Deva by Definition

A Day at the Zoo

As today was a warm and pleasant day, we decided to take a trip to the zoo. Normally, while there, we make an attempt at seeing everything, but due to crowds and our desire to visit the new Historic Vine Street Village entrance, we kept outdoors, seeing everything from lions, to tigers, to bears, oh my!

It was a great day to be walking around outdoors, stretching our legs, getting fresh air and enjoying the sun (slathered in sunscreen of course) while getting some exercise in. Because we didn't go inside many of the animal houses, save for the manitees, we stuck to the outside of the zoo, only zigging through when we were ready to leave, to see the zebras, cheetahs, and rhinos. The Zoo is also filled with gardens (there is a reason it is the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens). While leaving the Vine Street Village, I had the pleasure of seeing this beauty:

 

I was fascinated by the variegations in the colors, as the flowers were red and yellow in the same cluster. I could see planting this specimen (though I cannot remember the name of it) in a garden of my own someday.

Because it was warm and sunny out, halfway through our visit we stopped for drinks, and of course, some soft-serve United Dairy Farmers ice cream topped with sprinkles. Allen and I shared this cup and some water. It was delicious and hit the spot, being creamy, smooth, and chocolatey (and vanilla, it was a cup of swirl).

 

I think the highlight of my day was when we were headed to Giraffe Ridge. At Giraffe Ridge, if you happen to be at the zoo at the right time, you have the opportunity to feed a giraffe. That's right, feed a giraffe. The zoo has four giraffes, and two of the beauties were right up at the feeding station, waiting for their crackers. What we were given to feed the giraffes were small crackers that looked like a hybrid between a triscuit and a graham cracker, and were about the size of a large saltine. The giraffes saw you coming up with a cracker and were eager for their treats. We couldn't scratch their heads, because they don't like it, but I did get licked by the giraffe who got my cracker, and it was adorable.

 

Feeding the giraffe was the icing on the cake today, and I would totally do it again if given the chance.

This My Friends, is Why I Love 'Mythbusters'

Because they do things like this:

Happy Three Years

Three years ago today was the first time The Boy and I went on a date. We went to see 'The daVinci Code' with two of our friends, playing pinball before the movie, and by the end of the movie were holding hands. We held hands in the back seat of my best friend's car the whole drive back to campus that evening, and stayed up until 2am talking in my room. Three years later we have two cats, live in our apartment, and are house hunting.

If you asked how The Boy and I met, I couldn't tell you the first time I met him, I know that my best friend brought him to dinner one night, and he came with us subsequent nights as well. I remember the first time I realized that I might like him, was when he said that he could smell when it was going to rain, which I can do as well, and that spawned a conversation between us about growing up in Southeastern Ohio. The first time I said I liked him out loud, he and I had just had a conversation across from one of the dining halls while he was on his way to dinner and I was headed back to my room. I talked to his shirt the whole time, and when he had left, turned to my friend and said "I think I like him. Do you think he likes me?" She was the first one to know that I loved him, before I admitted it to myself, and just hours before I told him so myself.

A few days later he asked if I wanted to go with them to the movies. A week later was when I told him I loved him, hours after I had told my friend. After school was finished for the summer we spent the first six months of our relationship seeing each other only on the weekends. He was doing a co-op and I was at school. We had phone conversations every night, talked with each other on AIM, and emailed back and forth as much as we could.

Three years after that first date, and we still are together, enjoying the company of one another, playing with our cats, or teasing on the basketball court. We've experienced so much, and I could not ask for more. He has stuck with me when I've pushed, held me when I've cried, and made me laugh. I love making him laugh, surprising him with gifts or homemade rolls, and discussing any and everything under the sun with him. We have grown closer these past three years, and I hope that we have many more ahead of us.

Variety, It's the Spice of Life

At the start of every week, The Boy and I sit down to make a grocery list, which starts out by planning the meals for the week. Normally it's an easy task, but because we've been out one or two nights a week house hunting for the past four weeks, dinner has been iffy at best. We have been eating things fixed the night before, microwaveable food, or fast food. This week, since we're not looking at houses I was pretty lost in deciding what to fix for dinner.

The Boy suggested that I take a look through the notebook I keep all of the shopping lists in and see what I had shopped for earlier in the year. In doing that, I learned that no, really, I wasn't cooking as much variety that I thought I had been. Each week contained some combination of the same seven or eight meals - turkey cutlets, hamburgers, tacos, chicken in various forms atop rice - and there really wasn't any variety or rotation, just notes that would ensure that we wouldn't eat just chicken, just beef, or just turkey for a week's meals.

Discovering this lack of variety from our week-to-week meals led to a conversation about adding new dishes in. Neither one of us is big into pasta dishes, I don't eat pork or shellfish, and The Boy doesn't like beans or fish. Our likes and dislikes combined do limit us, but also allow us to become more creative with what we do like to eat. I thought about it and decided to add enchiladas as a new dish for this week, and now I'm brainstorming for more ideas. I already know that I would like to make at least one meatless dinner per week, and all of the recipes must be fairly quick to prepare (or have the ability to sit 24 hours before cooking in my refrigerator).

All of the thinking and website combing have led me to ask you a question, internet: do you have any suggestions on things to cook? My only rules are that it cannot have pork products or fish of any kind (even shrimp), as well as the quick or overnight rule mentioned above. Please help me internet, I need more entrees!

Peace and Harmony

In a conversation with The Boy today, I said that I wasn't being very zen. His response was "did you really just use the word zen?? I didn't think harmonious balance was your thing." which made me laugh, but also got me thinking. Is harmonious balance something that I strive for? Inner peace, harmony, and spirituality come up frequently in my conversations with friends and the people around me, but they are all things that I don't find myself thinking about very often.

When I was fifteen, sixteen or so, I practiced yoga, and read about the inner peace that it was meant to bring, that meditation would bring. Harmony and inner peace were things that I strove for through my practice, but never found. Yoga made me more flexible, but I was never able to calm my mind while doing it. Looking back, it was a learning experience, but I did not realize it until quite recently.

I am not a physically calm person. I fidget, get up, move around, and sometimes it's all I can do to not get up, wiggle, or go do something. Sitting still and meditating is not the way for me to find inner peace and harmony. My brain screams at me to think! Move! Get up! Which leads to me going and scrubbing the fridge out, vaccuming, cleaning the living room, or doing laundry.

Yet when I step outside in a pair of running shoes, and listen to the sound of my feet upon pavement, my breath as I move my arms and legs in rhythm.  I lift weights and focus on my muscles contracting, and getting the weight up, and away from the ground. In these exercises, I find focus in my breathing and the movements I am working to complete, the weight I am trying to lift, or the mile that I am pushing to reach.

So I don't sit still. I run, I jump, I push, pull, lunge, and press my way through meditation, finding my inner peace through motion.

Today Just got Weirder

I went to bed last night with a sore throat, stuffy head, and upset stomach, and woke up about the same, with sinus pressure that made me dizzy to boot. Because of that, I stayed home from work today (driving while dizzy is not recommended). I stayed in bed until almost noon, when I realized that I really wanted some throat lozenges, as the Tylenol and Mucinex had taken away everything but the throat pain and nastiness, and lemon-lime Gatorade doesn't work the same way as a good lozenge does.

So, I got up and took a shower. Because, to be quite honest, there was no taming my hair to even fit under a baseball cap for me to go to the grocery store and pick up a bag of lemon throat drops. It was bad. Recently, my bottle of conditioner landed on 'E,' and since there was still a week left in the bottle of shampoo, and I had a bar of Jungle conditioner from Lush that I keep on hand. No worries, my hair would still be soft and detangle, and the conditioner bar does work quite well actually (and makes me smell warm and spicy)!

Well, I'm sitting on the floor of my living room, in front of the sofa. The cats are playing or sleeping or doing whatever, or so I think. Maggie comes up beside me and hops up on the couch, and the next thing I know I have a paw and a kitty mouth in my hair. Claws, teeth, and all. Am I being groomed? Is my head being attacked? No. Clue. I'm going with grooming, or really liking how the conditioner bar smells in my hair and thinking that my hair is really quite delicious, actually. Because she's pulling on it while bracing herself with her claws in my neck to tug it.

Now, I love Maggie. I also like my hair, where it is, you know, attached to my head. So I brush her away - gently - and she runs off, only to come back and do it again. Then I moved. I still have my hair, but I have a few scratches to show for it, and I'm still wondering whether my hair was being attacked or cleaned.

I think that it's better off that I don't know.

Late Nights

The Boy and I have a habit of going to Kroger some nights, after nine or so, and picking up something that we want right now, something that we don't have at home and cannot wait until tomorrow. A majority of the time, the Something is not a necessity. We aren't out of toilet paper, tissues, soap, or milk. No, what we are after is cake, ice cream, hot fudge, or just a walk around the grocery store.

We take these trips when we are antsy, stressed, tired, wide awake, we take them whenever. Nothing really has to cause us to want a trip to the grocery for cake to have with ice cream, or ice cream to have with cake, or just to walk around, maybe buy some berries, gum, or Gatorade. It's time to spend together, not just sitting at our computers in the living room, or watching television. It's different than side-by-side time in the apartment, or walking around at the zoo.

You may think that it is odd, a late night grocery trip for cake, in all of it's delicious glory. Why not go to a movie? Or wait a few days and go to the zoo? Why the grocery store, of all places? This, I couldn't tell you. We go because we can. Because it's nine-thirty and we want to share a piece of cake, or a bowl of ice cream and some conversation. We go to spend time together discussing the ripe cherries now in with the grapes, and to take time out of our normal day. For me, in that moment, there is nothing I would rather be doing.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie

It seems that everyone has their own idea of what a perfect chocolate chip cookie is. I think there are as many perfect cookies as there are recipes, and there is a recipe to match everyone's tastebuds. Soft, squishy cookies, sugar cookies with chocolate chips, dense, chewy cookies, cookies with crisp golden edges, sweet ones, salty ones, extra chocolatey, thick, or thin, chocolate chip cookies are as varied as the people who eat them, and that is what makes them so good.
 
Myself, I like a cookie that is dense and chewy, with golden, crisp edges. Biting into it brings flavors of real butter, vanilla, a hint of salt and sweet, rich, semi-sweet chocolate chips. Some store-bought cookies can bring this about, and others remind me of sweet cardboard with flecks of chocolate in them. My search for my perfect cookie led me to this recipe, based on the one on the back of nearly every bag of chocolate chips in the grocery store. The flour stands at a mere two and a half cups in this recipe, but you could add more if you want a denser cookie. Because I allow my dough to rest a day before I bake it (something I discovered through the Smitten Kitchen) I have written it into the recipe, but you can bake them right away and still end up with a very tasty treat. Without Further Ado:
 
Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter, softened (room temperature is too soft, you want the butter workable, but still a little hard)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt, with extra for dusting
2 1/2 cups flour
12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
 
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until combined and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix to combine. Add the baking soda, salt, and flour, and mix until it all comes together. Gently fold in the chocolate chips until they are incorporated. Be careful not to overwork your dough. Cover, and allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator.
 
Preheat the oven to 375F. Bring dough out to soften a bit while your oven preheats. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfulls onto nonstick or lined cookie sheets, spaced about 1.5-2 inches apart. Bake for 9-12 minutes, until the edges are golden and the centers are just set. Allow to cool on the pans two minutes before removing to racks. Eat with milk, wrapped around vanilla bean ice cream, or share with friends. Mine can't get enough of this recipe, and neither can I.