Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond

Spring fever has been driving me insane lately; this doesn't bode well, as we've got another few years weeks before spring officially starts (and several more weeks of wintery-weather left at/around that point, generally). But right now, I could really handle hanging out (by which I mean walking around) on a beach overlooking liquid water (rather than the frozen kind) and sweating.

Last night after dinner, I was enjoying having the house to myself. I had Law and Order on the TV, I was working on some crafts, and a load of dishes was going in the dishwasher while some laundry was finishing up in the drier.

I started to smell something funny in the house. Not "ew, perfume" funny, but that melty smell associated in my mind with overheating electronics. D's computer has been on the fritz lately (off and on), so after about 10 minutes I put my crafts down and ambled over to give it a sniff. Turns out, his computer was off (along with the power strip leading to it). So I then checked the TV/gaming consoles area, my own computer, the humidifier, and the washer/drier areas. Nothing smelled like burnt wiring, so I sat back down & went back to what I was doing. After another while with the smell getting continuously stronger, I made the circuit again, this time also checking the fridge & dishwasher & the hallway outside our door. The smell wasn't coming from the hallway. In front of the fridge, it smelled. In front of the dishwasher it didn't. But I did mentally register that the dishwasher was (by now) on the heat cycle to dry things, so after inspecting the fridge & finding nothing, I shut the dishwasher off & opened the door.

Turns out my plastic spoonrest had slipped through the bottom rack in the dishwasher & was touching the heating element which is responsible for drying the dishes. Also turns out that element gets pretty goddamn hot, since the "heat resistant to 400 F" spoonrest now has about a 2 inch gash melted into it. The heating element was slowly slicing through the spoonrest like cold butter perched across a hot knife blade. Really goddamn stinky cold butter. I let it all cool off last night--tonight I get to see if I can peel any of that formerly-molten plastic off that thing before we need to use the dishwasher again. Yum!

So far today, the pond hockey tournament that was going on this weekend (in which I was playing) has been cancelled. Our current heatwave coupled with rain all day yesterday caused the ice conditions to be "crap" so they're postponing the championship games 'til next weekend--or 'til forever, it's not 100% clear which one it is yet. Meanwhile, the team from Duluth that my women's hockey team was supposed to play against this afternoon has decided not to come down because of the weather--Duluth is under a winter weather advisory 'til tomorrow afternoon which is supposed to involve terrible visibility, a lot of snow and possibly icy roads. So that game has turned into an unexpected practice--which is ok. We can certainly use the practice after the discombobulation that was yesterday's game.

Meanwhile, I wound up missing the pond hockey game that was yesterday because my errands took too long. On the bright side, I came away from my errands with replacement sweaters (2) for the ones (3) that I have pitched in the last month or so. The office is usually cold, so I generally have a sweater there in addition to whatever I chose to wear to work that day, so I can keep warm. The ones I had been using at the office had multiple holes in them & most were missing buttons when I'd long-since run out of replacement buttons, so it was about time to pitch them. I also came away from the errands with a returned library book slip (proof it was back on time after they lost one of my other books & blamed it on me!) and a large pile of stamps.

Yesterday evening I finished reading Born to Run which is about the Tarahumara people in Mexico & their propensity for running ridiculously long races (100 miles +)--and winning them. It also discussed the author's viewpoints on why so many people who run recreationally get hurt which can basically be summed up as "people will take lessons to learn to ski, to skate, to swim...but we never take a lesson on how to run". While I'm not sure if I agree with everything he had to say, he did make a few valid points. And more than that, he's got a helluva way of telling a story--I felt like I was sitting around drinking beer with my buddies & chatting rather than reading a book about (essentially) how to convert to the healthy habits that these Tarahumara folks have.

Currently, there are 3 pots containing 4 chicken carcasses & assorted veggies on the stove turning into chicken stock, I threw in a load of dishes to run this morning, & D just put in a load of laundry. The week's menu is planned so I can hit the grocery store on my way home from practice. We're oddly productive folks for having a lazy weekend planned. :-)

I got stuck working late tonight because off a super-duper important WE HAVE TO HAVE IT NOW sample that they handed to me 2 minutes before I was going to walk out the door (3 hours and 40 minutes ago, or so). I just finished up the report for it now.

D ordered our dinner about an hour and 20 minutes ago, when he got hungry--delivery. He just called the restaurant to find out now what the delay was. Turns out delivery dude got stuck in an elevator in downtown & they're sending different food to us now. So I head out right now, I might make it to my house in time for fresh dinner instead of leftovers.

Bizarre day.

Last night I made chicken pot pie for dinner, but instead of rolling the premade crust I use as thin as I usually do, I left it a bit thicker than normal for the bottom crust. I also added extra flour & purposely made the filling thicker than usual. WOW! I wasn't even in the mood for pot pie while cooking it, but the meal itself turned out better than 'usual' last night. I need to remember these changes for next time....mmm!

On a completely unrelated note, my current shampoo has a pina colada/coconut scent to it. Couple that with my vaguely-apple-scented conditioner, & when I get done working out (running/skating/sweating a lot in general) my hair smells very much like I'm a paper umbrella away from wearing a fruity drink on my head. I find that a vast improvement over the stink of hockey-helmet-hair any day. It was a little surprising the first time it happened, though.

Today I reffed my second hockey game. And after the game, a nice man came up to me with a clipboard, wanting to have a chat with me -- turns out I was being evaluated.

The process used to be that you took the test & read the book which was supposed to prep you for the season by teaching you the rules through these activities. Then you attended a seminar & learned how to apply what you'd read (though it's hard to teach the entire game of hockey including every single possible nuiance in a single-day seminar but it was basically to iron out the confusion, highlight rule changes for experienced refs, & give people a chance to ask some questions of more experienced officials.) Then you worked with a mentor for your first X games (where the value of X depended on each individual person), then you worked some games on your own. THEN you got evaluated.

Not anymore, apparently. I have yet to meet a mentor in either of my first two games. I'm hoping somewhere in my first year, I might have one once (or maybe twice if I'm lucky) but if I do have one schedule, it's not cluing me in to that fact on my assigned games calendar. I have exactly one hour of experience on the ice in an actual game situation, and about 30 minutes of ice time from that all-day seminar. And I got evaluated today anyway, and measured against the same standard that a second-year official would be measured against because they don't tell the evaluators ahead of time how much experience the people that they're assigned to watch actually have. In a way, it was very useful to have him point out the things he thought I was doing fine with & where I need more work; I've been asking my partners at every game to do that for me as well because I would like to improve & it's impossible to remember everything right off the bat. In a way, it was quite discouraging in the "I have almost no practical experience & I'm being judged anyway?" sort of way. I get that no one wants to be a mentor -- it's not a paid job, it's entirely voluntary. But I hope when I know enough that I'm comfortable passing on my information, that I'll be able to schedule some time to help out completely new folks--because I think it's really hard to be thrown into the deep end of the pool headfirst fully clothed & asked to tread water for 10 minutes when you've never tried swimming before.

When he found out that it was only my second game, he put that in his comments on the sheet; "she did quite well for it only being her second time". But it's a small consolation to a perfectionist who just received a sheet full of "needs improvement".

I just got home (and cleaned up) from reffing my first hockey game. A former teammate/coworker and I had taken the test with USA Hockey & attended the seminar in the fall so we received our crests. I put attempting to ref on hold until after I had finished last semester's classes, but since furlough is this entire week I'd left my calendar wide open for games to ref if they felt the urge to assign them to me. And did they ever take advantage of that; my first game was tonight, I have one on Saturday, and one next Monday. But it's really fun and a lot to think about all at the same time and I didn't even trip over any of the 10 year olds (my biggest fear is sitting on one of them & crushing 'em) who were playing in this game and I got a great workout chasing after them to watch the goal line/offsides. And I get paid to do it, to boot. It was awesome!

I hope I screw up less on Saturday than I did today.

Christmas this year was cool -- my mother and dad enjoyed the food D & I cooked for them & the gifts we gave them. Mom gave me a cookbook from Hell's Kitchen (the Minneapolis restaurant, not the TV show) which has all the stuff that my dad & D love to eat (bison sausage, lemon ricotta pancakes, homemade peanut butter). I am enjoying the thought of trying all the recipes myself. Plus maybe reading the ingredient list for the caramel rolls which involves 2 sticks of butter per batch will make me stop wanting them so much....or at least give me a better idea of how much running I'm in for after I have one.

I spent some quality time this past Saturday with Lilabeth & Stan. Stan is at the stage now where he likes making cat and dog noises when he sees cats and dogs (I have a beanie baby of each of them) and also where he finds noses fascinating--moreso if they're not his own. The side of my nose he was grabbing & twisting over the weekend now moves in ways the other side doesn't, and is accompanied by pain when it does so. I'm guessing the two things may be related--having a small monkey hanging off my face & having it hurt afterward.... Good thing I don't rely on my world-famous nose to get a paycheck. ;-)

Otherwise, I appear to be getting a headcold from the way my throat is feeling. That makes me sad; I don't want to be sick when I'm supposed to be entertaining my parents on Thursday.

Today was a final in the earlier of my two classes & the anniversary-luncheon at work.

The good:
-Overall, I think I needed approximately 15% on the final to insure that I got an A in the class. I believe I got more than that.
-The chocolate cake with fudge frosting & raspberry sauce for a garnish was great at lunch. Also, the 'house' salad dressing was yummy.

The bad:
-Our test had a bunch of things on it that he'd mentioned how to do in passing but never actually had us do ourselves.
-The main course at lunch was weird; chicken & bologna(?) in creamy pasta. I'm ok with one meat or the other. Both together makes it feel very much like a meal my dad is throwing together based on leftovers in the fridge 'cuz we don't have the money to go to the store this week. Also, it had olives in it; I hate olives (they're one of fewer than 5 foods I just don't like). They were easy to pick out, though.

The ugly:
-He had one thing on the test which we'd never ever had to do before. Fortunately, the command for it was pretty straightforward & I'm sure the help menu was at least marginally useful (I didn't bother to try to use help). Most people didn't seem to get to that section, though. Relative to how quickly I finished the mid-term, this test took forever.
-I had to stand in front of about 40 people at lunch while they talked about my accomplishments. This makes me feel beyond self-conscious.

I will be glad when it's time to go home today. I'm sleepy--it feels like it's been a long day.

I just reinstalled Baldur's Gate 2 (and the expansion) on my desktop (600 x 800 resolution, how I've missed thee?). Why, you ask? Because I was about six dragons away from finishing the expansion and I never got around to it. Jokingly, I used to say I was sure I'd have the game done by the time I turned 30. Now the clock is ticking....

The Monster Half (and 10-mile) are coming up in a couple weeks and I can't decide if I want to run another 10-mile without training much for it or not. On one hand, the last one turned out really well, especially relative to the effort I put into it. On the other hand....I'm not sure if Lilabeth would be able to do it with me or not. (But there's a discount for signing up for both the race on Oct 31 AND the half-marathon next spring which I think I'd like to do again! And discounts are good....right?!?)

I tried my hand at a different butternut squash ravioli recipe tonight. It was an epic fail. I'm somewhat curious if anyone else has had success with making the stuff at home and, if they have, what recipe they used. The filling tonight was over-seasoned so it tasted almost like an over-nutmeged pumpkin pie. The sage-brown butter sauce which was supposed to go with it was just weird. *sigh* Someday, I will find a version of this I can make at home. 'Til then, many squash will die to bring me that information.

My mother knows of my cooking experiments this past year, with the CSA and generally getting sick of eating the same five meals over and over again and all. So she keeps bringing a different cookbook from the library every time she sees me. The latest one was from Clotilde Dusoulier, the author of Chocolate & Zucchini, a food blog which has been around for millenia (by internet blogging standards).

She's very...interesting and her love of food is quite....earnest. Her food pairings in the cookbook are positively bizarre in a lot of cases, and her portion sizes are very VERY French. By which I mean that some of what she mentions using as a main course would be fine--if I'd also had a soup &/or salad course and a pasta course beforehand, and were intending to finish up with dessert after the main. I can't imagine feeding most of them to my father and actually satisfying his appetite. Or to my mother, and actually expecting her to eat 90% of the ingredients. Perhaps if I were enamoured with goat cheese, this might have helped me along the path of loving her ideas but as I am not it was quite a large stumbling block in about 40% of her recipes. And to the best of my knowledge, canned duck is not a very simple ingredient to get ahold of here in the US. I don't even know in which aisle one would find it at Cub.... I suppose I shouldn't mock her (or Cub). Maybe they do sell it & I'm blissfully unaware, as the only duck I ever ate growing up came from one of my father's hunting trips, not a cannery and therefore I am the food-snob. But I can't help but think, when I read the section about stocking my pantry, that it's much easier to do if I don't have to shell out Euros & have things shipped across an ocean prior to putting them on my shelf.

But her desserts? I'd totally eat that! (And pretty much every other one I read.) A sweet tooth apparently transcends our varying cultures.

( Today I did a lot of stuff )
Man, am I ever happy that it's about bedtime. I'm tired!

Fortunately, I have nothing going on tomorrow which would necessitate I leave the house with my car
as that sounds like it will suck.

*looks at her calendar*

Oh, wait. I'm supposed to wade through downtown 4 times....

/sad face

My work computer shuts off now, when I am not at my desk for some extended time period. The shortest time I have been gone and come back to discover it off is just over an hour. Yet the power settings claim it is never to shut down of its own free will, no matter how long I leave it alone. I can hardly wait 'til it starts shutting itself off when I'm still _using_ it.

A great big THANK YOU to Lilabeth & Jme for dinner tonight; it was delicious. I do enjoy Solera...

I just made a fairly quick, semi-nutritious, and tasty soup for dinner which involved chicken, noodles, coconut milk, lime, garlic/onion, and asian fish sauce. I love it when I stumble across a decent recipe on the internet kind of at random.

On the down side, my hands now smell like lime, garlic, and fish sauce. All at once.

Last night saw my first attempt at making veggie stock using this handy website's suggestions, coupled with some comments from the CSA message board. (These sources caused me to add some strange ingredients--like celery leaves from when I cleaned and froze several partial heads of celery, rather than throwing the leaves out like I normally do.) It smelled great while it was cooking and it used a bunch of what I'd normally consider to be rubbish (most folks with a garden would call it compost), so I think that's a double win. And thanks to my cooking fit over the weekend and the menu we've got planned for this week, I won't have to "worry" about lunches at all--by the time I run out of weekend leftovers, D will be making some of his dishes which give lots of leftovers, too.

This morning when I woke up, it was pissing down with rain which did not make me want to go for a run outside. So instead, I was a wuss and used a treadmill indoors. I've been working all summer to try and get myself to run a 5k at an ever-faster pace. I managed this morning's in about 29 minutes, which is my new "fastest time" evar, so I'm happy with that.

Last week Wednesday was our final trap shoot of the year. It was also pissing down with rain that day, when I was out shooting. My first 3 stations in the first round were terrible; then I got mad. I was 9/10 in the last two stations, and the second round I tied my lifetime high score of 21/25 (made earlier this summer). Note to world: I apparently aim better when angry.

I'm sad August is nearly gone because it means summer has nearly evaporated on me and soon life will be cold and dark and full of hockey. But that's alright too, I suppose.

Last night, we tried our hand at making eggplant parmesan (except baked, not fried). It turned out pretty well and it's not nearly as difficult as I would have expected.

That is vegetable number 4,286 (give or take a few thousand) that I knew was enjoyable from eating it elsewhere but would never have purchased one myself from a grocery store to bring it home and try cooking it. However, since the CSA sent it to me, I was forced to try cooking it and wound up with pleasing results. This whole summer really has taken a lot of the terror out of the veggie section at the grocery store.

(Yay for leftovers for lunch!)