April 17, 2010
My first batch of homemade mango salsa, isn’t it pretty? I should have taken a picture of it when I jarred it up in the old salsa jar. That was gorgeous.
I find myself thinking about Versus Matches this morning. As in, “who would win between” or “which is better”? Also about my feels-broken shoulder (it’s not) and how that’s gonna derail some of my super Saturday plans.
Cookery
Extra marinate the BBQ pork [Done!] and cook it this afternoon (+4 hours of marinate time, 1 hr to cook)
Make chicken stock (30 mins prep, 4-6 hours of simmering)
Defrost and bake chicken thighs for next week’s dinners
Prepare ingredients for hot pot dinner (not sure it’s worth the clean-up after, not with this shoulder)
Cleanery
2 loads of laundry
Workery
Freelance gig (3 hours)
Off the cuff writing (1+ hour)
Budgetary
Bekins coughed up a refund check, to be deposited.
UI still owes me a check for the remaining weeks of March, resend claim form. [Done!]
Throwdown Topics, cast your votes (or add your own)!
Roma tomatoes /// Hothouse tomatoes?
100% whole wheat /// Double Fiber bread?
Reavers /// Two By Two, Hands of Blue?
Bank-run Bill Pay /// Account aggregator bill pay /// Service provider Bill Pay?
Headphones /// Ear buds?
Paying less & ironing /// Paying more for no-iron?
Firefox /// Chrome /// Opera?
The mango salsa recipe:
1 ripe mango, diced
2 ripe tomatoes, diced (I use Roma)
1/4 finely diced red onions (use a rougher chop if your onions aren’t lethally spicy)
1/4 diced cucumber
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
Juice of 3 limes; I’m convinced limes aren’t meant to give up their juice
dash of salt
The first batch was handmixed/tossed because I didn’t want to crush everything, but the ingredients are pretty sturdy. Mixing with a spoon is just fine!
It seems to last at least a week in the fridge, I made a second batch and it’s lasting longer and still tastes fresh.
March 14, 2010
Of many possible Sunday scenarios, this was one of the good ones.
The old gang plus spouses met up for lunch but we preloaded with the cutest cake ever before we went out. Lunch was at an Italian restaurant that turned out to be Mexican food. We’re must be aging – our memories of where and when restaurants are on which corners are sorta hazy. The little one had a ball throwing her chicken, rice and beans on the floor – she’s normally much better about eating her food instead of playing with it but she didn’t approve of the chicken today. I fully approved of my enchiladas, and their guacamole was delicious!
Lunch was followed by an hour of basking in the backyard sun. We had a good long gossip, catching up on everyone’s lives: work, school, family, and health. A group of five seems to be the perfect number for these kinds of conversations.
We tentatively made plans for our next meet-up in a few weeks, probably a backyard BBQ since the weather is absolutely gorgeous, and headed out to the mall. Since I only returned a top to H&M, I made it out of there without spending. Score!
December 21, 2009
This weekend was a social whirlwind. I had the pleasure/pain of organizing lunches with former colleagues and college classmates.
On Saturday, we had BBQ with the former colleague, and the nutty one is as hilariously offbeat as usual. As is her new husband. We got greedy ordering, between the four of us we had 4 full slabs of babyback ribs, an order of tri-tip, 2 orders of mac’n’cheese, french fries, mashed potatoes, and baked beans. I didn’t finish my entire slab as intended, but that just makes for delicious leftovers!
The best part of lunch conversation: inventing zany, improbable uses for a monocle.
Cost: $32, with tip
On Sunday, our group of 7 was incomplete as the Dynamic Darling of the group had family matters to attend, but we still managed to have fun. Three of our group are teachers (middle school and high school), so teacher talk dominated the conversation.
The best parts of lunch conversation:
Lulu turning to me saying, oh! Are you a teacher, too?
Me: No, I’m just mean.
When Sarah recited the whole of Invictus, without batting an eye. And then was awarded a gold star by Sander, the other teacher, at the table.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley
When Sander, a notorious jokester, seated himself next to Kayla, the quietest, shyest of the bunch, to convince her that he’d reformed. After an hour of not picking on her, she laughed out loud at his mockery of someone else and he turned to her with a sly wink, “See? It’s always funny when it happens to someone else, isn’t it?”
At the end of the meal, the bill immediately got stuffed with bills and credit cards and handed to me for the final math. “I’m an English major!” they chorused.
“Guys,” I retorted, “we’re ALL English majors!”
Cost: $14, with tip
Carnavale!
Mighty Bargain Hunter hosts this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance: the Parts of Speech Abuse Edition.
My post on Holiday Traditions was included.
Nominations!
The Plutus award nominations are now open! The nominations will remain open for three weeks.
June 15, 2009
Overspending at the pump: $50. Oww-www!! Gas was $2.95-2.97 this weekend, up about 20-25 cents from 10 days ago. True to form, I didn’t need my car, or to fill up, until after it made the stag-like leap to nearly-unaffordable heights. C’mon folks, about to be unemployed here, can the rising prices be abated even just a little??
I did bring it upon myself, though, making myself available to chaffeur out of towner friends and then visiting Housebound Friend on Crutches 50 miles away all in the same weekend. And there was the bach’ette party that I completely skipped since it both required much more spending on the drinks and clubs, and was located in the desert, 60 miles in the opposite direction. Honestly, I was so tired by Sunday night that I couldn’t remember what day it was, never mind when and where the party was!
Saving at the (Red)box: In an almost laughable attempt to save money, we skipped renting from Blockbuster and the local shop, opting for the Redbox at the grocery store and a free rental coupon emailed to my phone. Savings? $1.08.
Microscopic savings led to more spending: Tricksy! Those Redboxes are inside grocery stores! And they had those Walker shortbread cookies I so love on sale for less than $4 a box. Mmhmm, ten dollars of groceries later, the brilliance of grocery store + Redbox’s marketing plan was another little thorn in my side. Grawr!
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In other news, this LA Times “
Girls’ Guide to Comic Con 2009” is simultaneously patronizing and frou-frou Entertainment Weekly Lite. Wait, those are the same.
I’m not a rabid fan, but I am a fan and reader enough of comics to see that the reviews of possible reasons for “female fandemonium” are based on Hollywoodisms. For example, why girls might swoon over the upcoming Whiteout?
Alex O’Loughlin for ‘Whiteout’
What more do you need than the hunkiest Aussie to ever play the undead … alive and in the flesh? And as long as he uses his real accent, he can talk all about this murder mystery set in Antarctica. Male lead Gabriel Macht isn’t too shabby either.
Really? Aussie Alex and Gorgeous Gabe?? That’s why gals should be intrigued by Whiteout?
Lemme tell you a little something about Whiteout, the comic. It’s a great cop story written by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Steve Lieber, about a woman named Carrie Stetko. She’s the protagonist of the tale, a U.S. Marshal deeply troubled by her past, who has been exiled to Antarctica and become a rare female year-round resident. The story opens as the peace of her retreat is shattered by murders, and a deeper mystery, which she has to investigate amidst suspicions that there is far more to these murders than simple homicide.
Can’t speak for the movie, or the acting, but I can say that the original story is an excellent read, and, if they actually write the script well, a strong, intelligent, complex female lead would be a great reason to be excited about seeing the promotion for this at Con.
NOT because of two possibly passibly pretty faces.
And, how webcomics facilitate learning. Or making of connections: Today’s Questionable Content is both funny, and led me to research the Bechdel Test. Which led me to this post about women in film that totally reflects the attitude I ranted about above.
April 27, 2009
’tis back to the grindstone, m’hearties!
Glad to be bringing home a paycheck for another few (9) weeks, but not so much to have to actually do it. Here. With these people. You understand.
Had a wonderfully *waiting* weekend with the BFF et al. We’re anxiously awaiting her new bundle of joy and have bets going on how much he’ll weigh. Your positive thoughts are much appreciated, I’m worried that he’s been so quiet.
We had other good news to celebrate: her sibling is engaged and will likely be having an Aussie wedding. I promptly texted my congratulations and asked if I was invited to the shindig. 🙂 [Yes, I am.]
I figured that I should invite myself early on to guarantee that I can find a decent flight. I’ll be doing my travel research soon, it’d be so cool if I were, ah, still unemployed and able to do a NZ and Australia jaunt in the fall. [Cool minus the part where I’d still be jobless ….. priorities, priorities…!!]
Oh, and I just realized that this will be the first wedding that I’ve attended in years where I won’t be part of the ceremony. Oh, to simply be a guest and not a working participant! Fun!
Spent $6 on admission to the Fair on Saturday, another $9 on funnel cake (with powdered sugar) and roasted corn on the cob. Friends treated us to our demolition derby tickets ($8/each).
Overspending goes hand in hand with unhealthy fair food. Refrained from buying apple butter, peach butter, cinnamon apple butter, and apricot butter. Luckily, I really only had $20 in cash, so I put a couple things on my card, and stuck to cash only the rest of the time. Total spending was about $32.50.
I wanted to treat them to lunch on Sunday for putting us up and all, but didn’t get the chance to. I did run their dishwasher for them, though. Imagine that, an Asian using the dishwasher to wash dishes! Such a novelty.
The real plan is to trade them manual labor (babysitting, cooking and cleaning) later this summer when I have time on my hands. We’ve been such close childhood friends that we’ve never practiced such etiquettely habits as host gifts and bringing wine to gatherings before, I guess there’s no reason to start formality with practically-family.
April 5, 2009
Of all weekends to report, this has to be one of the laziest since I was nine.
Saturday: Spent a cumulative 3.5 hours on the phone catching up with random friends who called and wanted to marathon chat. Was astoundingly fatigued all day, so, I watched 5 episodes of Dollhouse. I meant to watch one, but … they had five posted. Sometimes I get obsessive like that. Oh yes, and I spent $140 (to start) on this bridesmaid dress in eggplant from Alfred Angelo. Of course it’s a junior bridesmaid size that I bought, so I hope it won’t need major tailoring. [And if anyone has a clue how to make my hair look like that? That’d be awesome!]
[Photo courtesy of alfredangelo.com]That expense was a complete surprise. I was informed via text message that very afternoon that our plans to “wear whatever you have” had changed to “we need your sizing to order your dress right now.” *sigh* O, Bridesmaidery….
Grocery shopping on the way home was consciously restrained: I was starving and didn’t want to go overboard. I’m trying the TJ’s enchiladas (cheese, beef and chicken) for $1.69/package. Also, their Thai yellow curry and garlic naan bread. I’m thinking of trying scrambled eggs and potatoes with the yellow curry for lunch. Ooh, also, I bought a ten-pack of frozen hash browns. Yummm… total spend was $11.97.
Sunday: Another laaaazy day. Walked over to Fresh and Easy to pick up some eggs (99 cents/dzn) and asparagus (99 cents/lb). The weird thing was they’d clearanced out the old 9-oz. asparagus bundles, as they do, for 50% off, but it was more expensive than the 1-lb sale packages. I’m glad I was paying attention to the pricing and packaging!
And talk about your friendly neighborhood store! I discovered that they have this little Kitchen section where an employee cooks foods for sampling. They had iced lemonade with strawberries, Clementines, and lemon iced cakes laying out for sampling, with a ham in the oven. My timing was excellent. When I asked the lady about her opinion of the breads since I hate trying new, disappointingly dry, sandwich breads, she grabbed a new loaf off the shelf and made me an open-face ham and cheese sandwich! She reminded me to be sure and sample anything else I might be unsure about in the store; the employee running the Kitchen is allowed to open and serve any foods. Isn’t that cool? I didn’t end up buying the bread right away because I’d intended to buy a small package of ham to go with it; they only had ham shanks the size of 1.5 heads.
On the walk home, I played with the neighborhood Chihuahuas running through everyone’s yards. Really, they played with my feet.
Made a quick stop at Vons for a box of $4.88 Clementine Cuties and a block of sweet butter for the next batch of Mac’n’Cheese.
I think this week’s menu will include breakfast burritos, hash browns, roasted or steamed asparagus, some sort of creative curry (scrambled eggs and asparagus? and potatoes? and tuna?) and garlic naan, TJ’s enchiladas, and a lot of Clementines.
Now I’ve got my feet up waiting for the wash cycle to complete and debating how much I like these Charles David shoes (on sale for $20).
[Photo courtesy of 6pm.com]
March 15, 2009
I’m ready for a nap. Was up at 8:30 to make an errand run, having only 0.5 L bottles about, and thought I might pick up some TJ’s snacks. The snacks were a no-go but I did escape Target with a lovely new water bottle. I wanted the first one, but got the second one in blue because the shelves were understocked.
It’s actually cooler than I gave it credit for. Had wanted a very simple, sturdy bottle without straw/spout/drinking enabling device, but the pop-up straw worked better than expected ($10.50). It’s a good thing I tend to fall more in love with things after I acquire them.
They had Club crackers for $2.40/box, half the grocery store price, so I grabbed a box of original and multigrain. Made it out of Target in under $15 bucks, and 15 minutes — not bad at all.
The day-rate parking permit was $5, and it took us about 20 minutes (?) to get up to the parking area. We thought we were going to take the trail up to the ski lift area, but completely missed the turnoff because there was snow everywhere. It was awesome!
We also tried to convince my friend, who wanted to go way past the point of our endurance/snowshoeing capabilities that these were bear tracks.
She didn’t buy it, but after promising that everyone would go buy hiking boots and come back next weekend, she agreed to come back down the mountain. Thank goodness, I’m way too out of shape to be doing a major 10 mile hike along something called the Devil’s Backbone our first time out this year. Let’s work up to that, shall we?
I think we probably did a good 3 miles or so up the wrong trail, with a steepish grade, slogging through snow, slush, ice and mud. My toes are rather grateful that we let up when we did, the ground was so uneven and slippery, I’m surprised no one fell.
Also, we all picked up “walking sticks” along the trail which were a joke at first but came in handy as the snow got deeper and slicker. This was my trusty trail assistant:
I’m looking forward to going out again, and next time I’ll be sure to eat a real breakfast beforehand. Eating only a snack wasn’t the smartest planning, but it sure made my bacon cheeseburger with crispety, melt-in-your-mouth bacon, and side of fries seem like pure heaven by 3 in the afternoon! ($6.50)
Day’s total: $27
