I'm as American as apple pie

My first ever apple pie from scratch! Here's hoping it tastes better than it looks. My parents are coming for dinner tomorrow, so I figured they'd be good guinea pigs. I used a Pampered Chef recipe for the crust and the filling. Vanilla ice cream is at the ready!

Commuting Chronicles

Public transportation can be a total pain in the ass sometimes, but it's never short on entertainment! I figured this was an easy addition to the blog and should be fairly regular.

I was on a packed DC metro car headed to Union Station to get my train home. I was standing in the aisle and two school girls, probably 10 or 11 years old, were sitting in the seat next to me. The one girl had some really nice braids in her hair and since I was standing above them I was admiring them. I looked away and she started singing. Then I had the feeling she was looking up at me. She stopped singing and told me that she thought my necklace was beautiful. I thanked her and said that actually I was just admiring her braids. I told her how nice they were and I asked if she just have them done for the start of school. She said that she had just had them done last weekend by her aunt. And if I wanted, her aunt could do mine for free! I said she did hers for free because she's her niece. But, she assured me that no, she's a hairdresser and if I told her aunt that I was referred by her then she'd do them for free at her shop. Thinking about my darker roots, I said that I didn't think my hair would look as nice in braids as her hair. That's when she told me that I am a very beautiful woman and that I would look beautiful no matter what I did with my hair. I thanked her and she turned back to her friend and they started singing again. What a nice way to end the day!

Crazy productive!

This weekend is my first 'real' weekend since I started working. I don't really count last weekend because it was a 3-dayer and that's not real life. I've decided that Friday commutes are the best because everyone else takes off that day. I was home in record time. We went out for dinner, which I've decided might have to be a new 'thing'. You know, like a date night! After dinner we walked around a bit and I decided we would walk down towards a shop where I used to work part time to see if one of my old coworkers was there. She was, so we had a nice catch up. And by 'nice' I mean 'hilarious'. I miss working with her. I was in good spirits as we walked back to the car then it hit me, I didn't include that part time job on my background investigation for my new job. Holy. Crap. Good spirits have gone down the pooper. Since that job has nothing to do with any professional position I want to get, I don't have it on my CV so I totally forgot about it. It's 9pm on a Friday night, so there's not much I can do until Monday! I email and text my boss. No response within 5 minutes (which was about the max I was willing to wait), so I call a friend who has super crazy high security clearance. Okay, maybe not that high, but in my mind she could hang with the President. Anyway, I call her. No answer. So, I text her and ask her to call me. Desperate much?? She senses the tone in my text (which is not jovial) and calls me. I'm pretty certain I'm one step away from being fired and she's all, 'No big deal! Relax! You paid taxes! You weren't fired! You tell them you forgot and they just write it down!' WHEW! Then she is reminded that she needs to report to her super crazy high security clearance people that we're back in town and give them our address. Apparently being friends with a foreigner and his wife who both lived on foreign soil is a bit of a liability. Oopsies! Thanks to her, I was able to sleep easy last night!

Oh yeah, this post is called, 'Crazy Productive'. I put that because today I've been just that! That's the one thing I do like about working. I enjoy being crazy productive on the weekends. Especially if I can knock everything out that I want to do on Saturday and just relax on Sunday. Today I cleaned up the kitchen and ran the dishwasher, changed the sheets on the bed, washed and dried three loads of laundry, cleaned the litter box, rented a carpet cleaner and cleaned the carpet in the guest bedroom, went to Ann Taylor Loft's fall sale and got a new pair of trousers, a top, and a cami, and polished it all off with a nonfat (not skinny, because I guess that's different) pumpkin-spice latte. Boo-yah!!! The only thing left to do is go to the grocery store tomorrow, but that will happen after we watch the Pittsburgh Steelers stomp the Baltimore Ravens! It's a backyard brawl, ya'll! I wish it wasn't so hot or I'd wear my hat.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Whirlwind!

It's been quite a week! Sorry for the silence, but I'm trying to get into the groove with the job and commute thing. It hasn't been easy and I've been exhausted when I get home. I bought a ticket to use on the MARC train, but it wasn't valid until Thursday. This meant I had to drive for about an hour, then get the metro the rest of the way in. All in all, it was about 1 hour 45 minutes. This sucked. THEN, I got to use my train ticket and I thought life was going to be grand! Well, Baltimore is hosting this stupid grand prix this weekend so all of these roads are closed in the city. It took me 45 minutes to get out of the city, I missed my train and had to wait another 25 minutes for the next one, so that day it took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to work! Yeah, that's right. Two hours and fifteen minutes. 2.25 hours. My normal commute time by train should take me around an hour and 15 minutes, door to door. The majority of that is on the train or metro, so it's really not too bad. The ride home is the really nice because the train I get is non-stop between DC and BWI. The best part about all of this is that my employer pays my commuting costs. Getting the train and the metro adds up (fortunately parking at the station is free for monthly ticket holders) and once I saw the cost I was slightly regretting making the decision to commute. But at orientation they told us about the commuter benefits, which was a huge relief. I worked for this employer before, but it was a different location and because parking wasn't an issue they didn't reimburse us for commuting costs. I had completely forgotten that they did this and was sooo happy to find this out! That saves us $230 a month!

It's been hard to try and figure it all out. It's a bit of a juggling act now that I have a husband. It used to be that I'd go to work, hit the gym on the way home, or go to my part time job, come home, eat hummus and crackers for dinner. Basically, it was all about me. Now I just want to get home because we would like to see each other! He's also reintroducing himself in the kitchen and has been cooking me dinner. :) I'd rather sacrifice in the morning, getting up early so I can get to work early and leave early. I haven't bought a gym membership yet because I'm waiting to get settled into a routine. Allegedly there is a gym in our office building and we get a discount, but I need to investigate that further.

With this job brings new things to the household! We bought a car last week and I LUURVE it! We ended up getting a 2012 Honda Civic EX and it's way fun to drive. I did quite a bit of research between some different types of cars, new vs used, etc. We were leaning towards a used one, but finding a used EX is actually quite difficult. Then Honda came out with 0.9% financing on new models so we got a really good deal on it. My favorite features are the fact that we average 35 miles to the gallon and the bluetooth. I love talking to my car! :) I never really thought I'd care much about having bluetooth, but it's definitely an awesome feature. It looks like this, we even got it in black (because that's what was in stock), but ours doesn't stay shrouded in mysterious shadows.

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Today we FINALLY ordered a sofa! I'm pretty psyched about it! Coming home and not having a place to relax stinks. Frankly, the state our house is in right now is not relaxing at all, so I'm hoping that now I'll be able to get this sorted out. I'll do a longer post on the living room updates when the sofa comes in, probably at the beginning of November. It's a darker green color (not sage, but not evergreen either) and it has coordinating floral print pillows that I think will look nice with the striped chair. The legs match the ones on the chair. They had Labor Day sales going on, so we got a good deal. I'm hoping to paint in here before the sofa comes. Here's a picture:

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Oh yeah, and lastly...we had to get a new roof. This is not fun, so I won't go into detail. The fun part is I was able to fix the water damage in the guest room and I bought paint for that today!

It's been an expensive week around here! Ouch! 

S/M/L

Just when I was getting the hang of what size I was in the UK and Europe, we moved. That's right, it only took 5 years. Now that we're in the US, I was falling back on my fail-safe knowledge of 8 US=12 UK, 10 US=14 UK, etc. I hit the shops and everything is in S/M/L. What the heck?? A large can be anything from a US 10-14!  I think the only garment that still uses proper sizing is trousers. Not to mention it makes it a little difficult when you want to order something online. Personally, I find the European sizing charts the most accurate when it comes to clothing and shoes. A UK 14 could range anywhere from a European 38-42, which is a huge difference.

Has anyone else noticed this about the US? Is this a new thing that I missed while I was away? Is it because we're all fatties and seeing a number might make us feel bad? Personally, I'd just like to have proper fitting clothes!

Hey, what are you doing on Monday??

I'm going to WORK!

That's right, people!!! DUN DA DUNNNN!!! It only took 2.5 years of constant searching and eventually switching countries for me to finally become gainfully employed!!!

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I get to buy new work CLOTHES! We get to buy a CAR! We'll have HEALTH INSURANCE! My bank account will actually start seeing DEPOSITS again! I get to wake up at the crack of dawn and make the hellish commute to our nation's capitol every day! See, it's not all sunshine and roses. For those of you who know where I worked prior to leaving the US five years ago, I'll be working there again, just in a different office. Unfortunately, they consider me a new employee, which means I have to go through orientation all over again. Meh. I guess enough has changed in the past five years that I'm sure to learn something new!

I baked!

Well, I bake things all the time, but today I actually baked a PIE! I've never baked a pie before. I'm afraid of them. I think I'm actually afraid of the crust. I need to just jump into it and realize that eating the mistakes isn't such a bad thing!

Since it was my first go, I skipped the fruit pie (which truly terrifies me) and decided to go with a chocolate pie. Specifically, this chocolate pie posted on Lovely Jubbly London's blog today. The thing I liked about it was that it was easy and the ingredients were all in my pantry. Well, all except the...erm...refrigerated pie crust I ended up using. Yeah, I wimped out!

The best part was that I got to use these!

It all looks brand new, right? Don't be fooled...I've owned this stuff for probably 6 years or so.

I had to blind bake the crust, which is something I've never done before. I felt very Martha Stewart with my beans.

I baked mine the full 45 minutes, but I think next time I'd stop at 40, like LJL did with her pie (I got caught up in a House Hunters International marathon). Her pie looks WAY better than mine! I need to practice crimping the edges and making it look pretty.

I served the pie with squirty cream (not nearly as nice as the Irish version of this), and Wes gave it the 'grand sure' stamp of approval!