Hello all. I've missed you! I've finally gotten myself organized and onto a type of schedule, so you can finally look forward to (semi) regular posts. Every friday by noon, I will do my best to have something yummy up for you to try out. As far as this area of the site, anything posted here will be bonus. A site redesign may be upcoming, but I haven't perfected anything yet, so we'll stay here for now. Hope you enjoy!
Sabbatical.
Soon after the last entry was posted, I was offered not one, but two jobs, both part time. Because of this, my life is so very different now! I am watching a friend's child three days a week, and on the weekend I am the interim choir director at my church. Because of this, my daily schedule is completely different from what I'm used to! My head is still spinning. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm doing both things, but it's an adjustment. Because of this, I've not kept up on my promise to blog more often. My apologies. Most weeks I am cooking more often, but it's usually simple things like baked chicken, or things I've already blogged about, like my lovely quiche. In any case, while I do have a few things I've lined up to share with you, it may be a bit before I get to photo editing and blogging again. Please be patient with me as I adjust! I will be back, I promise...
Until then, arrivederci, au revoir, and all that jazz. See you soon!
Julie and Julia.
I loved this movie. Here's the preview. I vaguely recall Julia Child's cooking show, having only seen it a few times, and not straight through. She was quoted often in my musical training, as a reference for using a nasal head voice, (C'mon, music geeks out there? Send up a cheer!) but unfortunately the underclassmen didn't even know who she was. (Blasphemy, I know.) Anyway, the movie is based on both her life, up to when she became famous, and the life of a blogger, Julie Powell, who cooked her way through Julia Child's first cookbook and blogged about it along the way.
This movie inspired me to do two things. First of all, to cook regularly again, and second of all, to blog about said cooking. I've been lax, and saying I'd get back to it, continued to put it off. While I can't predict the future, I can say this: I do so love to cook. This movie reminded me why. Why shouldn't I continue to share that with you?
There are a couple brief sex scenes (that reveal as little as is possible) and mild swearing, but otherwise, this movie is good 'clean' fun. Take a date night, go out with friends, or go by yourself, but GO. You'll love this movie.
10,000 Steps.
Recently, I purchased a pedometer, as my old promotional gift one finally broke. It's a rather nice one, an Omron something or other, which fits in your pocket with a little safety clip, rather than clipping on the hip, which my old one did. I really do like it, but I've come to realize something. I don't walk very much. I move around our apartment quite a bit, (I'm a stay-at-home mom and piano/voice teacher out of my home...) but I don't get out much for walks. This makes the old '10,000 step' workout rather difficult, as I struggle to reach 5,000 on a busy shopping day out! I realize the point is to add in walks into your routine, but an extra 5,000 seems a lot to pull out of nowhere! Maybe it's just me...anyone else have any success doing the 10,000 step workout?
Radio Silence and Authorship.
I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. My computer isn't smashed into sparkly bits. I am not horribly incapacitated. I simply have not kept up with blogging.
It's my fault, really. (Well, of course it is. That's silly. This is my blog, I am the only one who posts here, of course it was my fault for not blogging. Anyway...) I made blogging into a chore in my mind, and therefore avoided it. I miss the days where I posted random things for the fun of it. So I will bring those days back now. I think.
I've been working on a children's book lately, mainly just for fun. I recently purchased three fairy tale books with the intent to read them to my son in the future (the stories are a bit long for his almost-one-year-old attention span at the moment,) and have been reading through them on my own first. One thing I noticed that bothered me a bit was that everyone was pretty. Now, I have nothing against beautiful people, but the people in these stories were the heroes and heroines simply because they were beautiful, not always because they were virtuous and heroic, as one would expect. (I'm generalizing here... some stories had legitimately heroic people, with good lessons. I'm simply citing the ones that didn't.) Because of this, I began to contemplate a world in which the heroine of the story was a particularly ugly bookish girl, who kept to herself with her nose in a book. (A fate I have often confined myself to happily, as I do so love a good book...) My plan at the moment is to have her fall in love with 'a perfectly ordinary man'. No transformation into a beauty in the end, no magic prince behind the mask, a simple romance among books. I'll let you all know how it turns out.
Queries.
I love that the number one search query used to get to my site is 'Blueberry Muffin'. Such a happy search term.
That is all. :)
Office Organization.
I find that getting new organizational 'tools' every so often helps me keep on top of the mess that engulfs my desk regularly. Granted, most of these things are just new ways to store my clutter, or else they are notebooks and/or planners within which to catalogue it, but it makes me feel better to be in possession of such things. Most recently, I ordered some decorative file folders to organize the various manuals and warranties that are currently in a revlon bag by the door of our home office. In addition to this, I ordered a new office caddy for my desktop, to replace the various colors of metal mesh caddies littered about. I'm hoping that since what I ordered is both slightly bigger and better matched to my desk, my desk will be less cluttered as well as better looking. Yeah, I'm a sucker for marketing. On another note, today I must rewrite the giant whiteboard monthly calendar that I got in hopes of its keeping me a bit more organized...
What do you do to keep organized?
Heading back to Hometown.
Well, I'm going back to my parents' place this week, as my little sister is *gulp* graduating from high school in a couple weeks and they want to get ready for the big party that will ensue. Enter me (and ridiculously cute Jonathan). I'm heading back to sort through a bunch of stuff I've been storing somewhat in the open, (ok, in my old room, where I've still got stuff that I hung on the walls in seventh grade, when I moved in there) so that there's more room for guests, and so my little sister doesn't steal my stuff when she leaves for college. (Kidding, Michelle, kidding!:) ) Anyway, because of this, I may not be around for a bit...but then again, maybe something monumental will happen and I'll just have to write about it. But probably not. I'll be busy, hanging out with my family and enjoying some good old-fashioned bonding time and forgetting mostly about the internet. So see you in a week!
Diggnation musings.
I'm currently watching Diggnation from over a month ago. If you like keeping up on internet and off-the-wall news, are willing to listen to some a lot of profanity, and a bit of (how do I put this) juvenile humor, (I have to say, I find it funny) Diggnation is a great show. We get it downloaded on our TiVo automatically, and we're trying to catch up now.
I've found that some shows stimulate a lot of conversation for Chris and me. A lot of the time, one or both of us haven't heard of the news they're talking about, and we find it interesting to get the different perspective presented here. Other shows, well, they just don't always have new news for us. Chris, especially, keeps up to date with news of all sorts, and so sometimes Diggnation simply rehashes what he already knows (and has consequently already told me about as well).
Still, we really enjoy watching this show together. Speaking of, I'm going to get back to it now!
Clutter.
It is amazing to me how two people can amass clutter and mess so quickly. Granted, I was that way before I was married, creating enough mess for two people on my own. I'm just not a 'neat' person. I clean for company, and try to keep our home fairly organized and picked up, but it seems that within hours of being clean, our place is back to where it started. If I was super busy, this would really annoy me, but as it is, I stay home with Jonathan each day and have time to deal. Whether I do or not, that is another matter entirely. :)
What about all of you? Are you the 'clean for company' type, do you enjoy cleaning, or are you somewhere in between?