Exhausted ramblings

Last week in the office was truly the week from hell...and next week does not look to be any better. *whine* Even I am getting tired of whining, and that's not right.

Maybe some cheerful pictures would help. These pictures are, sadly, a few weeks old; the garden looks much shabbier now. We had some hard rains and cool temps, and the flowers kind of gave up.


My Moonbeam coreopsis is still hanging in there, but fading now.


My agastache in front of the house did well this year despite the lack of sun. It attracted a few hummingbirds and lots of bumblebees.


We have a ginormous hydrangea on the side of the house.


Which attracted a pretty butterfly; no idea what kind of butterfly it is, and am too tired to Google "butterflies of Iowa", or whatever.

Why is Labor Day so late this year? I need a day off from labor - NOW!

My seven circles of hell

Dante had nine, but I have had seven past days of hell...

• Sunday - Started feeling sicker than a dog. And when I'm sick...I'm like a dog...I just want to crawl in a corner and lick my wounds till I get better, or die. Does not help when Meester hovers around asking "Can I get you something?"..."Are you feeling better, or worse?"..."Do you think you'll throw up?" Just leave me the f*** alone, ok?!
• Monday - Head is still pounding...chills and feeling ice cold all over. Stayed home from work.
• Tuesday - Still home...still ice cold. Haven't eaten anything but saltine crackers for 2 days.
• Wednesday - Had to go back to work. Next week will be the official hell busiest week of the year. Already 2 necessary production computers not working, and it's my job to get them working by next Monday...even if I'm dying...
• Thursday - Still working on the damn computers...head feeling better but not when I'm crawling under desks and hanging upside down from shelves to try and locate outlets, plug in cables, etc. Now I have a laptop to get ready for next week, too. Office area is filled with "clients" and co-workers are getting hyper-crazy.
  
• Friday - Got first 2 computers and laptop working for next week. Boss hands me another laptop to ready for Monday (he's taking next week off - great)...and assorted other tech problems to take care of. Temp worker hired for busy time is sitting on other side of my cubicle...humming and singing to herself...and her cell phone is set to a #@!*whistling!!! ringtone...and I hate whistling...it drives me insane...and I'm already insane and sick, too, thank you very much!
• Saturday - Meester decides to wash car. We're both in the garage and I'm looking at the concrete garage floor. My head has been hanging down all week...because I've been sick...and whenever I've gotten in and out of the car - I've been noticing funny sandy mounds around the seams in the concrete floor. Now I realize that I see lots of ants crawling in and out of the seams in the concrete.
  

Me: We have ants!
Meester: Yea.
Me: Thousands of ants! In the garage!
Meester: There are ants outdoors.
Me: Millions of ants! Living in the garage!
Meester: Yea.
Me: Do something!
Meester: *Sigh*...I'll go to the hardware store for ant spray.

So...I think the ants are dead...and I'm still alive...until tomorrow, which will be the most hellish busiest week of the year...sigh...

Wheel-worthy Wednesday

Want to know the most heavenly part of my trip to Chicago? The Chicago Chocolate Tours!!! A tour of scrumptiously delicious delights for your eyes and your mouth.

It wasn't just eating chocolates either. We took the Chocolate Shops of the Magnificent Mile and Gold Coast tour. We walked some interesting streets and our guide pointed out significant landmarks and architecture. We visited Teuscher (say "toyshur") chocolates, which I had never heard of, and it was the prettiest little shop in the 900 Shops mall. They let us sample their best champagne truffles...very posh. We bought an assorted box of their dark chocolate truffles and we loved every single one. (You could tell by the sighs and moans of pleasure as we each savored one truffle every night till they were gone *Big Sigh*)

And the more cupcake shop...!!! I thought "bakery frosting?"...not a fan...but this cupcake was frosted with melt-in-your-mouth chocolate mousse...and the chocolate cupcake melted in my mouth too. The more shop even has some kind of Friday night cupcake bar, where they serve savory cupcakes with liquor...just when I thought a cupcake couldn't get any better!!! I hope they have more cupcakes in heaven.

We stopped at Macy's for Frango Mints, which I remember from when I was little and my family went to Marshall Fields before it became Macy's, and we always got a treat of a box of Frango Mints. Everyone in the Midwest knows about Frango Mints, so I had to get a box to bring back and share with my office.

We walked through the Gold Coast area, past all the best haute couture shops, to Sarah's Candies. All kinds of chocolate treats...we saw the chocolate enrobing machine that flows chocolate onto everything...I so wanted to cover myself in chocolate.

We finished up at Argo tea, where we sampled chocolate mint tea and a rich dark brownie. Meester and I stayed after the tour ended for a bite to eat. I just loved the black vanilla cream tea!

I was really impressed that Valerie Beck, the founder of Chicago Chocolate Tours, stopped by to introduce herself to the tour group...a nice personal touch made especially nice because she brought more chocolate for us to eat...some kind of dark chocolate bar with ginger, which I like. I'm afraid I was drooling with chocolate while speaking with Valerie, but I suppose she's used to that.

Anyway...if you are a chocolate lover like me, don't miss taking a chocolate tour when you are in the Chicago area. No one paid me to say this - the Chicago Chocolate Tour was just that good. Mmmm...wish I was doing it all over again right now!

Weekend wrap

Whew, it's been an exhausting weekend here at la casa de la Wheel! Finally some real Iowa summer weather...temperatures in the '90s with a heat index of 100 or something miserable enough that you can hardly breathe outside. I decided it was a good time to skip gardening and stay indoors and do a complete reformat of my old computer. It has minimal memory and was filled with old programs and user profiles and was generally messy, so I thought I'd just start over with it.

Meester and I both work in tech, but different areas, so he thought he'd add his expertise to the project. There's nothing more fun than a technical couple trying to assist each other in a project. Don't bother trying to figure out who said what; it was pretty much interchangeable dialogue.

• "I always right-click..."
• "I wouldn't move that, I'd copy it, in case you lose it later."
• "I don't follow Microsoft's instruction; I do it my way. Trust me."
  
• "Wait, I didn't see what you did! Did you do it right?"
• "Stop watching me! I know how to do this!"
• "OMG! Why does it say File corrupted!!!
• "What did YOU do?!
• "!@#$%&*!!!"

Add in hours of rebooting and some searching for bookmarks that somehow disappeared off the external drive for awhile...WTF?...and the whole weekend went by...and nobody killed anybody...and we're both still alive...and Meester went to get a small Papa Murphy's pizza and they had the same pizza in a large that someone didn't pick up...so they gave us a large pizza for the price of a small...so we're full of pizza...and now my computer runs a lot more faster and better...so it's all good.

Wasted spin in the wheel

Aaack! I'm so tired of my obsessive-compulsive, time-wasting housekeeping! Last night I wanted to work on figuring out how to add a design background to my blog, since i haven't found a Blogger template that suits me yet, but I wasted a long time after dinner trying to figure out why...for the last 3 nights in a row...there has been a small wet patch in the exact same spot on the dining room table? The top of the table is cherry wood...you can see it in the background of my food pictures...and water on wood isn't good.

So I'm wiping the spot with my finger trying to figure out what the heck the liquid could be. No way am I tasting it, like those icky weird detective tv shows, where someone sticks his finger in something wet and tastes it and then says "It's blood." ...although Meester and I have been getting along at dinner time this week, so I know it's not blood on my table...

I think it's olive oil...but I find the spot after I pick up the placemats...and wouldn't the cotton placemats absorb the oil? Unless the placemats were sopping with olive oil, but I examined every placemat for moisture and couldn't detect any. And then I throw the placemats in the laundry room anyway, just to be sure that I wasted all that time feeling out every place mat. I checked the table coasters that we put our glasses on too, and didn't see/feel any moisture there. I even look under the table and up at the ceiling, like maybe our house is becoming the Poltergeist movie house, or something.

So then I cleaned the kitchen, in case the mystery liquid was still lurking somewhere, did some laundry, and piddled the evening away. Feh! I did give myself 5 minutes outside to look at the full moon and nearby Jupiter, before the mosquitoes chased me back in.....so, I only wasted about 95% of my evening.

Taste of summer

It's finally time for the classic tastes of an Iowa summer. Sweet corn, tomatoes, and muskmelons...grown in Iowa, not on factory farms or in foreign soil. With real nutrients inside - from the real sun! I feel so healthy eating this just-picked garden bounty. And it's so easy to make a quick salad with corn and tomatoes.

Iowa in a Bowl Salad

3 C. fresh corn, cooked
3 green onions, sliced
2 tomatoes, diced
3/4 C. diced unpeeled cucumber
1/4 C. diced onion
2 Tbs. mayonnaise
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. dry mustard

In a large bowl, combine corn, green onions, tomatoes, cucumber, and onion.
Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl; pour over vegetables and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Sorry I don't have a picture of the salad; it's a pretty, colorful salad. I just took a picture of the muskmelon that we had for breakfast.



...and, ummm, don't get the idea that I'm like a gourmet foodie, or anything... I just like to eat good and not-so-processed food. Notice the continual use of the word "easy" in my food posts. It seems that the older I get, the more my full-time job drains me of the energy for complex gourmet cooking after work. And the older we get...the less quantities we need to eat *sob*. A salad is just fine for summer supper (with dark chocolate snuck in later in the evening). Although Meester can hit the ice cream pretty hard for dessert...and I just lied, I sneak in some junk later in the evening when the salad has worn off. Maybe I'll come clean in a later post.

Favorite fruit salad

This has been our favorite salad for early summer. Strawberries are kind of winding down in the stores, but Michigan blueberries are in full force. This is so easy that I don't really have a recipe, but I can make one up and feel free to adjust all the amounts to your preference. It's so pretty that I had to share the picture.

Strawberry Blueberry Summer Salad

Bag of your favorite mixed greens
1 C. sliced strawberries
1 C. blueberries
1/4 C. sliced almonds, toasted
1/2 C. crumbled feta cheese
your favorite olive oil
your favorite balsamic vinegar

Put greens in a large bowl. Add strawberries, blueberries, almonds, and feta cheese. Toss lightly. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar (amount to your preference) over salad. Toss again lightly to coat salad with oil and vinegar.

Friday wrap-up

Ummm...yea...I know it's Saturday...but I was so freakin' busy all day long at work and after work we went for a nice long walk outdoors because the weather (see previous post) has been so incredibly nice for July. And then we kind of collapsed in front of the tv with a pizza...so no blog posting. Anyhoo...work totally sucked all day because Friday was the end of a cycle for our office. And don't we all hate trying to wrap up last minute requests in the last hour of the last day of the work week?!!

But I had one wonderful hour in the whole day! I took a little extra lunch time and went to a local coffee house and watched a live acoustic performance by nelo. I wasn't familiar with nelo, but now I love them! You can read all about them on their website, but see them in person if you get the chance. They are musically talented(love the sax) and laid back so that watching them perform just makes you feel good. Sweet musical vibes from such sweet guys!...and Reid,the lead singer, actually talked to me for a minute!...and he's a sweetie!...and a cutie!...and the age of my daughters!(darn, I'm too old to be a groupie now) Thanks guys for sharing your talent live in little ol' Iowa!