Hey, did I tell you we bought a grill last weekend? We totally did! We've been thinking about it for awhile. It was on our wedding registry on Amazon, but then we realized that we wanted one now, so we could enjoy it during the summer. So we bought it ourselves. It's a Weber One-Touch Silver. I hope the weather warms up again soon so we can do some grilling! I'd also like to get some outdoor furniture for our patio, but for now our Ikea folding chairs will do the job.

Patrick is crazy! He decided to do a triathlon next weekend while we're in LA (Erin will be doing it too because she is also awesome). Granted, it's a short triathlon, but still. What a man! He'll do a triathlon at the drop of a hat.

Happy spring and everything else!

We're not doing anything Easter-related today, but I think we're going to hang some curtains. I've been wanting to put up curtains since we moved in, but it just kept getting put off. We finally went to Ikea yesterday (and saw a Matrix exactly like ours also going to Ikea and three more Matrices on our walk to the store entrance--we're clearly are doing exactly what advertisers want us to do). We got roman blinds for our kitchen window and two sets of curtains (one sheer white and one heavy beige that may or may not clash with our couch) for the living room. I'm going to make curtains for the guest room using old curtains I bought (also from Ikea) in college, and then assuming all our current curtain endeavors go well, we'll return to Ikea and get curtains for our bedroom (I'm thinking two sets of semi-sheer cotton curtains in different colors would be pretty, and since our bedroom has no color scheme yet, we can do whatever we want).

This morning, I made us Baked French Toast with Cardamom and Orange Marmalade from Colorado Colore, which Erin gave us (thanks, Erin!). Here are pictures before and after baking.

It had lots of good things going for it. The maramalade got all carmelized, and the inside was nice and eggy and sweet. But something wasn't quite right. I don't think orange marmalade is our thing--it's too bitter. Maybe I'll try it again with a different jam on top.

Thread got back to me yesterday, and I have an appointment for next Saturday, so that's that! I emailed Bella Bridesmaids prior to that, to find out if Thread was usually so slow (since I will be ordering my Thread dress through Bella Bridesmaids if I end up liking it). They said that Thread is very reliable, and maybe they were just slow because it's prime bridesmaid-dress-buying season and they're swamped. So that's resolved. I'm excited to try on more dresses! I hope I find a good one...

Today was a good day, and I'm not sure why. I was just in a happy mood all day, even after my experiment went all awry at work. I'm glad it's the weekend! We're going to have a nice and mundane weekend, maybe go see a movie (I'm not sure if there's anything in theaters we want to see right now; Sin City isn't out for another week). Patrick's going to ride his bike. No big wedding-planning or car-buying stuff that requires lots of driving.

It's possible that next weekend we'll drive to LA so I can try on some potential wedding dresses. Unfortunately Thread, the boutique I'd be visiting, seems pretty incompetent when it comes to customer service. I emailed them to see if I could try on a dress without going to LA, and in return I got an email full of misspellings that totally disregarded my question and just told me to call to make an appointment. Not so bad, since we could visit friends while we're in LA. But I keep calling Thread, and I haven't been able to get ahold of a person to actually make an appointment with yet. I left a message, but nobody's called me back. Not sure how I want to handle this or if it's even worth driving to LA just to try on a dress. I was able to try on other Thread dresses in SF, and I liked them. But their dresses are non-returnable once ordered, so I'd really prefer to try on the dress I'm interested in before buying it. I just wish I didn't have to go to LA to do so!

I bought Patrick a bunch of irises to celebrate his first week of work and the coming of spring (I love having fresh flowers around!). They're all still closed. I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom during the next few days :)

And so ends our week of car-buying. We won't be buying any more cars for a long, long time! Our new Matrix is so great! Patrick got us a good deal on it, and the salesman (Jason at Piercey Toyota in San Jose) only had one with lots of options, so he threw those in for "free" (I know, not really free, but it's fun to pretend they were). So we got lots of stuff that we didn't need but that I'm excited about (more buttons to push!). Like a tire pressure monitoring system, sunroof, rear-window washer (as well as rear-window wiper, which I've wanted forever for no good reason), and wheel locks. And of course we got the XR, which means we have an outlet in the car for plugging in a laptop or blender or what have you (100W power limit, sadly). Plus a keyless remote entry system--I've never had a car with remote access! It's the best car ever :)

I'm glad Patrick will be driving the Matrix primarily, because even though I'm super-excited about it, I'd be nervous driving a brand new car, plus the Protege is more comfortable for a short person like me. So it all worked out well :) Now I get to be a passenger in the Matrix and not worry about hurting it.

This has been an exciting (and expensive) week. Good thing Patrick starts his new job on Monday!

I'm loving our new (used) car so far. It's so much bigger inside than the Mazda MX-6 that we've been borrowing (I'm afraid ours is not as sweet as the one pictured). It's palatial! It was nice driving a sports car for the past few months though. It's all smooth and aerodynamic and stuff. Anyway, we're probably going to buy our Matrix tomorrow if all goes well. I'm excited! And then we get to go out to dinner with Tree and Andrew tomorrow night--yay!

We're probably going to go to Austin's BBQ with them, which got me thinking about barbecue. I was talking about it today with my coworker from Texas, and he said he likes Armadillo Willy's better, so Patrick and I went there for dinner tonight (yeah, barbecue two days in a row!). This was against Patrick's better judgement, since he's been there before and didn't like it.

Patrick was right. I didn't like Armadillo Willy's nearly as much as Austin's. First of all, we had to order at a counter instead of ordering from our table; I like taking my time and eating some free bread when deciding what to order for dinner. We both had baby back ribs. Patrick had cornbread (pretty good--honey butter!), potato salad (also pretty good), and beans, while I had cole slaw, Texas toast, and jambalaya rice, none of which were worth getting again. The ribs were okay, but not as good as Austin's. So I doubt we'll be going to Armadillo Willy's again. It was worth a try though.

I went to a CPR class at work today. It was a good review, since the last time I went to a CPR class was in 8th grade, I think. I hope I can remember everything I learned, since it's a good feeling knowing I could save somebody's life (but scary to think about all the bad things that can happen to people). The good news is that I'm quite good at giving CPR, according to our fancy ResusciAnnie (she had special indicators that lit up when we were breathing/compressing correctly, and she had a printout that came out of her side showing the compressions and ventillations plotted versus time). I can't guarantee I'll still be good at it in a week, but right now, I'm golden!