Time for another episode of...

...Updating because I haven't done it in a while and feel guilty!

Yay!

1. HitWW has been going smoothly. No food poisoning to speak of yet, and we are often forced to try things that wouldn't have been our first choices from the menu. Some of them are unpronounceable. Some of them don't have English translations. We thrive on the unknown.
   
2. Teaching is going really well. When I emailed a student today to see if she would be willing to meet with our staff once a week for an extra 20 or 30 minutes to help her plan and write her next term paper, her response was, and I quote, "Oh! Wow! That sounds like a GREAT idea! I'd LOVE to do that! That would be such a big help!!!!" (Excessive exclamation marks and capitalization hers.) She's a tenth grader. She wants to give up some of her free time to work ahead on her term paper with us. Seriously, we have the best students. Also, I'm current on all of my grading. My guilt quota is normally spent on not returning papers in a timely manner, so I guess it gets spent here when I'm on top of things. Heh.
   
3. I have been knitting LIKE A FIEND. Hats, scarves, gloves, slippers, lacework, you name it.
4. Similarly, did you know how easy pillowcases are to make (I'm talking throw pillow covers)? I didn't until last weekend! It took less than ten minutes to sew one. I'm embroidering it too, so the project isn't done yet. But when it is, I will post pictures.
5. Culinary endeavors: I highly recommend this recipe from Alpineberry if you have any extra meyer lemons sitting around. Hubs doesn't like cake, but he even said these were a major win. Also, roasted root vegetables: so delicious, so easy. Can I have them every night, please?
   
6. In other news, Ivan managed to rip a curtain rod wall mount from the wall today. There weren't even any curtains up. It was screwed into the wall by three screws 7 or 8 feet from the ground. Figure that one out.
   
7. I have been reading, and not just for classes, which is really super great. I mean, revisiting Dante, Aquinas, Boethius, Lewis, Sayers, Eliot, etc. is great, but it's really nice to read some new things of my own choosing. Finished in the last two months:
   

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer) [startling, sad, gripping]
  
• Re-read the Hunger Games series (Suzanne Collins) [love me some good YA]
  
• Paper Towns (John Green) [see above]
  
• Save the Cat! The last book on screenwriting you'll ever need (Blake Snyder) [basic in a lot of ways, but really good at talking about marketability and practical ways to improve your story]
  

• Currently reading: Canticle for Liebowitz (Walter Miller) [Guys, this book is seriously awesome. Monks preserving literacy in a post-nuclear world. What more could you want?], In the Company of Others (Julie Czerneda) [not sure I'll finish this one. been working on it for several months. over halfway through, and I'm still not hooked.], Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard) [Like drinking a cool glass of water from that well you drank from as a child.].
• Next on the list: The Great Gatsby. Never read it before (everyone else read it in high school. My high school made me read Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville instead). Looking forward to it.

Yay! No longer feeling guilty! Until next week, or whenever I fall behind on grading!

A

Hole-in-the-wall Wednesday, Installment 1

Guess what I found!!!


Not the camera cord, actually, but a memory card reader! Yay pictures!

So.

HitwW began this week. We went to El Pescador, and it was delicious. I had the Molcajete, and Josh had the Fajitas, and boy were they good. Both required Josh and I to eat shrimp (something we never order), and we both actually liked it, even if they do look like bugs. Win.

Bean week is going well. Tuesday was french bread with sliced tomato and mozzarella cheese. Today Josh brought home leftover pizza from his parents' fridge, and I made chocolate chip cookies. I'm thinking we may have to get a little extra creative tomorrow.

Look! Here's our Christmas tree this year! We're about to take it down now since Epiphany is over and it's getting crispy, but it was lovely while it lasted.



I love Christmas...trees...

And no, we didn't have a tree topper. I couldn't find one I liked this year. Last year we just tied bow on top. This year we got lazy. But we got these guys:


Raccoon and Fox.

More posts to come when I've finished downloading and sorting through SEVERAL HUNDRED PHOTOS from my memory card...

A

Bean Week

It's not really as bad as Bean Day, but it felt a little like it at first.

Josh and I are trying something this week. In an attempt to be a little extra frugal (Christmas is expensive, you know?), we're trying to get by this week on whatever we currently have in our fridge/freezer/pantry. We want to see if we can refrain from spending any money on groceries this week and use up some of the stuff we've had around for a while. The exception will be Wednesday, which is now "Hole-in-the-wall Wednesday"--part of a New Year's resolution to try more new things. There are so many tiny little restaurants in our area that we've never tried, so we'll be heading out each Wednesday to explore them, to ask what's good on the menu, take them at their word, and try new things. We'll be keeping a food journal so we remember which ones are hits and which are misses.

But back to Bean Week. We opened the pantry tonight thinking we'd probably end up eating brown rice and beans, but we actually didn't. We put our heads together and got creative. We still had some produce from last week (tomatoes, sweet peppers, bell peppers, onions, lemons and limes), so we decided to make breakfast burritos with tortillas, eggs, frozen tater-tots, salsa (freshly made by Josh), pepper jack cheese, and sauteed peppers and onions. It was super delicious. I'm sure things will become a bit more...inventive as the week goes on, but I'm hopeful. It must be all those cooking shows we've been watching. Did you know there are 135 episodes of Take Home Chef on Netflix instant watch right now? Hooray for Bean Week!

A

Love time.

Just want to say: I love our condo. Right now, I specifically love the fact that our 8 foot tall Christmas tree doesn't even come close to scraping any part of our ceilings.

Pictures coming. I've been diligently taking pictures, so as soon as that camera cord decides to stop playing hide-and-seek, there's going to be some Christmas decoration love up here. I've also been ridiculously productive over the last two months in as far as making things goes (knitting projects, gifts, Christmas tree skirt, ornaments, etc.) so I'm planning on posting about that later as well. Seriously, it's been a triumph of domesticity over here. I also wrote an article about Christmas for our journal/newsletter (Thought & Sentiment), which I may repost here. Haven't decided yet.

Classes are done on Thursday, and then it will be Christmas break! Woohoo! We're going to try to approximate a Christmas party on Thursday by everyone eating cookies/drinking tea, coffee, hot chocolate, etc. at their computers during class. Eh. We do what we can. Class devotions for the last week or so have been Advent/Christmas themed. We started low-church with Sufjan Steven's "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" (which all my first-year students loved; a few third-year students didn't care for the banjo, stuffy traditionalists that they are...). We were going to listen to a selection from Handel on Thursday, but we encountered some technical issues that day, so we read some Chesterton Christmas poems instead ("The House of Christmas" and "The Wise Men") and discussed them. This morning my third-years listened to "Adam Lay Ybounden" and discussed the concept of felix culpa and "the blessed fruit" (they just finished Augustine and Boethius and will soon be moving into Aquinas, so it seemed appropriate). I think I'll try some Handel today for my first-years since they are less likely to have encountered it already, and "Adam Lay Ybounden" is a bit above their level at this point (plus, I don't even want to imagine the phone calls I'd get from their parents afterward...). Thursday for both classes is going to be "O Magnum Mysterium." Their heads will explode from all the beauty. It's going to be awesome. Especially for the first-years, who are discussing Abolition of Man right now...I can't wait. I love Christmas!

Time to catch up on my grading. Work now, holiday later.

A

Martha Stewart: FAIL

Remember that post a while back when I was complaining about the scorching heat and wanting to bake delicious fall dainties? Well, I finally got around to attempting that Boston Scream cake. The result? Anna wins. Martha LOSES LIKE A BIG LOSER.

The plan: delicious chocolate pumpkin cake with cream filling and chocolate glaze for dessert at my family's weekly Saturday dinner.

The execution: So, realizing that I actually don't own round cake pans, I decided that I could probably successfully adjust the recipe in order to make cream filled cupcakes, Ming Makes Cupcakes style. I cut the cake batter recipe in half (since 12 cupcakes would be enough for my family), and adjusted cooking time. The cupcakes turned out fine. Nice and moist.

Then I moved on to the cream. It was supposed to be a spiced pastry cream. What it turned out to be was a lumpy, jiggly, disgusting mess. Twice. That's right, after the first failed attempt, I thought that perhaps I had measured the ingredients incorrectly, or perhaps I had neglected an important step in the cooking process, or maybe the heat was too high. Nope. After carefully measuring each ingredient and obeying each instruction AND turning the heat to low instead of the suggested medium, it still came out lumpy and gross, like someone had dropped some scrambled eggs into thick spiced milk. Not appetizing, and not something you want to put inside cupcakes. I abandoned the recipe and whipped up some spiced whipped cream instead.

"Perhaps someone wrote the recipe wrong on the site," I think to myself, and turn to begin Martha's recipe for the chocolate glaze. My theory, however, is revised shortly after. Once I realize that the proportions the recipe has called for are essentially just producing chocolate milk, I decide that Martha is trying to fool me into making a horrible baked monstrosity filled with evil and topped with soggy. She wants me to fail and to feel inferior and small. I say NO, dump out most of the milk, and continue on and make my own superior ganache, sans recipe.

I topped the cupcakes with the ganache, let it set a bit, and then put a dollop of the spiced whipped cream on top. Came out pretty tasty.

All this to say: I'm on to you, Martha.


A

Once Again

Why do I always think of so many things I would rather be doing than grading on the night when grades are due? I'm not in bad shape this time around (just 13 one-page essays to grade before midnight--easy peasy), but I still find myself looking around and thinking things like, boy, I should do the dishes. Or straighten up that corner. Or rearrange the library. Or bake pumpkin bread. It's like my brain is out to get me.

Is this some weird procrastination instinct left over from school? I could be done with these essays probably in about two hours, and then I would have the entire evening to myself, but my brain says "No....why would you want that? Don't you love the thrill of being down to the wire? Tired, half-crazed, caffeine making your heart race as you blast through the last few essays just as the clock strikes 12? Isn't pumpkin bread more important to you right now???" And I say to my brain, "No, not really. You don't know me at all." (But my brain is a little bit right. My brain and I have a rocky relationship sometimes.)

I think my responsibility organ might be growing a little, though. Because last time I posted about the things I was going to do, grading was not included among them, and I actually--get this--decided to grade instead of doing all of those other things. Who am I?

Apparently, I'm the girl who's going to finish her grading before seven tonight. That's who.

A

Ear-worms and termites and needles, oh my!

Sounds like a creepy Halloween post, but it's really not. Just your common everyday random updates. Since it sounded creepy, though, here's a terrifying clown, in case you are disappointed by regular old news:


Aaaahhhh!!!! Run away!!!!! Why does anyone ever think that clowns are a good idea?

Moving on...

I have a pretty good capacity for memorization. (Years of theater will do that to you, I guess.) It often happens that I will read something, and if it strikes me as being particularly beautiful, I often commit it, or my favorite parts of it, to memory--sometimes even unintentionally. This can be really handy (as in, I can still remember the lyrics and melodies of any song I have ever learned, including obscure sixth grade Christmas play songs--"Christmas in Egypt," anyone?). It also can be really awful. I often will have snatches of songs or poems running through my head, and sometimes I only know some of the words because I accidentally learned the words instead of intentionally committing them to memory, which means that my brain goes on a loop with the parts that I do know.

I've had lines from a poem I don't know running through my head since yesterday. The poem is called "Wild Wednesday," and I have lost my copy of the book that contains it, which means that I can't look it up and fill in the gaps that I am missing. To make matters worse, the internet doesn't know that this poem exists, so no help there. I'm going to order another copy today, so hopefully by next week, I'll be able to get rid of this poetic ear-worm beastie. And inform the internet of this poem's existence.

Update on the status of our living space: Good news! Our guest bathroom is all completely decorated and ready for company! It's the one space in our condo currently that is a finished space--no boxes, and we have pretty new towels, a rug, etc. It's nice having one room finished, even if it's the smallest space in the unit (small victories are still victories). I will post pictures when I can find my camera cord again (still no luck there...).

In other horrible disgusting news, we have a termite problem. By which I mean about a hundred termites managed to "fall" through a hole in the window in the library/office and land on the floor. (Ivan: OMG BEST GAME EVER. Nom maim nom.) After kicking the very interested cat out, we sprayed them down with orange oil, which is good at killing them but not fun to clean up (and also not good for your pets or your lungs). The window is covered in tape to patch things temporarily, and the landlord has been notified, but no solution yet. I've relocated my computer and teaching stuff to the living room couch since it's no fun trying to teach class surrounded by dead bugs (or having surprise live ones crawl up your leg while you are trying to talk about Eusebius).

Update on medical condition: Saw the rheumatologist again yesterday for my two-week check up. He was really pleased with how well the steroids seem to be working, and is really hopeful that I will continue to gain more and more mobility back. I actually received a diagnosis, as well, as a result of all the x-rays and blood work from last time. The ruling is that I do have rheumatoid arthritis, but only in my hands at this point. Also, I am apparently in the 30% of people who show no evidence of the disease in their blood work (with the exception of inflammation indicators). The x-rays, though, showed typical rheumatoid like symptoms in my hands, but nowhere else, which means that theoretically my other joints could eventually be back to tip-top shape if the inflammation can be reduced enough since there hasn't been any joint damage yet. Yay! I tested negative for all the other scary diseases that can cause joint pain, so that's also good news.

Bad news is the treatment plan. I'm still on steroids for a while, but he's adding a new medication now that will eventually replace the steroids. It's Methotrexate, a drug that used to be used to treat cancer, and I will be taking six pills once a week (seems weird, but okay...). The warnings for this drug are pretty scary, though. Absolutely no getting pregnant, and no drinking alcohol allowed. Not that we were planning on having babies right now, and not that I drink much alcohol, but it's still a little scary. I'm not allowed to have even a drop of alcohol at least until after I've been on the new meds for eight weeks and we can check and see how my liver is reacting (alcohol with the meds could mean sudden liver failure). Then MAYBE, if my liver is super awesome, I might be allowed to have one or two drinks a month. Maybe. Also the new drug will decrease my levels of Vitamin D, Calcium, and Folic Acid, so I'm on supplements for all of those as well.

And get this: the methotrexate is only being given to me so that I can start an additional treatment probably involving at home injections. INJECTIONS. AT HOME. DO IT YOURSELF STYLE. Can I just say how much I hate needles? I've overcome my cowardice enough to not cry anymore when they want to take my blood (which they've been doing a lot lately, I might add), and have even discovered that sometimes it doesn't really hurt at all--if I don't look when they are putting it in, I am totally fine and not a blubbering baby-woman. Injections, however, have always been painful. It's not a matter of sticking the needle in and letting the blood and physics do their thing; they are sticking new stuff in there, and it doesn't feel good. Not ever. And for some reason, I don't think closing my eyes or looking away while trying to administer my own injection is going to be a viable option. It seems like eyes would be important for that sort of thing. Maybe I can get Josh to do it, but as of right now, he's pretty equally freaked out about it. Mr. I-can't-remember-the-last-time-I-got-a-shot-or-had-blood-work-ordered.

So anyway, fun time adventures ahead. The hope is that all of this will help stop the joint damage, and that my life will be happy and so much less painful (with the exception of the stabby needles). And that seems like a good thing to remember. Boy, God sure does like to stretch us in uncomfortable ways sometimes, doesn't he?

A