Oh, Carrboro

Sunday morning, across from Weaver St.

Weekly Round-up

Reading - still plodding through Nicholas and Alexandra. They have been arrested but aren't really in any danger (yet). I'm liking the book but it's incredibly slow going for me.

Watching - William Wegman's Fay's 12 Days of Christmas. I recorded this on HBO the other day - I have no idea why it was on in August. It completely cracks me up. I've always been slightly creeped out by the "dogs doing people things" concept but it's so funny in this video because they can't keep the dogs from doing dog-things, like trying to eat the cookie dough or licking inappropriate things. It's in the same style as the video below, with the same great narrator.


Getting ready - for the beach! We're leaving for the beach on Friday for the long weekend. The house is technically half a mile from the beach (it's "ocean-smell" rather than "ocean-view") but the weather should be beautiful. So excited!

Making - new recipes from my new Weight Watchers cookbook. Everything I've made has been delicious and not at all like "diet food" - leftover flank steak for dinner tonight.

Misusing - quotation marks.

100 Things - Part 3 (or 4?)

12. I have two pieces of jewelry I've worn every day for the past nine years (counting earrings as one). I bought some earrings on a trip to the mall in the fifth grade and I started wearing them in my second hole (pierced my junior year in high school by my best friend Jessica) after it cleared up from the inevitable infection (sexy, I know). The other piece of jewelry is my toe ring. It's on the second toe of my right foot and it's been there for at least twelve years.

13. I've had "real" surgery once - when I had my tonsils out at age 4 (maybe 5 - my mom knows for sure). The only things I really remember are throwing up in a laundry basket once I got home, watching The Wizard of Oz, and getting a bunch of balloons in a creepy clown holder sent from people who worked with my dad.

14. My "fake" surgery was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I call it a fake surgery because I remember nothing of it but I wasn't ever in a hospital or operating room. I had to go to a specialist because of the position of my teeth but that didn't prevent him from burning the shit out of my lip. Apparently, he rested the surgical drill against my lip during the procedure - I woke up looking like someone had put a cigar out on my lip. Thank goodness my mom was there - she was able to make the CVS run for Oxy-Contin and Neosporin while I passed out on the couch. A later infection made the whole experience super fun.

15. I got hooked on Alias while I was recovering from my wisdom teeth surgery. I watched the first two seasons straight through in a couple days - I was either sleeping or watching Alias. My mom was staying with me and would come downstairs in the morning and ask me what had happened on Alias while she was sleeping (did I mention I couldn't sleep for a few days? That was fun.). If you watched it, you know that the whole show ended in a strange season. I couldn't resist getting the Vaughn Comeback Tour t-shirt (I'll try and post a picture here.)

16. My most embarrassing moment as a kid was probably my first day of the fifth grade. (Honestly, barfing on the school secretary's shoes in the second grade wasn't all that embarrassing in the end.) Our family had moved about fifty miles north from Kentucky to Indiana and I still had a very southern accent. Since I was a new student, my teacher asked me to stand up and introduce myself on the first day. She asked me the name of me elementary school in Kentucky. I went to Pride Elementary and I said so. She couldn't understand me so I had to repeat it: "Prohd". She then asked me to spell it: "Pay - are - aye - day - a." People never stopped asking me to "talk Kentuckian".

17. Besides my lip scar, I have one other major scar - on my knee. I cut it on a air vent on the school bus in the second grade. It needed seven stitches and still looks pretty sweet.

Weekly Round-up

I'm going to try to make this a regular feature but I'm obviously not the greatest with the follow-through (see 100 Things...).

Reading - Just finished The Accidental Tourist and now I'm in the middle of Nicholas and Alexandra. We're in the middle of WWI and the shit's about to hit the fan in Russia. Things do not look good for the Romanovs.

Watching - the third season of 24. I'm watching this through Blockbuster Online so it can take a while to get the next disc. Episodes 13-16 should be delivered today and I'll probably watch them straight through this weekend. Also: Meerkat Manor. You absolutely have to watch this show.

Loving - my new haircut. I have a good before picture so I'll take an after one and post them. I got about 6-8 inches cut off and it's much darker. This was way overdue.

Linking - Here are a couple links that have made me laugh out loud lately. (Allan, the Oregon Trail one is for you.)
Watch out for typhoid!
The story of Erin's rental house and the best noted Flickr photo.

Making - a measuring spoon hook rack. I got sick of never being able to find the right size measuring spoon so I made a little place for them all to live. I was looking more for a plain piece of wood to mount the hooks on, but the letter was the best option at Michael's. I just painted it and drilled holes - perfect!


Dreading - my air conditioner has been leaking water the past two weeks. The AC guy just came by and said I may need a whole new unit. That should be fun.

Maybe I Could Be on the Next Season of Heroes

When I pulled into the parking lot at work this morning there was a fire hydrant near the building pumping water at full force. It continued while I found a parking space, gathered all my stuff together, and started walking to my building. (I really wanted to go over and stick my hand in it to see how hard the water was coming out but I resisted the temptation - just barely.) Right after I walked by it stopped pumping out water. Then, when I'm about twenty feet from the front door of the building, the fire alarm starts going off inside. I obviously have some new-found power over fire control/notification devices - I just need to figure out how to use it. By this time next week I'll surely be able to make fire extinguishers fly through the air and knock enemies unconscious.

Deal With It

I know the pictures in the next two posts are messed up but I don't have time to fix it and I wanted to get these posts up this week. (ETA: Fixed!)

In other news, our weekly bar trivia may be a complete sham. Manufactured scores, incorrect answers, and no post-trivia accountability? Definitely a little shady.

Canning Camp

(The picture above will take you to the complete set of pictures from canning camp, but I've posted a few below.)

Canning Camp with Grandma was a complete success this year. Patricia and I drove up from Tennessee and stopped to load up the car with more tomatoes than we could possibly use during the time we were at Grandma's. After one and a half days of work, we left with 102 jars (a total of 33 gallons) of tomato juice, diced tomatoes, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and ripe tomato catsup. There was a lot more prep work than I was expecting - all of the recipes except the tomato juice called for skinned, de-seeded, and diced tomatoes. Additionally, the salsa and sauce needed lots and lots of diced veggies.

All we had to do for the juice was to put cored tomatoes (skins and all) through the sauce grinder and add salt. We canned a few quarts of juice that were left over from other recipes but the majority of the juice was produced with the grinder.


By the end of the first day we had 20 jars of juice and had prepped the ingredients for two batches of salsa. We worked all day on the second day and spent the morning of the third day splitting up the jars and packing up.


This is the part where I would brag about how good everything tastes and about how my pantry is stocked with jars to last until next year. Unfortunately, everything is in Tennessee and we're trying to figure a way to get it to North Carolina without paying an arm and a leg. I may have to give in and have Patricia pack it up and ship it because I can only go so long using the precious jars of juice and sauce I saved from last year.

Vacation

I got back from my extended vacation late Friday night to an air conditioner on the fritz, an empty fridge, and two needy cats. It almost made me want to turn around and go back to the airport. Since then, I've had some time to settle back in and upload pictures from the trip. I'll do a separate entry for the canning pictures, so here are the Florida ones.

One of the best parts of a trip to Florida is a boiled shrimp dinner with fresh caught shrimp. The plated item to the right of the shrimp is grilled peach halves - really good.


After dinner we started talking about Beatrix Potter while Dad cleaned the kitchen and the books eventually came out. Here's M'ma reading Two Bad Mice:


No trip is complete without dinner at O'Steen's in St. Augustine. I had a running feud in college with a random guy about the best place for fried shrimp in St. Augustine. We were both so completely convinced of the superiority of our favorite restaurant that we stuck to our convictions even after we learned the two restaurants had the same cook and identical fried shrimp recipes.


On our last night in Florida we took a twilight kayak trip through the mangroves in the Indian River Lagoon. The sun set with about twenty minutes left in the trip and the full moon was incredible. We paddled by a bird nesting island and my dad got some great shots of some baby pelicans.



Obviously the trip was way too short and my tan is beginning to fade. It's a lot hotter here than it is there so I've been longing for the beach breezes since I left.