Two photos

The aforementioned baby blanket. :)



And for those who wonder what the inside of a horned melon looks like, wonder no longer...

The Handcrafter's Curse

I think it may be something everyone who makes things to give to people goes through. There's a little piece of you, a tiny selfish piece, that wants to keep things. Even if you're making them for someone else. Right now, I'm making a baby blanket for a new addition to a friend's family. It's wonderful, and bright, and I'll take pictures of it tomorrow. And I love it so much that I almost want to keep it.

I guess I'll just have to make another (after the second baby blanket I have to make) for myself. And no, that doesn't mean there's a baby on the horizon for us, it just means that I love the colours too much to not have them be part of my life. :)

In which Mike's and my minds think alike

Monday, Mike and I were IMing about what to have for dinner. "It'll be something with vegetables," I told him. "Or... maybe a stirfry?"

"Yeah!" he replied excitedly. "A stirfry!"

We had a package of rice noodles at home specifically for this purpose, and I've had not so great luck with them in the past. They've always been undercooked, more crunchy super al dente than actually properly edible. So I decided to try a new plan of attack. I put them in the pot, added water, brought it to a boil, then simmered them for five minutes. Meanwhile, I made up a vegetable stirfry with sweet and sour sauce and a few appropriate spices. When the noodles were done, I drained them. That should have been my first warning. They sat in the colander looking as solid-yet-piecey as a brain. But I persevered. Into the stirfry they went, with the last of the sweet and sour sauce. And then the stirring. The noodles began to come apart, disintegrate into mush. Hmm... I thought to myself. Maybe I went too far the other direction.

I served it. Something wasn't right. The vegetables tasted fine, but they were surrounded by this blandish, textureless, goo. I remembered then that I hadn't put salt in the water for the noodles. And there was something else. The smell. It was... And yet I bravely marched on, through half a plate. Finally I turned to Mike.

"You know what this smells like?" I asked him.

"What?" he asked, not looking up where he was pushing things around his plate.

"A farm."

He burst out laughing. "I'm so glad you said it and not me!"

Yes, that's right. I'd produced a stirfry that smelled like cow manure.

We picked out as many vegetables as we could, because they actually tasted okay if you could get them out of the mush and the smell, and formed the noodle goo into a little mountain on my plate, where it jiggled when you tapped it. Then we made toast with cheese (cheddar for Mike, brie for me).

Thankfully there was a lot of food left over from the party, or we might have had to resort to the takeout menu again. I haven't had very good luck with stirfries lately. The last two I've produced have been either too salty for human consumption (even Mike!), or smelling like farm byproducts. I think it may be time to reevaluate my cooking skills. Since we've moved to Edmonton, I've managed to serve four relatively inedible meals (luckily not to guests!), and one where I neglected to peel the shrimp (sorry, Dad), whereas in Calgary, I don't remember doing that once. Maybe something about the northern climes has sucked a bit of my already limited cooking skill away. Or maybe I just need to follow more recipes until I get the hang of things...

Posts Owed and Getting Older

I have had two things in the last week and a half that were blog-worthy. Sadly, for the one I keep forgetting about the necessary supporting documentation, and for the other, it happened last night, but I don't think I can post about it until I post about my birthday. So I will talk about my birthday, and then make a new post about what happened last night. :)

I am thirty now. It doesn't feel a whole lot different that 29, but maybe it will soon. After all, it's a whole new decade. This is the decade where I will set the groundwork for my retirement, where I will have children, where I will never have stronger bones than I do right now, and where I will hopefully bring my pain levels down and my energy levels up. This is the decade that I get married, make as big an impact on my piece of the world as I can, and start becoming crotchety instead of hip and cool (if I ever was...).

But before all that happens, we have to have a Harry Potter Party.

Click me for more pictures!

Thank you to everyone who came out and made the party so successful and memorable! Thank you also to those who couldn't be there, but were thinking of us that day. I had a wonderful time, and I couldn't ask for better people to share such a celebration with.

Shhh.... We'we hunting wabbits...

Few of the blogs I frequent have posted new news lately. But then, neither have I. So I figured I'd start the ball rolling, to see some new content! :)

I am three hours away from two well-deserved days off. Huzzah. You can sense the excitement from there, can't you? I mean, really, I am looking forward to them. I'm going to be cooking, cleaning, and knitting, and exploring things like baking pumpkin, making chocolates, and my new Miele vacuum cleaner (thank you, Farmor; I will think of you and how you hated cleaning every time I use my new, fabulous Miele vacuum, because I hate cleaning too. We couldn't have done it without you). I will be running out of yarn for the baby blanket I'm knitting as a gift (990 yards! I only have 225! ARGN!), but finishing the third Harry Potter scarf and starting the fourth and last one for donation. I will be piecing together a half-decent costume, though I haven't made a prefect's badge and probably won't get to it. I will keep bothering Mike about alternately wrapping my birthday present (but since I was there when he bought it, I might give up on this one) and writing my birthday card. I will be arranging for activities for the party, but there probably won't be prizes. And it will be fun to let the fencing world run itself for a couple of days, because they're really stressing me out right now.