Two of my favorite things

I have many favorite things. I have favorite stickers, favorite yarn, favorite decorated clothespins (quite useless but very quote), favorite songs, favorite flowers, favorite sock monkeys... lots of favorites.

Towards the top of my list of favorite things are food and wine. I'm not the kind of person who eats to sustain myself, but I adore good food. It might make me a bit more huggable than Heidi Klum, but I care not. I enjoy a good plate of pasta, a bite of fresh mozzarella, seared tuna medallions, grilled asparagus, and... well, I need not go on. We don't have all day... and I really don't need to comment on wine - that stuff is just good.

While this month might have been completely killer in about one million different ways, tonight will hopefully make up for some of it. I will be going to a wine dinner at a local restaurant and the menu starts with "imported cheese and meats".... um, yes please.

There are some other things, all of which are delicious, but this dinner had me at cheese. What can I say, I'm a cheese eatin' fool. The stinkier the better, in fact.

So, while I haven't had time for my other favorite things this month, at least I'll be able to partake in a couple of my favorite things tonight before heading off to the Texas Hill Country tomorrow. So, pray I don't drink too much tonight or tomorrow will be a very, very long day.

My finger is healing up nicely. That's one perk to taking your vitamins and drinking lots of water I suppose. The downside to the healing is that I can no longer play the "poor pitiful me, lookie at what I did to my finger" card. There are always ups and downs to every situation.

I've had a couple of nights home this week and I've found myself cleaning. I haven't been able to keep up with laundry, organizing, cleaning, and keeping a nice house for the past 5 weeks because I've been so busy. For those of you who know me well, then you know this has probably been more traumatic for me than my fight with the kitchen knife last week. Once upon a time, back in 9th grade (or so), I woke up a clean, neat person. I'm not sure what happened from the day before, but I quit being a messy kid and started being a clean human. I've been that way ever since and messes bug the ever lovin' heck out of me.

So, with my nights to myself, I've been cleaning and getting my life back in order. After all, I'm leaving state for a few days on Friday and I can't leave a messy house. I am my mother's daughter, after all.

Oh, and I've been cooking too. I received my first CSA box last Thursday and inside were some delectable goodies. There were strawberries, leeks, green garlic, spinach, kale, turnips, spring greens, a head of romaine and some chervil. It has been a lesson in cooking things I'm not used to cooking this week. I was most pleased with the turnips. What I didn't toss in my mouth while cutting up were boiled and sauteed into a sweet and salty side dish that just might be my new favorite thing. Who knew I loved turnips so much. I still need to work on the greens though. They were edible, at best.

Hmmm... after reading the first part of this blog post, I realize I've not said much that is very interesting.

Well.

Hmm.

Uhhh...

I've got nothing. Sorry about that. Maybe I'll have something exciting next time.

Oh Hai, Knife, you're sharp... or reasons why you should sharpen your kitchen knives.

I cut my finger open tonight. YES. Open. I apparently have a kitchen knife that won't cut through the peel of a lime but will do a good job of slicing straight through my finger nail and a good 1/8 of an inch into my finger. Nice picture I've painted for you... eh? I'd like to say I was slicing into a lime for a tasty margarita or vodka and cranberry - but no, it was for work. Yes, my "career" work and I was at home. *sigh* I've reached that point.

"What point is that" you ask. You might think it's the point of having nothing better to do that I bring work home. But actually, it's the point of having TOO much work to do during the day and it's either come home with some work or stay at work with some work. I chose to come home as I'm starting to forget what being home feels like. Good thing, I'm not sure I would have made it out of work without bloodying up the back hall. Thankfully I only contaminated one lime and had 19 more to work with. Ah, it will make for a good story later.

And no, we're not hosting a bar at work tomorrow. We're opening the Artosphere Chamber Music Series concerts at Cooper Chapel and we'll be serving sparkling water with slices of orange/lemon/lime (your pick) during intermission. It's going to be fabulous, even with a bandaged hand :)

I think I've reached the "crazy about her job" stage of life. Yesterday was the first day I've had away from work for three weeks and this morning I was thinking "You know, it's not really been that bad". I have most of Saturday off but that's it until my trip to Austin.

My trip to Austin to drink margaritas, eat superb Tex-Mex, dine on real Texas BBQ, lounge in the Hill Country sun, enjoy time by Town Lake (I'll never call it Ladybird Lake... or whatever the new name is), roam the UT campus, cry upon my first site of the UT tower in over a year and at the Austin skyline that I love so dearly, eat Amy's Ice Cream, try and poke turtles in the turtle pond on the UT campus, drive over the 360 bridge (at least 4 times), get overly excited at every single Longhorn that is plastered across the back of the cars, breathe in the Texas air, and just remember why I love that town so much.

Oh yeah, and to see these guys:


Sorry, more videos, I can't help it :)

I'm at 9 days until go time. 9 more days... I can make it.

It's not that I've been ignoring my blog... it's just that I've been busy. Oh, and my screen on my laptop went out a few nights ago (which makes it hard to blog regularily). I've got a new screen coming and once I have time to sit down for an hour and replace the old one, I'll be back to my normal, social media haunting self.

So, until then, I do hope you'll survive. If you don't think you'll make it, you can pretend you're hanging out with me this month by visiting the Artosphere website.

Enjoy.

Creating

After a weekend of restlessness, I finally found something to do today.

I made a necklace.

I haven't sat behind my beading table as much as I used to. Not sure why. It's tedious? Maybe. It wrecks my fingers? Usually. I've lost my jewelry mojo? Probably. I could be any number of things, but today I sat down and made the necklace shown above. Maybe one of these days I'll actually photograph it "for real" and list it over at Idyll Hands.

I'm not sure what's been up lately. I've been restless like a 14 year old with nothing to do. Too young to go drive somewhere, too old to play with her Barbies. Remember that age? I used to cry myself to tears from boredom. Yes, I was a bit dramatic, who wasn't? I'll prep everything to card some batts and then tire of the activity. The same goes for knitting since I finished my shrug. I'm hoping the recent boredom will go away when the Sweet Boy and I hop in my little Civic and head south to Austin at the end of May. Maybe some good Texas sun and a bit of the Austin Freak Flag is all I need to perk up a bit.

Or maybe I just need to head out into the yard and find a sunny spot to nap in. Perhaps a bit of sun will do it.

And one more...

Okay, I'm completely stuck on finding amazing covers of "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" now. I ran across this one today:



Ignore the crazy footage (you know how everyone on YouTube thinks they are music video producers these days) and just listen to the lovely. Dianna - I posted this one for you! Okay, not really, that's a lie, I posted it for me but I did think "HEY, I wonder if Dianna has heard this".

Enjoy.