I invited my students to go to my travel blog website so they could see pictures of all the places I'm going to. Although this is an open blog, I'm starting to (belatedly) get concerned about how much I share with everyone and everybody, and I'd rather my students focus in on just the travels and not necessarily everything I put on this site. More on this topic will follow in the future I'm sure but for now my quick fix is to use another website.
So.
If you'd like picture and blog updates of the trip you can find it here at
www.planetranger.com/onenewmexican
Friday, December 17, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Not Stressed At All
Okay, so that's a lie.
I leave tomorrow and I haven't packed. I'm supposed to make a pot roast for our Christmas party tomorrow, get a planetranger account so I can post photos of the trip for my students, leave instructions for the cat/housesitter, get a key to our eagle eye neighbor, clean, do another load of laundry, and call everyone who called yesterday to wish me a happy birthday, but couldn't reach me because I was at Stammtisch. And I've left my cell phone at work. I have to remember to pack my passport, the Euro Gerd gave me, my phone (and charger), warm clothes, and any Christmas gifts I've been accumulating. I know I'm forgetting something else!
Okay, enough writing about what I have to do, onto the doing.
I leave tomorrow and I haven't packed. I'm supposed to make a pot roast for our Christmas party tomorrow, get a planetranger account so I can post photos of the trip for my students, leave instructions for the cat/housesitter, get a key to our eagle eye neighbor, clean, do another load of laundry, and call everyone who called yesterday to wish me a happy birthday, but couldn't reach me because I was at Stammtisch. And I've left my cell phone at work. I have to remember to pack my passport, the Euro Gerd gave me, my phone (and charger), warm clothes, and any Christmas gifts I've been accumulating. I know I'm forgetting something else!
Okay, enough writing about what I have to do, onto the doing.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Leftovers
I'm home sick today and my doctor's appointment isn't until 1:00 so I might as well blog. I've had a stomach ache for over 1 1/2 weeks, generally been achy, and overall just not right. I'd hoped I was finally pregnant, but I guess not. Considering recent fertility bad news it would've been a miracle anyway, but now I'm wondering if it's not THAT, why in the world am I nauseous?
Two weekends ago we had a nice party, with tons of leftovers. Considering I haven't been feeling all that well, I haven't wanted to do much with the food. Since we'll be in Europe this Christmas, we really don't have much time to use up all of our leftovers, which forced me to deal with a refrigerator of food this weekend. We still had leftover turkey, 6 pounds of a 7 pound ham, tons of bread and cheese, and all of the vegetable from Boston Organics that I'd forgotten to cancel (specifically 2 squash, celery, turnips, onions, apples, oranges, pears, carrots, cranberries, mushrooms, and a head of cabbage).
So I decided to make soup. Actually, I've only made one pot of split pea soup, but I'm expecting to eat most of it before we go, and freeze the rest. It's easy on the tummy, used a bunch of the ham, carrots, onions, and celery, and didn't require effort (gotta love crock pots).
I also made a quiche to get rid of the rest of my eggs, use some of the cheese (still tons more to go), reduce the amount of ham, and use up the aging cauliflower. I forgot to save some mushrooms for the quiche, so it was mushroomless. This should get us through breakfasts for the week.
For yesterday's dinner I made potato and turnip mash, which disguised the turnips nicely and prevented their waste. I also roasted one of the squash and made roasted mushrooms as found on SmittenKitchen. Oh MY GOD these were good mushrooms. I was a little worried that I wouldn't keep them down, but I couldn't stop eating them!
In addition over the weekend I made bread pudding and custard. The bread pudding used up almost all of the leftover bread and the custard was made with eggnog that was about to expire (plus it used some eggs).
I still need to deal with apples and oranges, one squash, the head of cabbage, and a couple more carrots. I put the rest of the ham in the freezer for another pot of split pea soup later on down the road.
The apples are easy, I'm going to make apple pie filling and can it, if I can find enough unused cans around the house. Oranges, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. Perhaps I'll just make orange juice one night and call it done. Squash perhaps I'll make for dinner one night this week. Cabbage I'm tempted to make into sauerkraut, but that will require a bit of research. Plus there's the problem that I don't like sauerkraut and will be eating tons of it over Christmas. Gerd likes it though, so we'll see.
All of this is a bit of food to deal with when you don't feel like looking at food.
Two weekends ago we had a nice party, with tons of leftovers. Considering I haven't been feeling all that well, I haven't wanted to do much with the food. Since we'll be in Europe this Christmas, we really don't have much time to use up all of our leftovers, which forced me to deal with a refrigerator of food this weekend. We still had leftover turkey, 6 pounds of a 7 pound ham, tons of bread and cheese, and all of the vegetable from Boston Organics that I'd forgotten to cancel (specifically 2 squash, celery, turnips, onions, apples, oranges, pears, carrots, cranberries, mushrooms, and a head of cabbage).
So I decided to make soup. Actually, I've only made one pot of split pea soup, but I'm expecting to eat most of it before we go, and freeze the rest. It's easy on the tummy, used a bunch of the ham, carrots, onions, and celery, and didn't require effort (gotta love crock pots).
I also made a quiche to get rid of the rest of my eggs, use some of the cheese (still tons more to go), reduce the amount of ham, and use up the aging cauliflower. I forgot to save some mushrooms for the quiche, so it was mushroomless. This should get us through breakfasts for the week.
For yesterday's dinner I made potato and turnip mash, which disguised the turnips nicely and prevented their waste. I also roasted one of the squash and made roasted mushrooms as found on SmittenKitchen. Oh MY GOD these were good mushrooms. I was a little worried that I wouldn't keep them down, but I couldn't stop eating them!
In addition over the weekend I made bread pudding and custard. The bread pudding used up almost all of the leftover bread and the custard was made with eggnog that was about to expire (plus it used some eggs).
I still need to deal with apples and oranges, one squash, the head of cabbage, and a couple more carrots. I put the rest of the ham in the freezer for another pot of split pea soup later on down the road.
The apples are easy, I'm going to make apple pie filling and can it, if I can find enough unused cans around the house. Oranges, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. Perhaps I'll just make orange juice one night and call it done. Squash perhaps I'll make for dinner one night this week. Cabbage I'm tempted to make into sauerkraut, but that will require a bit of research. Plus there's the problem that I don't like sauerkraut and will be eating tons of it over Christmas. Gerd likes it though, so we'll see.
All of this is a bit of food to deal with when you don't feel like looking at food.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Too Mean
This is a revised post. Gerd thinks my first one was too mean. Ah well, he's probably right. It was about Karma (or how things all equal out in the end).
This is our former house:
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/south_end/2010/12/water_restored_in_south_end_af.html
On the SAME DAY I found out our old place was covered in water I got a call from HR. Turns out somehow my first paycheck was never cashed. I vaguely remember wondering when I was going to get paid because it seemed like FOREVER. Turns out it was. The check must have gotten lost in the move. As a result I have an extra paycheck, about the same amount we were asking from our landlord for our missing furniture.
Not only that, but I won two tickets to go to the big Christmas Gala ($500/ticket) which turned into a very nice birthday bash.
The heats back on, the car's still sitting in a shop south of Boston, and we're just not using the spare bathroom. Life does seem to equal out after a while.
This is our former house:
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/south_end/2010/12/water_restored_in_south_end_af.html
On the SAME DAY I found out our old place was covered in water I got a call from HR. Turns out somehow my first paycheck was never cashed. I vaguely remember wondering when I was going to get paid because it seemed like FOREVER. Turns out it was. The check must have gotten lost in the move. As a result I have an extra paycheck, about the same amount we were asking from our landlord for our missing furniture.
Not only that, but I won two tickets to go to the big Christmas Gala ($500/ticket) which turned into a very nice birthday bash.
The heats back on, the car's still sitting in a shop south of Boston, and we're just not using the spare bathroom. Life does seem to equal out after a while.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
What a Weekend!
I can't say it was ALL bad. We had a nice party with a lot of great people.
But leading up to the party I decided I wanted to install a bathroom. Seemed pretty simple. I mean, the pipes were all there, the water worked, all we needed to do was get a toilet and a vanity and hook it up. Even I thought I could handle that.
So we started installing stick-down tiles at 4:30 on Friday night, got to the toilet around 10:00, and finished around 11:30. We got up the next morning in time for the trash haulers to take away our monstrous cast iron tub (not the pretty kind) so we could finish installing the tile and put in the vanity. We finished the vanity by 1:00, except for the missing piece.
(Sorry I can't figure out how to rotate these photos)
Did I mention that we were having a party at 7:00 that night? So when I came back from the store around 3:00, with groceries and everything Gerd had an unpleasant surprise for me. Sure, the water worked, but the drain pipe. The drain pipe on the other hand did not work. There's about a 2 foot long crack that runs down to the main line. Flushing the toilet resulted in a gush of water Gerd found while looking for a tool in the basement. At least it wasn't flowing through our heater this time. That was last weekend.
The party went well and nobody seemed to mind our dining room bathroom, or were at least polite enough not to mention anything about it.
But this morning our woes weren't over. The heat turned off around 10:00 and is still out. Thank goodness for home warantees. The heater guy is looking at it now. Other than our disastrous trip to drop off the Mini, we've been wholed into our living room with a miniture space heater and about 6 candles to keep warm. It could be worse, the house only got down to about 60.
After we got a time frame that the heater guy would show up we decided to go drop off the Mini in the mean time. Not so good. We think the engine might need to be replaced. Apparently the coolant hose disconnected while Gerd was driving it and it started smoking. There was another hose that we couldn't figure out where it connected too, but Gerd decided to keep driving anyway (we were only 5 miles away from where we were going). At first there wasn't anymore smoke, but then it came back like before, but this time the engine block was leaking something.
Just when I hoped we were done with bad luck my computer cord stopped working. If I have to replace it, this will be the 4th cord I'll have had to buy for this computer.
So it was just one of those weekends. Hope yours was lest costly, less frustrating, and less cold.
But leading up to the party I decided I wanted to install a bathroom. Seemed pretty simple. I mean, the pipes were all there, the water worked, all we needed to do was get a toilet and a vanity and hook it up. Even I thought I could handle that.
So we started installing stick-down tiles at 4:30 on Friday night, got to the toilet around 10:00, and finished around 11:30. We got up the next morning in time for the trash haulers to take away our monstrous cast iron tub (not the pretty kind) so we could finish installing the tile and put in the vanity. We finished the vanity by 1:00, except for the missing piece.
(Sorry I can't figure out how to rotate these photos)
Did I mention that we were having a party at 7:00 that night? So when I came back from the store around 3:00, with groceries and everything Gerd had an unpleasant surprise for me. Sure, the water worked, but the drain pipe. The drain pipe on the other hand did not work. There's about a 2 foot long crack that runs down to the main line. Flushing the toilet resulted in a gush of water Gerd found while looking for a tool in the basement. At least it wasn't flowing through our heater this time. That was last weekend.
The party went well and nobody seemed to mind our dining room bathroom, or were at least polite enough not to mention anything about it.
But this morning our woes weren't over. The heat turned off around 10:00 and is still out. Thank goodness for home warantees. The heater guy is looking at it now. Other than our disastrous trip to drop off the Mini, we've been wholed into our living room with a miniture space heater and about 6 candles to keep warm. It could be worse, the house only got down to about 60.
After we got a time frame that the heater guy would show up we decided to go drop off the Mini in the mean time. Not so good. We think the engine might need to be replaced. Apparently the coolant hose disconnected while Gerd was driving it and it started smoking. There was another hose that we couldn't figure out where it connected too, but Gerd decided to keep driving anyway (we were only 5 miles away from where we were going). At first there wasn't anymore smoke, but then it came back like before, but this time the engine block was leaking something.
Just when I hoped we were done with bad luck my computer cord stopped working. If I have to replace it, this will be the 4th cord I'll have had to buy for this computer.
So it was just one of those weekends. Hope yours was lest costly, less frustrating, and less cold.
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