Got home from my first trip of the month Monday night late; it was a really good trip, great crew, and my FO on this trip has the exact same schedule for the month so we'll be flying together for the rest of July. That's very unusual and very nice; I like her a lot and look forward to seeing her again on Friday. We had a long layover in Pittsburgh and decided we wanted to do some shopping, so we took a long walk and wandered around ... and I discovered IKEA. Yes, yes, I knew it existed, I've just never lived anywhere that actually had one. And I know Crazy Aunt Purl is nuts about IKEA, and frankly I always thought maybe she was just a wee bit unbalanced in her fervent love for the place ... well, I owe her an apology. But anyway, I totally heart IKEA. It's amazing, totally amazing. I've raved about it to the point that Steve thinks I'm probably a wee bit unbalanced myself, but seriously ya'll. What a great store. If only there were one closer to me -- then again, that'd be dangerous.

So anyway! The first thing I do after coming home from a trip -- well, after petting the critters and sleeping for umpty-seven hours and reassuring the critters that I still love them and unpacking and tripping over the critters and doing laundry and carrying Onyx around because he needs even more reassurance than the others -- is cook a real meal. Steve never eats right while I'm gone, and although I try to pack healthy food to eat on the road, I'm craving home-cooked food by the time I get home. So last night I made a big steak dinner (Steve's favorite), and since I was feeling wild and crazy I made dessert. That's a rare thing; we almost never have dessert here. But I'd seen Pioneer Woman's recipe for Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce (do you read her blog? If you don't, you should check it out; she's funny, she takes great pictures that make me sigh with envy, and her recipes are yum, squared, if not precisely low-calorie *cough*). Anyway, this Peach Crisp looked pretty darned good, and the grocery store had some nice-looking peaches, and well. Let me tell you, pretty darned good? HA. I could live off this stuff. Not for long, mind you, I'd weigh 500 pounds and die of a heart attack within a year what with the cream and the butter and the sugar and all, but what a year it would be. Steve loved this it as much as I did; it's a good thing we were by ourselves, because the moans of pleasure would have been embarassing in public. I swear, it's THAT GOOD. I'm drooling thinking about it; good thing there are leftovers upstairs. I may be on the elliptical for the rest of the month burning off these calories, but it's so, so worth it.

Speaking of Onyx, have I mentioned that he's a dork? Poor Pippin; she won't fight back, she just stands there and cries to me when he takes her bed.

What a dork.

Coming tomorrow: pictures of my Askew, currently blocking.