Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond

Last night, D and I met up with several friends at the Tea Source in Minneapolis where we tried various types of tea and some of their desserts. I had the Vanilla Chai which comes with powdered milk and sugar already mixed in, and found it to be fabulous. So fabulous, in fact, that I bought some to take home with me and am enjoying a cup right now. Mmmm!

In summary: you should go to the Tea Source if you find yourself sad because your house is lacking in tea.

(Let's don't discuss my terrible taste in music lately, on a separate note.)

The last week or two has been interesting from a personal perspective, mainly dealing with the idea of combining my life more with D's.

I've been mentally chewing on the concept of our schedules for a while, specifically how to align them a little better. Actually sharing housing is still a pretty nebulous concept based a lot on the fact that we each own a one-bedroom condo and neither one is big enough to accomodate everything that both of us own. Even with a vast culling of personal belongings, we would probably still be hard-pressed to fit everything that was left into ~700 square feet. We'll sort that situation out with time, I'm sure. I prefer to work on one 'problem' at a time, and tackling the schedules seemed the easiest thing to do first.

( If you don't wanna know, skip it )

My ear has been stuffed up for about 10 days now. Long enough to drive me crazy, that's for sure. But when I asked the Dr the other day while at a 'wellness' appointment, she said that if it wasn't actively causing me pain or a fever, it was "fine". So apparently the inability to hear is all in my head. (ha! ahaha! ugh, puns!)

I got to try waterskiing on the 4th of July, at the lake where D and I went with his parents and a pile of their friends. It was both fun to try and humbling to be schooled at a physical activity by people who are somewhere in the neighborhood of 65. I realize that means they've just had twice my life span to practice, but still.... I did manage to stand up and go for a good 30 feet before I face-planted. And it only took me about 10 attempts to get that far. I would totally be willing to try it again, though, if given the chance.

In other news, there are a lot of decisions involved in having a wedding. Good Lord.

Tuesday night, I had a the start of a headcold--sore throat, slightly swollen lymph nodes, a barely-stuffy nose, and one hell of a headache coming on. Yesterday I stayed home and spent half the day sleeping and the other half sitting around reading and eating. Today I seem to feel somewhat less-bad, but I still have one hell of a miserable headache when the drugs wear off. Apparently, when my glands swell they make my whole neck hurt which in turn gives rise to the Headache from Hell. I think I will see about sneaking out of here early today, to grab some extra sleep.

Last weekend, I got to pretend to be a pastry chef. Lilabeth called me to ask if I could come help as the place she currently works is closing shortly, so they have been absolutely SWAMPED with reservations of late. I spent about 5 hours pretending to know what I was doing, plating up desserts (which had already been prepared). It was quite fun and I seemed to be ok enough at keeping them caught up that they were happy with me.

Furlough at work is next week. I have June 29-July 3 off. I am quite excited about that. Between now and then, I'm a bit busy.

Sometimes, I miss playing sand volleyball over the summer. Then I remember how frustrating it can be to try and play at a challenging level against teams who have known each other for years when you just met your teammates 10 minutes ago (hello, 20-point losses) and your team has one guy when the other team barely has the required number of women and 3-4 extra guys to sub in (hello, row of 8-foot-tall blockers no matter who is in the front row). And let's don't even talk about trying to organize a group of people you don't really know very well, to see if they want to play the second half of the summer (hello, herding cats) and I realize maybe it's not so bad to not be playing this year.

But days like today I still miss it anyway.

Last night, we went for a bachelorette dinner at Cafe Maude in Minneapolis (we'll use the city's boundaries lightly, since I'm not sure which city it's actually in).

There were six ladies there and with two bottles of wine, one of every type of dessert, and about 90% of the menu purchased as entrees or sides between us all, it still came out to a quite affordable "fancy" meal when we split the bill five ways (of course we did not make the Bride-to-Be pay!). I would highly recommend going there to eat. I would also highly recommend avoiding the peach creme brulee. It had a terrible texture--or so said all four of the chefs at the table last night. Personally, I ate a peach out of it and found that to be quite delicious. I did not have any of the brulee surrounding it, though, so I have no opinion on what they were grumbling about. It was the only dessert that was not finished, with the plate polished clean when we left--so take that as you will.

Today was a bunch of cooking in the afternoon and a bunch of "nothing useful" before that. I tried a new recipe for a 'root vegetable' lasagna, which will be lunches for part of this week. Have not eaten the results yet, but damn they smelled good. I also made a stir-fry with a bunch of the random green stuff from the CSA boxes (various vines and Asian greens and the bok choy, etc.) to get it out of the fridge. I'm not sure how that will taste, but it smelled really nice while cooking. And I cleaned the chicken carcasses out of the freezer--they're currently simmering in my first attempt at making my own chicken stock.

We made our own pesto sauce for lunch from a recipe I'd found. I prepped all the ingredients for him, but the fun part was making D blend the ingredients together (not my house, not my blender to break). He wound up with pesto on the cupboards, the ceiling, and in his hair in an effort to get the stuff mixed well. I think I have finally thought of something to ask for as a wedding gift--a food processor. Apparently they make such blendings much easier. Now all we need to do is, y'know, pick a date and we'll be all set.

Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) are close enough in flavor to the Real Thing that you can substitute them in spinach and artichoke dip and make something quite tasty, if said dip is your kind of thing. You'll just want to cook the sunchokes a bit first, or they're too hard (think raw potatoes) to actually blend in to the dip well.

In other news, life is rushing by at a maddening pace and one of my sets of relatives is apparently mad at me (so says mom) because they feel "left out" for having never met D when everyone else in the family has. Not my fault he had other things going on so he left early the last time I hosted a b-day party for my mother and had all the relatives over (and they came late). Then again, I might feel something a bit closer to remorse if I hadn't been the last one in the clan to meet their daughter's baby-daddy.

Why must the cleanroom be cold on days when I'm dressed for summer, rather than summer in the Arctic Circle?

Lilabeth and I succeeded in jogging, walking, and giggling/talking/grumbling our way through the 13.1 miles (my Garmin thinks it was 13.3) that was the first-ever Minneapolis Marathon this morning (we did the 1/2 marathon). I have the finisher's medal to prove it.

The finish line was rather poorly marked (in my mind) in that they had a time-point shortly before it and the sign saying "FINISH" happened to be flapping in the wind so it was narrow-side to me when I reached the time point. So you thought you were done running, but low-and-behold there was another 0.1 miles to go to hit the official "finish" line, and now don't you feel silly for starting to sprint when you did?

Now, everything is kinda sore/tired and I'm wondering how in Christ's name anyone actually RUNS a full marathon, but other than that? A long soak in the bathtub, 2 gallons of water, and a lot of stretching later, I'm starting to feel mostly human again. I would kill for tortilla chips, though. I think I could use a bag(or two)'s worth of salt.

Yesterday, D and I went to my parents' house for dinner. And mother got out the pictures of me from when I was a kid.

There was a picture of me on my rocking horse (without pants) with a bucket on my head.
There was a picture of me in mom's slippers (with no clothes on save a diaper) and a bandana on my head like a kerchief.
There were several pictures of me getting into or out of the bathtub, though they were all "tastefully arranged" so that you could not see nudity, save bare legs and the occassional buttcheek.

Until we hit the section of pictures from going up to my grandparents' lake cabin, I was starting to wonder if I ever wore clothes in the first 5 years of my life.

A couple weeks back, one of my lab instruments broke down. I get a quote for fixing it which, unfortunately, has to be signed off at basically one step below the CEO so that's currently tangled up in red tape. While I'm waiting for the red tape to untangle, I have discovered another building that my company uses has a similar instrument.

I contact the guy who's in charge of it there--he gives me a date I can come borrow theirs. The morning of that day, he emails me to tell me a construction crew just ejected him from the room with his instrument because they are tearing down a wall to replace another (very large) machine found in the same room as the instrument I want to use. When the wall has been replaced, he can go back in and continue working but not until then. They ripped the wall down over a week ago, and he hasn't been allowed in since.

Meanwhile, I am left with an ever-increasing pile of samples, a bunch of antsy people looking for data, and no way to get data for them. So I spend a lot of time trying to deflect angry 'customers' who are starting to think I'm making this stuff up.

-last week's trap scores were a pair of 17's; I was pleased

-my mother gave D several pictures of me from when I was a little kid. My 80's hair is just as scary as I remember it being

-cooking this week's veggies has been entertaining; sorrel sauce for fish and asparagus wound up really good and very vaguely like the first fancy meal I ever had, almost 10 years ago at some fancy French place w/John

-I made granola cereal for this week again; I'm looking forward to it

-My headcold has settled somewhat in my chest, giving me a nice sturdy cough. But at least I have a sense of smell back

-At the end of the month, I will go to the high school graduation of the last of my former baby-sitting charges. I'm getting old.

I can no longer say I hate radishes. Rather, I simply hate raw radishes. Roasted in the oven for 20 minutes after being lightly coated in oil, then coated in soy sauce and roasted another five, they're edible. Downright tasty, in fact.

I never thought I would find a way in which I would willingly eat radishes. Now, if only there was a way to make olives taste good...

Edit: I've also given up on doing anything creative with the parsnip. We wound up with one very large one and I still had 2-3 small-to-tiny old potatoes lying around, so they're all currently boiling together even though mashed potatoes aren't exactly D's favorite food.

as in, stories of me cooking vegetables--nothing to do with shows you can watch on a TV...

Last night was the first pick-up from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) which D and I signed up for and are splitting a share of veggies with Lilabeth and her family.

In the last 24 hours, I have learned what a sunchoke looks like, held a parsnip for the first time, discovered that radishes come in colors other than red, found out that burdock exists (additionally, it's apparently both a weed and eatible), taste-tested sorrel prior to throwing it into a skillet, and cooked and eaten ramps. The spinach and rhubarb in the box did not scare me, as I've at least cooked with them before. If nothing else, this experience will make me less frightened of the produce section at the grocery store. Heck, I may even be able to identify all the fruits and veggies by name at the end of the year.

The goal in doing this was to become more familiar with foods I would not normally pick at the store and to (hopefully) eat produce raised in a more environmentally-friendly manner than 'typical' produce from a factory farm. Additionally, I'm hoping to find some great new recipes since I was starting to get sick of all the ones I have familiarity with. Continuing to receive these boxes promises to make for an interesting summer.

I went on vacation with an ancient swimsuit and a boyfriend. I'll be returning home with a brand new swimsuit and a fiance. Even my mother said congratulations. Crazy!

Last night, D and I tried to go to dinner at the new-to-us Thai place in downtown, Taste of Thailand. Tried being the key word.

Their posted hours stated they were open 'til 9 p.m. We (because of me) were running a bit later than originally intended, but walked in to the restaurant at 8:45ish. And they refused to seat us, stating that if we wanted take-out, we could do that but otherwise they were closed and we should go elsewhere.

I spent about 2 minutes reading their menu before I realized nothing really appealed to me in my starved-and-dehydrated state enough to get it and haul it an extra 10-15 minutes back home so I could eat it with a beverage on-hand. So we took their advice. We left.

I'm glad some businesses are doing so amazingly well in this supposedly terrible economy that they don't actually need to bother serving all of the potential customers who show up on their doorstep. The handful of restaurants I've worked in have all had the policy that, while they dislike late arrivals, provided you show up before their slated closing time they will serve you. They may rush you along a little, but they don't outright refuse to seat you.

Watched Shoot 'Em Up tonight. That's 30 IQ points I will never get back. That said, any man who can maintain an erection while shooting a room full of bad guys without needing to reload his handgun as he's carrying a hooker on his penis deserves some mad props. And so do you, if you can parse that sentence without having ever seen the movie.

In other news, I made the nine-mile run today that my training plan said I was supposed to do. And that worked out great, while I was doing it. As soon as I started trying to rest, rehydrate, and eat afterwards? Hello, barfy feeling. Unpleasant, but it's gone now. And I have a new successful 'furthest distance run' to add to my list. Coupled with the ~2 mile hike through downtown we took today before my run, I actually made it majority of the way through a half-marathon's worth of movement today even though my net work is zero (I'm right back at the table where I started the morning off).

It had been a kind of crazy week prior to all this. I successfully executed a small surprise b-day party for D with the Gaming Crew (+ significant others) as guests on Friday night. The food was tasty, games were played, and lots of desserts were eaten. I'm never trying to surprise him with people again. Any future 'parties' will be common knowledge--too much stress for this lazy-ass, with all the sneaking around. Also, 8 people in his place isn't quite clausterphobia-inducing, but it's getting awfully close.

Last weekend's run on the 1/2 marathon training program was supposed to be 8 miles. I learned two things while doing that run. 1) Cereal and a couple strips of bacon 1-2 hours before I run can give me more than enough energy to complete 6 miles without making me feel barfy, no matter how flat or hilly* the 6 miles I choose to go. 2) 8 miles feels like it's about twice as far as 6, even though it's not (at all!) in the mathematical sense. I will need to sort out how to make these longer distances less-bad, since every week from here on out has my weekend run a new "longest distance I've ever gone in my life without stopping".

*where 'hilly' is in the Midwestern sense of the word not the costal, mountainous sense

I do think I'm starting to get addicted to the endorphin release that comes with choosing a greater-than-5k distance to go and successfully completing it. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing, a good thing, or a nerd thing (one more item crossed off my do-to list for the day--YES!).

I also find it entertaining that the more I exercise, the more I crave fatty food like burgers and pizza. So much for working out being healthy for me, overall. If I keep giving in to eating what I want, my cholesterol will go up the more I work out.

The trap league at work this year has shrunk significantly from the size it was last year. We had two divisions last year with a total of eight teams, four in each division. This year, we have three teams total. My own team has actually lost 2 members (of 5) and combined with another team. Several of the teams lost members from either the reduction in force or the reduction in pay received by those who still had jobs.

We shot today over lunch for the first time this season (a 10 and a 15 for me...not exactly stellar, but it'll give me a nice handicap for the year at least; last week's practice rounds were a 12 and a 17) and on the way back there was a huge cloud of black smoke billowing up, off in the distance. Turns out there was apparently a brush fire about a mile from work today. It was just a very strange day. And I hope it was just the brush that was on fire, not any of the houses over that way.

On Wednesday when I got home from VE, I attempted to start up my computer to play games for a bit before I headed to bed. Attempted being the magic word. It wouldn't start up. Reseating of things, wiring the reset button as the power button, and some other general pokings and a few tears later, I gave up on it and went to bed.

Yesterday and today, I've been agonizing over purchasing parts for a new machine with the insurance money I'd received to replace the computer after the pipe-flooding in my house around Christmas. It had been acting a little flaky since then anyway which is why I'd initially reported it to them, so I wasn't terribly surprised that it finally grew bored of life. It actually held on longer than I was expecting. With the current economy, I got a really decent replacement put together for less than I'd expected. By next weekend, it should be up and running again. I'd really like to take the day off when the parts come in so that I could spend the day building it, but with the expected furloughs this year, I have 4 days of vacation that I can choose when to use--and I've already tied two of them into going to Georgia later this spring.