Monday, October 8, 2012

Five Things

Time for another day of Five Things! Generally, "Five Things" is for five little things, none of which are big enough for their own blog post, but today a few of them actually ended up being fairly lengthy. So you get a giant Mega Five Things today! 

1. Remember this chair? 

My antique chair re-do was featured on Better After last week. Click on over and take a look! If you're coming here for the first time from Better After, welcome! 


2. Weird Coincidence of the Weekend

Sometimes really weird stuff happens to me. Last Friday, Jeff and I decided to go out to dinner. I said I felt like Italian food. Jeff suggested Zammitti's (a favorite place of ours), but I suggested we try somewhere new. There were two Italian places we really liked when we sampled their food at Tasting the Town (an event we went to recently), Christopher's and Amedeo's. 

We decided on Amedeo's.  We got there, ordered food and wine, and were having a lovely time. Then, I saw this man walk across the other side of the restaurant, and he looked really similar to my high school boyfriend's dad. Weird. Now, Jeff and I live in a totally different part of Houston than we did in high school. Kingwood is almost an hour away from where the high school boyfriend's family lives, so I was sure it wasn't really him (because why would he be way out in Kingwood for dinner?), but I told Jeff "wow... I just saw this guy that looks just like {ex-boyfriend}'s dad!" And Jeff was like "hmm, weird." And we went about our dinner.

So our food comes, and then... I see the ex-boyfriend himself walking across the restaurant. Quick background on the high school boyfriend: we dated for a couple weeks shy of a year (so by high school standards, it was pretty serious). I broke up with him my senior year and he didn't take it well. Apparently he thought we were going to get married. He continued to call me semi-frequently for a couple years after that, but eventually I was happily dating Jeff and I just wanted to move on, and I kind of just stopped calling him back. Soon after that, he finally started dating someone else. I ran into both of them at Target once. She seemed really nice. He seemed really uncomfortable. That was two years ago, and I haven't talked to him since.

So anyway, he went to the front door of the restaurant and met another guy at the door, and I recognized the other guy as his college roommate. So then I'm like "Jeff... I just saw {ex-boyfriend}, and I'm sure it's him, and his college roommate is here too! Why on earth would {ex-boyfriend} be having dinner with his dad and his college roommate in Kingwood?"
So we start hypothesizing about what could possibly be going on, and we decide maybe one of his parents is having a big birthday party or something, and I start trying to remember when his parents' birthdays are. I mentioned to Jeff that {ex-boyfriend} was engaged to the girl I met at Target and had been engaged for a while (I only know this thanks to the magic of Facebook), and then it dawned on us that oh my gosh... it's Friday... and they should be getting married sometime soon since they've been engaged for a while... and this is a fairly nice restaurant... and this could very well be their REHEARSAL DINNER. 

So then I started freaking out. I mean... what if I ran into someone?  A lot of his family and friends would recognize me, and what would they think? Probably that I'm some sort of weird stalker ex-girlfriend that decided to crash the rehearsal dinner. And even if they didn't think that... you just don't want to see the ex-girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. And what if I ran into him? It was a bit awkward that time at Target... surely it would be a million times worse at his rehearsal dinner! They're all really nice people... I wouldn't mind running into any of them any other time, but NOT at the rehearsal dinner!! 

So I'm like "Jeff... we have to get out of here." And he's like "no... we're on the opposite side of the restaurant... no one will see you, we should just finish our dinner." I started wishing we hadn't ordered a whole bottle of wine (why, oh why didn't we just order a couple glasses?!?!) because we had to stay until the wine was gone... and what if someone sees me?!!?

We ate pretty quickly, but there was still the issue of the 1/3-full wine bottle, and then another problem happened. I had to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms were on the side of the restaurant where they were, and I just knew I could NOT go over there. Running into his mom, or his sisters, or his fiance in the bathroom... any of it would just be weird. So we finished the rest of the wine as quickly as possible, and the waitress came and asked if we wanted dessert and we both said "no!" so instantaneously that the poor waitress was caught off guard a little, and then she brought the check and we paid and left quite speedily.

We looked on Facebook when we got home, and sure enough... it was their rehearsal dinner. His fiance grew up in Kingwood, apparently. We were at the restaurant at the exact time as their rehearsal dinner. Isn't that weird? I mean... we were so far away from where he and his family live, and we had never even been to that restaurant before, and we don't go out to eat that often but we decided to that day, and we were SO close to going to Zammitti's or Christopher's, but instead we picked the exact restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was. SO. WEIRD. 

On Saturday, I stayed away from any place that could possibly be a location for a wedding, or a reception, or bridesmaids getting their hair done, or groomsmen getting lunch. And I successfully avoided appearing at any more of {ex-boyfriend}'s wedding-related events. It makes my heart happy though to know he's found the perfect girl for him and he got married on Saturday. He's a really great guy (he even took my little sister to a dance in high school after we broke up because she didn't have a date), and he deserves a lifetime of happiness with a wonderful wife. I hope they had a wonderful wedding, and I hope they're really happy!

3. Funny Video

I'm not normally a huge fan of YouTube videos, but this one had me cracking up laughing so hard. I'm trying to convince some fellow law students to recreate it in the Law Review office. 


4. Jewelry Repairs! 

My white gold wedding rings have been long overdue to be re-plated with rhodium for a while. I've never done it before, and I've had my engagement ring for almost three years. I finally took them in, and oh my gosh... the difference is astounding. Take a look at these before-and-afters:

BEFORE: The engagement ring is older than the wedding band, so it was way worse!
AFTER: everything's the same color, and it's shiny!!

BEFORE: sooo yellowy!
AFTER: shiny!

BEFORE: tarnished and dirty...
 AFTER: yayyy!

BEFORE: it was WAY overdue for a cleaning...
 AFTER: shiny diamonds!

It's so sparkly and shiny now... I can't stop looking at it! It's like when we were first engaged all over again!

Moral of the story: get your ring to the jeweler and get it re-plated! Don't wait as long as I did! 
I also had them re-size this heirloom ring that used to belong to my great-grandma, so now I can wear it without worrying that it will fall off!

5. Pinterest Fails

A lot of times, Pinterest is awesome. But sometimes, it's just ridiculous. I seem to be stuck in a rut with Pinterest... the last few things I've tried have been an absolute disaster. 

Like this pin about baked mozzarella bites:

Source: pinporium.com via Katie on Pinterest


I followed the instructions exactly despite some reservations about how the cheese would do in the oven, but the bread crumbs wouldn't stick, and as I suspected, it just turned into a melty mess. I suspect the directions were just copied down wrong somewhere along the way. 




Melty mess. Not brown and golden and beautiful at all. Pinterest lies. 

Then there was this one about a single-serve cookie. 



I followed the directions exactly (despite wondering why there was no baking soda or baking powder), but it ended up as a chalky, crumbly mess. 
It looked good before the microwave...



Not cookie-like AT ALL! 

Crumbly and gross. I couldn't even eat it. 

I looked at the comments to the blog post that was pinned after I made it, and tons of other people had the same problem. Should've read the comments first.

So, in conclusion...
Make sure you re-plate your white gold jewelry periodically.
Pinterest sometimes lies.
Go see my chair over at Better After
Watch the funny video. You'll be glad you did.
Try your best to avoid running into your ex-boyfriend's rehearsal dinner. It'll kind of ruin your romantic night out with your husband.
Pin It

2 comments:

  1. Ha! That's a hilarious story. And wow-- what a difference in those rings!

    ReplyDelete
  2. try this recipe for a cookie in a cup!!!

    http://www.number-2-pencil.com/2012/03/chocolate-chip-cookie-in-cup.html

    it has never failed on me! :)

    ReplyDelete