Get Your Geek On

I realize that it isn't often I write on a Saturday.  With the Cutest Blog on the Block changing hosts, I decided it was time to update my background.  I'm not totally sold on this one.  We'll see.
I am excited, though.  We're off to Hamilton tonight to go to Star Wars in Concert, something we've been looking forward to for a while now.  I love the Star Wars movies, and I love a live symphony.   We're putting 2 of my favourite things together in one!  And we're going for Chinese!

Life keeps getting better and better.

Readers Anonymous

Hi, my name is Sarah, and I'm a magazine addict.

So in cleaning out the living room today (I KNOW, I've actually been working on it!), I discovered that there were even more magazines hiding than what I knew about.

When we packed up the old house to move, my mother realized that I wouldn't finish on time. She knows me much too well. My mom came and packed the main floor of our old house. There was no sorting, no purging, just into boxes. If we didn't know where something should go, we put it in the living room; and there it has sat for the past year. So now goes the difficult work of actually doing the purging that should have happened before things went into boxes.

I have found old phone books, stamps that will need extra postage to be useful, calendars from 3 or more years ago and the like. I have also found out how many magazines I actually have.

I've always enjoyed magazines. I started with a subscription to Sesame Street Magazine every year from my aunt, graduating to the Electric Company, and National Geographic's World. My parents gave me a subscription to Seventeen, and I bought other magazines for years from Vogue to Elle to Style at Home. Early on, I think I just liked getting mail. Now, I appreciate that I might be able to finish an article in one sitting, seeing as I have so little time to read.

I have just decided once again to let my subscriptions to the 3 magazines I'm currently getting lapse. I'm just not getting through everything and can't understand why I'm putting out good money that is being wasted in things I don't read and merely pass on to my friend's husband's physio clinic. I have more than enough Everyday Food issues to keep me entertained, and Real Simple always makes me feel inferior. The only one I may miss is the Educational Leadership magazine I'm getting from ASCD.

I did discover, however, a boon while I was cleaning today: 5 years worth of Cooking Light issues in a box, along with a list of everything I've made from the issues, and a bag containing 2 years worth of Canadian Living, obviously from my mother.

What's astonishing is that we moved a box of 55-60 magazines. That's not a little bit sad too. What else is sad is my excitement over all of these magazines. I suddenly have more reading material! More recipes! More of everything I really don't have time for!

In good news, I have found approximately half of the living room floor, and I was having way too much fun going through my CDs today, deciding what to keep. My iPod has really made a good portion of my CD collection obsolete.

First Week In, No Progress

I spent the weekend baking and cooking. It was fantastic.

J and I went to the market Saturday morning, and we bought yummy things that he thought were more expensive than things at the grocery store (um, no...) and then I started baking. I made jam filled vanilla cupcakes from Everyday Food and raspberry struesel muffins from All Recipes.com. Yum.

I have not made anything since. Sigh.

This afternoon, I am headed back to the grocery store and have grand plans for this week, so we'll see.

I have been busy choosing a front door colour, though. I'm hoping to have a couple of swatches up soon for judging which colour it should be, if it ever dries out a bit. As happy as I am about the cooler temps, it's just too humid to be thinking about painting anything of consequence at the moment.

Much like my cooking. Anything of consequence is falling by the wayside. I have muffins to eat.

The Summer 15

As I lay on the couch this afternoon, willing myself to have the energy to make brownies before going for a pedicure, I made the mistake of phoning my ever loving, working husband. (Note to self: at least sit up before you call him, making it appear like you might be productive. Or don't call on a Friday. It's his eeeevil day.) I informed him that I was working up the ambition to make brownies, and he wanted to know why I didn't have the ambition to empty the living room of the boxes that are still piled there more than a year after we moved. Sadly, I know that we still use a good portion of what's in those boxes because we root through them, find what we want, and get on with our days. I am guilty of even returning some of these items to the living room boxes so as not to have to figure out where said items should go. Ahem.

In the spirit of that conversation and the subsequent one I had with my over achiever of a mother that I'm not even going to dignify with a synopsis, I give you the "Sarah has GOALS for this Summer, and is Ambitious Enough to Achieve Them", or the list.

  1. Hang the garden hose mount on the side of the house and break down the large cardboard box it came in that is currently on my living room floor and has been there since April with the cordless drill that has been charging since late May.
  2. Work on scrapbooking my wedding. It's been 3 years, people.
  3. Purchase and install a new low-flow toilet in the powder room on the main floor. It's all about government rebates!
  4. Repaint the side door off the garage.
  5. Replace the light fixture on the patio.
  6. Repaint the front door some spectacular shade that J will question the wisdom of, and then learn to grudgingly agree with.
  7. Call the siding guy and see how much 2 more pairs of shutters would cost, including installation. I don't want to paint them, and I would like them all to match.
  8. Deal with the boxes on the living room floor.
  9. Buy a great carpet for the living room.
  10. Practice the guitar.
  11. Investigate the cost of a new air conditioner for the house, and see if we should really do the furnace simultaneously. I'm hoping not. The A/C won't get done if we need both.
  12. Cook at home 5 days a week, and try some of the recipes that seem to be stacking up everywhere. I should not spend time on allrecipes.com.
  13. Deal with the probably very nasty upstairs bathroom drain. The previous owners were apparantly very hairy, as evidenced by our shower drain when I cleaned it out. I'm not sure J and I have helped the situation. But the sink is running slow again and I've been avoiding. We should go into the fall with things under control.
  14. Go swimming, or do something. I have been looking at the Summer Activity guide and have come to the conclusion that I should be doing something. Swimming has always appealed, and it's not that much.
  15. Read. I would love to actually try the Twilight series and know what my intermediates might be reading. I also have a large quantity of professional reading that I need to complete for my job.

So there's 15 things that I'd like to/need to do this summer. How successful will I be? That's anyone's guess.

So Many Recipes, So Little Time

I am once again in the throes of caffeine withdrawal. I say "once again" because I do this at least once a year when I stop work and therefore stop driving past 20 Timmy's on my way to work. To go with that, I had a principal this year who bought me a coffee every day. Yeah, once again I've gone cold turkey due to the fact that: a) I don't like instant coffee, which is cheap; and b) I like the concept of actually consuming less caffeine, even though during the working days I feel a whole lot more with it when drinking my coffee.

I have suffered with the low-level headaches (usually they're pounding monsters but this time it's been the headache that wouldn't leave) and the inevitable sleepiness that comes from lack of stimulant. This combined with the fact that I'm so tired when school ends that I can hardly move means that I have been lying around this week being pathetic. Which, as we all know, is Sanskrit for "really cool way to live". Added to this is lower back spasms. Seeeing as there's been nothing in the past few days that should have made these happen (despite my husband's assertions that I "slept wrong"), I'm thinking that they're making up for the lack of headache.

One thing that lying on the couch with the TV on and Facebook running has afforded me is a chance to leaf through my scary number of food magazines and make a list of all the things I'd like to try cooking this summer. It's a formidable list. I also seem to like an inordinate number of heavy things that are more suited to Wintertime, when I have no time. But sloppy joes are good year-round, and I like soup.

One of my goals this summer is to spend more time in the kitchen. I'd like to say that I will make dinner 5 nights per week. Honestly, I'd like to say 7 nights, but I'm being realistic. J and I eat out a lot when I'm working and in a bad week, we'll eat out 6 nights. I'm not thinking that we'll want to give it up completely, nor will I want to.

J's mom had a rule when she was alive that she cooked Monday to Friday and took weekends off. I kinda like that philosophy. Except I'm happy to cook weekends most of the time.

So I'm starting to draw up plans of what I'd like to make, and I've been rooting through the freezer for what needs to be used up. It's kind of fun to be making these kinds of plans. As soon as I manage to find a cake for the BBQ we're going to this weekend, it will be even better. Sigh...

To this end, I've been thinking of what I'd like to accomplish this summer. A week of lollygagging is probably enough. I mean, it's never enough, but it should be. I'm thinking the next post is what I'd like to accomplish this summer as an accountability measure. One part will be the cooking but there's some other things I need to get done too. So, tomorrow?

Welcome, summer

Yeah, I'm back. It's been a rather busy year in which I managed to survive students, commuting, and everything else that goes with being at work and not nearly enough down time.

But now that summer vacation is here, I'm hoping to show up around here a little more. While I do read a good number of blogs every day, I am in awe of how people actually manage to write regularly and have something to say.

Perhaps one day I will understand and be able to do this too.