2009, so far
Jan. 6th, 2009 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrs_sweetpeach
We were supposed to travel to Indiana to see my brother-in-law and assorted other family members on December 31st, however the trip was postponed due to the terminal illness of my brother-in-law's mother-in-law. She, I'm sorry to say, passed away on January 1st. Rather than have an open funeral, the family will host a celebration of her life sometime later this year.
Not traveling to Indiana meant we were able to attend a New Year's Eve party hosted by two of our friends in Troy. We rarely get to see them, so the party made the perfect excuse. It also lead to my first RL exposure to Wii Fit. Not that I played, mind you. But it was interesting to watch as a handful of kids and adults played an assortment of games.
New Year's Day I spent watching tv, knitting, and struggling to fully wake up. When I finally felt awake enough, I ran billing. Happily, I can do that part of my job from home. It went reasonably well and I returned to my knitting and crime show addiction afterwards. I also finished knitting my first scarf of 2009.
Friday was another laid back sort of day. More daytime tv, starting with six hours of tv court shows (Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Alex, etc., etc.) -- so many that I started to grow weary of watching contentious people argue. In the evening we went grocery shopping, then it was home to knit a fish and felt some wool. I stuffed a fish with catmint for![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
ladyinfidel's cat and went to bed.
Saturday was SEMGS -- and Pot Pie Lab was *AWESOME*.dizzi_d and texaspenguin made pastry dough and lined a whole bunch of small aluminum pie pans (the foil, disposable/recyclable kind) with the dough and then had selections of meats and veggies so that folks could assemble their own. My favorite was the chicken curry, although I still think I would have liked it even better if the curry had been a hotter. The beef stew in a pot pie was also very good. There was a ham and potatoes and dried cherry pie that surprised me with its yumminess. bwittig made a cinnamon and apple turnover-like thing with biscuit dough and that was also among my favorites. As for (real) pies -- oh my. texaspenguin made a buttermilk cream pie (this was my first exposure to buttermilk pie and *yum*) and dizzi_d made one with Egg Nog (and, omg, that was like the best eggnog custard in pie form *ever*).
All in all, it was an awesome SEMGS lab. Evenjebra's green bean casserole pot pie turned out (although the puff pastry got a bit mushy after it cooled). Nevertheless, it still made excellent left-overs.
Also in attendance at SEMGS were two dog!dizzi_d and backrubbear have Noodle, their very quick and hyper Husky, and texaspenguin has Kodi, a black lab/Chow mix. I was a very happy camper being around two nice-sized dogs for the day.
Sunday we went over to a non-LJ couple's house for dinner. On the way we stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up salad ingredients. While there, I spotted a gingerbread house kit on sale for just $3.99. I've never made one before and thought that making one with me would be something our friend's son Ian might enjoy. As it turned out, his parents had bought one of those cookie Christmas tree gingerbread kits for him. So we whipped up three batches of frosting (my kit used confectioner's sugar mixed with an egg white and a few drops of lemon juice; Ian's kit had two frosting mixes, one white and one green). We somehow got the frosting into pastry bags (I sucked at this part and mine squirted frosting from both ends. Perhaps needless to say, I've never handled a pastry bag before and found it to be quite a challenge. Nevertheless, with Ian's help I got my house assembled and decorated. I'd show you a photo, only I haven't done anything with Sunday's photos yet.
Oh, and that reminds me! Before dinner,jebra and I went to the Henry Ford Museum to see Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television. The exhibit was interesting and I particularly enjoyed the information on costume design and getting to see the Ghost Busters' former ambulance. (Which probably had as much to do with that catchy Ghost Busters' Theme music as it did the vehicle itself.)
Monday was a return to work and then a repair job. A week or so ago, I washed my summer purse (which I knit last summer and managed to get dirty by tossing into my backpack). When it came out of the dryer, I noticed the cotton yarn had frayed and was on the verge of breaking. I considered various methods of repair, but I believe I'm out of that particular variegated yarn and I didn't want to mess around with weaving yarn through the knit fabric anyway. So I thought about crocheting something from my amazing stash crochet thread. I thought about trees and flowers, eventually deciding it'd be fun to crochet a sun and then use patch to mend the bag.
Not traveling to Indiana meant we were able to attend a New Year's Eve party hosted by two of our friends in Troy. We rarely get to see them, so the party made the perfect excuse. It also lead to my first RL exposure to Wii Fit. Not that I played, mind you. But it was interesting to watch as a handful of kids and adults played an assortment of games.
New Year's Day I spent watching tv, knitting, and struggling to fully wake up. When I finally felt awake enough, I ran billing. Happily, I can do that part of my job from home. It went reasonably well and I returned to my knitting and crime show addiction afterwards. I also finished knitting my first scarf of 2009.
Friday was another laid back sort of day. More daytime tv, starting with six hours of tv court shows (Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Alex, etc., etc.) -- so many that I started to grow weary of watching contentious people argue. In the evening we went grocery shopping, then it was home to knit a fish and felt some wool. I stuffed a fish with catmint for
ladyinfidel's cat and went to bed.Saturday was SEMGS -- and Pot Pie Lab was *AWESOME*.
dizzi_d and texaspenguin made pastry dough and lined a whole bunch of small aluminum pie pans (the foil, disposable/recyclable kind) with the dough and then had selections of meats and veggies so that folks could assemble their own. My favorite was the chicken curry, although I still think I would have liked it even better if the curry had been a hotter. The beef stew in a pot pie was also very good. There was a ham and potatoes and dried cherry pie that surprised me with its yumminess. bwittig made a cinnamon and apple turnover-like thing with biscuit dough and that was also among my favorites. As for (real) pies -- oh my. texaspenguin made a buttermilk cream pie (this was my first exposure to buttermilk pie and *yum*) and dizzi_d made one with Egg Nog (and, omg, that was like the best eggnog custard in pie form *ever*). All in all, it was an awesome SEMGS lab. Even
jebra's green bean casserole pot pie turned out (although the puff pastry got a bit mushy after it cooled). Nevertheless, it still made excellent left-overs. Also in attendance at SEMGS were two dog!
dizzi_d and backrubbear have Noodle, their very quick and hyper Husky, and texaspenguin has Kodi, a black lab/Chow mix. I was a very happy camper being around two nice-sized dogs for the day.Sunday we went over to a non-LJ couple's house for dinner. On the way we stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up salad ingredients. While there, I spotted a gingerbread house kit on sale for just $3.99. I've never made one before and thought that making one with me would be something our friend's son Ian might enjoy. As it turned out, his parents had bought one of those cookie Christmas tree gingerbread kits for him. So we whipped up three batches of frosting (my kit used confectioner's sugar mixed with an egg white and a few drops of lemon juice; Ian's kit had two frosting mixes, one white and one green). We somehow got the frosting into pastry bags (I sucked at this part and mine squirted frosting from both ends. Perhaps needless to say, I've never handled a pastry bag before and found it to be quite a challenge. Nevertheless, with Ian's help I got my house assembled and decorated. I'd show you a photo, only I haven't done anything with Sunday's photos yet.
Oh, and that reminds me! Before dinner,
jebra and I went to the Henry Ford Museum to see Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television. The exhibit was interesting and I particularly enjoyed the information on costume design and getting to see the Ghost Busters' former ambulance. (Which probably had as much to do with that catchy Ghost Busters' Theme music as it did the vehicle itself.)Monday was a return to work and then a repair job. A week or so ago, I washed my summer purse (which I knit last summer and managed to get dirty by tossing into my backpack). When it came out of the dryer, I noticed the cotton yarn had frayed and was on the verge of breaking. I considered various methods of repair, but I believe I'm out of that particular variegated yarn and I didn't want to mess around with weaving yarn through the knit fabric anyway. So I thought about crocheting something from my amazing stash crochet thread. I thought about trees and flowers, eventually deciding it'd be fun to crochet a sun and then use patch to mend the bag.
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