It’s allliiiiiiiive! IowaGirlEats.com, that is!

Massive internet outages in my area, coupled with the complete failure of my site to even load anyways, resulted in pretty much an entire day without Internet and IGE yesterday. It was nerve-wracking!

Thank goodness I had Internet access through my crackberry because, at this point in my life, I don’t even know what I’d do if I didn’t have a connection to the outside world. Are you the same way?

In between phone calls to GoDaddy and my internet service provider, I watched the Hawkeyes just barely pull off a victory against the Indiana Hoosiers (seriously that team is so up and down, it gives me anxiety watching them play!) then I got in a great, 4 mile run at the gym.

Ben and I were going to go out with some friends in the evening, but plans fell through and as we were discussing what to do, Ben suggested renting an XBox video game. Those games and controllers have gotten so complicated you practically need an engineering degree to play them, so I vetoed the idea. “Hey, wait!” he exclaimed, “I think we still have my old Super Nintendo in the basement!” Ummm, why haven’t we been playing that EVERY night?! Let’s do it!

We went to Trader Joe’s to pick up the essentials (food & beer, natch) then hooked that baby UP!

Well, it wasn’t as easy as that… You see this thing is like, what, almost TWENTY YEARS OLD and took some convincing to get going.

We tried the standard “blow in the game”

“wiggle” and “check the back”.

At last, victory was ours!

Ugh, how much do you love old school Nintendo?!

We settled in with blankets,

and necessities, including some great German Wheat beer from TJ’s,

and Orange Chicken that they were demoing at the store, (seeeeriously better then takeout!)

and played our little hearts out!

We were halfway done with the game before we even knew it. I remember it taking me weeks to complete level 1 when this first came out!!

I kept a constant vigil on my site during the process.

Fail. 

AT LAST, it came up around 8pm or so, thanks to Bryan from GoDaddy. He and his supervisor moved me to a new server, which they usually don’t do for individual accounts, but they made a “special exception” in my case. Aka, they knew they couldn’t get rid of me as I was calling every. 5. minutes. At any rate, it’s fixed! Persistence pays.

This morning I slept in ’til what I thought was 8:30, which was actually only 7:30 because of daylight savings time! I wanted something super fresh with my morning coffee. Apples & Almond Butter it was.

It’s actually been awhile since I’ve had almond butter, so I decided to mark it’s return by opening a new jar of Trader Joe’s Crunchy Almond Butter with Roasted Flaxseeds that I’ve had in my pantry for aaaages.

There’s little chopped up almonds inside, along with flaxseeds that have been roasted so they PoP in your mouth. This stuff is DENSE – 100 calories per Tablespoon!

But it’s oh so delish!

I served a blob of it alongside a massive Honeycrisp apple. I am honest to God stuffed right now. 

If you’ve never tried this almond butter, and live close to a TJ’s, you should pick up a jar sometime. The texture is fab!

This afternoon Ben and I having lunch at my parent’s house. It’s been weeks since our standard Sunday afternoon lunch – I’m looking forward to it!!!

Talk to you later!

~~~~~

Did you play video games growing up? Which ones were your favorite?

I loved Duke Nukem on the computer and Super Mario Brothers, Mario Cart & Donkey Kong on Nintendo/SNES. Towards the end I kind of got into James Bond too. I also have two brothers.