Several disjointed thoughts

We had our Amandla holiday party yesterday. It was good times, and good food. I had fun with my camera there.

I'm toying with the idea of moving my blog to our website (www.caitlinandsam.com) and using Wordpress to update it, but as of right now the blog will be right here because I can't figure it out. Maybe someday. Maybe someday I'll update the website from the "coming soon" iWeb page I set up. Actually, I could update it much sooner, except I think Bob messed with the site and I can't get iWeb to update it. That's not to say that Bob messed it up. I think he just Caitlin-proofed it.

This picture relaxes me a lot. I'm not entirely sure why. I like the colors. It is currently my computer background and it makes me happy when I'm eating lunch at my desk at work.

Lily is precious. That's not news, but I still wanted to share the preciousness.

I mean, look at those eyes! They slay me every time. How could you not love that?

I guess you could not love that if it were biting your heels, barking incessantly, humping your leg and pooping on your welcome mat. Those eyes just help you get over it quicker.

Homemade Pasta

My most recent culinary experiment has actually been on my to-do list for quite some time. The food blogs I read always rave about how delicious homemade pasta is and how easy it is to make, so I decided to give it a try about a week ago. For a first attempt, I think it actually came out quite good!

I made a very simple pasta dough with only flour, salt and egg. The dough really is very easy to make. Then I let it rest for about half an hour while I boiled the water and made up the sauce. I just rolled it out on the counter with my rolling pin and sliced it into thin-ish strips. It was a lot stretchier than I'd expected, like rolling out pizza dough. I had a hard time rolling it super-thin (though I might have been able to get it a bit thinner if I had more patience and wasn't hungry) so the pasta was a bit on the thick side. I actually found it to be an interesting change from regular dried pasta. After cutting it I boiled it for about 5 minutes in salted water and then tossed it with the sauce.

For the sauce I wanted to make sure I wasn't overpowering the pasta with a thick red sauce. Everything I've ever read about homemade pasta has recommended a very light butter or olive oil sauce so that you can really taste the pasta. I wanted to bring lots of veggies into this meal (I've been getting lazy lately with all the work stress about eating balanced meals) so I decided to use some of the brussels sprouts I'd stocked up on earlier this year. I had seen a recipe somewhere for shaved brussels sprout salad that sounded intriguing, since I'd never thought to not eat the sprouts whole, so I decided to slice the sprouts thinly and saute them. I chopped up half of a red onion to go with them, since I believe that it's not a meal if it doesn't have onion in it. I sauteed this up with olive oil and added "special" butter (the good stuff from the farmers market) at the end. I decided it needed a little something more so I mixed in a bunch of frozen basil.

Overall I think it came out quite good! In the future I'll try to roll the pasta out more and I'll also try using the mandoline to slice the brussels sprouts thinner. Overall though, I think it was a very successful first attempt at pasta!

In other news, happy Hanukkah!

Some people call in sick...

This morning I was joking about wanting to call in cold.

But instead, I called in wrecked. Sorry, J.D.

So much for posting every day in December. I guess I'm going to have to change my resolution from every day to almost every day. Actually, I think it would be an improvement if I just post a couple of times in December. That'd be better than November, or October.

Work has been quite stressful as of late. All of a sudden I'm being asked to do a large amount of advance planning in a short amount of time (I need to be two weeks ahead by Monday) and advance planning is not something I do well. It just feels like such a colossal waste of time because I'm just going to end up changing everything in a week anyways, when I find what works and what doesn't work. But I don't really have a choice since no-one at work seems to be listening to what I'm saying. So two weeks of half-assed lesson plans it is.

On a happier note, someone found my glove! I'd lost one of my favorite heavily lined leather gloves (that used to be Bob's or his roommate's ROTC uniform gloves). I wear them all the time and they're the most amazing thing for winter biking. Keep the wind out beautifully and keep my hands nice and toasty. They were starting to get perfectly broken in and fit like... well, like gloves. I actually observed this to Sam and then immediately commented that now would be when I lose one of them. And lo and behold, a few days later one goes missing. I was heartbroken! Just this morning Sam found it carefully placed on a box on our back patio. I must have dropped it bringing Lily in from a walk and one of our neighbors found it. I'm so happy!

Now, time to plan until I lose my mind.

Grades

My students' grades fascinate me sometimes. I love seeing them fluctuate as I put in each assignment. It greatly amuses me when the overachieving students have such high averages already that when I put in their 97% on the latest test their grades actually go down. Oh, to be that good of a student.

The reason I'm pondering grades right now is because progress reports are due tonight. I've been scrambling to catch up on my grading because this deadline kind of snuck up on me. I made the mistake a few weeks ago to do four labs in a row, assign a lab report for each, and collect and grade all four. Let's do the math on that one. Four labs, four classes, about 30 kiddos per class. That's 480 lab reports to grade. I'll never make that mistake again.

Back to grading now. I'd like to actually sleep tonight at some point.

And so, it begins

Boy, it's been a while. Hopefully I won't be abandoning my blog for this long again for quite a while. My resolution for the month of December is to update at least once a day for the entire month. I'm going to have to teach myself to be concise and to stop writing thousand word blog entries. On that note, I'll end here with a picture of Lily. Enjoy!

Whoa! News!

My goodness, we do have a lot of news. It's been a while since I updated, too, since things have been pretty bustling around here.

Let's go in order.

I started my new job! We're knee deep in curriculum and assessment planning, and we had an open house tonight for new and returning students. I got to meet a lot of my future students. They're all total sweethearts, and I'm really excited to start the school year now. Not that I wasn't before, but I'm extra excited now.

Then, on one of my first days at work, also the evening before I was flying out for the wedding, our old car decided to die and strand me in Englewood. I was not pleased. After towing it back up north and finding out that the repairs it needs could run up to $3500, we decided to give in and trade Turk in for a new, more reliable, more gas efficient car for me. So we got an adorable blue 2008 Yaris. She's got almost no "special features," like automatic windows or door locks, but I'm totally enamored of her. She's just nifty, and so cute. She looks like a blue squatting dung beetle, but in a cute way.

Then we got married, again. It was awesome. Truly and utterly awesome. Everyone partied hard, noone threw any real temper tantrums, and fun was had by all. I'll go into details about that later, and post some more pictures.

Now, the most important (in my opinion) news: we've adopted a puppy! She's the cutest thing on the face of the earth, and so wonderful. She's about 8 weeks old and a mutt. She's very obviously part lab, but we're not entirely sure what the other part is. We hypothesize border collie because of her white snout and paws, but there's no telling. What she is, though, is 100% cute.

See? I'm totally and utterly in love. She's currently stretched out asleep in my lap as I sit at the desk typing this. There is no feeling in the world like a puppy sleeping on you. It's wonderful. And Sam, of course, is in utter heaven. He's been dying to adopt a dog since he moved out of his parents' house, and now he's finally got a puppy all his own. She's even started occasionally sleeping through the night, which is amazing at her age and is absolutely wonderful for us. I'm getting up at 5am to get to work, so I really appreciate her letting me get as much sleep as I can.

Oh, she's twitching. Puppy dreams!

Anyways, her name is Lillian Fred Kurnit, or Lily for short. We love her. You should come meet her. She'll lick you to death, then eat your face. Seriously, she loves to nibble chins. I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about her on here. Get used to it.

Back to other news. Since we now have a teeny puppy who can't be left alone for terribly long, Bob has come to help! He's now living on an air mattress on the living room floor and making himself just wonderfully useful. I think he's going to be indespensible while Lily is little and I settle into my exhausting, time consuming new job. In exchange for room and board he's walking her during the day while we're both at work and also just generally helping out around the house. He's going to stay for a month or so until he gets on his feet in Chicago and finds a job and an apartment. It really is awesome having him here. Bob is awesome, and I'm really glad that we could work out a situation that's so mutually beneficial.

Actually, there may be a line for the position of our man-servant. Puppy-nanny? Mary Puppins? What do you call your live-in unpaid puppy assistant? VP of Puppy Relations? Ooh, I kinda like that one. Anyways, Bob isn't the only person who wanted in on our living room floor. My friend Chris is also interested in moving out to Chi-town, and would like the opportunity to stay free for a few weeks. I had to tell him that he could come out after Bob. Bob had called dibs a while ago on the spot. So once Bob gets settled and moves out, I think we'll be calling Chris in to help. It's going to be a few months before Lily will really be able to stay home alone all day. Having a roommate/puppywalker is way more fun than just taking her to puppy daycare.

Last but not least, Sam has a new show, in a new location! It's now Thursday nights at 8pm at Fizz Bar. It's still with the same people as before, the Pub Theater Company, but they've moved to a new venue. They liked the Mags so much that they made sure to take them with them when they moved. It's a fairly indefinite run, too, which is awesome. I think the guys will be trying out some new material, so it's definitely worth seeing.

Aww, Lily has the hiccups! So cute. But she's up now, which means I need to go walk her, so we'll stop there.