Here's some real excitement… I thought I'd make a record of everything I did yesterday, a fairly typical Saturday. Here are the raw notes, with some editorial explanations in blue:
walked out in the fresh snow to get paper
puffins & P-G [Puffins = Barbara's Puffins cereal, one of my favorites. P-G = Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.]
italian coffee & saturday stumper online [I like the Newsday online crosswords]
load of laundry
change from pj's [yeah, and it's only 9:30]
load of dishes
took compost out to shed
started barley soaking (organic Purple Prairie)
got sourdough out to try to see if it's still ok [I hadn't fed it since before Mississippi]
papaya juice & choc chip cookie while stuffing cks in envelopes, short stamps, prioritize [this is for work – I didn't have time at the end of the day Friday to stuff the checks from the A/P check run and get them in the mail, so I had to do it from home]
went through work email to clear spam notifs & junk – 1.5 hrs [I get notifications of every blocked email that comes in to the server – hundreds per day – and I have to read each one to see whether the sender is perhaps legitimate, because the ORFEE filter often blocks legitimate senders until I whitelist them. I had gotten waaay behind when I was in Mississippi in early January, and then sick for a week after that, so even though I was trying to get in at least 15 minutes of checking every day, I couldn't catch up – I had 3,200 notifications to go through, and I wanted to get that off my plate because it was annoying me every single day at work. There's gotta be some easier way, but I haven't figured it out yet.]
started roomba running upstairs
leftover basso for lunch (& whole grain chips w/ Desert Pepper salsa) [the basso was from our Valentine's / new-job-celebration dinner last night at Cucina Pazzo, as you know my favorite local restaurant — this was the special, and it was really good — lightly breaded & pan-fried sea bass, with a "warm salad" topping of fresh spinach leaves, roasted red pepper, carmelized onion, garlic, and kalamata olives — also smashed garlic potatoes and grilled asparagus … and yes, I know it's not Valentine's Day, but we didn't go out on the actual day cuz that's the way we are — it's just too crowded for our taste]
& watched chris fennimore cook w/ chef from taj mahal [this is the guy on our local PBS station, and he brings on guest cooks from local restaurants — Taj Mahal is an Indian restaurant on McKnight Rd that I've been wanting to go to, and now I want to even more.]
raisin toast & papaya juice – couple chapters of Kite runner
rebooted laundry (in dryer & another load)
rescued roomba & plugged in [he — Roomba — had somehow gotten into Nikki's room — the door must not have been closed tightly — and he got stuck on a pile of papers… sorry Nik! But he was done with our room and the bathroom and hallway anyway.]
worked some more on orfee while listening to pandora – created new station based on yeasayer (heard on world cafe yesterday) — pandora added caribou (liked), sunset rubdown (eh), king of prussia (ok), young galaxy (yes), xtc (interesting choice, of course I liked), epo-555 (good), the spinto band (liked), the naked brothers band (ok), jake mann (liked very much), jonathan segel (eh) [of course these very subjective ratings are based on hearing only one song from each group, so I could be way off base.]
dryer beeped – got out lights, put in darks, folded lights
back to orfee – i'm gonna get this done – not yet, down to 660
restarted starter [meaning now that it was room temperature, I added 1/2 C rye meal and 1/2 C warm water, and left it in front of the fire to try to get fermenting again]
alex called from PO re mailing absentee ballot app yay [meaning I'm happy he's remembering to get his ballot while he's away at school, so he can vote in the April 22 primary]
pens v sens & start crocheting bookmark [Penguins vs Ottawa Senators, big game — on TV. The bookmark is one of two I plan to make, sort of lacy crochet, maybe with a ribbon around the border, for the people I picked for the church's "Caring Sharing cross" program we do during Lent.]
2nd intermission: start soup: veg broth cubes, soaked barley, crushed tom, froz edamame + potatoes, carrots,onion, & cabbage from farm [i.e. several ingredients from the most recent winter vegetable box from Kretschmann's]
start sourdough flatbread (made up): sdough, flour, water, yeast, fresh rosemary
made antipasto platter for 3rd per w/ lambruscano bleah [the last of the sopresatta, asiago, and prosciutto from the muffalettas was yummy, the "bleah" is for the Lake Erie "wine" we had been given, which is far too sweet for our taste]
pens lost w/ 3 sec left in ot [darn Senators, they woke up after all]
seasoned soup w/ cumin, kneaded in more flour & put dough in warm oven
orfee again… listened to my "new age" station on pandora (david arkenstone, sambodhi prem, ottmar liebert, andreas vollenweider, amethystium, ooo depeche mode)
woo hoo – done! 3.25 hrs for 3200 emails
flattened dough & put in to bake
added chopped fresh parsely to soup – pretty much done – wait for bread
checked tonight's tv listings online
couldn't renew jane austen – will have to take it to lib mon [Nikki & I had gotten out a complete Jane Austen volume in early Feb, since we've been watching the Masterpiece Theater series, and there were some we hadn't read yet. Nikki read some before she left, but I haven't started on it yet since I'm still reading The Kite Runner. So I tried to renew it again online, but either someone else has put in a request for it, or it was because it was actually due by midnight last night, but the website told me I have to bring it in…and really, it's not fair for me to still have it when I'm still not quite ready to read it.]
go thru physical mail [it had stacked up for a few days — it included my Utne, Nikki's Art Education and ARTnews and a sample of Scholastic Art — sounds like we have a fledgling art teacher here, huh — Al had already gleaned his Roundel and Brew magazines out of the pile — also the latest Blockbuster Online movie from my queue — Running with Scissors — newspaper, car insurance, and phone bills, and a Barnes & Noble discount coupon — the rest was credit card solicitations and other junk that went straight to the trash — such a shame there's so much of that…]
dinner in den – soup (good w yogurt), bread (not a success), more papaya juice
seinfeld – manzier
put away soup – one in freezer
kite runner & matchstick men in front of fire
ice cream w/ penuche & special dark [I had leftover penuche icing from Mom's birthday cake last weekend, which is excellent straight, or as here, with vanilla ice cream and dark cocoa powder.]
nikki called
bed @ 10:30
Wasn't that fun? Don't you wish you were me haha 🙂
[do you see any exercise in there? No, I don't either. bah]
Where have the days gone? 