Pup & Stuff Portrait Friday #7

Hooray! It’s time for SPF, and you know what that means—it’s FRIDAY! As usual, Stuff Portrait Friday is sponsored by Kristine at Random and Odd.

Before the stuff, we have the pup:

Notice the look of intensity on her face. Actually, it’s more like her whole body, isn’t it? J.P. had a biscuit in his other hand, and when food is involved, there’s no distracting Penny. I had to use the flash for the photo, which turned her eyes green and made her look evil. So I Photoshopped it and now she looks like she’s on crack.

Now onto the stuff. The first pic is our bed. This is what it looked like last night, and per Kristine’s instructions I didn’t take any special care to make it look nice. Immediately after the photo was taken, I stripped it to wash the sheets. See the light saber on the nightstand? Guess who sleeps on that side?

And this is what our bed looked like a few months ago. Notice the close-up shot of the previous picture. That’s because we still have the orange/coral curtains hanging up, and they don’t exactly go with the new bedding. There’s nothing wrong with the old stuff (except that the Ikea curtains are really faded. And cheap.), but we were tired of it. Anybody interested in queen size Rose Bouquet and Berry Check bedding from Eddie Bauer? Matching valance included—we’ll make you a sweet deal!

And here’s our dresser. Notice the matchy-matchy state of our furniture, which is universally hated by all HGTV designers. I was unaware of the faux pas when we bought it, and I fully anticipate that we’ll have it for our entire marriage.

Also, the dresser is never this clean. Ever. I took this pic a few months ago after cleaning, so that I’d be prepared with the “before” pictures when we finally decide to finish the room. The new bedding is the first step, but it’ll probably be sometime next year before we make additonal progress.

And finally, my favorite jammies:

I bought these a few weeks ago when we were traveling. I talked to my sister when we were both en route to Milwaukee, and she mentioned that she’d forgotten her underwear. So when we crossed the Illinois-Wisconsin border into Outlet Mall Nirvana, we stopped at the Jockey store to get her some. These caught my eye, and I made an impulse purchase. Too bad they didn’t help me sleep in that nasty hotel bed.

Have a great weekend!

Who WAS That Woman?

I’m thinking that someone must have hacked into my Blogger account last month. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back on it there’s no way I could’ve written this post, could I?

Loving heat and humidity? Ha!

Bonfires? Maybe, if you feel like raising the ambient temperature to 137 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh, and the smell of freshly-cut grass. Try the crunch of scorched, dead weeds underfoot.

The smell of hot pavement. How about hopping from foot to foot like a loon because you can’t get into the house fast enough to keep from burning your feet?

The high temperature today was 97 degrees, with a dewpoint of 72 degrees (i.e., tropical). More of the same is on tap tomorrow. When I lived in Minnesota, I swore I would never complain about the heat because I hated the winters so much.

Guess what? I don’t live in Minnesota anymore.

The Wal-Mart of Restaurants

To reward ourselves for a weekend of hard work (spreading a VW-Beetle-sized pile of mulch around the house and deck), J.P. and I decided to go out for dinner tonight. Never mind that we ate out Friday night and ordered in last night; tonight’s meal was a reward (shut up)! He was having a craving for a restaurant that I don’t really like, but after negotiating a back rub in exchange, I agreed to go.

From the moment we arrived, it was like something out of a bad sit-com. In fact, it wasn’t unlike Roseanne. Everywhere we turned, there was another “interesting” character.

First, there was the girl standing around talking on her cell phone. She wore denim sausage-casing capri pants and green macrame-style high-heel shoes. Hmmm . . . wonder if she was talking “business” on the phone?

Then there was the couple in their fifties who came waddling out, he in a white grease-stained t-shirt and grimy red cap, and she wearing every necklace she owns. What’s up with the multiple necklace thing? I don’t get it.

The table next to us held a family whose children were in their twenties. One of the “kids” could barely put down his cell phone long enough to eat. As soon as he was finished with his mound of food, he picked it up and resumed his video game, completely ignoring the others at the table.

After we were seated, we waited and waited, and eventually our waitress, Kim, showed up. Her uniform shirt strained against the pressure of her pregnant belly, and it looked as if she could go into labor at any minute. We placed our orders, and I requested the half order portion of my entree.

When she returned, I couldn’t believe how much food was on my plate.

Sharkey: Wow, that’s a half order?!
Kim: It looks like a full order. Oh, but look (showing me the computer-generated ticket), I rang it up as a half order. See the H in front of it? You’ll only get charged for a half order.
Sharkey: That’s an unbelievable amount of food.
Kim: You can box up what you don’t eat and have it tomorrow, but we’ll only charge you for a half order.
Sharkey: Okay.
Kim: We’ll only charge you for a half order because that’s how I entered it in the computer, even though you’re getting the full order.
Sharkey: Really, it’s fine.

Ya think maybe somebody’s gotten testy with her over a similar mix-up in the past?

We finished eating, and Kim was nowhere to be found. J.P. joked that maybe she’d be back after she came in from pushing out the kid in the restaurant’s parking lot.

Finally, Nina stopped by to see how we were doing, and we asked her for the check. As she stood there waiting for J.P. to get out his credit card, she said, “I’m just here because Kim thinks she’s going into labor.”

Pup & Stuff Portrait Friday #6

Wow, it seems like forever (actually only two weeks) since I played along on Stuff Portrait Friday. SPF is sponsored by Kristine at Random and Odd, and she set up a Flickr group for us. Check ‘em out! This week’s theme is What’s for Dinner?

The first topic is my specialty dinner. Now let me just say that cooking isn’t my thing. Baking and desserts, however, are a different story. I like to bake bread (from scratch), flourless chocolate cake (a.k.a. Death by Chocolate), and cheesecakes, and I made homemade truffles as favors for our wedding guests.

But J.P. does 99% of the cooking in Sharkeyville. I make dinner maybe one night a month. And Wednesday just happened to be that night because he mowed the lawn in the 90+ degree heat, then showered and fell asleep before I got home from work. Rather than wake him, I decided to go all out and really treat him with my culinary skills. First, the raw ingredients:

And now the results. Bon appetit!

Mmmmmm . . . doesn’t that look good? Especially the green can cheese. That stuff makes me gag, but J.P. likes it. And no, I didn’t bake this particular loaf of bread. But I did grow the cucumbers and tomatoes in the garden. Partial credit?

Next up is food we ALWAYS have in our house.

We’re big milk drinkers around here. The two of us usually go through 2-3 gallons a week. And I have to have my Jif (no Skippy!), not to be confused with Susie’s Jif. I’m addicted to cheese, and I’ve recently been trying one new cheese a week from Wegman’s extensive selection. The buffalo wing cheese didn’t exactly taste like wings. It was more like really spicy Velveeta, with a creamy soft texture. I’d rate it two cows out of four.

And finally, my favorite appliance. The rules didn’t specify kitchen appliance, but I decided that would be safest.

I love me some toast. Plus, it’s an oven! You can make tater-tots, reheat pizza, and bake 2-3 cookies for immediate consumption. What’s not to like?

And last but not least, it wouldn’t be Pup & Stuff Friday without the pup. Here’s a shot that J.P. took of Penny and me one Saturday morning last winter. Nah, she’s not spoiled!

First Fruits

When we got home on Saturday, the garden looked like a jungle. It was hot and humid while we were gone, and apparently there was plenty of rain. My two nice little cucumber plants have taken over about a quarter of the space, and the tomato plants are drooping under the weight of all the tomatoes that have suddenly appeared.

And the plants aren’t the only thing that’s grown. The weeds are everywhere! But it’s been hot, humid, and raining off and on since we got home, so they’re safe for now. It was all I could do to pick these tomatoes and cucumbers between the raindrops tonight.

I’m thinking that by the end of summer I’ll have the fewest under-eye circles of any woman in the neighborhood, ’cause what else am I going to do with all those cucumbers? Don’t answer that!

Penny’s always happy to help any way she can. Here’s a shot of the Devil Dog Crunching Cukes.