I always wondered when I watched Rachael Ray’s show who the heck had the job of making all the cute little labels that are on the cans and boxes of food. Well, it turns out that this guy gets to do it! If you read the article, he came up with the product lines on his own and he gets to put random phrases on the packaging… Make sure to look at the gallery to get his true feeling about pickles. My favorite part of the graphic design class I took in college was “making over” existing logos and graphics, so I think this job would be a ball! I wonder how many inside jokes are on this packaging… From what he says though, it sounds like Rachael has never paid enough attention to notice the details of what he puts on there, though! What a shame.
Also found on RR’s website (how I ended up on this site, I don’t remember)… bacon-wrapped tater tots. What a delicious and savory appetizer that sounds like! We might just have to try making that one at our next dinner party!
Oak is playing in the sand volleyball league at IBM with some of our other friends. I went to practice with him last night, and now both of my hands are bruised. I am too sensitive for volleyball! No wonder it hurt so much every time I hit the ball.. LOL. I do think I had a personal record for the number of serves that actually went over the net though. Ding! Also, playing in the sand is a little nicer because diving (or in my case, falling over) does not hurt as much. Suh-weet!
I’ve signed up for my new host and am currently working on getting all my old content uploaded! Yay! I can’t believe how smoothly that all went. So, things will be “in construction” for awhile, but hopefully this new host will be better than the old crappy one. Plus, it’s cheaper! Ding. My FTP is going crazy getting all the old photos and stuff uploaded, and I’ve got some organizing to do with the entries that I imported into Wordpress (again). Unfortunately I’ve lost everything from December 2006-May 2007, but I’m hoping to write a summary of what I wrote about (LOL) by looking at the emails that I got from the comments. At least, it will help me remember what the heck I was talking about!
If this can tell you one thing – export your entries often and BACK UP! I would have thought that the host would do that for me, but apparently phpwebhosting is not high-tech enough for that. Boo to them. So far, Bluehost is rocking. I’ll keep you updated!
On Sunday, Oak was brewing so I decided to check out the Rugged Wearhouse in Cary. Mom let me in on this secret gem a few months ago, when I bought a cute orange purse and a Hello Kitty t-shirt at one of the locations near Concord. Little did I know, there are several locations in the Triangle… we’ve also got Rugged Wearhouse in Durham and Raleigh! Craziness.
Anyway, you could consider Rugged Wearhouse to be a cheaper, ghettoer version of TJ Maxx. Actually, I think maybe just cheaper. As in, most of the t-shirts are $5. Most pants are under $15. Dressier tops are between $7-10. You get the idea. You’ve got to be in what I can only call the “thrifting” frame of mind, though. Willing to sort through racks and racks of clothes, and to try EVERYTHING on. A lot of the merchandise is either a) from a no-name brand, so who knows how the sizing works or b) is a second from a big-name store, like Express. So you have to be careful to make sure that it fits, and that there aren’t any holes or stains. Not exactly made for a half an hour stop to browse.
I managed to find quite a few things. Only shirts this time. Since I pretty much only wear t-shirts on nights and weekends now, being such a “professional office person” (haha), this is a perfect place and price point to update that wardrobe. A little bit harder to find were office appropriate shirts, but I did find two; a button-up blouse from New York and Company that has little French people and Eiffel towers all over it (what my mom would describe as a “Carrie shirt”), and a nautical-eque red and white blouse. Ding!
I got some shorts for Oak but they didn’t end up working out. Oh darn, we’ll have to go back to return them….
This past weekend was the NextStep picnic. It was Oak’s idea to roast his very first whole pig for the event. So, we rented a giant pig cooker you can tow, acquired a pig from a friend-of-a-friend who can acquire pigs directly from a farmer, and a group of the guys spent the night tending to the piggy while she roasted with wood chips and vinegar basting.
Though I did not personally have much to do with the pig cooking process (I was busy arranging all the side dishes and making piggy cupcakes), it was delicious! People seemed pretty impressed, but some were disappointed that the head of the pig wasn’t there – we just had the two sides of it. I imagine if we did have one with a head, that the number of people freaked out would probably outnumber this number of folks who wanted to gnaw on a pig ear. So what’s your thoughts – with head or without?
I posted pictures of our container garden. Oak has gone all out on the tomato and herb plants this year!
Well, we’ve been going to the Flying Saucer for trivia on Tuesdays for the last 6 months or so, where we shared cheese fries (which we deemed the only “worth it” menu item), drank beer, and tried our best to answer the trivia questions. (key word: “tried”. I am a useless addition to our trivia team.) Then, they used to have a free buffet with crappy jalapeño poppers and taquitos, which only Oak consumed. The nights concluded with a visit to Snoopy’s for $1 hot dog night.
This week we decided for a change of pace, and went to Woody’s in Cary for their trivia night. Well, not only was the food selection far more diverse (hello.. 4 pages long!), there was a beer special. Plus, the pace of the trivia was soo much better (faster), and the “trivia dude” had far more personality than the Flying Saucer girl, who could not even pronounce our team name, Lazer Novice. She always said, “Noh-vice” for some reason. LOL. Though we did not win any prizes, we decided that Woody’s trivia was a clear winner.
This past Saturday, Oak and I went to the Durham Farmer’s market, and from there ended up visiting various places in Durham. We decided after the market that we had to go buy a headlight for Oak’s car, so Lola (our trusty GPS) took us to a very ghetto Autozone. Luckily, a Biscuitville was right next door that lightened our mood about the shady AutoZone experience.
Anyway, at breakfast we decided we’d take a walk around Duke Gardens. However, along the way we found the Durham Visitors Center. We picked up a few brochures for some places we’ve been meaning to visit, when we saw a poster for an herb, garden, and craft festival at the Duke Homestead. So, we went there instead. It was pretty neat. One of the Durham tobacco growers from back in the day, Washington Duke, had this house and tobacco farm on this site. They have it all restored to what it looked like “back in the day”, and there were a bunch of people re-enacting activities like candle making, etc. The festival had a variety of herbs for sale, and some old style handmade crafts, like old dolls, homemade jams and jellies, etc.
We went on an “edible plant nature walk.” It was pretty interesting. The guy that led the walk is a part of this club, I guess, that collects plants, etc. from nature and gets together to make a meal. Of course, I’m pretty sure they supplement it with other stuff. I can’t imagine getting full off of clovers and honeysuckle. The guy seemed impressed with Oak’s knowledge of edible plants.
By then we realized that we could go to the Art grows in Durham at SEEDS. There was a sign up at the DIG tent at the farmers market about it. DIGS (Durham Inner-City Gardeners) is this program for urban kids in Durham, and they run this huge garden and sell the produce at the farmers market. It’s pretty neat. We got to tour their huge garden/farm, and see the community gardens too. The kids were very enthusiastic about their garden, and they were growing a good variety of stuff! We’ll have to make some effort to take a look at their stuff at the farmers market more often. We also got a locopop and a delicious macaroon cookie. Yum!
A few weekends ago, Oak and I went for a jaunt to Washington, DC. Here are the pictures. Some linked highlights:
- We finally had breakfast at Ikea. At $1.99, it was so worth it. LOL. Though, the french toast sticks were barely edible.
- Our cheap place to stay in DC. We took the train into the city from Springfield-Franconia.
- Touring the National Zoo. I had heard about the Pandas and wanted to visit. After about 2 hours, we started to leave and realized that we hadn’t even seen half the zoo. The best part is that it’s FREE. Now we pretend that all our tax dollars go to the zoo.
- Lunch at Chinatown Express in Chinatown. Girls in the front window were making dumplings when we were there, so we had to get some of those, along with hand stretched noodles and some chinese soups. Mmm. We also got some desserts at the place next door that were pretty yummy.
- We went to a bunch of the national monuments in Washington – the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, etc. It’s crazy how close all of it is together. We walked between it all (though maybe this was a mistake, I hurt from the 12 hours of walking for 3 days!)
- We walked around Georgetown, with intentions to get dinner there. Only we were so full from the lunch at Chinatown express that nothing looked all that appealing. I think the highlight of this trip was going in the huge Dean and Deluca store. Talk about overpriced! These people need A Southern Season!
- A surprisingly good brunch at the Oasis on the Occoquan.
I found it really suprising that this article recommends “dark wash” jeans to wear to a job interview. While I think that everything they describe would be fine for everyday wear in a casual office, I don’t see them being appropriate for an interview, no matter how casual the office. The title of the article should be changed to “what to wear in a business casual office. ” – after all for the interview, aren’t you supposed to dress slightly nicer than the employees of the company?
