Monday, March 24, 2008

Happy Anniversary to Us!

The one photo of us taken this past weekend:



Our dessert Saturday Night (Creme Brulee...as if I had a choice):



And last but not least, Dearest Smushy (or, what happens when your venue tosses your cake top into a plastic bag with your wedding gifts):



The poor thing used to look a lot nicer...



I'll have to report back as to the taste. I was supposed to take it out of the freezer last night, but I forgot. We'll try it out after our first annual Anniversary Pizza.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

More cooking and knitting than blogging

I have several pictures on my camera of things I've been up to this week, but I haven't gotten around to writing about them. It's terrible of me, I know.

This Monday is our first anniversary, so we've decided to spend a weekend in Austin. It is Thursday, and at this point we have a hotel, but that is it. I suppose that means the rest of the weekend can be divided between a yarn shop and the super mega Whole Foods.

HaHa...just kidding. Sort of. I did just make reservations for dinner on Saturday night, and R has the list of things to do from his Rand McNally map software. I only know that I will not be spending a lot of time sitting around knitting. Had we decided on a B&B up in the Hill Country, however, that might have happened.

This week's food has been a mixture of work and no work. I roasted a big chicken on Sunday and used the leftovers to make gumbo per R's request. I was able to make a quick stock Sunday night, and I happened to have something in the freezer that I'm guessing not many people have:



My dad taught me how to make a roux by heating flour in a dry pan--witout oil so it's much lighter. The only problem with this method is it makes a ton of smoke, and we don't have an outside-venting hood over our stove. What do I do? I take my portable butane burner out on the porch and give off as much smoke as I want. Still, I am happy that I didn't have to do this.

I used some of the andouille we bought at Poche's Meat Market a few weeks ago. They make amazing sausages, and I love that this one in particular is so lean. You can actually see the chunks of lean pork in the sausage



Knitting? I knit a hat for my mom, and started working on some fingerless mits for myself. (Because you know spring is prime hat/mit wearing weather around here...) I also started playing with some stitch patterns on a wash cloth, but that's not a big project. I need to decide what I'm bringing with me this weekend.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Sewing Saturday

I was up relatively early this morning and R is off on a recruiting trip, so I pulled out my sewing machine and some scrap fabric. I made a new knitting needle organizer that will hold all of my needles with room to spare.

I still have to stick labels on each slot (I'm thinking iron-on). The circulars look pretty jumbled, but they will be easy to grab once the labels are on.

I swiped one of R's nice wooden pants hangers from the closet, but my guess is the pants that should be on there are with him and will need a coat hanger when he returns. I can easily grab a replacement at the store for my organizer, so that shouldn't be a problem.



It took about 3 hours to make it, and that included organizing the needles and putting them in. I also have to add some sort of button tabs to hold it while it's rolled up, and then I can just hang it in the downstairs closet. I'm not tossing the packaging, but this will be much easier to deal with than my current storage solution, which is one of those huge ziplock storage bags.



Right now I really need to go to the grocery store so I will have something to eat for the rest of the weekend. There really isn't anything in the house to cook. I should get something that R wouldn't want to eat if he were here. Tofu or tempeh and veggies maybe? I also need half and half because I bought a quart on Thursday and left it in my client's fridge. Dagnabit. However first I must remove the fur that is covering me after the 3 minutes of cat lap time I was treated to while writing this.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Celebrity Sighting!

(I first typed the title as "Celebrity Sitting")

Well, he's a celebrity to me. It's Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster, and holder of some serious online journal/blog presence dating farther back than my own late-90's online journal writing. He obviously had a much larger readership at the time.


(What's with the ghostly blur? Is Barnes & Noble haunted??)

I tried to find Rob's book the day it came out, but my neighborhood Borders only told me that it was "Likely in Stock" and we could not find it. I finally did come across a few copies at another store last weekend, but I decided it would be better for him if I waited until the signing and bought it there. (Of course I managed to pick up a knitting book from the bargain pile while waiting for him to get started.)

I enjoyed listening to Rob read from the book. I've known his voice for a while, but it was nice to hear it come out of something other than my computer speakers.

Of course I'm writing all this assuming you know about Rob. Rob's 8 year-old daughter Schuyler (that's Sky-ler, and you can hear her say it here) was diagnosed at the age of 4 with an extremely rare congenital disorder that prevents her from speaking. I read Rob's journals and blogs before his wife got pregnant, while he was the only one who knew that she was having a girl, when she was born and while they struggled to figure out why their daughter was different. So many of us have "watched her grow up"; it's very exciting for all of us to see this book come to fruition.

So I'm telling you now...go buy this book! Yes, it is a sad story at times, but there is also happiness and humor. I think everyone should get to know Schuyler.

This thinking of long ago journaling has once again sent me back to look at what was going on this week in years past. Ten years ago tomorrow I got my very first caller-ID box. I was so excited! I was also exploring the possibility of making out with a (gasp) 30 year old--so old, and trying to figure out to do with a quart of hummus. I had the best legal memorandum in my Air Pollution Law class.

I'm missing my entries from 1999. I think they're on a zip disk somewhere.

Eight years ago I was hanging out with drunk New York City cops in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. They were trying to get us to come up to their room "to just fool around." I was also typing up clips from high school notes I'd come across trying to find some sort of unlock disk:

you'll be slightly put out with me, but I screwed up. Here it is (calm down, it's really nothing!): I have the case for Disintegration, but in it I have Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me. See? No big deal, but you might be a tad bit annoyed.


Seven years ago "Thespacebar still onlyworkssometime and, itlookslike onlyevery second orthird timeitrytouseit. Orless. WHY? Why doesn'tmynewkeyboard work better than theold one?"

And I wondered why I never had as many readers as Rob...

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Lazy Sunday

Eating:

R is only in charge of dinner at home on the nights we order pizza, so breakfast on the weekends is his domain. This morning I was greeted by this:


aww.

Knitting:


Holy schmoly, that appears to be two socks on two circular needles. It's actually working, despite the fact that the tutorials online were very hard for me to decipher. I basically had to just take a deep breath and hope that it worked.

I did start the toes on double pointed needles, and I think that made life a bit easier. The next challenge will be the heel as I've never done toe-up socks before. I'm not looking forward to learning how to do short rows backwards.

Still processing:

Last night was supposed to be a going away dinner for a good friend of mine (my one and only bridesmaid). She had decided several months ago that she was going to move back to her home country of Turkey. At dinner, however, her ex-boyfriend (or so we thought) stood up and announced that she was going to Turkey in April, but coming back because they got married yesterday in Las Vegas.

!!!

She was sitting next to me and while we were all still in "WHAT???!?!?!" mode I looked down and grabbed her hand. "She is wearing a ring! Oh my god!"

That shows how observant I am.

Oh, and if you're curious. She got her American citizenship over a year ago, so it's not an "I need a Green Card" situation. Her husband (husband!) is actually German.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

This should be it

Fed Ex Ground delivers on Saturday mornings:



R to me "Well, your day is shot."

Actually, all but two of the yarns were in Ravelry, so I didn't have to input a lot of info. I haven't done pictures yet, but I can do that later.

This is definitely a project box because there are many skeins of the same yarns. They will be more useful than the equal amount of single skein novelty yarns that make up my new stash.