Kitchen

I’m fortunate to have moved in to a house that has a pretty decent kitchen.  However, my cupboards don’t have knobs on them and it really kind of bugs me.  Why?  Because constantly having to handle the wood of the cubpoards makes kind of a nasty black - smudgy spot on the cupboards and after time, no amount of cleaning it will get rid of it.  Also, the cupboards have been there for so long you can see wear on them where they’ve constantlyl been handled to open or close them.

I’m not sure if I should go for new cubpoards or just save some money and paint the ones I have and invest in some industrial knobs to put on there.  Painting cupboards (I’ve heard) is a hell of a job.  I’m not really in to it and wouldn’t have the correct weather or area to do it until next summer. 

I can wait that long, but I don’t know if I’d rather just throw some money down and have the current cupboards re-faced or have the entire lot of them taken out and replaced.  I do want a new kitchen sink.  And I would like to knock out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen and open it up a little.

Decisions, decisions…

Teeth

Turns out I need a $1900 root canal and 6 fillings replaced.  That will set me back roughly $4000 by the time we’re all done (not including what insurance already covers) AND I’m also now looking at invisalign (again) and whitening.  I’m trying to decide what to do first.  Of course, very first comes the root-canal and the crown…  But after that do I go for braces before I whiten or whitening before I brace?

I always said that I would get my teeth fixed if I ever lost weight.  Well, I have lost the weight so now is the time.  However, I didn’t know that losing weight so rapidly was going to do a number on my teeth.  (I don’t absorb minerals the same anymore).  So I’m wondering…  If I’m not going to have my teeth forever (for SHAME) should I invest in making them pretty.

Answer is simple…  Yes.  I’m not all git-git about it.

Not sure

How does buy.com get off selling this Toshiba Satellite for this price?  It seems pretty inflated to me.  Then again, I don’t really know exactly what laptop computers are supposed to cost now-a-days, but I do know that mine is more robust and cost about $400 less.  I don’t know, I guess it just struck me as odd that there would be such a push for something that doesn’t offer a lot of “oomph” when it comes to computing.

lips and boobs

So here I am scooting around the web again during another long night at work and I fumble upon Yogi’s weblog and find this here picture you see of Ms. Jolie and her newborn baby sucking on her boobie.  Yes…  What was the first thing I thought of?  No, not that there was a boob shot on my screen but…  “Did her lips get bigger?”  Yah, I was focusing on the famous lips…  Not the famous boobs. 

I’m so anti-motherhood all I can think about are Angelina Jolie’s lips.  There has to be something wrong with me.

Question

Neil vs. Tori

Dinking around on the web tonight I ran across the lousy poet’s review of the new Neil Gaiman book “The Graveyard Book”.  Where as the book doesn’t sound at all interesting to me, there is something I’ve always wondered about Neil Gaiman…  What’s up with his relationship with Tori Amos?

I former “Toriphile” I used to follow Ms. Amos quite extensively (can you say 9 shows one summer?) and I was really in to the online forum community.  Yes, I had the bright red hair.  Yes, I knew (know) every single word to the “Little Earthquakes” album. 

But that was me in a former life.  I still like her music, but I’m not 22 years old anymore and am also not really up for traveling the northern United States (And Canada) to go see another Tori Set. 

But something about Tori I’ve never investigated was her relationship with Gaiman.  She speaks (lyrically) of him often in her songs:  Tear in your Hand “If you need me, me and Neil’ll be hangin’ out with the dream king”…

Did she date him (I don’t know why I really care) or are they just pals like me and my buddy Mike are?  I mean, I reference Mike all the time…  In my blogs.  I mean, I haven’t written a song about him or anything…  But yeah, I guess you could say I make mention of the people that are close to me in my life.  Yah.  I guess so…

It just seems like she’s slept with him. 

But anyhow, another thing I find fascinating about this guy (other than MirrorMask, which is friggin fascinating all the way around) is that he is a graphic novelist.  Why do I find that weird?  I don’t know.  It’s also weird that he was the one that adapted the script to English of Princess Monoke. 

I dunno, maybe it’s time to become less of a Tori groupie and see what Neil Gaiman has to offer.  I guess what I’m saying is that he’s touched a lot of the things in life that I really enjoy, and I never really knew it, until now.

A Place… A memory

Only recently have I felt like I have a life.  So you’re saying, “Nyra, what do you mean by that?” 

I mean simply…  I have money.  I know that sounds superficial and totally lame…  But having some money to my name makes me feel like I can actually…  Well, have that life that I speak of up there.

Wandering through the web, surfing around thinking/dreaming/unrealistically thinking I could ever afford anything like this…  I came across the Mortgage and More Blog.  It’s a personal website.  I don’t know the person who writes it.  I don’t even know how I ended up at their page.  But one of the phrases on their site really just kind of stopped me in my tracks:

“If you are in the market for a second home/vacation get away, then you have come to the right post.”

Have I come to the right post?  Would –I- Ever be able to even fathom thinking about buying another home or a vacation get-away?

The truth is, yes.  We probably could.  With mine and Mr. Man’s salary we could afford a cottage.  We’ve even looked at property up-north before and I’ve DREAMED of having a cottage on one of the northern lakes like my aunt and uncle used to have.  I have such fond memories of running down the hill from the cottage to the waterfront and plowing in to the lake to swim all day.  I want to give that to my step-daughter.  I want to give it to Mr. Man and his family.  I want my dad to have a place to go up-north…  And I want my grand-kids (even if they may only be step-grand-kids) to feel the joy I used to have running around carefree during the summers at my aunt and uncle’s cottage.

My parents had a cottage of their own in Gelnnie Michigan when I was a kid.  However, I preferred to go to my aunt and uncle’s place (even though they were only like 10 minutes away from one another) because the lake our cottage on was weedy.  Do you remember what it’s like to be a kid faced with a summer at a weedy lake?  I do.  I avoided it.  It was awful.  The thought of stepping foot into that lake scared the hell out of me!

But my aunt and uncle’s beachfront was sandy and nice.  There was a dock to jump off of and sun fish that you could fish for from the shore.  There are fond memories of pontoon rides and tubing and trolling around in the inflatable boat with my cousins trying to catch a fish.

I want that for my family.   I just want them to have a fond memory of a place.  I want to buy that perfect place…  Someday.

Here’s to my health

I work for a pretty large company.  Mr. Man works for an almost as large company that is owned by the large company I work for (sort of, in a round-about way).  Why then, can’t we have health insurance that covers all of our needs?  It’s really annoying.  When I first started working professionally in the early 90’s my health insurance was:

a.       Complete – it covered everything from yearly exams to specialists and I only paid out minimally

b.       FREE!  My employer covered the entire cost of me having a very comprehensive health plan

c.        Had low patient pay outs.  I don’t think I even had a deductible and they paid at least 80% of my medical costs. 

But now?  Nope…  I pay out for health insurance that ISN’T complete and I have to pay extra to have dental and vision coverage.  I think they only cover about 70% of my annual health costs AND I have a yearly deductible and out of pocket minimum/maximum.

So, should I buy my family health insurance?  Do we need it?  Or would it cost us more than what our employers can offer us.

I’m feeling the pinch.  Not being the most healthy person in the world (albeit WAY more healthy than I ever used to be) and having an aging family and a step-daughter that we’re responsible for that has had medical problems in the past…  I feel like we should supplement.  But I’m afraid of the cost and I’m afraid to drop what we currently have.

Suggestions?

Cooking Week

So it was another cooking week. I made my ever so anal shopping list on Sunday, shopped for all the ingredients for the five recipes I decided to make this week:

Monday: Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic vinaigrette
Tuesday: Rigatoni with steak sauce
Wednesday: Buffalo Style Chicken Breasts
Thursday: Rigatoni with goat cheese - Only I added roasted sugar pumpkin and sage to this one
Friday: is supposed to be lamb meat balls with Greek yogurt dipping sauce, but we’re having a hard time finding ground lamb locally, so I had to order it through the meat counter.

Monday was a “keeper” recipe from the other week. We had to have it again.
Tuesday was effing delicious. We used a really good cut of meat and it was absolutely great.
Wednesday was another keeper recipe. Even G loved the chicken and I was afraid she may not because of the buffalo sauce. She really liked it though.
Thursday was good, but I probably won’t make it again. It’s a little bland….. but pretty good.
Dunno about Friday yet. Hope they can get us the lamb so I can try it.

G and her friend Krissy had a play date today. It was kind of fun to have the girls around all day. They even went outside and raked leaves, for which I offered to pay them. They had a lot of fun.

From Raking Leaves

And in interesting news, I went in to Bath and Body Works yesterday and struck up a conversation with one of the employees there. Out of the blue she says to me “you should work here, you’d be perfect. Our best customers make our best employees” Then she gave me an application and wrote her name down for me and told me to fill it out and bring it back in. She told me about all the wonderful perks to working there (all the freebies and discounts… that.would.be.heaven)… And after discussing it with Mr. Man I decided to fill it out and give it a whirl. I don’t know if they’ll actually hire me but I’d not mind working there a day or 3 a week. It would be nice to make some new friends at least….

I’m also consistently getting paid for blogging. Yesterday was my 2nd payday. In all I’ve made a few hundred dollars and I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks. It’s pretty interesting.

This was also the first time I went in there and had a conversation with someone I know only from the Internet. It was nice to meet you , in the flesh. I really shouldn’t have been such a heel and asked you what your real name was though. I guess I was a little nervous with all the application filling out and “official” stuff. “P