baaaaaaaaaaack

How can it already be almost 2PM? It's my day off--today should go SLOW.

We got back late last night. The trip was mixed--good parts, bad parts, exasperating parts. Nothing too brutal, though. Jeff was as fabulous as expected. He had a great time and I was frankly relieved that I managed to contain my sulk. My family loved him and he fit in pretty perfectly. (Down to joining us for the daily morning dogpile and swinging my nephews around.)

Jeff made the excruciating bearable, but holy crap were we giddy about coming home. ( The flight back was surreal. )

Also, it turns out that Jeff is a giant baby about having his ass kicked at Scrabble. I think the score when we stopped (because we were landing) was 300 to 100 and boy did he not like that. I took endless shit when the OFFICIAL SCRABBLE DICTIONARY was okay with "quin" and Jeff... was not. OMG there was endless ENDLESS abuse. Apparently Jeff's Scrabble vocabulary is limited to proper nouns and dirty words. It was wildly entertaining. Even if it means he hates me now. Muhahahahaa!!

SeaTac Alaska Baggage Claim is the slowest, lamest service on earth. We waited forever and ever. Then waited for our shuttle. We were so giddy when we finally got into my car. LA had slow roasted us all weekend. It was disgusting. Seattle's cool air was a blessed relief. We got home around 1AM, but neither one of us was tired. We made some scrabbled eggs with red bells, Italian parsley, smoked mozzarella, and green onions and had it with the last of the wheat toast. It was such fucking nirvana sitting on the couches with Brutus (KITTY) who purred and purred with us. We watched The Soup and then an episode of The Daily Show where we seriously nearly threw up laughing at Jon Stewart's riff on James Carvell. Which, holy Christ. We were nearly hysterical. (Jeff: "Two found dead at home with strange abdominal injuries.") We were laughing so hard we heard like half of it. We couldn't stop laughing until the end of the episode when Jeff made me rewind it --which just the act of rewinding it made us cackle. God. We both went to bed and lay there snickering for another half hour.

Sleep was the most exciting thing ever. At home. In a glorious full-sized bed. AND SLEEPING-IN OMG I LOVE YOU UNIVERSE CAN I PLEASE FRENCH KISS YOU?

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

cooking stuff

So, we spent the morning petting Brutus and just talking about the weekend and luxuriating in being home. I drove Jeff to pickup his truck from work and went to the grocery store. Even the drive down Aurora was orgamic. Did I mention how happy I am to be home? I bought the Paris issue of Gourmet and I am so excited to make both a fancy meal for us tonight (to thank Jeff for being such a trooper this weekend) and to prep for meals this week. In between that I need to do laundry, and actually do some work to prep for a meeting tomorrow--it's a brutal week ahead.

On the menu tonight:

Eggplant, hummus, and arugula tartines to start (though I think I'm going to make this more of a bruschetta preparation)
Fresh pea and mint soup with creme fraiche
Poached eggs with mushrooms prepared two ways (roasted crisp and sauteed with parsley garlic butter)
Thinly sliced steak (pour moi) --not from gourmet, I'm just going to grill and slice
Olive oil mashed Yukon gold potatoes
Bittersweet chocolate tart and mineola orange slices

I also want to roast some red peppers for the week and if I have the energy, make a big pot of bolognese pasta for myself.