yum oh !

Oh July you have never ended so tasty!

good book

Just finished The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. I really enjoyed this book, though it has been so long since I read the Poisonwood Bible that i really cannot compare them. The book made me interested in learning more about Frieda Kahlo, Mexico City, Trotsky, and McCarthyism. I like books that are a jumping off point for learning more.

Anyway... that is my book review of the day.

Today is gray and cool out, but the weekend is supposed to be nice. No plans for tonight... maybe try running again? Tomorrow we have a Booth event for Bill, but overall this will be a quite one.

Have a nice weekend


Oh and Mimi, if you read this, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Tomatoes on a rail

Sadly one is worse for wear and due to that won't make it through dinner time.

Home ownership year 4

so this post on Emily's blog (check her out, she is a great writer) got me thinking about the i want, i need, and the home makeovers.

When we first moved into our house, we knew there were some upgrades that we would need to do. The water heater was 20 years old and not functioning properly (it isn't good when the home owners freely admit something like that). there were holes of various sizes including one big one) on the plaster walls. there was a 4 foot drop out the family room door (they had torn off most of the deck). The wood siding on the garage was rotting and falling off. the original upstairs bathroom sink seemed to jump out and attack your toes every morning. These along with a need for insanely organized closets and a dislike of many of the paint colors drove a mad dash of need and want purchases in the first two years.

Now that we have entered year four the changes and upgrades are far fewer. Last year when we were told our ac was leaking freon and the possible fix could buy us most of a new ac, we ended up replacing the heat and ac. Did we need it? Maybe... our house is hold and the furnace and ac were underpowered... which meant, even functioning it was either freezing in the winter or sweltering in the summer, but we could have just fixed the ac and moved on. (Bill and I are super happy we had the money to just get new ones).

This year, my one goal is to spruce up our down stairs bathroom. and maybe finally get pictures in all the empty picture frames around the house.

I think, though, had Bill and I bought a bigger house, or if we had two cars, we might not have been able to afford all the fixes and upgrades to our house. With our income drastically changing soon, we will have to be much more careful about where we spend our money, and our definition of "need" will probably change. I think that Bill and I will have to tell ourselves "it will be out of public view in the basement" more often and the spend-y life of DINKs will be coming to a close.

tasting heaven

I had a bit of heaven last night with my farmers market bacon and my home grown lettuce and tomato.

and then just to make sure i had my quota of bacon grease, I sauteed some of my Swiss chard in the bacon pan.

Really how can you be bummed about CFA test results when you have such a simply delicious dinner.

Oh and dessert... peaches and ginger ice cream.

:(

Got my results today. Didn't pass. Life moves on, and honestly i forgot they were sending them out today, because my weekend was so busy.

This weekend was super busy. We had a cocktail party Friday. It was really fun except for driving home in a monsoon.

Saturday I had my teeths cleaned and then got Brian's birthday present. Then I picked up some spices drove home changed and went into the city for two different parties. The parties were tons of fun.

Sunday we had Winnie's class. She was introduced to the tire. She is doing so well for a dog that doesn't practice at home. Then I came home to a weeded garden (I love you Bill) and a freshly mowed lawn. I made some lunch and we got ready for dinner and sari fitting at Faisal's house. The food was awesome (though "not spicy" still brushed against my tolerance for heat) and Faisal's mom is so generous and kind. I can't wait for the wedding.

So, life will move on. I haven't decided if I will take level two again next spring. I'll give it a week to let the sting on my ego settle a bit.

Dress rehearsal

So we had the sari fitting this weekend. And even the guys got into it.

Beans from garden

Home grown goodness

buggy week

Monday morning: icky spider in the upstairs bathtub... size of a quarter or a bit bigger red and visible fangs
Monday evening: see picture below, while entering shower... subject found hiding between molding on shower door and wall
Tuesday: i didn't get home until late... no bugs
Wednesday: small (less than an inch) centipede in downstairs bathroom. I took care of it. Cicadas so loud it was hard to converse.
Thursday: cicada found outside door when I came home. Later in the evening i realized why as a huge cicada flew into our family room doors causing the dag to freak out. Even later, another small centipede on the stairs, Bill dispatched it.
Friday: dead dragon fly in the driveway at the bottom of our stairs.

Helicopter out my window

Filming transformers

sorry

Ok I might be going overboard on the pictures (I am pretty sure the last one wasn't needed).

Anyway still waiting for rain here... they keep promising it and it really isn't delivering. On Sunday, it rained for like 5 min. Yesterday, it drizzled long enough to get the deck wet. I keep puttign off watering my garden and potted plants and I now know as soon as I give in, the rain will come.

Last night I watched the movie gran torino. It was very good, intense, a bit violent and full of colorful and racist language, but good and touching none the less.

why I hate centipedes

They keep me from my shower

best thing i have signed up for all year

if you have a godiva chocolates store near you i highly recommend you sign up for their rewards program. you don't have to do anything but given them your email (and they only email like once a month) and you get a free chocolate every month. no purchase necessary. free chocolate? don't mind if i do. Oh and if you do you should try their "ice cream truffles". I tried a mint chocolate chip truffle today.... and it tasted just like the ice cream.

A daily bounty

Yum!

Garlic from garden

For home made hummus.

false promise

I was told there would be rain.... there has been no rain....

I didn't water last night because I was told there would be rain.... when we hadn't had any I watered for 30 min (soaker hose) this morning. but that is barely enough to wet the ground... and now there was no rain this morning, like they promised, so it looks like I'll be using our rain barrel again.

Hope you are all having a nice week. stay cool

How to make your husband happy part two

Put the chilled cream into an ice cream maker and then in the last five min add chopped crystallized ginger put into freezer

serve with farm fresh peaches

....husband is happy.

How to make your husband happy part one

boil milk and a 1/4 cup of ginger. temper egg yolk and sugar. cook until it coats the back of a spoon.

then place on ice bath.

strain and chill

weeeeeeeeee...

...ave! So I volunteered at the sckc agility trial on sunday. Sunday would normally be Winnie's class, but the kennel club was hosting an agility trial this weekend. Back to my title.... there was one lady who upon approaching the weave poles with her dog she belted out in a high pitched screech "weeeeeeeeeeeeeave!" The eee part lasted most of the length of the poles(about 22 ft).

Anyway the trail was cool to watch and I got to see how they set a course and I als spent about two hours setting jumps at each height change and fixing the chute after every dog. I saw two corgis compete (one was a Pembroke with a tail!), which was really cool.

Otherwise this weekend was birthday party and family picnic. Bill found a suit for his friend Faisal's wedding. And, as you can see below, I harvested my garlic. and since I harvested I also ordered som different kinds to plant for next year. By the time I decided to plant last year there was very little selection... so if you want to grow garlic I would order your cloves now.

Garlic harvest

First year of growing garlic. Yum!

bug bites

A lesson to you all if a bug bite gets infected get it checked out. Brian was released from the hospital yesterday evening after having three doses of antibiotics through and iv. From what my mom told me he is lucky he didn't get blood poisoning.

___

as an aside, I have had my bike for about a year, and yesterday I christened it with my first spill. Lucky for me I was ok (just bruised) and the bike was ok. Also lucky for me, Bill was with me and was able to dislodge my bike from where it slid (half way through a bridge). I had been quite worried about taking a spill, so I hope that was it for a while.

Love/ Hate

Those two words summarize all my feelings towards my garden right now. Inspired by this post and the amount of weeds popping up, I decided to put on my jeans and a long sleeved shirt and go work in my garden. On the plus side, my garden has substantially less weeds than before, but on the minus I have substantially more bug bites (they bit through my shirt and gloves!). On the positive side my swiss chard is really coming out nicely, as are most of my plants, on the negative I scraped my arm along a fence post this time and am now wearing a super huge band aid (again). On the up side I did get a good amount of sleep last night, on the downside it was because I was having a full body reaction to all the bites and took Benadryl.

Anyway, I love my garden I love pulling the weeds and munching on green beans as I go, but more than once this summer people at work have asked me is it worth it. I think despite the bite, bruises, cuts, scrapes and muscle aches it is. I get such a sense of peace... ...until I convince myself there is a spider on me and I freak out. :)

---

ps to those who know him... Brian got some bite while fishing in Canada and is now in the hospital because the bite got infected. I just talked to him and he seems fine, but I am glad he went in. Here he is with a pike he caught:

it is wednesday already?!

We had such a wonderful weekend. C I am so sorry we didn't see you, but I will see you soon.

The long weekend contained family and baseball, water balloons and horseback riding, hiking and swimming, wine and yours truly. We had such a great time and maybe I'll get the photos off my camera some time soon.

I continue to devour books. I still have two more lent books from co workers after the one I am on, and I am re reading Harry Potter 7 in anticipation of the movie.

My garden is coming along and we had a nice side of fresh picked green beans for dinner on Monday.

Hope you all had a nice holiday weekend.

Happy fourth