Sunday, July 31, 2011

Wine and Painting

Lets just say..thats practically all I did this last few days. Wine and painting. 


Thursday night,  I went to Polka-Dot Palette in Cary. They had the most adorable dog in the history of dogs and offer a lot of different classes, starting from a completely blank canvas. It was a little bit scary. They had a lot of paintings I would like to go back and do. One of which is the koi you see in the corner.. :)



With C and our awesome paintings...


 They let you design your own labels. I decided to go super dorky and do resveratrol, along with my graduation year. 
YAY!



 Saturday night, I ventured back out to Cary to Wine and Design. It was with the TWE so they had free wine tastings and everyone brought something delicious. This time, the paining was a bit more "paint by numbers" and they were a bit less "experimental" in terms of where to put your colors. I never listen to directions (and neither did B), so mine looked completely different. I had to make  it match the other one! Obviously..  Anyway, W&D definitely had some more intricate paintings. I really want to go do the Raleigh Skyline, and the NCSU belltower.

skyline..<3
Me and B with our paintings
my finished product. (check out how the
green bottles match..even the label!)


Me with both my masterpieces. 


I had a lot of fun, and it definitely inspired me to look at picking up painting as a habit. I cleared having a "houseful of canvas" with Mike, and he was fine with it. With him starting his MBA, I gotta find more stuff to keep me busy :)

Friday, July 15, 2011

July 6th, CIRQUE!

GO SEE IT, if you get the chance. 
After the AWESOME job I did of twisting my knee, Mike and I decided that Alegria from Cirque du Solei was rare enough to go see, CRUTCHES AND ALL.

Mike took a great picture of me..as of late..
It turns out the RBC center is actually really helpful for handicaps. When I arrived, they let us go park right up front and then tons of people held the doors open. Then, they let us trade in our seats for some accessible ones, and the lady at customer service had the "wheelchair team" come over. They wheeled me to our seat, then after the show they came and picked me up and wheeled me to the front door. AND THEY WERENT GETTING PAID. If nothing else, being cripple has made me discover how good people are. BUT, enough talking..I'm tempted to buy the DVD to be able to pass it around and relive the moment...


we had a while at our seats to goof off..


awe. (also, $11 beers FTW)

Monday, July 4, 2011

Live Blogging of the Brewing...

Last night Mike asked me if I would take diligent notes of his brewing. I THINK its his way of making me feel like I'm helping after the kneefiasco of 2011. :(.
Yay Dislocation.

SO,

10:30am: Mike starts sanitizing the area using the spray bottle, and filling up the sink with sanitizing solution. Terri, starts roaming the internet...

10:47am: In an effort to figure out how to accurately measure 3 gallons. Mike goes through several options. Measure 48 cups using the measuring cup? No... "Babe!, can you finish the gallon of milk. Um, No"  He then finds my pasta holding cup and says "THIS IS 1 liter!" Can I scratch lines in your mixing bowl to say where I gallon is?... No, I'll use tape. :)
 
10:53, we have measured 3 gallons. :)

11:14. We have decided that the grains smell amazingly like Coco Krispies which is now the only food I want. Mike is cracking the shells (with the Nalgene, we're straight up professionals in here people) and then pouring them into the cheesecloth pouch. He's also filling up the brew kettle with his excellent taped bowl from earlier.





12:08 The 158* temperature has been reached and the grains are steeping. We're supposed to not let it boil over (or let the thermometer die a boily death) I am still hungry and wanting cereal, Mike is studying "How to Brew." "I am saving this as a favorite place" in between scurrying to eye the pot.

12:15  This is a heavy pot. Mike wants to remember it. (He moved it off the heat) and has deemed the thermometer set up successful.

12:23 Mike has pulled out the grains, and is preparing to replace them with hops. I am searching for some way to support my Knee.

12:29 I missed the pouring of the goopy stuff (malt extract), to which Mike says "that woulda been a good picture." And sends me on a search for the "Cascade Hops"

12:32 Like a true idiot Mike says "get a whif of that" and sticks the hops under my hose. I cough until 12:34 when Mike finds a runaway hop and plops them into the water. Quickly declaring the pot "hypnotizing to watch"

1:00, we might have put the hops in too early. And it isnt quite rolling boiling like it should be.

1:38 I have acquired chick fila, Mike is boiling water to rehydrate the yeast, and is going to fill up the giant blue bucket from outside. The pots boiling nicely and things seem to be going well.

1:55 ice in the blue bucket and Mike's sanitizing everything to get ready to put it in the fermenter.

1:59, we have ice in the bucket, and ice in the beer. Mike's not content with the coldness factor. It has to cool down to below 80*, but between ice and the airconditioner, he's moving pretty fast. ALSO, the house smells of beer.

2:39. The beer was poured into the fermenter, and on the floor...and on my purse... LEARNING EXPERIENCES HERE PEOPLE!

4:40 and and a little behind schedule. but we're finally cooling down. The Hydrometer reads 1.047

5:00 perhaps doing this the weekend of one failtastrophe lead to others. it appears the rubber stopper has vanished, and Mike is trying to figure out how to seal the bucket. Parafilm has been mentioned, as has duct tape.

5:05pm Done. (for 2 weeks)

Update? I'll try...

I'm SORRY, I fell off the wagon. Again. I keep just..not..blogging.. I need to get one attached to my brain so that I can just THINK the words.. So, Since my birthday we have...

Picnic Noms
We went to a performance of the NC Symphony doing Paul McCartney's songs. They allowed you to bring a picnic and eat before the show, so that's exactly what we did. I packed up some cheese, some sandwiches with turkey and avocado, roasted tomatos, and cheesecake stuffed strawberries. We took one bottle of wine. And we were under prepared.

If you remember, the last time we went to the KokoBooth ampitheatre, a tornado touched down in Raleigh. Welp, this time, INSANE RAIN STORMS came swooping through the triangle. I had talked to dad earlier in the day, who had warned me about hail and nasty rain and wind, but. Oh well..Mike and I turned the table cloth into a burrito for keeping the rain out, and did a pretty good job. Go team us!



 After the rain left, everyone came back out to eat and play and we had a really great time. :)










Moving on..


The next weekend we decided to continue out date nights and go to Cafe Tiramisu, where Mike had a Groupon too. It was really tasty and we ended the night with the Tiramsu, which.. surprisingly, isnt on the menu. Then we managed to catch a showing of X-Men: First Class. I loved it, as a comic book nerd, and Mike thought it was really cool. They bring Magneto to the front, and his Holocaust history, more than the previous movies. The dialogue was great, the action was great, and it left you thinking..




Last weekend, we went to Aviator brewery (where we had a groupon) and drank some beers with some good friends of ours. We also played some cornhole, and Mike and I won!.





Then we packed up and headed into Durham for a Durham Bulls game. I've never been to a baseball game, so I was super excited to go. Mike's been trying to teach me the rules and the sport itself, so that things make sense, and at the game I did a pretty good job of figuring it out. Mike wore his Mets cap because the team the Bulls were playing was a Yankees farm team..and yeah, its all about the small protests.. DID I MENTION, that I also got to eat peanuts at the game? And there really were people walking up and down the stands selling food and drinks. Apparently, sometimes movies DO imitate life. Mike has now declared my attendance at  a Met's game is necessary.


FF loves.
Now, finally, this weekend. Friday started out pretty sweet with a trip to Downtown for First Friday. We saw HoolaHoopers (which made me want to learn how), and some really awesome arts and crafts. They had music and drum circles and vendors. It was pretty great. Afterwards, we went to a mexican restaurant that I'd been wanting to try, and...well, honestly I was disappointed, so we're not gonna go into that.

We went home, started playing around to dance central on the Kinect for Xbox and I decided that I didnt like my knee in it's current location, so I moved it. :( Now, I'm doing my best not to hurt it while I lie around and figure out how to move from my car, down the stairs at the deck (broken elevator you see) across the lot to my building and up three flights of stairs (again..no elevator) just to hobble around my lab for a couple days. I'm also scouring the craigslist for crutches. :(