Thursday, January 26, 2012
Whatever that is – My brother’s writing about the string of snow days in Seattle that disrupted his schedule, and I’m in Madison still feeling conference-time-shifted. For me, rather than snow storms, I think it’s the perfect storm of a long weekend in Dallas, including one twilight zone day, (capped off by Mark’s bout with food poisoning) plus the start of a new semester, plus we have a new exchange student (also at loose ends, patiently waiting for second semester to start at high school – Jan. 30th), plus the off winter weather we’ve been having. We finally got some real snow, but we’ve also had ice and rain and temperatures in the mid-30s in the daytime.
My main complaint is the utter inability to know what day it is – I missed Wednesday somehow.
Got back late Monday night to kitty-trampled kitchen counters, and stacks of mail. Today was trash and recycle day, so the kitchen’s looking more normal – I even dumped the compost twice – one advantage of the warmer winter – the compost bin doesn’t freeze closed – but I could do without there still being alive, flying bugs in there in NOVEMBER.
Tonight there’s noodle casseroles for dinner at the supper club – turkey and broccoli-mushroom – spinach salad and fruit salad and cookies. Both recipes made vats – I had to do overflow small pans, beyond the 13 x 9 x 2 I had planned for each. Maybe I’ll get a few pix, but given my usual habits, would that be a sign of normalcy, or ab-?
Half bagel on messy desk atop teetering pile of grad school applications I need to read
PS, as per usual, I guess – even though it was an exceptionally nice dinner group, pleasant conversation, several new members – only one picture from the dinner, and it’s of leftovers the next day:
Ginger cookies & chocolate chip - there were some rugelach too, but we ate 'em before they could get leftover
Mark seems to have gotten a case of food poisoning. We went to a place called Villa-O, kind of organic Italian. It was a little noisy, but we liked it. We ate different entrees – I had scallops with a fennel crust served on top of basil vinaigrette with arugula & tomatoes & a few fried potatoes, Mark had the Waygu beef Bolognaise on top of their homemade penne. We shared pizza bread and I had a few bites of Mark’s wedge salad with bacon and creamy Gorgonzola dressing, and we both ate focaccia with herbed oil from a bottle on the table. I tasted Mark’s pasta and he ate a little of my scallops. We cabbed back to the hotel – our driver, who was listening to coverage of the South Carolina Republican primary on NPR, thought Newt Gingrich is going to be the next president – he saw it in a dream. We watched TV for a bit, the remote crapped out, and Mark starting throwing up at about 9:00 p.m. That’s actually how I knew he was sick – Mark’s not, as are virtually all males – not likely to be stumped by a remote. One minute he was standing there with the remote in his hand looking baffled, the next, lunging for the bathroom, and stomach-emptying sounds ensued. I’m not sick. I suspect the oil, or the meat sauce. Or the salad – but not the Gorgonzola cheese, despite the fact that Mayo Clinic told Mark it was the culprit.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
So far, this is the conference day when nothing’s turned out as expected. First, the meeting in a private suite in my hotel with recruiters from a big library consortium, to talk about placing library school students from my school in fellowships & internships, turned out to be from 9:00 – 11:00 instead of 10:00 – 11:00 like I thought. Then I trekked up to one of the most far away hotels, for another meeting and once I located the empty locked meeting room, realized it’s tomorrow. I was already 20 minutes late for any of the other things I could have gone to in that time slot, plus I was a 20-minute walk away. So I found another of Dallas’s subterranean Starbucks with really well-hidden bathrooms – I assume to protect them from street people. You had to go up a closed escalator and ask the security cop – who directed you to the bathrooms behind an unmarked door.
I had signed up for a lunch – so went and got food, and then proceeded to my next meeting, one where I thought I was my division’s liaison to a larger organizational committee. And there was another person already there in the role. We worked it out without blood after – this was my last meeting; he’ll start now – but I still have to write the report. Shucks.
Not sure what can happen next – here are some pix from last night and today.
I’m in Dallas for the librarians’ conference. On the way, I was stuck in the Denver airport for about an extra hour – Frontier airlines seemed to have lost our pilot, so my plane that was to have taken off at 1:05 didn’t leave until more like 2:30. And why I had to go from Madison WI to Dallas TX by way of Denver is a mystery only Frontier knows the answer to – a symptom of our shrinking airline market – the airlines are all buying each other, so as a consumer, I have less choices of when and how I want to get anywhere. The plane just sat at the gate with its cute little raccoon tail & all. The advantage to the delay is that I got enough work done on my online course so I could send a welcome email to students, telling them a little about what to expect when the course opens on Monday the 23rd.
And I got to do nature photography of the birds that live on gate A30 in the Denver airport.
I rode the train into Dallas, which took about 2 hours – 2 buses from the airport to the train station, and then the train ride itself – but when I stepped off at the final station, I could see my hotel. When I got to the hotel lobby, the line to get checked in was ridiculous, so I left my bags with the bellman, and went for a drink. Even that was little difficult – had to go to the wine bar in the chop house, because the sports bar was too full. And when I opened my credit card wallet to pay for the wine, one of my cards was missing. After some minor panic, I figured out that I used that card to pay my bag fee when I checked in for my flight when I was still in PJs at home, and eventually Mark found the card in the pocket of my sweatshirt, that was hanging on the bathroom door, safe at home.
I did a little searching for pizza, but the better sounding places didn’t deliver, so I went with the bellman’s suggestion – and got a roasted corn pizza and an iceberg lettuce salad for about $15 – and 2 room service beers for another $16. And watched The Sting on TV. Pretty standard for a first-night-at-conference hotel night, except usually I’m with Mark.
This morning I had to get up 15 minutes early to shave my legs – it’s too warm in Texas for leggings or tights. And I did my Rodney Yee a.m. yoga DVD, too. I found the closet Starbucks – subterranean, in a shopping mall under a big bank building – 2 ways to get there – from the bank plaza or enter the parking ramp of another building across the street. And I took pictures of the leftover giant Christmas tree ornaments that are still decorating the lawn outside my hotel – sitting on brown sod.
Since Thursday’s dinner, as usual, I’ve been using up leftovers for meals en famille. We are hosting an AFS student from the Netherlands this semester, and she arrived on Friday night. We ate the Spanish country soup that Mark made last weekend (for the Downton Abbey 2-hour season premiere), along with leftover borscht and cheese bread and black bread and veggies & dip. Saturday morning, after the farmers market, I made pumpkin-dried cranberry muffins for breakfast. Saturday evening, our Dutch student met up with some other international students – who came in the fall – and went to the West HS basketball game. So she and I snacked on boiled eggs and beets and cheese (some purchased at the indoor market that morning). Later, after the game, we had streusel-topped apple pie with ice cream. I still think it’s a little too much streusel.
Since today is Sunday of a three day weekend, we are being a little lazy. Waiting for it to warm up to pursue outdoor activities, and trying to activate an old iPhone for our student. Ethan got picked up at 8:00 to drive back to Minnesota and college with his mom. I folded laundry, and made cherry-stuffed French toast for breakfast. I’m going to have to do actual work work later today, setting up my online courses that will start on January 23rd while I am at the ALA conference. And of course, all Wisconsin is in anticipation for the Packers/Giants game this afternoon.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
I was kind of a couch potato, again – but maybe a little more productive than Monday – baked the rye bread for the soup dinner Thursday. Which served nicely as my excuse for hanging on the couch, waiting for it to rise, and then bake. I realized in the morning that there was a quasi-work writing project I should have attended to Tuesday night, but oh well – just have to get to that Real Soon Now™. One loaf of the rye bread came out perfectly shaped, but its brother is misshapen. Tonight I’ll be prepping all the rest of the menu, so I’ll be sure to add more pictures later on.
One deserves such things, right? I worked until 5:30, then took the bus instead of walking. I didn’t do a yoga DVD. I made myself a nice little dinner – the last of the mushroom soup from last week (tho I only ate a few spoons, seemed to have lost its appeal – the mushroom slices were too hard, the milky broth was starting to seem too much like a cream sauce instead of soup), two slices of my own multi-grain bread with Jaarlsberg melted on, and a small spinach salad with a boiled egg & purple onions that had soaked in vinegar and more mushrooms, marinated, these ones. So the salad was actually a little over-dressed – but the best tasting component of my dinner, I thought. But then I spoiled it by munching up a couple of peppermint pats that were lying around, followed by plopping on the couch with a new cooking magazine, tea and 5 oreos.
And cats -
Cats & my feet on the couch
Posted from my iPhone, picture & all – tho I edited the picture next day on my laptop
My winter break got cut short by my unhappy discovery that our syllabi for spring term classes are due Jan 10 – I was operating on the blissful assumption that I had till the 17th.
So I’ve spent way too much of the weekend on the computer, trying to get the syllabi for my two courses written. They’re courses I’ve taught before, but I always want to update and add new material and readings … sometime I wish I could be one of those profs that just teach the same thing year after year …
I got out for a walk this morning with Rach – high 30s and sunny, no snow anywhere – it’d be just right if we were in Colorado, like in Boulder, NOT in the mountains. john posted a sleepy cat picture – wish I coulda spent more of the weekend like this, but I guess I did spend a lot of last night on the couch with cats holding me down. I watched the movie about Valerie Plame and only tuned into Saturday night life for a few minutes to hear Kelly Clarkson sing ger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” – which I guess was her first number. She’s not really my kind of thing, politically OR musically, but definitely one of those ear worm kind of songs – here’s the link to see her on Hulu, courtesy Rolling Stone.
We had a scrambler for breakfast, sweet potato, onions, Matt Smith’s spinach, Boursin (leftover from the cookie party), along with bacon and fresh bagels that I brought back from my walk.
Mark’s making soup for dinner – Ovens of Brittany Spanish Country Soup. It smells good. I made cup custards to eat with the last of the Moravian ginger thins – and Downton Abbey season 2 first episode. I seem to have gotten the custards out of the oven on time – they’re just the right jiggly-ness. Wish I could photograph the smell.
Cup custards cooling on a towel
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Looks like my Johnny Depp tag is getting too small, so thought I better do a Johnny post.
I am allowed to think Johnny’s cute, because he looks like my older son.
Johnny & Johnny
I am looking forward to the movie version of Dark Shadows. The original was on afternoon TV when I was in grade school. I liked it but I’m not sure why – no fang, no color, no action. So surely the Depp & Tim Burton version will be even more fun. I somehow missed Rum Diary, it was in and out of the theaters here in Madison pretty quick. But I’ll get it on Netflix or cable, eventually.
