This Post Doesn't Even Have a Title

I wish I were going to write something beautiful and insightful tonight, but yeah, I don't think that's happening. It's Derby Week in the Hall of Justice, which means light dockets and lots of leaving early. Last week was kind of a hard week, both work-wise and social-commitment-wise, so I'm taking it easy this week.

Here are some things I am loving this week:

Yoga. Believe it or not, I like it, and I think it's even exercise.

Korean food. Had it for the first time tonight, and it was mighty tasty. I ate a fermented black bean, and I would totally do it again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Two. I'm rewatching, since I got Seasons One and Two for my birthday. Ahh, the good old days, when Angel was hot, Buffy was a virgin, and Spike was still deliciously bad.

Dollhouse. Oh, Joss Whedon, how I love you. You have made me love yet another show, even though you made the poor choice of Eliza Dushku as the star.

My new air popcorn-popper. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm super excited about it, since I'm a weirdo who likes neither butter, oil, or salt on my popcorn.

Monday Stuff

1. Today, because my violin playing was so bad, Hannah (my teacher) decided to "cheer me up" by playing for me the next song in my line-up to "show me what I have to look forward to." Two lines into the song, I started laughing. I thought it was a joke, see, because it was SO RIDICULOUS to think I could play that. I even said, "Really, do you think I'm ready for that?" Luckily, my current song is so hard I will likely be 40 before I get finished with it. Oh, and can I just say that Vivaldi sucks all kinds of violin ass?

2. At Weight Watchers tonight, I lost 3.8 pounds. And I was TOTALLY not happy with that. You know why? Because I was hoping for more. Just 77 more pounds tonight, and I would have been done.

3. If I have one weakness as a cook, it is that I never remember that more is not always better. I made a Pampered Chef recipe for a chicken club pizza that I had at my party last week, and put waaay too much chicken and cheese and bacon on it. Now I feel like I need to just go eat lemons until sometime around Wednesday. Blech.

4. I went back to the holdover today to talk to a pro se defendant, and another defendant said to me, "Are you a lawyer?" When I said yes, he asked, "Are you a public one or a REAL one?" Hooh, boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me! So I said to him, "Boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me." Then I told him that I'm a prosecutor and that I'll be watching out for his case.

5. I am once again trying to work my way through The Artist's Way. The first few weeks demand that I figure out who is to blame for my stagnant creativity. I'm pretty convinced that it was that college poetry writing professor who laughed so hard at my poem, then at the end of the semester, asked me to read it again so she could laugh at it some more. Yeah, I'm thinking it's totally her fault that I didn't write Harry Potter.

Showing Off, A Bit

It occurred to me that I never posted any of the pictures Todd took with his fancy new camera of all the Christmas baking and sewing I did. He's been doing some really cool stuff with it.

Does this look like a food magazine, or what?


A montage, if you will, of all the yummy stuff that got sent around to various people:

Christmas sewing, for my nieces, sister, and sister-in-law (they're zippered bags for makeup and other things that need to go in zippered bags):


And while I look just hideous in this photo (I was a wee bit tired), Todd loves it so much I thought I'd post it, anyway. We like to call it, "The Dark Side of Holiday Baking":

Singin' the End of Holiday Blues

I suppose since I have to go to work tomorrow and work a WHOLE WEEK, as in five days straight without a day off, that Christmas is officially over. Here's some randomness to get me back in the regular blogging spirit . . .

1. I am not making resolutions this year, just sticking to my list of 101 things. There are a couple of things I want to do more of this year, like violin practice, baking, and making fun stuff, but no resolutions.

2. A church member this morning informed me that she was googling our church name and this site is one that comes up. Do you think that means I need to clean things up around here? Naaaah.

3. My lovely, lovely stepfather has been dreadfully sick and in the hospital since just after Christmas. Today, things seem to have taken a turn for the better, but it's been rough for him and my mom. If you are the praying sort, I know they'd appreciate it.

4. I discovered the Negotiator books over the holiday, and LOVED THEM. It's always great to find a book that you really like and then discover that it's the first of a series. I finished those up and have moved on to an earlier series by the same writer, The Walker Papers.

5. Those pecan squares I made for Christmas? The ones by Ina Garten, with nine sticks of butter? Totally not worth it. Next year I think I'll make just five batches of peanut butter kisses and be done with it.

A Brief Holiday Update

I've got the Christmas crud. No, that's not a Scrooge-y thing, just that little tiny bit of yucky sick you get when you work too hard at being merry.

Last week nearly did me in. There was Christmas cheer every night for seven nights straight, and it was supposed to be eight, but I had to wimp out on the last one. (Sorry, Bryan!) I also wimped out on half of my work day today and spent the afternoon and evening vegged out on the couch doing absolutely NOTHING to prepare for Christmas, which is now not even ten whole days away.

I cut out the contract knitting for Santa almost entirely, but added contract sewing, and lots and lots and lots of baking. So far, the Lewis household has the following waiting to be packaged up for gift-giving:

dark chocolate and walnut toffee
German chocolate fudge
peanut butter fudge
milk chocolate walnut fudge
date balls
butterscotch bars
almond biscotti

Still to come are Ina Garten's pecan squares, chai snickerdoodles, chocolate crackle cookies, and peanut butter kisses.

Sheesh. The contract sewing won't be done until the weekend, which is cutting it mighty close. Mighty close, indeed.

A Distinguished Guest Blogger . . .

Hello everyone out there in that crazy world-wide-web place. It’s me, Todd. I appear in this blog as a character occasionally. I’ve now been asked to appear as a special guest blogger. I like to be short, and to the point. Therefore, here are my guest observations:

Sara Palin: Ruined the word “vacuous”

John McCain: Who?

Barack Obama: Pretty cool. Smart. Kinda nerdy

Joe Biden: Uhm, clean?

Jennifer Moore: No idea. She’s the head of the Kentucky Democratic Party, and clearly did something to piss off that guy at pageonekentucky.com. Thought she deserved an honorable mention.

Daniel Lewis: OK, I was thinking about that red-head guy from Band of Brothers, and now “Life”—but it also happens to be my brother’s name. Both pretty cool. Not the Last of the Mohicans (he had a cool name, then put the word “Day” in as some kind of consonant middle name. A marketing ploy in other words).

Junk food: Pure evil. Evildoers brought this evil evildom upon us.

Wheat bread: Cool. Mavericky, even. Also Clif Bars. I can live entire weekends on Clif Bars.

Flyfishing: It’s actually fun. Makes the phrase “high class fishing” not a contradiction in terms. Will not, however, lead to “an understanding of life,” or cure mid-life crises. I will not write a book about it.

YMCA: OK song, even better place. Even if you’re not a Christian, or a young man.

Flyleaf:This is a band my “Little Brother” introduced me to. I don’t get it, find it a little scary, and so that makes me an old dude.

Kara: My wife. Great lady. Way hipper than me, as you can tell.

That is all, and thank you for your support.

Friday Night Dinner

Tonight I cooked a birthday dinner for my dad. One thing I have decided, I really like cooking for a smaller group. I don't think I'll ever be the "cook Thanksgiving for 50" type, but up to about six people, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Here was tonight's menu:

Guinness-braised beef short ribs
Horseradish mashed potatoes
Southern-style green beans
Cranberry-ginger relish
Chess pie

Doesn't that sound nice and fattening and yummy? Chess pie, in particular, kind of amuses me. Somewhere along the line, someone decided to dump a bunch of sugar, butter and eggs in a dish and call it pie. Tasty pie.

So we had a nice relaxing dinner, and I sent my dad home with his birthday presents -- a second, whole pie, fair trade coffee, homemade smoked trout and beef jerky.

Because everyone should get to eat pie for breakfast for their birthday stretch-out month.

Random Thoughts Monday

1. If you're going to be Presbyterian, you should know going into it that Presbyterians can't do anything without establishing a committee, mapping out what council that committee reports to, and scheduling a meeting. You should also know that said meeting cannot be accomplished in less than two hours. Dinner should never be postponed until "after this quick meeting."

2. I'm very, very pleased with our First-Lady-Elect, largely because she appeals both to my girly side and to my career woman side. Both sides of me are willing to overlook the fashion faux-pas of a dress she wore on Election night, largely because the dress she wore to the meeting today with the Bushes was so totally FIERCE and made Laura Bush look like Ms. Frumpy McDowdypants.

3. Has anyone noticed how much Laura Bush is starting to resemble Queen Elizabeth?

4. The socks I wore to work today, while very fun, what with their glittery leopard print and all, were also very itchy. Itchy socks make for a long workday.

5. I confess that I used a can of cream of mushroom soup in dinner tonight. I am so ashamed. I blame the long Presbyterian meeting and the itchy socks.

6. If dinner involves cream of mushroom soup, it is smart to forego dinner and skip to the biscuits and elderberry jelly for dessert. Actually, you can skip the biscuits, too, because elderberry jelly just freakin' rocks.

7. My violin teacher told me today that I trill better than she does. Apparently, all the trilling angst I went through as a middle school piano student paid off. I will be incorporating lots of trills in my upcoming debut with the Led Zeppelin cover band.

What I Do For Fun

dI'm going to be starting a new part-time job next month as a tutor for grade-school kids (more on this later, I'm sure), and while it's only a few hours at a time, and I get to set my own schedule, I've been concerned about what this would do to dinnertime at the Lewis house.

You see, we're dinner snobs.

I'm not sure how it happened. My favorite dinner, pre-marriage, was Zataran's red beans and rice, followed closely by my second favorite dinner, Mrs. T's pierogies.

And while Todd did come into the marriage with a reportoire that includes eggplant lasagna -- a dish I've never even attempted -- I think canned minestrone soup was on his menu more often than not.

But somehow, when the two of us set up house together, we started cooking "real" dinners. Blame it on the Food Network, I guess, but we routinely have some pretty well-rounded and tasty stuff.

So I decided that if I'm going to be getting home a bit later a few days a week (yet not late enough to chuck it all and go out to eat), I'm going to need a freezer full of home-made yummies, and since Todd's in trial this week, I got started tonight.

We're starting with beef dishes, since there's a half a cow in my freezer waiting to be used. As of 9:00 p.m. tonight, my freezer holds the following:

2 Meatloaves
1 Honkin' Big Shepherd's Pie (because I didn't have quite enough for two)
3 Bags of 3-Bean Chili
1 Bag of Carrot-Ginger Soup (Which does not have beef. It was a slight diversion.)

There's probably one more beef night coming up, and then a chicken night and a vegetarian night. I may even throw in a few desserts or breads. All in all, I found it to be most entertaining.

You may say Geek, but I say . . . Domestic Goddess.

Just Another Random Monday

Do you know any of those people who use the word "literally" alot?

As in, the classic: "I was literally scared to death. TO DEATH, I tell you."

Sheesh. Can't we just delete the poor word from the dictionary and put it out of its misery?

But I have to say, this weekend was a pain in the neck.

Literally.

I woke up on Saturday, full of resolve to swim laps and reward myself with a trip to the Farmer's Market, tried to do something outrageous -- like look to the right -- and HURT MY NECK.

Seriously, how stupid is that? I spent most of Saturday laying on the couch and whining about how I couldn't move my head.

(Which reminds me of a friend of mine who once thought her dog had had a stroke, but in fact, he had just strained his neck. Why that cracks me up today, I do not know.)

People, I'm here to tell you, you do not appreciate the normal range of motion you have with your neck. Necks are marvelous things, and I will never, ever, take mine for granted again. I'm going to give it a little grateful pat right now, just for good measure.

It IS getting better, now, thank you very much. But still -- SHEESH.

I tried to drown my sorrows with a new batch of banana ice cream, this time with toffee chips. The lesson I learned from this experiment: Toffee chips are mostly SUGAR and therefore will DISSOLVE if left to sit in the ice cream mixture to chill.

So the banana ice cream was just plain banana ice cream with a mild toffee flavor. Scrumptious nonetheless, particularly with a bit of butterscotch ice cream topping. Boy howdy.

And since I could quite easily look straight forward, Todd and I watched a movie on Saturday, too: Factory Girl. I had never even heard of Edie Sedgwick before this, but now I am totally obsessed with whether I would have been "mod" or "hippy" had I been alive in the 60's.

I've always said that I would have been a hippy anti-war activist, but that was before I had fully appreciated the makeup that the Edie Sedgwick-types wore.

Have you SEEN that makeup? The dark, dark eyeshadow, the thick eyeliner, and the FALSE EYELASHES?!? It makes me swoon. And the earrings? Man, oh man. Give me some thigh-high boots and a polka-dotted minidress and I would be perfectly happy. Shoot, I think I could make my hair look mod right now, with the cut I so fortuitously already have.



And yes, now that you mention it, I DO think I would steer clear of the propensity to jam heroin filled syringes into my ass THROUGH MY CLOTHES. No need to go overboard, people.

Domestic Stuff

Last night I finally went to my long-anticipated (by me, anyway) quilting class. Just a one-night affair, called "machine-quilting basics." I was quite concerned that I would be the dunce of the class and probably asked to leave before I infected the real quilters with my dunceness. Thankfully, this did not occur, although it was touch and go there for awhile.

Really, who would expect to go to a quilting class, the qualifications for which were "must be able to sew a straight line" and after a brief introductory lecture, be told to START QUILTING?! I had to slap my quilt sandwich together (and yes, that IS what it's called) lickety-split and just go with it.

It turned out okay. By the end of the night, my neighbor had said to me, "My, you're really good at squiggles."

I'm good at squiggles. Huh. Who knew?

I actually did take a picture this morning of my squiggles (and my name -- I quilted my name, isn't that cool?) but unfortunately, since I was quilting with tan thread on cream muslin, the picture came out looking a lot like nothing. You'll have to just take my word for it. I'm going to do some practicing on the really pretty fabric panel I bought which we didn't actually use in the class, so I'll post that when it's done.

In lieu of a quilting picture, I thought I'd pass on this great recipe for homemade ice cream that I made this weekend. (If you don't have an ice cream maker, I highly suggest you buy one. I bought a cheapy one for $18 at Target and it's working just fine so far.) Homemade ice cream, even made in an electric maker, reminds me of being a kid and cranking that ice cream crank until I thought my arm would fall off, then getting to eat multiple bowls of drippy, smooshy yumminess. In my family, we only had three flavors: banana, strawberry or peach. I made banana on Sunday, with the scandalous addition of dark chocolate chips. I'm planning on trying some more adventurous flavors this summer, but for starters, this one's a classic. It came from my mom, who got it from HER mom, so it has a great pedigree.



Homemade Ice Cream

2 quarts Half and Half
5 eggs (Yes, it has raw eggs. It came from a grandma, it must be okay.)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla
pinch of salt
3 cups of fruit

Mix together and run through a blender to chop and distribute fruit. Chill for as long as you can stand to wait. Freeze according to your ice cream freezer's directions, then put in your regular freezer for a few hours to harden further.

Best eaten outside in a lawn chair, swatting bugs and letting your favorite dog lick the bowl.