I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about Rielle Hunter’s (John Edwards lova) appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show yesterday. Admittedly, I taped the show but have yet to watch it (I just finished reading The Politician by Andrew Young which is all about the downfall of Edwards. Gossipy book but I kind of liked it).

Anyhow, the radio hosts were talking about something that really got me thinking. Hunter had a quote on the show that stated “It is not my experience that a third party wrecks a home… I believe the problems exist before a third party comes into the picture.”

To a degree, I agree with the part about there being problems before a third party gets involved in breaking up a relationship or a marriage. I don’t think there are a lot of cases where people in a happy relationship or marriage have one partner go outside the marriage without some sort of underlying problem being present in the relationship.  However, I do think that the third party does play some role in breaking up the relationship. If a person knowingly goes after someone that is in a relationship, they’re still partially at fault for breaking that relationship up although most of the blame should be placed on the person who goes outside of the relationship.

So I want to know: Who do you think is at fault for breaking up a relationship? The partner who broke the relationship or the third party interloper who came into the picture or both? What do you think?

Secondary Commentary on the Edwards Case:

In the case of John Edwards, I have a hard time seeing how he could go outside of his relationship while he should have been dealing with his wife’s cancer. The unfortunate thing about that is that I’ve unfortunately seen a marriage break up when one of the partners was diagnosed with cancer. Some people deal with issues better than others. In the case of the marriage that I saw break up in real life, I think the partner who left the marriage just couldn’t handle what was going on. Is it fair? No, not really but it happened.  With Edwards, I definitely think that he was taken down by a classic case of hubris or extreme arrogance and haughtiness (isn’t that how all tragic heroes go?) which led him to believe that he was absolutely infallible. While his affair began, he was deemed the golden child and heir apparent to the highest position that we have in this country (remember, he was ahead of both Obama and Clinton for awhile during the 2008 election cycle). For people of a certain personality type, that definitely has the possibility go to one’s head…

I have a feeling that since I’m not going to school anymore, you all are going to be getting a lot more recipes

Lemon Chicken:

Ingredients:
- Chicken breasts
- 2 large lemons
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 tbsp. garlic
- 1 tbsp. honey
- Italian seasoning
- 1 large onion sliced thin
- flour for dredging
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- oil for browning chicken

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Mix flour, salt, and pepper together
- Dredge chicken in flour mixture
- Brown chicken in pre-oiled pan (about 2-5 minutes on each side)
- Juice lemons into a separate bowl. Mix in chicken broth, garlic, honey, Italian seasoning and onion
- Place browned chicken in a glass baking dish
- Pour liquid mixture over chicken
- Bake for 45 minutes

* Serve with rice (we had brown rice)

Baked asparagus:

Ingredients:
- asparagus
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- olive oil

- Wash asparagus
- Cut the ends off of the asparagus
- Oven can be between 350 and 400 degrees
- Place asparagus on a baking tray
- Drizzle with olive oil
- Sprinkle with salt and pepper
- Bake for between 5 and 7 minutes

So a few weeks ago, I filled out a questionnaire thingy in one of my posts. I had mentioned for one of the fill in the blank answers that my first kiss was in a mosh pit. Passionflwr86 and Endlesssummer128 wanted to know the story.

So here it is. It wasn’t exactly my first any kind of kiss but it was my first real kiss. I think there is a great potential for every relationship to have that one epic kiss that changes everything. I know that with most of my relationships, I have been able to point to that one epic kiss, the kiss that changed everything and time stood still. The mosh pit kiss was one of those epic kisses.

I was in high school. I suppose I was a sophomore.  I had gone to a concert with my new boyfriend at the time and a couple friends.  We were seeing Incubus and I think Deftones.  The mosh pit was the place to be during this concert. Almost no one sat in the stands. Everyone wanted to be on the floor either moshing or trying to get closer to the band. I could hold my own so the onslaught of bodies pushing up against each other did not phase me. Incubus was just before their height of popularity and I was absolutely enamored with the band.

The song, “Stellar”, was getting tons and tons of radio play at the time and I was obsessed with the song. The band started playing the song. It’s kind of a slow song so the mosh pit had slowed down to more of a swaying than a moshing.  When he kissed me, everything slowed down and the crowd faded away. It’s amazing how kisses do that.

There has been more amazing kisses since then but this was the first epic one and yup, it happened in a mosh pit

So, tell me your epic kiss story!

On Sunday night, the Architect and I went to bed absolutely exhausted. At about 1 am, we were woken up by a horribly loud car alarm. Apparently the car alarm had been going off since 10:30 or 11pm according to the Architect. I am a very, very deep sleeper. If a zombie apocalypse comes and I happen to be sleeping at the time, I will either be either the first or the last one killed as I will probably sleep through it all. But I digress…

So the alarm continues off and on in 5 minute increments until about 5am. At the time, I was hoping that this meant that the person’s car battery had died (hey, my usual wake up time of 5:30am comes early). I was incensed. Yesterday was a long work day and I so could have used the energy that I wasted by cursing voraciously every time the alarm went off. On top of that, for the past two weeks, the alarm has been going off at weird times with great frequency. It happened about two weekends ago on a Saturday or Sunday morning. It’s annoying.

But, really, what do you do? I would have put a note on the car if it weren’t raining super hard off and on all night and if I could figure out which car it was. Even then, what does that really do? I hate being that person (blame my DC-ness of not wanting to involve myself in others’ business) but I did speak to the front office to let them know what’s going on. They said if we figured out which car it was and could give them the license plate number, they could get their on-site cop to run the tags and at least figure out who the owner was.

Yesterday evening, we were in the kitchen and we heard the familiar cry of the car alarm. The Architect ran outside, armed with his phone to find the car and take pictures of the car tags. Not only did he get the car tags but he saw the owner and yelled at him about the car alarm going off the previous night before. He also got the guy to turn off the car alarm totally.

It was awesome and sleep was victorious. The Architect deserves a prize!

So a few of you saw my pulse about finishing my last assignment for grad school last night. It feels so good to be finished. It definitely feels like another chapter has ended in my life.

Right after undergrad, I decided that I wanted to bite the proverbial bullet and continue right on to grad school. I knew that I would have to foot my own bill (I was lucky enough to come out of undergrad debt free compliments of my wonderful parents ) but I was ready and willing to do that. I got a fabulous job offer right out of school and I was off.

I took the summer between undergrad and grad school off from school and just worked to save up some money. Three years ago, I started my Masters while working. I remember thinking at the beginning how awesome it would be to have my Masters before I turn 25 (I won’t turn 25 until October). Now I’m finished and ready to move on to the next big thing.

The past few years have been difficult. Working full time and going to school full time is no cake walk but I wanted to just get through it. It didn’t hurt that I seem to be constantly surrounded by really amazing people in my life that were willing to push me a little further and give me encouragement when I needed it. Some semesters have been more difficult than others but I’ve done fine. Education has always come relatively easily to me.

It’s strange. I know this is a big accomplishment and I’ve had a lot of people tell me how proud they are of me for getting through grad school. I’m not good at taking compliments (I blush a lot and get really embarrassed) but it’s been especially hard to take the compliments about passing grad school because it’s something that I wanted to do. I don’t know… it’s hard to know what to say.

What I do know is that I’m happy to be done!!!

Yesterday morning, I rode with the Architect to work. We were listening to this morning talk show and they were discussing a NYT article about significant others fighting with each other over social networks like Facebook. On top of that, many of these little tiffs (or big fights) on Facebook have started becoming fodder for evidence in legal cases (i.e. divorce, etc.).

In fact, this has become such an issue in the legal world, there are some lawyers and attorneys that have begun to suggest that their clients take down their Facebook page when going through any sort of legal battle. Those dumb, little fights, sarcastic remarks and snide comments can become evidence in a court case. There was a paralegal that called into the radio show that said that one of her jobs is to look up clients on the internet just to see what information is out there about them that may be used against them. This includes looking at social network information as well! She also said that typically she is also asked to looked at the opposing party’s online information as well to gather evidence to be used against the opposing party in a court case.

The idea that you would fight over Facebook for the entire world to see just boggles my mind (although it is important to point out that many things people do boggles my mind). Now I do realize that it is pretty much impossible that a couple is never going to fight but not everyone needs the blow by blow details. It’s not fair to either side in the fight nor is it particularly conducive to solving the real issue at hand. Give someone a public forum to air their grievances and if they’re angry enough, the entire public will probably get an ear full.

Internet oversharing is a pet peeve of mine. It’s nice to be connected. Facebook has been a great way for me to keep in touch with friends and family spread all over geographically. I enjoy being on Facebook but I know that whatever I put on Facebook is going to be somewhere on a server out in the world for pretty much forever and therefore, I’m very particular about what I put online. Even if you shut down your Facebook site, the information that you put on the site is still retained by Facebook (for serious). I’m not sure that I would want anything unkind words that I said to someone else to be enshrined somewhere out on the interwebz for forever. I’ve seen quite a few things on Facebook where I can hardly believe that someone would post that where so many eyes can see it.

I think a lot of people don’t really think about what they’re sharing with other people and how easy it is for others to abuse the information given. This unfortunately extends much further than just having personal fights in a public forum. I know we all like to vent and I would argue that social networking has made it a lot easier for us to have an audience in which to vent but maybe we all need to reconsider what we are venting about and to whom. Divorce has to be difficult enough without everyone peeping in your virtual windows!

What do you think about Facebook arguments?

I woke up screaming at 4am on Saturday from a sharp pain in my neck. I’m not sure what caused it but somehow I ended up with a sprain in my neck muscles. I have never been in so much pain and I have a fairly high pain tolerance. It was ridiculous.

The Architect and I had a day of potential hiking and hanging out outside. We had gorgeous weather yesterday. Instead, I spent most of the day on the couch alternating between ice, a bag of frozen corn, and Icy Hot . I’m about the worst patient ever, which doesn’t help anything. The only thing that was really wrong with me was that my neck was in a lot of pain. Otherwise, I felt fine. At about 4:30pm, I begged the Architect to take me somewhere, anywhere just to get out of the house. So we headed up the road and ended up eating dinner out and exploring someplace that we hadn’t passed through before.

My neck feels a lot better today. It’s still sore but I’m not having any of sharp, shooting pain. Always a good thing.

When we got home last night, we sat down to watch Star Wars: A New Hope. Now, I had never seen any of the Star Wars movies all the way through before. I believe that I’ve seen part of some of the old ones and some of the new ones. It’s just one of those movie series that I had never gotten around to seeing before. I willing to guess that I’m probably one of the last adults in the US that had never seen a Star Wars movie before. I absolutely loved the movie. We bought the entire series so I’m anxious to watch the other movies

What movie haven’t you seen that you feel like everyone else in the world has seen at some point?

I wanted something really quick for dinner tonight since I’m supposed to be working on a paper and I had a lot of hazelnuts still left in the freezer from baking. I sort of threw everything together and it turned out well so I thought I’d share it with you all (instead of, you know, working on my paper )

Ingredients for hazelnut crusted chicken:
- 1 pkg. of thinly sliced chicken or chicken tenders
- 1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
(Note: I rarely measure my spices so just use as much spice as feels good)
- some basil
- some garlic salt
- some cayenne pepper
- salt and pepper to taste
- two eggs

Directions
- Heat oven to 375
- Grease a glass baking pan
- Scramble eggs in a bowl
- In another bowl, mix bread crumbs, hazelnuts, and spices (you can use a food processor to mix everything and chop the hazelnuts a little more finely)
- Dip chicken in egg
- Dip chicken in bread crumb mixture
- Place in baking pan
- Bake for 20-25 minutes or until chicken is golden brown

Ingredients for dipping sauce:
- Sriracha sauce
- Honey
(seriously, that’s all!)
- Mix one part Sriracha to one part honey. Adjust for taste.

(Note: Sriracha is a hot sauce also known as Rooster sauce. It can be found in either the international food section or in with the rest of the hot sauces at many grocery stores)

Enjoy!

What are some of your favorite fast and easy meals to cook?

When we first meet people, we see them in two dimensions. We see eye color and hair color; stature and how they carry themselves. Maybe we see something that alludes to who they are but we can rarely see past the exterior. It is only when you know a person that they began to become real or at least tangible. It’s a very basic image.

When you really know a person, they become three dimensional. You know their likes and dislikes. You know their personalities. You begin to know the small, intimate details of who they really are. You know their dreams and hopes. Their physical traits become second nature to you. You know what they are thinking and why they think that way. They become absolutely whole to you.

Time and absence have a way of turning the three dimensional back into the two dimensional. You are left with only your strongest memories of that person. They can be good or bad. There is too much to remember in this life that you begin to forget the small details and you’re left with just a very general impression. They almost become ghosts.

I find myself wondering sometimes if I’m remembering things correctly or if I have put my own spin on a few key facts (or fictions) that I remember. Perception carries a lot of weight.

One thing about writing that has always attracted me is that it allows you to capture right at the exact moment that you feel it. You can look back at what you wrote and perhaps the perception has changed at that point but you can at least grasp a bit of what you felt at that very moment. That transcendence is something else.

I was never the type of girl who planned her wedding out when she was little. I knew that I wanted to eventually get married someday to the man of my dreams (whenever it was that he came along). I just wanted to plan the details once I met that guy. About three years ago, I did meet that guy. Even once things got serious and I knew I wanted to marry him, I still wasn’t planning my wedding.

 One of my first thoughts after the Architect proposed to me and after I got over the initial shock and excitement and made what seemed like a thousand phone calls to friends and family was that “Oh, I guess I have to plan a wedding now. Eek!”

This isn’t to say that I haven’t had a blast planning our wedding. I really have enjoyed it but it hasn’t come without frustration. Most of this frustration has stemmed from the fact that vendors hear “wedding” and think “oh, now I can charge a bazillion dollars more.” It’s the dreaded Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) and I’ve been fighting it and probably will fight it all the way to the altar.

Cake has been incredibly WIC-ified (very technical term). Cake just shouldn’t be that expensive especially for what I want.

All I was looking for was a pretty simple cake. I wanted a round tiered cake with buttercream icing. We’re decorating the cake with real flowers that we’re getting ourselves. Unfortunately simplicity does not seem to be something that many bakers keep in mind when it comes to price!

After many long hours of searching, we finally found someone with reasonably priced cakes. He supplies desserts for one of the restaurants in my hometown where we’re getting married. We met with him and talked about what we wanted to have done. We also picked out flavors (the top will be chocolate raspberry, the middle layer will be chocolate fudge, and the bottom will be vanilla). I’m so happy that we got that straightened out.

On top of getting the cake settled, I also found a florist and picked out all of my flowers. It feels good to accomplish this stuff!

How was your weekend?