Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Pinned
Andrew has been working on homework all day and I have been tackling laundry and watching Taboo (I have no real excuse for watching sensationalistic television except that it is easy to watch) and Lucy spent a good portion of the afternoon happily pinned under Andrew's legs. She was less happy to get up.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Grunt in the snow
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thanksgiving!
On an unrelated note, I think both Andrew and I should get these bows for our Christmas ensembles:
And in case anyone is agonizing over Christmas presents, I have one suggestion...despite our tiny kitchen, Andrew and I are pretty enthusiastic amateur cooks. We didn't get a new cookware set for the wedding because we didn't need it, but our 11" and 9" non-stick pans have become incredibly scratched, so we've been admiring these babies, which are on sale:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-clad-d5-stainless-steel-french-skillet/?lineid=2&cm_src=E:COOKWARE-SETS
We have a William Sonoma gift card from the wedding, but it covers half the cost of them. And that's all the info I have on the matter.
So, to Rachel and Ben, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Feel better Amanda! It was great seeing some of the Layton family folks, and thank you for coming out, Sue and Will! To all the family we didn't get to see, we hope you had too much turkey just like us, to my family at home, we love you and thank you for the great evening, thanks to my mom for cooking her butt off and cooking one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever, and to all of our friends, we hope you were with friends and family! Lastly, to all, we hope you know that we love you and miss you and that you are, as always, in our thoughts.
Happy Thanksgiving :) I may not eat for the entirety of the next year.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Some random updates:
Andrew keeps telling me not to treat it like it is anything special, but I like to celebrate accomplishments within reasonable bounds, so a mere mention within the blog should suffice. We've been slowly moving into new rituals to help keep the apartment cleaner, and lo and behold it's working! Having a clean, open living space is terribly comfortable. Who knew?
Last week Andrew had a huge presentation due and he totally rocked it. I'm really proud of him for all of the effort and dedication he is putting into school. Shout out to my man Andrew!
I have hand surgery tomorrow to reconstruct the nerve that I severed. I anticipate it will go smoothly and easily, though I'll have to wear a brace for about four weeks. After that, I have yet ANOTHER surgery scheduled to fix my sinus issues, which have made living across the smoggy Wasatch Front difficult for most of my life, and I for one am really excited to get it all fixed. After this, no more surgeries. Hopefully ever.
Lucy now goes to her crate consistently with the command "Kennel", and most of the time with "K-town". That battle is almost won. She also gets spayed on December 3rd, and then she'll be pretty much all set in terms of her health needs.
Holidays are coming up! I'm excited for a break from work and the cold weather is rolling in as if on cue. I've appreciated the fairly warm fall we have had, but hopefully we'll still have a white Christmas.
Lastly, I'm handling a red-tailed hawk at work now. I have huge respect for all of our birds, but you really get a sense of what a deadly predator he is when he is three inches from your face and you have to trust the fact that he really wont take a big old bite out of you. I also got to sit right next to an emu and pet him for about 15 minutes, and similarly I was awed by what a powerful bird he is. Fear of animals is useless when you are handling them, but a healthy respect of them is an important part of building the relationship. Not surprisingly, fear and healthy respect feel sort of similar. It's taking my subconscious, primal mind a little while to figure out how to filter that and leave only the respect. Either way though, it's thrilling.
Photographic evidence:
Andrew keeps telling me not to treat it like it is anything special, but I like to celebrate accomplishments within reasonable bounds, so a mere mention within the blog should suffice. We've been slowly moving into new rituals to help keep the apartment cleaner, and lo and behold it's working! Having a clean, open living space is terribly comfortable. Who knew?
Last week Andrew had a huge presentation due and he totally rocked it. I'm really proud of him for all of the effort and dedication he is putting into school. Shout out to my man Andrew!
I have hand surgery tomorrow to reconstruct the nerve that I severed. I anticipate it will go smoothly and easily, though I'll have to wear a brace for about four weeks. After that, I have yet ANOTHER surgery scheduled to fix my sinus issues, which have made living across the smoggy Wasatch Front difficult for most of my life, and I for one am really excited to get it all fixed. After this, no more surgeries. Hopefully ever.
Lucy now goes to her crate consistently with the command "Kennel", and most of the time with "K-town". That battle is almost won. She also gets spayed on December 3rd, and then she'll be pretty much all set in terms of her health needs.
Holidays are coming up! I'm excited for a break from work and the cold weather is rolling in as if on cue. I've appreciated the fairly warm fall we have had, but hopefully we'll still have a white Christmas.
Lastly, I'm handling a red-tailed hawk at work now. I have huge respect for all of our birds, but you really get a sense of what a deadly predator he is when he is three inches from your face and you have to trust the fact that he really wont take a big old bite out of you. I also got to sit right next to an emu and pet him for about 15 minutes, and similarly I was awed by what a powerful bird he is. Fear of animals is useless when you are handling them, but a healthy respect of them is an important part of building the relationship. Not surprisingly, fear and healthy respect feel sort of similar. It's taking my subconscious, primal mind a little while to figure out how to filter that and leave only the respect. Either way though, it's thrilling.
Photographic evidence:
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Best meals of the week
We've been doing a bit of cooking over the past seven days! Here are my favorite three, in no particular order:
1. Pork loin in a whiskey cream sauce with pecans and almonds, served with garlic mashed potatoes
2.Breaded parsley pork loin medallions with white wine and broccoli
3. Tonight's vegetarian dinner, scratch-made spaghetti sauce with carrots and zucchini served over spaghetti squash, garlic bread, and baked apples stuffed with cinnamon oatmeal crumble and drizzled with vanilla sauce for dessert.
My meal qualifications have been that they need to be fairly cheap, incredibly simple and take as little time as possible between starting prep and eating. Number 1 took about 10 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook after the potatoes had been boiled, Number 2 took about 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook, and Number 3 took about 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook everything, but the spaghetti squash, sauce and the baking apples all cooked together for that hour so it was just matter of waiting a bit.
In between these meals have been a lot of Mac n Cheez and hot dogs, so we're still keeping it real. ;)
1. Pork loin in a whiskey cream sauce with pecans and almonds, served with garlic mashed potatoes
2.Breaded parsley pork loin medallions with white wine and broccoli
3. Tonight's vegetarian dinner, scratch-made spaghetti sauce with carrots and zucchini served over spaghetti squash, garlic bread, and baked apples stuffed with cinnamon oatmeal crumble and drizzled with vanilla sauce for dessert.
My meal qualifications have been that they need to be fairly cheap, incredibly simple and take as little time as possible between starting prep and eating. Number 1 took about 10 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook after the potatoes had been boiled, Number 2 took about 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook, and Number 3 took about 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook everything, but the spaghetti squash, sauce and the baking apples all cooked together for that hour so it was just matter of waiting a bit.
In between these meals have been a lot of Mac n Cheez and hot dogs, so we're still keeping it real. ;)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Still busy, holy cow! Andrew has some big papers and projects due in the next week, which coincides with the beginning of my (hopefully permanent for winter) four 10's schedule, so my working late actually helps save him from the distraction that is a bored wife. (Wife, WEIRD).
Unless Andrew has anything else to add, the most interesting thing that happened today is our learning that I sadly need hand surgery to repair the nerve that I sliced in my thumb. Normally the surgeon wouldn't suggest surgery, but my learning falconry for work requires that I have feeling on the portion of my thumb that is numb, allowing me to know if I'm applying enough pressure to keep the bird's jesses in place. In a sense, I guess it's lucky that my current line of work requires feeling in that particular area, because I have a good chance of regaining full sensation to the left top half of my thumb, whereas otherwise I would have just had to adjust to the lack of feeling.
I also learned what a neuroma is, which forms when a nerve is damaged and which I have. My own little neuroma causes these weird shocks to shoot up my thumb whenever I extend my hand, but now that I KNOW what's causing the pain, it doesn't seem half as bad so much as it seems sort of cool. The body totally rocks.
Lastly, did you know that for nerve repair, surgeons use a suture that is 1/3rd the width of a normal human hair? The surgeon alternately described it as being as thick as three blood cells lined end to end. SO. COOL.
Surgery is set for November 23rd, giving me just enough time to not be super loopy for Thanksgiving (avec espoir).
Unless Andrew has anything else to add, the most interesting thing that happened today is our learning that I sadly need hand surgery to repair the nerve that I sliced in my thumb. Normally the surgeon wouldn't suggest surgery, but my learning falconry for work requires that I have feeling on the portion of my thumb that is numb, allowing me to know if I'm applying enough pressure to keep the bird's jesses in place. In a sense, I guess it's lucky that my current line of work requires feeling in that particular area, because I have a good chance of regaining full sensation to the left top half of my thumb, whereas otherwise I would have just had to adjust to the lack of feeling.
I also learned what a neuroma is, which forms when a nerve is damaged and which I have. My own little neuroma causes these weird shocks to shoot up my thumb whenever I extend my hand, but now that I KNOW what's causing the pain, it doesn't seem half as bad so much as it seems sort of cool. The body totally rocks.
Lastly, did you know that for nerve repair, surgeons use a suture that is 1/3rd the width of a normal human hair? The surgeon alternately described it as being as thick as three blood cells lined end to end. SO. COOL.
Surgery is set for November 23rd, giving me just enough time to not be super loopy for Thanksgiving (avec espoir).
Monday, November 1, 2010
It's been a tremendously busy week. Andrew's been furiously reading books and working on papers while I've been doing stuff at work like Halloween Hoot. Our joint weekend fell on Sunday/Monday this week, and in honor of Halloween we've been watching a lot of scary movies I've never seen before.
Even during our weekend we were productive, though! Today Andrew and I went around to various necessary organizations and I officially changed my name to Waterhouse. I even like my driver's license picture-- woot!
We're going to go buy some salmon to make poached salmon of some sort (we cleaned the apartment today as well and our cookbooks resurfaced, so Andrew is inspired). Perhaps while Andrew works on the poaching, I'll work on studying for the GRE. I've officially decided to apply to the grad program up at the U, just to see if I could get the fellowship. Fingers crossed :)
Andrew just ordered Lucy to 'K-town' (her kennel). We're working pretty hard right now to retrain her to recognize the kennel as K-town. Not teaching her this from the get-go was obviously an oversight on our part.
Even during our weekend we were productive, though! Today Andrew and I went around to various necessary organizations and I officially changed my name to Waterhouse. I even like my driver's license picture-- woot!
We're going to go buy some salmon to make poached salmon of some sort (we cleaned the apartment today as well and our cookbooks resurfaced, so Andrew is inspired). Perhaps while Andrew works on the poaching, I'll work on studying for the GRE. I've officially decided to apply to the grad program up at the U, just to see if I could get the fellowship. Fingers crossed :)
Andrew just ordered Lucy to 'K-town' (her kennel). We're working pretty hard right now to retrain her to recognize the kennel as K-town. Not teaching her this from the get-go was obviously an oversight on our part.
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