You'll Be a Song I'll Sing

I did not take advantage of any Black Friday sales and stayed away from most shopping places. I wrote a little bit this morning, went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox with in-laws, aunt and husband. Then we had a late lunch at Tip Top, and ended up at the North Market where we got Jeni's ice cream for dessert. I bought a pint of Dark Chocolate, which I've never had, for home.

Once home I got sucked into internet time and then took a two hour nap. Writing commenced on the crappy non-power saving laptop. When it began to lose power I switched to upstairs. (I am saving money for a new laptop.) Fortunately, all of my words were still in my document on my USB Drive.

3043 words written today. Total word count is 33012. I can still finish my Nano project but I need some big pushes. I am going to try and get as much done in the morning as I can so I won't find myself at 10pm wanting or needing to write another 3000 words.

Sammy got a Peanut Butter flavored Frosty Paws today.  He loved it.  In fact, he loved it so much, he wanted to eat the paper cup it came in.  Instead, husband and I crumpled it up and played Keep Away with Sammy.  It was a solid 15 - 20 minutes of play.  I think we all loved it.  Sammy would run back and forth between us and while he would try to grab the cup in the air or on the ground, he was very well behaved.  No biting and no getting ouf of control.

Saw Where the Wild Things Are this afternoon.  Had fish and chips at Old Bag of Nails.  Dinner was from Smackie's Traveling Smoker stand.  They ran out of brisket so we had a pulled chicken and a pulled pork sandwich.  Yummy.

Wrote 1074 words today.  Total Word Count is 8293.

Today is the last full day at the beach house. We have to be out tomorrow by 10am. We'll drive to Durham for lunch and then head back to Ohio.

My in-laws kept asking me if I was doing what I wanted to be doing which I thought was a little weird at first. But they did the same thing last year when my husband was with us (he's at home with Sammy).

Mostly we've stayed here in the surrounding area - Topsail Beach, Surf City and Sneads Ferry. The other day we went to the NC Aquarium at Fort Bliss and it was perfect for my nephews. It was hands-on and they got to touch starfish, stingrays and horseshoe crabs.

I haven't done any fishing although we did rent a pole this year. My bro-in-law has done that. He caught a few small fish and a stingray.

Because I only see my nephews a few times a year it takes them several days to warm up to me. Yesterday I was a construction worker who rebuilt their home, got to play in some pillow fights, played hide and seek and read them a story. Last night we went to Nikki's Chinese and Sushi for dinner to celebrate my sis-in-law getting her Master's. I ordered the California and Spicy Tuna rolls which was too much with my General Tso's combo (which included Hot and Sour soup). When the menu said two rolls I thought it meant 2 - 4 pieces of each. I got something like 12 of each. My nephews were chowing down on the edamame beforehand (which I haven't had in years thanks to the Crohn's but seems to be okay to have now) and practically ate all of their parents' sushi. They got my extras.

~C~ wanted to try the spicy tuna and I told him it was spicy but I didn't taste the sauce so I didn't think it was spicy. He wanted to try it so I gave him a piece. While he ate it I asked how he liked it. Then I realized he was still chewing and apologized for asking him while his mouth was full. When ~C~ could respond he just reached for his glass of water and began drinking it. Very funny.

My little nephew likes to play the "block" game with his food. Someone will pretend to reach for a piece and ~W~ will put his hands over his food in a protective gesture like he's blocking the person from it. It's pretty funny. He did that unprompted last night with the dish of edamame set in front of him.

I never got pictures from anyone else last year so I'm hoping that this year I do. Even though we take a lot of the same pictures it's nice to get some different angles or to get the pictures for the times we missed (like the beach time I've missed because of my sunburn).

I've read several books while here (The Accidental Demon Slayer, The Pharmacist's Mate, A Change in Altitude, Walking in Circles Before Lying Down), finished one (The Shimmer) and started 3 others.

Went to bacon camp today.  Yes, you read that right, Bacon Camp! 

There was some artwork - letterpress stuff, a knitted scarf, a print of a bacon draped model, bacon roses and a paper mache type pig.  Contestants signed up to bring in bacon culinary creations.  Some of the items included bacon scallion cheddar cheese scones, blue cheese pear bacon scones, bacon pieorgies, corn chowder, deep fried bacon, bacon taco (which had a fancier name but I can't think of it now... corn tortilla holding a blue corn tortilla, a sweet corn relish, chipotle sauce, lettuce and bacon somewhere), calico beans with bacon, bacon wrapped dill pickles, ice cream with candied pecans blue cheese and bacon, pineapple wrapped bacon covered in chocolate and there was more after we left.

More people came than was expected so it was a little warm and I hadn't had lunch yet.  It went from 1 - 5 and we showed up around 1:30 and left just after 3:30.

I think I mentioned this a few months ago... our friend had a butcher block in her basement that she and her family never used and we were welcome to have it. Finally, one day after remembering, hubby walked over there to get it and rolled it back. (She lives one street over.)

It's not what I pictured it would be (I thought it would be shorter since a lot of them are) but I'm very happy with it! Usually it's tucked into the corner by the dishwasher but when I'm working on something complicated or requiring multi-steps I can pull it out into the middle and work.

Oh, and Sammy loves to lick the metal. I'm not sure why and he's not coughing up any clues.

Read in bed thus letting my husband sleep in later than usual.  Finished The Chris Farley Show and Magic Trixie and the Dragon and started Saints in Limbo.

Went to the grocery store and forgot main dish for tonight's dinner.  Played around with thawed puff pastry.  Made Parisian Apple Tarts (yummy!), and messed up cheese sticks.  Made chilled asparagus soup for the week which did not involve puff pastry at all.  I'm glad I only made half of the recipe.  The regular amount would have been way too much for two people.

It's been a weekend full of movies.  I'm going to make pickles now!

Went to Comfest yesterday for lunch with coworkers.  There were some healthy choices but I went with fried.  Corn dog, french fries and a funnel cake.  Last year I went with the half slab of ribs and I brought most of it home.  (Sammy at the rest using his Ninja Corgi skills to grab them from the middle of the dining room table.)

I did some weeding this morning but mostly I cut off new branches forming on one of our trees.  Headed to Marysville in a few minutes to have lunch with my parents at Doc Henderson's.

At the end of April I went to see the eye doctor.  My eyesight doesn't change much so I now have about 4 pairs of eyeglasses (including a pair of sunglasses) I can use interchangably.  My doctor asked if I wanted to go back to contacts and I said, "While they're nice for special occasions, I'd really rather sleep in each morning than fight with putting them in."  She wasn't sure what I meant at first and then she told me I have high elasticity around my eyes and that's why I didn't have any wrinkles yet.  Yay Mary Kay!  :)

Yesterday I watched three movies (Catch and Release, Then She Found Me and Stardust).  Stardust was probably my favorite of the three.

I've been trying to go to bed around the same time but yesterday I went to bed around midnight.  We woke up at 10:15am.  Mostly Sammy has been sleeping under the bed but last night he started on his bed.  Since eating the hamburger buns he's being doing the reverse sneeze thing at odd times.  I woke up during the night to him doing it and told him it was okay - he walked over to me, let me pet him for a little bit and he stopped doing it. 

I thought I would go to Details for lunch but I really don't want to get dressed nicely, put on makeup, etc today.  I may stop by the post office to mail out a return to Land's End that's been on my to do list for the last month.  :)

Got to sleep in a little bit.  For some reason I've been waking up the first time anytime between 5:00am and 6:30am.  Both are before the alarm goes off.  Today it was almost 9am.

Hubby mowed the lawn.  I did some sweeping, raking, weeding, edge trimming and the like.  Our barley floating thing for the pond showed up today.  Lunch was leftover ham.  Told hubby that it feels like I'm on vacation. At work the tv is on all day while on this day I got to hear birds, squirrels, barking dogs, laughing kids and people walking by our house,

I got most of an interview typed up for a visting poet next week.  About 3pm I got sleepy when I noticed the time.  (3pm is nap time on weekends.)  Took a nap for an hour or so with hubby.  We got a beard trimmer for hubby at Target and then picked up lunch at Pita Hut. 

We watched some shows on the DVR and played Little Big Planet.

They passed all the taste tests. Took extras to work on Monday.

I have about 2 dozen of the white/vanilla ones in the freezer (no frosting) that we can have next week.

Less than 2 hours ago I cut up some potatoes thinking that I'd get them started boiling and we'd have them with pork chops.  Just mash them down with our forks and cover with butter, salt and pepper.  Yummy.

Apparently I had the water on too high because I became aware of a bad potato smell while here in the office (on the second floor).  I checked and not only did the water all boil away, the potato was starting to burn brown in the pot.  My husband does have a bad sense of smell... he's practically in the next room and apparently didn't notice.

It may be a while before I leave this chair...

We had brunch today at Sage American Bistro.  I have been looking forward to their Creme Brulee French Toast for months.  We had plans to meet my WI friend and her husband there for brunch a few months ago but ended up at Mimi's Cafe instead.

Since it was still early we saw Duplicity.  It was lunch time and even though I wasn't too hungry we went to Banana Bean Cafe for the first time.  I thought I would try two appetizers... the calamari and the shrimp and grits.  I was expecting the shrimp and grits to be a half or third of the size that was served to me.  It could be someone's meal.  I ate most of the calmari and I think had maybe 10 spoonfuls of the grits.  Hubby had the Little Havana Cubano sandwich which had (nasal clearing) mustard he liked. 

We got home about 3:15pm.  I put some sulfur on the hydrangea bushes (nothing is sprouting yet), cut out some coupons and have been in this chair ever since.  3pm is usually nap time around here on the weekends.  Sammy is sleeping good under my chair.  :)

This has been a few weeks of food adventures for me and not all have been successful.

One weekend I decided to make some of the things I saw in Eat This! Not That! which included strips of chicken breast as a substitute for chicken wings. The idea was good and may have executed better on a real grill instead of the smallish George Foreman we have. I thought I would try some sweet potato fries too. I used a little bit of one recipe and little bit of another. Some ended up burnt but I could taste the difference between them and the regular fries I made. Sweet potatos are a vegetable that did not make it into my parents' house. Nope. Not even at Thanksgiving.

One night I made a super easy chicken stir-fry in our wok. It had not been used since we moved here and still had Zilla hair on it. (It had been sitting on top of Zilla's crate in the basement until we brought Sammy home.) When hubby brought the leftovers for lunch in the ladies at work said his lunch looked better than theirs.

This weekend I used the wok again to make Kung Pao Chicken. It was really good. I even ate some peanuts with it but the look my husband was giving me looked so sad and worried that I put the rest of the peanuts on his plate.

I went to two cooking classes this month. I know I mentioned the first one already but I don't think I've given any details on the second one. It was a knife skills class teaching us how to care and use our knives. (It included sharpening them as well.) Then we got to really use them. Dicing and chopping, we came up with the ingredients for French Onion Soup, a potato and leek (yet another veggie never seen in my parents house) soup and garlic bread. The thought of onion soup always turned me off. It made me think of the hot onion concoction my mother made us drink when we were sick. (*insert super sour face here*) This soup was great. And the garlic bread was the best ever. I watched the sou chef make it and I thought, "How could I ever buy frozen garlic bread again after seeing how easy that was?"

On Sunday we were supposed to go to Marysville to have lunch with my parents at Old Bag of Nails. My dad's birthday was yesterday and we were going to celebrate it early. Because of the weather they asked if they could come over instead on Sunday. I said sure and came up with a winter salad (based on what I had at my first cooking class), pork tenderloin, green beans with red taters, and sugar free vanilla pudding. Let me tell you... it sounds like it was a lot of work but was probably one of the easiest meals I made in a while.

Yesterday a Corgi cookie cutter arrived in the mail. It's a cute little Pembroke. Now I want to make some sugar cookies!

Today I found out about Eric Ripert's site and bookmarked it. He does a dinner social thing every few months where people make the recipes and send in the pictures. But Eric also outlines when you should buy stuff and the order you should start making everything. Very cool.

I've got some LJ entries to finish about my food and art adventures.  They are in my Drafts folder and will hopefully be completed soon.  If I don't get my LJ updated I sometimes feel like life is just passing me by.

It's been too cold for painting so our graffiti greets me each time I approach our garage from the left side.  I keep checking on it throughout the day to make sure nothing new appears.  It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow but then it's supposed to rain in the evening. 

Attended an online Character Workshop and it gave me the courage to face my last NaNo.  I was planning on starting to look at it again at the beginning of this month.  That sucker is getting printed off this week for rereading/review.

In food related news, I signed up for a knife skills/cooking and cooking class next month.

The mouse is now somewhere else.  I came downstairs on Saturday to find the humane trap closed.  It felt like it was heavier than before.  I took Sammy to his grooming appointment and spent way too long grocery shopping.  My coupon system sucks (they are arranged by expiration date) so I wasted at least 30 minutes looking for coupons that I knew I had but couldn't locate.  Save 28% at the store, though.

While I was gone, hubby looked inside the trap and was certain something with a tail was in it so he took it for a drive.  Upon arriving at the undisclosed location, he emptied the trap and the mouse scurried off. 

We think there was only one but only time will tell, I guess.

Today for breakfast we had sausage biscuits.  Homemade sausage biscuits.  They were yummy.  I used a biscuit recipe from Paula Deen which required baking the biscuits on the stove in a pan of butter.  It developed a lovely crust on the bottom but the biscuits weren't cooked all the way through so I finished them in the oven.  Next time I'll just give them a crust on the stovetop and bake them in the oven.  It's almost 7pm and I'm just now starting to get hungry again.

Last week I made some whole wheat pizza dough and we made two pizzas for dinner (with some leftovers for lunch the next day). I think we're going to have it again tonight!

Friday night hubby went out with friends so I began tackling the mess I've been letting pile up on the dining room table. Sammy went to the groomers for a nail trim. One of the ladies who work there was leaving work and recognized him. For dinner I had a bag of microwave popcorn. On bed. How decadent!

Actually the big surprise of the night was Sammy. He (like Zilla) goes crazy for popcorn. I had emptied the bag into a bowl and was on the bed watching tv, eating out of the bowl. Sammy was so well behaved. Granted, his nose was practically touching the bowl, but he did not grab any popcorn until I dropped a piece into the bowl. And then he zeroed in on the piece he thought dropped and only took that one. He listened to me and obeyed when I told him to back up.

Saturday I took the Christmas scarf off Sammy that had been there for almost two weeks. Now he has a little green ring around his neck. He was the butt of a lot of our jokes. Of course since Sammy only understands a few words he took it all in stride.

Sunday was a day of culinary disasters. I was going to make ricotta pancakes but the ricotta had gone bad early and I didn't have the ingredients to make it from scratch. Of course I found out about the ricotta after I'd separated the eggs. Jamie Oliver to the rescue! His pancakes were quick to make compared to the coffee cakes that I could have made. They were only slightly better than the last time I made them - they still tasted a bit eggy to me. Then I made my mother's friend taters which are quartered, fried in oil and topped with paprika. They are so unhealthy I have them once a year or every other year. And of course I burned the skins and cut parts while the insides were perfect.

My mind has been all over the place the last day or so. I think it means it is time to start writing again!

Yesterday was a Very Good Day. I finally found the paddle for my breadmachine. Over the weekend I contacted Black and Decker to find out they no longer made the paddle but they were willing to offer me another breadmachine at a discount. Didn't want to spend the money on a new one since I knew the paddle was around here somewhere.

Tonight I made a sweet bread (those are miniloaves) and we'll take some to work. I didn't use the bread machine though since this required a quick mixing of ingredients (no hand mixer to drive Sammy crazy) and no rising time.