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December 29, 2005
the midway mark
yesterday, for all it's stormy beginnings, turned out to be kind of a nice day! (and, according to KRON4, today will be more of the same) it was the midway mark, and i must say; i've been doing really well with the balance of accomplishing tasks and lotza flotzing. i have not been doing well on the hanging out with tha peeps side of things, but that's cuz i really haven't been feeling the rain. if the rain is mia, i might try to either go down to 14th street or up to masonic...i suppose it depends on who's home and whatnot....anywho, i WAS talking about yesterday. yeah, i popped out yesterday and spend some of the precious cash in my possession to purchase some food stuffs. i admit, in my poverty, i went to safeway and purchased gmo carrots and tomatoes...and prolly frozen spinach. the hike over the hill was pretty good for me, since i hadn't had any kind of walk since sunday. i guess i got thinking food, cuz i wound up parusing these awesome ol skool betty crocker "cookbooks" i have...
this is called HOME ENTERTAINING and i have to say, that the illustrations have rocked me since i was a child looking at my mom's betty crocker cookbook binder...but more on that later...first
will you look at that buffet?!?!?!?! i mean it's not only the socially acceptable color and nutritional combinations, it's all the other stuff too; the serving dishes, furniture, linens, backdrop decor...I LOVE ALL OF IT?!?!?!?
i was also flipping through dinner for two
i ask you to please look at the above picture, and access for yourselves; does that look like a dinner for two? looks like a friggin' dinner for 4 at least to me...and then i wonder how it is that those folks coulda been eating all that food, yet we're the overweight generation....oh yeah, i forgot; technology. but that's a tangeant for another time.
the point being i got all inthemood to cook up a little sumpin-sumpin. i didn't make anything from betty crocker though. i made a pot-o-soup from my quick vegetarian pleasures cookbook; previously and continuously raved about as being the answer to all food blahs.
i went for the spinach soup with semolina dumplings, which i made so many times when i was back eastside, that i should have the recipe memorized by now...but i don't. i don't remember recipes i didn't make up myself...i mean, REALLY; it took me well over a year of knitting socks almost every day before i'd memorized that sucker...that's why i got that cookbook book stand. well worth the money, even if it is a little awkward to store in my kitchen space.
unfortunately you can't really see the dumplings. this time i was super careful not to stir the soup too soon after i'd dropped in the dumplings. i did that last time, and i trashed all the dumplings. the soup became more like a stew; yummy, but not really what i'd wanted...so, i learned from that situation and applied it to my current soup with preferable results!
the other thing i worked on yesterday, will hopefully be going in the mail later today
the rest of the day was spent knitting on my sweater (I FINISHED THE SLEEVES!)
and watching TWIN PEAKS
whereby i've totally fallen for the special agent cooper character....
Posted by Meagen at 07:23 AM | Comments (2)
December 27, 2005
in the midst
today i am at home enjoying the luxury of staying in my cozy apartment on a rainy day. definately the perfect time to knit and catch up on the ol' blog. today's post contains a plethora of picts, so i'm posting with the ol'extend-o entry, so that opening the page isn't a time consuming bummer. in fact, i'm kinda thinking this might be the way to go from now on....
in a moment of holiday vacation happiness, let me share some pictures from the grad div holiday party(if'n you've got problems with your mug being posted in these parts, lemme know, and i'll fuzz you out...)
there were many more picts that didn't come out, and obviously i'm only posting what did...
how stoked was i when they moved the party from dwinelle to the faculty club? pretty damn stoked...
(that's the entrance; couldn't take a pict of the outside as it was raining ropes...)
i'm sorta getting ahead of myself though. there was a last minute surge of holiday festiveness within grad div, and maybe that accounted for some of the change in holiday plans.
ok, back to the party...the seaborg room of the faculty club was where we had the grad div holiday dinner two years ago; i don't know why it isn't the "regular" spot...i think it's a really nice room.
there was a white elephant gift exchange. whenever i participated in one of these in boston or northampton, you didn't get to open anything until after everyone had had their opportunity for selection. i didn't actually participate in the selecting, i only brought a gift...a gift i made which apparently was stolen a couple of times. for reasons known as stress of the season i never took a picture of said hat...if i see yoon wearing it sometime (she's who wound up taking it home) i'll snap a pict. in the interim, here it is inconspicuously wrapped amongst the other offerings...
this is dick from publishing; dude has a great sense of dry humor, as witnessed by his tie!
a very cute pict of gina and i taken by maria. my picture of the other side of the table was not very image friendly, if you know what i'm sayin...
dean mason handed out a buncha see's chocolate santas...you know, santa is some kinda anagram of satan, isn't it? what's that all about?
and there was entertainment too! lots of singing...but only shaya's picture seemed to come out...
in the midst of getting things ready for sending out for the holidays(pictures in the picture gallery next week) i managed to eek out a pair of ravenclaw gauntlets from the first issue of vogue's K1 for myself...STOKEDNESS!
i do think my neighborhood can be quite lovely...like momi toby's at 6:30am...
on christmas eve they had a news blurb about the tom and jerry christmas display on 21st between the castro and noe valley. hopefully i'll have live picts tomorrow(break in the rain...)
tom taylor's the name, christmas the game...one of the things i kept saying all day is, man, just change one letter in a person's name, and you've got a whole different ballgame., referring, of course to the disparrage between our city's mr.christmas, and the infamous mr.tooltime tim taylor...
although i'm not the hugest fan of disney, i am wicked into lilo and stitch and thoroughly enjoyed their christmas show
of course on christmas morning, i had to watch a christmas story...a few times
it was a beautiful morning
this gift took my breath away, LITERALLY
this gift feels really soft and reminds me of flames
this gift made me laugh out loud for several minutes
a bouquet of bar stirrers; my aunt knows i'm my father's child...
i don't know if you can see the two harry potter lego sets; one i bought for myself back in october, and the other came last week. it's kinda like santa sent it, cuz i got it(a used snape's classroom kit) before i could pay for it. thank you!!!!
i spent christmas day and night at neil's house, with him, and, later, seanie. here's my see's santa getting familiar with neil's russel stover santa...
we went to the airport to pick up sean, and i was amazed at how many people were there!
there's a house a few doors down from neilz that always puts up a tinsel christmas tree forest...there's something about it i think is neat-o
this is the only pict i took from hanging out. i brought all kinds of harry potter candy with me, in addition to a dinner and a lunch and some snax...there were fizzing whizbees and acid pops, and chocolate frogs...
i'm trying to walk that fine line of all vacations/holidays whereby i get some stuff done, but do nothing really. one thing i have done is to meet one of my new year's resolutions. i wanted to track all my spending for last year. i wasn't as efficient as i could've been about doing it, but i HAVE actually completed the task(except whatever i spend between now and friday which can't be more than twenty bux...the tallies will come later this week...for me, not you. you just needed to know i'd completed the task....
i built up the snape's classroom yesterday. wicked fun! i think it came out really good, and there weren't any pieces missing; except the instructions...
however, i knew this wasn't such a big deal, cuz i thought the instructions existed on line...and they did.
today is all about working on this blog
and watching the twin peaks series while continuing to feverishly knit
on this striped ballet neck cardigan i started on christmas eve. if i finish the sleeves today, which might be reasonable as they are going to be 3/4 length, and i don't have anything other than dinner to take care of, then i can start the fairly easy fair isle from stitch'n bitch nation tomorrow!!! that won't take long at all, cuz it's "chunky" yarn, and then i can finish up the friend gifts for the january giving period....yes, i DO have some yarn issues, thankyouverymuch!
Posted by Meagen at 12:54 PM | Comments (2)
December 18, 2005
ALMOST CHRISTMAS VACATION
in light of the whole "chistmas hoopla" happening, i think i gotta go with christmas is what i always celebrated growing up in an irish catholic family. i'm wicked into celebrating, and wish that there were MORE holidays recognized by the federal government. i mean, really what would be better at bringing the citizens together than MORE PAID VACATION?!?!?! of course, what i like about the holidays isn't necessarily what's hyped. i like the idea of making more time to hang out with peeps, decorating with lights, and eating lots of tastey foods. you could ask my family, i'm not really one with a long list at christmas. even growing up, it was really about all the parties my parents were invited to(my father being the professional irishman that he is), and seeing all the different kids and parents that we didn't see regularly, and more food than i could ever wish for. in particular, my favorite party was thrown by the hodgkins family. they had a christmas tree farm on the land where they had their shooting camp. for a lot of years, they would haul all the families on this truck with tracks on the bottom(like a tank) from the main road to the lodge. there was a full-on spread of food with all kinds of crockpots, salads, cheeses, cookies, candies, and both adult and child hot chocolate dispensers(adults' having theirs with rumplminz). at some point we'd go out into the woods with another family and mr.hodgkins to cut down our tree. when the time came to leave, the truck would haul you and your tree back to the main road. that's one of my favorite memories from my childhood...
so, all my picts are kinda with that in mind...
the holiday sliding even turned into a cookie making event due to rain
(i didn't double check the one pict i took of nathalie and damon together. i've fotoshoped another face in, in order to maintain my friendship with nathalie...)
let's hear it for an expediant and relatively stressless last week of work before the university's week of vacation!!!!!
Posted by Meagen at 07:53 PM | Comments (5)
December 07, 2005
the week in review
well folks, it's gonna be about one more week of this, and then i'll be back to my regularly scheduled 4 posts a week (i don't know if you ever noticed, but that's what my goal has always been). man-o-man; there'll be a lot of baking next saturday night!!!! things are moving right along at quite a clip, but i'm only about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way there, and i HAVE TO have everything in the mail by next tuesday, if'n it's gonna make it eastside in time...
anyway, let me present the week in review:
i got my christmas decorating on last week!!!
my little tree...i've had it for 3 years now. i've been trying to make one more little "set" of ornaments each year. this year i made those beaded snowflakes from my last entry. last year i made a little "village" out of chipboard with glassine windows. however, potterland has grown to the point that i had nowhere to go with all of the buildings. i scattered what i could around the rest of the living room, and decided the castle would be my "village" this year, so it's a hogwarts kinda christmas
i even knit myself a christmas stocking this year! it went so much faster than regular sox! it only took about 2 maybe 2 1/2 hours!!
sean came over on friday night
and we watched santa claus is coming to town
i wicked love thoes old christmas claymation-type specials!!! we also watched rudolph the red nosed reindeer which sean gave to me on vhs many, many moons ago...
i went to a baby shower for the lovely lady in the middle(even though she does so not look preggers in this pict...
there was lots-o-action!!!
it's kinda neat to have little kids running around; especially when you know you can play with'em, get'em ALL WORKED UP, and then send them home with their parents!!! WORD OF WARNING TO YOU RACHEL!!!
the baby in this picture is adorable, no doubt, but it is NOT the baby for whom all these
presents are meant(the pile was actually just starting at this point).
there were lots of folks there; the usual cast of characters, and a few suprises as well!
the guy standing next to isaac happens to be one of a handful of people whom i actually like from my high school. alan and his wife moved here from boston about a year ago, and i ran into them with rachel last friday night(alan's wife is best friends with rachel's sister). talk about a small world!
regulars here boy!
all truly classy parties have an awesome outdoor fireplace!!!!
the nutcracker ballet has started
the symphony has their trees up
and my neighbor has their own christmas display...i think this means it's time to haul over the hill (between the castro and noe valley) to check out tom and jerry's display for this year!!! (i will DEF INATELY put up the picts from that adventure) also-also; on december 17th, at approximate 4:20PM i wanna go christmas sliding over at the sewell street slides! there's bound to be libations and fresh cardboard boxes brought with!!! lemme know if'n you wanna go!!!!
Posted by Meagen at 04:52 AM | Comments (7)