a productive saturday

today joe and i got up early and rented our first zip car. it was so exciting. our volvo S40's name was Solana. joe was sooooooo excited to be driving a car with a decent engine. and i must say that when driving around in this city you sometimes need that extra ooomph to prevent getting hit by other drivers. man. i'm glad i don't have to drive.

we went to ikea in elizabeth, new jersey (right next to the newark airport), returned picture frames and light bulbs, and bought some new window treatments. since we went so early it was not neeeearly as insane as the first time we went when i needed several hours afterward to recover from the madness. its like a favorite pastime on a Saturday afternoon is to take your extended family and your crying toddlers to ikea and walk slowly with a large cart.

anyway. this is joe installing the hardware for the windows. i was the manager of the window treatments but i needed help when it came to the actual installation. so joe was the "installer" of the window treatments. and it was quite a production because we had to move the desk...and use the drill...and climb up onto small step ladders... this is when joe claimed that since he is an architect i cannot question anything he is doing that involves the use of a tape measure or level.

so these are our beautiful new shades. (special note: three of the four window panels have since fallen down and need to be reattached.)

we also embarked on a new adventure today. we ordered our groceries for the week from Fresh Direct. They are being delivered tomorrow between 7 and 9. joe got all of his lunch supplies, including boar's head deli meat. i got my yogurts and cinnamon toast waffles, and then we got ingredients for dinner for the week. i will be making 'Country-Style Chicken, Corn, and Lima Bean Chowder with Basil' from the soup cookbook i got for Christmas. I'll also be making 'Lemony Linguine with Shrimp' (from another cookbook) and a honey-herb glazed pork tenderloin (you can buy it ready-to-cook from Fresh Direct!). we're hopeful that we enjoy riding the Fresh Direct train and that it saves us cold walks to the grocery as well as money.

i may be the chef when it comes to dinners, but joe is in charge of the coffee in the morning. it is helping me to wake up and not be such a late sleeper. we've been getting Gimme! Coffee. This week our flavor of choice is the Guatamala blend. i picked it out because we had some time left over with our zippy little zip car and drove over to the coffee shop.

so we again tried the video thing. this time with joe's camera. now i can't figure out how to even get the videos off his camera and onto the computer. the experimentation in that arena continues.