03
Dec, 2006

breakfast for dinner

i have a big group of friends here and we like to get together about once a week for a party. sometimes it’s just someone on friday afternoon sending out an e-mail and inviting people to bring some food over and hang out if they’re not doing anything else on saturday night. surprisingly frequently, we like to attach some sort of “theme” to the party. this past weekend, two of our friends hosted a “breakfast for dinner” party that was a big hit. they reasoned that we rarely eat breakfast together and there are so many great breakfast foods that we should just have them for dinner. so, there were egg casseroles and quiches, biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, french toast, various baked goods, several fruit salads and crepes. delicious!

other parties that have been so popular that they’ve become annual or semi-annual include sushi making parties, “saladpalooza,” the i-reuben (a combination of homemade reuben sandwiches and music file sharing — shhhhh….), the fondue party, tapas parties, fajita party and probably a few that i’ve forgotten. not everyone can come to every party, but i sometimes regret when we have to go out of town for a weekend because we almost always miss a get-together and you never know which ones will become legendary.

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01
Dec, 2006

veggies!

i’ve been so busy lately that i’m starting to get in a real “quick food” rut at home, subsisting mainly on peanut butter, eggs, bread and cheese. notice the complete lack of vegetables. i mean, occasionally, i can scrape together a small salad (fresh from a bag) on the side, but i’m really struggling to get vegetables on my plate now that summer is over. so, tonight we went out to eat. we chose to eat at a place that i’ve always known has great food, but it’s seat-yourself and the few times i’ve been there it’s been packed and i don’t like the vulture aspect of fighting for free tables. friday night at 7:00 didn’t seem like it was a great time to avoid that scene, but we decided to try it anyway. when we arrived, there were actually two free tables-for-two right away (i think we’d always gone with friends in the past and needed a larger table) and we got to choose the less breezy one. the menu is small, but everything on it is a sure thing, so i waffled. i wanted something warm (did i mention that it snowed today? brrr…) but the list of roasted vegetables on one of their salads looked so tempting! i asked the waiter if the salad was indeed served cold and he confirmed that it was, but pointed out that one of the sandwiches had a “roasted vegetables” instead of meat option and that the veggies were the same as the ones listed for the salad and it was a hot sandwich. with avocado and chipotle mayonnaise. sold! it arrived at the table, spilling over with roasted carrots, beets, sweet potatoes and artichokes (along with giant chunks of avocado–drool) and a small pile of salad greens with a spicy dressing on the side. oh man. it was soooooo tasty. and now, i’ve finally gotten some vegetables! maybe that should be my rule during the winter–if i eat out, i have to find the most veggie-intense item on the menu and order that. anyone else have any winter vegetable tips? recipes?

Posted in winter, yum | 3 Comments
29
Nov, 2006

another cool artist

i found another artist who does amazing altered books. check out the whole page of pictures. the one shown here is by far the simplest. i am particularly fond of the alice in wonderland one.

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29
Nov, 2006

oxymoronical kitty

this morning, my cat was sitting on the floor, purring very loudly and mr. happy stuff referred to her as a “sub-woofer.”

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28
Nov, 2006

photos at last!

who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?
for everyone who has been anxiously awaiting a photo from my workshop, click here! sorry there’s not more, but this is my favorite. this is a photo of one of three (or four?) displays i did in the hallway of the place where the workshop took place. it was lots of fun to put together and got appreciative comments even from teen library patrons passing by.

Posted in library stuff | 1 Comment
28
Nov, 2006

a very exciting thanksgiving holiday

i wish i had time to tell you about our thanksgiving break–we had a great time visiting family, but so much happened and i’m feeling pressed for time today, so here are some highlights:

–a young cousin (from mr. h-s’ side of the family) gave me a drawing of their cat “pebbles” that she had made especially for me.

–not getting stranded in the car in a no-cell-phone-reception area when the car broke down between his aunt’s house and his parents’.

–a generous mechanic who replaced our alternator on the friday after thanksgiving in the driveway of his parents’ home (so we didn’t have to pay to tow)

–visiting with a high school friend of his and friend’s (relatively new) wife about traveling we’ve each done in the past two years

–meeting my best friend from college’s 8-month old baby–what a cutie!

–learning that we are now aunt and uncle for the first time! (welcome to the world, “skippy”!)

–visiting my cousin (who’s really more like an older sister) and her family and eating a german meal of sausage, potatoes, cabbage, sauerkraut, and sweet rice (i don’t think i’d realized before that sausage/sweet rice/saurkraut was a family meal and not just something my parents did)

–seeing another cousin who had lived abroad for many years and whom i hadn’t seen for almost as long as he’d been gone, plus meeting his new wife (from turkey) and her son.

–eating lunch at my favorite restaurant in my old hometown (not a chain and with no substitute anywhere i’ve found)

–visiting longtime family friends (is it possible that we hadn’t seen each other for six years??!) on their homestead farm where they produce all of their own electricity and water and much of their own food. every time i visit them, i wonder why we don’t all live like them. then i remind myself how much work it is and my astounding admiration for them is renewed all over again.

–playing cards (“hand and foot”) with the in-laws (i lost miserably but still had fun)

–finally getting on the road home sunday morning after 3 false starts which included parts of the car bouncing down the road (turned out later to be the part that had fallen off thursday night but had just been hiding somewhere in the engine), a wallet left in the car we’d borrowed to drive to see my family, and a few other things i forget.

–home again, home again, despite pouring rain for the last few hours of the drive. mr. happy stuff, you are my hero.

Posted in autumn, stuff that makes me smile, trip down memory lane, yum | Comments Off on a very exciting thanksgiving holiday
21
Nov, 2006

driving with my gut

today, i was running errands in a less familiar side of town and i decided to take (what i hoped) was a shortcut to get from one place to the next. i drove along just fine until i came to a fork in the road that allowed me to choose between “north” (hwy blah) and “east” (hwy blah blah) and i wanted to go northeast! ack! so, i chose the direction that my lane went (it felt sort of correct) and continued “north” but rather disorientedly. i had no idea where i was and after two exits that we definitely not where i wanted to be (i was pretty sure of that… sorta) i suddenly found myself driving on what looked like middle-of-nowhere interstate with exits that indicated interstate numbers and faraway towns instead of local streets. ah, a lovely little bit of help-i’m-lost!-adrenaline as i realized there was no easy place to turn around and chose the highway exit option that seemed to veer most closely in the direction i wanted to go. as i merged onto this new road, i soon recognized that i was entering into the left lane of a road i’d often entered from the right lane and (even better) i was heading exactly the way i wanted to go and the exit i needed was just up ahead and with plenty of room to merge over. whew! everyone should get lost in their own town every once in awhile. it keeps the neurons firing, it ups the adventure quotient of the day and you learn new ways to maneuver around your world.

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20
Nov, 2006

pre-paid parking meter

let’s see if i can catch up with the last few days. i’ll start off with the title–last tuesday, i needed to do an errand downtown and when i found a parking space on the street, i discovered that it still had 16 minutes left on it–more than what i needed! hooray (small, tiny happy)!

bigger happy:
the workshop i’ve been planning for since last spring is finally over! i believe it went pretty well… i know that everyone loved the display i created.* the workshop was presented to my children’s librarian colleagues and was hints and tips for how to decorate and some program ideas for next summer’s library program theme. as mr. happy stuff noted when he saw me sitting on our living room floor surrounded by picture frames, lamps and a birdcage, “you’re going overboard, aren’t you?” yep. and i had fun doing it. got myself seriously stressed out about it too, but i was still enjoying the creative boost! and now i’m exhausted. wrung out like a limp rag. so i spent yesterday hibernating and catching up with my reading. i got through three books!

*including some library patron teens who happened to walk past the display as we were tearing things down after the workshop. in fact, pretty much all the patrons who walked by the display said, “wow. cool.” or some derivative. which was even more gratifying knowing that they didn’t know i had created it and i was right there to hear them.

Posted in library stuff | 4 Comments
14
Nov, 2006

all the way home!

last night in storytime, i pointed to a picture of a pig in the book i was reading and i asked the kids, “and what does this say?”

one little boy replied without hesitation, “wee, wee, wee!”

Posted in laugh, library stuff | 1 Comment
13
Nov, 2006

little bird

yesterday, i listened to some new children’s music cd’s that i bought for work. i was completely delighted by elizabeth mitchell’s new cd, “you are my little bird.” it’s the sort of album my mother would have purchased if it had been around when we were kids. very gentle, some traditional folk songs, some i’d never heard before (maybe originals?), some in languages other than english (including my favorite spanish one, “pio, pio, pio”). her website even has a songbook that includes chords for some of the songs. i like her other three albums too (one is a collaboration with lisa loeb), but this is my favorite so far.

Posted in la la la!, stuff that makes me smile | 3 Comments