off

heading out to cabo.

i am very excited - it's one of our favorite places.



ready to get away.

rulabula

happy hour yesterday at rula bula.

a great evening with good friends. it's nice to have "couple" friends that we enjoy being around.

the bf and i didn't have a ton of friends that we both liked being around in minneapolis. i think it's because we met when we already had our own set of friends. i like hanging out with mine and he liked hanging out with his. attempts to mesh the two teams didn't really take even though everyone usually had a good time. i think it's hard to break out when you've already made great friends. lifetime friends. sigh. i miss my girls in the midwest.

it's a change of pace.

we all ordered guinness and shepherd's pie. mmm. sometimes i like change.

pot

everything is better in minnesota:



after laughing out loud, i almost cried.

farfalle

what has my life become?

i used to be a party girl, for goodness' sake.

and now?

what i did last night:



farfalle with turkey sausage, peas, and mushrooms.

note: when a recipe calls for turkey sausage with the casings removed, i automatically think of sausages, uh, encased. i do not think to remove casings from ground turkey sausage, but apparently this can happen which is why i had to refer to the internet for a photo of what this was supposed to look like and imagine my surprise when i found that my sausages did not look like that. also, giada's book recipe and her food network recipe online do not match up.

but i rolled with it and ended up with about six servings (!). when will i learn that the bf and i cannot possibly consume one pound of pasta.

next time.

piccata

i made chicken piccata last night.

my first time!

so you can imagine. i really wish recipe books had more pictures. not only do i need the before and afters, i need the everything-in-betweens as well. i also need pictures of what a skillet might be (all that pretty much registers with me is "pan") or how to cut "crosswise" (is that opposite of "lengthwise"?).



it didn't quite look like this, and the bf has this fear of me killing him with undercooked meat (wimp), so i had to leave the chicken in two minutes longer than the recipe required, thus straddling the very thin line of "perfect" and "rubber."

whatever. the bf said it was good. i served it with parmesan couscous (boxed) so at least i knew the side was effing fabulous.

tahoe

spent four days in the reno/lake tahoe area.

and it was pure bliss.

home. well, not permanently, but still.

thursday and friday nights we had lovely dinners in with great company and fantastic wine. friday afternoon the bf played golf.

saturday we went out to lake tahoe for a lovely lunch cruise. sigh. breathtaking.



a quick stop back at the ranch, then off to the casino. roxy's for dinner. vodka martini. crabcake. truffled mac n cheese. delish!

after dinner entertainment included taking in some comedy. the first two acts sucked. but then this guy came out and i almost keeled over i was laughing so hard. i can't remember any party of his name but i wish i could. hilarious.

on sunday we hit the driving range and a couple of practice holes before we headed to the airport and home. i'm still not ready to be here.

LL

the bf and i went on a date last saturday.

it was a surprise even though the bf is indifferent to surprises (read: i LOVE them!).



dinner. a revolving restaurant in the heart of downtown phoenix. ooh.

then we walked a couple of blocks to a theater:



who did we see?

i laughed so hard i cried. she kills me. and next time we are sitting in front!

condition

sometimes i feel like people want you to be happy as long as they don't really have to do anything they don't want to do for you to have it.

mariposa

new bedside table lamps even though we don't have, uh, bedside tables?



yes please!

assess

i took a personality assessment on wednesday.

today i got my results.

he asked me to rank the following motivators for myself before he revealed what the test indicated.

money
knowledge
creativity
power
helping people

i thought for about one second before i said, "without a doubt, knowledge and creativity for me, followed closely by helping people, with power and money running in the distance."

he said, "i have never met anyone who got them all right before."

i didn't have the heart to tell him that i spend a lot of time thinking about myself. grin.

wipe

i just wiped my blackberry.

i have been frustrated with my phone service (tmobile) and my phone (blackberry 8100) for at least a year.

i have contracted the hourglass of death. every time i want to do anything with my phone i have to tap into my "infinite patience" reserves. and this reserve is very limited. very.

i put off contacting tmobile regarding the matter, instead opting to figure it out myself on crackberry.com, having other clueless users walk me through updating the software, deleting applications, restarting, popping the battery, all to no avail.

i finally started calling tmobile in the hopes that they could either send me a new phone or phone or send me a new phone. they have been complete b*tches about it. until today. i am going to try to get a full-discount-early-upgrade.

but then i decided to wipe my phone. and lost all my contacts. so sad.

i lost contacts like "john sushi" (a sushi chef at fuji-ya) and "julian met" (stalked me for an hour and a couple of days when i was at the met museum in new york). whatever shall i do?

plea

oh please, universe, i appeal to you today.

please send good karma my way as i try to send out positive thoughts.

maybe i am asking for too much. but if i could ask for just. one. more.

in poker terms, i need that river card to turn over in my favor.

thank you.

pj

i like to sleep in little boxsies and tank tops.

most of the time, that is perfectly fine.

but i find myself lacking friends+family-acceptable pajamas*. i can't just walk out of the guest bedroom wearing what i wore to sleep. what does this mean? i need sleep/lounge-wear. i hate waking up and putting on jeans just to sit and have tea and toast with company.

and so i find myself searching:



this works, yes?

*i have spent most of my life thinking that this was spelled "pyjamas." i always thought spell-check was wrong.

bella

threw a soiree on saturday night:











the theme was italian kitchen. i meant to take pics of the tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper; and pics of the panna cotta with raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries that i made. not to mention the two lasagnas that constituted the great lasagna bake-off, but i failed. the bf won 4-3 though, although he grumbled that he didn't win by a landslide.

all in all, a very successful (and delicious!) evening.

whipping

i often find myself turning to the internet for the most mundane questions.

today, for instance, in blackle i typed in:

[what is a saucepan?]

reason: i am trying to make panna cotta for the first time. i forgot what a saucepan was and wished giada had more pictures to accompany her recipes. i also rued myself for only buying a pint of whipping cream when the recipe called for three cups which only equals two and a half cups (i checked the conversion when i got home. brilliant). the best part was when i opened the fridge and thought gasp! i was smart enough to buy two of these! [before i realized it was the same one that i put back a moment ago].

another great question from today:

[what charles manson song did guns n roses record?]

i love that i clear my cache so infrequently that when i go to type in a question, the auto-fill has a field day:

[when are peonies in season?]

[where is ed from the bachelorette?]

omg. can you tell how i spend my time these days?

in-n-out

sigh. double bad news day.

i need this for dinner.

everything will be okay, right?

yoc

i just found out that a guy i used to date (read: french-kissed once in my bedroom during junior high) works at my previous place of employment.

the bulk of our relationship consisted of finding out that he liked me and then all of a sudden we were "together." wow. i wish real relationships worked that way.

he came over to my house once under the guise of hanging out with my brother (and brought his best friend as a decoy because guys in junior high are too cool to travel alone).

oh, that magical half hour in my bedroom (gasp! as if!). i thought this was it! my first french kiss - i thought it was going to be way more, um, way less, er, slobbery. ew. this was it?! what a major letdown in my then teenage angst-ridden life. where were the sparks and fireworks and that tingly feeling adults got in all the romantic comedies? the stupid grin? what about the wining and dining? the champagne and strawberries and perhaps dinner before a walk in the park and giving me your coat when i get cold? none of that. just a cold, minty, surprisingly hard tongue in my mouth. ick.

and with that? a girl's dreams (and her realization that romantic comedies are full of sh*t) come crashing down.

i was pretty sure i could live the rest of my life without it.*

i also remember sneaking out in the middle of the night in my mother's car to his house (with a friend, natch), and getting lost. so much for romantic comedy.

if i remember correctly, a week later i found out that the boy was "dating" (read: getting way more action from) another girl.** when he learned that i found out, he "dedicated" (read: heard) a bryan adams song to me that happened to be playing on the radio the exact time he called me. how convenient! please, the kiss wasn't at all great and now i'm supposed to take this? i don't think so.

i didn't buy it then. and i don't buy it now.***

the memories! make it stop. please stop telling me you know people i used to know. most likely, i used to date him. or i went out on one date with him once and never called back to "reciprocate." or i made out with him in college. or i just kissed him in a bathroom in new york (gross). or i met him on a plane. or we met at a bar in orange county and he gave me a ride back to the hotel. or he worked at a bar in vegas and had a girlfriend but i was convinced he could still love me. most likely.

love, sophie

*oh shut up. what did i know?
**i also heard that she had the herp. [insert maniacal woman-scorned laughter here]
***i think this is the exact moment that led to my never-ending suspicion of men in general. yikes.