For a few weeks now I have been meaning to share my "green thumb" story.  Turns out I have one!!!  For the past few weeks we have been using home grown basil, dill, and parsley when we cook.... salads, ministrone, herb-crusted salmon -- It's so rewarding to include something we grew with our dinner.  It makes dinner feel fresher - even if its only in my head.

Adam thinks I'm nuts because I nibble on basil leaves when I'm in the office.... looking forward to having enough basil for a tomato, basil, mozerella salad, or even a home-grown pesto sauce.... it's pretty funny that we are growing herbs on the windowsill of the 26th floor, but it is working better than I could have imagined. 

Next time around it should be more successful, because now I know that the seeds really do need to be placed further apart.  About a month ago, I dug up the oregano that wasn't really working and seperated the basil into two containers.  Since then they have grown considerably faster. Take a look!  Basil on the left, pretty much taking over the container, and parsley, which I just chopped, on the right - it grows so fast!)

Look at my BASIL!

I just replanted more dill - we used all of the first batch already, and decided to give oregano another try (again, seeds too close), so that's what's going on on the left. 

Basil, Dill, Oregano

{PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK}

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Tonight, I got home from a busy day of work at 6pm; caught up with email, played on the computer (uploaded photos - finally!), and futzted around the house until dinner.  After about an hour of TV with Adam, we "hit the books" for about an hour (should have been longer).....  and then I spent the next HOUR getting ready for the next couple of days....

I made myself two lunches (tmrw & Wed), bfast & dinner for tomorrow, and fruit snacks to last me the week....  then, I got outfits ready for the next few days, packed up my toiletries, and got my workout clothes laid out .....  what a lot of planning!!!!

Tomorrow, I plan on attending a SPIN (stationary bike) class at the gym before work - it starts at 6:45am, so I'll be a zombie leaving the apartment in the morning and want to be able to "grab & go" without much thinking.... I'll go straight to the office from there, and then straight from work to my "exam" class, which won't let out until 9:30pm, if I'm lucky.  I prepped some for Wed so I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow night.... 

I'm a big Sunday night prepper... I like getting clothes ironed for the week and some food-prep done to make things go smoother when we get home and are in a rush to cook.  I can only imagine how much more prep will come with kids.  Yikes!  It looks like some form of tonight's routine is going to become a weekly staple as I try to juggle a busy work schedule and regular exercise around this study regime.  Ugh.  Is it December yet? 

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Had a thoroughly enjoyable birthday weekend.  Two nights of drinking and a fabulous afternoon/evening at my mom's.....  been so busy, barely have had time to Vox -- still having that problem with the webpage at work... such a bummer... I'm working from home on Wednesday, so I hope to do some catching up then.

Thanks to all of you that sent me birthday wishes!!!  Big fan of MySpace this week - got bday wishes from friends who otherwise (and why would they) have known that it was my birthday. 

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Last night was my first "exam" class - figure I would stay out of trouble by not referring to it by name.  Using one word to summarize: Painful.  The topic was Ethics - extremely straightforward and relatively short in comparison to some of the more technical sections (like quant and accounting)..... I have taken more securities exams than I care to remember on the topic, so I didn't need to worry about this section too much. 

The lecturer sounded like a used-car salesman and started the lesson by telling everyone that they didn't need to do any of the reading before the lecture on whatever that week's subject is - what the hell!  I figured we would all come in having seen the material already and the class would be a chance to reinforce the material and answer any lingering questions - Nope.  Instead, he plans on using it as an introduction to the material, with the individual work done afterwards.... well, I'm not doing it that way, end of story, and I find it appalling that the lecturer would say that.  I think that's stupid and counterproductive.

He droned on for over 3.5 hours, when he said we'd be out early for a topic that should have taken 2 hours tops.... He already warned us that long sections could go on for 4 hours -- if this took 3.5hrs, how will we complete longer, more complex subjects in only 30min more?  Not a good sign.  He had one of those crazy pens that could write on the screen of his computer that we could see on the projector and totally overdid it.  He wrote out word for word every note he wanted us to write in our lecture notes... which slowed down everything considerably.  Then when he got about 5 pages from the end, he realized that we were close to the end of the class and suddenly picked up the pace dramatically, blatently leaving stuff out -- on the last slide he actually used the term "blah, blah, blah" to describe the material - thanks, helpful....   I spent the last hour doing work I had (thankfully) brought with me from the office. 

Luckily, the class is on my way home (as if that's even possible since I live a block away!!!!!) and by 9:40pm I was in my Pjs with a glass of wine in my hands... I feel bad for all of the other students in the class that have to get home, especially those guys in the suburbs that have to come in to the city for the class.... rush hour traffic to get in on time and a drive home around 10pm afterwards - that must be awful.... 

It's going to be a long 5 months.... 

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My sister Nicole moved to Colorado in early June.  This weekend we got a letter/bday card for Adam from her... in it, she gave us her Top 5 Things she misses about NJ.  It has been cracking us up for days.  Here's her Top 5:

1) Pork Roll (aka Taylor Ham) -- too funny!  We had it for breakfast on Saturday morning and sent her a photo with the caption "Wish you were here"

2) Z100 - A NYC radio station that plays current hits and skews hip-hop

3) The Beach (also known as "The Shore" in Jersey-ese)

4) Guidos -  Can't quite explain this one.  If I never see a wife beater again it would be too soon....  must be backlash from all the hippies she sees.

5) Big Everything.  Big hair, big sunglasses, big bags...

Then she wrote that somewhere down the list were the two of us...  I'm looking forward to visiting her soon - either piggie backing off of work-travel, or in December after I take this stupid exam.... 

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What's the best practical joke you've pulled or had pulled on you? 
Submitted by Mike Schwartz.

In high school, we had two friends in our close-knit group that were a year younger than us.  The year they graduated from high school (so I was done with my frosh year in college), we played a great prank on them.  The night of graduation, our high school did something called Project Graduation - they bussed you somewhere that had lots of fun activities, to keep you from drinking and something bad happening... 

So, while they were off at Project Graduation, we went to the parents of our friends Malps (who I went to the wedding with) and Aaron - and told their parents what we were up to....  we went to the highschool, found their cars in the lot and moved them to two spots next to one another (thanks to the spare keys the parents had loaned us).  Then we soaped up their windows and toilet papered their car... now that I think about it, Dave's older sister was with videotaping the whole thing....

When the buses pulled back in the parking lot, (apparently) everyone was laughing and pointing at the carnage.  So were Dave & Aaron, since they had no reason to think that it was their cars under that toilet paper mess.  

I have a photo somewhere - I'll have to dig it out.

Dave, of course, got me back.... he toilet papered my car the summer between junior and senior year in college.... he had used scented toilet paper and the TP had stuck to the car in the morning dew.  I hit a rain storm on my way driving to Dickinson and there was litterally foam coming off my car - pretty funny. 

I FOUND THE PHOTO - better late than never.

Scan0003

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I had been looking forward to this book club meeting for weeks now.  I thought the book was intense and was looking forward to discussing a variety of topics with others.... well, there were 7 or 8 of us, and about half of the group had read the book previously, not explicitly for the book club meeting, and hadn't bothered to go back and reread, or even refresh their memories about the book.  The others, were extremely quiet and barely shared their opinion.  At first, I was excited when I realized that they were all so different from me, there were 3 social workers, a nurse, a teacher, and someone who dealt with immigrant issues... "what different and interesting viewpoints they will have", I thought... NOPE.

I felt like I was coming off as this opinionated crazy woman.  No one really had any comments when I spoke up and didn't really recall the specifics of the book enough to even know precisely what I was talking to.  I was especially speaking less than I normally would have, since I was new to the group, but I still felt like I was sharing so much... mainly, because no one else really discussed the book.  They talked about this author's second book, some volunteer program in Camden, Bush's healthcare policy, and on and on.... 

Luckily, the whole thing lasted less than 2 hours, so it wasn't unbarebly painful.  I was disappointed.  I'm still not quite sure how it happened, but the fact that I had a (future) book suggestion, somewho got me put in charge of the next meeting.  So, I'll stick it out for another month or two and see how things go.  Maybe the fun, interesting women were the ones that couldn't make it this time around..... fingers crossed

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We offered to cat sit for one of my work friends... he and his wife were over for fondue last week and mentioned that they were taking a vacation soon.  That night I shared the story of another cat we took care of - Basil.  We had a scare within 10min of him being dropped off, because I thought I might have left the window in the bedroom open and he fell out.  We live on the 26th floor - it wouldn't have been pretty  (We had neighbors that lost a cat like this).  The window turned out to be shut and Basil was hiding in our closet....  crisis averted.

Today, I asked my friend if this was the weekend that we were due to cat-sit - it is.  He told me that he "didn't trust his cat" and didn't need us to watch him afterall.  When I pressed further, he shared that he was worried that cat would walk out on the window ledge.  I told him that in this awful heat there was no threat of us opening any windows, so nothing to worry about... no dice.  He swore it wasn't that he didn't trust me, he just didn't trust his cat.  

Well, its not like the cat could open up the window - so what he was really saying was that he didn't trust me/us.  I felt like such a loser! 

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One of the guys I worked with told me about the dilema he was having regarding his wife's birthday.  They both play tennis and she wants a new tennis racquet.  The question he posed to me was whether or not he could just give her his racquet to her as a birthday present.  He isn't a big fan of his racquet and she has been demo-ing different racquets and likes his racquet and grap the best.  He figures that since he isn't in love with his racquet anyway, he will give it to her and just buy himself a new one. 

My answer: Definitely Not!!!  This reminded me of the Simpson's episode where Homer buys Marge a bowling ball for her birthday - i think it might have even had his name on it. 

I told him he could still give her his racquet and buy himself a new one, but not as a birthday present.  Back to square one.  It was pretty funny!!!

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Something has happened to my VOX account at work and the VOX webpage thinks that I am accessing the page from a mobile device.  This screws up the way everything looks, but more importantly, has made it impossible to post anything - such a bummer.

I even deleted all of my cookies, and had to deal with not remembering a lot of saved passwords, in an attempt to fix it, but to no avail.... even my buddy in IT didn't have any suggestions.

Anyone know how to fix this?  In the meantime, I will have to post when I get home.... if I get around to it.  Today I wrote my posts at work, so I can just cut and paste them tonight - but what a pain in the butt!!!

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