Eye candy

So I love crafting and I really love me some Ryan gosling.... Here's a nice combination of the two with some ryan gosling "hey girl" memes.

California part one!

Just getting around to posting about my California trip, it's a wonder what you can get accomplished in a 5 hour car ride with an iPad. So here goes..... California part 1!
Got to spend memorial day weekend in California with Michael for fanime in san jose and my birthday weekend. I flew in Friday morning and out Tuesday morning, always a bit of a rush, but always worth the trip. We had two day passes for fanime, the goth kitty outfit was saturday's costume, i also made Michael's shirt myself (and he got compliments on it,) and then for Sunday I wore my geisha dress and Michael dressed in his will turner garb. He always gets stopped for photos in that and actually looks surprisingly like Orlando bloom (see photo for proof). He always jokes he photographs like a serial killer, but not in his pirate gear, he always looks good in those photos. The Saturday photo is after we ate at the maid cafe, I think my favorite thing about the maid cafe, other than the maids that play games with you, is watching all the socially awkward guys flirt with the maids who are being friendly (that's the whole point of the maid cafe guys). I had to get my entertainment that way since Michael said I couldn't sign up for sci fi speed dating at fanime.... Something about me having to be single to sign up for that. I don't want to find anyone there, but what girl wouldn't want to spend 5 minutes on a date with chewbaca or a storm trooper. I think I'd only make it about 5 minutes but it would be quite an experience hehehe.

Other awesome thing about being at fanime for the weekend was getting to go to psycho donuts! It was near the end of the day and they didn't have too many choices, but I decided to go for the "sushi sampler" the donuts were a little dry, probably because of the massive quantities they had to make, they were slammed all weekend plus had a booth at fanime as well. Still yummy and points for creativity with the sushi box.

Hey kid...

You want some Moxie? This is a drink most commonly found in new England and when my dad was a kid his grandfather used to offer him moxie just like this. I never met my great grandfather, but from my fathers impression I know exactly how that sounded. I found this at a grocery store in cape cod... Here's a tribute to my family.

By the way... Moxie is wicked gross... And according to my dad drunk only by old men.

S'mores cookies

Yum! The title just sounds delicious right? So for a little bit of backstory, my boss's daughter had her nintendo ds stolen at daycare. She's like a mini version of me and always sends in penguin drawings she does for me to hang in my office so we're bffs. This is the ds she bought with her own birthday and first communion money so it was a big deal.
Kudos to her though because instead of feeling sorry for herself she decided to raise the money to buy a new one herself by selling lemonade and having a bake sale at the daycare. I has to support a little entrepreneur!
So here are some photos of my contribution to her namesake, s'mores cookies and apparently they were very popular.
I used the original toll house recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/original-nestle-toll-house-chocolate-chip-cookies/ and substituted chopped up Hersey bars for the chips and added mini marshmallows. If you are looking to recreate these cookies, I have found the key is to bake them for 8 minutes but at the 4 minute mark you have to pull them out and put some mini marshmallows on the cookies then put them back in the oven. That way the marshmallows don't burn.

Work

While the whole point of this blog is to help myself unwind and take some me time away from work and home stress, I would like to take one post to talk about my work.
I got a promotion at work! I will be the community development officer for the credit union. It's a new position, but what it breaks down to is that I'll be going out to our business groups full time and opening accounts and doing loans on site as well as teaching financial literacy classes.
I will be getting an office at the administration building and will be doing quite a bit of traveling with my new position. I will miss all of my regular members in my office, but am looking forward to a new challenge.
I'm very excited because that has been one of my favorite parts of my current job and now I will be able to do that full time. If I could have chosen my dream job this would be it and I'm lucky to have gotten the promotion.

There enough about work, I just had to share!

Bacon, bacon, bacon!!!

Any excuse for me to talk about bacon right? You guys all know I can't go a day without thinking of or talking about my favorite food group, that's right..... Bacon!!!

I stopped in North East, Maryland (that's actually the name of the town) to go to woody's crab shack (highly recommended, but more about that in a later post) and wasn't super hungry so I decided to walk around main street and enjoy some of the local color. I wandered into the local general store and stopped by their candy counter and noticed they had bacon bark! Calling my name.... I looked at the tag which said bacon bark: chocolate, mango, cyanne pepper, and something else.... But let me tell you what it doesn't have in it.... Bacon! Bacon bark with no bacon. The lady behind the counter told me "you wouldn't believe it but all the ingredients combined taste exactly like bacon". Really? She didn't offer me a sample though, so much for customer service and it was like 9.99 a pound and I wasn't gonna pay that much for something that didn't even have bacon in it! So I have no idea how it tasted, she then told me "I don't eat pork products... But my friend Casey swears it tastes just like it".
Let me tell you something little girl, no one tells me "new truths" about bacon, especially someone who tells me they don't eat "pork products"... have a little respect.

Now on to some things that do contain bacon.... Recently I have had some bacon sightings. First up is bacon jerky, I found it in a shop rite in Pennsylvania and it looks yummy. Actually it kind of looks like they put bacon in a bag and are selling it as jerky.... Having made my own jerky with my ronco food dehydrator (I love infomercial items) I know the general process and assume that they dehydrated the bacon a bit, but still not sure they could get it to jerky levels. I think bacon has too much fat. Regardless my loyal readers know I embrace every new bacon product (at least ones that are really bacon, see above)

I also found bacon dressing at the Amish general store in Lancaster county, yum.

When driving back from camping fourth of July weekend I drove past a road and had to turn around to get a photo of the sign because I couldn't believe it.... You guessed it, bacon brook road. I figured the road must contain bacon, or at least a pig since I was in a very rural area upstate. I almost stole the sign, I had all the tools, but it seemed like bad karma so I just took a photo. I had to go back and check the photo and make sure I wasn't hallucinating and it was actually beacon brook rd or something, so here it is for evidence!

My kitties

So I was cleaning out the photos on the iPad and came across these photos and thought it would be a great time to introduce my readers to my cats, can't call them fur babies.. That's one of those terms that makes me cringe, too much like a crazy cat lady.
These photos were from January during Michael's last visit to NY and they are all testing out his duffle bag. I think they were debating going to California with him but they know I control the catnip stash. Amazing the power a dealer has over an addict....
So from
Top to bottom, El Capitan, Rascal, and Nuzz. Rascal is the oldest, he's about 6, el capitan is 5, and Nuzz is about 2.