trees, gourds and sprouts. and a car.

Things going on:

We bought a new car! Huzzah!

Andrew's starting making terrible engine noises on the way back from WI a few weeks back. After checking it out, it was either 1: new engine or 2: new car. Considering the body of his car was in pretty bad shape and we were thinking about getting a new car sometime in the next year anyway... new car it is!

Car shopping is a huge pain in the ass. You spend a lot of time looking on websites to find vehicles in your price and mileage range, then go to the car lot to see that the car is in worse condition than it looked online or that it's been sold already. We were very close to buying a different car and while we were giving the dealer 36 hours to think about putting new tires on it, someone else bought the car. That was disappointing, but I really like the car we bought and it's in great condition and has less miles than the other car. So go us!

Since our evenings were consumed with car researching/test driving/buying for the past two weeks, the house pretty much went to shit. I only finished the last of the Massive Pile of dishes yesterday (it was so massive that it deserves uppercase). It didn't help that we needed to continue to eat, thus adding to the Massive Pile. We also had a Big-Ass Pile of laundry, but we did that on Sunday.

I opened up a retirement account - woo! Considering the economy is shit, I'm in a pretty aggressive fund, hoping that by the time I retire at 88, I'll have enough to pay for a mediocre old folk's farm. I'm not betting that Sam will take care of me in my old age... he seems pretty thankless.

Sam spends a lot of time sitting or trying to sit on our laps.

Ok, that's Dia. I took that to make Sam jealous.

Andrew cut down this big ass tree and we want to make a cutting board from the wood cookie:

For scale.

Although that little shit has been taking bites out of the bark. I found him chewing on a hunk of bark just this morning.

I just made a batch of acorn squash seeds using my patented "forget about them and remember in a panic" method. They are pretty damn tasty. I'm going to try gnocchi this afternoon.

I bought a pumpkin at the store and made pumpkin puree. I haven't used it for anything yet, so I'm open to suggestions of pumpkin-flavored deliciousness.

I also bought two stalks(? sprouts?) of Brussels sprouts at the farmers market while I was on the way home from a happy hour last week. Impluse purchase? No, never. Not when it comes to Brussels sprouts. We're down to one last serving of sprouts from the two stalks, so that'll be my lunch today.

Ok, there's a finale episode of Project Runway that's calling my name, so time to go cook sprouts and make gnocchi. Bacher out.

camping

A story in pictures.



(ok, this one is in here because Sam had a leaf hanging from his mouth.)




The end.

how to make perfect roasted squash seeds

My secret tip to cooking perfect squash/pumpkin seeds?

Rinse/salt the seeds. Put the oven at 200 degrees. Leave the seeds in the oven and literally forget about them. While getting a drink of water before going to bed, realize you forgot the seeds were in the oven and take them out in a panic. Enjoy!

Perfect, seriously.

the chicken and i

Step one: Get a chicken.



Step two: Cut the chicken apart.


Step three: Make stuff from the chicken for later.


Step four: Eat stuff from the chicken now.


Step five: Repeat.

sam gets excited about popcorn

One of Sam's favorite foods is popcorn.



You'll notice he body-checks me at 21 seconds and Andrew at 27 seconds.

the fall closet purge

Purge of 2011 update:

Still have half a bottle of buffalo sauce in my fridge. I gotta use that up, asap. I did, however, use up all the little mini shampoo bottles that I've had for years. Success! I'm slogging through using up the bars of soap, which doesn't go quite so fast.

Another fun purge was getting rid of all my pants.

Seriously, I got rid of every pair of jeans I own. They either 1: didn't fit me or 2: had holes in them or 3: didn't fit me AND had holes in them. After some bargain shopping, sister's closet shopping and regular shopping, I now have 3 pairs of non-holey jeans that all fit. A miracle! (Don't worry, Kari, I only borrowed one pair of jeans because yours are usually too short for me. I think they're too big for you now anyway.)

I also purged some dress pants I really liked. They're black with blue pinstripes that I found on sale at Old Navy. I love the blue pinstripes, but they were just way too baggy and my legs were drowning in all the fabric. My momma did buy me some new pinstripe pants when I was home this weekend, so huzzah for that!

So we'll be making a Goodwill trip in the near future and hopefully getting rid of some junk that's been riding around in Andrew's trunk for months. Let's see if I can convince him to part with the 1950's gas camping grill that he got while cleaning out his grandparent's old house. We've had it for 18 months, never used it (just like his grandparents never used it) and it has just sat around in our apartment and then in his trunk. I say the statute of limitations is up and if we haven't used it yet, we're not going to use it in the future.

We did go to Green Bay this past weekend, which was fun and relaxing. The dogs played around a ton and I think Sam is still recovering from the weekend. I forgot to bring my camera so there are no pictures, unfortunately. Up for this weekend: Andrew's probably going to the Ren Fest with his brother and I'm hitting up a beer fest with Amy.

I did take some pictures of Sam being goofy, but what's different about that?






One of these days, I'm going to stop thinking everything he does is picture-worthy, but unfortunately for you, that day hasn't happened yet.

Bacher out.

i was running.

I went out for a long run this morning, aiming for 11 miles. It went well; I felt pretty consistent through most of it. I went down to the Midtown Greenway, connected to the Cedar Lake Trail, (which is quickly become one of my favorite running paths), ran along the river, went past Gold Medal park and the Guthrie, then headed back south to my apartment. The scenery is great - you run through woods, through prairies, through urban areas, along a river and over a bridge. Nearly everything you can think of for scenery.

After crossing the river to Northeast, I was chugging along on the path next to the river and there were a lot more people than usual in the area. It seems they were having a 5k race that morning. Which is all fine and dandy, until I realize that the starting line of the race was in my path and the race route went over the river on the Stone Arch Bridge, which was where I wanted to cross back. As I get close to the bridge and the crowd of people, I hear "We're about to begin! One minute until the start of the race!" So I join this race for the first quarter mile across the bridge, then peeled off in the opposite direction to run up a really, big-ass hill.

Other things I've seen while running: A bike accident with an ambulance team, wedding photography, a marching band playing Lady Gaga before the Pride parade, countless crowds for Twins games, some middle aged dude who yelled "Yeah! Yale!" as I wore my Forestry sweatshirt.

Tuesday I took Sam out for his very first run with me. He did very well and wasn't too distracted by squirrels and birds. I took a water bottle to give him water while we ran, which helped him cool down. We did 2.6 miles (including some water breaks) and he was definitely into it. He was speeding up during the last quarter mile to the point where I was sprinting to keep up. I could feel it the next day; it was definitely a good speedy run. I think Sam liked it; after we were done he had lots of energy - almost like his own runner's high - and then he crashed and was tired, tired, tired. We're going to go again on Monday.

The only new picture I have is of a scratch under his eye. He got it from the dog park yesterday; a couple of dogs were rough-housing around with him and one must have got him with their teeth. Sam seems to be fine, so I'm not worried.


It's that spot underneath his right eye. He wouldn't sit still for a picture.

Bacher out.