Mishaps and other haps

This last weekend in April has been gorgeous. The last TWO weekends have been beautiful, actually. Save that rain for the work week!

We have a few yellow tulips around our mailbox and deck, courtesy of the previous owners. Other plants and bulbs appear to be sprouting and foliating, but I am not sure yet what is not a weed or what will flower.

My housemates and I headed to the Farmers’ Market at the Capitol yesterday and browsed the bedding plants while we admired the colorful variety of pretty tulips that were lobbying for their right to exist all around the Capitol building. PHEAR THE PFLOWERS, STATE LAWMAKERS!

Our grass is all nicely mowed, thanks to the muscle power of PhysOrg, and I am by myself at home for the moment reflecting on what we accomplished yesterday, so I think I am going to head out and do more things in the wide world.

Hope everybody is having a great weekend!

It is finally raining in earnest tonight, enough that I think we will soon need to rev up the *other* Honda and mow the grass.

We were thinking about that movie date that we keep postponing tonight, but PhysOrg finally picked up his Wii today, after four months of visiting various electronics and video game stores on at least a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, and coming away empty-handed.

Also, I had another work day that pounded me into the floor. I feel like being a gelatinous blob at the moment, while I recover mentally and physically, so I am shying away from anything beyond making dinner and hanging out at home. I am feeling better after talking to a couple of people about it and in the long term it will all be good, but in the short term, there is anguish and stress.

Growth prospects, potential– you shoot yourself in the foot if you stagnate too long and I am definitely feeling the need to move on to better things …

But the real question is what will PhysOrg do on his lunch break now that he is not staking out all of the electronics stores in town? Will he chew his food more slowly, rather than wolfing down that Club Lulu? Will he finally master Guitar Hero 2? Or will he return to his old haunts as usual, pretending to shop for a Wii?

Yay, we had a really nice weekend and the beautiful weather in Madison lasted at least through this evening. I heard thunder outside a little while ago and we finally shut all of the windows, but I don’t know whether it has actually started raining.

My housemates and I went out to dinner together Friday night at Maza, a newish Afghan restaurant that happens to be right across State Street from Kabul, another Afghan restaurant that we have enjoyed on multiple occasions. I thought it was very funny that Madison now has an Afghan restaurant across the street from another Afghan restaurant. If the one we’re at runs out of sambosas or kabobs, we can just run over to the other one!

Mlitiagrl and I spent some time at dinner talking about native plants in the area. The Arboretum is having a sale next month and we’re excited about bringing some indigenous plants home to our yard.

We headed over to Paciugo for gelato afterwards. I had walked by Paciugo once or twice with PhysOrg, having no idea what it was. Apparently it is The place for fresh gelato in town. Hopefully it will do well despite being within a stone’s throw from a Cold Stone, a Ben & Jerry’s, and the Chocolate Shoppe.

After we got home, we all ended up running an instance online with Gruntac and a couple of other guildmates and headed to bed around 1.

PhysOrg and I had some shopping to do Saturday morning, but in the afternoon Artie and Guffey arrived for their visit with us. We had a good time chatting about Artie’s trip to Thailand and seeing lots of photos. We hit Old Chicago for dinner and watched The Prestige. I think we were all starting to feel a little sleepy by the time we finished that movie, but we put on Flushed Away and had some snacks. Most of us managed to finish the movie, but we were all pretty ready to call it a night at that point.

When I woke up this morning, PhysOrg and Artie were outside chatting on the deck. It was an absolutely beautiful morning. At the moment, we have some folding chairs that can be used outside and a small table was moved outside temporarily for coffee mugs and the like this morning, but we will probably pick up some weather-resistant deck furniture soon so that we can enjoy the long summer weekends in the backyard. It was a very calming, pleasant way to start the morning.

Mlitiagrl took off with her mom for a while, so the rest of us played (and won!) a game of Arkham Horror. Artie and Guffey had to leave when the game was over. I made dinner for PhysOrg and me and we decided to postpone our plan to see a movie. Mlitiagrl arrived back home. More egg salad has been made and laundry has been done. PhysOrg flipped into a cleaning/organizing mode this weekend, too, so I have been finding objects in strange places … scissors in the tool drawer and vinegar in the china cabinet …

I am in no way ready for another work week, but I have had a good weekend and that is indeed a great help.

An advertisement for Spider Man 3 on TV last night shocked me into the realization that time is passing. It dawned on me that:

1) PhysOrg and I have seen none of the movies currently out, some of which we’ve talked about seeing AND

2) Summer movies are going to start coming out in the next month or so

I have been anticipating Summer Movies of 2007 since the trailers started hitting theaters LAST summer. I feel like I should hurry up and see movies before I start missing other movies.

I really can’t believe it’s almost summer. It feels like we just cleaned up from our New Year’s Eve party a few weeks ago … where is the time going?

If I remember this past week for one single development in my life, it should be memorialized as the Egg Salad Sandwich Week. I hated eggs as a kid and therefore did NOT like egg salad, but I have come to a slightly more favorable opinion about eggs over the last few years. On a hunch, I made a batch of egg salad Monday night and since that time, I have eaten SEVEN egg salad sandwiches. Big sandwiches. I am not joking.

This week I have been chilling out and recreating after work by cooking dinner and playing WoW. Since Teqnoq and Minni hit 70,we have been slowly working on quests for money (like everyone else, we want epic flying mounts), rep., and gearing up and preparing for the new end-game instances. Playing WoW means spending time online with our guildmates, whom we’ve become fond of over the past two years. Several of these players have been in the guild since its inception (or nearly that long) and our characters have kind of “grown up” with them.

I have been reading a little. I am almost finished with a short biography of C.S. Lewis written by his stepson. It’s interesting because it is probably the most blatant example of hagiography I have ever knowingly encountered as an adult. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. I am simply reading it in full awareness of what it is, which is what all good readers should do with every book they lay their hands upon. It’s easy to forget that if you approach your average book with different expectations.

Also in my reading stack for the next month or so:

The Future of Life (E.O. Wilson)

In A Sunburned Country (Bill Bryson)

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Stacy Schiff)

IWoz : Computer Geek to Cult Icon : How I Invented the Personal Computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it (Steve Wozniak)

A Woman Alone: Travel Tales from Around the Globe (I’m interested in travel stories right now)

We have another busy weekend ahead (mostly planned/booked). At some point, I need to start a list of little fixes and chores that need to be done around the house. Inside and outside maintenance will keep us busy when we’re not being social, having fun with friends, and playing games. There is so much to look forward to as the days become warmer and longer!

Have a Happy Earth Day this weekend!

Ah, it has been a busy weekend. Our household has been sitting around for the last hour or so watching part of the Planet Earth miniseries on Discovery Channel, captivated by the incredible cinematography. Also, just unwinding.

Friday night PhysOrg and I saw the remastered version of Young Frankenstein shown at the Capitol Theatre as part of the 2007 Wisconsin Film Fest. That was quite spectacular. I had not seen it on such a large screen before and apart from a minor speed glitch during a few minutes of the movie, it was a wonderful presentation.

We met Mlitiagrl at the Union afterwards and picked up Gruntac, who came from Chicago to visit us for the weekend.

After catching up some on Friday night, we woke up late on Saturday morning and took Gruntac to Marigold Kitchen for breakfast. There was a wait to order and we waited again for a table, but breakfast was very satisfying and tasty. PhysOrg ordered two breakfasts (later bemoaning this decision a bit). In keeping with the Marigold decadence, I ordered a coconut macaroon and ate it while waiting for breakfast. After taking one bite, I confirmed it was very probably the best coconut macaroon I have ever had.

We spent the afternoon doing various things: Gruntac gathered up the belongings we had been storing for him and ran out to pick up some books that were stored elsewhere. I trotted Minni around to do some enchanting. We ended up trying to fit in a game of Arkham Horror and while we got a good start on it, we never managed to get back to it.

Saturday night I went to Duck Soup Cinema (again at the Capitol Theatre) with PhysOrg, Mlitiagrl and Terry. Buster Keaton’s The Navigator was the main attraction and it was hilarious. The live organ accompaniment for each Duck Soup film I have seen has fit it so suitably that it’s easy to forget that you are not listening to something that was originally part of the film.

We came home, picked up Gruntac for ice cream, and then … it was really time to crash.

Sunday morning (today) we all piled into my little car and met The Goddess and her sister for breakfast. Having breakfast out in a timely fashion on a weekend morning is kind of a big feat, so we ended up settling for our second choice to avoid a long wait at the first breakfast place we picked. On the other hand, we had plenty of time to chat and generally hear what everyone had been up to recently.

After breakfast, PhysOrg cleaned out his car, he and Gruntac packed it up with Gruntac’s stuff, and a little later the three of us headed to Chicago to take Gruntac home. Thanks to the GPS function on PhysOrg’s phone, we made it to Gruntac’s apartment building in the historic Lakeview District safely. We unpacked the car, had a walk around the neighborhood, and stopped for an early dinner at a bread and sandwich shop called Red Hen (according to the website, they also have a shop in Milwaukee). Then it was time to turn around and drive back to Madison, so we have been on the road a lot today.

I can’t believe the weekend has gone by so fast, but it’s back to work tomorrow …

EDIT: One highlight of the return trip from Chicago was narrowly missing a horrific intersection with approximately four deer who thought it might be a good time to cross the Interstate as we were approaching, unaware. The cars in front of us slowed down, which was good because we could only see one deer galloping alongside the road at first, the others being too CLOSE to the road to see since they were obscured by the cars in front of us. One deer made it across the road safely and the others decided it was a bad idea and turned back at the last second.

Thusly:

1) TWO WHOLE MONTHS until new episodes of The Closer and TNT is ALREADY running ads non-stop.

2) We’ve been trying to catch up on old episodes we missed, but TNT apparently only schedules two-hour re-run blocks of the show every other week. So half of our Tuesday nights, we are very disappointed to find that there is no Kyra Sedgwick from 8 to 10 PM.

The past week or so, I was beginning to feel guilty that the garden Mlitiagrl and I have been planning this year is thus far a thought in our heads and not a bit of work has been done on actually creating the garden.

Then PhysOrg arrived home from work today and asked if he should move my car into the garage since we are supposed to have several inches of snow overnight.  I guess this won’t be very good for the sprouting bulbs by the mailbox.  I was just admiring them yesterday.

Spring gardening is a hard call to make, though.  It’s not unheard of to have snow in May, so should we wait until June to plant?

Hope everyone is having a good weekend celebrating Easter or Passover, or just sleeping in. Or maybe not sleeping in because you set your alarm for 8 AM because you don’t want to waste a weekend day by oversleeping.

It has been a pretty laid-back weekend. I had a half-day company holiday Friday, so after my normal Friday routine of meeting PhysOrg for lunch, he left me at Boston Store, where I found two new pairs of shoes. Unfortunately, I was looking for a purse. Have you ever noticed how most department stores place women’s shoes and handbags in close proximity to each other? With all of the vapors wafting over from the fragrances section, you could easily get lost or disoriented and end up in the shoes when you really mean to be in the handbag section. Perhaps this is why PhysOrg winced at the entrance to Boston Store, murmured something about the overwhelming odors that protruded at least five feet out of the store, and said that he needed to hurry back to work.

We had better luck shopping for a handbag at (less-smelly) Macy’s on Saturday. However, I learned that PhysOrg and I do not have similar tastes in handbags. In fact, I think if he were a girl, we could still be friends, but he would have to walk ten feet behind me and pretend not to know me if the preppy girls showed up. Besides, if I had chosen the handbag dotted with silver studs, clinky chains, and keyrings, I would also have to wear stirrup leggings, eyeliner, a dozen arm bracelets, and hairspray my hair out to a diameter of no less than three feet. OK, well I guess I would still be fond of PhysOrg, even if he was THAT GIRL with the outrageous handbag.

Regardless, I like shopping with him.

After a mild weekend, temperatures have plummeted again this week. The furnace has been rumbling away to keep the house nice and warm. I keep forgetting to wear a jacket.

It has been a busy week, but I have taken the time to cook a couple of nights. I needed to throw together something for lunch also, so I remembered the basics of a Greek recipe from an old cookbook that an ex-boyfriend’s grandmother co-authored. It was a good, simple recipe, even if I forgot about it for a while. (Recipe is crossposted also in a comment on my sister’s blog)

Mediterranean Chickpea and Rice dish:

Sautee onions in olive oil. I used a big splash of olive oil. Add the (salted) water for the rice (I substituted 1/4 cup of lemon juice for part of the water), bring to a boil. Add rice, cook until almost done, add can of drained chickpeas. Season with plenty of black pepper before serving.

I think I used to bake this dish (maybe?) and the lemon juice is new, but really adds to the flavor. It makes a very simple and quick stovetop dish, but it is tasty for lunch and it freezes well.

And Minni hit 70 less than five minutes ago … exciting!

EDIT: For those of you playing, we are working on Karazhan attunement this week.  There are several people in the guild who are at about the same point, so hopefully we will be able to organize some Karazhan runs soon that are mostly just guild members (I expect there will be random slots open here and there).

I am taking a break from WoW Tuesday night, but Teqnoq may be around farming leather for some items he wants to make.  I think we’re going to work on the attunement quest line again Wednesday night, hopefully do a Shadow Labs run or two to get people up to speed.