with chocolate chips and coconut cream cheese frosting while I'm studying for a dental materials class. Before any of you go and accuse me of being unromantic, though, just know that I made her a pop-up card this morning before I left for school, and I have another gift that's a secret to all of you. Plus, on Monday night after my test we're getting Thai food from our new favorite restaurant (Chabba, down in Manayunk) and renting a movie. So there.

Here's an interesting article, suitable for this day of love:

Gorillas in a Tryst

Diamond(s) in the Rough

Tonight Colin and I went on a date. To IKEA. We split some swedish meatballs at the cafe and then proceeded to wander around for a good 2.5 hours, 30min of which was spent talking to this really interesting guy from Bangladesh with whom Colin exchanged phone numbers to sometime go to dinner with him and his wife. Random. But I love meeting interesting new people who love to eat.

Anyway, before we went to IKEA Colin had to get something at Target so I decided to peruse around the DSW located next door. Lately I have had extremely good luck at DSW. Case in point: about a month ago I got a really cute pair of patent leather yellow flats for $13 and a super cute pair of curry-brown colored leather Frye wedges for $30 that retail on-line for $150!

Tonight I found two more gems. A really cute pair of patent leather pointy red flats for....do you want to guess??? $7.97. Yep. They were marked down and then 80% off. Then, I found a pair of leather blunt toed grey flats for $19.99, also 80% off and retailing on-line for $115. Are you kidding me?! What kind of good luck is that?! It was like cute 80% off shoes were just flying off the shelf and into my arms!

Colin is majorly jealous that he can't squeeze those 13's of his into my shoes. I think if he could I might come home to him prancing around in my yellow flats!

Weird words

Do you ever look at a word that you've known all your life and all of a sudden it just looks really strange? I clearly remember this happening to me in high school when I was looking at the word "friend". All of a sudden it didn't seem like a word out of the English language, like it was just a random mix of letters that spelled nonsense. Well, the same thing happened to me tonight when I was looking at the word "fail".

Speaking of which, check out these failures.

My nemesis

Right now I have a three letter nemeis: G.R.E.

It's really getting me down. I figured that I should probably review, since off the top of my head if Sally has three red hats and Joe has 4 orange hats, I'm not really sure which color would be on display the 4th Tuesday of the month. The problem is, studying for the GRE is about as appealing to me as watching Fantasia was when I was 7. Not happening.