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  • Sunday Update

    Woke up at 7.  Did my exercises.  Blogged, read email and tried to catch up.


    Oatmeal for breakfast.  It takes about 40 minutes to make it so I cook up four servings.  One to eat today and three others for the following mornings.  The best tasting one is always the first.  I put a little sugar and nutmeg on it.


    Spent the rest of the morning watching television, mostly programs about needlepoint and crochet. 


    For lunch I made salad with greens, carrots, grapes, celery and cooked, sliced chicken breast.  I baked it in the toaster oven for about an hour.  I didn't want to use the real oven because it annoys me.  It clicks whenever it is on.  I should hire someone to repair it.  Just because it's been this way for five years doesn't mean we can't fix it.


    After lunch we watched more TV.  I also unpacked my luggage.  Yeah, I should have done it yesterday but I was too wiped out.


    I wrote up a grocery list for ingredients for about 5 dishes I would like to cook in the coming week, but when we got to the supermarket, I realized I had left it at home. 


    However, being too stingy to waste gas driving back to retrieve it, I approached it as a memoery exercise. We checked off the ingredients from the list when we go home and found I had brought back only 1.25 lb of ground chicken, instead of the 2 lb on the list.  Not perfect, but not a calamity either.


    After watching more television, I started dinner and we should be sitting down to eat pretty soon.



    • Salad Caprese

    • Corny Corn Bread

    • Chicken Veggie One Pot

  • Home Again, Home Again

    Got back home this afternoon. 


    It was a good vacation; no one died and no late night ER visits.


    Need a day to decompress.

  • Alpine Update

    Not Switzerland but Texas...


    Visiting Grandparents.  Was planning to take them to Oklahoma for a reunion but Grandma is not feeling well so we took her to the doctor on Monday and he put her on antibiotics.  So we cancelled the trip.


    No Verizon service in this town anymore, so my mobile phone does not work at all.  Grumpy.


    Am getting a lot of crochet done.  I made a couple of carrots, strawberries, sandwich cookies and two mice.  Now I am working on a stuffed animal dog.

  • Film Update

    Film synchronicity moment: Seeing the famous mime Marcel Marceau in Silent Movie after watching an interpretation of the father of mime Baptiste Debureau in Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis).


    Sadly, that was the best part of Silent Movie.

  • Book Meme Update



    You're Prufrock and Other Observations!
    by T.S. Eliot
    Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic
    and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying
    to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you've really
    heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons.

    Take the Book Quiz
    at the Blue Pyramid.

  • Saturday AM Exercise Update

    Focus: Lower Body Strength
    Length: 30 min.
    avg bpm: 139
    max bpm: 152
    Exercise of the Day: Rotating Lunge (l & r)


    You put your right foot up
    You put your right foot back
    You put your right foot to the upper right
    You put your right foot back
    You put your right foot to the side
    You put your right foot back
    You put your right foot behind
    You put your right foot back
    Repeat 7 more times, then do the hokey pokey while you rest.
    Repeat with your left foot.

  • Friday PM Exercise Update

    Since I didn't have time to exercise in the morning, who says I can't exercise after I get home from work?


    Focus: Core Body Strength
    Length: 30 min.
    avg bpm: 138
    maz bpm: 169
    Exercise of the Day:  Side Plank (r & l)


    I thought I had seen all the planks before but she hit me with a new one.  Kneel, then put both hands on the ground and strech out your legs.  Then pivot and rest on one arm while pointing the other to the sky.  Keep your back and legs and head in one line.  Basically you are like the letter T that has fallen on its side.  Hold for 15 seconds, then go back to the starting position.  Rest, then repeat on the other side.


    Yesterday, I went to the dentist for my 6 month check up.  No cavities!  That makes two visits in a row.  Have to keep brushing to keep up this winning streak.  My reward?  The money that stays in my pocket since I don't need a filling, crown or what have you.

  • What's your favorite childhood memory?

    It was summer and my parents drove us down to visit my mother's parents in New Mexico.  We all stayed in a motel that had pictures of huge cute insects painted on its outside wall.  I remember there being a lady bug.  And we all had a good time.  I also remember my father's parents being there as well, but I could be mixing up different memories.  I distinctly remember eating at restaurant and having sopapillas for dessert.  I now know it was also called Indian fry bread.  I got to have them again in NM when Chuk and I did our road trip from California to Texas, so it was a little nostalgic.
       

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  • Book Update

    I finished Nature Girl by Carl Hiassen.


    Honey Santana and her son Fry are interupted during dinner by a telemarketer who upsets the mother so much that she hatches a hair brained scheme of revenge that changes the lives of not just them, but several other characters including Tigertail (half Seminole on the run), Gillian (bored sorority girl), a horny fishmonger, a private investigator, and even members of a cult. 


    I really enjoyed how the author brought people from so many different walks of life into one convoluted story, with plot twists upon twists.  This, interspersed with beautiful descriptions of rural south Florida.


    There is violence, adult language and adult situations, so I don't recommend this to young adults, but it is a nice change from Harry Potter. 

  • Cooking Update

    I just spent  5 hours on this recipe for ratatouille.  Yes, the recipe is not named ratatouille, but that's what they made in the movie.  Sorry, should I have put a spoiler alert before that?


    Frankly, I don't know if all that time was worth it.  Granted 2.5 hours of it was spent baking it in the oven.  However, it  proved to be much more watery than I expected.  I did like the vinagrette sprinkled on at the end.


    Now that I have attempted this recipe, I think I could shave an hour off by organizing my time better, but even so, that's a lot of time for a vegetable dish that has only 4 servings.  Perhaps, I could do a double batch, or I could come up with a way to introduce a vingrette into my recipe.


    I call it my recipe, but it's the one from the Time Life cook book on French provincial cuisine that Julia Child edited.