Moving to Wordpress

I decided I like the look and feel over at Wordpress, so I'm moving blogging operations to stephanielo.wordpress.com. Sorry for the address change, but I think it's for the better. Come visit!

Mama's tired

Man I'm wiped. NIWeek ended today and boy am I glad. It's the kind of work event that sucks the life out of you for the duration of the time it goes on, but even for all that I enjoyed most of it. I wrote the on-site news release which was actually kind of enjoyable to write, but made for a pretty intense couple of days.

Tonight Mason's at Little Woodrow's with Gary, so I went on a walk, opened a bottle of vino and got Dreamgirls from movies on demand. Good times. Tomorrow I'm going to leave work early to go to happy hour at 4. Good times.

Five Healthy Babies

A guy I work with just became a dad to five babies -- his wife delivered healthy quintuplets (!) today! It's a really cool story. She made it to 34 weeks, which is almost unheard of for this many babies. Catch up with the whole thing on her blog and their web site.

The aforementioned giant cucumber from my garden

Yes, we dressed it up. Yes, we are adults. Trisha (who sits next to me) brought in some Ms. Potato Head gear. This is how we lighten the mood during the stressful summer -- dressing up vegetables. Here, Andria (who sits across from me) models it. God bless camera phones.

I'm a bad blogger

As Shelley reminded me below I haven't been doing very well blogging. So, here's a few things that have been going on in my life.

• Work, work, work. Summer is the busiest time at my company (not at Mason's, ha) and this year is no exception. I am managing a large project and to boot, my manager is on maternity leave, so that means I don't have her to bounce things off of as usual. She did send me a lovely bouquet of flowers though, which was very sweet.
• Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Which was amazing. HP books are the only ones where Mason and I have to map out a plan for who gets to read them first when a new one comes out (this year, I read it at night and Mason read it during the day). Plus, once one of us nears the end of the book, it's not unusual for that person to hole up in a room to finish, and the other person knows not to bother the person reading. I posted a comment about the book on Lance's blog.
• Gardening, when I can get outside, when it's not raining. I haven't watered my garden since mid-May. No joke. My plants are so big that I can't get into the back corner of the garden where the watermelon patch is. One of the tomato plants is so big it's fallen over -- the tomato cage can't hold it. I grew a 1.5 lb. cucumber (I didn't mean for it to get this big, but with all the rain I can't get outside every day and cucumbers grow really fast). I'll post a picture soon. I made three quarts of pickles and canned them, and then canned two quarts of peeled, seeded tomatoes. I can't eat the veggies fast enough. If you need cucumbers let me know. I have a ton. Oh, and there are two baby watermelons that I can see, but like I said I can't get back there so I'm betting there are more.
• This is really cool. Mason discovered yesterday that the neighbor who lives behind us is Lam Jones, former UT football player who played with Earl Campbell and was coached by Darrell Royal. He was the second overall pick in the 1980 draft and played for the Jets. And he has an Olympic gold medal -- he was a world-class sprinter. Anyway, he found out he had bone cancer in Oct. 2005, so he took this gorgeous photo of the UT tower after we won the championship in Jan. 2005 and the co-op sells them to help him raise money for his medical bills. Mason met him yesterday, and he gave us one of the pictures for free as a housewarming gift!

So there you have it folks. Work, gardening, Harry Potter, and living next door to a local celebrity. That's what's been going on in the Logerot house this summer. I really promise to post pics from our vacation and of my massive cucumber. I just have to upload them. More soon! I promise to be a better blogger from here on out!

Competitive eating cracks me up

I love it. They're announcing all the competitors and telling bits about them, such as "So and so is a burrito specialist, and holds titles in matzo balls and reindeer sausage."

They're gearing up for the annual 4th of July hot dog eating contest. The big news this year is that the favorite, Kobayashi, has some sort of jaw injury. Will he win? Or will his injury cost him the championship? That is yet to be decided, folks.

As an aside, I find it ridiculously unfair that some of these people weigh 105 pounds, etc. If your job is to stuff as much food in your mouth as fast as possible it only makes sense that you should be larger than those of us who actually watch what we eat. But I digress.

Vegas, a cold, and fine restaurant dress

So, today's our anniversary (3 years!) and we are in Vegas. We started the week in California and will end it here. I'll post more details later, but for now I will say that all was well until I woke up with a nasty cold today. Which blows. The kicker is that we had reservations at Mesa Grill for dinner, which is Bobby Flay's restaurant in Caesar's.

I tried to act normal this morning, thinking it was just allergies. The weather in CA was really cool (in the 50s in the morning) and I thought maybe the climate change was the cause for my scratchy throat and congestion. But no. The good part is that I was still able to enjoy our dinner, which was so delicious and really fun. We even brought a bottle of wine that we bought in CA and had it with our food. So yay for good food and wine, and nay for people's clothing at Mesa Grill, which brings me to the final part of this uplifting post.

I admit that Mason and I can be snobs about some things. Dress at nice restaurants is one of them. Our feeling is, if you have to make reservations at a venue a week in advance, you should probably dress at least in church clothes for your meal. Tonight, we saw all kinds of crazy stuff, including denim shorts (on men and women), Birkenstocks (hello 1977) with and without socks, tank tops, and the like. You get the picture. Of course we quietly made fun of them.

Come on, people. Put on some pants and real shoes. It's not difficult. It's a four-star restaurant in one of the most famous cities in the world. Dress like it.

Anywho, enough ranting. Just had to get that out before I go to bed. And speaking of that, my Nyquil is kicking in so I am off. More later.