March 31, 2008 at 10:10 am
- Thanks to some fantastic craigslist snooping, the Lovely Suse snagged us a new slipper chair for the Lovely Tess’s room (though a different fabric, thank god). That is one comfy chair. I’m a little worried that I’ll fall asleep while giving her her bedtime bottle.
- It took me an entire month and a half to figure out where random sounds on my MacBook were coming from. Turns out every time one of my Skype contacts becomes available, it makes a sound. Have I mentioned how much I love my Skype? Sign on and send me your info and you might get a call from the Lovely Tess.
- Is it a conspiracy that almost evey mattress manufacturer has a name that starts with “S”? Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Sterns and Foster, etc. As if mattress shopping wasn’t confusing enough, they try to make it even harder. Not that I plan on replacing my ten year old mattress any time soon. It’s still the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on. Ok, maybe a few hotels have had better beds, but I still love ours.
- The Lovely Suse has turned into a sewing machine. Not literally, but for a couple of weeks, she was finishing new projects every couple of days. A couple of bags, some pillows, an apron, She’s good. I think Tess will be getting lots of pretty dresses in the near future. Maybe I’ll get some too.
- I recently discovered that the public wireless network in my office doesn’t block the same sites and ports that the normal network blocks. Nice. It’s completely random what they choose to block, which is pretty annoying. Now, I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
- My new favorite grain: farro. Also labeled hulled wheat, it has this really cool chewey texture and nutty, slightly sweet flavor. I bought a bag of what I thought was the right thing at a nearby Greek grocery store, but the package didn’t have any English on it. I took a chance, and we boiled it and mixed in green olives, lemon zest, olive oil, parsley, and scallions. It was a winner.
- Our chives dn oregano are starting to pop through the ground. Ah, Spring weather is on the way. Finally.
- I’m pretty sure we made enough food for Tess yesterday to last her until her 4th birthday. I tell you what, that girl eats well. Turkey, pork, lamb, chicken, cheese, corn, zucchini, green beans, edamame, squash, carrots, apples, pears, mango, bananas, chickpeas, lentils, crackers, cheerios, dried cranberries, etc. At this point, we’ll let her try bites of whatever we’re eating, and so far, she likes it all. I know we’re lucky that she’ll eat anything, so let’s hope that it stays that way.
Tags: 2008, topten
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March 24, 2008 at 9:29 am
- Did you miss me last week? It’s ok. I’m still alive. It was my first week of school, so I was a bit preoccupied for pretty much every second of every day last week. I haven’t been that busy in a really long time. I don’t think I read a newspaper, magazine, or website, or watched a single tv show or listened to any music for the entire week. And I think I saw the Lovely Tess for all of 5 minutes. Not a whole lot of fun. The actual school part was really good and I’m really excited for it, but I missed having a life. It will pretty much be the equivalent of having a second job for the next two years. I’m planning on still updating this, but you’ll have to forgive me if I start slacking a little bit. If you want to know what’s going on with me, you might actually have to do something crazy like emailing me or calling me. I always have time to say hi.
- In the run up to last week, but home PC picked the perfect time to die. Seriously, that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing last weekend, right? The problem was that the computer would just shut down for no apparent reason and in no discernible pattern. It would be on for hours on end and then shut down, or it could be on for 5 minutes and shut down. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and we actually talked about getting rid of it all together. Did we really need a separate PC if we each had our own MacBook? Not wanting to waste the entire weekend, I made a deal with the Lovely Suse that if I couldn’t fix it in a day, I would take it apart and sell off the pieces. Luckily (I guess), I figured out that the video card was busted (and after three trips to Microcenter), it was fixed. I think. It’s still having a few issues, but for the time being, we’re back in business. I hate PC’s.
- The Lovely Tess has been given the green light to eat everything except nuts, honey, and shellfish. So obviously, it was time for her first slice of pizza. Luckily, we happened to be passing Frank Pepe’s on Saturday, so I was proud to have her first slice be one of the best in the land. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her so happy to eat, just shoveling the pieces into her face as fast as she could. She had a big smile on her face for the rest of the day. Yes, she is officially my daughter.
- After many failed attempts at making fries at home, I finally found a recipe that works: Jamie Oliver’s “April’s Rosemary Straw Potatoes with Lemon Salt”. Holy crap these were good. All nice and crispy and salty and good, even after they had cooled down. Whereas in the past, I’ve cooked the fried twice, once at 350 and a second fry at 375 and then drained them on paper towels, this recipe has them fried just once at 350. After draining them, I dropped them into a metal bowl with the lemon salt and tossed them to coat them and cool them off (the steam is partly what was making them soggy). Once cooled slightly, I dropped them onto to paper towels to absorb any remaining oil and then transferred them to a bowl after cooling. Oh were they tasty. I was on the verge of completely giving up on making fries (much like I’ve given up on making Indian food and Chinese food), but this one is a winner.
- Wow, this looks familiar.
- It’s official: everyone we know is pregnant.
Tags: 2008, topten
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March 10, 2008 at 10:48 am
- The snow was gone, the sun was out, and it was time to fire up the grill yesterday. Unlike last year when I grilled at some point every month of the year, as soon as the snow hit this year, I was done. My grill has been buried in snow for the better part of the winter, and I just wasn’t motivated to go out in the cold and fire it up. I’ve been just fine staying in and braising instead. Yesterday, though, I was craving something grilled, and the weather was cooperating. Let the grilling begin!
- I think I’m handling this whole daylight savings time thing ok this year. We’re up so early anyways that it’s always dark out when we wake up during the week. But when it’s still light out later in the day, it just makes me feel a whole lot happier.
- As of March 1, Whole Foods stopped offering plastic bags for your groceries, and I hope that more stores follow in their path. Even though we use canvas bags for our groceries, we still have a mountain of plastic bags in our house from other places. Target was always the worst offender as they would literally put one thing in each bag until we finally started telling them to load them up with as much as they could. Maybe we just need to get some more giant reusable bags for our trips there.
- My home PC started acting all funky last week and was shutting off randomly for no particular reason. I thought it was a problem with the video card and made a trip to the Geek Store (as the Lovely Suse calls it) to get a new one, but that didn’t fix the problem. I finally noticed that the computer was only reporting half of the RAM that I actually have installed, so i unplugged and plugged back in both memory modules and the problem seems to be fixed. Computers are stupid.
- One of my school asssignments is to watch October Sky, which I watched on Friday night. I have to admit, it got a little dusty in the house toward the end of the movie.
- Can some one please explain to me what they do with Facebook? I understand that high school and college kids use it for, um, I don’t know, posting pictures of each other and leaving messages for each other and meeting people or something? Honestly, I don’t really know. But what do “adults” do with it? The only networking site that I’m a part of is LinkedIn, which I’m also not completely clear what people do with it other than compiling as many connections as possible.
Tags: 2008, topten
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March 3, 2008 at 11:06 am
- The most addictive kid’s snack of all time: animal crackers. After grabbing a few from a bowl in a kid’s store a few weeks back, I immediately wanted more of my own. I now have a big container at work and at home, and I’m having a hard time staying away from them. George and the Lovely Tess enjoy them too.
- It’s also Girl Scout cookie time, as once again, I got guilted into buying more boxes from a co-worker’s daughter. When he actually brings the girl to work to go from office to office, how can you say no? So I bought two more boxes of Thin Mints to go along with the two boxes I bought last year that I’ve barely touched. It scares me that these never go bad. I can only imagine the nutritious chemicals involved! Still, a Thin Mint straight out of the freezer is a delicious treat.
- Yes, that was two cookie items in a row.
- We signed up for a CSA this year. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a way for farms to lock in cash early in the year so that they can afford to run. You pay a certain amount before the growing season begins, and staring in June, we get a big box of produce every week. We chose The Farm School as they always have the best stuff every week at the Farmer’s Market and they’re set up to teach future generations of farmers and kids, and they have local pickup near our house. We had wanted to do a CSA last year, but with Tess on the way, we didn’t know if we’d be able to handle it. We can’t wait for this season to begin.
- Things that were organized/cleaned out this weekend: the freezer, the pantry cabinets, the cabinet underneath the sink, my old file box. We like The Container Store. I also streamlined my email Inbox by unsubscribing from every one of those promotional emails from The Gap, Amazon, TigerDirect, Banana Republic, etc. Although now, I get practically no emails. My RSS feeds have also been cleaned out, unsubscribing from feeds that I never get around to reading.
- I thought this was a joke, but apparently St. Patrick’s Day has been moved to March 15 this year because it conflicts with Holy Week. Does this mean that Boston is going to move Evacuation Day to the 15th as well, since I’m convinced that the City made this holiday up so that everyone can a day off to get drunk on St. Patty’s Day. But since the 15th is a Saturday, will they still get the day off on the 17th?
- We tried making this frogurt this weekend and straight out of the ice cream maker, it was really good. After a few hours in the freezer, however, it was one giant, inpenetrable block of ice. I guess one will need some tweaking.
- At what point will I start to get used to the childproof locks on our cabinets? The entire weekend I kept trying to open the cabinets, get stuck on the lock, and then start swearing at the stupid locks. Hey, I guess they work for adults too. I already can’t wait until I can take them off.
- This is the last week of the Lovely Suse’s Hell Season. We’ll all be happy to have her back.
Tags: 2008, topten
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