Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

So, life should be back to normal, whatever that is, after house sales and moving apartments and pie palooza.

But it’s been a busy week, and I have a cold and “reading the news, and it sure looks bad”, like the Joni Mitchell song says. Way too much Paul Ryan, dismantling various WI clean government entities, like campaign finance and the government accountability board.

Let’s see if I can even remember what happened this week. Monday I managed to get out for a walk before work. I had a meeting on Bascom Hill that went to 12:30, and I walked a little more up State Street to get some lotion and fancy soap and cash. I stopped for an iced honey latte at Colectivo. The last time I got one it was perfect – cold, milky, sweet, but not too sweet. This one was way too sweet. I watched the barista make it – she had the plastic cup filled with ice and milk, OK, and the honey in a little measuring cup, into which she poured the hot coffee shots to melt it, also OK. But it looked there was at least three tablespoons of honey, maybe a quarter of a cup of honey – no wonder it was too sweet. I drank half and poured it out. I think I had a salad for supper and made pumpkin muffins, to use up the pumpkin, the last carton frozen last winter, that I started using for the pumpkin scones last weekend. There’re still a few left in the fridge.

Tuesday I had a funny back and forth day. Started off in the office, only one meeting at 10:15. I took the muffins and the last of the scones to work with me, and good thing too, as we shall see. I headed home to be there at 3:00 to let the cleaning lady in and pay her, and to grab my carefully packed dinner to take back to work with me. Where I needed to be until 8:00 PM, to help run an info session in Adobe Connect for prospective students interested in our online masters degree. In which we had about every possible technical glitch. I logged in about 15 minutes in advance which should have been enough, but my Adobe Connect chose that moment to update. I should have noticed that the icon on my phone had got different from the one on my computer. Then the director had no sound. Lots of background noise and feedback. And I forgot to start the recording, but we all agreed that a clean recording later would be better. And I forgot my dinner – I had a scone and an apple instead of the soup and bread with pepperonata I had packed.

Wednesday I has an 8:30 meeting. I walked in because I thought it was going to rain. After the meeting, I needed to do major catch-up in the “how-to-teach-good-online” course I’m in – if I complete at least most of the work, I get a big stipend that I can use for travel. I had a student logging in (from Qatar) at noon (about 8:00 PM her time) for an online help session, then a 2:00 meeting. I headed home – I started walking but the bus went by and I got on – and got my bike and went and bought some milk, since there wasn’t even enough for the next day’s latte. Then I made a big stir fry for supper, and and got upstairs in time to meet the next student who needed help. (They’re hand coding small websites, and I have offered individual coding help by screen sharing) Her questions were easy so I had time to eat before class. Then another student after class – which meant I was working until 9:30 PM.

Either Tuesday or Wednesday I sat at the kitchen counter and had a microwave S’more – I’m guessing it was Tuesday, of the forgotten dinner.

Thursday it was 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM meetings. I drove over to pick up my CSA box, the one I was making the crazy mixed up stirfry in anticipation of, because I was feeling the effects of my head cold. It was a good box: a head of Savoy cabbage, a small Butternut squash, 2 big leeks, a bag of carrots, 4 or 5 frying peppers and 2 poblanos, a head of garlic, a smallish cauliflower and two nice trees of broccoli. I could only be a tiny bit disappointed, because in the newsletter they had pictures of gold and purple cauliflower and the fractal vegetable Romanesco broccoli – and I just got normal stuff – white cauliflower and regular green broccoli. Still nice stuff. I had one last student help session, and then I ate leftover pumpkin pie from pie palooza, and collapsed on the couch.

Which seemed to help my cold a lot – on Friday I felt much better. I felt relatively prepared for the f2f meeting for my “how-to-teach-good-online” course; I got enough work done so that I left work before 5:00 (I mean it was about 4:50, but that’s still before 5:00). It was really raining, so I left my bike and computer at work to be picked up on Saturday.

We went to see the Steve Jobs movie. I liked it better once I figured out it wasn’t comprehensive, just the events around the Mac launch in 1984, NeXT in 1990, and iMac in 1998. When we got back, I baked dark sticky gingerbread to take to Steve & Heike’s – we were planning to go see their new house either Saturday or Sunday. And, in more anticipatory cooking, I put a pork roast in the oven that was the last piece of meat from the last pig we bought last winter – this year, I’m going in with 3 other families on a whole pig. Anyways, it was an overnight slow roast – basically like this from Food52 – and man, did it make some good pig.

On Saturday, Mark and I had pulled pork sandwiches on big buns with coleslaw (remember, Savoy cabbage in my CSA box) and pickles. They were so good that Mark packed one to take to Chicago – and he usually doesn’t like to pack food. We also went to book fest stuff – we saw David Maraniss talking about his book about Detroit. we had to sit out in the overflow seats and watch on TV, but it was OK. Stu Levitan asked a good question – “what do you think might’ve happened if Detroit got the 1968 Olympics?”

I think I get to have another sandwich as my reward for making it through Monday dinner, and maybe I’ll get better pics then.

Sunday we went out to see Steve & Heike’s new house out on the Northside. It’s right by the house where I lived for about 9 months in 1986, the period when Jeff & broke up, until we started seeing each other again, to go to Dead shows, mostly – and I got pregnant with John and we got married. On Sunday we walked around in the nature preserve and behind Dane County Human Services, which is grand old building and a county park, where I used to go for foster parent classes, oblivious to how close it was to where I once lived. We ate the gingerbread with some apple-pear sauce I made from the not so great pears I got at the farmers Market Saturday, and one of each variety of apple I had in the fridge. I smoothed it out with the immersion blender and it was perfect with the gingerbread.