Balls

I am thankful for wine.  Mostly because I am drinking it right now.  I am also thankful for balls.  I had bunch in my mouth yesterday.  Been a while since I had balls in my mouth.  Stuffed in my mouth.  My balls also had sausage.

I can fit so many balls in here!

Tsk.  Not *those* kind of balls.  Get your dirty minds out of the gutter.  Stuffing balls.  Sausage stuffing balls.  For Thanksgiving.  I started with this:

Tube o' meat.  Appetizing.

And then I added a bunch of other stuffing-related ingredients (I should start a cooking blog).  The end result is supposed to be something along these lines:

Balls all up in my mouth.

Mine were shoved in the back corner of the oven because nobody cared about my Heather-friendly, sausage-laden balls, so they turned out more like hockey pucks than scrumptious, springy, chewy balls, but that didn't keep me from eating about 17 of them.  (I was able to eat so many because nobody else would touch my balls.  Sigh.)  I even had one with breakfast.  And another for lunch.  What can I say?  I love balls.  They're fun and delicious.

And now I want to go for a 5-mile run.

I don't run.

It's about 3ish in the afternoon and I've been trying to work since about 10 this morning.  No, true story.  I had a plan and everything.  It morphed into I WANT TO GET DRUNK, but even before that, my attempts at work-related activities were going something like this:

I am bad at working on the "weekends".

Good intentions, man.  Good intentions.  I was going to map the shit out of some maps.  And now my afternoon is pretty much this:

Just swap the limo for the couch in mom's basement and the pizza with balls
and add a TV playing "Fringe" re-runs.

It's hot as fuck in this basement, FYI, so I wish I was in a limo right now with the windows down, wind blowing through my very, very long short-ish hair (that I just cut again on Tuesday - I'm giving up on that whole "growing it out" thing.  Fuck hair.  Who needs a ponytail when one owns 14 baseball caps?)  I feel like a hot, disgusting, stuffed turkey, so I just downloaded a workout video and as soon as I am full of less wine, I'm going to workout like WHOA.  (... probably not too much 'whoa' because I am a little drunk and full of balls.  I'll take a little 'whoa' over no 'whoa' at all.)

P.S.  I <3 GIFS.

Shirlington Ho s

In today's blog post, I am going to share my Saturday adventures with you.  My seester came to visit for the weekend and much fun was had by all.  Shenanigans galore (I'm going to skip the telling of the "shenanigans" that involved laying on the couch in baggy sweatpants and stick to the fun bits).  This tale will largely be told in picture form, because we took a lot of damn pictures.

We began the day's adventures with a late breakfast at Busboys & Poets.  I had chili, Kristy had mimosas.

Ok, I had mimosas too.

Happy, in a mild mimosa fugue state, we camped out in a local Starbucks (the mild, mimosa fugue state only lasts so long before the extreme post-mimosa sleepy state settles in), where Kristy did some homework (about five minutes worth, as a matter of fact) and I did a hours and hours wee bit of work-work.   I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that we didn't get much actual work done, but our grand intentions should count for something.  We did enjoy each other's company, as well as the many silly things we found on Reddit.

As our breakfast was more of a brunch we didn't have an actual lunch, and after exhausting ourselves with all the hard work and whatnot, we were starving by 5ish.  We headed off to Jaleo -- a spectacular Spanish tapas place in Crystal City -- at 5:30 to have dinner.  With the rest of the geriatrics.

Our first course was sparkling white sangria.

According to Kristy:  "This tastes like heaven."
Also, "It looks like we're drinking vegetables.  There's a lot of green."

Next came the tiny cheese with tiny breads with tiny spreads.  And more sangria.

Heather says, "This cheese is the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth."

(says Kristy)

Needing meat (*wink*) in addition to the sangria (and mostly just to expel the horror that was the taste of goat cheese out of my mouth forever), I ordered spicy chorizo wrapped in potatoes and my oh-so-very-favorite, fried dates wrapped in bacon (why yes, they are as amazing as they sound).

I look the same in every single picture ever, so here, the important things:
booze and fried bacony goodness.

In honor of my I WILL TRY LOTS OF NEW THINGS month, I threw caution to the wind and ordered Conejo En Salmorego Con Pure De Albaricoques, or Canary Island-style (tiny, fluffly, adorable) rabbit confit with apricot puree.

Skeptical Heather is skeptical.

But Heather, the charming and graceful eater that she is, dug in with gusto.  (Why do I keep referring to myself in the third person?)

Does my mouth need to be open that wide?

And you know what?  Cute, sweet, fluffy little bunnies ARE DELICIOUS!

On the outside I looked like this...

... but on the inside, my mouth and tummy were doing this.

Dessert seemed like the next course of action (see what I did there?), but looking at the dessert menu, we were flummoxed.

Kristy:  I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THE WORDS HERE.

Truth be told, we were in such a happy, blissful sangria state, it didn't matter much what we ordered.  We had something with apples in some kind of sauce in some kind of magical bread pouch-thing and it was scrum-diddly-umptious.

And finally we were done and full and happy and in need of HOOKAH.  Off to Andalusia we went.  A tea and hookah joint, to be precise.  Hookah.  Tea.  Hm, I see hookah, and tea, but... but... where's the WINE?!  Alas, wine was not to be had at Andalusia, but I will say the hookah was top-notch, as were the random friends we made while sitting outside, enjoying the night and our shisha.  (Or however you spell that.)

Still, we were sad to lose our sangria-induced happiness and being the classy ladies we are, we (we being "I") popped over to the 7-11 and bought a few small bottles of wine, which we sipped surreptitiously throughout the evening.   All class, my friends, all class.

We rounded out the evening with yet more wine at Capital City Brewery in Shirlington and had grand plans to head back to the homestead after finishing our drinks and end our evening with a rousing bout of Dance Central on the XBox, but instead, we went immediately to sleep.  Immediately.  I don't think we could have managed to turn on the XBox, much less rustle up enough coordination to play any sort of game.  Unless it was a sleeping game; that we would have rocked at.

Shit, we couldn't even manage a decent self-portrait.

"Kristy, why can't you get your head in there?"

....alllllmost.

"Kriiisty, I don't want a solo picture."

"Here, I'll take the picture."
See, perfect.

As good as it's going to get.  At least that night.

(OHFORTHELOVEOFGODANDALLTHATISHOLY!  It should not be this difficult to format multiple pictures at once.  Make this better, Google!)

And that was our very fun Saturday.  Our Sunday involved the couch, the television and not much else.  Totally worth it.

To go back to the challenge a bit, here are some other things I have tried this month:  a new chili recipe, duck (at a Peking Duck place -- I'm glad I had the experience, but I find it perfectly acceptable to never eat duck again.  Bring on the wabbit!), chocolate covered edamame (do not want again).  Um, shit.  Wait, no, I didn't eat shit.  I meant "Shit!" in an exclamatory fashion because I can't remember any of the other things I've tried this month.  Next post... (which will be a less boozey post).

This is where I live and would now, and forever more, like to be known as a "Shirlington Ho" (..s).

Ray's Hell Burger (MEAT-O-LICIOUS)

These will likely be the only words you'll read in this post because I believe the pictures will speak for themselves.

.... and scene.

Siblings, You'd Best Skip This One

Hello, boys and girls!  You know what today is, right?  It's meat day.  Meat Party.  A meat party in my mouth, to be exact.  It's meat-o-riffic.  Meat-o-licious.  Meatasbord.  Meatanza.  Supermeatifragilisticexpialimeatocious.  (I'd like you hear you say that one out loud.)

First stop, Harris Teeter.  No chance I'm going to eat that low-fat, non-greasy, boring-as-heck turkey sausage I have in my freezer.  After 30 days of no meat?  I don't think so.  Bring on the grease and fat.

That's what I'm talking about.

Just grab a handful and squeeze it out.

You are beautiful.

Your sizzle is a beautiful sonata; it's magic for my ears.

...ssssssssssss...

Oh, yeah, you get nice and black, sausage patty.  You get all hot and crusty.  I'll even give you a dash of maple syrup to help things along.  That's how much I care for you.

Who's got the nicest crust?
YOU'VE got the nicest crust.

Little patty is lonely and needs some egg friends.

Egg friends are the best of friends.

And now it's time for all of this to go in my mouth.

You are delicious and beautiful and I love you.

(Being a bit on the brown side, you may think those eggs look unappetizing, but you'd be wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  They're brown because they were cooked in SAUSAGE FAT AND GREASE.  Ain't nothing unappetizing about that.)

A perfect bite.

(You're a perfect bite.)

So that was my morning.  How was yours?

Overheard at My House Tonight

"I'm ready for some meat."

Meat Party

Four more days until ... MEAT PARTY!  It's going to be the funnest party.  Maybe only for me, but whatever.  MEEEEAT!  July 1st, hamburgers, bacon, who's with me?  Maybe a half-smoke for dessert?  Don't make me enjoy my meat alone, friends.

(You were thinking a different kind of meat party, weren't you?  Get your minds out of the gutter, readers!  I keep a clean, tight ship, you filthy animals.)

(That being said, I want to make a joke here about having a meat party in someone's pants, but that seems inappropriate, so I'll refrain.)

(Or maybe something about a "hot beef injection".)

(That's what she said.)

...

And after the meat ingestion, we start the month of no swearing.  I'd like to share a conversation I had with my sister the other night regarding the upcoming challenge:

Kristy:  So, do you want me to point out when you swear?
Heather:  Well, yeah.
Kristy:  Every time?  You're going to have to do so many embarrassing things.
Heather:  Wow, thanks for all the faith in me, sister.  I'M NOT GOING TO SWEAR!  Go to your room!
Kristy:  Oooookay.

My sister is a skeptical jerk.  If she wasn't so pretty...  (I don't know how to finish that sentence.)

Brain-storming ideas for punishment (which I won't have to worry about because I'm not going to swear), I thought of the tried and true swear jar, but the problem with that is I'd just be giving money back to myself, which isn't much of an incentive.  I could give it to charity, but if I swear at all (which I'm not going to), it will only happen once or twice (it's NOT going to happen) and then, what?  I'm going to slide the charity of my choice a crisp, cool $1 bill?  No.

I think I should have to do something public and shaming.  For example, I dance like a white girl:  with a lot of enthusiasm, lip biting and awkward gyrations.  My dancing feet have got no rhythm.  (I'm never gonna dance again ... Heather's feet have got no rhythm...)  As punishment for swearing (the swearing I'm not going to do), I could follow in Jimmy Fallon's footsteps and attempt to do the "Cat Daddy" a la Kate Upton.

The original dance (don't be afraid, there's no nudity here):

With Jimmy:

Shoot, even Kate looks a little awkward in that video, but, you know, she looks like that, so it doesn't really matter what she's doing; she will still be ridiculously hot.

"Next up, Kate Upton cleans out a litter box."
<10,000,000 views>

I'll get my groove on, video it, upload it to my blog and brace for mockery.  I think this is a pretty solid deterrent.

What do you think, my tens of readers?  Any other ideas for me?