Making Strides

Hi Everyone!!! Some of you may have seen this in an email, but think of it as a friendly reminder.

This year marks the fourth annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event in the south suburbs and our fourth year participating. We've been fortunate these past few years to have the incredible support of our family and friends.

So this year, we're going to give back a little more in return. Bill and I are going to give away a brand new Amazon Kindle 3G in a raffle*. Reading is good, and so is fighting cancer. Why not do both? Donate just as you would normally, and every $25 you give will count for one chance at the e-reader.

Please support us by donating and/or joining our team for this non-competitive 5k walk on Sunday, October 17th at 9am. The link below will take you to our team website where you can make a contribution online or sign up to walk and join our team. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Any checks should be made payable to the “American Cancer Society.” Click below and then choose “Donate to our Team”

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/Young_and_Hopeful

*The raffle will take place on Monday October 18th.

I hope to figure this out

I pass this sign on the stairs leading to our classroom level at Booth at least once a day. I love it.

Chinese fruit cake

This is moon cake. It is given to friends and family during the moon festival every year. Bill likens it to Chinese fruit cake. It is a dense cake associated with a holiday that every one gives but many don't like to actually eat.

Brr

So in the past week I have experienced highs near 90 and lows close to 45.

I got my garlic this past week and I will need to get it in the ground soon. I will also have to clean up my garden for the season. I picked 3 semi ripe tomatoes this week in anticipation of the dropping temps. There are a few green ones still out there but I have to face the depressing facts: summer is over and winter is on its way.

I dislike this part of the growing season (trying to not say hate). The funny thing is I love fall, but the death of my garden is hard to handle. So I will probably sulk for the next week until the rain stops and I actually start taking down my garden.

I havent had a class yet

but I have had three sessions on finding a job. I guess that is one of the reasons Booth is ranked number one this year by the economist, and is consistently in the top ten of most rankings. business school is just as much about your job as it is about your education.

So because what I think I would like to do isn't one of the big recruiting jobs my search is going to be me searching. why i couldn't have done that while i had a nice paying job I am not sure.

yesterday Bill and I tried this restaurant in west town. Dinner was yummy but dessert was phenomenal. I had a concord grape tart made with local grapes and served with corn ice cream (odd sounding but very yummy). Today we are going to try a new BBQ place. Bill has a club meeting for a club he is considering joining. They do consulting projects for not for profits that cant afford a consultant. It gives him experience plus volunteer work and provides the NP with help they need from a smart group. The full time program doesn't have this club, but we do have a club called Net Impact that I will be joining. they help team students up with local NPs to do board work. they also help students interested in pursuing NP work after school.

yesterday I attended the club fair to see what other groups I might want to join while on campus. There are so many student orgs, but many are either cultural or professional. So many just don't apply to me. I think I will join their Women in Business group. I hope I can get involved in this group as I always wanted to get involved in WIP when I was working full time. then there are the social clubs: wine, epicurean, yoga, every sport imaginable. Unfortunately, most of these clubs cost 100-150 dollars for the two years. I just can't decide on what might be worth while.

on top of clubs and job searching, eventually I will actually have classes and that will be followed by lots of homework. There is a grade non-disclosure policy at school, but I still want to do well, as do most of my classmates. Booth curves its classes to a 3.3, which basically means for every A there is a C and for some B+ there is a B-.

Anyway that is what has been on my mind the last few days. if a brain could hyperventilate, mine has gotten close this past week. I am a worrier and this information overload has me on high alert. I hope that once I get into the swing of things I will be back to my normal self. And if I am not I expect you guys to call me out on it. Thanks in advance!

Winnie got her Halloween costume

I am so blessed

I want to thank every one for the wonderful birthday wishes. I always feel so blessed to have so many family and friends. To day has been awesome so far. I woke up with a million (slight exaggeration) Facebook messages, a few ecards and some sweet gifts.
I have a job-y fair-ish thing today and then a closing reception and then I will finally be oriented.
Talk to you guys later!

birthday birthday birthday

(oy oy oy!!!)

the weekend is here

YAY!!!

We have a busy weekend ahead of us and it includes celebrating my birthday! yay! This also means i need to wish Alana a happy birthday (along with my aunt Erin). My birthday isn't until Tuesday, but we have tickets to see billy elliot and I am super excited for it.

I am still fighting this cold, though sleeping in today has help tremendously (that of the cold had run its course).

Yesterday Bill went with me to my semi-formal event. He got to meet a bunch of the people I have been talking able for the last week and a half. What was amazing though was how many people I didn't know at all. It feels like all I have been doing is meeting people every day, and still I know so few people in my class.

I am all signed up for classes, and have started looking for my books. Bill and I are taking two classes with the same books and I am taking a class he took last quarter so book wise I am hoping we can overlap a lot.

On the home front, I am awaiting my garlic (yay) and starting to think about taking apart my garden (boo) next year we will probably cut back (let the soil rest) so Bill and I have been discussing what worked and didn't.

We really liked the garlic. most of the work is done the fall before and I am loving my yummy garlic in stir fry and tomato sauce, in soups and basically everywhere else

The Swiss chard that i planted by seed was super easy and resilient. I literally sewed the seeds and we have been picking leaves and enjoying them all summer.

I really have liked the Cherokee purple and Hungarian hear tomatoes, but i think from now on I will pass on cherry tomatoes.

My peppers were a bust this year along with my cuckes I thing that was more the weather than anything, so I would probably just do less of them and hope for greatness.

The lettuce always seems like a better idea at the beginning of the summer. we did eat a bunch of the red leaf ice burg that i planted in the garden and in the early summer i enjoyed some of the lose leaf mix. I still have seeds and will try them again, but i am not buying any new ones.

the beans and beets are probably passes. for the amount that we eat beans it is easier to buy then at the market, and we really only consume the beet greens and they are so similar to chard that i don't see a point in both.

Basil is a must every year as is parsley. My perennial herb area got out of control too early in the season and I gave up on maintaining it.

I also have my asparagus bed which is a tangle of ferns and weeds at the moment, but I hope to be able to eat some next spring.

Over all, I think that I am still very dependent on my local farmers markets, but given my time and interests in the cooking and preserving parts of the process I don't have the space to grow enough for the two of us. I like the process of a garden. I love looking out at it and tracking the growth, and that satisfaction is worth all the juicy tomatoes in the world.

This post has ran way too long so I'll sign off. have a great weekend!!

25 lbs

I have spent the better part of today processing my tomatoes. I have 7 pints of quartered tomatoes in their own juice that are almost done processing. I have (hopefully) 5 pints of sauce. I also have 8 tomatoes left over. In the box there were 3 that were beyond saving. Overall, I am very proud of my tomato filled day. I can't wait to taste the fruits of my labor.

so flipping cool!!!

i just saw an owl in my back yard. it was sitting on the telephone wire. it was HUGE!

ok that is all

Real classes

So school doesn't start until next thursday, but I had my first "real" class today. It is for my LEAD class, which is a leadership element that every first year has to take. It was weird getting up and sitting in a class room bright and early at 8:30, but I guess I need to get used to it.

I bid for my classes over the weekend, and will find out the results tomorrow. I am still unsure about one of the classes I was going to take so I a currently bidding for 5 (both the accelerated and regular version) hopefully some clarity comes to me over the week because I am honestly torn.

This weekend was nice and Sunday morning we were back to the market after a few weeks off. I bought 25 pounds of tomatoes and i hope to can them on wednesday. I am thinking so into sauce and some into sliced tomatoes.

Otherwise, I am waiting to start any new books until my birthday (amazon gift cards yay!) but I did get Professor Layton and the Unwound Future yesterday. I hope that this game will keep me sufficiently occupied on the train.

Oh and a quick shout out to CB - congrats on your DC tri!!

never forget

so tired

Hi everyone!

Wisconsin was great. I played tons of icebreaker games with my 578 other classmates. We climbed rope courses and did team building exercises. Both evenings they had games and dancing. My favorite part was the 3 hours we spent with people from improv olympics (another improv group like second city). They had us do a bunch of improv games which were silly and fun.

Unfortunately, both nights up there were very late, and we had to be at group things at 8am every day. Friday I was back in Hyde Park from 8:30 to 5pm and the long days, stress and copious amounts of talking have left me a bit sick (very sad sore throat).

Hopefully, tomorrow i will be able to get back into the swing of things.

ps while i was gone Bill was able to harvest 3 new tomatoes and some peppers. Lets hope the weather stays good enough for me to get a second bounty.

And so it begins

No Fruit pies,

but a different type of Apple.

Today Bill took the day off of work and we had a wonderful day together. The highlight for me being the laptop I am now blogging upon. School starts next week and I am excited to have a laptop all of my own.

saucy

I am currently spending my time off puttin up tomatoes of the winter.

Yesterday I made about 15 cups of potato soup.

Maybe tomorrow I can make fruit pie fillings. Ha ha hmmm