Chai Tea and Sunday Brunch

We tried the following today at Starbucks (description taken from their site): “Tazo Chai Black tea blend with exotic spices, steamed milk and honey. Taste the flavors of India in this steamed Tazo blend of rare black teas, milk, exotic spices and comforting vanilla.”

It was quite yummy, and with non-fat milk, the grande was only 230 calories, of which I only had a third, so it was a nice low-calorie treat. In fact, it ended up being our breakfast since we were on the go from 7 am until just a bit ago. Now we’re finally unwinding from a day of shopping. We also caught an afternoon showing of Taking Lives which I thought was good. Then we came home, did a ton of laundry, and I decorated for Spring/Easter (may not be religious, but I still like the decorations) and changed the dining room and bathroom theme to something more Spring-like (even though it no longer feels like Spring outside).

Here’s this week’s Sunday Brunch:

What Happens at the Equinox

The calendar says it’s officially spring. Where I live there is still about 18″ of snow on the ground. BUT … I’m optimistic that I can get into my spring rituals soon.

1. Do you get a spring break? Nope. It’s not fair either. Is it any wonder children are happier than most adults? They get two weeks off around Christmas, a week in Spring, and the whole summer. And what do us working stiffs get? An entire 10 work days off a year. Whoopie-dee-doo!

2. Some of us are pretty casual about spring cleaning. Others go to it with a lot of gusto. Which are you? Well, I think I do “spring cleaning” every month ’cause I love to reorganize.

3. Is planting flowers or a vegetable garden on the agenda? If you count planting flowers in pots. Can’t wait to have a house and real garden!

4. Do you suffer from allergies and do they get worse in the spring? Nope. I’m lucky, considering my mom is allergic to everything.

5. How will you celebrate Easter this year? We’re going to St. Louis Easter weekend (Friday and Saturday) so we’re just going to be relaxing on Easter. We’re not very religious, if you couldn’t tell. If we weren’t going away for the weekend, we might have dinner with family.

Saturday Afternoon

It’s a gorgeous day in Chicagoland. We took the kids to the library and came home with far more stuff than either of them will be able to watch or play with before bedtime. But it’s free, so who cares?

Between Joe and I, we came home with something like 16 cds. Can you guess what I’m doing with them right at this moment? Yes, I’m bad. I just don’t like buying cds, especially when they have one or two good songs on them.

I think my head is going to explode before the day is over, though. To my right is a Thomas The Tank Engine video playing on the tv and to my left is the girl on Joe’s computer playing a game. I can barely write a coherent entry when the tv is on, so you can imagine!

Mmmm … it smells so good in here right now. We’ve got the patio door open with the fresh breeze blowing in, and we’ve got hot dogs and cottage fries cooking for lunch.

It feels like Spring. Oh wait, it IS the first day of Spring. Too bad I hear the warmish weather isn’t going to last. Stupid Chicago weather.

Friday Five

Here’s this week’s Friday Five. I’m not in an overly talkative mood, so these will be short.

If you…

1. …owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? Mexican AND Chinese, just because they are my two favorites.

2. …owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell? Media items like cds and dvds.

3. …wrote a book, what genre would it be? Comedy.

4. …ran a school, what would you teach? Common sense.

5. …recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it? Trance/Techno.

Soapy food

Ok … this is the strangest thing. But finally, the mystery is solved. Let me explain …

A couple of months ago we were looking for an open Chinese restaurant on a Sunday ’cause our favorite place isn’t open weekends. Well, we found this little joint and ate lunch there. They gave us so much food, though, that we took some home.

So dinnertime rolls around and we’re munching on our Chinese food (mongolian beef), when I took a sip of Pepsi and was completely disgusted because it tasted like soap! I urged Joe to take a sip, and he tasted it too. Thinking it was a bad can, we opened a new one and got the same exact taste. So then we thought maybe the case of Pepsi was bad. But when we took a sip of water, we got that terrible taste yet again. Baffled, we figured it must have been some strange chemical reaction produced by the spicy Chinese food and decided we wouldn’t be eating at that place again.

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