It’s been a while since I brought you a mundane, day to day happenings in Casa McMaster in Texas update…I’ve had this post ready for a week, but keep forgetting to hit the publish button – whoopsie!
These last three weeks have been full of ebbs and flows…I started off with an SSA board meeting at the SLB Western Geco office 3 Monday’s ago followed by a tasty and cheap lunch with Magz and Sam on campus.
After a yummy roast dinner, I had my first two-hour Choir practice up in the city – which I LOVED!
Thursday was my favourite day in a LONG time, why? Cause it brought RAIN, RAIN I tell ya!!!!! It’s been SO long, our neighbourhoods are under drought conditions, water regularions and threats of prosecution if we break the temporary laws.
It’s been over 100F for weeks on end, with seemingly no relief in sight. This has been the driest summer ever recorded in Texas…It’s been a long, looooong and seriously HOT summer and it goes on…*sigh* Bring on hockey season – for more than just the hockey!
Last Thursday also brought with it a small celebration for my friend Julie’s birthday. A little group of us got together for a delicious three-course lunch in a ‘nook and cranny’ type restaurant in Missouri City, ”Aura”. A French bistro type restaurant, which turned out to be a hidden gem of the area, three courses, $14.00 and plenty of choice.
It was lovely and the company was good too! I’d brought with me a dozen cupcakes from a not-so-great place up town that I had a groupon for (and have subsequently given them a negative review on yelp!) but the cupcakes were ok and went down nicely after a tasty lunch!
On my way home, I stopped off to pick up some hard-to-find foods at an Indian grocers I’d never been to before and stopped in at The Glazery, to sort out details of an SSA activity I’m planning for October and for dinner, we ordered pizza for dinner cause neither of us could figure out what we wanted to eat!
Friday was a pretty long day, Col and I both had a wee lie in (we’d stayed up late watching Lost the night before) and I pretty much went straight to Target where I spent just over two hours doing a ‘baby shower shop’. I picked up a few things for the house, but, for the most part, I spent my time picking up any number of fruits, veggies and a mix of random things I needed for the almost-upon-us baby shower.
When I got home and unpacked, I grabbed the hubby and took him for a yummy lunch in Pei Wei, an ‘Asian diner’ – it has killer Thai coconut chicken curry for me and honey seared chicken for Col. It’s cheap, it’s quick, it’s big portions (always good!) and last but not least it’s delicious!!
Back at home, I spent over four hours in the kitchen working on food-prep. I washed, peeled and cut up fruits and veggies, made three different sandwich fillings (tuna and sweetcorn, egg and onion, salmon and cucumber) and a big bowl of pasta salad which Col tried and asked me to keep some for our dinner cause it was delicious.
The evening was spent researching things to do in Singapore and Sentosa Island (and putting together my traditional “I wanna do” list for our upcoming trip).
Saturday was spent party planning, cooking, baking, organising and we headed up to the Maddens, where I started putting things together for the party and we crashed overnight (cause it made sense!). Sunday brought with it the fun-filled baby shower that you’re all sick to death of hearing about!
Monday (29th), was supposed to be my decompressing day, the ‘come down’ after a weekend of cooking, organising, and executing my party planning. However, instead, it was a day of insane cleaning, tidying, more organising and putting stuff away. I’m like a tornado when I get started, I can’t stand things not being tidy and organised, so I just blast my way through it all, until it’s all done and to a point that I can relax!
I forget what we did Tuesday, which suggests that it’s nothing worth recalling, Wednesday, Col worked from home, my exhaustion hit like a ton of bricks, so it was sleep and relaxing for me, followed by a quick ‘glue’ trip to Hobby Lobby as they had all adhesives for 40% off this week!
Wednesday Col worked from home, the day involved a wee trip to Hobby Lobby for me and we decided to use one of our remaining Groupon’s for dinner. We ate in a place called Otto’s BBQ. It was just ‘ok’, it has a mix of highs and lows. Firstly, the staff aren’t particularly friendly or welcoming. As we paid for our food, we were told that we still had around $4 left on our groupon (so why couldn’t I have had my baked potato upgrade, eh?!?!) so we picked a slice of German chocolate cake.
It was stale and pretty gross. I’d have been peeved if we paid full price for it.
One huge plus for me is that they offer caffeine free diet coke – which is a big selling point for me!!! I think we’d go back if we were in the area, but wouldn’t go out of our way to make another trip. It’s pretty darn good value though!
We followed dinner with some fruit and ice cream and watching Lost into the wee hours of the morning!
That night, while lying in bed, Col wasn’t his normal ‘gone in 10 seconds’ self, he was awake for a wee while. I asked what was up, he replied that since home was six hours ahead of us, it was this time, 15 years ago that he was walking through the gates of Camco’s office for his first day at work.
Fifteen years!
That’s an impressive stint for anyone really!
To celebrate (because he’s missed his office ‘deadline’ for their awards dinner and we now won’t be getting his big to-do until next year – where I even get to dress up and look fancy!) , I took him out to the Char House Bar and Grille with another groupon (yes, I should buy shares in their company, I know!)
The menu wasn’t particularly extensive and we have mixed reviews about this place too. I loved what I ordered, Col wasn’t fussed and we both agreed that paying $20 out of pocket on top of the $20 groupon was way overpriced for a shared appetiser, two main’s and two soft drinks!
We won’t be back!
Labo(u)r day weekend was spent dog-sitting, it was quiet, low key and cheap.
We spent Friday evening through late Monday night pretty much just watching back to back episodes of Lost, (with a small time-out taken for me to go to Body Attack) it was bliss! Col needed it as much as I did!
We kept it low-key, cause we leave on our trip soon, so we’re counting our pennies. It was fun, though, and Col turned to me on Monday and said,
‘This is a taste of what’s to come at Christmas’
My reply was, ‘yeah, if we’ve any TV show’s left to watch at this rate!’ LOL!!!
Monday afternoon, Magz and Sam came back from their trip out of town and dropped by to pick up the dogs (who were THRILLED to see mum and dad!) We decided to have lunch at a little Mediterranean place that our friend Sharon took us to, before she moved to Norway.
The food is good, but the service and general atmosphere in the place SUCKS. Not to mention, paying $4.50 for a small fruit smoothie is well past day light robbery…especially when we’d almost finished eating by the time Col got it!
I enjoyed the food though and the company, as always was great. After a Starbucks pit-stop, we watched the latest episode of ”Young Dumb & living off mum” online before the Maddens all departed to go home. The house was pretty darn quiet with the dogs gone!
Tuesday I started back at Spanish classes, with a different teacher, a friend of mine Ana Maria. The class lasts two hours (with a short snack break in the middle) and she’s a wonderful teacher! I had a lot of fun and can’t wait to start making some real progress with the language.
Today, I was supposed to be at the SSA Newcomer’s coffee and then Body Attack – but I woke up with a pretty bad migraine & slept on and off til almost 1pm. I’m feeling a little better, the nausea has gone at least so I might chance a bowl of cereal after I empty the dishwasher!
Sorry for the boring post (with no pictures!), they can’t all be buzzing with excitement…though, with our trip only 8 days away…I think excitement will return shortly!!