Archive for July, 2008

Okay friends, I’ve got good news to announce. I’ve been offered a new job!! I will be working for a company that helps research and run clinical trials of experimental cancer medications. It sounds like interesting work, the pay is much better, the hours are normal (Hallelujah! No more nights or weekends!), it’s just 10 to 15 minutes from our house, and I’m hoping to get a little closer to my science roots.

Oh! Plus, I get to wear scrubs! It’s like wearing pajamas to work everyday! Andy is trying to convince me to buy a set of truly horrendous scrubs with kitty kats, hearts, flowers, and bees on them. Yeah…I don’t think so. Though, I’m tempted to buy a set of Grey’s Anatomy scrubs. They’re so much more comfortable and more flattering (Fitted scrubs, that’s how Ellen Pompeo looks so darn good! Oh…and she’s a televion star.) I’ve never really thought about what a huge market scrubs must be! I’m rather excited that I’ve stumbled upon another outlet for my shopping hobby.

So to celebrate my new work chapter, I went out to celebrate with some of the pharmacy gals. Kim, Krystina, Andrea, Adriane, Francis, and I went out to dinner at Posado’s. Andrea and Adriane brought their baby girls, Ava and Addyson, respectively. There were a lot of “A” names that night, reminded me of high school. (Ashley, Audrey, Allison, Ayako…”A” names are popular, what can I say?) I had a great time and will definitely miss the people that I’ve gotten to know so well. I wish I could hang out with the girls more often, but a 24 hour pharmacy doesn’t really grant us many opportunities to find a night where we can all be together.

Sadly, everyone had later plans, had kids to get ready for bed, or had to work early in the morning…leaving me feeling like I still needed to celebrate properly. After a quick call to Ethan, I picked Andy up at home and we headed out to downtown Fort Worth to party the night away. We met up with Ethan, Donald, and a bunch of UNTHSC grad students. Some of them were familiar to me, some were completely new faces, but all were fun to be around. It was just a laid back night wandering around Sundance Square as we pleased. I do love downtown Forth Worth, it’s got a good vibe, decent music, a pretty nice mix of people, and for the most part it’s safe and clean.

All in all, a great weekend. Today, we just relaxed around the house trying to avoid the terrible Texas heat. In the evening, we took Jabber for her first trip to the dog park! She did pretty well for a newcomer. There was a dog that tried to be a bully, but Jabber stood her ground…on top of a boulder. How she managed to jump up there, I’m still puzzling over. We’re hoping she’ll be less shy and play with more of her puppy peers over time. Sigh…work tomorrow. Even yuckier, late shifts all next week (3 to 11). Two more weeks of retail pharmacy…I think I can make it!

Though I loved growing up in Kansas and wouldn’t have changed it for the world, there were a few things we lacked. After all, being stuck in the middle of the country does create a certain longing to see something different, something besides flat to mildly hilly land. I would dream of a view of the mountains in the distance or hearing the crash of waves against a beach. Well, since I’ve moved to Texas I’ve been nagging Andy to take me to Padre. So, last weekend we planned a mini-holiday to Port Aransas (located on North Padre Island). Even more fun, we invited Andy’s parents to join us for our little beach getaway.

I actually had a 6 day weekend! (A product of working last weekend and a reduction in our hours due to corporate money saving schemes…don’t get me started) So, I took care of a lot of errands while poor Andy continued to go to work. He was able to get Friday off for vacation, but couldn’t match my long break. After dropping Jabber off at Courtney and Griffin’s apartment on Thursday, I had us packed and ready to go! I was pretty proud of myself, one bag for the hotel, one bag for the beach, and the cooler. I only brought ONE pair of shoes!! Incredible! We drove to Austin Thursday night, and after a little change in plans headed for the coast Friday afternoon.

From Austin, Padre is really only about 4 to 5 hours away. That’s really not too bad, especially since we split the whole trip up into two days. We pulled into our hotel (Holiday Inn Express) just in time to drop everything off, freshen up, and head out to dinner. At the front desk lady’s suggestion, we headed for The Wharf Restaurant. Delicious food, though the wait staff left much to be desired. I had a tasty fish sandwich, while Andy and his dad ordered blackened fish, while Mom Trommer ordered a nice steak. After dinner, we took a quick walk on the beach just down the street from our hotel. The sand is so soft and velvety, and the water is awkwardly warm…like tepid bathwater. (my exact reaction was pee water, but let’s go with bathwater instead) Since everyone was tired from the long trek down, we headed back to the hotel for the night. Andy and I watched a special on the Travel Channel about the mysteries of the Smithsonian Museum before falling asleep, a little foreshadowing on our next trip in September!

Early on Saturday, we met for the continental breakfast in the hotel. It had the usual bagels, muffins, juice, coffee…etc. Then everyone packed up and got ready for the beach and off we went! One of the best parts of Padre Island is that there is MILES of beach. You simply get your car down on the sand and drive till you find the perfect spot. Problem was…we were driving a Yaris. Not exactly the rugged off roading vehicle you want on your side. Needless to say, we got stuck, really stuck. The car’s body was basically resting on sand. So, with the help of Dad Trommer, Andy, and 2 other kind souls, we reversed our way back to drivable sand. That aside, we did manage to find a perfect little stretch of beach to call our own.

Us and the Seaweed (better it be seaweed than miles of jellyfish!)

The Trommers under the sunbrella

We properly set up camp. We had towels, chairs, our protecting sunbrella, drinks, snacks, books, music, magazines, lots of sunscreen, and happily spent most of our afternoon on our beach site. Now, I sprayed everyone with our Neutrogena sunscreen spray. It has always done well in the past, but as we were heading back to the hotel…everyone had developed a slight pink hue except me. This, of course, has now turned into a full fledged sunburn by now, but I’m still puzzled as to why my spray failed me/us! We reapplied and everything! Turns out, I should have read the instructions more carefully. You’re supposed to reapply after…just about everything, after getting wet, after you’ve dried yourself off, after an hour of high sun exposure…etc. Oops…sorry guys!

We had another delicious meal (lunch) at a family favorite, Snoopy’s. This was followed by some nice cold ice cream next door at Scoopy’s. I thought this was funny, Snoopy’s next to Scoopy’s. No one else found this quite as amusing. I blame it on the sunburns. ^-^ It was a unanimous vote after lunch to head back to the hotel for a nice de-salting, de-sanding shower. We then smartly decided to hide out in the hotel until dinner.

This is us right before dinner…everyone’s just a bit pink

This is us just after finishing dinner at Fin’s…look at the sunburns setting in! Poor Trommer family!

Learn from our mistakes friends, if you’re going to use spray sunscreen at the beach, spray often! Needless to say, everybody was in a little pain by Sunday. So, rather than risk more injury going to the beach again, we headed home. After we reached DFW, we took Griff and Courtney out for dinner at the Loophole to thank them for watching our beloved Jabby. We had such a good time last weekend. It’s nice to get outside the normal routine and experience something different. Plus, we had great company and such tasty food! Here are our photos for the trip. Alas, it’s back to everyday life for now…

Jabber’s look says it all…we’re tired!

As a farewell to Andy’s 25th year and a kickoff to his 26th, I planned a fantastic outing last Monday (yes, I’m posting about LAST Monday – 07/07/08-…oops, I got lazy) and took him to the famed Texas de Brazil restaurant. A lot of our friends and co-workers have been raving about this place since we moved here! However, at $50 per person…we were reluctant to try it for ourselves. Well, thanks to their online e-club, they have specials, discounts, and free birthday meals. It seemed like the perfect time to give it a try.

Even though I made reservations, we still had to pick up a pager and wait till our assigned time. They were crazy busy for a Monday night! Since we got there early, we stopped by the bar and got a drink while waiting for our table. They have nice mojitos there, but as with everything else…very expensive.

Before

Once we were seated, the server warned us to pace ourselves. We kind of blew off his warning, we can certainly tell when to stop eating, right? Oh, in case you’ve not heard about this type of restaurant. It’s supposed to be based off of a Brazilian steakhouse. The servers come around with big skewers of meat (lamb, beef, steak, chicken, pork…etc), and depending on whether the little card on your table is flipped on red or green, pile your plate with whatever meat they have.

We started with the salad bar. It was so tasty! They had all sorts of salads, pasta salads, cheeses, pickled hearts of palm (which taste surprisingly like bamboo shoots…), soups, and rolls. We each had a plate of salad. I realize now that this was really wasted space! Then the meat fest began. Once we flipped our little sign to go, in about 2 minutes, our plates were completed filled with meat. How unhealthy, but oh so tasty! Nothing was cheap meat, everything was the best quality meat and perfectly grilled and seasoned. When someone would ask us, “would you like another filet mignon?”, the idea was so unexpected, that we would dumbly nod and another perfect steak would be piled on our plates. Needless to say, we rolled out of the restaurant hurting…

After…on the couch

We can now say we highly recommend this restaurant, along with everyone else. It’s really a good thing it’s so expensive…our health can’t take that kind of gorging more than 1-2 times a year!! Good grief! Not to mention, the salt intake had us drinking liters of water on end for days afterwards!

Moving on to last Thursday (07/10/08), Griffin and his girlfriend Courtney just moved into their new apartment in Denton. They graciously invited us over for a housewarming dinner. So far, the apartment is beautifully decorated. They told us of their future plans: painting, more furniture, more art…etc. Sounds ambitious but it promises to be spectacular when they’re done.

Courtney made a delicious dinner of salad, lasagna, garlic bread, and tasty baked apples with ice cream. We had a great time, and it was so nice being treated to such a lovely dinner.

With that said, I have to get to work. I had to work last weekend (hence the lack of posting) and have 2 more days before I get the rest of the week/weekend off. We’re planning a mini-holiday to the coast. I’ll be sure to post about that when we get back. Till then, here’s the complete set of pictures from Andy’s birthday…

Oh and here’s a picture of Andy with no neck. It makes me giggle.

Wishing everyone a happy Friday with this cute little clip. Don’t you wish you had a pet that is as cute AND useful! More life, less fuzzy cuteness to post later…

It’s the big birthday day!! Hooray for Andy! Jabber and I showered him with presents and smooches as soon as midnight rolled around.

Jabber Hugs and Smooches!

After some light chores, (Sorry, but it still has to get done! Being adult is not always fun, but having clean underwear and groceries is always good!) we headed out to the Movie Tavern in Bedford (about 20 minutes from our house) for dinner and a movie. The plan was that we were supposed to meet up with a bunch of Andy’s friends to watch the new Angelina Jolie flick, Wanted. Sadly, most of the people that were interested were unable to come. Next year, right?

In the end, we had a nice night with Griffin and Courtney (2 out of 7, not good odds. Poor Andy, I guess that’s what happens having a birthday at the end of a national 3-day weekend). We still got to watch a pretty awesome movie and ate some tasty food. I would highly suggest the movie, but I do warn the faint of heart. The movie gets pretty gory and violent in parts, but despite the blood and guts, I still enjoyed it and would highly recommend seeing the film.

Us after the movie. Can you believe the flash on my camera?? It’s completely dark out, but it looks like daytime! Incredible!

When we got home, we enjoyed the mini-birthday cake that I bought this morning at Central Market. It might be miniature, but it was delicious! With that said, Andy is now playing some of his new games that he got for his birthday…surprise surprise! Speaking of surprises, I do have one more trick up my sleeve for tomorrow…be sure to check back later this week for updates. Oh, and here’s the photos up till now.

It’s Andy’s Birthday Eve! What does one do to celebrate one’s last day of being 25? Plenty!! We started the day with a nice stress relieving massage at the Aveda Salon in Southlake. You know the masseuse means business when she comes out wearing scrubs. The thing about a good massage, is that it really needs to cause a bit of pain to be effective. No emphasis on fragrances, music choices, light rubbing, or “is this too hard?”, just straight to the attacking of sore muscles. Man, we came out of the session soothed and highly relaxed.

Next on the list, a absolutely fantastic meal at Truluck’s Seafood, one of our favorites. (Andy did mention how it was amusing that all his birthday surprises have benefited me as well…yeah, totally coincidence…mmhmm) Andy started with a crown and coke and I had a wonderful blueberry martini. (I think Andy’s drink of choice tastes too much like pool water gone bad)

My tasty drink

After some freshly baked bread and honey butter, we got our main dishes of sesame tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes for Andy (which I had last time) and coconut macadamia crusted Hawaiian mahi mahi with a pineapple salsa over asparagus sprouts for me. Oh my goodness, it was so gosh darn tasty! We devoured everything with such speed…that I neglected to take any pictures. Oops! Sorry guys, but I guess you’ll just have to come down and see/taste it for yourselves!

Us, the hungry duo. (p.s. like my pearls??)

After dinner, we stumbled with our big tummies to the next door Barnes and Nobles where we browsed through magazines and books. I discovered a whole line of magazines catered to the loving dog owner!! My favorite of the bunch is definitely Modern Dog. Don’t worry, Andy teased me plenty, and no, I didn’t purchase nor subscribe to any. Our agreement is that dogs don’t need clothing, and most of the magazines center on doggie fashion…a little odd, but if having the most posh pooch on the block makes you happy, go for it!

After our dinner recovery period, we headed to the Southlake Harkins Theatre to watch the new Pixar movie, Wall-E. I do love all the Pixar movies I’ve seen. This was no exception. However, it was not an all time Angela favorite. Don’t get me wrong, the characters are still adorable, the plot interesting, and the animation was extremely well done, of course. Robots just aren’t my cup of tea as far as the fuzzy cuteness factor goes, seeing as how they aren’t fuzzy nor have twitchy noses. Definitely worth watching though! Tune in again tomorrow for the Big Day!!

Happy Fourth of July! This year is a little different than most years, because as you know, the fourth falls on a Friday. Which means the sixth of July falls on a Sunday, as common sense would dictate…and a calendar. I have magically manipulated time and space to create a three day weekend as a special surprise present for Andy’s Birthday!! Okay okay, I am unable to bend the time-space continuum (I know you’re shocked), but I am still taking advantage of the three day weekend and have planned the days to the brim with fun Andy enjoyed activities, starting with today!

Unrelated to my hard work, the festivities actually started yesterday, when our friends Erin and Isis stayed the night on their way up to Kansas. Andy and Erin went out to dinner at Up-N-Smoke, a local Keller motor sports bar (I kid you not, apparently “biker bar” is not politically correct anymore). After dinner, Erin taught Andy how to play Alhambra, which I am told is a fantastic game. Jabber and Isis romped around the house, and I…was at work. Though I missed out on most of the Erin-Isis fun, at least I was able to say good night to them when I got home.

After Erin and Isis hit the road on their long journey up to Kansas, Andy and I…slept. Yes, we were completely lazy. But I thought Andy would appreciate the rest before his crazy awesomely fun birthday weekend!! We had a light lunch of leftovers (not exciting, but cost efficient), doused ourselves with sunscreen, and headed downtown for a Fort Worth Cats minor league baseball game!

Now most of you know that I don’t particularly enjoy sports, nor do I enjoy being outside during the hot Texas summer sun. However, Andy loves baseball AND fireworks, both of which would be covered in our low low priced $6 tickets. Gotta love minor league baseball! The seats are generally better, more crowd interaction, and decently priced admission, though the food/drinks were still horrendously expensive. Tonight the FW Cats were playing against the Wichita Wingnuts. I really need to start using the word “wingnut” in more everyday conversations, what a fun word! In the end, the Cats won 9-3, felt a little bad for the losing Kansas team, but I don’t have a great affinity for Wichita.

After the game, the fireworks show began. Wow! It was a great and really long display, filled with sparklers and firework blooms that I’ve never seen before! Plus, it gave Andy a chance to play with the fireworks setting on my camera.

I would definitely go for another game next year on the Fourth. Though perhaps I’ll get us better (shaded) seats! After a nice de-stickifying shower, we’re just relaxing and about to curl up on the couch with a good book. While at the game, we got these little American flags to wave during home runs and such. I thought it would be sweet to get a picture of Jabber holding the flag. What says Happy Fourth of July like a patriotic puppy? Yeah…didn’t work like I had planned. This is what occurred…

Look Jabber, it’s the United States flag, hold it while I get a nice photo for my blog!

Wait Jabber!! Come back with that flag!!

Gasp! No Jabber, no chewing on the flag of the United States of America!!

Drop it! Drop the flag! Bad Dog! Treasonous Dog!

Sigh…look what you did. You killed it! Feel shame and guilt.

Actually, she did feel rather bad after she discovered she had broken her “new toy”. She snapped that flag like a toothpick! Kind of glad it wasn’t…my finger. With that noted, hope everyone had a happy Fourth celebration of their own, minus the flag destruction…sigh. Tune in for more photos and stories as we continue with Andy’s 26th Birthday Weekend Bash!!