Peas in a Pod

My husband Jac hates peas. He really feels pretty darn strongly about them. Ever since I was a wee pea my parents told me peas would give me curly hair and I should gobble them all up. My hair is still stick straight of course. Whether it was their inducement or my natural yearning for green globes of goodness. I love peas.

We are a strange pair then. Lately we've been hangin' onto each other through a series of wild and wacky adventures from the depths of my kidneys to the thoughts of our doggie shrink. It's spring time and we're in lurrrrrrrrrve. We're also happy to get out with the dogs and walk and talk. In a couple of weeks it will have been nine years since our first date, but I'm starting to really be in the "can't remember a time before Jac" state of mind. He went away to be with his mom for a few days recently and it felt like an eternity. 

When we walk the dogs, they walk between us but a little closer to him. That's okay, I totally get where they're going with that.

Guinness Braised Brisket for St. Patrick's Day

This brisket was really something special. I bought the ingredients before I knew what I was going to make. We needed something appropriate for the day. I found the recipe on MyRecipes and surprisingly it comes from Cooking Light magazine. It is a revelation. Instead of the crock pot I cooked it in a 275 degree oven for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. I removed the brisket and reduced the sauce some. We served it with boiled potatoes and fluffy yeast rolls. We're making sandwiches from this tonight.

Cupcakes for Knitters!

It's fair to say that Jac and I made these St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. I made the cupcakes (a box of butter yellow cake mix) and the frosting (The Last Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe You Will Ever Need) and Jac went to two stores to get me the green decorating sugar which we took turns sprinkling on the cupcakes.

I brought them to Knit Night and they were quite a hit - almost as popular as the homemade Irish soda bread. It's important to have a well-balanced (savory and sweet) selection of noshes when you are knitting and gabbing.

The Paperless Office

One of the habits I've struggled to break is my fascination with all cool notebooks and stationery and pens and folders and binders and labels and -- well, you see how it goes. I worked in the school store and the bounty, newness and order of that little closet was something to behold. I can still see the lidless boxes filled with vibrantly colored pencils. Ten cents! Ten cents for a shiny, metallic, rounded, new #2! 

I can't help but peruse the paper and office supplies aisle in Walmart or Target or even CVS. Kate's Paperie is proof that my grandmother was wrong when she claimed, "This is Purgatory." because Purgatory would never have fine writing accessories like that!

But, I scarcely ever write by hand anymore. My handwriting is definitely suffering for it, but I still revel in the undeserved admiration of people who tell me I have "beautiful handwriting". I did used to have really very nice handwriting. There was a period in college when I insisted on writing with modern fountain pens and my script was flowing and very fountain-like.

But stuff written down is stuff. And I am a big, huge fan of only having stuff I want to have. If you don't read Unclutterer then perhaps you don't understand. I want everything in its place and possibly an OCD system for every thing. This led to my recent fascination with Delicious Library. It is software that helps you catalog all your stuff! And you get to use the Mac iSight camera as a barcode scanner!

I knew I was obsessed with stuff way back in the 80's when I first heard George Carlin's wonderful stuff routine. It was so hysterical that when he was older and a little more crotchety and a little less funny, I could still laugh to myself over the stuff routine while he was in the middle of some overranting rant. 

I guess a little more than a year ago, the great Unclutterer... (I actually think I met the woman behind the site at my local knit shop.) introduced me to the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. It is a mythical office tool that turns heaps of paper into neatly organized PDFs at the touch of a button. It has made our two-home living all the more organized because I have scanned most of our vital docs so I can find what I need on my laptop, not in a filing cabinet.

Recently, I added the software I'd wanted the scanner for in the first place - Neatworks. NeatReceipts (or Neatworks for Mac) adds an OCR functionality and database that somewhat magically turns receipts into records - capturing the store, payment, date, and even taking a stab at the expense category. For a small business owner like me, it's ideal for reliably tracking business expenses so that when I finally do get to file my taxes all the records are right there (and all the paper has been shredded). 

Of course, next to the Internet, the scanner is the genealogist's best friend. I have digitized much of my dear Auntie M's vast paper collection and now it's sharable, portable and searchable. (Although of course I am looking for a system to manage the scans but still make them sharable.)

And my lovely little mindless Apple TimeMachine backup just finished running and all my little electronic files are safe and sound taking up bytes instead of boxes.

Things Too Crazy to Blog

So, um, lately?

Two kidney procedures - one "shockwave" one laser. One strong allergic reaction. One unpleasant response to anesthesia. One kidney stent insertion. Stents are very uncomfortable, doctors do not want you to know that having 6 inches of foreign object lodged in a place not designed for that sort of thing is very unpleasant. One trip for me to the ER regarding those lovely kidneys. No medical care from that ER because it was Free Temperature-Taking Day and all of Northern Virginia needed to have their temperatures taken. Many bits of calcium oxalate showing up in odd places. A lot of prescription medications, some of which make things look like Tang, most of which have no street value whatsoever.

One other family medical crisis - a routine surgery turned life-saving event. Thanking lucky stars and heavens and strangers that the family member is on the mend. One other family medical crisis involving doctoral stupidity of the highest order. Do not shove things stuck in a child further into said child! She is now recovering.

Working every night I was physically able until "all hours" to stay on track or at least try not to fall horribly behind. As I too rapidly approach two score years I found myself almost undone entirely trying to lay out a frackking Word document. Burned at stake by 30 bureaucrats only to redeem myself by promising them job security. God help me.

A wonderful bit of snowstorm that had to go and time itself for my surgery day making it very unstormjoy-worthy.

And my culinary adventures? They are just, well... how does (let's just say "at least")  three nights of noodles with butter sound to you? Tasty yes? Photogenic and prose inspiring? Not so much.

This weekend I want to make a cheesecake. I hope that happens and that I get to show it to you. 

Reading this:

http://www.pinkofperfection.com/2009/02/highs-and-lows-at-the-grocery-store/