Happy Match Day (and birthday, Dad!)

Today is Carl's "Match Day." I'll let Carl and Kathleen spread the news of where they're headed next, but since they were busy doing match stuff today, I got the pleasure of getting Lily ready this morning and taking her to school. We've had some great conversations lately -here are some snippets.

In bed this morning...

Lily: "Where's Mommy and Daddy?"
Ingrid: "They're at Daddy's work. It's match day."
Lily: "Match day? Be back?"
Ingrid: "Yup. I'm going to take you to school and then Mommy and Daddy will pick you up."
Lily: "No. Not daddy. I told him no pick me up. Just Mommy. No daddy in the car. Mommy and Ingrid. Daddy with Terra."
Ingrid: "Well, we'll see what we can do."
Lily: "Put them on the naughty chair."

Then on the way to school...

Ingrid: "Did you know it's match day today?"
Lily: "Go to school and then match day?"
Ingrid: "Well, it's actually match day all day long."
Lily: "Hmmm."
Ingrid: "Today Mommy and Daddy find out where you're going to move to."
Lily: "Let's go right now."

Some other favorite recent Lily-isms include:

• Carl plays a game with Lily where he says a piece of food is his and nobody better touch it. Lily inevitably takes the bait and ends up eating the food and Carl yells and says, "Who ate my food?!" The other day after several rounds of this game, Lily announced with a laugh, "Daddy's a funny guy!"
• Last Friday when Carl, Ryan and I were playing Monopoly and Lily was being our "banker", Kathleen told her it was time for bed. Very seriously she stated, "You go. I'm working."

It's going to be very strange to not hear her voice all the time when they move this summer!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Saturday I spent the day in Fell's Point celebrating an early St. Patrick's Day on a bit of a pub crawl. They don't do St. Patrick's Day up quite as big in Baltimore as they do in Chicago, but it was fun all the same. (And honestly, I was really happy to not have to stand in lines to get into bars at 2 in the afternoon.) I was a little lax with taking pictures, but here are a few....

Christine decides she's not really a fan of Irish Car Bombs. (Who can blame her?)

I'm not sure if this was in response to something she drank or something just hit Beth's fancy.

It was a beautiful 60 degree + day in Baltimore. Another difference between St. Pats in Baltimore and Chicago.

In my St. Patrick's Day best.

Some pictures from San Fran

A little too cold to take a dip.

Aquarium of the Bay. Jaws IV anyone?

Out to dinner

Alcatraz. Finally where they belong.

Sarah shows off her moves on the cable cars

Thoughts from yesterday's flight 294

I’m sitting on the plane coming back to Baltimore from a few day vacation in San Francisco with Sarah and Allyson. As always, we had a great time. Rarely do you find a trio of more relaxed girls. Not much ruffles our feathers. We don’t really care much what we’re doing. We all run at about the same speed and don’t get too caught up in all the things we should be doing.

In the planning stages, we all (without prompting) came up with one thing we’d like to do while we were in SF and figured the rest would all just kind of fall into place. And it did. We walked China Town, visited the Sea Lions, went on a tour of Alcatraz, checked out the redwoods, spent a day in Sonoma and Napa, found the Ghirardelli chocolate shop, went down the most crooked street in San Francisco, hung off the sides of cable cars, and more. And as proof that we apparently have grown up from our college years, we were up each day by 7 and back in our hotel room by 8:30 each night. Guess we never were really the biggest partiers anyway. :-)

Mostly it was just really nice to catch up (face-to-face) and get to explore something new together again. It’s extraordinarily comforting to know that despite our distance from one another, we are able to start up where we left off and simply enjoy each other.

Tubing is great!

Last night my Meetup group went tubing at a ski slope in Pennsylvania. I'd never been tubing before but have been looking forward to it for the past couple of months. I wasn't disappointed. We got up there around 5:30 last night and spent a few hours spinning down slopes and trying desperately to stop before bowling people over at the end. It was great! I couldn't quite get the pictures to do the slopes justice (they don't show the steepness particularly well, but trust me - when you're at the top - it feels steep.) It's a bit of a drive to go up too frequently, but definitely something I want to do again!

The view from the base of the slopes.

Shannon riding the big conveyor belt up to the top.

Ryan after getting some serious air on the way down.

A view from the top.

Maryland = $

I've decided Maryland is the biggest nickel and diming state I've ever known. I have been back and forth since I got here about getting Maryland license plates. I was going to do it, but then I found out they have this rule about getting a Maryland State Safety Inspection before they'll give you plates. This just seemed like a big annoyance to me (not to mention an expense I didn't really want to get into.) Plus, I'm just against this. When I went in to a place to see what the cost was of one of these "inspections", they informed me that it's an $80 charge pass/fail and if there's anything wrong with it, it has to be fixed and then re-inspected (for another charge.) When I argued the price, he states, "Well, it's a one time fee - you never have to have it done again." This I had to just laugh at. "So, you're telling me that in Maryland, they do a safety check on your car once and then your car continues to deteriorate, but they never check it again?" He just gave me a look.

Anyway, I decided to press my luck and not go through with the inspection. Then recently I got a notice in the mail saying that I need to register my car. So, I decided to be a good, law-abiding citizen and get my plates changed.

So, Friday I made an appointment and went in to get my safety inspection. The car was fine except my serpentine belt needed to be replaced. I'm actually glad they found that and fixed it before it caused any real problems. At any rate, I walked out of that place paying about $130.

Then I went to the Motor Vehicle Administration and sat there for 2 hours waiting for someone to help me. I finally got up to a person, she did her fancy computer work and announces to me, "OK, that will be $569."

What??? Why???

Well, come to find out, Maryland charges you a 6% tax on the value of your vehicle to bring it into the state. This is just about the craziest thing I have ever heard. I ask the clerk to explain, but she can't. Her only comment is, "Well, at least your car is a 2002 - just think if you had a new car!" Yeah, just imagine. But this is my point precisely. My car is a 2002 - and you're going to charge me $500 to register it here? That's nuts.

I argued and argued and finally to some avail. I just can't see paying that much to register my car here, when I'm not planning on staying longer than 6-9 months. After explaining this several times, the clerk finally dropped her voice and offered me a potential way out. We'll have to see if it works.

Done with Doctors

As many of you know, I have been very sick these past two weeks. It started with nasty aches and pains, accompanied by rotating fevers and chills. I was waking up at least twice a night just drenched in sweat. It was awesome. You know it's bad when you work from home and you still have to call in sick. After about 7 days the aches and pains finally left and were replaced with an intense sore throat. And then I happened to look at my throat in the mirror one evening and saw nice white spots on my tonsil.

Due to these fun symptoms, I went to the doctor twice in the past two weeks. The first time I went to an urgent care center. It was actually a relatively nice place, but there was certainly a bit of that "if you're not dying, we're not worried" atmosphere. The nurse was, well, less than friendly, but I got her back by coughing on her when she stuck a cotton swab up my nose for a flu test. :-) The doctor who saw me was actually nice, but not what I would call thorough. He basically said it wasn't "the flu" and was probably a para-flu. The fact that I didn't have any cold like symptoms didn't seem to bother him. Anyway, basically I was dismissed with the orders to eat as much as I could and come back if it wasn't better in 10 days.

Then, after I noticed the spots on my throat I decided I should go to another docter and make sure it wasn't strep or something great like that. I actually got an appointment in a regular doctor's office, which I thought was a good thing so that perhaps I could find a primary care physician at the same time. Didn't turn out that way. I ended up with one of my favorite kind of doctors - the ones that just give you these looks like you're totally wasting their time. He put one foot in the door and said, "It's probably not strep. And if it's not, you realize there's nothing I can do about it." Off to a great start, I forced him to listen to a quick background of how I'd been feeling the past 2 weeks. He still had one foot out the door. He responded with, "That doesn't change anything. " After the nurse administered the strep test, he came back in (obviously from eating lunch because some of it was still lodged in his beard) and told me it wasn't strep and began to walk out the door. A little exasperated I stopped him with, "Look. I'm only pressing this because this is the 2nd time I've been to the doctor in two weeks and I would like to not come back. Is there anything else this could be?" This made him pause for a brief moment, but after pressing on my throat for a second he ruled that there was nothing else it could be.

I HATE doctors like that.

Now, granted, it's two days later and I'm finally feeling MUCH better, so it turns out he was right, but still. I'm a new patient, I would like to think that the doctor would at least TRY to give a favorable impression. I'm sorry they booked me during his lunch, but I really didn't have anything to do with that.

Anyway, I'm done with doctors. The whole experience really made me miss my primary care physician in Chicago. She was awesome. There's a lot I don't miss that I thought I would, but I definitely miss a) my doctor, b) Irie's daycare/boarding place and c) Jamba Juice. So far I have not been able to find anything that even comes close to comparing with any of these three things.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

Kathleen told me about this fun site where you put in a picture of yourself and it comes back with your closest Celebrity Look-alikes. It changes slightly depending on what picture I use, but Amanda Bynes always comes out on top. Strange, but it really could be worse. Carl comes back with Mother Teresa! :-)

Random Recall

I guess I've been a little bit lax on updating what's new in my world. Mostly because there hasn't been a lot that's really "new". Maybe that sounds a little boring, but I have to say, I'm enjoying life just the way it is right now.

Life at BELL has settled down somewhat. I still have my momentary, "Why in the world am I doing this?" thoughts and I still think the program needs some serious organizational help, but all in all, I'm enjoying it more. After the holidays, they combined the 5th and 6th grade classes (because the 5th graders didn't have a certified teacher in their room.) This has proved to be a bit difficult, mostly because the grades are following two different curriculum, so it's basically resulted in me working with the 5th graders and the teacher in the room taking on the 6th graders. It works OK, but I don't think any of the kids are getting the full benefit of how the program is supposed to work. But, I'm actually kind of enjoying my 5th graders. They're trouble-makers, but the kind of trouble-makers that think they're much worse than they actually are. So far, this mostly means that they do things like when I ask them to write stories using new vocabulary words, they write them about each other and how one of them throws like a girl, or something to that effect. Or they tell each other to shut up and then they say, "Ohhhh, you said the s-word."

One of my favorite boys in this class (we'll call him "T") apparently told his mother that the kids don't really do anything at BELL, so the first day he got moved over to my room, she stopped in and said that she was thinking about pulling him out since they weren't doing anything. I explained that he had just been moved into this room and he'd been working on stuff that day. She decided to keep him in for awhile and see how it goes. So since then, I've been on "T" reminding him to do his work, stay on task, etc so that he can't tell his mom he's not doing anything. On Tuesday, he finally looked up at me and said, "Man, Ms. D, you're on me like a tattoo." I've been using that phrase ever since.


Life at home is good too. Lily is still constantly entertaining me. Some recent comments that have made me laugh have been:

• Yesterday we were playing "horsey" and she fell off my back. I asked if she was OK and she jumped up and yelled, "I'm TUFF!"


• When I was gone one evening last week, she went over to Irie to pet her and said, "Don't worry, Irie. Your mommy be home soon."


• She also calls me Miss Ingrid about half the time which I find hysterical. It's like she needs that identifier, but she hasn't figured out "Aunt" yet. She also has completely mastered saying Ingrid correctly now.


• And also how she picks up key words/phrases from the TV. She'll be seeming to pay no attention to the TV, but as she's playing, she'll suddenly repeat something that was just said and keep on going. It can result in some pretty funny commentary.

As I'm becoming a little more concerned over what comes next (work, where to live, etc), I'm still greatly enjoying my time in Baltimore. Whether it's Duckpin bowling, volleyball, happy hours after work, or trips to uniquely Baltimore places - I'm keeping busy and thoroughly enjoying getting to know people here. And still finding time to plan a few day get-away with Sarah and Allyson for early March.

Irie has become increasingly spoiled and has progressed from being fine with being left in her crate to being ok when left in the basement, to being ok with being left in my room alone at night to now insisting that she be with people at all times. This has created some issues since she's a total pain when she decides that she doesn't want to be alone. It remains to be seen how this will work out, but one thing is for sure, Irie has certainly adopted Carl and Kathleen as "her people".

And, yes, everything is going great with Ryan. I'm not sure how I found such a sweet boy, but I'm glad I did. :-)

And that, my friends, is the extent of my random recall for today.

Pictures that made me smile today

Little flasher

Lily continues to keep me more than entertained. On this particular evening she decided that first she needed her shirt and skirt off and then secondly, her coat back on. I just couldn't help snapping a few pictures. I'm sure she'll love these later in life. :-)

Welcome to the morgue

Kinda sick, I know - but it's the first thing that comes to mind when you walk into the family room these days.

Lily has taken to covering up her babies with blankets to put them "to sleep." I'm sure this is perfectly normal, but since she covers their whole bodies it gives a kind of creepy effect. As always, it's highly entertaining to live with a 2-year-old.

It's that time again

As has become common-place for me I wanted to take a minute to look back on my 2007 Resolutions and let you know how I did. (And of course provide a few for the year to come as well.)

2007 Resolutions

• Take a vacation. A real one. (I did. I went to Mexico for a glorious week.)
• Find a new place to live. (Went above and beyond on this one. Moved all the way to Baltimore.)
• Find a new p-doc. I've been putting this one off way too long. (Yup. But then I moved. Go figure.)
• Put more effort into maintaining my old friendships while still building new ones. (I think I did a better job of this in 2007. You guys can let me know if you disagree.)
• Break past my indecisive dating patterns (This one probably still remains to be seen, but I'm very happy in the relationship I'm in at the moment.)
• Be nicer to myself, especially by reminding myself that I'm only human and not above the feelings we all experience (I still have to catch myself now and again, but I'm quick to remind myself of this at least.)

2008 Resolutions

• Get back to working out at least 4 times a week. (See that's what happens when you don't put it in your resolutions for a year.)
• Decide where I'm going to live next.
• Decide what career I want next. Oh, and get a job. (Those might need to be separate, I'm not sure yet.)
• Read at least 3 really good books.
• Take advantage of not having a full-time job and do some traveling!
• Avoid going crazy during the 2008 elections. Allow only limited time paying attention to what's going on. Ignorance is sometimes bliss.

That's a good start. Let's see where the year takes us!

Pond Hockey

Irie did her best to keep up with the puck and occasionally even got hold of it, which led to an early end to our pond hockey fun.

Phone Fun

"Can you hold on a second? I've got another call."

So many people to talk to, so little time.

Is it impolite to just hang up?

A smattering of pictures from recent Christmas festivities

Santa Claus enters. Notice Lucy's bear hug and Lainey's rapt attention?

I love this picture. It's like she's doing some Michael Jackson move.

My what a big bone you have Irie.

Irie decided Dad (the non-dog lover) was a great person to cuddle with.

I think this shirt is hysterical. Thankfully so does Zander.

Merry Christmas!

This post will cover a little of this and a little of that. Primarily because I am at my grandparent's house currently and internet access is a little... shaky. The good news is - they have it. The bad news is, it's pretty slow and is really only set up on their computer. Because of this I'm not going to bother to try to break this into multiple posts or get pictures up right now. That will just have to wait until I'm back in high-speed territory.

First off, last Friday Ryan took me to a new contestant bar for the best bar burger in baltimore competition - The Perry Hall Inn. I have to give him props - it was much better than the first place. It was definitely a dive bar and the clientele was... interesting, but really that's the kind of place I like, so it works. It's also about 5 minutes from the house which is good for me, but possibly not the best place to make an after work hangout because it's further from other people. Mostly I think Ryan wants it in the running because he used to be a regular there and has some pull with the staff. Hey, that's alright with me. I like when bartenders are nice. And Ryan's told me some fun stories about the place, so we'll see. The search will continue because two bars is just not enough to base a competition off of, but it's certainly in the running.

Then Saturday morning, I took off for the farm (aka my grandparent's in Indiana.) I am used to driving on off days (the day before most people take off or the day after most have to be back at work), but for whatever reason I chose to drive on the Saturday before Christmas this year. Let me tell you - it was a bit insane and I now know why I drive on off days. I have never seen the roads like this and was amazed how many people were at the oasis. There were literally no parking spots and lines out the door. Needless to say, Irie and I pretty much drove straight through without stopping.

Yesterday was a relatively low key day. Just some shopping and cooking and general catching up with the fam. And then today was our big Deetz family Christmas. I got the great task of dressing my cousin, Davey, up as Santa Clause (pictures will follow) in the antiquated santa suit. Despite a few tears in the suit and a pillow that was a little too square to be a belly, the little girls (all under the age of three) all seemed to enjoy getting to see Santa in action. Ever since then Lily's been telling everyone (with a note of disbelief), "Santa came today." It's definitely more fun to have little ones around at Christmas time.

Tomorrow morning will be the smaller family Christmas (Dad, Zander, Lily, Carl, Kathleen and me) and then I suspect we will be found playing some ice hockey out on the pond. In theory the ice is thick enough to stand on, but Carl did fall in earlier today. Dad claims he wasn't listening to instruction. I forsee some hypothermia in at least one of our futures. :-)

Some favorite memories from the festivities this week so far include:

• Lily standing at the basement door looking outside calling, "Santa, come inside and give me presents. I have a special donut for you. Santa...."
• Lucy, after receiving a stuffed reindeer from Santa, telling her parents, "Santa brought me a reindeer. That's what I've always wanted."
• My dad receiving a shirt from Santa that says, "Mom likes me best." A long standing family joke.
• My grandma asking me if I met my new boy at church. And me responding, "No. Actually it was at a pub crawl."
• And just the general way that stories spread around this place. It's simply amazing.

Can't wait to share pictures and the future stories to come. In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good-night.

The best burger bar in Baltimore challenge

Back in Chicago I had this great burger place that several of us went to every Tuesday night. It's probably the only place I've ever been a "regular" at - and certainly the only place I walked in and my drink of choice was instantly brought over without having to place an order.

So, I decided to make a little challenge for myself here in Baltimore and see if I can find a comparable place. I may never become a regular - but I like to at least know it's there to quiet my great bar burger cravings.

Last night I drug Ryan out with me to check out the first of what will likely be many trials. I think we both agreed that the burgers were not the best (way too salty), but the place was definitely fun. It had foosball, pool, and a shuffleboard-like game. It also had a stripper pole and comfy couches. All in all, it's probably not a place I'll frequent when I'm hungry - but it definitely has hang-out potential.

Me on the pole.

Ryan on the pole.

They also had a replica of the awesome leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Love it.

The Ultimate Sugar Cookie

As Kathleen mentioned in Pumpkin News, I've been keeping myself busy with Christmas cookies here lately. It has long been a desire of mine to find the "perfect" sugar cookie recipe and I have to say - this year's is as close as I've ever come. These cookies are soft and plump, stand up to icing with no breaking and are VERY tasty. Even better, they seem to stand up to being stored without losing their softness (not that they seem to be hanging around very long here.)

I made the first batch a few days ago and then made some more with Lily yesterday. It's a much messier process with a two-year-old and several cookies didn't make it to the oven due to just a little too much touching, but all in all, we had a good time and they turned out remarkably well.

And since this is the season of sharing and I'm sure there must be a few of you out there looking for a good recipe, I thought I'd pass this one along. Enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.5 cups butter (or margarine) softened
1 cup white granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Cream together sugar and butter until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Cover and refrigerate dough (at least one hour, but I left it in there for about 3.)

Roll out on floured surface to approximately 1/2 inch thick. Cut out shapes as desired.

Bake at 400 degrees on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 minutes.

A trip down memory lane

I've been spending some time tonight organizing photos on my computer and for the first time since I moved to Baltimore, I'm feeling a little pang of home-sickness.

It's funny to look back on all these old pictures from college and the years since then and realize I'm not there anymore. It's not really full blown home-sickness - I think mostly because a lot of those days are over now, whether I'm in Chicago or not. As much fun as it was, I'm not in college anymore. My friends don't live just down the hall. And most of us really do have lives that involve waking up early in the morning to go to work. Several of us have moved. Many are married. Some even have kids.

And mostly, I'm quite happy with how everything has turned out so far. I'm still close to my closest friends. For the most part we've all been able to evolve and still be involved in each other's lives. I'm happy with my choices and all that good stuff. But there's still that part of me that would love to be back at the cabin with Sarah, Michael and all our friends. Or going on a roadtrip.

It's strange to not have close girlfiends here. I think I'm doing fine in the making friends department, but it's not exactly the same as having Sarah or Nicole nearby. I'm used to having my shopping buddies or people I just lay around and talk about all the worldly issues with. :-) Or even the simple stuff, like heading over to Marcus and Beth's for dinner or catching a movie. There are things that are just easier with people you've known forever.

Man, I make it sound a lot worse than it is. I'm not unhappy here in the slightest. I guess all I'm trying to say is, I do miss my old world a little. Thankfully Christmas vacation is less than 2 weeks away and I'll get to reunite with a bunch of family and even spend some time in Chicago catching up on "the good ol' days." Until then - I miss you all and I can't wait to see you soon!