Happy Spring?

I thought it was spring. Really. But I believe Mother Nature things otherwise:
That's right, folks. That's the view out of my balcony tonight when I got home from work. Yes, it's March 31 and snowing. It has been snowing since about 7:30 this morning, has not stopped yet, and is not forecasted to stop until mid-morning tomorrow.

I <3 Minnesota.

The Sauce.

Two weeks ago when Nathan came to visit, his dad sent along a special little gift for me. What? A jar of The Sauce. I can't even begin to explain my love for The Sauce... but here's a little background...

A couple years ago when I first met Jim, he showed up on my doorstep with Nathan and a bag of ingredients. An hour later we were grilling turkey burgers with The Sauce in the backyard. From that day on, I was hooked. A family recipe, I thought I'd never see the day the recipe fell into my hands. It did, two years ago on my birthday. However, it's still not the same as when The Sauce Master, aka Nathan's dad Jim, makes it.

So when Nathan came to visit two weeks ago and a jar of The Sauce was placed in my hands, you can understand my excitement. However, the past two weeks have been pretty busy and I haven't had so much time as to think about with what to use The Sauce.... until today.

I have little-to-no food in my apartment right now - just haven't been home or had the time to get to the grocery store. As I sat here wondering what to do about lunch today, I remembered I had soup chicken left in the refrigerator from a pizza I made last week. Brilliantly, I took the chicken and The Sauce and made me some bbq chicken for a sandwich. I'm happy to report The Sauce was amazing and this could very well have been one of the best bbq chicken sandwiches ever.

Thanks Jim!

Early Morning Phone Call = Ticketed.

My phone rang at 6:34 in the AM. I thought maybe it was Tara telling me she and Vanessa were pulling to my parking lot and I needed to get my lazy ass (ok, it was only 6:34) out of bed and let them in, but I was wrong. It was my sister.

"Liz," she says.
"Do you know what time it is?!" I groggily asked back.
"We're going to Israel!!!!" she screamed.

She continued to tell me she checked her email before heading to work this morning and had an email with our trip dates. So I rolled my half-asleep body out of bed to ensure I too had the email.

Friends and lovers, Stephanie and I will be in Israel July 27 through August 7. A belated birthday present for the both of us!

Stay tuned for the details...

Lizzo's House of Transients and Deviants...

... is back in business!

With Tara back in the country, she'll be staying with me for a week or two until she gets a new place. So tonight after work, I headed over to Home Depot to get an extra key made for my apartment. (Don't ask why the office won't just give me another one!)

With two freshly cut keys, Lizzo's House of Transients and Deviants can now hold not one, but TWO transients and/or deviants.

Now all I need is a Vacancy/No Vacancy sign...

Quote of (last) night...

An animal carrier truck drives by...

Lizzo: I wonder what kind of animals were in there.
Allen: T-Rex.

She drives me crazy....

So I decided I was going to sit on the fundraiser committee at my synagogue. I heard an amazing pitch for help a couple Shabboses ago, and thought my marketing stills could be of use. And hell, maybe I can meet some Jewish mothers who have Jewish sons... one never knows.

In any case, tonight was the second meeting of the Beth Jacob Fundraiser Committee. The first meeting was about two weeks ago and I left pretty excited. I get to do lots of things I love -- invitations, centerpieces, letterhead, posters, the program. It'll be great. And my mock invite looked pretty amazing and got rave reviews. All good.

However, there is this one woman on the committee who drives me crazy. Maybe it's the age difference -- she is probably at least 5 years older than my mother -- or maybe it's that she's a bit more rounded and has more experience than I do when it comes to fundraising, but damn -- she needs to chill out. She is so caught up on the price of everything and what people will like and not like, she can't stop and listen for two minutes to the ideas everyone has. This woman needs to shut up and ship out. Maybe it's just how I roll... and how I think... and how people want to come to a fundraiser, pay a good amount of money (it's a fundraiser, for the love of pete), and have FUN! This woman doesn't seem to think that way. To her, it's all about the benjamins...

That's all I'm going to say about it -- she is ridiculous.

Goodbyes suck.

Saying goodbye is always the hardest part. We had an awesome weekend. Nathan and Shelley came in Friday morning and it was as if Nathan never left. We saw just about everyone we had planned on seeing, stopped everywhere on the list, and even had a feast at my apartment. We let Shelley experience the craziness that is the Mall of America on a Saturday afternoon, putzed with my computer, installed CS3 (woo hoo!), had a super fun night at the bar, and Al’s for breakfast this morning.

The worst part is saying goodbye. It’s not like I don’t know we’ll talk in three hours when they get home. Or that we won’t talk tomorrow and every other day this week, as we always do. It’s just hard.

Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for hanging out, but damn, the aftermath sucks!

It was an awesome weekend – Shelley’s great – and hanging with Nathan is just… something.

So thanks for a great weekend. I love you.

The NyQuil Effect

... is seriously amazing. You pop two (huge) pills (because now they make NyQuil in capsules instead of that repulsive stuff you drink down) and no more than fifteen minutes later, you enter The NyQuil Effect. Your head starts to get stuffy, eyes a little blurry, and you can feel the eyelids getting heavy to the point of no return. It's awesome.

Don't get me wrong -- you should not take NyQuil just for The NyQuil Effect -- but damn does it do the trick when you feel like you're going to have a long night ahead with a drippy nose and the onset of a sore throat.

I will beat this damn cold in the next three days. Count it. There is no way in hell I am going to be sick this weekend.

It may only be 10:00p, but the NyQuil says it's time for bed.