Odds And Ends: It’s Monday, Bishes!

• How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. We laid low on Friday and Myron whipped up a tasty curry chicken dish. Our house was smelling like an Indian restaurant all evening. I’ll have to snag the picture off his FB page to show you guys.
• Saturday was a lot of sleeping. We woke up, ate French toast, fell asleep again, woke up and ran a few errands to pick up some shoes I’d ordered and hubs got an early Christmas present: a new Nexus 7 tablet. I’ve played with it a bit, I’ll try to have a full review up sometime this week.
• Hung out with my BIL and my homegirl @CaliGirlED to watch some football yesterday and my Houston Texans are 11-1, baby! Bulls on Parade! My husband had a GREAT time and is currently at work drinking a LOT of water.
• Got a pedicure yesterday. What’s the big deal you say? Well the fact is that I got BLUE TOE NAIL POLISH!!! LOL! Being that I am risk adverse and resistant to change from my normal pinks, red and oranges..going blue is a walk on the wild side. Hubs liked it too. Now green polish is probably a bit too much for my delicate sensibilities right now.
• I decided I’m going to do some Christmas cards this year. I felt quite trifling after all the nice ones we got last year from folks. Hubs wants to take pictures but it’s December 3rd, I might need to get in where I fit in with these cards.
• Does anyone out there use Amazon Prime? I signed up for it to get free shipping when I ordered a case for Myron’s tablet and you get 30 days free. Is it worth the $80 bucks per year??
• Read this article on the NY Times site this morning and had a lot of say about it on Twitter -

College isn’t for everyone, but EYE cannot in good conscience suggest to a black/brown kid to skip college/trade school/military svc when the majority of our black/brown kids are already undereducated coming out of high school. Per the usual, the NYTimes article is written from a place of privilege and that’s annoying. The playing field for US that encourages entrepreneurship is still not level and the barriers to entry to run your own business for people of color are still very high. Not to say that it cannot be done because it is occurring, but right now if I had a kid, I’d be sending them to college.

That’s all I got this morning..what’s going on random with you?

 

 

At The Movies With The Macks: Skyfall/Lincoln

Hubs and I took in a couple of a flicks over the last few weekends in Skyfall, the 23rd installment of Sir Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 and Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s film about our 16th President.

Let’s start with Skyfall. I’ve always been a casual fan of the Bond series and really started to pay attention when Pierce Brosnan stepped into the role because I was a fan of the TV series Remington Steele when I was a kid and always found him to be super Rico Suave, even when he was kicking the ass of some villain. But since Daniel Craig took over the role with 2006′s Casino Royale and became the first blond Bond, I’ve been really paying some attention. Not only because Daniel Craig is sizzling HOT but because he brings a certain grittiness to the role of 007. Dare I say it…James Bond likes to get grimy and me likey quite a bit. At any rate, I looked forward to Skyfall and it did not disappoint.  There was less overall action (but there is a fantastic chase scene to kick off the movie) than Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace but the story line was more nuanced, as it took the viewer into the pasts of both M and 007  and even dared to query if 007 and his spycraft was outdated and passe’. Since this is the 50th anniversary of the Bond film series, the nods to the past were quite appropriate. The movie wraps up at Bond’s abandoned childhood home with a twist you won’t expect and I’ll leave with you that. This is a definite must see. Read a review from the LA Times here.

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I have to admit that Myron wanted to see Lincoln more than I did, being that he is a big history buff in general and is interested in the Civil War specifically. Now don’t get scared and think this is a sprawling, epic (read boring and long) bio-pic about Lincoln’s entire life. It isn’t. Instead, Spielberg smartly chooses the 4 month period between January and April 1865 to frame the movie, when Lincoln, fresh off re-election attempts to get 2 big ticket items accomplished: end the Civil War and get the 13th Amendment passed, which would abolish slavery. Spielberg quite deftly weaves in several story lines such as the relationship between Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln who is grieving the loss of their son Willie, the tension between Lincoln and his oldest son Robert, who has been forbidden to join the Union Army, and the back room dealings that the Lincoln cabinet had to undertake to get the necessary votes (these scenes are some of the funniest of the film). Tommy Lee Jones is a straight up scene stealer as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, an aging abolitionist and has a very interesting back story based on historical fact. Daniel Day-Lewis melts into character as Lincoln, down to the halting deliberate gait that he was known to have.

A comment related to the slavery story line: I noted a bit of discussion on my social media feeds about the lack of screen time given to the treatment of slaves in the movie. There is a notable opening scene where two black Union slaves speak with Lincoln and one dares to question the President about further rights for blacks and there are a few other scenes involving Lincoln’s house servants, who are both free people of color and his interaction with them, but to be fair this was not a movie expressly about slavery. It was first and foremost a film about trying to get the 13th Amendment ratified and the inner workings of Washington DC government at that time period. It’s a political movie that just happens to be tackling a difficult, soul wrenching topic. I think it’s done quite masterfully. This is a definitely a must see (in particular for older children and teens) and needs to be added to your DVD collection as well. Read the NY Times review here.

Are you planning to see Skyfall or Lincoln this holiday season? What other films are on your to be seen list?

Odds And Ends: The Monday Edition

What’s happening?? *in my TI voice*

How was ya’ll’s weekend? Mine was very busy and I am tired so I am happy to be at work, where it is slow and quiet so that I can rest up from it. LOL!

Let’s see, Friday morning I took a few hours off to go an interview for a perm gig. I ended up in the wrong building, hauled ass across the street to the right building, was late to the interview and then got in there and talked for 3 straight hours to 3 different people. That interview was painful and I’m sure I didn’t get that job but I will survive.

Friday evening started off a lot better. Hubs and I went on date to have dinner, see my baby daddy Daniel Craig in Skyfall and to have drinks at Dave and Buster’s with our favorite bartender, my BIL, Tony.

Saturday morning, we got up to run to the bank, run by the store and had lunch at our favorite Indian buffet then came back home to watch nap a little college footbal before our evening activities. As usual, we double booked ourselves for two birthday parties at the opposite ends of Houston. The first one was a 30th birthday party for Myron’s cousin. It was really fun, she had a craps and a blackjack dealer at her house and plenty of food and libations. We also got to see some cousins and their new baby. A time was being had by me but alas, it was time to make a move to the west side (yeyah yeah!) to the other party we’d be invited to. This party was for the birthday of the ghey guy who works at our neighborhood Kroger’s who we have struck up a friendship with. He’s actually a really a cool guy so we had to show our faces or else we’d never live it down. So we stopped by, had some drinks and were entertained by a 49 year old ghey dude in heels getting his boogie on to Whitney Houston. LOL! There’s never a dull moment when you roll with the Macks!

Sunday morning, we were up early (well 10 AM is early for me on Sundays), to get ready to go watch the hometown team, Houston Texans play the Jacksonville Jaguars at noon. We met my BIL at a sports bar and proceeded to see the Texans pull out a squeaker of a win. It shouldn’t have even been that close. After that, we had a fabulous ribeye dinner and got ready for the short work week.

And I still haven’t gotten my ingredients for my dish that I’m bring to my mom’s for Thanksgiving: my dear MIL’s sweet potato crunch. I suck, but I’m going to the store tonight, I promise!

So that was my weekend, how was yours? Big plans for the holiday??

Odds And Ends: Nothing Is Constant But Change

I’m still here. I’ve had so much to say but couldn’t talk about it. But I can say this: God works in mysterious way and I am extremely thankful for His grace and mercy. You all know that I’ve been stressed out the majority of the year dealing with my job and my difficulties with my manager and have been interviewing all year. I interviewed for a contract to hire position on Friday, October 12th.

I got fired on Monday, October 15th. Now I’ve been fired/laid off before so I know how these things go. You go into a conference room and hear the spiel from the manager and HR about why you are getting a pink slip.. But this was a bit new for me. I was being fired, but I was eligible for re-hire.  Say what now?? Also, my plantation was not going to contest me filing for my unemployment benefits. WDDDA?  Now I was thinking that something was up. My old manager had left from the conference room at this point so I asked the HR rep to confirm what he’d just told me and she did. She then asked me: You don’t seem surprised that this happened. I told her that I wasn’t but I wasn’t worried because his opinion did not define me and that I serve a mighty God. Her response: Don’t worry, folks like that always get what is coming to them. You just let God work it out.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Normally HR folks toe the company line so I was surprised to hear this.

We went over some other paperwork dealing with my 401K and she told me they would pay me out in lieu of a notice until November 2nd. I went on home and prepared to get my job search grind on.

I got a call about that other job I interviewed for on October 17th. Fired on Monday, new job on Wednesday.

I started last Monday, 11/5. Essentially I had a paid 3 week vacation, although I did do some other interviewing and networking in the interim. I’m actually waiting to see if I will be selected for a permanent gig that I interviewed for and made it to the second round of. If not, at least I know the role I have right now is very long term.

The funny thing about this is I was talking with a now former coworker about how I’d gotten a good vibe about the interview and the manager that interviewed me but I was scared about making such a jump because the job was contract to hire and not permanent. Well looks like God gave me a little push, didn’t he? I’ve slept like a baby every night since leaving my old plantation. I’m less stressed which means Myron is less stressed. I’m not coming home crying anymore. I’ll get benefits and vacation through the contract company. My hourly rate means I got an instant 7K raise. And I have the flexibility to keep on looking for another job if I want to.

What did I learn from this? No job is worth your sanity and peace of mind, even if it is “permanent”. Sometimes, you have to step out on faith. And even when your faith isn’t all that strong, thankfully God’s is stronger.

What’s Been Cooking

So I’ve been on a bit of a cooking spree as of late..and that makes my husband very happy.

I was inspired by Babs, who made a crustless quiche this past weekend to try my hand at my own. My hodgepodge recipe is as follows:

1/2 medium onion diced

1 medium red bell pepper diced

minced garlic to taste

1 package of Jimmy Dean sausage

1 cup (or more) of shredded cheese of your choice

8 large eggs

salt/pepper/other seasoning.

I sauteed up my bell pepper and onion and added the garlic at the last minute because it will burn. Set to the side to cool.

Pan fry the sausage in a skillet and make sure you break it up fairly fine. No large chunks. Make sure to drain all of the grease off.

Whisk up your eggs, salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like. I added a dash of creole seasoning. I also added some heavy cream cause it makes your eggs fluffy.

Butter or grease your glass baking dish well as you don’t want the eggs to stick to the pan. I used an olive oil cooking spray.

Layer your sausage and veggies, then your cheese, then pour the eggs all over the top and make sure everything is even.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. The eggs should be firm but springy to the touch.

This what it looks like before you put it in the oven.

This is the quiche fresh out the oven.

This how it looks on my plate! I put a little sour cream on top too.

In addition to my quiche, I stumbled upon a great low carb recipe website and made a couple of the recipes from there. They were super easy!

Balsamic Cream Chicken with Mushrooms:

http://peaceloveandlowcarb.blogspot.com/2012/01/pan-seared-chicken-with-balsamic-cream.html

Creamy Chicken Scampi: http://peaceloveandlowcarb.blogspot.com/2012/10/creamy-chicken-scampi.html

My at home chef was very impressed and for him that’s a compliment, cause he is VERY picky about food.

Give these a try and let me know what you think!

Two

On this day, 2 years ago I got married.

And I’m thankful and grateful to God for sending me this husband of mine, who is a monument of strength and patience. I love him so much.

But let’s not be fooled, this year 2 has been rough and I’m glad to be headed into year 3.

We lost my mother-in-law, which was and still is a crushing blow to both of us, especially to him.

I have struggled tremendously with a difficult manager at work, which has caused me much worry and moments of self doubt.

There has been much frustration in our efforts to create a family as well.

But through it all, my husband is my rock. His encouragement and steadfastness know no bounds. His sense of humor keeps me in stitches. His skills in the kitchen keep me well fed. His intelligence and thirst for knowledge continues to amaze.

And so, this what year 2 of OUR marriage looks like.

I am blessed beyond measure. All praises be to God for the things he has done and will continue to do in our marriage!

Happy Anniversary Myron! I love you!

 

Odds And Ends: The Monday Edition

I was laying in bed this morning, waiting for the alarm to go off and I had a jumble of thoughts in my head so here we go:

• I was supposed to be reading 30 books this year, up from last years total of 25. I have failed miserably at this and going into Q42012 I am unlikely to reach that goal. But I have been reading, quite a bit actually. My Pocket app on my phone and my tablet is my new best friend. If I come across an interesting link on FB or Twitter, then I save it to Pocket so I can read it later. I’ve also started following 2 Twitter accounts @longreads and @longform, which tweet a variety of longer articles from the web on various topics from sports to technology to pop culture to literature. If I get stuck somewhere (like at jury duty a couple of weeks ago), I can always pull up something to read.
• I might not be reading many books but it hasn’t stopped me from downloading them like a crackhead, though.
• Do you consider yourself religious or spiritual? Do you attend church regularly? I ask because my mama was fussing at me last week about attending church. I must admit that our church attendance has fallen by the wayside in the last year or so. But just because I am not in church, doesn’t mean church isn’t within me. I still pray and I talk to God pretty frequently but I still feel some guilt around  the church attendance thing. I also think that Myron and I need a new church home, as our current church home (that we grew up in) isn’t really doing it for us anymore. This is going to require some more prayer, thought and discussion I think.
• I went to a kid birthday party of Saturday. I immediately got drafted into refereeing kid disagreements and dealing with tattle tails. It’s not as easy as it looks. And my soror’s little boy (the birthday boy in fact) asked her the same question SEVEN different times. Yes, I counted them. I keep wondering if I’m equipped to be a parent.
• I’m still having a struggle at my workplace. I’m still praying for peace about it.That’s all I’m going to say about that.
• I had an interview for a really exciting position last week. Got some goot coaching from a Twitter friend too. I didn’t get it. Turns out they didn’t like ANY of the candidates that were sent over. And of course, no feedback to find out what you did wrong. I think the recruiter was more aggravated than I was. At this point, I figure if I am supposed to get another job then I will.
• @OneChele over at Black n’ Bougie, did a insightful week’s worth of posts based on the Iyanla Vanzant’s Fix Your Life interview with Evelyn Lozada. Click on this tag: http://www.blacknbougie.com/search/label/Lessons%20learned and read all the posts from the week of September 17-21. You will be glad you did.
• Myron and I have been eating a mostly Paleo/Primal diet since the beginning of August and we joined the gym. I can see the difference in how my clothing is fitting. Slow and steady wins the race for us.
• Summer is over. Fall is upon us. I’m sad. Fall isn’t my fave time of the year.

That’s all I got. Got any odds and ends to share?

Are You Better Off?

One of the major themes of this year’s election is the economy, with the Republican party asking the electorate if they are better off than 4 years ago, when President Obama was elected. I’ve also been following a series in the NY Times which is discussing the state of the middle class in the US today. In a follow up blog post, the author highlighted selected comments from that post:

“Most of the income gains seen in my lifetime have been created by families going on afterburners — sending the other adult out to work. Now, we are seeing families going backwards, but that may be a good thing. But we will need to learn to get by on less, especially if competition by foreign workers accelerates.” – jstewart58

“Interesting that this appears on the same page as the article about Caterpillar. Is it really necessary for them to freeze wages when they are making record profits? You can bet that the upper echelon of company officers will not have frozen wages. There are many hard issues that contribute to the problem, global wage competition, automation, poor education, but these are exacerbated by actions taken by companies like Caterpillar.” – Oh Please

“Since WWII, the idea that one is solely responsible for their own success has widely taken root and the generations since have increasingly failed to acknowledge that success is the product of both individual initiative/hard work AND opportunity. The first generation that had the privilege of combining hard work with unprecedented levels of opportunity was the baby boomers and, speaking very generally, they seemed to forget the opportunity component as they rose through the professional ranks of business and government. This explains policies that reward the haves while eroding the opportunity (education, health care, higher minimum wages, pensions) that allows have-nots to use their individual initiative to pull themselves out of the lower classes.” – Dan

“The uncomfortable truth is that America’s economy has progressed beyond blue collar jobs and is now a service economy. Our biggest export is knowledge (in the form of technology, patents, business, etc), and is no longer ‘stuff.’ So it is slightly misguided to blame manufacturing companies that don’t pay workers higher wages, because these companies are no longer in industries where their workers can demand a premium.”– Austin

“Tax cuts for the rich have turbocharged inequality, beginning with Reagan and culminating with Bush II. To afford these tax cuts, we’ve cut everything else that helps the middle class, especially really great public schools.”– Carol

Honestly, speaking it’s a mixed bag for me. I am better off than I was 4 years ago because I got laid off in February 2009, worked contract for about a year and have been full time at my current employer for a year (after being a contractor there for a year). I got married which added a wonderful husband and an additional income to my household. But, the value of my house is upside down and there are additional expenses that must now be paid. It’s been difficult to save money, this year in particular. But I know so many people who are so much worse off that I feel I shouldn’t complain.

How about you and your family? Are you better or worse off than you were 4 years ago? Do you agree with the commentators from the article?

California Love

There were a lot of things that conspired against this year’s vacation.

First, we had to change our destination at the last minute because we thought Hurricane Issac was going to hit the Miami area. So we decided to go to the Left Coast (San Diego) instead. Next my manager acted a complete and total ass about me actually going on vacation. We normally go the first week of October because the month of September is a busy time at my office with the annual budget so going on our actual anniversary won’t work. So after much schedule juggling, we both were able to get time off the last week of August. This actually worked out better because we didn’t have to go back to work till after Labor Day.

Then Myron sprained his foot and we were in the ER the day before we were to take off, and he ended up on crutches for the duration of our trip.

But one (several) monkey don’t stop no show, so the hubs and I made it on the plane and prepared to show California some love!

Here are some flicks I took while there..San Diego is gorgeous and we will be back!!

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(Food) Hoarders

I was reading this blog today titled Newlyweds on a Budget. Its a personal finance blog written by a young wife who lives in California and I’ve been following it for a few years now. Today’s post was about how she wishes she was single again…because her husband eats up all their food.

I quote:

This week, I’ve been making black bean and egg white burritos. I ran out of tortillas and cheese on Tuesday so I asked him to pick some up since he had the day off. He purchased tortillas (10 count) and cheese (8 oz) Tuesday EVENING, not DAY, but EVENING. On Wednesday morning, I made my black bean and egg white burrito and measured out one ounce of shredded cheese.

This morning, I went to make my burrito and there were only three tortillas left and when I went to add my cheese, the bag was gone–I ended up finding the empty bag in the trash can!

In ONE day you ate SIX tortillas and SEVEN ounces of cheese? It was enough to make me march upstairs and wake him up and proclaim loudly: “From now on, we buy our own cheese and put our names on it! I am not sharing cheese with you anymore!”

I know it was a childish move, but it was the last straw of a long line of expecting food to be there only to find out that Eric ate it. It’s like he just has no regard for whether someone else (ie, ME) would like some, he eats it ALL.

Now I know that men tend to eat more than women, cause they are just larger and have bigger appetites but it will never get to the point where I am labeling food with my name on it. WDDDA??? I have my fave things to eat and so does Myron and we try not to mess with that too much but hiding food from him?? Say what now?? It’s not THAT bad. If anything we are trying to pawn off the extra food on each other!!! And if either one brings home leftovers from a restaurant, we know that it for the person whose plate it came off of, unless we offer to share.

I think that A) her husband is either clueless or inconsiderate and B) she needs to up the grocery budget. Married folks should not be in the house scrapping behind vittles!!!! A conversation seems to be in order here.

Granted I don’t think it’s anything she’s going to dump her husband over, but it seems to be a MAJOR annoyance for her.

At any rate for my folks who are married/live together or have had a relationship where many groceries were being consumed, has it ever got this bad behind some food????