Salad = Freezer, not a match

Having been carnivorous for most of my life, I've been trying to incorporate more vegetables in our diets recently. We started buying these packaged, pre-washed salad greens from the grocery, we serve these with creamy Ceasar salad dressing, croutons and parmesan cheese.

The thing is, these packaged greens aren't really cheap and each pack lasts us 2 to 3 meals. So last Sunday night, we opened up a fresh pack and put the remains back in the refrigerator. On Monday afternoon, I saw the package again and decided to stick it in the freezer so that they'd last longer. Who knows when we'd get a hankering for salad again ? Right ?

Last night, we decided to eat the remainder of the salad,... ewww! Turns out that freezing salad greens wasn't such a good idea after all. I wish I'd taken a picture before we chucked it out to the trash. The veggies were all soggy and reddish - not all nice.

And now, we know. (... and knowing is half the battle, GI JOEEEE!)

Walking with Dinosaurs

Hubby and I got ourselves some tickets to the Walking with Dinosaurs show at the Continental Arena a few months ago. We were very excited, come on... dinosaurs walking around the stage ? Our tickets were for the 10:30a show so we had to wake up extra early last Saturday to make sure that we had time to grab breakfast and still make it in time.

Getting there was a breeze, given that we lived only 10 miles away from the arena, but we've had to pay $10 for parking. Inside, t-shirts were being sold for $25, programs for $15 - I wanted to get some souvenirs but these prices were outrageous! I was so glad that we had already had breakfast before leaving home. If we had to eat there, we'd have spent another $20 easily and still not be satisfied.

Anyway, as we got into our seats, we looked around and started cringing when we saw that allthe groups there had kids. Hubby & I were the only all-adult group that we could find. We probably should've gone with friends who had kids.

The show was around 2 hrs in length and had a 20 minute intermission in the middle. I dozed off for most of it, it was so so boring! There were some amusing moments - where there was a mother & baby T-Rex - but I expected a lot more action, maybe like those I saw in Jurassic Park (the movie). The kids did seem to enjoy it though as there were a lot of them growling, roaring and imitating dinosaur sounds as they were walking back to the parking area.

Seemed boneless ?

Hubby and I were grocery shopping when I saw this at the meat section:

Beef Round Eye Round Roast
Seemed Boneless

er.... I did not see any bones sticking out of the meat either. so yeah, it seemed boneless to me too. Needless to say, we didn't buy this because if the store weren't sure about this being boneless, I wasn't too sure either.

Looking back

Life assessments are usually done at around New Year's time - it's usually the time when one looks back at the things that were accomplished the past year and start planning goals for the following year. It seems too early to make one now but I can't help but feel that I'm due for one since a whole lot of events have transpired in my life since 2007 started.

2007 has been a roller coaster for me. Got married to hubby in early 2007, honeymooned - our very first trip as a couple (what can I say ? we're old-fashioned *smile*) - in Singapore, and flew off to New Jersey, USA to start our married life together.

Q2 2007 saw us getting the announcement from our company that they're closing the NJ offices and the request that we relocate to headquarters in MA. This time also showed us some advancement in our GC applications and gave us our EADs.

Q3 2007 was pretty much spent entertaining potential buyers for our home and the occasional goodbye-but-we'll-see-each-other-again-dinners with friends and colleagues who, unfortunately, cannot relocate. A good friend from high school also came by and stayed with us while he toured NY / NJ - our very first houseguest. Oh yes, Q3 also gave us a bit of a shock when we heard that our real estate company was shutting down (and that our agent was among the 350 staff that were laid off). The best thing about Q3, however, was being able to work from home on a daily basis - a huge blessing!

We are now one week into Q4 of 2007 and I'm looking forward to receiving good news - did I mention how much of an optimist I am ? The way I see it, there's really no way for us to go but up, right ? And we do have a lot of things that we're waiting on - our GC, job for hubby, house on the market, relocation to MA - I'd be happy to get a few of these checked off of our list so we can go ahead and get started on the baby project.

Date at the movies

I found this one last AMC movie ticket in my wallet a few weeks ago and realized that it would be expiring on 9/30. I immediately made plans with hubby to watch a movie before the pre-paid ticket expires.

We made our way to our local cinema this afternoon to watch a movie. Unfortunately, the movie pass that we had doesn't allow us to get into a movie that's has not been showing for more than 2 weeks. This restriction and the time schedule forced us into a corner and we found ourselves with tickets to Dragon Wars.

Check out the reviews in Rotten Tomatoes, these people aren't lying. D-Wars is really really bad. So much so that we felt that we wasted 2 hrs of our time (and the travel time to the cinema) so we decided to watch another movie. This time, we got ourselves a good one, Resident Evil: Extinction. Compared to D-Wards, that was one heck of a movie.

A new me

I had my drivers' license renewed and got a new name in the process. You see, I have two first names - for example, Tina Rosario (not my real name) - and ever since I moved to NJ my license has always just said "Tina" as my name.

Apparently, NJ's MVC isn't ready for people like me who have multiple (or long) first names and up till recently, my SS ID even had to have a dash in between my first name "Tina-Rosario" because the agent who helped me get my SSN couldn't get the system to accept a space in the first name field. Fortunately, the SSA had already addressed this problem as I was able to get my name right when I applied for a name change after I got married.

... but going back to NJ MVC, the first time I got there, the agent helping me looked at my passport and told me that the 2nd part of my name should just be dropped. There was no way to put it in and since then, I was Tina. 5 years later, while renewing my license, somebody in MVC decided that my drivers' license name not matching my passport name was a huge problem and brought the matter up with the higher ups. Some discussions and phone calls (to immigrations) later, I was told that I have to use both names.

Now, the problem was, NJ's drivers' license application form only has space for 9 characters. The MVC-boss then jots down a new name and tells me that I have no choice.

So everyone, meet the new me - TinaRosar.

If you ask me ? I think it's kinda stupid to force me to use a put-together-truncated version of my name. I know a lot of people who only use one of their 2 (or more) first names. I am *not* liking my new license at all.

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Edit: Just got off the phone with the DMV and was told that it's normal to have your name truncated on your license because there is no space. In fact, everybody in NJ whose name is Christopher, will only have CHRISTOPH on their license. Argh! Governments should start upgrading their systems.

Athenia Street Fair 2007

September 16, 2007
Clifton, NJ
(click photo to view album)

Our city sponsors a street fair every year. I've been looking forward to this year's because this time, I get to go with a date *smile*. There were a lot more stalls selling assorted items and toys, food & drink stalls, rides, and definitely a lot more attendees compared to last year. There was also a live band courtesy of our neighborhood bar, Dingo's Den.

Sammie and I had a lot of fun walking up and down the street and checking out the wares. We also walked through an exhibition of classic American cars. Before we walked home, we stopped by Wild Bill's Olde Fashioned Soda stall and got a $7 mug of rootbeer (we get to keep the mug). We also got ourselves some funnel cake - standard carnival fare - of course and sat down to enjoy the live music.

Among the day's loot were 2 canvas bags distributed by the city to promote recycling (I like using these instead of plastic bags), a frisbee & a refrigerator magnet / clip from a local bank and the stainless steel mug that we got from Wild Bill's.