Mind-dump

It's been quite a weekend, and I'm going to do a brief mind-dump sort of recap, in the style of my early blogging...a list.

1. The lovely Rachel stayed with me beginning on Wednesday night, crashing on my couch during the Bay Area leg of her book tour. She is a delightful houseguest, and it was nice having a little girl time. The book event I went to at Mrs. Dalloway's in Berkeley was also quite fun, and she was my buddy on The Great Washer/Dryer Purchase of 2009.
2. I won $7.50 at the Super Bowl party on Sunday...I picked the 3rd quarter score! "Picked" is the overstatement of the century though, since all I did was pick a random assortment of boxes on a grid, paying $0.50 per box (or more accurately, The Boy paid). Someone randomly picked numbers to correspond with the X and Y axes of the grid, and if (for example) the score was 13 to 7 Cardinals, the person who had picked the 3 box in the Cardinals row and the 7 box in the Steelers column would win the prize money. The winnings were $7.50 for 1st and 3rd quarter, $10 for halftime and $25 for the final score (as if predicting the final score was somehow more challenging than selecting the score for the 3rd quarter? I don't get it really...). Anyway, like I said, I won $7.50 ($3 of which was immediately gone, paying back a friend who had helped to cover part of my pedicure that morning). A new member of our group won BOTH halftime and final score, going home with $35. Now that's some luck, if you ask me. And oh yeah, there were deep fried Milky Way bars. Sadly, we didn't end up deep frying pickles, but the Milky Ways were kind of life-changing.
   
3. Rachel and I came up with a new dessert: Double Mint Ice Cream Sandwiches. Trader Joe's mint chip ice cream sandwiched between two Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. Mmmmm. The Boy and I are eating them for dessert in just a few minutes.
4. I made Trader Joe's marinated Ahi Tuna steaks with Trader Joe's rice pilaf tonight. Yes, it's a big night for TJ's at Chez Kim, but it's delicious, not totally unhealthy, helps us get some fish into our diets (I rarely cook fish even though I know I should), and is also quick and cheap! Love it!
5. Finally starting to settle into the new job...I can't believe it's been a full month already!
6. I am doing a bit of home re-design/re-arranging. I'm very excited about it, and I hope I'll do a really good job of getting rid of things in preparation. I'm buying this awesome kitchen cart for $130 from someone at work, except the top is an even better butcher block top (like in this picture).
7. I got a call from Sears today, which ended up leading to them sending me a check for $99.99. Apparently I was not supposed to be charged for the delivery/installation, or I they charged me for the wrong kind of delivery/installation or something. The manager, because I had to deal with their error (which really, wasn't much of a problem for me - they called me and told me they were sending me a refund check and that was about it), said that rather than charging me whatever it was they were supposed to charge me, they were just going to give me a refund. Sounds good to me!
   
8. I finally got my camera back from Best Buy. They had it for a month - but everything seems to be fixed, and it was all covered under the warranty. Bonus: I got to fill out a customer service survey, where I could provide feedback about how the service itself was good, but it took way too long. I really like surveys. And no, I will not be doing that "25 things" thing on Facebook.
   

Pictures below...

Display for the book event...I love that they were displayed next to one of my favorite books ever.

And a close-up of the display

Rachel, testing out a lawnmower of sorts outside Sears.

The most ingenious dessert. Pardon the poor photo quality. It was taken on my phone.