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!!

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

I hate training new employees

I'm at the same grocery store almost every day. Most of the cashiers/baggers know me. Many will get me a 10lb bag of ice before I even ask for it. They know I bring my own bags and I'm particular about how they are packed.

This one lady...I swear, three times I have said "and may I please have a bag of Reddy Ice; the big bag?" and then she doesn't ring it up and thing brings me one of their little courtesy bags of crushed ice, so I have to do another transaction, usually annoying the person behind me. Perhaps the fourth time will be the charm.

When lines are slow, one of the neighboring cashiers will usually come over to help bag if I can't get there in time to do it myself. I always put the cold stuff in my green envirosac . They don't always know this, but I'll pull that one aside and say "please put the cold stuff in here." That way I only have one bag to put and keep in my insulated bag and can pull stuff out at the client's as I need it. The guy said "Yeah, ok!"

Well, I get to my clients and I unpack the canned/dry goods onto the counter and get to work. I need my coconut milk. Where's my coconut milk? Did they forget to pack my coconut milk? Oh god. How will I make this Thai curry???

Oh, wait...nope, it's in the cold bag.

Later: where's my chicken broth? Oh...don't tell me...yep, it's in the cold bag.

I know it's silly, but it makes for a bitchy me.

There are some bagging-only employees that I will avoid completely and have no qualms about stepping in front of them and suggesting that they'd be better off helping the woman who is just staring into space while her groceries pile up at the end of the belt.

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.

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.

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.

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...