New wheels, winning crepes, and free shipping

The whole time I've had Happily Going, I thought I was showing my pictures as big as Blogger would allow. It turns out, my pictures were practically tiny. I apologize, and am excited to have larger pictures now, without ruining the bloggy format. Three things on the agenda:

#1: The past few weeks we have busy with the car business of selling and buying, and here is our new purchase!  It's a blue Prius and I really like driving it- it's very smooth on the road and has a much tighter turning radius than I'm used to. The Mr. loves watching the fuel economy. We are exciting like that.

#2: I n-e-v-e-r win raffles or drawings, so I was super excited when I checked my e-mail this morning and found that I won a gift certificate to a restaurant! The restaurant is called Ravenous and they make some pretty fantastic crepes and pommes frittes (Belgian French fries). The last time we were there, the Mr. had the Blueberry Zeppelin (blueberries) and I had the French Kiss (chocolate-hazlenut). Their other specialty is pommes frittes which we chose to eat with aioli and a horseradish sauce. YUM!!

#3: We, at The Crafty Bees, are offering FREE SHIPPING on all card orders to US and Canada until December 1st!! Just enter coupon code FREE11 at checkout.Just look at all that awesome, crafty goodness!

Does anyone have any suggestions for which kind of crepe I should try next? You can find Ravenous' menu here. I hope everyone is having a great start to their Thanksgiving week!

Library, Christmas survey, and catching up

Recently, I've been under the weather a bit so it seems like everything is taking a little longer. The Mr. and I recently sold a car and we'll hopefully be bringing a new one this weekend.

I also had a pretty big exam this morning so I've been at the library quite a bit, and the Mr. went on a work trip this week and was gone from Sunday till Tuesday.  I swear we haven't had a normal, non-busy week in a long time.  I REALLY am looking forward to a Thanksgiving break next week.

Unrelated to either of those, I stepped on a piece of glass yesterday in the kitchen. It was very unexpected. It bled a surprising amount, but my foot is just fine. Lesson learned: sweep the kitchen a little better!

ALSO! I'm doing a Christmas Survey! I copied it Em at Then Along Came the Boy. You should check her blog out!

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?  Hot chocolate, with marshmallows!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Wraps them.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?  Colored lights are the way to go. White lights are only for ceilings!

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.

5. When do you put your decorations up? Any time after Thanksgiving is acceptable.

colorful books at the library!

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Homemade fudge! Also those molassess cookies and the crinkle cookies. I’d have to agree with em here: Mom makes them all the best! I also like roasted yams with marshmallows. Yum.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Getting a real puppy, after two years of “stuffed animal” puppies! (It was difficult to convince me that a stuffed animal “counted” as a “real dog”. )

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? What are you trying to say???

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Right now I only have a handful of ornaments, but I’d prefer to have lights, garland, beads, and anything pretty.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love it on the weekends, hate it when I have to travel somewhere far in a blizzard.

12. Can you ice skate? Yep; it’s been awhile though!

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?  Oh gosh- Well, it’s pretty hard to have a better present than a puppy!

my second edit on those BRIGHT books. :)

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Relaxing with family/friends, taking a break from the usual daily “hustle and bustle”

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?  See the answer to #6.

16. What is your favorite Holiday tradition? Eating the answers to #6. :)

17. What tops your tree? I have nothing for the top of the tree, right now. A star is usually nice, though.

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Giving. This year I seem to be behind in that realm!

19. Candy Canes: Yum or Yuck? Yum!

20. Favorite Christmas show? A Christmas Story

21. Saddest Christmas Song?  No time for sad Christmas songs!

22. What is your favorite Christmas song?  Carol of the Bells, on the piano

Week in Review!

PHEW!! We survived the week...it was a busy one.  I pretty much studied for my anatomy and physiology mid-term non-stop.  I think it really paid off, though, so I'm glad everything I studied was on the test. Nothing caught me off-guard, so I'd say I was well prepared.

After my mid-term, the Mr. and I went to a mechanic to get the his car's air conditioner working again. Less sweating in the car- yay!  We've also been out and about, spending time at the pool, reading, and spotting some lovely flowers along the way.  Other than my class being half done, not much else has been new this week.  Now it's time for relaxing!

The clouds were threatening, but it didn't rain.

 pink and yellow flowers

white and pink flowers

This is my favorite photo of the week- blue lupine, which attracts an endangered butterfly.

Driving lesson: Follow the lines and arrows!

I witnessed this lovely example of poor driving on my way back from school yesterday.  The speed limit is somewhere between 40 and 50 at this point, but the van in front of me was approaching the intersection quite slowly, even though we had a green light, with a left turn signal.  At this point, nothing is abnormal.

Other driver = orange car, blue piece

ME! = green car, pink piece.  (I'm ALWAYS the green car, duh! and you can picture me in a smart fortwo if you want. It would make an awesome present.)

 The car is still approaching...nothing too weird yet, other than their incredibly slow speed (like, 15 mph maybe). I couldn't go around them since traffic was packed in all lanes (which I didn't feel like picturing because I don't have THAT much free time), so I just hung out behind and watched.

At this point, most people who want to turn left get in the left turn lane.  The light is still green, and they weren't getting in the left turn lane, so I figured they just forgot that their blinker was on.

Blinker is still on...going straight...they must not have wanted to turn. Hmm, okay.  Well, whatever. People forget those things sometimes.

But wait...WHAT?  Okay, so maybe this person just forgot and didn't feel like using the left turn lane to turn left from. They are a wild and free spirit. Whatever.

The amount of weirdness increases. The other side of traffic is mostly packed, as they are waiting for their red light to change.  Mind you, this is all broken down slowly here, but was really happening at about 15mph.  Which is snail speed, for traffic.

So this car is heading toward the other side of traffic.

Yep, that car just got in the other side of traffic's left turn lane.  

 Since the other two lanes of opposing traffic are full of cars, our awesome left-turning car waits for a few cars to let him in.

 He cuts through traffic.

Our driver reaches his destination, and receives a 'Bad Driver Award'.   

I almost didn't even believe that this happened when I saw it.  My pictures aren't the greatest, but I figured it would be more interesting to look at than writing about it. {Do you like the Life game pieces that I used??} How little does that person know about driving??  

It didn't seem like anyone was in harm since the driver was going so slowly, and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the opposing traffic was just trying to stay out of that person's way.  I really wasn't affected at all, but seriously?? c'mon!

Busy weekend!

Phew!  Our Friday went like this:

9:00 Leave for the north DMV
9:30 -10:10 DMV stuff {holy cow, we were not expecting it to go this fast! 40 minutes here vs. 4 hours at the other place!!}
10:10-2:00 We had to take the car to get inspected, then the mechanic fixed the car, and reinspected it so it would pass.  We paid a bunch for it and in the meantime we ate lunch {sushi} and browsed around the nearby mall.
2:00 - Left the DMV/mechanic/mall area for campus
2:30-3:00 I got my picture for my new student ID card, got the campus parking sticker for my car, and bought books. That also set us back a few bucks.

We had a little downtime to have a smoothie and relax before heading out again.

4:30 Left for some organized bowling. I'm pretty sure we drove through some ghettos, and made it there late, but alive. GoogleMaps estimates of driving times through cities is about half of what it actually is. Ugh.
5:10 BOWLING!  We bowled and the Mr. scored 147 then 145.  I bowled 109 and 112.  We bowled until
7:30 left the bowling alley, taking a different way back, making much better time than before
8:00 got back to the apartment
8:15 headed out to the movie theater to meet up with another couple to catch the
9:10  showing of THOR. I thought it was a pretty fantastic movie. It lasted until
11:10 at which point we drove back and basically fell straight asleep!

I've gotten so used to going to bed around 9, that I was honestly surprised that I stayed awake after such a busy day.  I even kind of tripped on the escalator since I am so nimble on my feet {har har har}.

On Saturday and Sunday we did more necessary paperwork and chores.  Today we went on a walk through a protected forest area, and that was pretty interesting.  We also planted some seeds, so hopefully those will turn out well!

I hope everyone else had a fun, relaxing weekend!

A Lesson in Local Dialect

As an addendum to my previous post, about our weekend (here), you might have left that post wondering:
"If the northern DMV was soooo GOOD, then why did you (two, educated, handsome, charming, splendiforous, grown adults) choose to visit the "BAD" metro, inner-city DMV?"

The mister had been told by coworkers that the northern DMV was "okay".  In comparison, when we asked a clerk at the grocery if they had any input on the subject: "..." (The ellipsis is signifying an unending pause.) "..." "The downtown DMV...", she looked around, "it's not so bad".  That should have been our warning, right there.


Turns out, we have plenty of rose colored glasses to go around.  "We'll save time driving there, since it's about 10 miles closer", we reasoned to each other.  We thought that driving 20 miles less round-trip would be worth it. We figured that even if we had to spend extra time there, it would have been equivalent to the extra time we would have spent driving to the northern DMV.

Nope. That's not how it worked.  I am glad to say, from this, we are learning the local dialect:

If something is "okay", that means it is glorious, magnificent, stupendous, and the most fantastic thing ever. If something is "not so bad", that means it is abhorrent, unpleasant, and should be avoided at all costs.

Using these new vocabulary words in a sentence, I can say: The DMV is not so bad, and relaxing at home with Easter candy is an okay way to spend the evening.  =]

Going places, doing things, and paying everyone along the way

This is what our Friday and Saturday consisted of.  A narrative may or may not follow, depending on whether or not I can put all of my lovely thoughts into words or not.  Until then, this is the gist of what we've been up to yesterday and today. It seemed like lots of fun colored crayons would be more helpful than trying to explain it. And if it looks confusing, that's because it was.  VERY.

If you click on the picture, it will become larger (I think). This evening, it was 7:00 by the time the Mr. was back from the store.  Luckily, supper turned out well, and one of my two highlights of the day was finding pesto on sale: so we had pesto shrimp and spaghetti. Yum.