Where have I been?

There should be some fantastic answer like, "In a wilderness cabin with no internet!" or "On a beach in the Bahamas without my laptop!" or "Saving orphans from floods and fires!" There are no fantastic answers such as that.  I've just been busy with a lot of mainly mundane crapola that you probably don't want to hear about.  It involves slogging through classes, doing some assignments that always crop up at the end of the school year, and (most recently) having our intra-school trial competition to decide who gets to be on the trial team next year.  I mean seriously, that was my Friday night, all of my Saturday today, and will be most of my Sunday tomorrow.  WAHOO!  I'm so exciting.

But here's a little recap on the less-mundane things that have been going around these parts lately.

First of all, last Saturday was PB's birthday.  PB and I aren't huge birthday people, so we didn't do anything super fancy.  We just went down to the lake house and grilled burgers and played Taboo while we listened to the top 100 songs of 1987.  I know, I put on an exciting birthday celebration.  I also got PB the most hilarious alarm clock for his birthday.  It's called the Sonic Boom - and seriously, that's what it is.  It has a vibrating disc that you connect to the clock that shakes the whole bed when the alarm goes off.  And the alarm itself?  It sounds like a tornado siren.  It makes Peggy Sue howl when it goes off.  She also won't get on that side of the bed anymore because in Peggy's little weenie mind, the vibrating is apparently caused by forces of evil.

But so far, it works!  It actually gets PB up!  This is a big win and will mean I do not have to kill him for sleeping through alarms!  It's something I've never understood because I could probably wake up in the morning to the sound of a tiny mouse sneezing, so having to buy the equivalent of a fire whistle for PB is a little odd, but hey, whatever you have to do.

You'll also notice that I did a really A+ job on this birthday celebration - I went around the house and gathered up all the really lovely 1980s candles (it's like an accidental theme!) and used them as birthday candles.  Again, whatever you have to do.  It worked, I feel the wish probably still counts.

We carried PB's birthday celebrations over into last night, because hey, even if we don't do anything really fancy, you still get a whole birthday week, right?  That's how I see it at least.  So we went out to Carrabba's, which never ever fails to be delicious, and J and I ordered sangria, which never ever fails to be the most amazing thing ever.  

One "quartino" of that stuff is just never enough, and I was really needing more when we left.  But then I was not wanting to pay like $20 for another little jug of it at Carrabba's, so we made a stop by the good ol' Harris Teeter, did some iPhone research on the way, and ta-da!!  Our own version of Carrabba's white sangria!

And I mean once you mix everything together, you can't just not finish it, right?  So clearly we were successful in achieving our goal.

In case you're needing a delicious white sangria recipe, a la Carrabba's (maybe not exact, but pretty darn close and really yummy), here you go:

Ingredients:

1 bottle Yellowtail sparkling white wine 

1 bottle cheapie pinot grigio (OR you can use another bottle of Yellowtail, OR whatever fairly dry white wine you like)

2/3 cup white sugar 

1 lemon

1 lime

2 oranges OR 1 cup orange juice 

About 1 cup club soda

Directions:

Mix wine, sugar, and club soda in large (and I do mean REAL LARGE) pitcher.  Or use a flower vase like we did.  Not kidding.  Slice up the fruit, juice some of it into the wine mixture, and chill thoroughly or serve over ice.  We clearly didn't, but I'm sure it would be better if you let it chill and mix its flavors together all day or overnight.

Here's something else, besides delicious wine products, that's making me super duper happy.  My grandmother and I pretty much have a standing Friday lunch date and then a shopping trip or errands.  This Friday involved going to get our nails done with the shellac nail polish that they promised lasts for three weeks.  I'm only on day two, so I can't really attest to whether or not that's true yet, but so far I don't even have a little bit of wear on them.  That's saying a lot, because normally, I mess them up on the way to the car as I leave the nail salon.  The brand that I got is called Entity 1 Gel, but I think there are several out there that do pretty much the same thing.  It's more expensive than a regular manicure, but I figure if it really lasts for three weeks, it's more than worth it!

So far, so good!

I promise not to be MIA for so long next time.  What's been making you smile lately?