vegan chai

strep is no fun

bleah, still sick but don't want to neglect my march blogging commitment. :) here's hoping april brings healthier throats!

aw, poor me

i believe i have the evil strep throat. i'm going to go to the doctor first thing tomorrow, but for now i'm just going to sit like a lump on the couch. *sniff* tomorrow when i feel better (here's hoping!) i'll try to say more interesting stuff.

about to burst

i ate WAY too much today. well actually, maybe i didn't eat too much; i just ate too much in too short a time period. yes, i think it's that one. i had a brunch date (pancakes!) scheduled for 11am today, but the place was busy so we didn't get seated until closer to 11.30am and probably didn't eat until almost 12noon. i think. i'm guessing. anyhow, i had two ginormous delicious pancakes, along with "a bite" (but really she gave me a huge piece that was more like four fantastic bites) of the vegan breakfast burrito. by the time we were done eating and chatting, we noticed that we had an hour before the cupcake competition, so we decided to go for a walk in order to digest our food and build our appetite for dessert.

when we got to the cupcake competition it was chaos (alliteration! actually, if you're into alliteration, the true name of it was: cream city collectives crazy cupcake competition), people and cupcakes everywhere. we shopped around to figure out what we had as far as vegan options, and then went to the kitchen to get a plate. we decided to buy four cupcakes and share them all, so we'd really only be eating the equivalent of two cupcakes, but with the benefit of trying four. genius, right? there were lots of yummy-sounding choices, but in the end we selected the fauxstess, the chai, the vegan goddess, and the neapolitan. we headed outside to find somewhere to sit down, and proceeded to gorge ourselves on cupcakery.

after THAT was over, if you can believe it, i attempted to bop across the street to get a berry smoothie. alas, my plan was thwarted when we learned that the power on that entire block had gone down shortly before we wandered in. boo! truth be told, i probably did my stomach a favor by not piling a smoothie on top of the Day of (pan/cup)Cakes.

when i got home a little after 3pm, i remembered that i had a "buy one, get one" coupon for noodles & co. that expired today. yikes! i called my husband to remind him, and we made tentative plans to eat there later. because we usually eat dinner around 11pm, we decided to call it "lupper" and aim for something like 5pm. so, yes, at 5pm we went to noodles & co. and i managed to pack away a pasta fresca (hold the cheese, sub broccoli for tomato, add tofu please) and a ginormous glass of water. needless to say, when all was said and done, i felt like a blimp. i had to watch myself around sharp objects. blerg.

it's nearly 6 hours later and i'm STILL full. there will be no dinner for me. of course, i'm a teensy weensy bit afraid that i might be coming down with The Husband's Strep, so i'm all hyper-vigilant about my throat right now. i did a glass of emergen-c a few hours ago, and i'm thinking i might drink a chai as we unwind in front of the teevy tonight. he's going to have to roll me upstairs to bed. soooooo full.

ruh roh, strep

we found out today that my husband has strep throat. he's probably had it since monday. yikes. i feel fine so far, so here's hoping that veganism magically repels strep. *hopes really hard*

darouk, the feisty arabian

my dad called with very sad news this evening. i can always tell when he calls to give me bad news: he starts his conversation with, "so how are you?"

i doubt he realizes that he does this, but he's done it enough that i always know something's up when he starts that way. i imagine i hear something in his tone, too, but really it's that phrase. if he's calling just to pick my brain about american idol or ask me for a quick favor, the phone call starts very differently. i find it kind of interesting that he uses such an innocuous phrase but that i always interpret it as, "he's about to tell me something Not Good."

so anyway, my dad called tonight and asked me how i'm doing, and i said, very guardedly, "oh, okay..." and waited for the fallout. i didn't have to wait long. he said, "well, unfortunately i'm calling with some pretty bad news," and then he proceeded to tell me about the incredibly sad afternoon that he and my stepmom spent saying goodbye to her horse, darouk. i just mentioned him last month, so you might remember that he was getting to be an older guy (37!), but until very recently he was in pretty great health.

apparently this morning he was lying down in his stall, and couldn't get up. he had fallen twice in the past month or two (slippery pasture), and had a rough time getting up, but he recovered both times and was doing okay. as soon as my parents got the call today that he wasn't getting up, they both left work immediately (after calling the vet) and went right to the barn. they tried to help in several different ways, but he just couldn't get up. after a lot of crying (both my parents and the vet, who has known darouk as long as my stepmom has), they finally decided it was time to let him go. it was not an easy decision by any means: my stepmom adopted darouk when he was only a year or two old (and she was only about 19 i think!), so this is a very special relationship that has lasted her entire adult life. i just can't even imagine how she must have felt today. i started crying as soon as my dad told me, and i kept that up for awhile. i'm so sad. poor old boy.

my earliest memory of my stepmom was the day i met darouk. i was 7 years old, i think, maybe 8. my dad wasn't even officially dating her yet (we'll leave those details to the mists of time, but let's just say my parents were still married then), but he finagled us a play date because i loved horses so much. she was a total sweetheart to me, and so excited to show him off. i almost don't know how to think about her without darouk in the picture somewhere. i can't believe he's gone.

cute sneaks, 10 weeks later

so, last night i caved and ordered those cute hemp sneakers from simple (in cub). i first developed a crush on them a couple of months ago, and i visited them periodically (heh), and now that spring is finally threatening to arrive, i decided to go for it. i love my blackspots muchly, and i wear them lots, but i actually have quite a few brown t-shirts, and i've been really wanting a pair of casual sneaks to go with all of my brown/khaki stuff. until now my only shoe options for brown clothes were novacas loafers or some cute 1940s-style pumps, and neither of those work particularly well for casual t-shirt and jeans days.

anyhoodle, because zappos is apparently contracting with superman, i received my shoes this morning. seriously. i ordered them last night, and they were on my porch this morning. i have no idea how this happened, but i'm not complaining.

as is my custom, i opened the box immediately and put them on so i could march around the house. they're adorable. they have lavender laces, which i hadn't realized until i saw them in person, but i think it's ridiculously cute. they're comfy-cozy. i love them already. the end.

here's why i'm excited about saturday

there's going to be a cupcake competition! and "vegan" is a category! and i just found out that there will be TEN varieties of vegan cupcakes on tap! i don't know for sure whether i can eat ten cupcakes, but i might have to try it.

i thought briefly about entering the competition (i love making cupcakes!), but i got too nervous and decided not to this year. so maybe this year i'll scope it out, purchase and judge the cuppers, and then get a better feel for whether i'd like to join the competition next year. in any case, look out tummy, because saturday is going to be a big day.

my office door

you may remember my office door from a couple of months ago, when i found it mildly vandalized. the truth is, i never did decide on what to put up in place of the "i am not a nugget" sign, although i was still thinking about it relatively frequently.

welp, my project just got bigger because today i arrived to find my office door completely bare. you see, over spring break, the powers that be had all of our office doors refinished, and as such, our signage was all removed. i knew this was coming, and i meant to take everything down myself, but the few days before spring break ended up all wonky, and i wasn't at school as much as i wanted to be, and then i totally forgot. so, they removed the signs for me and put them in my office. for the most part, they are unscathed, although my CoK poster was torn. boo. i also have two things that ended up taped to each other (back-to-back, though, so hopefully no damage when all is said and done).

instead of being bummed, i'm going to look at this as an opportunity to start fresh and decide how i want my door to look all over again. some of those things are old favorites that i'll likely keep, but maybe starting from scratch will help me find different inspiration. i know it's not much, just my silly office door, but lots of different people see it day in and day out, and if it makes even a few people think twice about who they're eating, i'm happy.

my vegan easter basket

sometimes it pays to be the only vegan in the family (although don't get me wrong, i'd trade it in a heartbeat if i could be joined by more)... because i get special treatment when it comes time for easter baskets. this year i got 3 tropical source chocolate bars (one almond, one mint, one solid chocolate), and 2 dark chocolate ritter sport bars. woo hoo!

cookbook problem

remember my ice cream problem? well, it just occurred to me that i have a very similar cookbook problem. i am not the chef in my house--i leave that to my husband. if i were the chef, we would live on a consistent diet of mac & cheese, pb&j, soup, bean & avo burritos, and chocolate cake. i have zero problem with that, but the boy craves variety (and is a great cook), so he took over food duty years ago.

when i went vegan, he got bummed and i got nervous, because he wasn't sure what to make and i wasn't sure how to reassure him. my instant solution was to buy a boatload of cookbooks, imagining these fun lazy saturdays where we sat around, paging through them, marking recipes that sounded good to both of us. well, i've been vegan since october 2004, and guess how many of those saturdays we've had? you guessed it! zero.

still, i wasn't deterred. i kept buying cookbooks, and putting cookbooks on my christmas/birthday lists, and now i've developed quite an impressive collection. i have made a few recipes from several of them, but the honest (and embarrassing) truth is that my beautiful vegan cookbooks are sorely underutilized. i'm really more of a cookbook collector than anything. here are a few titles from my recent buying history, and in each case i've made approximately zero to one recipe from each: tofu 123, vive le vegan, the joy of vegan baking, veganomicon, and eat drink & be vegan. now seriously: those are all awesome cookbooks! what is my problem?

any other cookbook collectors out there who want to make me feel less alone and foolish? please?

farewell, spring break

so today is the last day of spring break, and what do i get? a frickin' blizzard that started at 5am today and is going to continue until at least 10pm. seriously. it's march 21st and i already have over a foot of snow in my yard. LAME. i had totally allowed myself to go to the place in my mind where we were done with snow for the year, and then this happened. i want to just close all the blinds, pretend it's not there, and wait for it to melt.

in other disappointments, i just ruined one of my favorite desserts of all time and i'm not (too) ashamed to admit that i almost cried about it. i have been craving this dessert for a really long time, and i keep not making it because i'm afraid i'll eat the whole pan, but the other night i was about to go crazy for it so i decided i would make them "soon." after being bummed about the million-inch blizzard this afternoon, i decided that soon would be today. unfortunately, when i was about 90% done with the project, i decided to change it up a little bit based on what some people on VRF say they do with my recipe, because i thought, "eh, what the heck?" ...now, truth be told, i've always liked it the way i make it, which i guess is why i always make it that way (ha), but i thought, well, if they found a way to improve on it a little, why not give it a shot? so i added a tiny bit of vanilla and soymilk to the chocolate chips i was melting, and within 30 seconds my lovely beautiful melty chocolate had turned into a chocolate sponge. i am not happy. i didn't have any other chocolate chips so i couldn't just scrap the sponge and start fresh, so i had to make do with the sponge. the peanut butter cup bar thingies are basically ruined, and i am soooo bummed. stupid spring break.

toothpaste

i have sad news. (for me.) i just learned that my toothpaste of choice, tom's of maine cinnamint, is no longer. they've evidently discontinued a bunch of their flavors, and my personal favorite is one that got the axe. i had been unable to find it recently, and i chalked it up to "out of stock" until i finally used the google today and saw the bad news.

sooo, i'm on my last tube and i need to start looking for a replacement. i hate trying new toothpastes, because it takes forever to get through a tube, and if you don't like it? well then it just sucks to be you twice a day for the next two months, you know?

does anyone have any recommendations? the only other "vegan" (i.e., no animal testing or dodgy ingredients) toothpaste i've ever used is JASON powersmile, and that was a horrible experience i'd be thrilled to never repeat. it tastes like burning.

dealing dogs

after it sat on my FiVo for two years and one month, i finally watched dealing dogs the other day. it's an HBO documentary that focuses on class B dealers, who buy and sell dogs for medical research. there is a fair bit of shady goings-on and a metric assload of really sad stories if you start reading up on it, and because of that i put off watching the film. also, i was hoping to watch it with my husband, but after 2+ years i gave up and decided to stop waiting. i was home the other day with a cat on my lap (otherwise known in this house as "trapped on the couch"), so i sucked it up and pressed play.

i really liked it. the documentary focuses on one specific kennel and an undercover agent from last chance for animals, and it takes place over the course of about a year. there is a lot of heartbreaking footage, but it brings to light a lot of stuff that the general public doesn't know (but really really should!), and there's a happy ending. i highly recommend it. in fact i'm keeping it on my FiVo in the hopes that my husband will watch it anyway. ;)

backyard of awesomeness

for those of you who haven't yet seen deer in the yard, prepare to have your mind blown. lookit all those gorgee deer! lookit their giant ears and precious faces! check out how sweet and lovely they are! they are just hanging out in this family's yard, year after year, becoming trusted friends. words cannot describe how happy this makes me. i want to move in with these people for a summer and just sit in their grass. wildlife encounters always seem so special to me, but this is going above and beyond anything i could ever even imagine. i have SO much love for those deer. squee!

ice cream problem

so here's the thing. i buy ice cream and don't eat it. i see flavors that sound delicious, i buy them, and then i don't really feel like eating them once i'm home. it's weird. i end up eating a small bowl of each flavor, and then the pint (or quart) sits in my freezer forever, waiting for someone's attention. and it's not that i don't LIKE the ice cream. i actually have moderately strong opinions about which companies are the best, and which flavors are the best, and all that good stuff... i just have a problem finishing once i start. i need to work on this i think. maybe commit to eating one bowl per day.

spring break

this week is spring break for us, but we haven't planned a fun trip or anything, so we'll likely be doing all the same stuff we always do, minus the teaching. yippee. i'm thinking maybe it would be fun to do something each day, like a theme... maybe... i don't know, go out for vegan pancakes every morning and see which restaurant does it best? or rent a movie every day that i've been meaning to see but never got around to? those both sound like fun. but my guess is that instead it will be more like, clean a room of the house each day. or read all the crap i haven't gotten around to until i'm totally caught up. or do nothing much and be irritated with myself at the end of the week. yay, spring break.

the CSA, she is chosen!

okay, so we went to the CSA open house today, and it was kind of madness. there were tons of people there, and it was kind of like going to a science fair: everyone had a table with a little display, but none of it was "standard" so you had to just visit each one and figure it out for yourself, decide what questions you should ask, and wait patiently for your turn with the farmers. when we first walked in we were told that they were doing "CSA 101" presentations at 1pm and 3pm, and we got there at 12.55pm so we high-tailed it upstairs to sit in on the 1pm presentation. they basically just did an overview of how CSAs began (in japan, apparently. who knew?), what the benefits are, and some ideas about how to decide. it was a nice overview, but i started to panic about halfway through because the presenter said, "some of the farmers you talk to today will probably already be full," and i was all wtf this is supposed to be our early chance omg i can't believe we're going to get shut out of a CSA again!!! panic panic panic. honestly i almost wanted to scurry out the room as soon as she said that, but i kept it under control and stayed put.

once we were done with that, we wandered the two floors of farms and grabbed brochures, looked at displays, and asked a couple of random questions. after we had all the brochures, we sat in a room and tried to figure out some of our main "weeding out" criteria. having never done a CSA before, i was really liking the idea of going with a half-share this year. there are only two of us, and we eat out a fair bit, and i am deathly afraid of drowning in produce (which would also translate to wasting food and money). one or two of them didn't offer half-shares, so we put them in the "no" pile. we also wanted to find farms with drop-off points near our home so that it would be convenient; that eliminated another two farms.

all of the CSAs at the open house were totally organic, so that was awesome. the next thing i noticed was that three of the farms sold meat. ugh. the first one that i noticed had a line that said "chickens $9 each" and it gave me a stomach ache. my husband tried to cheer me up and said, "maybe it's like, you can adopt a pet chicken!" heh. so anyway at that point i looked for any CSA that sold meat and put them in the "no" pile.

last but not least, the egg issue. obviously i would never buy eggs from a CSA, but my husband asked me if i would mind belonging to a CSA that also sold eggs. my gut instinct was to say, "nope, don't wanna," but at the same time i was thinking that they probably ALL had eggs so this would likely be my compromise. i told him i wasn't sure, but that i thought i'd be okay with it. well, as we looked at them more closely, i realized that there were several that didn't offer eggs, which made me happy/relieved, and then i felt myself leaning toward joining a CSA that didn't offer any animal products at all.

in the end we arrived at a short list of three or four farms, which felt a lot more manageable, and we went to visit those tables to talk more with the farmers and ask more specific questions. one of the things i was really interested in was a winter share (because, potatoes + beets + onions = golden in this house!), so i wanted to find out how many of them offered that service, for example.

my husband and i were both drawn to one particular farm for whatever reason, and we visited their table three times as we tried to come to a decision. they were super nice, they do an email newsletter every week to let you know what will be in your box that week (plus a "probably list" of the next week's box), and they cutely try to "organize" their boxes each week so the food you get makes sense together. they drop off at our co-op which is really convenient for us, and they encouraged us to try a half-share to start (and said we could upgrade later if we wanted to). i liked that they didn't try to up-sell us; it felt sincere and friendly. they also have some fruit (melons, berries, yum) and they have a pumpkin patch. we can go to the farm and pick strawberries, tomatoes, and pumpkins during the season if we want to. they don't do animal products. they do have a winter share. we were sold! we walked to the car, got the checkbook, and joined today. the deliveries start in mid-may, and go through early november (plus the two giant winter share deliveries in mid-november and mid-december). now we just have to put on our creative cooking hats and get ready to try some new vegetables this year. we're excited!

choosing a CSA

last year we wanted to get in on a CSA for our summer produce, but because we were totally inexperienced, we waited too long and all of the local farms i was interested in filled up. boo! this year, however, we are much more on the ball. tomorrow there is going to be a "CSA open house" nearby, so we're going to go scope the wares and see if we can pick a place. anyone have any good advice or tips?

sneaky nicety

this morning i (along with three other people) got an email from a woman we just offered a job to, saying that she's coming into town for a visit so she can check out the city some more and all that good stuff. she wanted to know if the group of us might be able to get together for a meal while she was in town, and the subject line of her message was, "burgers anyone?"

i had a really busy day so i didn't respond right away, deciding that one or more of the other three people could take that ball and run with it, and i'd figure myself out as the situation developed. we have a few places around here that are known for their burgers, but as you can imagine i wasn't at all interested in going to any of them. anyway, like i said, i was busy today so i procrastinated.

imagine my delight when i learned this evening that two of the other people suggested to her that we should try going out for mexican instead, on accounta my being all vegan and whatnot. yay! it was brought up in a very thoughtful but still casual way, and honestly from someone who (it seems) goes out of his way to provoke me about my veganism sometimes. i was so, i don't know... proud? kind of touched? by the gesture. i didn't know he had it in him. awww.

so hooray, we're going out to a great restaurant with several vegan options that we all like quite a bit. no burgers, no having to get out of it, no playing the weirdo. thank you, friend who usually aggravates me!

underfed

today i had to get up early after going to bed far too late, and then i was running really close on time so i left the house without breakfast. i made a chai before i left, though, and brought it with me. i also threw some random things in a bag. so by 9.30am or so, i had gotten a good start on my chai, and i had eaten a peanut butter cookie luna bar. but then for the rest of the day all i supplemented with was the other half of yesterday's tropical source chocolate bar, a silk strawberry banana yogurt, and a banana. oh, and at about 8pm i thought i was going to eat my own arm, so i snarfed a few handfuls of dry roasted edamame. i am totally starving to death right now. on the upside: last night i was at our local teensy co-op and they had nutritional yeast! i see mac & cheese on my horizon. maybe tomorrow night.

in other news, right now i'm at school using my mac!book!pro! and i launched iTunes only to find that there is some magical thing that allows me to see (and listen to?!) other people's iTunes libraries. i have no earthly idea how this is working, but i am totally stoked because right now i'm listening to some sweet joshua radin (a few songs i don't have and hadn't heard before), all thanks to a random dude named adam somewhere in my vicinity. thank you adam!

blast from the past (-ish)

i had forgotten how much i like tropical source chocolate bars. i haven't had one in awhile, so the other day i bought one (rice crisp), and today i ate half of it. yum, seriously. definitely getting the minty one the next time i'm at the store.

you just never know

you hear people say all the time that life is precious, and you should make every moment count because you never know when you might lose someone. that you shouldn't put things off, that you should always tell people what they mean to you, and all that corny-sounding hallmark stuff. i think this is one of those things that you don't really get until you suffer an unexpected loss, and that happened to me today.

i learned earlier tonight that my friend carlo died a couple of weeks ago. he lived out of state, but his funeral and burial happened here, and i didn't know so i wasn't able to attend. carlo and i were pretty close in high school, and i was smitten with him even after he came out (heh), and he was one of the nicest warmest people i knew. plus adorable and hilarious. he was awesome. i reconnected with him recently after totally losing track of him (he had moved to arizona) and we exchanged some great emails. still, it wasn't "enough" and now i regret not trying even harder.

he died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 35. he was the absolute picture of health, so it was a complete shock, and of course everyone is heartbroken. i'm terribly sad, and i feel a loss even though he wasn't part of my day-to-day life. i think of him often and fondly, and i can't even imagine what his friends, his family, and his partner are going through right now.

carlo, you will be sorely missed by an awful lot of people.

vegan at the movies

today i went to see juno (finally!) at a theatre near my house. i haven't been to this particular theatre in a really long time, but it's a cool old theatre that's all artsy and whatnot. anyhow, after i bought my ticket i took a quick peek at the concession area, and the first thing that jumped out at me was the word "vegan" on the sign. i did a double-take and realized that they were selling alternative baking company cookies, and the sign said, "ABC VEGAN COOKIES." how awesome is that? i didn't buy one, and i didn't stick around to peruse the rest of the offerings (i was cutting it close to the start time), but i was totally excited to see that they had vegan goodies behind the counter. yay!

a craving unfulfilled

okay, the brownies have helped me out with my chocolate baked goods craving, but i have another one that's been pestering me for the past month or so, and that's mac & cheese. the sad part is that we're pretty low on nutritional yeast, so i keep putting off making any, because i'm all, "eh, i'm not sure we have enough nooch, i'll just wait to be safe."

so the other night i went to the co-op to buy sugar and chocolate chips (to buy the brownies!) and i made a special pit stop in the bulk aisle to stock up on nutritional yeast. imagine my dismay when i found the bin completely empty, with a little "out of stock" sign on it. *sniff* i'm getting to the point where i'm going to see how much nooch i actually have in my container, and then adjust all other ingredients to accommodate.

a little overwhelmed

i just looked through this slideshow and i found several of the pictures very haunting. people make me so incredibly angry sometimes. here is the article that goes along with the slideshow, in case you haven't seen it yet and you're interested.

in the past few days i've stumbled across several totally different, but equally infuriating, stories about animal cruelty. there's the US marine who threw a live puppy off a cliff (complete with horrifying video), the pro golfer who killed a hawk by aiming golf balls at him until he was successful (why? because the hawk was making noise and "ruining" the golfer's stupid videotape), and now this story detailing the poaching trade. it's all making me very sad.

brownies for dinner

it's cool to just skip dinner altogether and go straight for the dessert part, right? grownups do that all the time just because they can, right? *looks around nervously*

i've been jonesing for chocolatey baked goods for a few weeks now. i haven't made a cake yet because i'm too full of sloth to make frosting (and how embarrassing is that?). i finally broke down and made some brownies on saturday, but sadly they didn't turn out like i'd hoped... they were a little too dry and not moist/fudgy/dense like i expected. so tonight, armed with a new recipe, i tried again. the batter for these was off the chain delicious, so i have high hopes for the brownies. i hope they're fantastic because i have a 9x13 pan of them. maybe i could call it "chocolate casserole" and feel better about eating them for dinner?

lanceless: the full story

my husband and i are big lance armstrong fans. it started when we lived in austin, and it's still going strong. we watch the tour de france every july, glued to our couch for the first half of each day for three weeks, totally disoriented once it's over. we were SO excited to see lance kick the TDF's ass every year for seven years, and we were sad to see him go. anyway, nutshell: we heart us some lance.

other, related, background: as you know, i'm a professor. this gives me the luxury of a ridiculously flexible schedule. i have boatloads and craptons of work to do--don't get me wrong--but my time is my own 98% of the time. i can organize my tasks and my work time and my leisure time however i see fit. crazily enough, this year i have two course buyouts--one because i'm a new director for a large lecture course, and that gets me a release (because it's hard, yo!); and one because i won a two-year grant to do some research--so that means that each semester this year, i only teach ONE class. even more unbelievably, because it's a large lecture course, i literally only have to be in a classroom fifty minutes per week (the students are with their TAs in their discussion sections the other two fifty-minute periods each week). fifty minutes a week! how sweet is that? i realize this is a very very VERY lovely schedule. i appreciate it. i cherish it, in fact!

okay, so a few days ago, my husband learned that lance armstrong would be coming to our state capitol to lobby for our statewide smoking ban (w00t!). i don't really know what the big connection is, but who am i to argue? anyhow, we also learned that after he did his thing at the capitol, he was going to come here to our town to do a press conference with the governor and our mayor. awesome!! my excitement was short-lived, however, when i realized that the date (and probable time) coincided with the only 50 minutes all week that aren't mine to do whatever i want. boo!! i tried not to think about it too much... i was all, hey, who knows where he'll even go in town, i bet it wouldn't even work out or be convenient or whatever. ha.

on monday (the day before he was going to come), we learned where the press conference was going to be held, and i wish i could say that it was completely across town in a place i'd never been and would get lost trying to find, but no. he was doing the press conference FOUR BLOCKS AWAY FROM OUR HOUSE. seriously, i think my heart broke a little when my husband told me that. at first i thought he named the restaurant just to mess with me, actually. sigh. i bemoaned my bad luck loudly and often, and then i practically demanded that my husband go anyway. like i was seriously going to be pissed if he didn't go. hee.

so yesterday i emailed people for pity (and got approximately zero) and whined and carried on and pouted, and then poked and prodded my husband to go with a friend of ours, which he did (yay!). once it was all over i wasn't so sad anymore; it was fun to live vicariously through my husband. the press conference was pretty brief and there weren't any long Q&A sessions or meet & greets or anything, so it was really more like, "yay i saw lance armstrong in person!" but still, it was cool and i'm really happy at least one of us got to do it! he took some pictures and a few of them turned out pretty great, so i'll be posting them on the flickr soon.

lanceless

i just got home from a very long day that involved many things, none of which included seeing lance armstrong in person. boo! i almost got to add him to my honorable mentions list, but alas, it was not to be. right now i need to eat some dinner and watch some american idol and go to bed, but tomorrow i'll tell my sad, sad tale. i'm sure you can barely wait!

adding more friends

i love animals. doy.

right now we have two crazy affectionate outgoing boykitties. we adore them. they fill our lives, to be sure. and yet, i/we often consider adding to our brood. volunteering at the humane society contributes to this mindset in a huge way--every monday i come home with an "if i could adopt one animal i met today, it would be..." in mind. but for reals, even beyond mondays, we've been sort of thinking about bringing in another babe.

i am all over the map: a third boykitty? a sweet girldog? i find wonderful candidates every single week!

or what about a bunny? (there is a handsome boy named larry at our humane society right now. his fur is like velvet and he is SO friendly!) or maybe a pair of rats? (there are two brothers at the humane society. they love each other, and i love them.)

my husband is not so much all over the map. he has more or less honed in on the idea of rescuing a racing greyhound. i really like the idea too, don't get me wrong, but i'm still slightly dog-shy. i love them, but i sometimes worry about the BIG switch from a "cat lifestyle" to a "dog lifestyle." we've been in loose contact with our local greyhound rescue, and we've gone to a few of their meet & greet events (who can resist meeting soft sweet greyhounds?), and i bought my husband a couple of recommended books on greyhound adoption, but that's as far as we've gone with that at the moment.

i have a list of pros and cons brewing in my mind, but i'm not ready to sort it all out yet. maybe sometime soon. in the meantime, what do you think? kitty #3 vs. greyhound #1? or knock it off and leave all the love for our two boys who definitely deserve it? big decisions.

what up, alba?

so, like, over a month ago (right? i'm pretty sure it was, but i'm not up for searching at the moment) the news hit the vegan airwaves that alba's hawaiian lip balm had switched to beeswax and was No Longer Vegan. vegans everywhere flipped their shit (and rightly so), and as far as i can tell, alba's customer service email inbox was flooded with requests to switch back. we all got the "you should receive a response in 7-10 business days" automated reply, but i have yet to hear of ANYONE getting a response from them. what gives? are you just too busy reformulating so you can go back to your vegan ways? i hope so.

but if not, here is a list of who will be getting my business instead:
1. avalon organics vitamin C (as long as they don't switch too, since it's the same parent company)
2. crazy rumors (not quite as creamy as alba/avalon, but a great runner-up. i'm partial to the spiced chai, of course)
3. pharmacopia lip elixir (spendy, and the scent needs to grow on me, but so far i really like the texture a lot)
4. clean aura (sold locally; no website yet)