Mishaps and other haps

The last quarter of the year tends to be my favorite time of year and all of a sudden, we’re almost there!

We had a pleasant last weekend of September, with summer-like weather in Madison.

The temperature was perfect for watching Widowers’ Houses at APT on Friday night.  I wore a light jacket, but it was never as chilly as I suspected it might be.  Next year the new theater, The Touchstone, will open and I wonder how this will change the experience of watching performances there.  Will there be no more need for sleeping bags and hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps on chilly Fall evenings?  Will this allow performances to run later into the year or all year around?  I guess we will see.

On Saturday morning, we slept in and skipped the Farmers’ Market, but made up for it by picking up a couple of pumpkins when we went shopping later.  Athena and Margaret dropped by and delivered a sofa to our house.  The cats are very pleased with this new acquisition.

Michael and I considered going out to a friend’s on Saturday night, but we ended up staying in, cooking dinner, watching the presidential debate we had recorded while we were out on Friday night, and playing a computer game we hadn’t touched in a while– Barrow Hill, a game about creepy Celtic rocks in Cornwall.  Michael turned out every light in the house, so it was extra scary, a good Halloween game.

On Sunday, we went apple picking with Josh and Betsy and brought home another huge bag of apples.  Then the rest of our Sunday crowd arrived for our Sunday game.

We’ve had a fun start to the work week, too– visiting the Dotzours on Monday evening.  Althea made pumpkin pie.  That’s a goooood idea.

Tonight we’re having movie night at our place and watching The Mummy, which I am really excited about.  I think Terry and Tom are the only guests expected for movie night this week.  I’m hoping to see a bunch of scary/creepy movies over the next month.

The weather is cooling off as the week goes on.  I am not sure we will have more weekends with summery weather this year.

Doh, I just found out that Geek Kon is this weekend and I already have plans, so I will probably not be going.  Ah, well.  Michael was kind of interested in the RPGA event that’s being run.  He’s running the module for a group of us on October 4th, but was looking for a chance to actually play it before that weekend.  However, it sounds like the game session at Geek Kon is already full, so that’s probably a no-go.

Someone at work asked for the pumpkin bread recipe that I use and since I was typing it up for my co-worker this afternoon, I thought I would also post it here.  It’s officially Fall (as of yesterday) and time to make pumpkin muffins!

Pumpkin Bread

(makes 1 loaf bread or 12-15 standard-sized muffins.  Note: for muffins, bake 20 minutes at 400°F.)

1 & 1/2 c. light brown sugar (I routinely reduce this to 1 c.)
1 c. baked or canned pumpkin
1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 c. water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger

Optional: raisins, nuts, chocolate chips (1/2 c. nuts, 3/4 c. chocolate chips or raisins)

Preheat oven to 350° (400° for muffins).  Oil 9X5X3-inch loaf pan (or muffin tin).  In large bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, eggs, and water.  Blend well.  Combine flour, soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger.  Stir into pumpkin mixture.  Stir in raisins, nuts, and chocolate chips (if desired).  Scrape into loaf pan (or muffin tin).  Bake loaf 50 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (bake muffins for 20 min).  Remove from pan and cool on rack.

(I can’t remember where I found this recipe originally– probably online somewhere.  It’s a favorite of mine and it doubles well.)

Thanksgiving is booked!  Woo!  I haven’t spent it with my family since I moved to Wisconsin ten years ago.  So in the shower this morning, I had the brilliant idea that Michael and I should go to Florida for Thanksgiving.  He hasn’t met too many of my relatives beyond immediate family and it would be a great opportunity to do that.

So tickets are purchased.  We will be leaving the morning of  Wednesday Nov. 26th and will be back in town late on Monday, Dec. 1.

We finally exhausted our apple supply while people were over this afternoon*, so I think another trip out to the apple orchard would be a good idea.  We’re probably going to go next Saturday morning (September 27th)– 9 or 10 AM would be optimal.  Please let me know (by commenting here, by email, by phone, etc.) if you’re interested in joining us and we’ll make plans!

*FYI, if you need to exhaust your own apple supply, peel and cut up some apples, sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar, and serve to guests.

The cold I’ve had has pretty much derailed the gym trips the past couple of weeks.

However, today we finally walked into the game shop at the right time and picked up a Wii Fit.  The guy said they had seven and they’d had them in stock for about three days, so it sounds like the area is finally saturated and they are not selling out quite so fast.

Back in July we narrowly missed being in the right place at the right time.  We were a couple of shops down, at the Apple Store, when the game shop received a shipment and promptly sold out.  We stopped in and found out that we were about fifteen minutes too late.  It was sad, although we had other toys to play with that day (iPhone, iPhone, iPhone!).

So I spent some time today using the Wii Fit and it’s a fun little toy.  I started coughing after doing the jogging exercise, so I don’t think I am up for a full-fledged workout yet (in fact, my chest felt heavy and sore when I woke up this morning- I do not deal with respiratory ailments well or get over them very quickly).

In other news, we made a trip out to the Lussier Heritage Center this morning and I think it may be the right place for our wedding ceremony and reception.  We are tentatively penciled in for October 10, 2009.

We also took my engagement ring to the jeweler’s to be cleaned, so I got to watch a woman soldering a setting on a (different) ring this morning.  I think that would be a fun job.  You get to play with fire and make pretty, sparkly things that people enjoy.

Sunday morning: Breakfast at the Pancake Cafe near our house.  I love it.

Sunday afternoon/night: Gaming eventually followed by dinner– our household with Matt and Liz at Picasso’s.

Monday night: Dinner with the Dotzours, our new Monday night event.  We get to relax and spend time with our niece and nephew and their parents!  Still fighting congestion, I have been drinking tea almost constantly since having a cup that Althea brewed Monday night.

Tuesday night: Movie night.  This week we joined some friends at the theater near our house for Burn After Reading.

Wednesday night: We had nothing planned initially, but ended up spending a few hours hanging out with Kelly (who was in town for a few days) at Borders on the east side.  There was a lot of browsing and I picked up my first wedding-related book.  Maretta sweetly handed me quite a few wedding magazines and the like that she collected a while back, so I am doing pretty well with literature.

Thursday night: We babysat Andrew and Sylvie while Bryan and Althea went to a parents’ meeting at Andrew’s school.  We were very well-fed with homemade rolls and some awesome pasta e fagioli soup.

Friday night: Tomorrow we have a session of our Friday night game.  Danny volunteered to make potato soup, which sounds great.

Saturday morning: Plans to visit a venue we are considering for the wedding.  I hope it rocks so that we can reserve it and set the date in stone.

While I was snoozing this morning after my alarm went off, I was dreaming of an old friend.

I think I dream of a few people who were in my life quite a while ago because they mean a lot to me and the relationships were positive, open-ended, and had no definite closure when our lives ceased to intersect.

I woke up thinking about how many attachments we make and lose as we live our lives.  It is as healthy to lose attachments as it is to make them, which is something many people may deny or fail to remember.

I thought about how many attachments I have had to lose and how other people have had to lose their attachments to me in order for me to be where I am now, ready to marry a wonderful person, be part of his family, and start our own family.

I had written out the preceding thoughts in a notebook this morning and handed it to Michael to read.  He responded by showing me the Woot shirt of the day, which was sort of fitting … What happens to one of us happens to us all.

Losing attachments isn’t the same as losing friends, though.  Hopefully we do keep most of our friends, even if we haven’t seen them in twenty years.

One of my co-workers forwarded us all a recipe for chocolate cake today.  This is not just any old chocolate cake.  This is a 1-2 serving chocolate cake that is made in the microwave (with minimum clean-up and equipment) in less than 5 minutes.  You know, it’s chocolate cake that’s *very convenient* if you’re a mom of young kids or a student or if you’re just busy with life stuff.  Or if you just like chocolate cake.  Mmmm, nourishing chocolate cake …

Michael and I tested the recipe tonight and it works.

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

1 Coffee Mug
4 tablespoons flour (plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
Small splash of vanilla

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well . Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again.

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!

Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

Michael received an invitation to beta test Wrath of the Lich King, the new World of Warcraft expansion coming out in a few months, so between that and his regular PvP matches, I have been losing him quite a bit lately.

I am sure I will be picking up the game again when the expansion is actually out, but there was enough going on this past summer that I just didn’t play WoW, period.  Minni, my 70 druid, is decked out in epics and has run about as much end-game material as she was interested in and capable of committing time to.  Ten-person raids are my limit.  It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t played how much greater the time sink is if you commit beyond casual raiding with your guild, but suffice to say I have had friends who have played WoW like it’s a full-time job, maybe a full-time *salaried* job.

With work, gym, a work-related class and exam, two gaming sessions per week, movie nights and family nights, and random social events going on this Fall, I’m not sure where WoW will fit in, or whether it will have more importance than, say, working in that weekly episode of The Closer that MythTV has been faithfully recording.  I do like my current lineup and I like the non-commital gaps on Wednesday and Thursday nights.  This leaves room for going to dinner and a movie with my fiance or something.

I’d like to sit down and work my way through Firefly and the first few seasons of the new Doctor Who, also.   Eventually I am going to go back and catch some of the HBO/Showtime series I have missed or seen incomplete bits of over the last few years.  I guess it’s great that everything is on DVD now.  We never have to be tied to any kind of television or “it’s only in theaters now” schedule.  I can’t remember what life was like before you could watch a movie at home, as often as you wish … and television is a lot more like that now than it used to be.

It’s a rainy Saturday, so I am glad I had not made plans to be out and about this morning.  However, I was thinking of making breakfast soon and I can’t decide between quiche (with sausage!) and a new recipe for apple donut muffins.

EDIT:  Sausage sounded too heavy this morning, so Apple donut muffins won.  These muffins are pretty heavy themselves, though, as they are baked, then dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar.  Complete coronary artery blockage should be happening in 3-2-1 …