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.

So, school has started...and I'm sick. I know it comes as a shock that once again I'm stuffed up and feeling awful seeing as I work in a building that hosts about 450 small germ factories per day. Somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better.

It is giving me lots of time to surf and master the art of time suckage between honks of my nose.

Tell me what you think: should I update the blog for something that's more seasonal, or should I just wait for spring again? I mean, I haven't been here since July and all...

A Hazy Shade of Summer

I know that this is a good vacation. How am I so sure? I am relaxed enough to contemplate more decorating.

My mom and I painted the master bedroom here last week, and it looks, in a word, awesome. For those wondering about pics, I keep meaning to take them and post...honest. But I would need to make my bed and that doesn't happen much.

I love dreaming about decorating in a way that I have never explained to J with good reason. He would probably be scared. But seeing as I'm planning to drag him to the fabric store this evening and explain to him why we're getting specific fabrics so that I can make curtains this weekend for a bathroom that we've vaguely talked about painting I'm thinking that that's about to change.

So I went to the library this morning to get more books about San Diego and work on planning the trip when I ended up with 5 books of curtains and valences. I'd say we're close to a metamorphosis of the bath...All I need to do is pick a colour. And that could be pink. Or green. See how close I am?

In Other News: I was watching The Price is Right yesterday while contemplating lunch (don't mock me, I'm on vacation) and I don't get what's happened to Drew Carey's hair. He rocks the brush cut in ways few over 10 can. What's up with length???

Marketing and Shopping

You know who I think has brilliant marketing strategists? The people over at Pizza Pizza. J and I took my parents to the Blue Jays ball game last Sunday. They were having a Pizza Pizza strikeout game. Essentially, every time the Jays pitchers get a strikeout they cover up another number in the Pizza Pizza number on the ribbon boards in the stadium. When you get 7 strikeouts, everyone who has a ticket can go to Pizza Pizza on Monday for a free slice. As soon as there are 6 strikeouts the entire crowd starts chanting, "Pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza..." on every batter who gets an anything and 2 count.

I totally enjoyed my slice last Monday. Thanks Doc.

Today I'm shopping. I have made a huge list and hope I can get it all accomplished. I'd rather not end up at the store again this week.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Or at least, it is for me.

I've been loving my time off of school and have been sleeping a lot. It's all good. At some point I had to catch up from the school year when I don't sleep quite enough. J's also working a lot which means I can spend time alone in the silence. I love this too, simply because I spend too much time with people.

In currently exciting news, I bought a new Seagull guitar. If you would like to know more about this wonderful company, and their lovely instruments you can look here. I would highly recommend them. I'm loving that I have time to practice and I feel like I might actually be getting somewhere. Now that I've purchased a more expensive instrument, it appears that I will be taking lessons for a few more years. This is not a bad thing. Guitar is one of the things that I'm totally enjoying because it's not work, and it's just for me.

Totally Unrelated Aside (a la Kapgar): So apparantly the web is "all a-Twitter" about Katie Holmes "performance" on So You Think You Can Dance. I've got to head for the It Sucked camp, but not because Katie's dancing was suspect on a show that is all about great dancing. It's that I think that the way they promo'ed the show was cheap - if she couldn't be there, they should have found someone else; and if you're going to bring back the talent from previous seasons, why don't you use them? I still love SYTYCD, but they need to think.

I'm All for Being Polite

Ack! We moved, and I didn't blog. School came to an end, and I didn't blog. Summer has started, and I am back!

Let me just start by saying that the move went well, we are free of the other house (although getting out was a chore, and I left a vacuum behind). The living room is full of boxes, but seeing as my mother is showing up next week, I think that will change. Now that I have time, some things are getting done. I still have a screen door in need of repair and towel bars to hang, and my mother is coming to help me paint; but I can see the floor of my office again and things are slowly finding homes.

In exciting news, I've continued with my guitar lessons. Last summer, when I realized that I would be teaching guitar (an instrument I hadn't picked up since university and then only because I needed to for a semester), I started into lessons with Pete, the guy 2 doors down from us who runs a full time studio out of his house. When the year was over and I knew that I wouldn't be teaching guitar again next year, I decided to continue with lessons. Guitar is one of the few "me" things I do, and despite the fact that I don't practice enough it's been a lot of fun.

So for the year, I was using one of the guitars from school. We rented 30 guitars so that I could teach the grade 6, 7, and 8s music this year. I was responsible for 30 classical Yamaha guitars that I was renting out to students for $20 per term. I was never so glad of anything coming to an end as I was of those guitars returning to the store. No more making sure where they all were, no more restringing (a job I sucked at), no more hounding 12 year olds for money. It was all good.

Except at the end of the year, my guitar went back too and I was back to using the guitar that was originally my father's. The first year my parents were married (so probably 1971 or the spring of 72), they decided to take general interest classes through the Peterborough Board of Education. My mother took furniture refinishing, and my father took guitar. My mom bought him a guitar and case for Christmas.

Guitar did not work out well for my father. Perhaps it was that he was 40 and trying his hand at playing an instrument for the first time. Perhaps it was the group setting. He says that his hands were too small to make it work. But after the course, the guitar was relegated to the top of a closet in my parents house until I announced that I would be taking lessons with Pete to be ready for the fall. Then that guitar that had been in a closet for all that time make the migration to my house so that I could use it for lessons.

Pete restrung and cleaned the guitar up for me last summer. He also commented that the strings were pretty high (another probable reason that my father had trouble), and recommended that I take it in to see what could be done about the bridge. I, of course, didn't do this because I suddenly had an instrument with strings a comfortable distance from the neck. So once again, my father's guitar sat in a corner unused in the case.

Flash forward to the return of the guitars. Suddenly, now that I have the time to practice, I'm back to the original guitar and it's awful. I now feel a need to take it in. In fact, Pete's comment to me yesterday at my lesson was, "This week, you can blame the instrument. Next week, we'll be back to blaming you."

So I went from Pete's to the repair shop and had the instrument looked over. The guitar currently has more questions than answers that go with it. I had to leave so that Len could see if he could figure out what could be done, and what exactly he's dealing with. We're not sure whether the instrument should actually be strung with nylon strings because it looks like a classical, but has a steel string neck. It appears that someone has tried to brace the bridge before, but my mother swears she bought it new and no one has done any work on it. But Len has promised to do what he can because he knew I'd like to keep the guitar for "Sentimental reasons". It's the polite way of saying, buy a new guitar. Which I'm starting to think I may do.