Overdoing it

I guess working out in the garden for an hour before yoga was too much because I could hardly get through today's session. I think part of the problem was I was dehydrated, even though I make sure I drank several extra glasses of water before I went outside. I finished all the water I brought to class (which usually doesn't happen) and drank two more glasses as soon as I got home. Or maybe turning 40 gallons of compost was more work than I thought.

Contests

If there's one thing I like, it's winning. I think it is genetic since everyone in my family is always entering contests. To help you out, here's a few contests you might like:

The Pioneer Woman is giving away a Lucky clothes GC. I'm not sure I'm fashionable enough for Lucky clothes, but what the heck. Better hurry though because it ends soon!

If you're a scrapbooker, Luxe Designs is giving away several packages.

Good luck!

Mystery box

Guess! Come on, guess! I picked this up at a seminar last week and put it to use immediately. When I saw the flyer for the seminar, I was thrilled. I signed up immediately, but I couldn't convince Mr. Fix-it to attend. Too bad because I went to the wrong place and had to call him to figure out where I was supposed to go. I felt bad for walking in late, but they hadn't started yet and besides, there were other people that came in later than me (not that that excuses me). I actually learned a little at the seminar, but not as much as I had hoped. I thought it was going to be three hours, but it was less than an hour and then about 45 minutes of Q&A. Not quite what was advertised. But the best was yet to come (the box shown above). Some hints? you want some hints? The contents weigh about a pound, it's moist (you might be able to tell from the photo), ummm, it's very useful, I have some already...enough hints?


Have I kept you in suspense long enough? Did you guess? Okay, here it is:

It's the worms for my new vermicomposting system. I was told it would take 30 to 45 days for the worms to digest the first layer of food. That will be just in time to add a boost to all the veggies in the garden. I've very excited about this, can you tell?

$4.17

This is getting ridiculous, a six cent increase overnight!

$4.11

That's today's gas price. Good thing I filled up over the weekend at $4.03. Anyone want to take any guesses as to when we'll hit $4.50? (I just can't bear to think about $5.)

Garden update

Look! This might not be exciting to you, but it is to me. It is a Chinese long bean seedling. Remember, I got the seeds from my mom and she got the original seeds from my grandmother. I'm soooo excited mine sprouted!

One of my eggplants bit the dust, or more accurately, the snails got to it so I replaced it with a bell pepper. I also planted some more Swiss chard (why do I think I'm going to be tired of it soon?). I posted a recipe for Swiss chard on my other blog, if you're interested. I also planted a six pack of Japanese cucumber (I never found any English cucumber seeds or seedlings). Why did I plant them all? After losing one eggplant and having another not doing so well, I decided to plant all the cucumber seedings instead of sharing them with my neighbor. If you're in the area a couple months from now, feel free to help yourself. I'm sure I'll have enough to share.

More cooking

In keeping with my quest to become a SAHW, I cooked dinner on Sunday and Monday. I can't remember the last time I cooked three days in a row, really cooking, not like pasta with jarred sauce or quesadillas (two of our go-to meals). Sunday, I made Singapore noodles, which are curried rice noodles. I didn't add enough veggies, other than that, it was tasty. It would have been good with some red bell pepper, but I was too cheap to spend $3.99 for one.

Monday, I made Japanese Mum's Chicken, really, that's what it is called. The original plan was to make a couple batches of cashew chicken, one to cook and one to freeze, but I got tired of boning and dicing the chicken thighs (next time I'm going to buy boneless, skinless thighs) and just made one batch to freeze. I used the rest of make Japanese Mum's chicken. This was also inspired by the fact that the previous day, I soaked rice threads instead of bean threads. How embarrassing! After cooking the chicken, I added the bean threads to the sauce and voila! instant side dish. Mr. Fix-it was pretty pleased with my efforts. We'll have the leftover chicken tomorrow, then we're out of leftovers and I'll have to think about cooking again.

Scrapbook sale

If you need anything (or even if you don't), there's a Memorial Day sale at Linnecards.com. 15% off of almost everything in the store. And that's off of the already discounted price. Happy shopping!

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Today I cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner...I think this is the first time I cooked three meals in one day. I never make breakfast (that's Mr. Fix-it's job), and often lunch or dinner is leftovers.

Breakfast was French toast and sausages, lunch was soup, and dinner was Mexican casserole and stir-fried spinach. I just realized it was an international meal day, lol.

This was brought on by my wanting to use up what we had in the fridge, you know, that using what you have and saving money and all that. We had some French bread that was a few days old and over a dozen eggs in the fridge. So that's what made up the French toast for breakfast. Last week, Mr. Fix-it made a roast so I chopped up the leftovers, added a can of chopped tomatoes, some beef broth that I had previously frozen, and Swiss chard from the garden and ended up with a yummy soup. We had an excess of tortillas and sour cream so I made a "Mexican" casserole, layering tortillas, enchilada sauce, refried beans, and sour cream. It came out a little too moist, but still tasty. We'll be eating that for a few days since we only ate 1/4 of the casserole.

Speaking of saving money in the kitchen, always use what you have. For today's meals, I didn't have to buy a thing. Normally, I wouldn't think of eating spinach with Mexican food, but since we needed to use it up, that's what we had and it was a tasty addition to dinner. One kitchen tip is to always have tortillas on hand. Now that I think about it, we could have had burritos with the leftover beef instead. Anyway, I hope I gave you some ideas about inexpensive cooking.

It's raining, it's pouring

Boy, is it pouring. I definitely won't need to water the garden this week. I was getting ready to put away some of my winter clothes (which just means moving them to another part of the clost) and now I'm glad I didn't.

Ouch

I just broke a tooth. Eating a piece of chicken. Not like I eating anything too tough or chewy. I hope my dentist has an opening tomorrow (I'm not in pain, that's why I'm not calling tonight). I'm not looking forward to the bill either. I'm sure that will be painful.

E-mails

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had to leave work a bit early (4:45 pm) on Friday in order to pick-up Mr. Fix-it and get to our babysitting duties on time. From then until I walked in this morning, I received 49 e-mails, plus a project schedule changed last minute, plus the people to finish this project are coming in late today, plus I won't know the status of this project until these people come in. No wonder I soooo look forward to my weekends!

Babysitting adventures

Last night, we babysat the twins while my BIL/SIL went to see my nephew's school performance. He's in preschool so they sure start young! It was a bit of a rush to get over there. Mr. Fix-it agreed to help babysit, so I had to leave work early to drive home, then drive over there. Thank goodness for the carpool lane.
My SIL seemed reluctant to have me (us) babysit so to encourage her, I gave them this for their anniversary. It is stack of 1 and 2 hour gift certificates for babysitting. The gift was really fun to make. I used a leftover Prima container (finally, I'm getting some use out of their excessive packaging) and backed the gift certificates with Bazzill Bling to give them a little extra oomph. Most of the ribbon came from my giveaway pile, so it felt good to use that up.

The girls kind of ignored me unless they wanted to be picked up; they were really interested in Mr. Fix-it. Maybe because they see him more often? Of course, he was responsible for playing with them and I was responsible for diaper changes. Little Miss C was an unhappy camper. Her mom said to let them cry it out when I put them down, but after 20 minutes of wailing, I figured something was wrong. (I can't believe her sister slept through that.) Turns out, she had a messy, very messy diaper. After a change and a bit more wailing, she went right to sleep, thank goodness.

After the musical, the family went out for ice cream. My BIL said my nephew really enjoyed his "alone" time with Mom and Dad. Poor little guy hasn't been getting as much attention since his sisters were born. I'm glad we were able to help.

Congratulations to me!

Since it was announced on her website, I can now proudly announce that I have been selected for the design team at Linnecards. I'm very excited to become more involved in the scrapping world. If you need any scrapping supplies, check out the shop. Everything is discounted and free shipping has a low minimum.

Teaser

Got some exciting news this morning. But can't spill the beans until there is an official announcement.

Communication

It is so interesting how communication has changed over the years. I remember when we would make a long-distance phone calls and time them because we didn't want to spend too much money. I remember comparing long-distance phone plans to get the best deal. Now, with free long distance on my cell phone, I don't worry about long-distance calls anymore. And when Mom calls me, I ask her to hang up and let me call her back so she doesn't have to spend any money on the call.

I communicate with some people by e-mail, others by snail mail, some by phone, some by IM or PM, but none by texting. Don't know how to, don't care about it either. Mr. Fix-it isn't interested in texting either so we don't have it on our phone plan. One problem with all these communication methods is everyone has their favorite and if you don't use that method, you might not hear back from them. And I think that's rude.

Entering the modern age

It looks like 2008 will be the year we enter the modern age of technology. I'm writing this from our new notebook, and that means we have a wireless network at home too! Woo hoo! It's about time! It amazing how impatient one can get with technology when you get something new. The computer boots soooo much faster than our desktop.

This is really Mr. Fix-it's computer, but I've been testing it out the last few days. The history and bookmarks are all scrapbook and cooking pages. I think he'll be surprised the next time he logs on, lol.

I tried to set up our network myself. Really, it should have been very easy. But I couldn't get the router to connect to the internet. The manual was useless. The router forums were almost useless because most of the solutions assumed you knew how to set up a network so the one line answers just lead to more questions. I set the MAC address, blah, blah, blah. But still no go. One of the techies at work offered to check out the router to make sure it wasn't bad so I took him up on his offer. He called me a couple nights later to get some network settings from me and it turns out there were two settings that should have been the same, but were one digit off. He didn't even ask me about those settings because he assumed they would be the same, but I noticed the difference and told him. Guess I am detail-oriented, ha! ha! So he set up my router, brought it back, and Houston, we have a wireless network! The only slightly annoying this is, he brought back my router, told me he set it up, but wouldn't tell me what he did. Guess techies like to always be one up on their colleagues. I can't complain too much since he didn't charge me anything and I trust him more than I trust geeksquad.

We're also planning on upgrading our cell phones since we want Bluetooth. Actually, I don't really care about Bluetooth, but it will make it easier for me to multitask if I don't have to hold my cellphone in my hand. Gosh, think I'll ever get an iPod someday? (I'm coveting an iPod Touch.)

Thank you

Thank yous...they are sort of an inside joke, well, I guess not anymore since I'm telling you all. I'm not supposed to thank anyone because I usually get into trouble when I do. More on that later.

First, thank you to the guy who blew me a kiss. I didn't think that leaving you space to pull out of the parking lot was that big a deal, but hey, I'll take that kiss! And thank you to the lady who let me go ahead of her in line since I only had a few things to buy compared to her basketful. And should I thank my friend for her lovely thank you card? Yeah, I guess a thank you for a thank you could turn into an endless cycle. None the less, I'm thankful to have her as a friend.

As for why I can't thank anyone? Well, maybe just not at work. Many years ago, I thanked someone for helping me with a project (he did an extra good job). But I didn't thank anyone else so they all got bent out of shape, emails flew back and forth, and I was so upset by it all, I swore never to thank anyone again. But, I like to live dangerously and ended up sending a thank you e-mail again. Worded very carefully so as not to offend, to be all inclusive, and be casual, yet professional. Yep, offended someone else. This time, all the recipients and their managers were happy. But others felt I had raised the bar and now thank you notes would be expected by all. So now, no more sincere thank yous. I still thank people at work, but it really isn't very sincere. More like, "Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I have a question about the second bullet point, blah, blah, blah."

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog!

Jury duty

Yep, that's how I spent my day. Right in the midst of our busy season and I have a project due this week. But, when I got the summons, I didn't have this project and we weren't quite as busy. I was a bit frantic last week trying to make sure I got as much done as possible and yesterday I left extensive notes for everyone in case I was selected as a juror.

This time, I had to go to Superior Court rather than the local court I had been to before. In some ways, it was a nicer experience. The juror room was huge with comfy chairs, several tables, and computer corrals. (I hope someone enjoys the current magazines I finished reading and left behind.) The cafeteria was small, but serviceable. There is much more activity, which made the experience more interesting.

I am so proud of my fellow citizens. There wasn't anyone who gave excuses about it being a hardship. No one who brought their children. Not too many complaints about the time. A few times, we had to self select based on the criteria they read off (not that they didn't have our info) and people lined up to go to the various courtrooms without complaint. So while I'm happy I wasn't selected for a jury, I am also happy to have served my civic duty and happy that we have the 6th and 7th Amendments.