I finally got tired of having black hair with blue highlights, so yesterday I had my new hairstylist knock things back to a uniform dark brown shade.
The blue was fun while it lasted, but a year-and-a-half (give or take) is a long time for me to stick with one hair color or style.
Now I'll be able to walk around in normal society and no one will be the wiser about my inner weirdness. Nah, I think it shows anyway.
Whew, I'm glad that's over with! I made it through my third annual NaBloPoMo, but it was far from easy. I do see the value of returning to my weekday posting schedule, but I'd like to have the weekends off again.
The new post that got the most traffic this month was my throwaway one about applying vanilla extract as a perfume while baking. I know why – it's because J-Walk Blog linked to it. Thanks, John!
As usual, I had traffic spikes on Thanksgiving and the day before as people found my various recipes via Google searches. Apparently there are a lot of people who need my help making dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and other seasonal goodies.
I can't think of anything pithy to say in summary so I'll just wrap this up and enjoy the rest of my evening. Goodnight!
The good news is that I had a lot of fun staying up late last night. I went over to Spyder and Kanga's house with A Librarian and we plunged into the middle of a marathon of Lord of the Rings extended editions, watching until the third movie ended close to 1:00 a.m.
Even though I stayed up until nearly 2:00 a.m., I still woke up at 7:00 a.m. That was my first mistake, but one that's easy to make when you have a young cat in your room trying to crawl up your nose to get your attention.
I went and volunteered with The Animal Rescue Alliance for a while in the morning, but didn't stick around long because they had plenty of help and I was tired (what a surprise!). My biggest potential good deed for the day was sending my sister a cell phone pic of a cute bobtailed kitten there. She's already put in an application to adopt it.
Once I got home, I surfed for a while and ate an entire box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for lunch. It wasn't long before I crawled under the fluffy fleece throw on our couch and fell asleep with cats piled all over me.
My husband eventually woke up and I transferred myself to our real bed…and then slept until 7:00 p.m. Yikes! I really did NOT mean to do that.
Now I'm fated to have another late night whether I like it or not. I just hope I can break the cycle enough that it doesn't mess me up when I go back to work on Monday.
How was your Saturday?
So Trillian woke me up at 6:00 a.m. yesterday, just like every day. She actually wakes me up about every three hours all night long, but the six o'clock wake-up is the one that sticks.
My husband had been sleeping on the couch for some reason, so I transferred him to the bedroom and we did a cat exchange so that Xena would be shut in the room with him and Trillian could roam the house free of the threat of being viciously hunted down and pummelled.
As I checked my e-mail, I went over my Thanksgiving cooking plans in my head. I'd been brining the turkey since the morning before in a mixture of apple cider, brown sugar, kosher salt, fresh ginger, garlic, cloves, bay leaves and orange slices. I figured it would need to cook about four hours (13+ pounds x 20 minutes per pound) with the stuffing inside.
After a few hours of surfing and reading, I started to get bored, which caused me to accelerate my food preparation. Even though dinner wasn't until 2:00 p.m., I went ahead and poured off the brine, rinsed and stuffed the turkey and put it in the oven around 9:30 a.m. At the same time, I started my dinner roll dough rising.
As long as I was in the kitchen anyway, I snapped the ends off the green beans and steamed them, then peeled and cut up the potatoes and placed them in a pot of water to wait for the time when I'd need to start applying heat. I mixed up the ingredients for cranberry sauce in a pan on the stove and prepared the brie I would be later be baking as an appetizer.
I know this sounds like a meal plan that would make Martha Stewart proud, but the reality is that Murphy's Law was in full effect. The rolls were tough – and I don't know why. I severely overcooked the turkey. The mashed potatoes were really dry because we barely had any milk. I hadn't bought enough green beans, so the green bean casserole was way too soupy and there was only enough for everyone to get a scant spoonful.
Did I mention that I managed to shower myself and the kitchen with red wine right as I was starting to serve the food? The white shirt I was wearing is now officially a dust rag.
Still, everyone complimented me profusely on the dinner. We had a nice time sitting around drinking champagne, wine and coffee, chatting and catching up. The cleanup was so easy that all evidence of the meal had disappeared by early evening (except for some wine stains on the edge of the counter that I noticed this morning). Oh, and there's an extra pumpkin pie in the refrigerator.
I'd forgotten how much I enjoy having people over for dinner. I think I'm due to throw another dinner party soon.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the U.S. who's reading this.
Here are some of the things I'm thankful for:
I have several hours before I need to stuff the turkey and put it in the oven. After that, I'll clean the kitchen and living room, prepare the green beans to be steamed and eventually made into a casserole, peel the potatoes and get them ready to cook later, remove the rind from the brie I'll be baking with pecans and brown sugar to serve as an appetizer, and cut up the apple for the cranberry sauce. Oh, and retrieve the utility table from the basement and clean it off so I can set it up as soon as I've confined the cats to their various rooms.
Have a lovely day!
Because I jumped on the bandwagon and read Twilight, then immediately went out and saw the movie, apparently I am now a "goth cougar pervert" according to a number of other bloggers/Twitterers in the same club.
Just wait until the random Google traffic from THAT phrase starts hitting…
Yesterday I drove to the University of Kansas to take part in a KU Marketing Club event. Molding young minds and all that…
On my way home, I noticed that my Honda Insight hybrid seemed awfully sluggish and that my gas mileage was lower than it would ordinarily be for highway driving. It wasn't long before an indicator light came on.
It said "IMA," which I took to either mean that the car's computer had developed partial but as yet unspecific sentience or there was a problem. It turned out to stand for "Integrated Motor Assist," which is basically the go-between for the battery and the motor.
I was surprised to find out that my car dealer's repair shop is open on Saturday, and I took my car in this afternoon. They dispatched a guy to drive me back home so I wouldn't have to wait. Thus, I spent the afternoon lying in bed reading Twilight with cats piled all over me. Ahhh. (Completely unrelated digression: I used to have a pony named Twilight.)
So anyway, the car dealer finally called me and said, "Blah, blah, blah, part name, blah, blah, other part name, blah blah, order on Monday, blah, blah, blah, should be done on Tuesday." There was also something in there about the parts probably being under warranty (yay!).
Because they had the car apart already, there was no point in arguing about the completion date. It looks like my husband and I will be sharing his car for the next few days, which means we finally have an incentive to unload all the gear from our band's last gig.
So that's my weekend so far. How's yours going?
Conversation right after I got home from doing some volunteer work yesterday:
On my NaBloPoMo schedule, which I've almost completely ignored so far, Thursdays are set aside for product reviews. Feh. I don't know what I was thinking when I continued that category from last year. Instead I'll talk about books, which more or less fall into the "stuff I like" category.
Read any good books lately? Share them!
After the last two crushingly disappointing presidential elections, I was on pins and needles all day yesterday about the outcome of the latest one.