Monday, September 6, 2010

I need to resurrect this blog

I do get regular text messages looking for updates to my daughter's blog, so there's no guarantee that I will be able to follow through with this one, but I will try.

I need another subheading now..."oh, and what does she sew." I'm super excited about a recent sewing project, and I want to put it up here before I put it out anywhere else so there's a record that this was the place it all started.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Power

We still have it. It went off for 45 minutes this morning but came back on.

I am watching the local news and they are showing video of a bayou near my house that is completely full. Luckily we are several feet up and a half a mile away in an area that didn't flood during T. S. Allison.
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Friday, September 12, 2008

We still have power

We just watched a movie but it is pretty windy out, so I imagine it won't be too long. We have already had a few power dips.
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No, I do not face "CERTAIN DEATH"

I stole this from a friend of mine, who got it from lovely Fox News:



We are not in any of the mandatory or voluntary evacuation area, and our neighborhood has the word "Heights" in it.

R did go for a walk a little while ago (partially to stop at Walgreens to get a few bars of soap because I realized that the sliver in our shower was the last bar in our bathroom) and checked out the bayou near our house. He says it's up, and not flowing the right way, but I'm still not worried about flooding. We're quite a ways up from it.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

This is a test

Not of the emergency broadcast system but of mobile blogging. Hurricane Ike is about 30 hours away and I thought it would be interesting to see if I can Blog through it. I have already started some fridge cleanout before the power goes out, making banana bread in a bundt pan and a dozen muffin cups. I also forsee quite a bit of knitting. Stay tuned and let's keep our fingers crossed that my phone works!
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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Yes, I'm alive

I've been meaning to post, but I really don't know why I haven't lately. I suppose I've been busy, although we have been in town every weekend since we were in New Orleans. It has been nice.

Last night was my turn to host book club. It was so sad; only two of the seven attending had actually finished the book (I was one of those two, although I finished it 15 minutes before they arrived), two only made it to page 90, and the rest didn't even start. I realize that these groups are often more social than anything else, but I think people should at least try to read the book. We had six weeks!

Our book was Love in the Time of Cholera. Yes, it was a past Oprah Book Club selection. Please don't give me grief for that.

Because the book is loosely set in Colombia, I started digging around for traditional Colombian foods when deciding what to make. The food at our past meetings has not been tied to the book, but it was easier for me to do this than to come up with a menu any other way. I made an Aji Salsa, a huge pot of Sancocho de Gallina, and arepas. Dessert? Well, that was chewy chocolate cookies from Central Market. I had to have one easy thing!

In knitting, I finished a baby sweater for R's step-cousin's baby shower that we are attending this evening. I'm also working on a simple wrap using some Unger Angelspun yarn. The pattern is a simple rectangle in stockinette stitch that is seamed together. (I need to find the pattern again so I will know how to finish it!) The yarn was some from my mother-in-law and it is a very boring fleshy color, so I decided today that I would try to dye it. I have part of a sweater that she was knitting with it and it is currently in a hot pot of water with two packs of black cherry kool-aid. The yarn is a mohair/nylon/acrylic blend, so I'm hoping that the mohair and nylon will take up the dye even though the acrylic will not. It has only been 20 minutes and the water is almost clear, so things are working so far. I just have to see what happens when I rinse it. Pictures to come!

update: It worked!!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Food-filled French Quarter

We flew to New Orleans this weekend for what was originally supposed to be a friend's wedding. The bride-to-be called it off about eight weeks ago, so it ended up just being a party with his family and a few friends. R booked our flight and our hotel rooms the weekend before the wedding was called off.

Our flight was late getting in, so instead of having a few hours to take a nap and get ready, we pretty much had to jump in the shower as soon as we got there so we could be ready for 8:15 when my parents picked us up. We went to Upperline for dinner, which is one of R's favorites. It was a first visit for the rest of us. Their fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade really were worthy of the dreams R had been having since he made the reservations. Mmmmm. I had a huge half roasted duck but sent much of it home with my parents, who planned to use it to make ravioli.

Saturday morning my parents came back to get us and take us to visit my Granna. I saw a real decline (even mom noticed it since her last visit), so it was a hard visit, and made even worse by finding out today that she is back in the hospital. They thought it was pneumonia, but it is apparently just a respiratory infection from the cold she had earlier and is being treated with antibiotics. She got a wheelchair on Friday and is having a hard time adjusting to it. We could tell she was depressed, and she would zone out for bits here and there. The nurses say she is sleeping more and more now. I know what that means.


We had reservations for 15 at Antoine's on Saturday night. We were in a back room and that may have affected my experience a bit. I know that getting food out for 15 can be tough, and then everyone waits for all plates to be served, but this resulted in my fish being just barely warm and I ate less than half of it. I did fill up on appetizers though, and I at least enjoyed most of them. I say most because I have discovered that I do not like Antoine's original Oysters Rockefeller. I think I prefer another restaurant's attempt at recreating it. I don't know if it was the (too much?) Pernod, but I know that I did get several grains of rock salt in my mouth (the oysters are baked in the shell on a bed of rock salt), and the salt completely overpowered it.

The rest of the evening was spent on one of the Balconies at The Royal Sonesta overlooking Bourbon Street. We had beads to throw to the drunk tourists, and I was happy to find many Auburn people to scream "WAR EAGLE" to and throw beads to. Oh, and if you're wondering, yes I did see several sets of breasts. The guys in our group were down a few feet from me and were attracting the ladies with long strands of large gold beads.




(yes, I eat. I'm just slouchy in this picture making my shoulder blade stick out in such a lovely manner. Sorry mom!)

I got a lot of knitting done with our flight delay. I'm a few inches past the waste yarn for the afterthought heel on my socks, and I have now have yarn for another pair because I found The Quarter Stitch on Chartres while we were walking around this morning and bought some green Koigu