Monday, January 30, 2012

I'm at work now.

What I am reading tonight:

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel

This is a recommendation from Diana, and it's pretty good. It's the same old thing, i.e. witches, vampires, demons, but it's well written and I'm enjoying it. I'm also reading yet another diet book, and re-reading the second Stephanie Plum book.

What I'm knitting today:

I was going to bring the sweater I'm knitting for Maddy, but oops, I forgot, so all I have is my purse knitting, which is a sock in the Little Arrowhead pattern by Nancy Bush. I don't think I have enough yarn left on this skein to get me through the whole night at work, so I might have to use something from the Emergency Knitting Stash I keep in a drawer at work.

Tonight we all went to yoga class, and by 'all' I mean Rachel, Kim, and I, aas well as Laura and Shelley. The Monday night class is always big, and the whole Y must have been busy because the parking lot was full! Ash reported that he had a hard time getting a machine to work on because so many people were working out downstairs. It will be nice when all those people who made New Years resolutions give up on exersizing!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Who wants to be haunted?

So Rachel called me just now as she was walking over to the grocery store across the field from her backyard in the middle of the night. (Probably about 100 yards away.)

I told her it was dangerous, but if anything happened to her I would be comforted knowing that I was the last person who talked to her. Then I suggested that she should come back from beyond to contact me.

Rachel said if she was going to contact anyone from beyond it would be Kim, because it would be fun to freak her out. I had to agree that it would be funny if she contacted Kim, because Kim is the one who watches those stupid ghost hunting shows on TV, and she is so interested in the paranormal.

Fortunately Rachel got home safely, so it doesn't matter now.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

In which I don't even try to catch up.

How much I walked today:

The hospital has a walking program for all of the employees this year, and our goal is to walk 10 miles a week, or two miles a day, five times a week. Yesterday Kim and I walked our two miles, but today we went to visit with Maddy for an hour instead. Tomorrow we'll get that walk again!

What I cooked today:

Kim wanted some rice with meat and vegetables like she ate in Taiwan almost every day, so I made chicken with sauteed vegetables for her, and cooked some white rice in the rice cooker. (I like brown rice better, but I was out of it, and anyway, white rice is more Asian!) It turned out very well, and Kim said it was like what the cooks at the school made for lunch.

And I made bread!

I downloaded a free book for my Kindle with recipes for breads that you mix up and refridgerate until you are ready to bake them - at least 8 hours and up to five days! I liked the idea of making bread that I could set aside until I was ready to make it, so I mixed up a batch two days ago and baked it yesterday. These breads don't have to be kneaded, and they only need to rise once, so they are less labor-intensive. The bread from that first batch was okay, but it was white bread, and I like whole wheat better, so today I looked online to find an article I read a couple of years ago on making artisan bread in 5 minutes a day.

The article mentioned the bread cookbook written by the author of the article, and I remembered that I bought that cookbook after I read the article, but I never made any of the bread in the book. My cookbook cupboard is full, so it will requre a search to find it!

So tonight I made the basic dough recipe from the article in Mother Earth News and tomorrow I'll try baking a loaf. I'm excited about this, and if it's good, we'll have bread for a week, because the recipe makes enough dough to bake eight loaves!

What Maddy was doing tonight:

When Kim and I went to see Maddy, she was watching her favorite TV show, Phineas and Ferb, and drinking some juice. While we were there, she brought Big Bear out of her room, and Kim recognized him as Mr. Bearington, who had been her bear until she went to Taiwan. Maddy also showed us her new dog that she can pull around on a string, and she offered the dog a sip of her juice. Later she offered the dog her binky, too. I don't know why she thinks a dog would want her binky.