Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Comfort Food

This past weekend, I was hit with a pang of homesickness, so I decided to combat it with some good ol' fashion comfort foods. You know what I'm talking about... Those foods that your mom used to make all the time when you were young and at the time, they didn't seem like anything special, but now, after being out on your own (even if it's just at school and ARA dinner), you would give your pinky toe to come home one night to mom's meatloaf and brussel sprouts. So this weekend, I fired up the crockpot for a nice batch of ham and bean soup. If you're not from the mid-West (specifically Ohio), you may not be familiar with this classic wintertime dish. Traditionally, the bone from the Christmas ham is placed in a crockpot with some water, pinto beans, onions and enough brown sugar to make your teeth rot. It's then cooked initially for 8-10 hours, and after the first serving, it continues to be cooked until you finish it. And a must-have sidedish for this 5-ingredient wonder... cornbread! Crumbled up into the soup to absorb all the liquidie goodness.... hmmm...

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Minnesota Snow

So, for the first time this winter, we got snow last night. It was only about 6" but here they treated it like a blizzard! It started coming down pretty hard around 1pm so I thought that by 5pm they would have a handle on things, so I left work and took the highway home. Well, I was wrong! It looked as if the roads hadn't been touched, and these crazy Minnesotians acted like they were from Jersey or something. They would just drive where ever they wanted to all over the road. No turn signals, no lanes, and they couldn't make up their minds on how fast they wanted to go. And today I went out, and thank goodness the roads were clear, but everyone had their snowblowers out! Snowblowers for 6"??? And Minnesota snow is a lot different from other Midwestern snow. It's light and fluffy and just blows everywhere, unlike the wet clumps that fall out of the Cincinnati sky. I will never understand these people.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Nakedness.... At the Y?

So recently I've been really good about getting up in the morning and going to the Y to workout, but I think that may need to come to an end. This morning, I was extra good, and was there by 5:45am for my morning routine. There are several women that work-out at that time and then get ready for work. Today I was shocked. There is this one lady that I had seen before. The last time I saw her, she was topless... That's right, she was only wearing underwear, while she was fixing her hair and putting on her make-up. Today she was totally NUDE! Not only was she not wearing any clothes, but to dry off, she took two of the hand dryers (that are hung to high) and pointed them at her naked body. I was thinking, "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!" Get a towel! I then head over to where my bag is and such, in complete disbelief, and as I'm taking my jeans out of my bag, I look up to see the naked backside of another lady. She's in the toilet area, fixing her hair, carrying on a conversation with another lady. I've talked to Jackie in the past about this, and she said that proper locker room etiquette is to be covered by what a bathing suit would cover. I don't care if it is a "women only" locker room, or if these women are comfortable running around nude, it makes ME uncomfortable! Goodness, I thought that this was a place founded on Christian morals... and last time I checked, Christians looked down on strip-clubs.

AHHHH!

Monday, January 17, 2005

To e-mail or not to e-mail, that is the question!

So I'm having a bit of a struggle.... I have a "friend" who I haven't talked to in about 3 years now living in New Jeresy. We parted ways on not so good terms. I'm going out to NJ for some training next month... do I offer up an invite to meet or not?

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Adventures in Baking

So recently, I've been doing quite a bit of baking, bread to be specific. Today, I made my dough and placed it into a greased plastic bowl. I then started to boil some water on the stove and turned the oven on "warm". A warm, moist oven helps the yeast to react (ask any woman) and the bread rises faster and larger. So I placed the pot of boiling water into the oven, with the bowl of dough, turned the oven off and then focused my attention elsewhere. About 20 minutes later, I heard the oven turning on and off... so I went to check on my dough. When I looked at the oven, I noticed that the little "Hi; I'm on!" light was glowing red. I opened up to see my dough burnt, and the bowl it once was in, in globs all over the oven racks and stringing to the bottom of the oven. It seems that when I turned the oven off, I was a bit overzealous and left the oven on "broil" So if there's anyone out there that has some advice on how to clean up burnt plastic, please let me know!

I think I'm going to invest in some glass bowls too.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Snowflakes

So today I was talking to the bossman about the lack of snow in Minnesota right now, and he says to me, "You're probably happy about it... I bet you don't like snow."

If you're not laughing right now, you don't know me.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

RARHS!

It's been a long week... leave me some love!

Sunday, January 02, 2005

2005.... Are you ready for me?

So I spent the last few hours of 2004 and many of the first of 2005 in the Second City. Good times, Good times! Lots of company with friends and I even learned a few things too. Like, did you know that Hugh Grant was arrested in 1995? Some how I missed that. I like him anyway though. There were a few questions left unanswered at the end of this weekend, the most pressing would be, according to Canterbury Tales, what does it mean if someone's eyes are set too close together. This is not to imply that anyone has unhandsome eye placement, just a question that came up.

Andrew has the picture thing set-up for me, I just have to get some pics up and I think that may also mean that I need to develop a watermark or something. I wonder if I have to apply for copyrights for my images. Something else to look up.

Thanks to Mellissa, I would also like to start a new part of my blog. It will be a project page. Hopefully it will be something that I will update semi-regularly, and it will have a crafty idea for the week/month/whatever. I will give as much info as possible and probably some drawings and or pictures so that everyone do it! Right now I'm in a home decorating phase, so most of my ideas are revolving around that type of craft.

Damn this post was too long!