When you join the Noodle & Company email club you get freebie offerings – I get a completely free dinner bowl of ANYTHING for my birthday, for example. Today is National Spaghetti Day and I got an email coupon for a small size bowl when I purchase a regular size bowl. Lots of choices, too.
PITA, naturally, wanted to stay up watching tv until the new year – laptop going as well, since that’s how they do things, so I stayed up as well and watched the giant star go UP the 36 story tower at midnight. Chicago could afford the extreme light show since it was sponsored by Corona beer – otherwise they’re as dirt poor as the state…
I say extended because my birthday falls on the 23rd so the festivities kick in earlier, although as you get older the kicks aren’t quite as high…
The nicest part about having children with money (besides being able to pay room and board) is that you get presents that aren’t made at school! DH got me a Tripp Lite Eco Green battery backup + surge protector for my desktop which gives me 10 minutes to finish programs and close everything down properly. there was an incident involving the microwave, electric kettle and apparently everything else electrical in the house that blew the circuits…
Mom sent a card with check – told her to visit the eye doctor cause there were a few zeros missing. DH gave me a card that evening with a rather nice cash enclosure and my choice of restaurants for dinner. Before the presents I was thinking SOAK HIM, but afterwards decided on Mangiano’s and honestly, don’t know why we haven’t eaten there more often. Incredible pasta deals. Figures I’d choose a BOGO restaurant, though, right?
Christmas Eve is always laid back here. Made a late morning fried potatoes and eggs breakfast (FirstBorn had picked up DD donuts the night before, saying “just give me an assortment.” Dude, you do not say that just before they close ’cause you are going to get the most god-awful stuff left on the shelf. Trust me, I thought the squirrels were gonna throw ’em back!) Watched Star Wars IV in preparation for Christmas Day’s outing to watch VII. Bought tickets to the Tivoli in Downers Grove online and, since it’s part of the Classic Cinemas chain, we paid $7 total for each guaranteed ticket – no lines! OMG, you HAVE to see this movie! Later that afternoon, DH and PITA played Zombie-opoly…I burned my retinas out playing Bejeweled and Candy Crush (how the heck did PITA get to level 347 – not kidding here – when I get you sad failure music at 35???). We exchange presents on Christmas Eve, so I got even more good stuff! FirstBorn bought us all great books, I got a coffee mug from PITA saying Tough Old Bird and a spa gift certificate from DH.
Christmas Day we no longer celebrate at my Mom’s for dinner. She decided a couple of years ago that even if we brought all the food and promised to clean up there was still a mess and she was too old to deal with it; or mean, your call. So this year we went to the Christmas Brunch at Drury Lane Oak Brook and the quality and quantity of food offered was astounding! Naturally I’d switched to a little holiday purse, so no room for zip-locs – wait, why are you all surprised – but I think DH finally, for the first time in his life, got his fill of raw oysters (and that includes happy hour deals down in Savannah)! Service staff was excellent, constantly coming over with more coffee, tea and mimosas, removing dirty plates and glasses, etc.
And yesterday we just vegged out, went to Noodles for my free birthday bowl, and then PITA and DH watched something violent between football games…wait, that’s all violence!
Hope your days were enjoyable as well.
Lots of fun stuff at this Goodwill store in somewhere north…I think Addison. Someone might say, why would a sane person buy a box of Electrasol from 1994, but then sanity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The reason is that this baby has over 6% phosphates in the powder, which means super-speaky-clean dishes! Even Cascade has been running crappy lately for me.
No inserts at all in the 12/20 paper, since most people are out doing last-minute shopping. but 12/27 will have one, the January P&G. The largest/most valuable paper of the entire year comes the weekend after, (1/03/16) when we get 2 redplums and 2 SmartSource inserts. They’re usually massive ones, too. That’s when the Super Bowl-themed stock-ups start…
Now that the weather’s turning cold, rainy and just plain nasty, it’s time to get back to bread-baking, so I just whipped up a batch and stuck it in the refrigerator. This is my no-fail, go-to bread book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. The latest version contains gluten-free and other types of flours. Here’s a link to last year’s baking results. FirstBorn said I’d finally found my calling. I no longer use a stand mixer cause it has to be washed. I also bake in cast iron, which approximates the steam ovens used in bakeries; this link shows my DIY yeast process as well.
“Back in 1909, a super-rich French banker named Albert Kahn decided to create a photographic record of the world using the new color photography process that had just appeared, the Autochrome Lumière. He commissioned 4 photographers to take their cameras to places all over the world. One of the cities they documented was Paris.”
Apparently a total of 72,000 photos were taken in all – sadly, the super-rich banker went bust in 1929. DH sent me this link; click and see some extraordinary photos of everyday life and scenes of Paris from 1914. I asked my mother if she remembered it like this … and she hung up on me.
