total food porn

How do I love thee, Duke's Chowder House? Let me count the ways...

1> Your lobster chowder is perfection. PERFECTION. Creamy and sweet and insanely delicious.

2> Your wild mixed greens salad with bleu cheese, candied pecans, orange and grapefruit wedges and tarragon vinaigrette...Heaven on a plate. Seriously.

3> The bread. I just love bread. Warm from the oven with soft butter. Mmmmm.

4> FREE APPETIZERS! Coconut prawns with honey chili sauce and steamers (fresh local clams steamed with garlic butter, roasted garlic, fresh herbs and Mac & Jack's). The shrimp was especially tasty. I could've easily polished off the whole plate myself, but I shared it with friends.

And if that wasn't enough, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for dessert, where I had their limited time only Jello butterscotch pudding creation: butterscotch ice cream mixed with Reese's peanut butter cup and Butterfinger and swirled with caramel.

My tastebuds have exploded. (And so has my waistline...but I am a happy, happy woman today.)

the first step...

I signed up for the My Career Advancement program offered by the military, which provides $6000 of tuition assistance for spouses to pursue a certification or degree to obtain what they call a "portable career" (though I'm not entirely sure why writing/editing certifications and degrees are not included on this list, as those careers are most certainly portable).

So...in keeping with the requirements of the program, I have requested info about this:

http://www.cityu.edu/programs/soe/med_reading.htm

If I can get all this squared away, I hope to start the winter session. But this might be a big if...we'll have to pay for this out of pocket too, and that may end up being the major hurdle in all this. We can't really take on any more student loan debt and we're already paying some of Lance's college expenses.