back after a break

An unintentional break - at least part of it. A Windows update totally bricked my PC, and I was out of laptop commission for a couple of weeks. Once I got it back, I was so fed up with the whole computer thing that I couldn't even think about writing a new post. I'm here to tell you to back up your files. I'd backed up photos, but not files, and I lost a LOT of stuff that was important to me. Enough that I cried. More than once.

But on to bigger and better things. I finally ordered a camera that I hope will inspire me to take/publish more and better pictures. It's time to put this blog out there, instead of just noodling around with it.

almost done

The teen's Christmas sweater, that is. The knitting is FINALLY complete, and aside from one glaring mistake that I think I can acceptably fix with some minor weaving, I'm very happy with it. Now, I just have to sew in the sleeves (I'll have to Google how to do it b/c I have a copy of the pattern without the making up instructions) and get the ribbon for the trim. She saw it laying out and loves it. I'll be posting a finished picture soon!

Of course, I didn't do nearly what I wanted to do this weekend. As usual, when teen is grounded, I feel some sort of responsibility for keeping her semi-occupied while she's out of the social scene. So we watched Auntie Mame Friday night (well, I watched and she fell asleep - but then she finished it Sat and loooved it), then I took her running errands Saturday, we all had dinner and hung out Saturday night, and I pinned Bella's doll outfit pattern this morning so she could cut it out. I was exhausted both nights and fell asleep early, and most of my leisure time was taken up with working on the sweater. Now I'm ready to just veg a little - think Brad and I are going to watch a movie. Looking forward to teen being out of town later this week - hoping that next weekend, my days will really be mine.

if i put it here in writing,

maybe I'll do it, right? Right? Okay, I guess my track record isn't that great, but here's what I want to get started/done this weekend:

• food shopping
• fabric store for felt, fleece
• start on Bella's doll outfit
• start on felt ornaments
• work on more rings from Gram's earrings
• write
• Italian
• Sunday dinner - make pasta?

Nothing like being really over ambitious. I'm thinking I'll be around a bunch of the weekend, though, since Lauren's grounded and Brad will be at the mobile conference.

my eyes! my eyes!

I spent a little bit of time tonight trying on spring clothes in preparation for our upcoming trip to the Keys. Can I just say... ick. Late winter bod. Sucks getting older. I eat and drink about the same as I always have, and I still exercise a bunch, but I just can't keep weight off like I could when I was younger. I know I'll lose more this summer when I switch to walking outside, train for the marathon, and get on my bike regularly! But that doesn't help for the trip that's 10 days away. This isn't going to be a bikini year, I'll tell you that much. I'm still looking forward to it, though. I'm more than ready for a week of sun and warmth and NO SNOW.

Friday-Saturday

 We're kind of had our normal Friday night on Saturday night this weekend - drinks and dinner at home, most of the evening spent on our laptops, surfing favorite sites while listening to music.

I made what's become a favorite dinner - a rice dish with chorizo, spinach, and chickpeas. We saw a similar recipe once, but we changed things around to make it our own, and Brad's been thinking about it on and off ever since. The teen is a fan of neither chorizo nor chickpeas, so I haven't made it since the first time, but tonight, we knew she wouldn't bet eating dinner with us, so I figured it was time.

Most of the flavor from this dish comes from the chorizo, so make sure you're using one you really like. We frequent two local butchers/markets that make their own, and they're each fantastic in their own way. It's a pretty quick dinner, too - the veggie/chorizo saute is made while the rice is cooking, so you're looking at less than 30 minutes.

Rice with Chorizo, Spinach, and Chickpeas

1 cup jasmine rice
vegetable oil
1 small yellow onion
1 large garlic clove, finely minced
1/2 lb. fresh chorizo (I got mine from Clancey's), removed from casing and crumbled
8 oz fresh spinach, chopped
1 14-16 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Cook jasmine rice according to directions. While rice is cooking, pour about a tablespoon of oil into a large skillet or 3 qt. saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, onion, and chorizo, and cook, stirring often to break up chorizo pieces, until the onions are soft and the chorizo is browned, about 8 minutes. Lower the heat a bit, and add the spinach, stirring occasionally until the spinach is wilted. Add the chickpeas and stir. Cook until the chickpeas are warmed through. Add salt to taste (how much salt you need will depend on how salty your chorizo is).

Stir in cooked rice, mix well, and check for seasoning. Serve immediately.

another fantastic dinner

at the Corner Table. We went last Friday night and loved one of the dishes so much that we had to go back last night to get it again. Of course, as luck would have it, when we arrived and Scott asked what brought us back so soon, we found out that they'd just sold out of the dish we wanted - a deep fried egg over duck confit and microgreens. At first we thought he was teasing us, but sadly, he wasn't.

Not that it mattered that much. We were there with our friend Jay and sat at the bar, where we chatted with staff and pored over the menu, trying to make our decisions. I talked my semi-adventurous husband into trying beef tongue tacos with beans - he liked them, but I loved them. I've always been slightly afraid of beef tongue, but these tiny two-bite tacos were delicious. I had potato/mushroom pierogies that were tasty, and Jay had rabbit sausage that was, frankly, amazing. It was served with braised cabbage that really gave the dish a zing. I liked his starter the best. Scott was doing a tasting dinner at the chef's table in the kitchen, and he sent us out a sample of one of their courses: roasted glazed ribs. A crispy, savory surprise. Then another surprise shortly before our entrees arrived: deep fried eggs! In another iteration, but fantastic nonetheless: crazy, soft-boiled, lightly breaded, and deep fried egg over braised beef with hollandaise and a red wine reduction. We still managed to eat our entrees. Mine was a homemade pasta tossed with smoked trout and capers in a lemon butter sauce. Salty, smoky, bright - I don't think I left anything in the bowl. And a shared pot de creme to finish off the experience.

We could barely walk out of there, and now Brad and I have food hangover in a big way today. I can only imagine what Jay feels like. He's a mostly vegetarian who ate rabbit sausage, ribs, deep fried egg over beef, then a beef burger topped with short ribs - holy meatfest, Batman!!

Thank you, Scott and company, for another memorable meal and for the surprise extras. We really appreciated it!!

book in a day....

That's what happened today. Room, by Emma Donoghue. It was on a ton of best of 2010 lists, and I have to say, the praise was well-deserved. The plot was creative, disturbing, arresting. I opened it when I sat down on the bus to work this morning, and I just finished it about 20 minutes ago. It dominated my day, and it was completly worth it.

one of those nights

Feeling completely non-productive. I'm at the point with the sweater where I have to start sewing, and I'm not in the mood. At all. I want a night of vegging out in front of the tv, but there's nothing on (nothing new), and desperate as I feel, I'm not desperate enough to watch Real Housewives. Maybe it's time to break out the video games and make a big cosmo...

heaven

We've been teenless since noon yesterday. She's at the DECA competition, staying in downtown Minneapolis at the Hyatt. I think that things are going pretty well, if you can base it on her texts.

I'm loving the quiet. We have semi-quiet evenings when she's around, but the kid's a talker, and she's not that great at entertaining herself, so there are many nights when reading a book or writing anything or working on a project are next to impossible with all of the interruptions. I adore her, but I look forward to being an empty nester.

Especially now that Brad's going to be working downtown! Woo hoo! We're already planning after work happy hours and nights where we stay downtown for dinner and carpooling and scootering and... hopefully, he won't always be onsite at clients' offices.

All of the pieces of her sweater are finally done. Maybe tomorrow I'll start piecing it together. Not really looking forward to sewing it up - it's such fine yarn, I'm afraid that you'll see too many stitches and mistakes. I'll just have to go slowly....

proud

Tomorrow, my husband is going to get a job offer for what is currently his dream job. He put himself out there, networked, and talked his way into this company. They had no plans to hire him - he just made them see that they need him. It's so not his way to step out of his comfort zone and sell himself that way, but it paid off. I'm terribly proud of him.

productive evening... no, really...

I'm finding out this week how much I depend on having that time at lunch to workout. The training class has been eating into my walking time, and I get and stay busy enough once I get home that I can't count on workout time.

That said, I didn't spend my night aimlessly bouncing from task to task or website to tv. I spent a big chunk of time relearning/teaching pre-calculus to the teen (tag teaming with Brad), and then after dinner, I did some reading and some knitting. Did I miss the workout? Yes, but there are only a couple more days of this training class. Am I happy about what got accomplished tonight? Yes! (for a change)

whole lot of stitching going on

I'm almost finished with the little Golden Girls cross stitch project that I'm doing for Shelley's birthday. Looks like I'll be done almost a week ahead of time - that's unheard of for me! The pattern doesn't call for outlining the finished pattern, but I'm doing that. Otherwise, a couple of the ladies get lost, their colors are so pastel.

I've got the house to myself tomorrow night. Brad will be in Duluth on an overnight ski trip, and teen is spending the night at Grandma's. Hooray! All nighter of video games and dozing in the big chair....

soooo not in the mood

I want to be, but I'm not. I had such a terrible week at work last week, and I'm afraid it's going to spill into this week and poison it, too. It took me the entire holiday weekend to get over it (and let me say, I think it was the brunch at Cafe Twenty Eight that finally made me smile again), and I'm trying very, very hard today, but I feel like I'm slipping a little. I think I'll finish this (small! and only!) glass of wine, head upstairs with a book, and wait in bed for my husband to come home from darts. With any luck, I'll still be awake when he gets home...

spring, and a girl's thoughts turn to....

.... vegetables. All it took was two days of February thaw, and suddenly, I've got CSAs on my mind. I left off last season with a promise of a half share from Loon, but I'm a greedy, greedy girl, and I told them that really what I wanted was a full share. They never replied, and I saw today that Driftless is taking orders, so I emailed Loon to find out if there's a full or half reserved for me. If it's just a half, then I have to decide if I want to also do a Driftless half and just hope that the two farms wind up doing their half shares on alternate weeks or if I want to say thanks but no thanks to Loon and go with Driftless this year.

sapping the life out of me

Yep, that's what my job's doing these days. I've been bored there for months and months and months, but this last week or so is just putting me over the top. It's been seriously painful. I can't even describe how tedious. But how old is this getting? How often will you have to read that I hate my job? How many more days/weeks/months/years will I simply settle? How many bottles of wine will I have to consume to try to forget?

girls' night

Brad had a user-group meeting tonight, so teen and I were on our own for dinner. After MUCH debate, I remembered the Chatterbox Pub, and seeing how teen was in the mood for chicken tenders (CHICKEN TENDERS. STILL. AT SIXTEEN. I have failed as a parent...), it seemed like the perfect spot. And it was fun. We actually pulled out a card game to play, which I'm sure surprised the hell out of her, since I seldom want to play games. They weren't at all busy, so we weren't there for long, but we had a nice time. And now she's found another place where she and her friends should be able to hang out.

sunday night already?

Another weekend where I didn't get done nearly as much as I wanted to. I can't complain about the amount of knitting I got done, though. I finished up two more pieces of the sweater - I just have one sleeve left, and then I'll be ready to make it up. Today I remembered that I want to do a cross stitch project for Shelley's birthday, and now htat's just around the corner - March 6th. I have time to do it, but I really want to finish the sweater first. We'll see.

Today was a beautiful day, with full-on February thaw, but I couldn't get Brad to even go for a walk.  He and Lauren went to run some errands (for Valentine's Day tomorrow, I believe), and he came home in kind of a crappy mood. He should've stuck to our agreement - cards at the most, out to dinner later. But it's sweet that he wanted to do something else. The first few years that we were together, we did terribly romantic things for Valentine's Day. And I loved it. But honestly, it's a lot of pressure to keep trying to top yourself, and I don't need him to do that. He shows me every day that he loves me - I don't need any surprise on Valentine's Day to tell me.

three down, two to go.

Pieces of the teen's sweater, that is.

gah.

That just about sums up how I'm feeling tonight. I have days where I can almost hear myself aging, and I just want to turn back the clock and start over. There's so much I still want to do, and I'm just wasting away my days at another job I don't love, coming home too mentally depleted to do anything except surf the web and half-heartedly watch tv. I guess that I should consider it a small win that I've been doing this almost every day since the start of the new year, but I haven't made it public, I haven't quite figured out my voice yet, I haven't even decided the direction I want to take it.

What do I want to do this weekend? Food shopping, eating out, knitting, Italian, reading, writing, adding to the blog, perhaps some time with jewelry... we'll see what I actually get to.

notorious

Teen wound up staying home from school today. By the time I got home from work, she was heavily wallowing in the misery of a terrible, terrible cold. Sometimes she's the world's biggest drama queen, and I had to talk her down a little. She doesn't get sick very often, and it's like the end of the world when she does. Worse. Than. A. Man. She told us at 6:30 she was going up to bed, but Brad wouldn't let her. He was afraid that she'd wake up again at 9 and not be able to fall asleep again. To keep her up, I put on another one of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" movies - Notorious. Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman. A classic. I think it's in my top 10 all-time favorite movies. I was about teen's age when I started getting into old movies, and it seemed like she really liked this one.

I actually finished another piece of the sweater and got a smidge done on the third. I should be able to finish that tomorrow night, and then I just have to knit the short sleeves and assemble it (including knitting the neckband). Don't think I'll be able to finish it this weekend, but I'm getting there. She may still be able to wear it while it's cold! Then I can move onto the next project, which will either be Bella's Christmas sweater for next year or one of the purses that Jess showed me.

valentines

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day, but I do love doing a little something for the kids. And the teen likes (with a little prodding) doing something for her grandparents. So tonight, we busted out the craft materials and made cards. Teen's were all lovely, with lots of glitter and loving sentiments. I did the ones for the kids and had fun with it. I'll mail them - I can still remember how much fun it is when you're little to actually get something in the mail, and an envelope with some candy and a big heart valentine should be a big hit.

I'm tempted to one for the teen, too. We'll see how she reacts to the ones for the kids - I made them after she went to bed. She went up early again tonight - she's definitely fighting some kind of cold. She was better for a couple of days, but today, her sore throat is back, and she was coughing before bed. Hopefully, another good night's sleep will help.

quiet evening

Brad is out at darts, and I spent the evening watching "Gaslight" (Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman - I loooove her) and working on Lauren's sweater. I got a lot done, but I had to put it down when the pattern started requiring too much counting. Too sleepy and engrossed in movie to keep count. So instead, I finished the vanilla bean/bourbon/candied pecan ice cream. And it was fabulous. I'm absolutely making it again when my dad comes to visit next. He's going to love it.

babe

Do I ever love me some Children's Theatre. Last night, I took Bella to see Babe. It was fantastic. Dean Holt was the lead, and I've been loving him since we started taking Lauren, probably ten years ago. His face is so expressive, and he's a master of physical comedy - the kids always laugh uproariously at his antics. Bella loved this one, probably because she vaguely knew the story. She's definitely fascinated with the sets and how they do things. Last night, she was wondering about how they make the same set look like day/night, so I tried to explain lighting to her a little. She also loved that there was audience participation in this play - the first thing she said when it was over was, "I liked how we got to do stuff, too."

Not much crafting going on these last few days. Some knitting here and there, but not very much. Tonight, after we got home from dinner/bowling with Jack/Jena, I paged through the knitting book I have from the library. It's due back on Monday, and I wanted to see what, if anything, I wanted to glean from it before I return it. There's a chapter on cables that interests me, so I might try to take notes on that. I'd like to make the purse that Jess was showing me, and it's got cables, which I haven't tried yet. The purse seems like a fairly easy project and a good way to jump into cables.

Coming up in this next week, though, my creative goal is to start taking more photos and begin uploading them to the blog...

teenaged girls suck

Teen is going through a bit of drama at school. She made a social mistake, and she's paying for it. There's a major Mean Girl mentality these days, more I think than when I was in school. I'm not blind - I'm fairly certain that the teen is sometimes a mean girl herself, and now she's on the receiving end. I'd love to be able to step in and somehow make things better for her, but I can't. And she's already fairly fragile - I hate seeing her ostracized like this. I know it will blow over, and probably pretty quickly, but it's still painful to watch her struggle through it. What I'd really like to do is bitch slap one of the girls and have a serious, honest talk with two others, but again, I can't. It's going to be a rough weekend here, I think.

might be time to shit or get off the pot

Today at work, my boss told me that our upcoming web services project is going to need 24/7 support for the client and that I'm on the support team. Granted, when I looked at the list, my name isn't at the top, and I could only be called for one scenario (unlike a couple of my coworkers who are at the top of the lists for each of the scenarios), but it just gives me a bad feeling. And sure, it's unlikely that anyone would answer, "Why, yes, I'd LOVE to do that!" but it would've been nice to have been asked. When I signed on for this job there was no hint that I'd be working outside of normal hours, let alone dealing with the possibility of getting a support call every Sunday at 3:30 am.

So, I'm thinking that there's a fairly good chance that I'm not long for this job. And I'm not excited at the prospect of going after another IT job that's unfulfilling. I'm getting too old for this shit. It might finally be time to figure out what I want to do with my life and GO FOR IT. What the fuck am I waiting for at this point? That needs to become my short-term goal. I want it to be something creative, but can I make money at that? Gah - it's so exasperating! I have to at least try, though, so that's what I'm going to do over the next couple of months. Wish me luck...