Friday, March 08, 2013

YUMMY CHOCOLATE OF THE DAY



I KNOW, RIGHT?! 

It's been a long time since I did a YCOTD, but to be frank, I haven't been eating as much chocolate as I'd like.  Well, actually, that's not 100% true, I'm not eating as much INTERESTING chocolate as I'd like.  Shut up, I'm supposed to be eating better.  If I tell people about the chocolate, I'd have to count it as real food!

I recently ordered a sample collection of Chuao chocolates from Birchbox.  Birchbox is basically a very girly, makeup-beauty-lifestyle subscription service where you get a box of 4 or 5 different kinds of samples in the mail every month.  Sometimes you get awesome stuff and sometimes it's kind of meh, but I love it because I've found a lot of different products that I really like without having to buy a full size product.  Also, I love getting mystery boxes in the mail.  I can't help it.

Anyways, sometimes Birchbox sends samples of snacks in the boxes and since I loved the sample of Chuao that they sent me, I ordered the entire box, which is 7 small bars, all of different types AND they're only 50 calories each.  Not bad, really.  I'd had some of the Chuao chocolate before, and I knew I liked it, but I wanted a more complete idea of the bars they offered, so this sample box was a great thing.  Each piece is about two inches long, and about 1/3 of an ounce, so it's enough without being too much.

The first one I tried was called Spicy Maya, which is described as "seductive cinnamon, pasilla chili and warming cayenne bedded in dark chocolate." 

 
It. Was. Amazing.  No, not just amazing, it somehow actually tasted sexy.  I know that isn't going to make much sense, but that is the best word I have.  The chocolate was dark and a little bitter with a good melt (not greasy), the cinnamon and chilies added some heat, and every once in a while I'd hit a bit of chili that was a little bigger than the other pieces and it would add a pop of heat.  There was even a slight after burn in my mouth and on my lips that lingered a while after the chocolate was gone.  The little chocopod (as the small bars are called) was just the perfect size, too.  Any more of it and I think it would have been too much. 

Oh, chocolate, I've been away way too long.  *Swoon*

PS:  Sorry if this review sounds a bit porny.   I have just really, really, really missed good quality chocolate.  You have no idea.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

GRRRRRR

I'd like to think that I'm generally an easygoing type of person.  I mean, I know that's not true about all things in life (just ask Steve - heyo!), but I'd like to think that in most situations, I can take the daily bits of unpleasantness and keep rolling along nicely.  I say, I'd LIKE to think that, but after yesterday I'm not so sure anymore.

I had an appointment at my doctor's office.  It wasn't with my doctor, but I had to see a nurse so that I could get a prescription refilled.  It's apparently a new rule or law or something, because it's the first time I've ever had to do that just to get a refill for this particular prescription. It's inconvenient, but I can understand that someone, somewhere feels that this is the best way to do things now.

So I went into the office first thing in the morning.  I was the first and only patient in the waiting room, and they made me fill out an insurance form (again) after saying it had been two years since it was updated (It wasn't. I'd been there three times since last January.)  I also made a faux pas by not remembering the name of the nurse I was there to see.  I had written it down, but forgotten to bring it with me and I called her two different and wrong names before they realized who I was talking about. Oops. My appointment was at 8:15, but that time came and went.  I'd always thought that not being called at your appointment time was because other patients took longer than they thought, but apparently not.  However, I really wasn't that bothered about not being called back right away.  I figured they had their reasons.

The door opened and a nurse told me to go to the scale (as every dang nurse always does) and then she directed me towards an exam room.  Something about this lady was weird.  I felt right away that she seemed...I don't know...terse or angry.  I apologized about getting her name wrong, thinking it might have insulted her, but she didn't crack a smile or even really look at me.  She walked over and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm and up close I could really tell she was angry about something.  I just kept quiet and she walked out of the room.

Have you ever been around someone who was really mad at you?  You get that weird, tingly feeling in the pit of your stomach and your face gets all warm?  That's how I felt as I was sitting there.  I began to wonder if I had inadvertently done or said something that I hadn't realized, because it felt directed at me.  She wasn't gone long, but when she came back in, she didn't even close the door to the exam room.  She just turned around and said in a rather rude way (I'm paraphrasing:)

"I can't write you a prescription, you don't qualify anymore.  These are not my rules.  I don't even know why they told you to come in."

She gave me a very, very short reason why I wasn't eligible and said when I came back to see the doctor next month, maybe I could get it then. I was genuinely puzzled, because while I could sort of understand her reason, it didn't make a whole lot of logical sense, so I got a chance to ask one question before she pretty much stalked out without saying another word.  I had been with her for less than five minutes.  I was completely nonplussed.  Honestly, I've never been treated that rudely in a doctor's office before, especially by a nurse.  I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, but she acted as if my very presence in the office was some kind of joke meant to inconvenience her in some way.  I was slightly concerned about not having the prescription refilled, but not so much that I would have made a scene or anything, so I have no idea what her problem was.  Was she ticked because of whatever this new rule was that said she had to see people specifically each time the prescription was refilled?  I don't know, but I did know that whatever her damage was, I didn't cause it.  By the time I'd gotten to my car, I was mad.  The more I thought about it, the madder I got!

It pretty much ruined my whole day.  That sounds kind of hyperbolic, but being treated so rudely first thing in the morning really set the tone for the day.  So thank you, lady, for giving me a scorching case of the Mondays, and thank the horse you rode in on, too.

Friday, March 01, 2013

SIGH

I am why we can't have nice things. :(

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home from work when something hit the side of my car.  I think it must've been a garbage can.  Well, in retrospect I think it was a garbage can that the garbage truck might not have put back completely off of the road.  I honestly didn't see anything, so it had to have just been the corner of the thing, but still.  At the time, I was so startled that I didn't even think to look behind me to see what I'd hit and by the time I got home, I freaked out thinking that I might have sideswiped a person!  I mean, I guess I knew I didn't hit a person, mainly because I'm fairly sure it would have sounded less Rubbermade-y and more meaty, but I was scared!  I pretty much sat in my office waiting for sirens.  Not that I'd just hit a person and run or anything, not if I actually KNEW I'd hit a person.  At any rate, there were no sirens.  Let's move on.

Anyways, whatever I hit knocked the passenger's side mirror off of the car.  Not the mirror housing, but it popped the mirror off.  I hated driving without it, because the convertible top of my car creates a huge blind spot, and I just knew that I'd try and change lanes and cause an accident.  Luckily, though, Steve was able to get a slightly smaller mirror that fit the housing, so after about a week I had a new mirror!

Fast forward to this past Monday.  I'd forgotten to get the garbage can from the street when I got home from work, and again after Steve and I got back from running an errand at Target.  I remember mentioning to Steve that we needed to bring it back in, but we got sidetracked by something when we got in the house and forgot about it again.   By the time I remembered it was still out there, a storm was blowing in.  The wind was blowing very hard and it was raining a bit. Since I was wearing shoes (and let's be honest, pants) I ran out into the rainy, windy night to wheel the can back to the house. 

The rain was cold, which was very uncomfortable, so I got the can and I tried wheeling it through the yard.  It was too squishy after the rain, so I wheeled it to the driveway and started to run.  I had to maneuver it between the cars, which I always have to do, but the wheel on the can jigged and I smashed it into the passenger side window of Steve's Challenger.  Oy.  The mirror housing snapped off and just dangled there by the power cords. I threw the can into the garage and ran back out into the rain and tried to fix it, but apparently I'd broken some important piece within the mirror housing, because it just sort of wobbled on its stalk like a broken doorknob.  When I got back to the house, I told him what I did.  Then I ran and hid.

Don't misunderstand me, Steve isn't a violent type of person.  Seriously, he barely has emotions to begin with, so I didn't hide because I thought he'd yell at me or anything.  I just felt so terrible.  I'm so freaking clumsy!  I've never been one for the wanton destruction of personal property (except for that one time and I'm still finding glass underneath things) and to know I was the one who broke his CAR of all things made me feel awful.  I think I'm very much like a child in some ways, and hiding when I'm uncomfortable is one of those ways.  He was actually very nice about it.  Much nicer than he needed to be, and told me to come out from beneath the laundry pile.  He tried to see if it could be fixed, but he didn't have what he needed to make it stay.  Then we jumped into my car and rode through the, by this time, rather violent winds to Wal-Mart to get some kind of adhesive to fix it until he could have it replaced.  It was near midnight by this point, and I had forgotten how scary the Midnight People of Wal-Mart can be! Luckily, he was able to find some kind of bonding agent that has held it on very well, so hopefully it won't just fall off while he's driving!  I suppose he'll have to have it replaced one of these days, but apparently with his car you can't just get the part mailed to you.  It has to be ordered and painted to match the car, then it has to be installed by a mechanic.  I still feel bad, but not as bad as I did.  This is the second time I've damaged his car.  NO wonder he won't let me drive it!  :)

Oh, and to make the day complete, I broke an iPhone!  That one wasn't completely my fault, though.  Steve had given me a deactivated iPhone that I was using as an iPod-with-a-camera (not sure what was wrong with it, but it couldn't be used as a phone anymore.)  I had it in my purse and when I reached for it on Monday found that the cover and screen had separated from the body of the phone.  It wasn't detached, but it had lifted away from the button near the bottom, and I couldn't push it down and fit it back in the frame.  I realized a piece of plastic inside was bent outward, so I lifted the screen enough to wiggle my finger inside to try and push it back down, and the glass cracked and the whole thing fell apart!  When I showed Steve, he told me it wasn't my fault.  I was unaware of this, but apparently some iPhone batteries are faulty, and they can swell up inside the phone, causing them to--well, not explode, but it pops them apart from the inside.

Anyways, so I've been very careful not to handle or get near anything of value this week.  At this point, I'm pretty sure I could break a chunk of granite with by bare hands without meaning to! 

KELLY SMASH!