Archive for November, 2010

Post-Thanksgiving catch-up

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Time to catch up after a couple days of silence.

Thanksgiving was great!  We missed being up north with everybody, but we really just don’t have the money to travel right now.  And we had a fantastic time with our own plans.  Since Justin and I enjoy cooking so much, we always make a TON of food – turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, ambrosia, cranberry sauce, gravy, rolls and pie.  And it’s just the two of us!  So this year, since we’re actually finally making friends, we asked a couple people if they had plans or if they’d be sitting alone at home, since their families live pretty far away, too.  We were turned down by two who were traveling to be with family, and taken up by two, one of whom would come over after spending time with his family.  It was a lot of fun!  The one who came earlier in the day helped us get dinner ready and we actually ate at 3:00, which is a first for us since we’ve historically had bad luck getting the turkey done on time.  The other friend showed up in time for pie and we sat around playing Munchkin-Fu for a couple hours.  All in all, a very enjoyable day.

Friday, we decided to just relax and not do much.  I sat in a comfy chair in Justin’s office and breezed through two books while Justin played on his computer.  We had leftovers for dinner, though, and this turned out to be a problem since both of us reacted badly to dinner.

So Saturday, instead of being a day to get projects done around the house, was another day of rest and recuperation for us.  And really, we didn’t mind that at all, except for the stomach upset.  I started to feel much better and started testing out the food to see if I could identify by trial and error what from the dinner had made us ill.  It wasn’t the sweet potatoes or the mashed potatoes.  It wasn’t the rolls or cranberry sauce.  It wasn’t the pumpkin pie.  It might be the turkey.  Or the green bean casserole, the stuffing, or the French Silk pie.

Sunday we both had to be at church early – I had band practice and Justin was manning the computer in the back.  It was a good service; the sermon was about the difference between being successful vs. being faithful.  I got to read scripture between songs and channeled my Mrs. Donnelson, if you know what I mean, only stumbled on one word, and didn’t fall off the stools we were sitting on for singing.  When we got home, we looked at the massive number of dishes piling up in the sink that need to get washed by hand since our dishwasher died on Wednesday and decided to go take a nap instead.  Until 4:00.  We relaxed a little longer, rinsed dishes while warming dinner of already tested sides plus the green bean casserole and stuffing, and chatted with friends online for the rest of the evening.  And the problem might be the stuffing.

The only other thing of interest was us breaking a bowl on my foot.  I say “us” because I put the bowl on top of the fridge to clear up counter space on Thanksgiving and failed to move it back, Justin moved it forward to get bread from behind it, and I opened the fridge door which sent it tumbling to the ground, where my foot broke its fall.  I felt bad because the bowl broke and Justin felt bad because it sliced my foot.  But Justin showed me that the bowl can be glued back together and be almost like new.  And my foot will heal just fine – the cotton sock I was wearing helped cushion the damage.  We are both a little concerned about how much I bleed when cut lately and how long it takes to clot, but not too concerned.

It was a lovely long weekend and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  And now I’m back at work.  I’ve got 12 full days and 3 half days before I’m on Christmas vacation, as long as my manager actually gives me the time off I’ve requested.  And I’ve got quite a lot to accomplish before then, so it’s not going to be boring, that’s for sure.

I hope you’re all having a great cyber-Monday!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

It’s just before midnight and I should be sleeping.  My feet are aching and my head is still going, though, so here I sit.

I had the day off from work today — actually used some of my vacation time to stay home.  And since I had the whole day free when I wouldn’t have normally, I figured I should try to squeeze as much out of it as possible, right?

So I slept in a little bit, woke up slowly, but got started not long after Justin left for a meeting on the Island.  I cleaned the house from top to bottom — the kind of cleaning that’s putting things back in place and not actually dusting or wiping things with cleaners.  But we just did that a little while ago, so it just needed a good tidy.  And then I worked on getting my office back in order because it was getting really bad in there.  I pulled out all my sewing projects while I was at it, and after things were tidy and the laundry was folded and there wasn’t any more cleaning to be done other than vacuuming and Justin promised to do that, I took my sewing downstairs and worked on that.  I fixed a handful of things, a sweater, skirts, and finished up a craft project I’ve been working on for a few days.  I made these!  Except I did maple and elm leaves and I didn’t do the interfacing because that was just too much work.  But I’ve got 12 of these double-sided things around the house — four of them are hanging from the light in the dining room.  They’re adorable!  Plus I rolled a few napkins for tomorrow with twine bows and a little fall decal.  And we collected a bunch of pine cones lately and I’d soaked them and set them out to dry and put them in a variety of places around the house, like in glass vases and a bowl-centerpiece with a candle.  Did you know that when you soak pine cones they close back up?!  I didn’t know they would do that!

Anyway, I went to a chiropractor appointment and back home and started on the rolls for tomorrow and the pies.  And just hit problem after problem the whole way.  The milk for the rolls had to be room temperature.  The shortening for the pie crust needed to be chilled.  The pumpkin pie recipe called for 2 cans of evaporated milk.  And then I realized, after running to the store, that it was for two pies and I only was going to make one.  So I put out the milk to warm, I put the Crisco in the freezer to chill.  I eventually got the rolls going and they rose just great for the first half of their rising, and didn’t rise at all for the second half.  I didn’t put enough water in my pie crust and when I went to roll them out, they kept breaking because they were too dry.  I had to bake the crust for the French Silk and it just didn’t go as fast as the recipe said it should.  But that whole pie is a shambles because halfway through folding the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, I dropped the whole bowl onto the floor.  It landed right-side-up so I was able to finish and put what was left into the pie.  But about 1/3 of the bowl ended up in a splatter across the floor, the cupboards, and up my pants legs.  I figure, we’re going to just fill in the rest of the space with whipped cream tomorrow.  And while I’ve rolled out the crust for the pumpkin pie and it’s sitting in a cake pan in the fridge because we only have one pie plate, I gave up on trying to make that one and just sat down with Justin to watch some TV and relax.  I’ll do that pie tomorrow.

We have people coming over tomorrow — a couple people we met through the gamer geek group here in town.  People whose families are far away, too.  So it should be a fun day.  I just have to not freak out too much.  Our Thanksgiving meal track record isn’t great.  I know once, we ate at 10:00 at night.  And it looks like last year, we didn’t eat our Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving day at all!  I can’t remember why that was the case . . . .  Anyway, I just really want it to go well.

But I hope you’re all doing great!  I hope everyone’s traveling safely and that you all have a wonderful time together.  Sorry we couldn’t make it up this year.  Money.  Plane tickets.  One of these days I’ll figure out how to make those two things work together better.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll talk to you all soon.  Be safe!  Have a great day!  And I love you lots!

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Kleenex boxes

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

I’ve become a horder of Kleenex boxes.  I hadn’t thought about it until I ran out of tissues again today and threw the empty box in the drawer with another empty box and thought “Wait.  What did I just do?”

I only do it at work.  But I just counted and I have seven Kleenex boxes in my drawers here.  Seven is a large number when you consider that there are 130 tissues per box.  (130 x 7 = 910 tissues.)  Seriously?  That’s a lot of Kleenex.

Now, it’s not like they’re just sitting there empty.  That is a very important factor of this hording.  Of the seven, only two of them are empty.  The other five have a variety of objects in them – from tea bags to silverware to personal toilette items.  I’ve trimmed the tops off the boxes and stapled the sides to keep them from falling apart.  I’ve binder-clipped them to the box beside them to keep them from shuffling around in the drawer.  They are my second-hand organizational efforts to keep my drawers in order.  And the two empty ones are back-up, in case one falls apart or I find a use for another box.

Sure they are.

I think I might have hit the point where I’m keeping them because I like keeping them.  Because if I didn’t have a use for the last box 130 tissues ago, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to need a second empty one.

Just like the empty CD spool is going to have some use eventually.

I think it’s time to go through my drawers and do some purging.

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Blah

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

Yesterday was good. Today was crap. Tomorrow will be better.

That’s all I have to say about it.

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Posted in Living! |

Relaxing day today

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

So I’m feeling fine today, no after-effects from the  allergy problem yesterday besides some awful morning breath.  I slept a long time, but I’m not sure if that was because of the meds or just because hey!  It’s Saturday!  And I had no plans.

Well, we did have 1:00 plans, but we were up before that.  We went to our book club meeting about Moon Called wherein most people discussed how much they didn’t enjoy the book, even through they were able to talk about characters that they really enjoyed and favorite scenes from the story.  I’m still kind of “meh” on the book — it was irritating, but it was the first of a series and apparently they get better.  I probably won’t read the others because I have enough other books to keep me busy for a while, but on the whole, it wasn’t that bad of a read.

Anyway, we did that and it was pretty much the extent of our day.  The rest was spent catching up on reading and cleaning up the kitchen, starting to cut out leaves for a craft project, and catching up on my NCIS: Los Angeles. And now I’m wishing that I wasn’t caught up because!  Ugh!  That last scene!  I need to know what happens in the next episode!  Also!  Gah!  I finished the latest Pendergast book and!  Ugh!  That untied thread!  I need to know what happens in the next book!

Anyway, nice and relaxing. Tomorrow I’ll have to be more productive, but I very much enjoyed today.

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