Not Paying the Parking Meter

So if there is one thing I hate, it is paying for parking in the city. Another thing I hate is not being able to find a good spot. So today when I found a spot directly across from the building where my class is, I saw that the meter was flashing "Out of Order" and then "See Time Limit". I was very excited. This was like the two best things! The time limit at this location is 3 hours up until 8 pm and since I was parking at 5:30, that was perfect (after 8 it is basically free and unlimited until 8am). So this made me in a slightly better mood (bad mood was from the fact that I was on my way to a final exam). I've got another final tomorrow night which I should be studying for but I can't get motivated. The end of this quarter kind of kicked my ass with all the work, so I'm feeling a bit rundown and would rather just go to bed than study for maybe one more hour.

Blood Oranges

This is a tiny blood orange I got at Trader Joe's for 35 cents. I really only bought it so I could take a picture of it, but then I sucked the blood, I mean the juice, out of it after I was done with the photo shoot, and it was quite tasty! Somewhat difficult to get the true colors to show correctly in the photo (flash = too washed out, but this is too dark) but pretty neat anyway. I think my mom used to always buy the blood orange juice from a vending machine in the teacher's lunch room at the ASIJ elementary school. I don't think you can find it here in the U.S. very easily, although I think it was made by Minute Maid.

Muji Stuff

Yuki is the best! She sent us a little package and it got here today. It had stationery items from my favorite store, Muji. For those who don't know, Muji is like the Japanese equivalent of Ikea. They make stuff that is relatively inexpensive and is generally pretty simple, but very nice. It is supposed to be the "Un-brand" but it is actually its own brand. They have a store in London and I think there are some places (such as the MOMA stores in NYC) that sell their products in the U.S. I really miss going to Muji. Pictured here are a little tray to put on your desk for pens and pencils and such, a very cute folding picture frame, and a "Cube keshi gomu" That means "Cube eraser". It's like a little puzzle of erasers. Very cool, but also kind of impractical because each piece is kind of an odd shape. But I love it.

Chad's Fabulous Cooking

Chad made some really fabulous food this weekend. Pictured here is a spinach, eggplant, tomato, and chickpea dish with jasmine rice. It is from his vegetarian Indian food cookbook. It was very authentic tasting. Kind of like palak paneer but without the cheese. We had this for dinner. If we had food like this all the time I think I could easily switch to being a vegetarian! Maybe just fish on occasion. Is this a preview of things to come after he is finished with his Master's degrees? Probably not, but oh well. Plus that's pretty far off now that he just started a new one. I know that what he really wants is for me to say that he doesn't have to work at all and can just do house stuff, but I don't think that will ever happen.

Cardboard Drop OFf

So I don't have a lot of time this weekend because I have two finals to study for, a homework assignment, and a project to finish ... but, we did find time to run a few errands including getting haircuts and going to Han Ah Reum to get groceries. So another errand was dropping off our cardboard. We don't have curbside cardboard recycling where we live, so if we want to recycle the massive amounts of cardboard we accumulate, we have to drive over to the local dropoff center. Usually there is a big garbage truck that you throw the cardboard into, but today there was no truck, just a sign pointing to the ground. So that's where we left our cardboard. I didn't show the most embarrassing part which was that almost our entire trunk was taken up by pizza boxes!! Oh well, at least we are recycling them!!

Snow? Again???

I guess I spoke too soon! If you didn't see it, I posted a photo of snow a week or so ago saying that I thought and hoped it was the last snow of the season. The forecast at that time was for increasing temperatures. Well, sure enough, the temperatures went up. They went up into the upper 70's in fact. And then overnight they dropped down to the 30's and we got SLEET all day long. I don't think there was actually any snow, but we got a good 4 or more inches of just sleet - little ice pellets. So maybe I WAS right and that WAS the last snow of the season, but this looks just about the same and has the same general effect. We shoveled the front walk thinking that it was better to get at least some done before the end of the night. Now you can't even tell we shoveled. This is lame! But at least I was working from home today because we had a plumbing issue to take care of ... So I didn't have to drive in this. I wonder if we'll be able to get out tomorrow to get our hair cuts!

No Time for Movies

So I decided to take a photo of this DVD today because Chad and I got this in the mail from Blockbuster over a month ago (I think) and we haven't finished watching it. We watched about 1 hour of it and just haven't found the time to finish. Every time I am using my computer I see the little "Sin City" icon in the corner reminding me that we haven't watched it. I think Blockbuster has recouped all the money they lost when we used to rent a crapload of movies every month for the one monthly fee of like $10. Maybe we should cancel because we just don't have time. But I really WANT to have time!