The Pioneer Woman Travels to Houston

We all know I love the internet. And my computer. I mean, that's where all my friends live. ;) One of the neat and slightly odd things about the internet is that you can know all kinds of things about a person you've never met. Like how she met her husband or what her kitchen looks like or how she feels about mushrooms. Things that 20 years ago you wouldn't know about someone without having met them or having a gossipy grandmother that had.

The Pioneer Woman is one of those people I know all kinds of things about and had never met. She writes/blogs about her "decade-long transition from spoiled city girl to domestic country wife." I find her fascinating and funny and feisty many other words that start with F and end with Y. Especially friendly. Pioneer Woman aka Ree Drummond took her witty writing and recipes from the web to paper. She wrote a fabulous (I swear, I didn't do this on purpose but I cannot stop using F adjectives) cookbook. You can buy it at any bookstore. The cookbook came out a few months ago and she's currently on a book signing tour.

She stopped in Houston this past Saturday and I headed out to meet her with some of my other internet-turned-real-life friends. My friends Reneé, Natalie and Kristen introduced me to the Pioneer Woman's blog a while back. Reneé, Natalie and I (along with N's sister and adorable daughter) met up at Georgia's Market to meet Ree.

Reneé and I went to Blue Willow Bookshop on Tuesday to pick up a pass to stand in line and meet Ree. I purchased by book from Blue Willow and they offered me a pass to the yellow group for buying my book through them. I declined and took an orange pass so I could hang out with Reneé and her friend Nicole. The ladies at Blue Willow were so freaking nice. I wish their shop was a little closer to where I live. The store is so neat and it turned out to be way too small to host this event so it was moved to Georgia's Market which was just a short drive away.

They had a dutch oven (it looked like a le creuset -- WANT) out and some papers so you could ask Ree a question. They selected several questions to ask and then she let people in the audience raise their hands. Reneé worked that to her advantage and asked two questions. One about the worst thing PW had ever cooked and then one about another book about Ree and her husband's courtship. You know, I don't think I've ever used that word before. Courtship. Weird.

Reneé and I totally lucked out in getting a seat. Natalie did us a huge favor and saved us seats. Now, the seats were tiny. I sat down and wanted to take my coat off and I felt like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. Fat guy in a little coat ... Natalie was reminded of Friends. "Could these chairs BE any smaller?" But everyone around us was super nice and chatty.

Here's Ree answering questions in front of a bunch of organic rice milk.


After the Q&A session, they started calling colors for signing passes and we waited for our turn to have our book signed. We were in the fifth color group. Not only did she sign every book (and some people had more than one), she chatted with every person and posed for a picture. The girl in front of me had several books. I would have felt bad for bringing more than one but Ree just smiled and signed and chatted away. That probably says more about Ree being a nice person than me being a nice person though. If I was the one signing books, I'd be thinking "seriously? You want me to sign all of these?"

Reneé, Nicole and I were the first three in line for the orange group. Ree told Reneé she liked her outfit that everyone was so dressed up and asked if that was normal for Houston. Reneé is usually dressed well but we had attended a Christmas party before the signing so she was all Christmas-y in her green sweater and heels.

I went next. Here's me and Ree (we're on a first name basis now)
OK, a couple of things. She said she liked my laugh and it was infections. And then in true Karen-talks-too-much fashion, I told her that my nickname in college was Flipper because people think it sounds like a dolphin. And she said she'd never have thought of that and I said something like "well, that's not the worst thing I've been called."

I meant in relation to my laugh (which someone I didn't know once said it sound like a turkey). But that's not how it came out at all.

And secondly, I have got to start taking flash pictures in shirts before I leave my house. Hello, beige grandma bra. I see you.

Here's my signed book:
See! First name basis!

I also got a t-shirt. It's an adorable brown tee with flowers and whatnot. The woman handing them out was nice enough to ask if I wanted a medium or large. They are cute little baby-doll type tees. Yeah, I will totally take a medium. (In fact, the large is about 3 sizes too small but it's so cute and I am working on slimming down so hopefully I'll be able to wear it in the next 3-5 years.)

When I was trying to take a pic of my book, Pan had to get in on the action:
I'd like to say he was waving but actually he was trying to attack the wrist strap on my point and shoot camera.

The whole experience was great. I got to hang out with some girlfriends that I don't see enough. The bookstore/venue had everything organized so well and we really didn't have to wait that long. Ree was wonderful, of course. And I ran into some ladies, er people, I hadn't seen in years. -- I'm just not ready to call people my age "ladies". Maybe when I'm 40 that will sound less weird.

My cats make me laugh

Nothing says crazy cat lady like posting pictures and videos of them on Facebook, Blogger and a message board.

Pan is super entertaining. He freaks out if a baby cries on TV. He has been "fighting" with this cat that keeps showing up on my porch. I have yet to get a video though because that cat only shows up at 8 a.m. And if I'm home at 8 a.m., I'm in bed.

Here's Pan. He's unamused by me.


And her's a bad quality video of him trying to sleep. He did this for about 10 minutes. I filmed it with my phone because I was afraid to move and he'd stop.




Katanna is also unamused by me.


She loves my suitcase though (bad quality pic but still cute)

Someone with more motivation than me needs to invent a motivation pill

I have zero motivation. I don't want to do any work. I'm here. I've got all of the programs open that I need. I have coffee and diet coke available.

But I just can't get motivated. I don't know what's wrong. I know that no one else is going to do the work. And the more I put it off, the more stressed it'll make me to do it. But I've got Target.com open, blogger open and I've played Bejeweled Blitz for about 30 minutes today.

I even tried to give myself a stern talking to but I got about 3 words in and decided I didn't have the motivation for that either.

I'm going to have to work over the weekend if I don't get busy. There is a scene in Boogie Nights where Philip Seymour Hoffman keeps hitting himself in the head and saying "stupid, stupid, stupid".

That's me right now.

Two weeks!

I haven't seen my nieces since November of 2007. My sister and nephew were here earlier this year for a couple of months when my other sister had her first baby. My brother in law was here last year to do some stuff with their house. But the girls haven't been home since they moved to Japan (this time).

I have about 30,000 things to do at work before they arrive. They are flying in on the day the international applications are due so I probably won't see much of them the first few nights.

But they will be here for three weeks so I will get to spend plenty of time with them. I'm so excited! I hope they are too ;)

Hmm, maybe that's why my head hurts

I have a list in my head of things I want to write about. Yet, here it is, two (er, three) weeks after my last post. Maybe tonight I'll write all those things down and carry it with me. That might inspire me to actually type out some stuff.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was on the treadmill and for some reason the water in my bottle tasted funny. I always fill up my water with ice and filtered water because the water that comes out of water fountains tastes funny and you never know what people are doing to drinking fountains when you aren't around. I just assume it's something I don't want to know about.

As I'm walking and taking sips, I realize that the water tastes a little like cranberry. Which would be OK if I bought those PUR flavor filters.

Since I do not, I had a good idea of what the problem was. A couple of weeks before this, I had purchased some cranberry vodka. After having a vodka/soda, I put the lid on and stuck it in the freezer.

Apparently (this is where I make a big hand gesture when telling the story in person), I did not screw the cap on all the way and when I rearranged the stuff in the freezer so I could put 10 Lean Cuisine Cheese French Bread Pizzas in there, the bottle fell over. (As an aside, I love those and they are very hard to find. I don't want pepperoni and I don't want supreme! I want cheese! So I stocked up when I saw them at Target. And they were on sale!)

The bottle fell over and cranberry vodka dripped into ice cube tub. The bottle had been at least 3/4 full -- I'm not entirely sure I had only made one drink ;) It was now down to about 1/4 full. There was a nice vodka/ice sludge in the bottom of the ice cubes. I could pretend I dumped it all down the sink but anyone that knows me very well knows that's not what happened. I dumped it into a bowl and stuck it back in the freezer for the next time I wanted a vodka and soda. (A good blogger would have taken her camera out and captured a picture of the sludge but I did not)

Coincidentally, the next day I woke up with a migraine at like 5 a.m. I occasionally get them from working out and I occasionally get them from drinking. If I had to guess, I'd say drinking while working out is definitely NOT a good way to avoid migraines.

Chicago with the girls

When I moved back to the Houston area after college, I didn't have a whole lot of friends in the area. I was posting on a message board for Aggies and eventually met quite a few people at happy hours set up through the message board. I've become good friends with several girls I've met through the message board. I call them girls but we're all grown women with jobs and whatnot.

It's been 6 or 7 years since I met most of them and now several of them are married (or divorced and re-married). They have beautiful kids and beginning to scatter all over the country.

Most of us spend a lot less time on that original Aggie message board. We talk about things that don't necessarily need to be so public (I mean, do 5,000 people need to know that my pap smear was abnormal AGAIN?) So, we have a little private board we chat on.

One of the girls is pregnant with her second child and wanted to do a girls weekend before she was 1. too pregnant to fly 2. the mother of two beautiful babies.

We planned it pretty quickly and the dates were hard to coordinate. It ended up being only three of us but we had a blast. We had pizza at Gino's, went to Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower), saw a pirate exhibit at the Field Museum and watched the Aggies get embarrassed on national TV at the ESPN Zone.

In August I was worried about getting myself on a plane to Atlanta and by October, I had been to Atlanta and Nashville and was going on a trip to Chicago. I even navigated the train and bus to the hotel from O'Hare National Airport. What a difference three months makes.

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip:

Every time I see this one of me and the giant globe at The Field Museum, I sing "she's got the whole world in her hands." Thanks Jami!


Standing out on The Ledge at Willis Tower



Looking down


View from the skydeck


It was a great trip even though it was short. We decided to do the same thing next year. Boston is the destination!

Oh Look!

I'm the worst blogger ever!

I have been keeping busy though so as soon as I feel like typing, I actually have some stories to share.

Maybe this weekend. It's finally going to feel like fall this weekend. Sounds like a good reason to make some Butter-Nut instant hot chocolate and type up some stories for all of my adoring fans (stop laughing!)