...Just between you and me...

Pledge to go Veg!

2008-05-08T13:02:00.001-07:00

http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/7day_veg_pledge?c=weekly_enews

I am not a vegetarian - let me say that up front. I like meat, chicken, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, all of it. But I do believe that the meat, dairy, and other animal farming industries are not held accountable and are in need of a major overhaul. As one of the biggest industries in America is its also one of the most unregulated and unmonitored. My hope is that with all of this "going green" craze, people will also push for humane animal farming. So I like to read up on this issue through different sources, one of which is PETA. They are no doubt quite radical in their approach to instigating changes - and I may not always agree with their approach, but I believe in their intentions, and I believe in their undeniable results. So with that said, I invite you to click on this link to read about a current campaign. The 7 day pledge simply means that you pledge to go vegetarian for 7 days. If every household went vegetarian for one meal a week the impact would cause an immediate shift in the animal farming industry, our environment, and in your own personal health. If you need recipes check out my link for vegetarian recipes at Go Veg

And if you need 30 more reasons, watch this

Saluting Animal Moms on Mothers Day

2008-05-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

According to writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the trials of motherhood make moms the great vacationless class. Although she may have been talking about the human variety—the moms who are near and dear to us—other animals show the same tireless dedication to their children. PETA hopes that this Mother's Day, while you are praising your family's matriarch, you'll also remember that some of the best moms in the world are found in the animal kingdom

Northern Fur Seals:
Fresh from foraging for food, moms have to find their young quickly in a sea of hundreds—or possibly thousands—of seals, so both mother and pup depend on their uncanny powers of vocal recognition to find one another. Both will call out and answer, responding selectively to one another until they are reunited.

Elephants:
The TLC that these mammoth mothers bestow on their babies is among their most engaging qualities. Always ready to give an affectionate caress, a gentle nudge in the right direction, or a cool bath to help their babies beat the heat, doting moms maintain constant touch with their young ones, never allowing them to stray too far from their side. Mothers even stay in touch with their adult kids and enjoy close relationships with their daughters that can last up to 50 years.

Cows:
For cows and their calves, it's love at first sight. The first minutes after birth are spent developing a bond that will last a lifetime. Throughout life, mother and child maintain social contact and regularly enjoy each other's companionship. Their attachment and affection for each other is so deep that if they are forced apart, they both suffer severe stress. Moms have been known to escape their enclosures and travel for miles looking for their calves.

Dolphins:
Dolphins are known for graceful synchronized swimming, but dolphin mothers and their babies also synchronize their breathing for the first few weeks following the babies' birth. These dedicated moms may nurse their young for up to 10 years and will also mentor less experienced females by allowing them to babysit as practice for when they have babies of their own.

Cheetahs:
Let's hear it for single moms! These lightning-fast felines have their paws full caring for their cubs all on their own. Not only does mom protect her children from predators while she is nursing them, she also hunts for them from the time they are weaned until they are 14 to 18 months old. Overly active offspring can make the task of hunting even harder: Cubs often scare hunted animals away with their animated antics, leaving mom so worn out that she sometimes falls asleep in the middle of a hunt.

Chickens:
Nurturing begins in the nest for these caring moms. Mother hens will turn their eggs as many as five times an hour and cluck softly to their unborn chicks, who chirp back to her and to one another from within their shells! Once chicks hatch, devoted moms use their wings to shield their babies from predators and have been known to refuse to leave their nests during a fire if they have newly hatched peeps.

This Mother's Day, please take a moment to recognize the unique bond between mothers and children of all species. For tips on practicing kindness and compassion in honor of all animal moms, please visit PETA.org.

Visit the source

13, I mean 2, childhood memories.

2008-05-08T09:27:00.001-07:00

13 Childhood Memories

I couldn't make it to 13 so here's 2! :-) Maybe I'll add to the list as I go along.

1. BBQ and lots of it Dad was in a different cookoff every weekend. As much as we might have complained about being lugged around, sleeping in campers, and permanently smelling like mesquite smoke, as kids we really did love it. My mom might say differently, but I think just as much of her that hated it loved it. She too would compete in the fajita or beans cookoff and placed several times. Man, Dad makes some damn good bbq. It'd be one thing if he wasn't winning, but he was a constant threat to the other wannabe's. The name of his team was "Whodathunkit BBQ". Clever, who woulda ever thunk that they could make such awesome grub. Other than food there was all sorts of festivities - for example, the ugliest feet contest, the male hula contest, and the white water raft race (sans the white water) where Dad was trampled and a chunk of his nose was gouged out. I'm sure we whined a lot about these weekends, but it was definitely a fond memory, and an early education on how to have a rockin good time after 30.

2. Mom singing in the car Nowadays you’d never catch my mom singing in the car – its rare if the radio is even on, or if it is on it’s the jazz station or talk radio. But I have a vivid memory from my childhood of my mom singing in our little 79’ Honda civic hatchback. It was probably a warm Saturday afternoon, running errands around town. The radio was always on a country station - songs that nowadays are considered “country classics”. I like to recall these fond memories when we go to karaoke. Usually if the crowd is younger in age on that particular evening, they’ll just kind of nod along, clueless to what they’re hearing. But I love singing these songs on the nights when I'm feeling a little homesick.

KooKoo for Karaoke

2008-05-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, we’ve recently become obsessed with Karaoke. One mans cheese is another mans cheeseburger. Now before you laugh, there are a lot of reasons why we love this so much. First, it was something we both got to be new at. When you date later in life your interests are pretty much full grown, so if they’re not the same it makes it hard to plan something you’ll both enjoy, rather than one conceding to the other just because you love him/her. Walker is great about being up for new things and scenes, so when I mentioned karaoke, he was hesitant but willing. Actually I’d been popping in on my own while he was working nightside and I think his curiosity finally got to him – either way, he was game. And voila! Our love for karaoke was born. There is another reason we love it so much – because people intrigue us. Both analytical by nature, we love to see the way karaoke blossoms peoples personalities. If you’ve experienced karaoke w/us before, you know the myriad of folks that come to our little haunt. You got old people and young people, great looking people, and mousy looking people, hip and not so hip – but karaoke is a place where everyone is accepted and everyone encourages each other to be brave and try that new song, even if you can only hit two of the notes. It’s not always pleasant to listen to; but it is so pleasant to see the way people come out of their otherwise squeamish shells, and take a jab at being outgoing. For a city where so many are away from home it’s a great stand-in family, and one that we look forward to seeing each week.

Wedding love and madness!

2008-04-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve gone and let myself get obsessed with planning this wedding. I’d vowed I would never be one of “those brides” – obsessing over every little detail. Yet here I sit with giant bags under my eyes because I was burning the midnight oil on things like Chinese lanterns, shoes, parking options, and favors. When talk about getting married began it was, “lets have some beer, some music, some grub, and a warm day and we’re good to go”. The idea was to have those nearest to our hearts and to have a relaxing and fun time. We wanted so badly for it to be that simple. But there’s so much more to it than just throwing a good party, there’s so much more to us and to what this wedding represents to us – we certainly didn’t expect to feel this way. A funny thing happened after our engagement…people say as your relationship grows your love changes, and I guess this was one of those changes. I’ve always known Walker was the one for me, but now it’s so very real to look at him as my husband and me as his wife. That’s something that I never thought would mean so much to me. *ew feelings, ew* ;-) All of this solidified to us that this day should be just as sweet and playful and unique as our relationship is.

As convenient as it might be to just go with a packaged wedding, there are many reasons this would never work for me or for Walker. Outside of the fact that we want something more personal than that, we are both card-carrying control freaks. It makes it hard to buy into somebody else’s vision for our wedding, to not be able to say that special touch was our idea as a gift to you. Not that we haven’t seen a few great ideas along the way. But it’s very important to both of us to have an active role in the way the day and evening come together, no matter how exhausting it might be. We’re trying to harness our perfectionist tendencies so that no one gets carried away; of course we’re doing a lousy job. When it’s all said and done though, the satisfaction from feeling like we created a truly personal and memorable evening, and that we didn’t settle for convenience, is worth sacrificing a little sleep. We can only hope that our vision is brought to life on that very special day.

So this weekend I was flying solo in the planning department. I looked at three venues and I think we decided on one. I tried on the dress I had in mind and it was a winner. I was able to see the bridesmaid dress and it was a winner too. Picked out shoes for all the girls to select from. Narrowed in on a caterer and bakery. And finalized on theme and decor, ceremony setting, colors, etc... Here are a few shots from what we've agreed on so far.

Thursday Thirteen #1

2008-04-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

Thirteen Things about Casey, featuring the letter T
1. Talk to my cats like people
2. Trying to be more thoughtful
3. Terrible driver
4.Tomato lover
5. Teeth conscious
6. Trying to plan a wedding
7. TOO SHORT!
8. Tasty cook
9. Terrified of tight spaces
10. Taco Bueno - I miss it
11. Tired tonight
12. Thinking about Friday night plans
13. Thick skinned

Menu Planning Monday - budget stretchers

2008-04-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

chicken tacos - HEB combo loco (30 min meal) ($5)
buy ground chicken at $2.50 lb, get taco shells and salsa free (and cheese too). One of our new grocery faves is lettuce shreds. Yes, we know we can just thin slice iceberg lettuce and get more out of our purchase, but we really think theres something to the shreds. They actually have flavor whereas iceberg is usually very bland if not bitter. I'm not big on ground chicken - I find it dry, but Walker really wanted to try this cut out. I'm happy to see him getting more involved with meal planning. Served with FF veg. refritos topped with a little FF sour cream, salsa, and cheese melted on top

Hot doggies - HEB combo loco (30 min meal) ($8 w/leftovers)
Buy the all beef lite franks @ $2/ea, get 2% Kraft ched free which will be for taco night too! Buns on sale for a buck. Having these w/lowfat hotdog chili, sliced fresh strawberries/bananas, holy trinity salad. Our quest for more side options goes on, but we managed to start eating carrots by getting creative.

Grilled chicken and veggies salad - BOGO deal (30 min meal) ($6)
Still had a pack of the chicken tenders left from my Kroger BOGO deal. George foreman and a little BW3 grilling sauce, and voila - man food that he'll never know is good for him. Kroger had all colored bell peps on sale for a buck each, a steal in my eyes. He has also approved zuchinni as a veg for his limited farm fresh palette, so I'll grill those up too and throw on my cheap bag salad, topped with homemade citrus vineagrette.

Grilled italian seasoned chicken breasts over spag and veggie marinara (30 min meal) ($6.50 w/leftovers)
Premarinated chicken on sale at HEB, $3.50 for 1.5lb. Had the pasta and veggie marinara in freezer, along with 3/4 of garlic bread loaf. Ceasar lite kit on sale for $3 - we love this so had to have.

Slow cooker - pork tenderloin and potatoes (Crock Pot during the day, 30 mins to finish) ($5)
Tenderloin on sale for $2.77 lb!! wow!! This was so easy! 1 pork loin, 4 russet potatoes, water to cover, and one package onion soup mix. The pork was so tender, more like pulled pork. I removed the potatoes and smashed with a little baked potato fillings - these were the real winner. Also thickened the aujus into a gravy right in the CP and poured over the pulled pork. Served with steamed broc on sale at Kroger for buck a bunch.

Hamburger Helper - makes a great meal apparently... (def. 30 min meal) ($5)
90% lean on sale in value packs - $2.99 lb. Bought a 2 lb. pack and split for two HH nights. Walker had picked up a double box of the "dinner in a pinch" so I figured he could make that a couple nights. Mix in some corn, broccoli, whatever. Serve with extra salad.

Picture Post

2007-10-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

Walker at our little after-work dive, Danny's

Dan foils my plan again to get a decent picture
The chase building downtown
Dan in the distance, at the State Club,

probably my favorite place so far in Houston.
I'm beginning to think his face is stuck like that

Walker's 30th Bday at Sherlocks
(and look, a real smile on Dan)

Me and Walker huggin up
Walker's Sis, Hillary and her beau Lee
Dan and Walker really do like each other.
Joe in town for the Dolan wedding, he's gonna need more than that.
Leaving San Antonio, tear tear

Hillary rockin out to guitar hero before bday festivities
Walker anxiously waiting his turn
Walker had a lot of them crazy candles!
Dan, again with the face.

Romey

2007-10-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to the silliest gal in our life, Romey. If haven't heard the story, Romey was a stray cat that came to me in San Antonio. I had been there a couple months and didn't really know anyone yet and I had been thinking about getting a cat. Just something sweet to come home to and take care of. Well just a couple days after deciding this, a cat showed up on my porch, and I named him "Amigo", because I fate had sent this friend to me. Well Amigo might have liked hanging out on my porch but his male instincts called him back to the wild and I never saw him again. Then shortly after I noticed this long haired gray cat had been hanging out on my porch and around the apartment building. I thought "he" was beautiful. And an odd bipolar mix of sweet and sassy. Obviously still fairly young, playing and pouncing all the time. I was certain this cat had a home. He never looked hungry and was behaved (for a cat at least). But he really took a liking to being around me, and so I named him "Romeo", since he was such a loverboy at times. I don't know why but I had just always assumed he was a boy. So I promptly purchased some catfood and settled on the fact that he was now mine to look after. You would think he would be grateful but his personality took a turn and he quickly became very complacent with the things he thought he was entitled to - having his space and his affection on demand. It made me laugh though. What can I say, I'm a sucker. And then I met Walker. I knew it was love when I found out he was a fellow cat-lover. I'd never found a man who would even humor having a cat. And he fell in love with Romeo as if he was his own. But the question began to grow, is Romeo really a Romeo?? Or is he a Juliet!? Being long haired we couldn't see any of the tale-tale signs of his, ahem, "manhood"...And he didn't really howl at night the way most male cats do when indoors. But then maybe he was altered, which would explain his lack of nightlife curiosities. We tried many times to investigate the situation, but he was very very fickle about his belly being rubbed and was not afraid to let you know where he stood on the subject. He frequently enjoyed taking naps on his back, legs spread open; and one day we seized the moment! Romeo was in fact Romey...not a drop of evidence that he was a "he". That was it, the verdict was out. He, was a She. Suddenly it all made sense - the moodiness, being fussy and demanding. Of course she was a female. Walker likes to tease that I taught her all of that. But we love her and she has brought a lot of joy and pleasure to our little family. Sometimes we think about getting her a sibling...but then we realized she has enough attitude for two cats, and it was be inhumane to put another cat at her mercy.

Moving to Houston we were both nervous about how she would adjust to becoming a full-time indoor cat. She adjusted perfectly - by being extremely clear that she was NOT going to be a full-time indoor cat, the all night meowing and scratching at the door. We tried convincing her the patio was outdoors, but she is no idiot. She again was very vocal about what she wanted and expressed her disgust with us regularly. In all fairness, it is only natural for her, and we came to terms with the fact that it was cruel of us to expect her to let go of all that she'd ever known. She was paying the price for our fears. We realized that cats are created with the instincts that will get them back home after a night of prowling and so we let her out for the first time. And wouldn't you know it, all that fuss for nothing. All she does is sits on the stairs or in the breezeway or sidewalk. Very rarely does she venture very far. And heaven forbid she wander too far, she does have her identification for a safe return. Its so funny, if we go somewhere in my car, when we return she is always sitting on the trunk of Walkers car. She even knows our vehicles! And if we don't see her when we pull up she is at the door of the car as we are opening it to get out. Its the weirdest thing, but comforting to know that she knows where her home is.... and more importantly where the food is.

We affectionately call her by many names. Piggy, Plumpy, Pig-Pig, silly meow, Bloat, good baby...and we like to sing songs to her only because it angers her and we like antagonizing her. So with all this said if you come over and you think your loved ones have lost it, I promise you we haven't, we have just become crazy cat people.

"If I wanted you to turn your head I would have told you to"

"this is MY lap"
"Seriously, is it asking too much for you to sit still?"
"Yes, that's right, I'm up here."
"Dang Papparazzi"
"Are you enjoying that water?"

"oh, don't mind if I do!"

Welcome Wagon

2007-10-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family! And welcome to my blog. I tend to think my life is pretty boring, but if you are ever curious about the boring details, this is where you will find them ... that is if I manage to remember to post on here! HAHA! I got the idea of this blog from Darby. You should check out her blog as well. In true Darby fashion no detail is left untouched and you can see all sorts of cute pictures of their family happenings. Hopefully the rest of my crew will come aboard and start a blog of their own.

I'm all out of thoughts for now. The honest truth of it is that its Sunday at 1pm and church just let out. For someone with a trip to "Wal-mart's" ahead of her, this is a daunting task on a Sunday anytime after noon; so I must go prepare myself. Hopefully I will survive sans panic attack and won't have to retreat to the lawn and garden department to gather my composure. I leave you with a picture. We don't have many, but we're working on it.