Miscellaneous Monday

It's time.

• I am so pleased to see how many fabulous comments I received on my 100th post! I tried to respond to every one within the comment box and now my head hurts:) Just kidding. That was a few hours ago, so I'm totally recovered.

• Tonight we made Shrimp Diablo from the Dinner by Design stash. OMG it's the bomb. I don't normally take pictures of food because it kind of grosses me out, but I had to snap this one:
  

• The only problem is Nate "was" allergic to seafood in his younger years. And now he can take it in small amounts. So he picked this dish out and sure enough, now he is complaining of a stomach ache and itchy throat. Damn him! I love shrimp and I thought we could work this into our rotation! But I guess if it makes him sick we should steer clear, right? I just hope he doesn't vomit because that boy does it with some FORCE [sorry if that's TMI but it's awful.]
  

• Also, we did our taxes tonight. We stopped by Best Buy to purchase Turbo Tax and of course, they were out. So we just did the online version and let me tell you, I was SUPER stressed. I annoyed myself with how anxious I was about the whole thing. Maybe it had something to do with my blogging friend Erin's post that totally freaked me out. Anyway, it was a bit complicated this year because I've had THREE full time employers in two states this year, plus we got married. Not a big deal, I know, since we don't own a bunch of property or anything. But I was stressed. Here is all the freaking paperwork displayed on our coffee table:
  

And here is the most amazing gift ever:Ummm, we somehow got $3214.00 back from Uncle Sam. Now before you give me grief for letting the government use our tax dollars for free all year, let me just say that we did not plan for such a return. I claimed different numbers [either a "1" or "2"] for each W-4 since I progressed from being single to married but can't even recall which I'm claiming right now. It was blind luck and I understand that this was always our money....blah blah blah. But it's still freaking awesome.

I think it had to do with paying for 5k worth of tuition for Nate last year. I completely forgot we could claim tuition! And that bumped us up big time. Plus he only worked for five months last year then became a student, so I think we got a break from having one breadwinner? I don't know.

So now what? This amount is more than enough for my wedding DVD and album that I've been drooling over for eight months. But now that we have the money, of course I don't want to spend it. We've also talked a lot about going on an anniversary trip over Memorial Day weekend but we don't know where to go, or how much to spend. Then there's that second laptop Nate has been coveting....who knows, we'll see. I'm sure we'll just save it for the "down payment on a house fund" and stay boring old fuddy duddies forever:)

• Here is what Henry did the whole time we stared at the computer screen, praying not to owe money:
  

• A great Nate quote: "Since it's Fat Tuesday, can we make ourselves fat?" Actually, dear it is Monday but sure! So he made us glorious chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies. I'm salivating just smelling them!
  

Oh and if you think they look weird in the oven it's because we used our bomb cookie dough scooper that we registered for and we love it. Totally not necessary but cool.

• I have Jury Duty on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm kind of glad to be off work but also a little nervous. What if they assign me to a hard-core murder case and it's all on my shoulders to decide a persons fate!? Or maybe it will just be eye-gouging boring. They say they have free WiFi so I'm very tempted to bring my laptop along and just surf all day long. Now THAT I could do!

• Our crazy landlord now claims he is 99% sure the apartment will be rented to this chick. He said, "It's gone up from 95% to 99% and I'll call you tomorrow." Too bad he's making these arbitrary numbers up from the top of his puny little head. Annoying! I need to know if we should light a fire under our butts or not----doesn't he know how important PLANNING is to some people in this world? Uh.
  

• I haven't had time to read ANY blogs on my Google Reader tonight and it's stressing me out! I know there are 45 new posts and I'm just itching to read them all. But we've been busy tonight and now I'm past my computer curfew. Is it weird that those types of things stress me out? Why am I becoming such a stress ball lately?