A true irony....

ok, so maybe it's not irony. i can never remember what is irony and what is coincidence, but that's not really the point here.
last month, the morning that michael and i drove to chicago for my IRS interview, we stopped at the mcdonalds near my house for a couple of mcgriddles. i used to order the bacon, egg and cheese mcgriddle, then realized that the bacon made it really difficult to eat. so now, in theory, i order a mcgriddle with just egg and cheese.
this special order presents several problems for the folks at mcdonalds. first off, they can't figure out how to ring it up. sometimes it's a sausage and egg mcgriddle without the sausage. sometimes they ring everything up separately (which one time resulted in me receiving three separately wrapped items - two griddlecakes and some egg, which i had to assemble while driving in rush hour. i would like to point out that i did not receive my $0.30 cheese....).
this particular morning, i received a mcgriddle with nothing but sausage on it - no egg or cheese, which are the two items i ordered. sausage is the food i would least like on my mcgriddle. yuck. but we were on a time schedule, so i took the sausage off and just ate the cakes.
michael is not particularly tolerant of fast food folks. he insisted upon returning the sausage to the mcdonalds when we got back from chicago. the manager gave us two vouchers for a free mcgriddle. so i tried to redeem them today....
here's the irony - after confirming that i had ordered a mcgriddle with only egg and cheese, TWICE, i received a sausage, egg, and cheese mcgriddle. so, in exchange for the voucher i had received because the people at mcdonalds screw up my order 1 out of 3 times, i received a screwed up order.
you think i would learn and go to a different mcdonalds, but honestly, it's just getting funny.....

A Married Christmas

All right. Today is December 10th. I am still working on my Christmas shopping. That may come as a surprise to some of you, considering I was the one that had all my presents bought and wrapped before Thanksgiving in previous years. However, even though this is Michael & I's 4th Christmas together, it seems that there are a gizillion more presents to be purchased. For instance, look at our tree. At about 2 feet high, it is quickly becoming overridden with gifts. Currently, there are 39 gifts "under" our tree. My goodness....there are still at least 3 people left to buy for....maybe we need a bigger apartment....

A Married Sunday Afternoon.....

Does anyone else remember college? When I was fun? I'd stay up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleep all day on Sunday? Well, those days are over. Now, I spend the whole day cleaning my apartment. Today, however, I lived on the wild side. Michael and I played Battleship. Now we're going to do a little Super Sudoku before settling in to watch the Packer game while we cook in our crockpot. Wow. The crazy part is, I actually enjoy it.....

I finally understand....

Last night I purchased and watched the newly released Office Space Special Edition (with flair). First of all, I find it a bit ironic that the special edition was released approximately 5 days after my quest to purchase this movie began. I was sitting at home one day recalling all of the stupid things that happened to me at work that day, and it dawned on me - I'm living Office Space. So I went to buy the movie.
When I first saw this movie, I thought it was funny. I did not, in retrospect, appreciate the full "it's funny because it's true" humor of the movie. For example - yesterday I got FOUR emails regarding the fact that I had forgotten to submit my timesheet on Monday. I had already realized my mistake and submitted it first thing on Tuesday morning, yet four separate individuals felt it necessary to address the issue with me, all asking what happened and stressing the importance of timely submission. What they didn't know is that I did nothing for the last 2 weeks and therefore it had no effect on their precious chargeability. This little incident reminded me of how Peter was recognizing that if he made a mistake, 8 separate bosses felt the need to discuss it with him.
From the first scene to when Peter was driving in rush hour and the guy with a walker was making better time to the scene where they destroy the evil fax machine, I am living this life. Now, if only I could come up with some evil scheme to defraud the company and then find my true calling as a construction worker.....But then again, maybe I just have a case of the Mondays.

stalking - the new american passtime

i was reading cosmo last night. really, i don't enjoy it much anymore as i don't need much advice on finding men or being single, but i still have the subscription and it's better than financial accounting. when i got to the middle of the magazine (the second half is an upside down special version on what i can only imagine is "men"), there was a story about dating co-workers. well, that seemed interesting to me, as i myself have dated a co-worker on two occasions. it was interesting until i got to point number seven or so. they suggested, after exhausting all of your other resources to find out everything you can about the cute co-worker, that you should go online and purchase a background check. the suggested website charged upwards of $125. apparently regular stalking isn't good enough anymore. now you have to spend $125 to find the love of your life. i'm still not sure why you can't just go strike up a conversation with the guy.....

A Terribly Wonderful Idea

last night we had the pleasure of joining a couple of michael's relatives for dinner. they brought italian sausage all the way from new york city. i personally don't like italian sausage, but i do appreciate the sentiment. more importantly, they brought us the most wonderful gift. it is a red plate. sounds simple enough. this red plate is to be used to honor specialness at meals. what a wonderful idea to honor someone for something wonderful they have done by giving them the special plate. unfortunately, michael and i are not really doing much special these days (we got burnt out over the summer), but i cannot wait until we have a family and can share this with them. perhaps we will even have a special person at every single meal.

Fon-don't

it seems to me that all newly married folks have one thing in common - a "married couple cooking" disaster story. i personally thought michael and i would be immune to such a story considering we have lived together for awhile now and he is a pretty good cook. i was wrong. tonight we decided to try out our new fondue pot. so, we studied the recipes online and decided to try to make the three cheese recipe from the melting pot. apparently there is a reason people go to the melting pot and pay a lot of money for melted cheese, bread, and apples.

OH MY GOD

so i'm sitting at work today and get a call from michael. he says "did you get my email?" that itself would be enough to make me think "oh my god" as mike NEVER emails me. so i say no. he says he'll send it to my other email account as my work tends to confiscate emails not from KPMG employees. he then adds that the email is from his brother and it contains swearing. now he's peaked my interest. his brother doesn't swear......
first, a little background. michael and i got married recently. instead of writing out thank you notes, we recorded a little message for each person and mailed it off. we used our ipods and a voice recorder to record them and itunes to burn the messages to CD (sounds like extraneous information, but keep reading).
finally i get the email. christopher, michael's brother, is writing to tell us the thank you note would perhaps have been more sincere had we not chosen to title the CD "F**k It". at this point, i nearly fall off my chair in sheer horror. another note, chris has 4 kids, ages 14, 7,4, and 2.
my horror stems from the fact that i intentionally name the CD "Thank You!". just like that. exclamation mark and all. i swear on it.
so we try 2 other cds. one comes up as "what about the next disaster?". the next comes up as a song from patti ann smith.
i called apple. they say, as i suspected, that the cd database that the new mp3 programs pull cd information from has similar files with inappropriate titles. so yeah.
so, the moral of the story - if you got a cd from us as a thank you note and it is named something obscene, thank the nice people at CDDB. I named it thank you.

Mi Primo Favrito

This past weeknd, Michael, Butler, and I took a treck up north to see Matt run in the Twin Cities Marathon. Here's a picture of him right before the finish line, looking as good as ever. It's sort of hard to see him, but he's in the grey shirt and black shorts. (i drew a line, i swear that's him)
He finished about 19 mintues past his goal, but the people in charge said everyone finished slow because of the wind(?). He finished in 4:41. I'm constantly amazed that anyone is willing to run at all, no less 26.2 miles. that's just crazy! but he did it, and i'm super proud of him!

Ok, I admit it, I don't make decisions on my own....

Alright, so Daniel was right - I don't make my own decisions. I was sitting around today, surfing the internet in a futile attempt to avoid cleaning my increasingly disgusting apartment like a "good wife" (ha ha ha!), when I realized that nearly all of my currier/stanley buddies have blogs. So, in true Kate fashion, I caved. Now I have a blog. I figure if they think it's a good idea, I should probably get on board too! Maybe it's better if I don't make my own decisions - honesly, should I be trusted with major life decisions. I bet Gwen and Michael would both give an enthusiastic no to that. So really, I'm just doing the world a favor. Or something like that.....