Author: heather

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Back in Bidness

heather

As is my custom, I have gotten out of the custom of writing in my blog.  Again.  I’m not sure why.  We’ve had quite a bit of “action” lately.  The Beentz was here for a visit, Tim’s mom was here for a visit, I took a watercolor class at the Figge, I agonized over getting a smart phone and finally broke down and got one and then traded it in for the iPhone 4s, my mom bought me an awesome $15 standup desk from Salvation Army, we ran a 5K.  What else?  Hmm…  I found another school program I am interested in – Human Computer Interaction at Iowa State University.  Maybe I’ll do it?  That’s about the past month or two real quick-like.

On to the present, today we are cooking!  This morning I tried a roasted chickpea recipe from Fitness Magazine.  They probably would have turned out deliciously if I hadn’t over cooked them by at least 5 minutes.  The chickpeas that were not reduced to ash were actually pretty tasty.  I’ll have to try that recipe again.

Right now we are cooking up some delicious minestrone and acorn squash.  I made the absolute best chocolate chip cookies on Thursday, and I froze half the dough, so I might bake up some of those up tonight too.  Once the cold, windy weather sets in, I’m all for keeping the oven on all day.

Tim and I played a game of Carcassone, ate some Buffalo Wild Wings, and listened to some great music this afternoon.  Did some laundry, kissed Lucent on the head lots, dyed my hair dark brown.  Overall, it’s been a pretty excellent Sunday.  Here’s to me getting back on track with blogging and with healthy eating & exercise habits (which have been absolutely disgusting lately).

Take care, and don’t forget to the watch the Simpsons Halloween special tonight!!

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It’s finally finished

heather

Back in April, one of my co-workers found out that I dabble in calligraphy, and he asked me to do “Dance like nobody’s watching” in calligraphy on a small sheet of paper, so he could give it to his wife.  I assured him that I am no good as a calligrapher, but told him that I could probably convince my mom to do the piece, as she is an excellent scribe.

I never caught her in the right moment; however, so I resolved to do it myself.  I did 4 or 5 pieces that I was very dissatisfied with.  Then I decided to do it on watercolor paper on top of a nice watercolor wash.  I finally completed one that I was fairly happy with only to realize that I had written “Dance like nobody’s wathing.”  According to the Urban Dictionary, wathing is “Stalkerishly watching someone or something bathe.”  I think the most disturbing part of that definition is the part about watching “something” bathe in a stalkerish manner.  Shiver.

Anyway, missing the “C” changed the meaning of the phrase resolutely.  So I had to start over.  Again.

I was working on painting an ocean scene, so my palette was already loaded with purples, greens, and blues, so I got the paper soaking wet and washed those colors over it.  I then peppered the paper with kosher salt.  When it was all dry, it had a neat, almost tie-dyed, effect.  I drew guidelines on and went at it with a teal calligraphy pen.

Man, I really need to start taking better pictures of my stuff.  Anyway,  it’s not awesome, and the calligraphy  needs a lot of work, but I gave it to my friend yesterday, and he was really happy with it.  As long as the (non-paying) customer is happy, I am happy. It only took me 6 months to complete it!  Now I just need to finish my Mom (from Futurama) painting, and I’ll have a totally clean slate.

To get me off on the right foot, this morning I spent half-an-hour typing up an inventory of all our (“our” being Mom and me) watercolor paints.  It seems that for every class I take, I have to spend $40 on paints, even though I already have 3 baggies full of them.  Somehow I never have the exact right shade of cadmium yellow (the teacher requires deep and I have light, etc.).  To save time, I created a spreadsheet with columns for Main Color, Color Name, and Brand.  Now I can easily sort to see all the various reds or greens that I have.  It’s pretty awesome.  I kinda want to sign up for a class right this minute, so I can tell in 60 seconds whether I already have the appropriate colors in stock.  Ah, blessed spreadsheets…

On that note, Go Hawks!  Weeeuuwww!
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Home Sick Today

heather

I came down with a nasty cold yesterday – the kind of cold where you always need to have a tissue on hand because at any second, liquid snot will just start pouring out of your nose.  I mean pouring – like water pouring out of a faucet.  All the moisture from my nose vacated, so during the night I had to get up and put a moist washcloth over it to protect the fragile, exposed cartilage.  I need some mucus back up in there.

I went to work this morning because my nose seemed better and because at our office we have Paid Time Off (PTO) which means we don’t get sick days.  We just get days to use for whatever.  I, of course, have all of mine allocated to fun stuff like Benny & Nate visits, trips and what not.  But I had to break down and use some of my precious time today.  I took a brief 10-minute stroll with a co-worker this morning, and when I got back to my chair, the aches set in – all in my legs, my hands, my head.  In the span of 10 minutes I went from feeling poorly to feeling horrible.  So home I went.

After a nappy-poo I watched the first Firefly episode, then I tried to read The Dispossessed.  It’s a great book, but my fever-addled brain could make no sense of the words on the page, so I put it down and watched Good Will Hunting.

There is nothing like laying around all day, doing nothing, and then watching a movie about a genius to make one feel inadequate and as if one is not living up to one’s full potential.  I’m not sure it was the best movie to watch in my state.

But tomorrow is another day.  Hopefully I will be feeling better and will be able to accomplish something of use.

Books

Memoirs of a Geisha

heather

I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha this week.  I have to say, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. Learning about the training of a geisha and their lifestyle was interesting, but the main charactor, Sayuri, annoyed the heck out of me.  She described everything using metaphors.  I think the author was trying to make her appear poetic and deep, but they were so overused that it seemed forced.  Here is an exaple,

“But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however, we suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.“

She uses two separate metaphors to describe the same thing!  Enough already!!

Geishas are also supposed to be clever conversationalists.  Her examples of “clever” conversation all involved a geisha talking about being naked with her skin exposed to breezes or what not.  That didn’t strike me as “clever.” One does not need to be very clever to arouse drunk males.  I didn’t read one example of clever conversation in the whole damn book.

Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, but I just don’t understand the whole geisha thing.  They aren’t “prostitutes,” but they do sleep with men for money.  Kinda sounds like a prostitute to  me; albeit an expensive, high-class prostitute.  Watch Mal’s take on “Companions” in Firefly, and that’s pretty much my impression of geishas.

The main story thread also aggravated me.  *SPOILER ALERT*  Sayuri encounters this man, The Chairman, one day as she is crying by the river.  He speaks a few kind words to her, gives her money to buy shaved ice, and a hankie to dry her tears.  Of course, she immediately falls in love with him in that instant and spends the next 15-20 years yearning for him.  Eventually, after a series of unfortunate events, he ends up becoming her “danna” and paying her Okiya for the pleasure of sleeping with her a few times a week.  How romantic.  Oh, and he’s married and has a family.  I just don’t get it.  I understand that she was essentially sold into the lifestyle and had very few options, especially in those times (the book takes place during the Great Depression/World War 2), but still.

I did enjoy reading about the culture and the kimonos, however.   In my opinion, if the book had been written about a truly clever Geisha, it would have been much better.

 

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Watercolor Aspirations

heather

So…again I haven’t written in a while.  That doesn’t mean that  I haven’t had anything to write about.  It just means that I haven’t written in a while.  I’ve actually had tons of things I wanted to write about, but my old bane, inaction, has been at it again. Maybe if we tossed the couch and the TV, I might actually get something done.  I blame some of my inaction on an uninspiring work location.

I moved my laptop to the top of our book-case in an attempt to create an ad-hoc stand-up desk.  It works fairly well; however, I don’t have much room to work, and since I’m just standing there facing the wall, I feel rather anti-social.  It’s not an environment that is conducive to creative enterprises.  It’s conducive to checking email and Facebook, and that is all.  My brother and father are both building me stand up desks…eventually. They both have plans, and they will both build something amazingly beautiful, but it may be awhile.  Anyway, once I get my stand-up desk(s), I am going to experiment with a little rearranging, so I can position it in front of a window instead of a wall.  I stare at fabric-covered walls for 8 hours * 5 days a week, and I can’t take the wall-staring a minute longer on the weekends.

I did find a way to alleviate some of my cubicle discomfort.  I purchased a piece of original, amazing art from Ryan Hayes.  It’s a small piece of art that packs a big punch.  It’s funny; when I first considered taking watercolor classes, I was reluctant to do so because when I thought of watercolor, I thought of poorly painted, washed-out, sad little flowers.  That wasn’t what I was interested in painting. At all.  However, the more watercolor work I see, the more  I realize how false my prejudice was.  People create absolutely stunning work with watercolor.  It’s ironic, though, that the piece I bought is a painting of flowers.  But it has amazing movement in it.  Check it out here.  See what  I mean?  Anyway, I hung this painting up in my cubicle.  It breaks up the expanse of grey & tan and provides my eye with a much-needed visual retreat.  It also reminds me that I should be doing artwork of my own.

On that note, I signed up for another art class at the Figge.  This class will focus more on technique, I think.  I kind of jumped into watercolor painting without have any basics in it.  Hopefully this class will strengthen the foundation.  While looking up the colors that I need for this class, I ran across this website:  http://www.watercolorpainting.com/index.htm.  It has tons of good information and tutorials on the basics (how to hold your brush, how to do a wash, etc.).

My friend, Butterbrickled, is creating an animation involving pirates and ninjas.  It looks great so far, and he has enlisted my help to paint some floaty/Tiny Wings inspired backgrounds for it.  I’m happy that he has assigned me a task, as hopefully it will make me actually get my gear out and get to work.  I lack motivation something fierce.

I read a good article from LifeHacker today, though.  The article advised just DOING something, one thing that you’ve been putting off, to get yourself out of a rut.  It’s so easy to fall into a rut of inactivity, and so hard to get out.  But just by taking action – any action (cleaning off your desk, for example), you can start to lever yourself out.  I have  about 10 things hanging over my head that I know I need to do, but I keep putting off. So, my baby step today is to finally write a blog post.

Cooking/Recipes

Healthy Beans & Rice

heather

I ended up working from home today because the internet at work was out.  That meant, amongst other things, that I pretty much ate everything that was edible in the house.  So for lunch, I had to get creative.  Tim had made some delicious brown rice on Sunday.  He mixes a little wild Ojibwa rice (from Greatest Grains) with some brown basmati rice and then cooks the whole bunch in chicken broth.  Wow, I almost wrote, “chicken juice.”  Chicken juice sounds gross, but chicken broth sounds delicious.  Yet they are exact same thing.  Ah, the power of language.

ANYWAY, Tim made some delicious rice of which we still had plenty left over.  I got creative and mixed the rice with about 1/2 a can of Aduki beans (excellent for a weak spleen) in a pot on the stove.  When it was all hot, I put it in a bowl, drizzled it lightly with olive oil, doused it thoroughly with Sriracha, and peppered it heavily with salt.  It was, I must say, absolutely delicious.  Feel free to steal my idea.

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An Evening Stroll

heather

Tim and I were in a quandary as to what to do last night.  We talked about going to the fair, but we didn’t feel like braving the crowds and the heat just for access to delicious, horrible junk food.  We talked about seeing a movie (Captain America or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, perhaps), but we missed the matinee cutoff and so were dissuaded by the expensive ticket prices.

Finally we decided to just leave the house and follow the wind.  Actually, there was no wind last night – just heat and humidity, so we followed the lights instead.  We drove past the fairgrounds, and everything and everyone we saw there convinced us that we did not want to go in.  Teenagers now, evidently, think that white booty shorts are the pinnacle of fashion and sexiness.  I saw outfits I have not seen on a walking, talking human being since watching “The Dukes of Hazard” after school 20 years ago.

Just writing that paragraph made me realize how my perspective has flipped.  I am at the age now where I can refer to something that happened 20 years ago and that something happened when I was a fully functional, remembering human being.  I am also complaining about the clothes of “young people.”  Well, to be honest, the clothes of slutty young people.  I’m sure I complained about that when I was “young person” myself.  I use quotation marks because “young person” is completely relative, both to the person saying it and the person hearing it.

I digress.  After driving past the fair, windows down and eyeballs boggled, we coasted downtown through some west-end neighborhoods bursting with non-Central Davenport personality.  We finally hit River Drive by Credit Island and followed 61 into downtown.

Davenport recently create a new park, Centennial Park, which is where the RAGBRAI riders deluged the Mississippi.  The City created a spray park, replete with garish shower heads that look like the sexual organs of plants and oddly shaped, very steep hills.  It’s actually a very cool, unique site.  The randomness of the hills and banks hides the spray park from a river view and provides some somewhat challenging hiking for kids.  The City even built, or is in the process of building (growing, I guess?), a meadow.  A real meadow.  Davenport has planted (or allowed to grow naturally – not sure which) prairies/meadows all along Duck Creek.  The intent is to keep pollutants out of the creek and to reduce the amount of mowing that needs to be done around the creek.  The meadows are absolutely beautiful.  Over the course of the spring and summer,  the flowers, grasses and colors change, providing something to distract your eye while you’re pounding the pavement or cycling past.  I am hoping that the meadow downtown turns out similarly.  It will be really beautiful down there eventually.

Next we strolled over the Veterens Memorial Park.  It’s not quite done yet; at this point it’s just some granite boxes, some lights, and 3 huge flag poles jutting into the sky.

Finally we headed over to the basketball courts/skate park, only to realize that the park is bifurcated by a fence north of the rail road tracks.  From what we could see in the night, visitors to the park cannot walk between the two park sections unless they head out to Marquette Street.  I don’t know why the park designers would set the park up this way.  Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

We strolled back to the car, admiring the lit-up Centennial Bridge and the sapphire sky.  What a beautiful evening.

I read an article in Women’s Health yesterday about happiness.  What I got from the article was that you can’t rely on the “big” moments in life to keep you happy – getting married, having kids, buying a house, etc.  These moments happen too infrequently, so those highs are followed by too long of a valley.  Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt, too, so we adjust to the new level of happiness quickly and fail to notice our transformed state.  The article recommended finding happiness in daily life – the evening stroll with your best friend, a baby frog chilling out in your flowers, the sleepy eyes on your warm chihuahua, a breeze that brings a scent of salty ocean. These moments happen every day, every hour, if you take the time to notice them.  Like so much in life, happiness is a matter of perspective.

Cooking/Recipes

Artichoke Walnut Hummus

heather

I just made the most delicious hummus.  In the food processor, I combined an almost full can of rinsed garbanzo beans that had been chilling in the fridge for a couple of days, 1/3 cup tahini, 1 full fresh squeezed lemon + enough water from some canned artichokes to make up 1/4 cup, 1/2 teaspoon of Real Salt, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 or 4 canned artichoke hearts, a swirl of olive oil, a hefty pinch of cayenne pepper and about 6 walnut halves.  I blended the crap out of it for a few minutes.

We have no tortilla chips, so I spread some of the hummus on brown rice cakes.  DEEEELICIOUS.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Super tasty breakfast

heather

Yesterday Tim and I ran (well, I walked/jogged to be precise) the Race for the Cure.  The weather was perfect for running – cool and slightly overcast.  Tim did excellently – ran the whole way.  I, on the other hand, ran the first mile and then walked/jogged the rest of the way.  I also got confused as to where, exactly, the finish line was located.  I assumed it was under the huge balloon arch that designated the starting line. After crossing under the arch, I wandered around for a bit, looking for Tim.  When I couldn’t find him anywhere, I realized that beyond the arch was the huge number 3, designating the third mile mark.  And… people were still running.  I flowed back into line and ran the 1 or 2 minutes to the real finish line, just up and around the corner.  I was super frustrated with myself for not catching on immediately and adding 5 minutes to my time, but it was a still a great experience.  The Race for the Cure is a very happy/sad experience.  It’s amazing to see 9,000 gathered together in a stand against a disease, exercising together and supporting each other.  It’s also super sad to see the long lists of loved ones who have died from cancer pinned to the backs of people’s shirts.

To cap off our 5K, Tim and I decided to take a bike ride.  We mapped out our route, from Rapids City, IL to a certain jog in the road that we biked to last time.  According to Googlemaps, the round trip route was about 22 miles:


We loaded up the bikes on the Civic and headed out.  Again, it was a perfect day for biking – cool, overcast.  As long as we didn’t stop in one place for too long, the bugs were not too annoying.  We started off in Rapids City and biked through Port Byron, past Cordova, and to the jog in the road.  It sure seemed much longer than any other 22 mile ride we had taken, but we chalked it up to being tired from the run.

We finally returned to our car, never so happy to see it before.  Our shoulders, necks, taints – anything that was in constant contact with the bikes was throbbing.  Once we arrived home, we looked at the map more closely and realized that we originally mapped the wrong jog!  We actually biked 13 miles further than we intended:


No wonder we were so exhausted!!  It really was a great ride, though, and a good training experience for RAGBRAI. We learned the importance of bringing snacks (dry-roasted peanuts), lubricating delicate body areas that you DO NOT want chafed, and taking breaks to give your shoulders and arms a rest from the unforgiving road bike tires.

To reward ourselves for all the exercise, we had a delicious supper of fried mushrooms and pork-T at Filling Station.  We continued the healthy eating spree with a super delicious, cooked-by-Tim-with-love breakfast this morning.  He cooked up some spicy chorizo and combined it with scrambled eggs, cheese, avocado, fresh green onions, and Salsa Brava and rolled it all up in a chewy, toasted tortilla.  It very well could have been the tastiest burrito I have ever eaten.

So that was Saturday.  Today is Sunday, and I have a list of like 30 things I would like to get done today.  We’ll see how long the coffee buzz lasts…