Over-the-top excitement

The Porter household is in for a big change. If everything goes as planned, Rob and I will be proud puppy parents this Sunday! If there is one thing I go crazy over, it is dogs. They are all cute in their own way, even the ones that Rob says aren't. Rob has heard the 'aww I want a dog' line from me more times than we can count over the past few years, but there was never the right opportunity or time to get one, until now.

If you've been keeping up with my blog, then you know all about Christopher the terrier mix we visited at the SPCA not long ago. He was a cutie, and his name still comes up on a daily basis, but I can now say that I don't think we were meant to be Christopher's parents. For whatever reason, maybe the daunting task of training him or his fuzzy history or excessively energetic personality, we just felt too much hesitation when it came to actually adopting him. Part of me, and Rob, wanted to, but part of us just couldn't commit. However, I am thankful for meeting Christopher when I did, because he really sparked my interest in getting serious about searching for the right 1st dog for us.

Rob and I have always wanted a goldendoodle (cross between a golden retriever and a poodle). We both love golden retrievers, but with Rob's allergies and how much they shed, it would never work out. Goldendoodles are the next and even better option for us, because they don't shed very much and they have a little curl to their coats which makes them simply adorable. The down side to doodles? The price. Many of the breeders I came across charge over $1,000 for a pup, some over $2,000.

While searching for goldendoodles online Sunday night, I just happen to come across a site that said their goldendoodle had a liter of 12 puppies on August 15th, and they would be ready for their 'forever homes' on 10/10/10...this coming Sunday! Not to mention the price was by far the lowest I had seen. After looking at all of the cute puppy pictures and videos, and finding out there were still 6 females available, we jumped at the opportunity and sent in our deposit check which will hold this adorable little girl for us :)

Girls weekend is on!

Dates are set, airline tickets have been purchased, and Girls Weekend is on! Well actually, for my mom it's more like a month, for me a week, and for Katie 4 days...but I'm going to refer to the time we are all going to be there together as Girls Weekend. By 'there' I mean Naples Florida :)

Our beach...


Last time Mom and I were in Naples together...


Katie had been planning to fly down from PA to visit us in Atlanta this Fall, when I thought maybe we could make more of a vacation out of it. My mom had already told me I was welcome to join her at the condo in Naples (once my Grandpa's place) since she would be there the month of October, so I extended that invitation to Katie, and now in about 3 weeks we'll all be relaxing on the beach (as long as no hurricanes come our way).

For as long as I've been friends with Katie (since 9th grade), she has always come to Cape Cod in the summers to spend a week with me and my family. She fell in love with the Cape and the house and the beach, like many do, and I always appreciated all of the times she made the trip up from PA to MA. The past 2 summers she wasn't able to make it to the Cape (getting older sadly equals not being able to take week vacations whenever you want), so our trip to Naples is going to make up for it! Hey, think they have a Lost Dog Pub down there? ;)

Weekend Update

Friday night Rob suggested we have dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and watch a movie at home. It had been forever since I ate at CPK, so it was a nice treat. I forgot how much I love that place. I got the buffalo chicken pizza (I love anything with buffalo sauce on it, and Rob doesn't, so I get my buffalo fixes when we go out, rather than at home) and Rob got the California club pizza (he's on an avocado kick, so that pizza fit the bill). For our movie, we watched The Informant...started out strong, but the story dragged after a while. Love Matt Damon, juat not big fans of this movie.

Saturday I asked Rob if we could go to the event at the SPCA, of course he said sure, but really I never should have suggested we go. The back story to this outing, is that earlier in the week while looking for jobs I checked out the animal shelter websites. After finding no career opportunities on their websites, I looked at their dogs available for adoption and fell in love with Christopher, a terrier mix. So we were really going to the SPCA event to see Christopher in person. He was an adorable, really playful, really energetic, somewhat vocal pup, who is probably in need of some serious training. Then again, he's only 5 months old, what do you expect? As much as we liked him, and as much as I wanted to adopt a dog right then and there (you should have seen/heard how sad and jealous all the other shelter dogs were when we took Christopher out of his cage to go outside, breaks your heart), we left the way we came, just the 2 of us. I was probably a little too emotional on the car ride home, poor Rob having to deal with me and my crazy love of dogs, but I did realize it just wasn't the right time and we would have been rushing into something that requires a little more planning and preparation.

Sunday=football. Now that we have Direct TV NFL Sunday Ticket, we can watch my Steelers and Rob's Lions every week. Today was the first Steelers game I have seen in a long time that didn't come down to the last minute. It was pretty great having a game I could feel somewhat relaxed watching, since they were up by 18 at half time. I like that we have so many quarterback options, and I love Rashard Mendenhall. And coach Tomlin's sweet shades...


Tonight for dinner=Hungarian goulash. The slow cooker is back! I got my amazing slow cooker, that can also fry, bake, roast or steam, last year for my birthday and I have gotten a lot of use out of it. But summer time just doesn't scream slow cooker time, so it hasn't been out of the cabinet much lately. Today I thought I'd try a new recipe, so found this one in the slow cooker cookbook Lisa gave me last year. It's basically a couple pounds of cubed beef chuck and sliced onions in the pot, with a mixture of beef broth, tomato paste, worcestershire sauce, paprika, chopped garlic, salt and pepper on top. I took out the caraway seeds, because I'm not really a fan. The last 30 min. of cooking you add sliced bell pepper, and a water&flour mixture. Served over noodles, it's delicious!

BAM!

Last night I attempted Chicken Marsala for the first time, and it was a delicious success if I don't say so myself! Weeks ago Rob suggested I make it for dinner while his family was visiting, but I decided against trying something I knew nothing about making for guests. Rob did the grocery shopping on Sunday and came home with organic chicken breasts and muchrooms (his favorite ingredient that I frequently add to recipes that otherwise don't include mushrooms just for him). I took it as a hint to make chicken marsala, though he said that didn't even cross his mind when he bought the stuff.

It must have been a really long time since I ate this dish, because I forgot how much flavor it has to it! I never order it when we go out, thinking it's too plain, but next time I might just have to try it. I used Emeril's recipe, and while I normally wouldn't use that much oil and butter in one meal, it was worth it this time.

Traffic jams and airplanes

What is the number one thing that people familiar with Atlanta will tell you about Atlanta when they hear that's where you are moving to? That the traffic is terrible! I can't tell you how many times I heard this bit of advice, more like warning, from people. I believed them, but really, what city doesn't have traffic problems? Now that I'm here, I can officially tell you it sucks more than most other cities!


First off, many of the highways are 12 lanes wide. Second, most of the time all of those lanes are filled with vehicles. I tend to stay in lanes closest to the right hand side so I don't miss my exit and because with all those lanes and cars it gets a little overwhelming to be in the middle of the traffic nightmare. Of course rush hour(s) is really bad, and we are very lucky that Rob's office is only about 8 miles away from our apartment in the less busy direction, but even when it's 2pm on a Tuesday the highways are busy. Where is everyone going all the time?

Once you get over the amount of traffic, you have to get use to ramp meters and pace vehicles. Ramp meters are basically traffic lights at on-ramps that try to regulate the amount of traffic entering the highway by flashing alternating red and green signals. Only 1 vehicle per green light is supposed to merge onto the highway. Not long ago, we were stuck behind a pace vehicle going below the speed limit after picking Rob up from work. It's a good thing Rob has better distance vision than I do, because he was able to read the flashing sign above the truck that read 'Do not pass pace vehicle.' Besides the efforts to regulate traffic volume and congestion, the worst are all of the accidents! I honestly do not know if I have ever driven on the highway without seeing cars pulled over on the side of the road (or just blocking lanes of traffic) due to cars running into each other. I won't even get into what Rob would say is the biggest problem with driving in Atlanta...the abundance of idiotic, careless, inexperienced drivers who do whatever they want whenever they want.

And today, only 10 miles away from our apartment, Atlanta motorists had to deal with a plane landing on the highway! I'm not really surprised this happened in Atlanta- with everything else wrong with the traffic situation why not add a random plane landing into the mix? But I am surprised that there was enough room for the plane to land without hitting another vehicle. Hats off to that pilot!

Ew

I have never really been the type of girl who needed my guy to kill bugs for me, but if he's around I always appreciate his assistance with such matters. Rob and my Dad might disagree with me, saying the screeching sound I make when dealing with bugs proves I need help. But ask Lisa who took care of the spiders in the Cape house this summer...not her! Anyway, I never really needed a guy to kill the bugs for me until we moved to the South...the home of the palmetto bug.

In case you haven't spent much time in the South, I should tell you that a palmetto bug is just a cute way of saying cockroach. They are large, disgusting, and one of the fastest running insects around, which I found out the hard way. One night last week I was watching TV when I saw a baby palmetto bug crawling up the living room wall from behind the TV. Rob had already gone to bed, so I grabbed a chair and paper towel from the kitchen and squished the little sucker. No problem.

Fast forward to the following night. Rob was already sleeping (note: I have and always will be the night owl of the house, and Rob is the opposite), when I walked into our sink/closet area to get ready for bed. Before I even turned on the light, I saw a rather large dark spot on the carpet near the door that connects the bedroom and sink/closet area. No way I thought. I turned on the light and yes way. It was a huge palmetto bug. I grabbed some tissues and it was already half way up the wall. I shrieked a little, tried to squish the bug, but all I really ended up doing was brushing him onto the floor. He was just too big, I could not bring myself to squish something that big. So I went into the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed saying Rob's name over and over, a little louder each time, until finally he got up and I told him he needed to kill a bug for me. He was still half asleep but said something along the lines of, 'a bug? right now? are you serious?' By the time he walked into the sink/closet area, the thing had run across the floor and hid somewhere back behind Rob's safe in the closet. Rob went back to bed, and I stayed in that closet for a good 15 minutes trying to find it, with no luck. I did not sleep well that night.

The next day I was walking on egg shells throughout the apartment, convinced it was going to show up at one point or another. But I never saw it. Rob tried to convince me that it could have been anywhere by then- back outside, under the carpet, down the drain, in another apartment, etc. I almost believed him, until last night. I was filling out a survey online for a job application I was filling out and decided to take my laptop into the bedroom where I could concentrate better. As soon as I sat on the bed, I jumped up and ran back to the living room to tell Rob the bug was back and crawling up our bedroom wall! I thank God for Rob, my palmetto bug killer, and for being able to sleep better at night...until the next one shows up.

Mixers

This week my youngest sister Michelle had her first sorority mixer. Besides the fact that it was on a Tuesday night and she was going as Pocahontas, Rob and I couldn't believe that Michelle was old enough to have mixers to go to! Well mostly Rob couldn't believe it. When I told him about it, he shook his head and said, "that's why I don't want to have any girls, well I do, but look what you have to worry about, one word...mixers."

I cracked up laughing, because poor Rob knows more about mixers than he ever wanted to. We started dating before I even went to my first sorority mixer, so there were plenty of nights I dressed up as who knows what and went out without him to some frat house. He was such a good sport :)

I told him there is nothing wrong with mixers, and he replied, "yeah well who even knows what the themes will be in 20 years." And in his best girly voice, that sounded more like a 5yr old than a college aged girl, he said, "Dad- I'm going to a mixer tonight and the theme is prostitutes and pimps!"

Mixer Flashback...