A beautiful day

I'm sitting in our back yard in one of our patio chairs, my feet lazily flung up on the patio with a beer in my hand. The grill is full of chicken and pork and asparagus. We've been eating chunks of meat straight off of a shared wooden cutting board and talking about how beautiful and warm the day is.

Rodolfo's just run into the house for something, leaving me to the world, staring at the half naked trees and the sky and contemplating our lives in a city of bike paths and jobs and friends and a puzzle of faces that I don't know the names to, but I see over and over again.

It's a moment of comfort and happiness. Contentment to the fullest. In mind and tummy and heart all at once. A feeling that doesn't come so perfectly very often....that it almost catches me off guard and I have to take a breath to remember to really let it in.

This is living.

AFRICA!

Allright. Back to trip plans rather then trips!

We have tickets for Africa!
So now, Asia and Africa are accounted for, that just leaves Europe!

Rodolfo found a great deal thru Egypt Airlines for $700 each including taxes.

What's the great deal about it? Multiple stops!
We'll fly into Johanesburg and get picked up again in Tanzania, giving us a couple months to experience the world cup and travel the coast thru South Africa/Mozambique/Tanzania.

From Tanzania, we'll have a week in Cairo Egypt and then back to London for our European adventures!!!

WHOO HOO!!!!!

Chicago!

We just got back from a great long weekend with Rodolfo's dad...in...CHICAGO!!!!

Incredible food, incredible city, incredible experience.

Here is a short little skyline video I accidentally took..and then realized, hey! I can totally take videos! This is AWESOME! Why not?!? Don't mind if I do!

I love CHICAGO!!!

Our trip to Seattle!

Turkiliciousness

I am a team captain.

This is a very amusing statement for those who know I'm not a team sport type person.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only sport I've ever done well at was floor hockey (it's the Minnesotan in me) and that career ended right around 5th grade when I grew boobs...is it related? who knows!

ok...so what's this captain business about?

I've discovered my nitch! and I'm quite proud actually! I kind of, sort of, like to run! If you count nature peeping and stopping for pee pees as running activities.

Why not soccer or tennis or something?

I'm the pacifistic type, so the only person I like to hurt while working out is myself, yes...that is really why...but yet at the same time, I'm very aware that I'm quite extroverted, (I looooooove being around people)

Solution:

Public massive running!

Something about the thumping of feet, the sweating, the large amount of designer running paraphernalia all around me, it's like being in the running of the bulls without a horn up your ass! It's awesome!!!

Next massive sweat experience here in Madison is coming up on Turkey day, and last years experience was so much fun (the running, the sweating, the quasi free half of a banana) I decided to make it a team experience, complete with team eating of the turkeylicious turkey afterwards!

We even have a team name! Turkeylicious!

Team mascot is still under discussion, but I'm sure something will be worked out by the big day!

So, if you are looking for a calorie burning extroverted activity come Turkey day, sign yourself up! The more the merrier!

Paz

Paz is the new member of our little family.

Back story:

If you've heard it already, skip ahead to the non green.

When I was 6 I wanted a dog, badly.

So badly, I copied out the names, descriptions, genres, height and weight of every known dog imagineable. I was OBSESSED!

So you can imagine my parents response to:

CAN WE GET A DOG?!? CAN WE GET A DOG?!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!

Parental revelation to getting out of the poop scooping, grooming and vet check ups?

"Ok Sarah, you can get a dog.... if..... you can prove that you are responsible enough to take care of a smaller pet"

What pet did they choose at the all holy home of glass surrounded puppies and kitties?

A morning dove I named princess. (that's me, my name, yup, Sarah means princess...I was extremely egocentric as a kindergardner.)

Fast forward to 3rd grade...she's still kickin' and healthy as a..bird.

Because I was a bit awkward at making friends, my parents let me bring princess with me to class, which is where Princess met a bird lover in my 3rd grade teacher who adopted her fully into the class room as our mascot of all things "cool". She would go to meetings with princess on her shoulder and always had a few droppings on her somewhere's or others...

THIS is where Paz comes in.

First grade teacher revelation: hmmmm....we teach the solar system with kids running around the room with globes, why don't we teach sex education with birds?

TADA!

Paz.

that means peace.

she named him.

It was Montessorri school, what can I say?

One minor problem/solution to my hippy education, was an entirely different kind of

hippy education.....

Paz..

laid...

eggs.

We have ourselves a fine pair of lesbian doves.

OH, yeah, we got a sex education! Except for the whole mysterious bird vent system.. google it.

...and I kid you not...they would do it night and day. In the cage, out of the cage, on a table, in the air, all possibilities are open for youthful, happy, healthy lady birds.

After that awakening education to the class, Paz and Princess came home.

In college...yup...still alive... I decided they should live with me because they could die at any moment and I needed to be there emotional for them in that momentous occasion. Did they? Nope. But I'm pretty sure princess had a stroke one night in the fall of 2003, when I heard a little but sturdy thump in the dead of night...1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds.....and then the slight shaky pitter patter of uneven little birds feet. Princess didn't walk quite the same after that.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2007.

Yup. She finally kicked the bucket. After 1998-2007 R.I.P. my darling Princess.

Which leaves forgotten about Paz. Like many college aged young ladies with adventures to go and get done, I left her on my parents, deciding I was unable in my chaotic, crazy youth to watch over a small tiny bird that sits in a cage. I know, I'm lame.

Which brings us to now!

Paz is our official first pet as a married couple.

I always thought...dude, I'm NEVER going to be one of those lame couples who practice having babies by purchasing a pet...but I have incredible news....

Rodolfo is FINALLY in love with a small animal! It's a miracle! (He hates dogs, it's his thing, kind of like hating cheese...which both also happen to be the two things I've always obsessed the most about! Coincidence? Or some form of sick personal psychological torture? Perhaps!)

So, for the next two months we will fulfill our suburbanite household requirements

4 bed 2 baths, check

pet, check

patio set, check

What will happen next?

my kitchen

I've been living in Madison since 2001.
Yup, 8 years.
Long enough to say goodbye to my college roomies and say hello to a husband.

Most people leave town after school, but I stuck around for the R man.
And in sticking, I also stuck to my kitchen, which grew and grew and grew.

Last night, throwing random vegetables into a pot, I realized what I'll miss the most about normal life.

My KITCHEN!!!!
How will I live without a veggie peeler?
And our gorgeous set of knives?
wine glasses?

Ever since my mom purchased my first copper bottomed pots (on a super rebate sale at Rainbow foods) back in my first ghetto apartment in college, I've been in love with my kithen gadgets....those, and my wine vacuum pumper thingy! SO COOL!

I know we'll come back to claim them, they aren't gone forever, but an entire year of not cooking? No kitchen? No creating/destroying/exploding? It's hard to imagine.

One of my dreams about living in Asia is the food! Pad thai's, currys, I have this vision in my mind that I might have the guts to hire someone to teach me to cook Thai, not U.S. restaurant thai, the real deal! Sticky rice for example! I've tried many times and every time, failed horribly.

When I worked at a Thai Restaurant a few years back, all the girls I worked with were incredible cooks. I would ask them how to make sticky rice, this is what they would say:
"oh! So easy! First you...and then!...and then....and then...and then... then...that's it!"

uh.... yeah....

perhaps we could rent a kitchen in Thailand? Just for a day here and there? But, it won't be the same.
Not knowing where the forks are, or the can opener, or the salt.

I also wonder what foods I will miss the most. Pizza? Ice cream? a cheese sandwich?
Or will I miss none of these, gorging myself on summer rolls and mangos?

It's exciting and terrifying to give up gastronomic control. Hopefully we'll come out the better for it...that is, if we don't accidentally eat poop and come down with an "ailment" like some unlucky travelers do... and the lack of uncooked veggie eating is also highly difficult.... I can sense myself rawing it up recently, trying to make up for my future lack in fresh veggies...

So, I have 2 more months to make every oven related American classic.
Bring it on Betty Crocker!