Ahhhhh holiday weekend

We had a busy weekend in the NSC household.

• I got off work early on Friday and proceeded to clean the first floor of our house. We really needed it. Not quite what I wanted to do to start out a three day weekend, but when it needs to get done…

• CP and I made a delicious dinner of Kibbe meat sticks on the grill, tabbouleh salad and chopped veggies with a tahini dressing on top (all Lebanese dishes). Yum! It went quite well with light beer. :-)

• Buster didn’t pee in the house once the entire weekend! It was so nice to not have to break out the mop for a few days!

• We weeded our various gardens and the front yard.

• Bought and installed new cedar window boxes for the front of the house (the old owners had cheap plastic ones that were falling apart) and new two new planter boxes for our front step.

• Took Buster and Koda on a few walks- including an hour long walk yesterday before it got too hot. Buster was great and lasted through the entire walk….and then promptly fell asleep for hours once we got home.

• CP smoked ribs and a beef brisket all day on Sunday. He made two different barbeque sauces to put on top, along with a sweet potato salad and beans. Yum but not so healthy….

• We tried to watch Inception but the Directv download didn’t work properly so we ended up watching the Swedish versions of The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. They were pretty good. It will be interesting to see how Hollywood does the films.

• Buster doesn’t understand the meaning of sleeping in on holiday weekends….so he woke us up at 5am every morning. To combat that I ended up taking three naps yesterday!!! No wonder I feel so rested today!
  
  How was your holiday weekend?
  
  
  By the way, anyone else having problems commenting through Blogger? I have been trying to comment on posts but the site kicks me out and tells me that I am not signed in. Very frustrating!!

Confession

I am a very curious person. I’ll admit that I do like to “stalk” people on Facebook. It’s always interesting to see what people are up to these days if you haven’t seen them in a long time. Being bored at work yesterday I went looking for my ex boyfriend. I was curious if he ever finished grad school and where he was working. We are not Facebook friends anymore because at some point he couldn’t handle seeing CP in my pictures, hearing that I was happy with someone else, etc.

Not able to find him on Facebook, I googled his name and finally found him on LinkedIn. Most of his profile was private so I had to “friend” him to see what he was up to. He accepted and then sent a short email saying that he hoped that I was doing well. I ended up emailing him back and asking how he was doing, where he was working, etc. I received a LONG email about the past couple of years, his unhappiness over choices he has made, student loan debt and how he is currently trying to finish his thesis/couch surfing while job hunting.

I replied with some suggestions as he is looking for work in an industry similar to mine and told him about buying a house in CT, getting a puppy, hating my job, etc. He responded with part of the email bashing homeownership and dogs. That’s fine if it is not your cup of tea, but no reason to bash my choices in life. His response basically snapped me back into reality. Why did I contact him anyway? It’s been YEARS since I have talked to him or even thought about him. My original email was innocent in nature- bored at work and curious as to how life is turning out for him.

But if CP found out that I contacted him, that might not go over so well (CP is not controlling- this is just the ex that was trying to get me back after I started dating CP). If he is going to be all depressed over the way his life turned out and bash my life, then why do I need to talk to him anyways? So I deleted the email and won’t respond. But I feel guilty for contacting him in the first place.

Chalk it up to a life lesson that I should have learned years ago…..

Anyone else do something stupid like this with an ex?

A cautionary tale

As you guys know, I have been trying to decrease the number of chemicals both in our food (shopping for organic fruits/veggies and trying not eat processed foods) and in the products in our house. CP is completely on board with the food choices we make after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (Haven’t read it yet? PLEASE DO.)

He is a bit more skeptical of green products. After reading some of the ingredients in toothpastes, I decided a while back that we were going to switch to Burt’s Bees toothpaste. Why not go a bit more natural with something that is in your mouth and that you ingest even without meaning to?

Well, after my dentist’s visit this week, I will be switching back to a chemical-laden toothpaste. I went in for my regular visit and the dentist found that I was starting to get a cavity in between two teeth. I had never even heard about that happening and it is not my regular m.o. for cavities! I asked the dentist if Burt’s Bees could potentially be the problem, and he thought that the toothpaste most likely didn’t have enough fluoride in it. While I hate to switch to his recommended Colgate Total, I hate cavities even more.

The moral of the story? I will continue to purchase green products and make good choices based on the ingredients of the products, but maybe not in my toothpaste.

Have you guys had a similar problem with a green/more organic product?

Sprouting seeds

At the beginning of the month CP and I planted the following seeds:

Beets

Carrots (two kinds)

Bibb Lettuce

Romaine Lettuce

Spinach

Bok Choy

Kale

Swiss Chard

Zucchini

Leeks

Brussel Sprouts

Sugar Snap Peas

Green Pole Beans

Yellow Wax Beans

Bush Cucumbers

We weren't sure what to expect because last year we only planted romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce and carrots from seed. But so far most everything is doing great!

The start of cucumbers.

Our snap peas. I guess my rows were not very straight.... :-)


Zucchini plants that will eventually take over the raised bed! (Notice the fencing- we put that up because Buster kept jumping into the bed!)

From left to right: Bibb lettuce (in back), Romaine lettuce (not doing as well in front of it), Kale (in back), Spinach (in front), Bok Choy and finally, Swiss Chard.

I can't wait for fresh veggies! If these babies make it (we still have to cull the inferior plants to make sure that there is room for everything to grow), we will have saved a bunch of money over last year because it is so much less expensive to buy seeds than to buy already-started-for-you plants!

A typical day with Buster

1am- one of us gets up to take him outside to go to the bathroom. He hopefully does his business, comes back inside the house and goes back to sleep. This, of course, does not always happen and he thinks that it is playtime.

5am- CP wakes up and jumps in the shower. This wakes up Buster and he starts to bark, whine, etc. This also wakes me up even though my alarm is not supposed to go off until 6am. CP takes the dogs out and feeds them.

6am- I wake up and play with Buster to try to tire him out. This morning I went for a run afterwards before getting ready for work and that is supposed to wake me up right? Well it had the opposite effect on me and I am ready to fall asleep at my desk. :-(

7:30am- take dogs out again before leaving for work.

12pm- rush home during my lunch hour to take the dogs out, eat lunch, feed Buster, clean up any puppy messes and try to play with Buster to tire him out. Two days a week I won’t have to rush too much as I will be working from home, but the other three days it is going to be stressful to try to get home and back to the office within an hour.

5pm- rush home from work to take dogs out, clean up any puppy messes and play with the dogs.

6pm- feed dogs. FB always gets fed first (it’s especially fun trying to hold back a puppy that is lunging for FB’s food. That’s guaranteed to not end well if he bothers her while she is eating).

7:30pm- take Buster out to hopefully go to the bathroom.

9pm- walk Buster to try to tire him out.

Yeah, having a puppy is TIRING. I appreciate FB and her calm demeanor even more these days. Buster was supposedly the “calm” one who would be good for a home with an older dog. He was calm and quiet for the first day…. He has already tried to hump me and FB to assert his dominance (yeah right buddy) and we think that he is going to be one stubborn dog.

Hopefully he learns his place in the family soon. It’s hard to be mad because he is just so darn cute.

Tug

Despite CP’s worries about the urologist appointment regarding his sperm analysis, he came back from the appointment last month upbeat and laughing. You see, the doctor that he saw was in his 70s but referred to CP’s testes as his balls, swore a lot and genuinely made CP feel comfortable because of his casual attitude.

Basically, the doctor told him that a single sperm analysis test doesn’t mean anything. The 4% “good sperm” number is low, but it could have been influenced by something such as a cold several months back. Across the US sperm counts are dropping and no one knows why.

CP was told to go back to the clinic, watch some more porn and give two more samples about a month apart. If both of those samples come back with abnormal results then CP will get referred to a sperm specialist.

Of course at the end of the appointment, the doctor did have to give CP’s balls a tug to make sure they were okay. LOL.

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The second sperm analysis results are back. CP's good sperm percentage dropped to 2%. He will go back in a month to get them checked again, but this is NOT good.

While we wait for his third sperm analysis, I am going to call my doctor to find out our other options.

Next month it will be a year of trying without getting pregnant. I think that we are then considered infertile. Awesome (please note my sarcasm).

iPhone

Last week I was finally able to upgrade my Blackberry Curve to an iPhone. My two year agreement with Verizon was up and it was time to cash in my discount!

Because I already have an iTouch I thought that I knew a lot about the phone. Turns out I am wrong. My coworker also has the AT&T version and told me that the earbuds that they give you are actually a hands-free device! You can use the earbuds to answer phone calls and end phone calls. So cool. I would have never guessed that.

I already have a few good applications. I tend to only download the free ones because you can start to spend a whole lotta money otherwise. :-)

Some of my applications include:

Iheartradio
Nook
Angry birds
Yelp
Shazam
Tosh.O
Mapquest
Weather channel
Daily Show
Urban spoon
ESPN
NPR
Goodreads
Facebook
Wikipedia
ShopSavvy
AroundMe

So here is where you come in. Do you have an iPhone? What application do you absolutely LOVE? Tell me about some more cool features on the phone because I am clueless!