Back from the ABQ!

Well, we're finally home.  After ten days, five airports, one bajillion calories, and just as many laughs, I'm back here watching Jeopardy! with Matt while Mitch licks a bowl that once held macaroni and cheese.  Ahhhh. . .

Now, it'd been decades since I last visited Albuquerque.  The last time I was there, Mario 3 had just come out, the New Kids topped the charts, Bush I was president, and my sister was seven years away from gracing the world with her presence.  Normally I would be a little morose at this time, having just left my grandparents without knowing when I'd see them again.  But I'm not this time, because in about a week they'll be moving to Florida where they'll only be about 3 hours away from us!  Shoot yeah!

Our visit was just lovely.  It was nice to get to talk to my grandma and grandpa, to listen to their stories, to help them cook and clean and pack.  I've never had the opportunity to enjoy that much one-on-one time with them, and I'm really grateful to have had this time with them.

Here's a little bit of what it looked like, hanging out with Carol and Bruce in the ABQ.

Grandpa loved his new red suspenders. 

 Grandma's favorite farmer's market.  

 Edible loot.

 Sassy suitcase of Grandma's.

 We didn't cook any meth, but maybe Grandma and Grandpa's neighbors were?

Ouch!

Discovering Our Love Languages

Not long ago, Cassie referenced this quiz about love languages.  When Matt and I looked at the descriptions of the love languages, it was pretty easy to identify which love language each of us subscribed to.  I said immediately that my love language was acts of service: I love it when people do things for me (get me a glass of water, get me a glass of wine, take my plate to the kitchen, clean the house, do all of the driving on long road trips, etc.).  Not that I don't like a thoughtful gift or a nice hug, too, of course. 

Matt's is quality time.  Matt doesn't really need much besides someone to be in the room to hear him call out all of the correct answers (questions?) on Jeopardy!.  Not surprisingly, Matt's favorite times (and some of mine, too), are when we stay up late, sitting at the kitchen table, talking and laughing and feeding Mitch too many treats.

Even though we thought that we knew our love languages from the descriptions (which Matt insisted, by the way, were stupid), this weekend we took the quiz, per Cassie's request.  Matt went first.

It did not go so well, because for the better part of ten minutes, he mocked the quiz--yelling his insults from the other room-- for its stupidity and transparency.  I have to admit, he had a point.

The five love languages are: touch, service, quality time, words of affirmation, and gifts.  The questions on the quiz were really subtle.  For instance, check one:

• I love it when you celebrate my birthday with a gift.
• I love it when you celebrate my birthday with meaningful words.

What love languages could these answers possibly support?  Matt had believed that the love language theory was stupid in the first place, and didn't keep it a secret that he found the quiz to be a complete waste of time. 

Was he wrong?  Nope.

Because it took all that to discover that quality time is his love language.  Mine is acts of service.  Basically, if he does things for me then I'll hang out with him.  Sounds good to me.

Hey, Matt, the house needs to be vacuumed and the clothes need to be put away.  I'll be lying here on the couch when you're done, and I'll be happy to hang out, and to listen to you shout out the answers during Jeopardy!  Hell, I'll even provide you with affirming words like, "You're so smart during the kid's tournament."

What's your love language? 

(Oh, and if you're looking for a super-fun old school quiz, here's The Spark's Purity Quiz.  How pure are you?)

This and That

1. How is it that I'm twenty-nine years old and still manage to get shampoo in my eye at least once a week?
2. Stefan is my favorite Jeopardy! contestant in eight years.  There's nothing like the Tournament of Champions to make me feel like a complete idiot.  (Except for, maybe, getting shampoo in my eye time and time again.) 
3. Went to the beach on Sunday.  Wore sunscreen.  Still managed to burn my ass.  Time to break out the satin pajama pants. (Landed a plane on the beach.  Oh, wait. That was someone else.)
4. Have been having intense hydrangea envy while taking Mitch for walks through the neighborhood.  Decided to take action by buying and planting my very own bushes.  I'm cautiously optimistic.  If this doesn't work, I'm getting a ski mask and skulking around the neighborhood at night cutting blooms.
5. I love thunderstorms.  So do my new hydrangeas.  Mitch, however. . .not so much.
6. Thirteen more days of school, but who's counting?  Me, that's who.
7. Went to Gap and bought two more cardigans.  That's five, for the high price of $15. 
8. Mitch, still the cutest and most snuggly dog on the planet.
9. AND. . .Lost.  What the hell?  Why did I just waste six years of my life?  To be fair, I didn't care all that much.  Once I found out what the numbers meant, I was good.  But it's probably good that I didn't care that much, because I might have been heartbroken.  Every time I think of the ending I want to vomit in my mouth and spit it at Kate.  Lame.

The Real World = Lots of Great TV

Weeeeeeeeeeee're baaaaaaaaack. 

Because all good things must come to an end, our perfectly-balanced-between-fun-and-relaxing spring break is over.  I spent nine days getting my body to adjust to staying up late and sleeping in, just in time to have return to work, just in time to have to force myself to wake up early again.  Boo for waking up early.  The good news is that there are only forty-five more school days until summer.  That's really not a lot of days.

And birthday week/month is over; we ate the last vestiges of it tonight.  (PS--Here's a great gift idea. Sneak Fresh Market ribeyes into your friend's refrigerator when you are house and dog sitting.  Your friend will be forever grateful.  Muchas gracias, Cris!)  Year twenty-nine has been pretty great so far, I must say.  If the next fifty point five weeks are as lovely, I'll be a happy, happy girl.

We don't really have anything exciting happening anytime soon, but there is a certain comfort in returning to our routine.  And since we are admitted television addicts, our routine includes way too much of the tube.  Here's what we've been watching of late:

• Breaking Bad.  We (and by we I mean Matt) have been hearing about how great it is for some time, but hadn't gotten around to watching it.  Why is it so good?  In case you haven't heard of it before, here's the premise: unsatisfied high school chemistry teacher finds out that he has terminal cancer, and begins cooking crystal meth to be able to leave money for his family.  And it's got the dad from Malcolm in the Middle, only now he's an evil genius.
• American Idol.  Psych!  We stopped watching this season.  It just sucked too bad and I couldn't stomach Cara.
• Amazing Race.  This season's coming to a close, but it's been great fun.  Plus, three of the five remaining teams are ones we chose: cowboys, gay brother/straight brother, and the idiot models.  Every time we watch Matt curses the models for still being in the race, even though he picked them.  If only the Buffalo Bills could be as successful as the stupid models.
• Top Chef Masters.  This hasn't actually started yet, but it does tomorrow, and we'll be watching and loving every second. 
• Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  Hugh and Cassie recommended this show (and Christina was raving about it), and I think Hugh put it really well when he described it as being one of the best-edited shows on tv.  And Jamie Oliver is officially one of my favorite British people. 
• Jeopardy!.  Always.  We're watching it right now.  It's 1:28 a.m.  Matt is ranting about how he would have won this game.
• Lost.  I'm really  not that interested since I know what the numbers mean, and that's all I really cared about, but I watch it anyway.  Just looking for closure, I suppose.  Tonight's episode was pretty good.  I like how Desmond and Jamie Oliver always call people Brother.  It's so endearing. 
• 60 Minutes.  We're really, really old. 
• The Pacific.  Matt's watching this; I'm not.  I'm sure it's good and all, but all those army boys all look the same to me, and I have trouble figuring out who's who.  And, yes, I'm quite stupid.
• Treme.  I will be watching this one.  The guys from The Wire doing a show about post-Katrina New Orleans?  Yes, please.
• 500 Days of Summer.  It's not a tv show, but we just watched it last night and I loved every second.  A modern-day Annie Hall, if you will.  Charming and funny and bittersweet.  Plus, it had the girl from Elf!

And here's a hump day video to get you through the day: President Obama playing HORSE--I mean, POTUS--with Clark Kellog, who is good at basketball.  (Better at basketball than damn Kentucky, who is not as good at basketball as I thought.)

Blackout Monday

Matt and I were so excited for a quiet night at home last night. We'd been on vacation, we'd hosted Chloe, we'd gone to Augusta, we'd driven approximately 1.3 million miles. We were ready to relax, watch the news and Jeopardy!, cook dinner, and do very little otherwise.

Nature and Savannah's shitfest of a power grid had other plans. A huge thunderstorm came through and knocked out our power around 6:00 p.m., which crippled our plans for the evening. (Not to mention that the storm interrupted my viewing of a really dramatic episode of 90210, the one where Valerie pretends to be pregnant to make her married boyfriend give her $100,000.)

And Mitch isn't so much a fan of giant thunderstorms. Throughout the storm he nervously laid between Matt and me on the bed, pretty much being the cutest thing ever. Once it passed, he came out to inspect the damage.


There was no real damage caused to our house, but there was a pretty pretty rainbow.

And the sky looked pretty great.

We decided to go out for dinner with the hopes that the power would be back on when we returned. Yeah, right. This is Savannah. The power would be out for a long while.

Fortunately, I'm a candle freak. Years ago I bought these lanterns at IKEA. Since moving here, they've been quite handy. Go buy some if you're planning on moving to a city that hasn't updated the power grid in 300 years.

We played the most excruciating game of Scrabble of all time. I blame it on Matt, who started off our game with the word "oak." It was miserable, and he was winning handily before I decided that we should just quit. Matt is so much better at Scrabble than I am, and it sometimes makes me feel like I'm more stupid than Valerie's married boyfriend.

The really shitty part of the blackout was that the people two streets up from us and one street down still had power. Ours didn't come back until 8:30 this morning. I'm going to put this episode in the "Reasons to Leave Savannah" column.

Our power's been iffy today, and if it goes out again tonight, I'm writing my congressman!

This is Jeopardy!

Raymond: Course I got Jeopardy! at five o'clock. I watch Jeopardy!
Charlie: Don't start with that, Ray.

It's possible that I married Raymond Babbit, Dustin Hoffman's character from Rain Man. On weekdays Matt must--MUST!--watch Jeopardy!. If he is away from the house and thinks that he forgot to record it, he'll call me and ask me to check the DVR and make sure that it's recording.

Matt's love for Jeopardy! is rooted in his love for trivia (and the superiority he feels when competing against other people in any trivia-related activity). He knows a lot of useless stuff. He even knows the answers to the ballet and opera categories. WTF?

Not surprisingly, Matt owns me in anything trivia-related. I can usually beat him if the question is about: the Olympics, the Bible, or Beverly Hills 90210. One of the greatest moments in my life was when Matt and I were playing '90s Trivial Pursuit, and I ended up getting a shitload of questions about 90210, and they were always for pie. Finally, I received my final question. It, again, was about 90210, and asked what the name of the night club behind the Peach Pit was. Matt didn't think I would know the answer, but then I shouted out "PEACH PIT AFTER DARK!" and began to celebrate. He shook his head in shame, not because he lost the game, but because he was dating someone who was so knowledgable about 90210. Since I've sucked Matt into my world of inane television drama, he now knows the answers to many of the questions I would have monopolized in the past. Like this one:


We've created little games that we play whilst watching Jeopardy!. Back in college, we would play drinking Jeopardy, which was a fun and dangerous game. Basically, each of us would choose a contestant. When our contestant got an answer wrong, we had to drink. When either of the other contestants got an answer right, we had to drink. There was also some form of wagering on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy, but I can't remember. Now that we're mature adults who can't get college drunk every night, we no longer play drinking Jeopardy. (But apparently we're not too mature for the Friends drinking game, which has become a staple of our Thanksgiving celebration.)

We still pick contestants, and of course we shout out the answers. One of my favorite--and obnoxious--things to do is to repeat Matt's answers and pretend like I came up with them on my own. Matt will be all, "Stonewall Jackson!" and I'll wait about a half a second and with the same enthusiasm shout, "Stonewall Jackson!" I'll also celebrate when the answer is, indeed, Stonewall Jackson.

By far, though, the best part about watching Jeopardy! is what we do with the final answer. When Alex (with whom Matt has a love/hate relationship) reveals the final category, we try to predict what the answer will be. For example: if the final category is American Authors, Matt and I will select an author. If the author we selected actually ends up being the answer (or really question), then WE WIN IN LIFE. That's right, we win IN LIFE.

It was like Christmas for Matt when we returned home from vacation--7 episodes of Jeopardy! that we could watch back to back. It even ended up being a bit of a self-esteem boost for Chloe and me because the week we were gone Jeopardy! aired Kids Week.

Last night we watched about five episodes of Jeopardy!, and I'm happy to announce that I won in life TWICE! Chloe won in life once, and Matt did not win in life. He seemed disappointed to be the only one who was not winning in life, but maybe this picture of a shirtless Alex will help to ease the pain.