Pizza!

I think pizza is one of the best concoctions ever invented. My Studly Hubby agrees. Like many Americans, we have a long tradition of frequently eating and relishing pizza. Unlike many Americans, we prefer to make it ourselves, dough included. Actually, let me re-phrase that: we prefer when my Studly Hubby makes it himself (I have nothing to do with it except enjoying it once it's made). He uses our breadmaker to make the dough, then rolls it out, makes his own tomato sauce, adds some veggies and pepperoni and cheese, and bakes it up. He claims it's quite easy. And it's amazingly delicious. The secret is in the ingredients... frequent pizzas provides lots of opportunities to explore pepperoni and cheese and different ways to make tomato sauce. My Studly Hubby's pizza is pretty much... perfect!

Shown is the remaining half of an extra-green pepper and pepperoni pizza still sitting on the pizza stone that was used to bake it.

Delicious!

The Ride Around Lake Washington

Today we rode ALL THE WAY AROUND LAKE WASHINGTON! This is a 55 mile ride and took us about 5 hrs.


Our route started from Seattle took us through Renton (home of Boeing), Bellevue, Medina (where Bill Gates lives), Kirkland, Bothell (near wine country), back around the north end and down into Seattle again. The East Side of the lake (Bellevue, Kirkland) is a mysterious place where techies go every day like my Studly Hubby who works at Microsoft in Redmond. Most people just cross a bridge by car to get there, but one can also go all the way around by bike!

Around the halfway point, we stopped at a beautiful park (in Kirkland) for some lawn-sprawling and some lunch:

This view of Lake Washington is pretty much what we were looking at for the whole ride, from various angles. It was an amazing ride!

As is typical for Seattle, we got some rain on the ride. Strangely, it was only raining in Seattle so for most of the ride it was sunny and beautiful but the last 15 miles or so, as we were coming back into Seattle, we had intermittant drizzle and rain. By the time we got home we were soaked and very dirty. We peeled off our clothes and put them straight into the washer. Then we showered, ate, napped, ate again, and now (at 8 pm) we're finally feeling recovered.

Some great quotes from the ride:

"Who put this hill here?"
"Ack! My bike is stuck! Oh, wait, it's my muscles."
"It's Burgermaster! Speed up or I might accidentally stop there, and that would be horrible!"

Our bike team is doing very well, and we should be all set for our charity ride at the end of September. This is most of the team:

I am in yellow and my Studly Hubby is next to me in black.

We are over halfway to our goal for fundraising! If you want to help out, go here to make a donation. Any amount helps! And a BIG THANK YOU to those who have already donated!!!!

The Honey-Do List

Have you heard of a honey-do list? It's the list you make for your spouse or partner ('honey, can you do this?') of housework etc that is inevitable in a long-term relationship.

These days, my poor Studly Hubby has a long honey-do list. Since I hurt my back, I haven't been able to do very much of the housework. Plus, it's the summer and there's a lot going on. Thus, there is a need for a list. So my Studly Hubby, a long-time fan of techie solutions to everyday problems, wanted to write a program to create a honey-do list that I can update from work or wherever. Then he discovered that iPhone has an application for this! It's called Zenbe, and you can create lists that you sync with other people so you can both see and update the lists.

We both installed Zenbe, and now we each have a list. It's great! And it's so much fun, my Studly Hubby barely notices how much housework he's doing.

Major Bike Surgery

I have a really priceless bike. It's a super-80s racing bike (Giant) that was rebuilt by a friend's bike-guru dad. I think he got it at a garage sale for something under $20. He put all new components and wheels on it and gave it to me complete with a speedometer (fun!). My Studly Hubby got a matching 'his' version. After we got the bike, we switched out the seat and put new tape on my Studly Hubby's handlebars and new pedals on mine (with SLP clips, which have been my nemesis). Then we started training for this crazy bike ride we're doing in September.

Well the bike needs more work. This week I raised the seat, bought another saddle, adjusted it a few times, then went to work on raising the handlebars (for my sore and achy back). I had to rip out the brake cable and speedometer (and retape the handlebars), put on a handlebar extendor, then put everything back together. I couldn't have done it without my Studly Hubby's help, and lots of advice from Recycled Cycles down the street. It was our first time messing with brakes so I stopped by Recycled Cycles on my way home from work today to get some more advice and do some final adjustments.

Well it was hot in there while we were standing around, and my bike got grumpy with me for taking so long and messing with it so much. After I left the store, I hopped on and the handlebars turned one way and the seat turned another and I fell right over. All the bolts had loosened while I was standing around in the bike store! It was pretty hot in there but I didn't think it was THAT hot. So I took it aside and told it to behave! and then I walked it back home and this time got some pliers and tightened everything with all my might (and some of my Studly Hubby's might too). I think we got it this time.

Now to get used to those clip-in pedals - maybe I should start wearing knee and elbow pads!!

My induction into iPhone world

My Studly Hubby finally caved and got an iPhone. And while he was waiting in line (that's right, a month later there are still lines) he decided to get two so we can have matching his and hers phones. So now I have an iPhone. I didn't originally want it, but let me tell you, it is pretty cool. I can check facebook, email, take pictures (and email them), look up phone numbers (on the web), change settings, check the weather, and track myself all without breaking any fingers or toes. It's amazing.

Facebook

One of the things I like about Facebook is the Status Updates. Anytime you want you can change your status (the message by your profile picture) to tell everyone what you are up to. For example, mine says right now "josie is a speedwalking demon" because I just got back from a kick-butt speedwalk (that's right, speedwalking is the new running, and it kicks butt) and wanted to brag about it.

But I just noticed something funny that nobody will ever notice unless I point it out, thus it has to be pointed out. Earlier today, my Studly Hubby's Status said, "Derek says, "eating dandelions makes you pee" and at the same time, my Status said, "Josie just went potty." Is that a funny coincidence or what? It turns out, I HAD been eating dandelions... and they DO make you go pee! But that story is for another post.

A toast with a flight of champagne

My Studly Hubby is so Studly that he recently got a new job at Microsoft just because he's so good looking and super muscley. As before when he was contracting, he will be working for MSN Entertainment as a web developer (which requires both stunning good looks and bulging muscles). He contracted there for the past year and had a fantastic experience, and now he will be in a full-time position with all the sweet Microsoft perks like 'the blue badge' that gets you on any bus for free and makes you an instant comrade with any other 'blue-badge' Microsoftee around the city.

To celebrate this awesome new job, we took ourselves out to the Purple Cafe in Kirkland, which is a wine bar with really exceptional food. For those of you who are not familiar with the very metro wine bar, it is a place wine snobs go that is sort of like a bar but fancier. We are not wine snobs but we are wine snob wannabes, so we have been making the rounds to the wine bars (and the many wineries here in the state of Washington) to try to get hip to the wine snob world.

One of the great things about a wine bar is that they serve wine in little taste sizes (1/3 of a glass or so) and then bring it out with a full description as part of a taster set (called a 'flight', usually 3-4 types of wine). They carefully place each glass on a typed label and description (as shown above) so you don't get it mixed up with the others, and then you can delicately sip each one and comment on it to your friends and read the description and munch on little munchies and be as snobby as you like while you decide which one you like best.

Because we were celebrating, we got the champagne flight, which included two from France, one from Spain and one from Italy. Before the food came, we each tried each one and then ranked them (each of our ranks were completely different) and then after we got the food we had to totally re-rank them because our 'palate' was changed by the food (it really was! my #4 changed to #1).

Although both the food and the wine were both excellent, we couldn't resist the Dairy Queen temptation afterwards (don't worry, we skipped dessert at the bar). Since they have never heard of crunch cones in the Pacific Northwest, I was forced to get the Brownie Earthquake which turned out to be quite pleasant.

What a celebration!