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Here's what I've been eating lately:
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Here's some food from the last month! Several repeat in similar themes: yogurt/fruit bowls, veggies + protein, noodles, snack trays. As always, click a photo to view full size/HQ.
(this first pic for sure was taken with the iPhone 11 and it is amazing)
( Moar food! )
(this first pic for sure was taken with the iPhone 11 and it is amazing)
( Moar food! )
Here are some of the meals I've had over the last few weeks!
We've been only eating lunch and dinner and sometimes a dessert or treat, and it's been working out great.
You'll notice a lot of repeats as we use leftovers and such. We have a ton of rice + veggies + protein dishes as well that I forget to take pics of at lunch.
*All my photos are "live" photos so I took hasty screenshots of them, ignore any weird text etc. on the photos ahah
Veggie soup with tofu and egg (I used basically all the veggies that were about to go bad)
( More! Simple but filling meals )
We've been only eating lunch and dinner and sometimes a dessert or treat, and it's been working out great.
You'll notice a lot of repeats as we use leftovers and such. We have a ton of rice + veggies + protein dishes as well that I forget to take pics of at lunch.
*All my photos are "live" photos so I took hasty screenshots of them, ignore any weird text etc. on the photos ahah
Veggie soup with tofu and egg (I used basically all the veggies that were about to go bad)
( More! Simple but filling meals )
I've been working hard at buying few ingredients and making them work for multiple meals, but I keep forgetting to take pics, and the food is so amazing I wanna cry. I love food, and I'm a decent cook.
Also Steve and I have a kind of a bet going, though it doesn't really qualify as a real bet. First, we had mental limits on the amount we'd pay for various food items when shopping - I try to buy local and organic as much as possible from our co-op, and then I supplement our food at the end of the week with Imperfect box. This week my goal was to spend $50 or less on Imperfect, and I totally did. Normally I have the privilege to not think about how much I'm spending, but I'm working on sticking to a budget like an adult.
Then, he teased me about using all the produce before it goes bad. So I'm getting proactive AND creative. Last night I saw the summer squash was getting bumpy and the remaining green beans were going brown/spotty, so I cut em up and steamed them quick. I am a firm believer that cooking produce going bad extends its life by at least another few days (probably there's science behind it and it's not a belief at all). I WILL use all the produce, AND we will eat amazingly while doing it.
Third, more a personal challenge, was to find ways to make it so when I make these meals (because I'm NOT "prepping" weekly meals - I'm doing some small things to prep like soaking noodles, etc.) that it doesn't take more than 30 minutes start to finish (minus dishes). I've been doing well so far. Sometimes though I get really into it and want to pre-cut or prepare something ahead of time while I'm at it. I DO really like cooking; I just don't like how much of my time it eats up (no pun intended).
( Pics! )
Right now I have a bean soup cooking in the slow cooker that I meant to hit start on last night but forgot when tired, so we'll have it for dinner. It calls for dried black beans, but I forgot I used all mine and didn't realize it until I had prepared everything else, so I guess it's pinto bean soup!
My friend Courtney is strange, in my eyes. I don't think she describes herself as a picky eater, but there are so many vegetables and fruits she doesn't like, or has refused to try. FRUIT!!!! I literally don't know what that feeling is like.
I like almost every single vegetable and every single fruit I come across. I don't like to eat fruits with a ton of seeds (ie blackberries) because of the impossible crunch/grit and getting stuck in my teeth, but that's about it. The flavor itself is still good though...
Do you guys have any specific fruits or veggies you don't like? Entire categories (example, Steve doesn't like melons because he says they're bland. WHAT!)?
Do you consider yourself a picky eater?
Also Steve and I have a kind of a bet going, though it doesn't really qualify as a real bet. First, we had mental limits on the amount we'd pay for various food items when shopping - I try to buy local and organic as much as possible from our co-op, and then I supplement our food at the end of the week with Imperfect box. This week my goal was to spend $50 or less on Imperfect, and I totally did. Normally I have the privilege to not think about how much I'm spending, but I'm working on sticking to a budget like an adult.
Then, he teased me about using all the produce before it goes bad. So I'm getting proactive AND creative. Last night I saw the summer squash was getting bumpy and the remaining green beans were going brown/spotty, so I cut em up and steamed them quick. I am a firm believer that cooking produce going bad extends its life by at least another few days (probably there's science behind it and it's not a belief at all). I WILL use all the produce, AND we will eat amazingly while doing it.
Third, more a personal challenge, was to find ways to make it so when I make these meals (because I'm NOT "prepping" weekly meals - I'm doing some small things to prep like soaking noodles, etc.) that it doesn't take more than 30 minutes start to finish (minus dishes). I've been doing well so far. Sometimes though I get really into it and want to pre-cut or prepare something ahead of time while I'm at it. I DO really like cooking; I just don't like how much of my time it eats up (no pun intended).
( Pics! )
Right now I have a bean soup cooking in the slow cooker that I meant to hit start on last night but forgot when tired, so we'll have it for dinner. It calls for dried black beans, but I forgot I used all mine and didn't realize it until I had prepared everything else, so I guess it's pinto bean soup!
My friend Courtney is strange, in my eyes. I don't think she describes herself as a picky eater, but there are so many vegetables and fruits she doesn't like, or has refused to try. FRUIT!!!! I literally don't know what that feeling is like.
I like almost every single vegetable and every single fruit I come across. I don't like to eat fruits with a ton of seeds (ie blackberries) because of the impossible crunch/grit and getting stuck in my teeth, but that's about it. The flavor itself is still good though...
Do you guys have any specific fruits or veggies you don't like? Entire categories (example, Steve doesn't like melons because he says they're bland. WHAT!)?
Do you consider yourself a picky eater?
78// Bad food, good Steve
Aug. 5th, 2018 01:52 pmToday we woke up a little late, and were both frisky right away in the morning so we decided to take advantage of that!
Then we relaxed with coffee before needing to head out to lunch with Steve’s parents and grandpa, who just turned 92. We planned to get to Roseville a little early so we could stop at Half Priced Books. Today was a bust for me, no cheap SK hardcovers, no Murakami I don’t have, no manga that seemed interesting and no humor books that caught my eye. I was feeling flirty with Steve though so I made my trip interesting that way. He ended up finding a DS game he wanted and a manual for a Castlevania game he was missing. Score for Steve! Then we needed to go over to Baker’s Square.
When we first started doing lunches with his grandpa, it was at an Applebee’s, and that sucked. Now we go next door to Baker’s Square, which still sucks, but at least the pie is good. The food itself is bland and mushy. I opted for the in-season peach pecan pie, which is like a cheesecake with peach preserves on it. It was pretty yummy. The conversation was fun this time, everyone appeared to be in good moods and we planned for Steve and maybe me to go up north the weekend of the 19th for four-wheeling. Steve’s parents talked about plans for an RV so they can drive around the country during the cold months. I knit on my second Totoro sock, woo.
Next on our agenda was MilkJam. We had planned to go there since we wouldn’t be far from Minneapolis, but the drive ended up being like 25 minutes anyway. The weather was good and the being with Steve was awesome so I didn’t mind. I parked us a few blocks away, and we were surprised to find that there was like no line... score! We each got waffle cones, me with Cereal Killer and Steve with the mango sticky rice. I loved mine, but also I wanted the mango. I’ll probably get that next time. We walked and ate our cones, and just enjoyed each other’s company.
Finally we headed home. I had thought maybe I’d play ITG, but I was not feeling it at all by the time we got home. Too much sugar for the day, so sleepy and lazy. So I knit on my sock and Steve played his game (which he eventually beat) and we watched The Office. Soon after, Ben started streaming, so we watched him try some Fantastic Beats songs and then some officials. It was a great time. Steph was in the Twitch chat and Dave was chatting with her a bit and maybe I got protective of our Officialz group when she was making comments about officials songs (we all usually communicate via the fb group vs in twitch. I’m working on it, but it’s obvious that Ben is also protective of the four of us (him, Dave, Steve and myself) and our work on Officials. So.
After he finished playing, Steve and I went back to a show and I finally went to bleach my hair so I can dye it lavender for Bethany’s wedding. Steve beat his game and we watched a few more episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. We realized Netflix started us on the last season. I really enjoyed the Dana Carvey episode, and the Kate McKinnon episode even though she was so intense.
We ended the night continuing to watch Seinfeld while I iced my arms. Before that though we talked about the nuances of yoga and did a few postures. I’m super excited for Monday yoga, can’t wait to get back to the stuff I crave.
Then we relaxed with coffee before needing to head out to lunch with Steve’s parents and grandpa, who just turned 92. We planned to get to Roseville a little early so we could stop at Half Priced Books. Today was a bust for me, no cheap SK hardcovers, no Murakami I don’t have, no manga that seemed interesting and no humor books that caught my eye. I was feeling flirty with Steve though so I made my trip interesting that way. He ended up finding a DS game he wanted and a manual for a Castlevania game he was missing. Score for Steve! Then we needed to go over to Baker’s Square.
When we first started doing lunches with his grandpa, it was at an Applebee’s, and that sucked. Now we go next door to Baker’s Square, which still sucks, but at least the pie is good. The food itself is bland and mushy. I opted for the in-season peach pecan pie, which is like a cheesecake with peach preserves on it. It was pretty yummy. The conversation was fun this time, everyone appeared to be in good moods and we planned for Steve and maybe me to go up north the weekend of the 19th for four-wheeling. Steve’s parents talked about plans for an RV so they can drive around the country during the cold months. I knit on my second Totoro sock, woo.
Next on our agenda was MilkJam. We had planned to go there since we wouldn’t be far from Minneapolis, but the drive ended up being like 25 minutes anyway. The weather was good and the being with Steve was awesome so I didn’t mind. I parked us a few blocks away, and we were surprised to find that there was like no line... score! We each got waffle cones, me with Cereal Killer and Steve with the mango sticky rice. I loved mine, but also I wanted the mango. I’ll probably get that next time. We walked and ate our cones, and just enjoyed each other’s company.
Finally we headed home. I had thought maybe I’d play ITG, but I was not feeling it at all by the time we got home. Too much sugar for the day, so sleepy and lazy. So I knit on my sock and Steve played his game (which he eventually beat) and we watched The Office. Soon after, Ben started streaming, so we watched him try some Fantastic Beats songs and then some officials. It was a great time. Steph was in the Twitch chat and Dave was chatting with her a bit and maybe I got protective of our Officialz group when she was making comments about officials songs (we all usually communicate via the fb group vs in twitch. I’m working on it, but it’s obvious that Ben is also protective of the four of us (him, Dave, Steve and myself) and our work on Officials. So.
After he finished playing, Steve and I went back to a show and I finally went to bleach my hair so I can dye it lavender for Bethany’s wedding. Steve beat his game and we watched a few more episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. We realized Netflix started us on the last season. I really enjoyed the Dana Carvey episode, and the Kate McKinnon episode even though she was so intense.
We ended the night continuing to watch Seinfeld while I iced my arms. Before that though we talked about the nuances of yoga and did a few postures. I’m super excited for Monday yoga, can’t wait to get back to the stuff I crave.
61//Steve lunch and grocery shopping
Jul. 3rd, 2018 12:51 amMy morning was spent much the same as yesterday morning, so I’ll skip over that, but I did need to wait for the new TV to arrive and sign for it and direct the guys to where to put it. That went off without a hitch, and then I asked Steve if he wanted me to come out for some Jamba lunch and walking, and he of course agreed enthusiastically. Before that, I RACED to the park to catch a random wild Lickitung, mwahahaha.
I started to leave, then when I was trying to take a Pokémon gym I realized it was colder than I anticipated and was threatening rain, so I went back home to get my windbreaker, and then I stopped for gas and tried to do a 3-star raid but was unsuccessful solo (I got really close though). Then! Onwards to the University. We got Jamba and I stopped to pee because I learned my lesson from last week and didn’t want to ruin my own day.
After that we started wandering around campus, and Steve asked me my plans and I told him I planned to grocery shop. He then made a comment to me about not spending a lot of money and that I purposely buy the more expensive of a product because I think money equals quality, and I interpreted the tone as attacking, so we got into a tiff about it. This looked mostly like tense silent with brief word exchanges, and after like 10 minutes of me seething in my autism and his own feelings on the matter, we were able to discuss our points - Steve doesn’t want me to spend a million dollars shopping and reminded me that we had developed a weekly budget several months ago (which I obviously forgot about). Since I do all the shopping and cooking, it’s very upsetting to feel like he genuinely believes I buy the most expensive thing on purpose, when in all honesty I don’t look at price basically ever and go off of what I want - whether that is ingredient list or the item of produce or whatever. A specific example of this is wanting 100% buckwheat soba and not flour/buckwheat soba. In the end I agreed to stick to the original budget, now that I was reminded and remember it, and he expressed his appreciating of the fact that I want us to eat good food and do the making of the things. The rest of our walk was back to normal, good and fun.
After he had to go back to work (boooo) I headed to the Wedge. I was able to find most of the things on the list that I wanted, but still needed a few things from Whole Foods. I drove to Woodbury and got the last few items I needed before heading home.
Once back home, I set about making lunches for the rest of the week, which didn’t take long as I was using a Rawvana recipes. I love her recipes because they are delicious and usually 5 ingredients or less. The food always has a lot of flavor and strikes home the beauty of using only a few ingredients. The problem I have with her recipes is that she expects you to consume 200-300 calories for a meal, which is ridiculously unhealthy. I think she tries to balance this out with salads and fruit as snacks, but it still works out to like 1100-1300 calories per day, which does not work for me and certainly doesn’t work for Steve. So I usually end up either doubling the recipe, or taking a recipe that says it serves 4 and making it serve 2. That sort of thing.
After the food was done and dinner was had (if you guessed fried egg Sammies and rice, you’d be right!), I played Hearthstone all night, finally beating the Witchwood solo adventure and playing some constructed. Steve okayed Shadow of the Colossus and Nick was playing Demon’s Souls. A good night.
I started to leave, then when I was trying to take a Pokémon gym I realized it was colder than I anticipated and was threatening rain, so I went back home to get my windbreaker, and then I stopped for gas and tried to do a 3-star raid but was unsuccessful solo (I got really close though). Then! Onwards to the University. We got Jamba and I stopped to pee because I learned my lesson from last week and didn’t want to ruin my own day.
After that we started wandering around campus, and Steve asked me my plans and I told him I planned to grocery shop. He then made a comment to me about not spending a lot of money and that I purposely buy the more expensive of a product because I think money equals quality, and I interpreted the tone as attacking, so we got into a tiff about it. This looked mostly like tense silent with brief word exchanges, and after like 10 minutes of me seething in my autism and his own feelings on the matter, we were able to discuss our points - Steve doesn’t want me to spend a million dollars shopping and reminded me that we had developed a weekly budget several months ago (which I obviously forgot about). Since I do all the shopping and cooking, it’s very upsetting to feel like he genuinely believes I buy the most expensive thing on purpose, when in all honesty I don’t look at price basically ever and go off of what I want - whether that is ingredient list or the item of produce or whatever. A specific example of this is wanting 100% buckwheat soba and not flour/buckwheat soba. In the end I agreed to stick to the original budget, now that I was reminded and remember it, and he expressed his appreciating of the fact that I want us to eat good food and do the making of the things. The rest of our walk was back to normal, good and fun.
After he had to go back to work (boooo) I headed to the Wedge. I was able to find most of the things on the list that I wanted, but still needed a few things from Whole Foods. I drove to Woodbury and got the last few items I needed before heading home.
Once back home, I set about making lunches for the rest of the week, which didn’t take long as I was using a Rawvana recipes. I love her recipes because they are delicious and usually 5 ingredients or less. The food always has a lot of flavor and strikes home the beauty of using only a few ingredients. The problem I have with her recipes is that she expects you to consume 200-300 calories for a meal, which is ridiculously unhealthy. I think she tries to balance this out with salads and fruit as snacks, but it still works out to like 1100-1300 calories per day, which does not work for me and certainly doesn’t work for Steve. So I usually end up either doubling the recipe, or taking a recipe that says it serves 4 and making it serve 2. That sort of thing.
After the food was done and dinner was had (if you guessed fried egg Sammies and rice, you’d be right!), I played Hearthstone all night, finally beating the Witchwood solo adventure and playing some constructed. Steve okayed Shadow of the Colossus and Nick was playing Demon’s Souls. A good night.
50//Food musings
Jun. 22nd, 2018 11:36 amI get into these moods where I’m obsessed with certain cultural foods for weeks or months at a time, and I go back and forth most often between Japanese, Mexican, and Indian (though Naf Naf is Middle Eastern, and they have the best hummus and falafel, I don’t make that at home). I love very specific things about each of the basic flavors, but I feel like I can’t be focusing in both at the same time because they are just *so* different.
For the last couple months before school got out, I was on a Mexican kick. Black beans, avocado, tomatoes and cumin were my main staples. Now I’m back to wanting rice and noodles, seaweed, light soups and *gasp* eggs. I haven’t eaten eggs since I was traumatized watching “What the Health?” I live mostly a vegan lifestyle anyway, so to stop eating eggs wasn’t that big of a leap when I wasn’t consuming them that often. I’ve noticed that I don’t really miss anything anymore after I stop eating it.
The thing I consume that makes me not vegan is cheese - usually sheep or goat but occasionally cow, especially if I’m eating out. I used to be obsessed with cheese; living just a 10-minute drive from Wisconsin, I have access to a lot of high-quality cheese. However, once I stopped eating it regularly, the cravings for it diminished after a few months. Even now when I eat it am I rarely dying for it. It adds a nice texture or flavor to certain dishes, but otherwise I prefer it plain, like a snack. Dairy is in most foods if you’re eating at a restaurant, and I go out enough that it makes sense to just call me vegetarian vs vegan.
I digress.
I spent the day reading through a book I have with Japanese recipes, “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat,” just because I enjoy the book, and gathering ideas for recipes I wanted to make. Of course I skipped the recipes with meat and fish, and found a vegetarian Dashi recipe online (though when I eat at any Asian restaurant I assume the soup base has fish stock and that’s okay with me).
Then I spent the entire afternoon meandering through grocery stores - Whole Foods, my local co-op, and a local Asian market (“Ha Tien”) that I’ve never actually been in. Most of the food there was Vietnamese or Laotian, but there were sections for Japanese and Korean foods too (though mostly junk food). I finally was able to get enoki mushrooms, which are often out of stock at the co-ops, whole daikon, a cute soup bowl, some various seaweed types, dragon fruit, and decent rice. Ha Tien also had a surprisingly robust selection of “vegan seafood” in the frozen section. I couldn’t read any of the ingredients so I don’t actually know what any of them were comprised of. Having never developed a taste for seafood, I wasn’t willing to try any out, but that was pretty fascinating.
Shopping took forever because in the Asian market I had to move very slowly to determine each section’s wares and look closely at the labels, and I was constantly in the way of a man trying to vacuum the floor. Literally wherever I set my cart, he would mysteriously appear. Maybe he was following me, lol. All the cashiers could have been students of mine, but I didn’t see anyone I knew - I would guess most of my Hmong families shop at Hmong village (a huge indoor market with homemade clothing stalls, beauty supplies, various electronics services and hot food stands) because it has a much much larger selection of fresh produce, but I don’t think it has much in the way of noodles, spices and meat.
Things I wanted but did not find:
-shiso
-Kiriboshi
My Japanese-food (or Korean or other Asian food) consuming friends, some questions out of curiosity:
1. What are your Japanese food go-tos? What do you make most often at home? What is your daily food routine?
2. How do you make your tea?I drink a lot of tea, and I use a metal electric kettle, but I have very hard water so mineral build-up happens quickly. I’m curious how others deal with these annoyances. Also, what IS your favorite tea (anyone answer! I’m curious)?
3. For how long do you store rice, and how do you keep it from getting hard (or how do you rehydrate it)? In the book, the woman adds green tea to her leftover rice. I’m curious if that’s common or not.
4. What are your favorite noodles and why?
5. What are your favorite spices or accoutrements that you add to your cooking to make it flavorful?
6. There’s that Japanese trope of eating toast while in the go, what kind of bread do you consume? I don’t eat that much bread, but when I do it’s a sprouted kind with nuts and it’s amazing.
7. Do you cook rice on the stove or in a rice cooker? If you have a rice cooker, what kind? Do you rinse your rice even when the directions say you don’t have to? Do you soak your rice? I currently use a Zojirushi 3-cup simple rice cooker, but I’ve always been really interested in the more expensive, high-tech rice cookers. I almost always rinse my rice no matter what, so the starches don’t get everywhere. I only soak specific short-grain rice, overnight.
I got home pretty late, and Steve just had a new TV delivered for us. We bought a 47” back in like 2010, which we used for quite some time. Eventually it broke, and we used a hand-me-down plain tv of similar size for the next several years. Steve’s gotten to the point of wanting to play his state-of-the-art games on a state-of-the-art tv, and I don’t blame him. He did a lot of research because we haven’t owned a new TV in almost a decade, and he settled on a TCL 65” that is considered the best value for its quality and size. The TV is really nice, about $750USD, and it’s of course huge. The picture is beautiful, but we noticed like... dark patches, when you pan side to side. Steve did some research, and it turns out this is called “dirty screen” phenomenon, and is very common on these TVs. Most people don’t care because it’s not a huge issue, but it’s very noticeable once you see it. Steve and I debated the merits of using the warranty to get a replacement or get it fixed, but at this point I think we’re actually going to trade it out for a more expensive Sony that’s the same size and is more reliable, albeit more expensive.
For the last couple months before school got out, I was on a Mexican kick. Black beans, avocado, tomatoes and cumin were my main staples. Now I’m back to wanting rice and noodles, seaweed, light soups and *gasp* eggs. I haven’t eaten eggs since I was traumatized watching “What the Health?” I live mostly a vegan lifestyle anyway, so to stop eating eggs wasn’t that big of a leap when I wasn’t consuming them that often. I’ve noticed that I don’t really miss anything anymore after I stop eating it.
The thing I consume that makes me not vegan is cheese - usually sheep or goat but occasionally cow, especially if I’m eating out. I used to be obsessed with cheese; living just a 10-minute drive from Wisconsin, I have access to a lot of high-quality cheese. However, once I stopped eating it regularly, the cravings for it diminished after a few months. Even now when I eat it am I rarely dying for it. It adds a nice texture or flavor to certain dishes, but otherwise I prefer it plain, like a snack. Dairy is in most foods if you’re eating at a restaurant, and I go out enough that it makes sense to just call me vegetarian vs vegan.
I digress.
I spent the day reading through a book I have with Japanese recipes, “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat,” just because I enjoy the book, and gathering ideas for recipes I wanted to make. Of course I skipped the recipes with meat and fish, and found a vegetarian Dashi recipe online (though when I eat at any Asian restaurant I assume the soup base has fish stock and that’s okay with me).
Then I spent the entire afternoon meandering through grocery stores - Whole Foods, my local co-op, and a local Asian market (“Ha Tien”) that I’ve never actually been in. Most of the food there was Vietnamese or Laotian, but there were sections for Japanese and Korean foods too (though mostly junk food). I finally was able to get enoki mushrooms, which are often out of stock at the co-ops, whole daikon, a cute soup bowl, some various seaweed types, dragon fruit, and decent rice. Ha Tien also had a surprisingly robust selection of “vegan seafood” in the frozen section. I couldn’t read any of the ingredients so I don’t actually know what any of them were comprised of. Having never developed a taste for seafood, I wasn’t willing to try any out, but that was pretty fascinating.
Shopping took forever because in the Asian market I had to move very slowly to determine each section’s wares and look closely at the labels, and I was constantly in the way of a man trying to vacuum the floor. Literally wherever I set my cart, he would mysteriously appear. Maybe he was following me, lol. All the cashiers could have been students of mine, but I didn’t see anyone I knew - I would guess most of my Hmong families shop at Hmong village (a huge indoor market with homemade clothing stalls, beauty supplies, various electronics services and hot food stands) because it has a much much larger selection of fresh produce, but I don’t think it has much in the way of noodles, spices and meat.
Things I wanted but did not find:
-shiso
-Kiriboshi
My Japanese-food (or Korean or other Asian food) consuming friends, some questions out of curiosity:
1. What are your Japanese food go-tos? What do you make most often at home? What is your daily food routine?
2. How do you make your tea?I drink a lot of tea, and I use a metal electric kettle, but I have very hard water so mineral build-up happens quickly. I’m curious how others deal with these annoyances. Also, what IS your favorite tea (anyone answer! I’m curious)?
3. For how long do you store rice, and how do you keep it from getting hard (or how do you rehydrate it)? In the book, the woman adds green tea to her leftover rice. I’m curious if that’s common or not.
4. What are your favorite noodles and why?
5. What are your favorite spices or accoutrements that you add to your cooking to make it flavorful?
6. There’s that Japanese trope of eating toast while in the go, what kind of bread do you consume? I don’t eat that much bread, but when I do it’s a sprouted kind with nuts and it’s amazing.
7. Do you cook rice on the stove or in a rice cooker? If you have a rice cooker, what kind? Do you rinse your rice even when the directions say you don’t have to? Do you soak your rice? I currently use a Zojirushi 3-cup simple rice cooker, but I’ve always been really interested in the more expensive, high-tech rice cookers. I almost always rinse my rice no matter what, so the starches don’t get everywhere. I only soak specific short-grain rice, overnight.
I got home pretty late, and Steve just had a new TV delivered for us. We bought a 47” back in like 2010, which we used for quite some time. Eventually it broke, and we used a hand-me-down plain tv of similar size for the next several years. Steve’s gotten to the point of wanting to play his state-of-the-art games on a state-of-the-art tv, and I don’t blame him. He did a lot of research because we haven’t owned a new TV in almost a decade, and he settled on a TCL 65” that is considered the best value for its quality and size. The TV is really nice, about $750USD, and it’s of course huge. The picture is beautiful, but we noticed like... dark patches, when you pan side to side. Steve did some research, and it turns out this is called “dirty screen” phenomenon, and is very common on these TVs. Most people don’t care because it’s not a huge issue, but it’s very noticeable once you see it. Steve and I debated the merits of using the warranty to get a replacement or get it fixed, but at this point I think we’re actually going to trade it out for a more expensive Sony that’s the same size and is more reliable, albeit more expensive.
45//Father’s Day at my mom’s
Jun. 17th, 2018 03:54 pmAfter sleeping for only 4 and a half hours, I had to get up and start getting ready. I decided not to make homemade baked beans but instead buy them. The chocolate cake thing I made ended up lo9ing delicious, but I was worried it would be too bitter.
As usual I was running Kate somehow, I can’t even remember why. I might have been writing an entry? I got up at 9:30 and yet we didn’t get there until after 1. Oh! I was trying to finish my Mom's gloves that I never gave her for mother’s day, but I still didn’t finish, whoops.
When Steve and I arrived they had all finished eating, even though they’d texted me 7 minutes before we got there stating they were gonna eat. I guess they were hungry, lol. We listened to Name of the Wind, and again I started to get tearful. It’s just too good. I die.
The food was good, beyond beef burgers and chips and baked beans. After food we went outside and tried not to melt in the heat. Steve, August, mom and Paul played cornhole for awhile while Bethany, Jake and I talked. Then Bethany and I got thirsty so we went inside to get drinks, and we discovered they’d bought a two-person sauna?? Lollll. Apparently my mom’s doctor thinks she needs to sweat or something, so instead of going to the gym like a normal person, she shelled out over 3 grand on a personal sauna. So weird.
I joined in for a few games of cornhole, and Steve and I were beaten by Paul and August and then Bethany and Jake. We’re not good, lol. I don’t have depth perception!!!
It was SOOO hot so we all would stand in Clyde’s kiddie pool.
Steve, my parents and I think Bethany all loved the pie. August and Jake hated it, and Clyde actually thought it was good! He hasn’t had a lot of sugar so it wasn't too bitter for him. :)
We hung around until 5 or so, at which point it was definitely time to go. So tired.
Somehow even though we were both ridiculously exhausted, we ended up having our own fun for quite some time after we got home, until we were both extra completely worn out. What a good day.
As usual I was running Kate somehow, I can’t even remember why. I might have been writing an entry? I got up at 9:30 and yet we didn’t get there until after 1. Oh! I was trying to finish my Mom's gloves that I never gave her for mother’s day, but I still didn’t finish, whoops.
When Steve and I arrived they had all finished eating, even though they’d texted me 7 minutes before we got there stating they were gonna eat. I guess they were hungry, lol. We listened to Name of the Wind, and again I started to get tearful. It’s just too good. I die.
The food was good, beyond beef burgers and chips and baked beans. After food we went outside and tried not to melt in the heat. Steve, August, mom and Paul played cornhole for awhile while Bethany, Jake and I talked. Then Bethany and I got thirsty so we went inside to get drinks, and we discovered they’d bought a two-person sauna?? Lollll. Apparently my mom’s doctor thinks she needs to sweat or something, so instead of going to the gym like a normal person, she shelled out over 3 grand on a personal sauna. So weird.
I joined in for a few games of cornhole, and Steve and I were beaten by Paul and August and then Bethany and Jake. We’re not good, lol. I don’t have depth perception!!!
It was SOOO hot so we all would stand in Clyde’s kiddie pool.
Steve, my parents and I think Bethany all loved the pie. August and Jake hated it, and Clyde actually thought it was good! He hasn’t had a lot of sugar so it wasn't too bitter for him. :)
We hung around until 5 or so, at which point it was definitely time to go. So tired.
Somehow even though we were both ridiculously exhausted, we ended up having our own fun for quite some time after we got home, until we were both extra completely worn out. What a good day.
43//My first full day off is a sick day
Jun. 15th, 2018 10:26 pmSo we went to bed around 9:40, and I woke up several times with such bad reflux that I basically was vomiting in my mouth/choking/coughing. If that wasn’t bad enough, at 3am I woke up so cold and couldn’t get warm. I was shivering so much and asked Steve to cuddle me. My joints (fingers, knees, elbows) hurt so badly that I started to cry when Steve held me. He was not warm like I was hoping; he felt cold too. He of course told me that I was burning up and broke into a sweat immediately upon touching my skin. Eventually he went and got me another blanket for myself and gave me some NyQuil, as he had to get up in a couple hours. As I lay there waiting for the meds to kick in, I thought about how when Haley is sick, she just tolerates it. She never puts medication, even OTCs, into her body unless she absolutely must (and the only thing I can think of over the last 5 years was when she got her first UTI and waited until it was a kidney infection to prove to herself it wasn’t going away). I was grateful I don’t have a mental illness that makes me suffer like she does. Eventually the NyQuil started to work and my pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
I woke up 13 hours later, well-timed to a concerned text from Steve about whether I was alive or not. I was much better, my fever broke at some point, and my joints were still tender but not super terrible. But I had to spend the day in basically a hangover state, all gingerly moving about and taking it easy.
Haley came over to get a shirt she left over at my place and we laid outside for awhile until it suddenly started to rain. We talked about how I value people who have passion about things and hobbies and interests, and Haley values people who... have passion about their personality? It was really hard for her to put into words and I kind of feel like I know what she’s getting at. The difference I guess is that I think if people have no hobbies or passions, they’re kind of empty and boring, and she feels the opposite - that you’re “deeper” if you are interested only in other people and getting hype from simply being around them, and that if your life is a hobby you have less substance to YOU as a person. It’s actually a very interesting way to look at two opposing perspectives.
Personally I can’t imagine how boring and frustrating life would be if you had to rely on others to entertain you or make you feel fulfilled. You’d experience so much disappointment when everyone fell short of your high expectations and demands. I love having hobbies and sharing in the passion for them. She particularly asked a lot about Ben and Sean and why we like them, because they’re the quintessential “normal” people that Haley wants nothing to do with. It was so hard to explain the good vibes that I get from them, and how we share hobbies but also are different in a lot of ways, and how much I appreciate the way Ben talks about both things he loves and things he hates, and how Sean is observant, responsive, and independent in her own ways and has hobbies that overlap with Ben’s but she also has her own interests too that are unique and cool.
Soon after she left, Steve got home and left again to trade in his PS4 for a PS4 pro, and I showered and got ready for dinner. Soon after, Scott and Nick showed up and we met Courtney, Joe Waid, his girlfriend Megan and Quimby at India Palace. The place was packed and I learned that Courtney always calls ahead, when Steve and I have never done that. They were able to seat us in a weird spot in just a few minutes. The food was delicious as always, though I ate very little because I was still feeling a bit weird. I was pretty quiet, as was most of the group, most of the time. It’s like everyone was having a tired adult day.
After India Palace a few of us walked over to Starbucks for drinks and then headed back to our place. Steve’s plans for his birthday were to play Hidden Agenda, a game developed by the same people who made Until Dawn and played very similarly. Until Dawn is an amazing survival horror game that I insist you find a way to play, because it is SO GOOD. Choices affect outcomes and story. Hidden Agenda can be played as a story or as competitive between people. The group chose competitive, and each chapter in the story, someone random would get a “hidden agenda” to try to make something happen (or not). These events impacted parts of the story, and everyone got to vote between two choices during parts of conversations or scenes. Most choices were majority vote but some were “everyone has to agree” choices.
In the end, the group got a bad ending, but our suspicion over who the identity of the killer was confirmed, and now I want to play through the story to see how my decisions alone would shape the narrative. I LOVE these kinds of games, “choose your own adventure” for the modern day.
It was after midnight when the game ended, and Joe waid and Megan had left around 11, but he texted me asking for updates when the game was over, haha.
Bedtime and Kripp! Tomorrow is Larvitar day in Pokémon Go... and also about 50 million other things we’re doing.
I woke up 13 hours later, well-timed to a concerned text from Steve about whether I was alive or not. I was much better, my fever broke at some point, and my joints were still tender but not super terrible. But I had to spend the day in basically a hangover state, all gingerly moving about and taking it easy.
Haley came over to get a shirt she left over at my place and we laid outside for awhile until it suddenly started to rain. We talked about how I value people who have passion about things and hobbies and interests, and Haley values people who... have passion about their personality? It was really hard for her to put into words and I kind of feel like I know what she’s getting at. The difference I guess is that I think if people have no hobbies or passions, they’re kind of empty and boring, and she feels the opposite - that you’re “deeper” if you are interested only in other people and getting hype from simply being around them, and that if your life is a hobby you have less substance to YOU as a person. It’s actually a very interesting way to look at two opposing perspectives.
Personally I can’t imagine how boring and frustrating life would be if you had to rely on others to entertain you or make you feel fulfilled. You’d experience so much disappointment when everyone fell short of your high expectations and demands. I love having hobbies and sharing in the passion for them. She particularly asked a lot about Ben and Sean and why we like them, because they’re the quintessential “normal” people that Haley wants nothing to do with. It was so hard to explain the good vibes that I get from them, and how we share hobbies but also are different in a lot of ways, and how much I appreciate the way Ben talks about both things he loves and things he hates, and how Sean is observant, responsive, and independent in her own ways and has hobbies that overlap with Ben’s but she also has her own interests too that are unique and cool.
Soon after she left, Steve got home and left again to trade in his PS4 for a PS4 pro, and I showered and got ready for dinner. Soon after, Scott and Nick showed up and we met Courtney, Joe Waid, his girlfriend Megan and Quimby at India Palace. The place was packed and I learned that Courtney always calls ahead, when Steve and I have never done that. They were able to seat us in a weird spot in just a few minutes. The food was delicious as always, though I ate very little because I was still feeling a bit weird. I was pretty quiet, as was most of the group, most of the time. It’s like everyone was having a tired adult day.
After India Palace a few of us walked over to Starbucks for drinks and then headed back to our place. Steve’s plans for his birthday were to play Hidden Agenda, a game developed by the same people who made Until Dawn and played very similarly. Until Dawn is an amazing survival horror game that I insist you find a way to play, because it is SO GOOD. Choices affect outcomes and story. Hidden Agenda can be played as a story or as competitive between people. The group chose competitive, and each chapter in the story, someone random would get a “hidden agenda” to try to make something happen (or not). These events impacted parts of the story, and everyone got to vote between two choices during parts of conversations or scenes. Most choices were majority vote but some were “everyone has to agree” choices.
In the end, the group got a bad ending, but our suspicion over who the identity of the killer was confirmed, and now I want to play through the story to see how my decisions alone would shape the narrative. I LOVE these kinds of games, “choose your own adventure” for the modern day.
It was after midnight when the game ended, and Joe waid and Megan had left around 11, but he texted me asking for updates when the game was over, haha.
Bedtime and Kripp! Tomorrow is Larvitar day in Pokémon Go... and also about 50 million other things we’re doing.
38//Home again, home again
Jun. 10th, 2018 02:07 pmSunday was a lazy day, but I really wanted breakfast at Bloom again, and so off Sean and I went.
I was NOT disappointed. I mean, I was a LITTLE disappointed because by the time we got there, the vegan pop tarts were gone, but I ended up ordering a crapton of other things instead.
I ordered a really good sticky breakfast and jasmine tea (above picture), and crispy hash cakes that made me want to die, they were so good. I ordered Steve biscuits and gravy, and he said they were the best he’d ever eaten. That place is a winner, no doubt about it.
Before and after, Sean and I walked around playing Pokémon Go. We did a Marshtomp raid, and that was really cool.
After we got back, the boys were watching Dmac play ITG, trying to qualify for a tournament. I spent the afternoon weaving, and Sean joined me doing her own. I thought maybe I was weaving too loosely and Sean was weaving too tightly. Mine had gaps in the warp and hers was bubbling. But we just kept at it! I also helped her re-wind some yarn to work well in her project.
Before we were ready, it was time to go. Back in the car, got my knitting out, and more Name of the Wind.
I was NOT disappointed. I mean, I was a LITTLE disappointed because by the time we got there, the vegan pop tarts were gone, but I ended up ordering a crapton of other things instead.
I ordered a really good sticky breakfast and jasmine tea (above picture), and crispy hash cakes that made me want to die, they were so good. I ordered Steve biscuits and gravy, and he said they were the best he’d ever eaten. That place is a winner, no doubt about it.
Before and after, Sean and I walked around playing Pokémon Go. We did a Marshtomp raid, and that was really cool.
After we got back, the boys were watching Dmac play ITG, trying to qualify for a tournament. I spent the afternoon weaving, and Sean joined me doing her own. I thought maybe I was weaving too loosely and Sean was weaving too tightly. Mine had gaps in the warp and hers was bubbling. But we just kept at it! I also helped her re-wind some yarn to work well in her project.
Before we were ready, it was time to go. Back in the car, got my knitting out, and more Name of the Wind.
33//Last classroom day with Tealie
Jun. 5th, 2018 11:02 pmTealie pointed out that today is our last ACTUAL teaching day together. When we found out two years ago that I would be with Jenny last year, we both got a bit emotional about the fact that we were breaking up as co-teachers, and now we're making it permanent! We tried, we really did!! It was actually sad to think about, because I feel like there was so much we didn’t get to do together this year because of various roadblocks, but overall the year was good. We didn’t have any real conflict that I can think, no tension between us or struggles. We got along really well and are much closer friends outside of work. She even has begun sending me more “home life” snaps that are more personal. It’s cute.
Today was another long day. At Nokomis I started going through and organizing my files intermittently, and then I went up and pulled Idrew to talk about his services for next year. Janice had caught me in the hallway and said he seemed a little less happy to see her, and she was worried he was upset about qualifying. So he and I had a really good conversation about what the services will look like for him - they won’t be much. At this point it will just be a study skills class to help him with his work. He is smart, so he’ll be in gen ed classes all the way. I gave him the rundown of the structure of the day there, how teachers will help him, how he’ll definitely make friends (and several of his peers will be attending Parkway too). At one point I asked him what his biggest fear is about going to middle school, and he gave the cutest answer: “Like I’m the new kid and everyone will be staring at me.” Awwwwwwww.
I went back to Parkway to finish testing Miracle, and that took almost 2 hours because I was giving her breaks and chatting with her and Aazariah. I hadn’t had a chance like this all year to really connect with her, and I know both of their older brothers. I never had either of them in class, but Miracle’s brother Tre was in my buddy room a lot. He seemed like a cute kid, just some difficulties with focus and I know he has an untreated hearing problem. Miracle told me he got arrested this year for breaking into someone’s house, and she went on at length about how he’s not a bad kid and he’s been mixed up with a bad crowd since going to high school and his life has been threatened as a result of the fact that he’s trying not to run around with these other boys after going to court and having house arrest. She’s really worried about him and said she’s still mad at him for behaving that way. I know she’s just really worried about him and her family means so much to her.
After testing I drove us to Dairyette. It’s like a Dairy Queen, but it’s a one-off establishment that’s been around forever on the east side. I bought them each a treat for staying so long after school with me. While there I ran into Gustavo! He goes to the high school closest to Parkway. He seemed good, he asked about anime club and the kids he was hanging out with completely reminded me of the group in Spider-Man: Homecoming - unapologetically geeky but also really funny. He seemed sad that I wasn’t gonna be at Parkway next year even though he never even visits, lol.
I walked the girls across the street to the apartments where Miracle lives. She harassed her mom about,eating us in, banging on the door and calling her several times in the span of 30 seconds, and her mom came storming to the door yelling, and the look on her face when she saw me was hilarious. She of course stopped yelling immediately and apologized to me, saying that Miracle will often call her from WITHIN the tiny apartment. I told her she didn’t need to apologize to me, and that I had told Miracle she was being annoying. Lol. We talked about Miracle for a bit, she signed the papers I needed her to, and I was on my way home.
Once I got home I realized I was so damn tired. Steve and I laid down for what we thought was only a short amount of time, but turned out it was almost 2 hours!! We must have been really tired. It felt sooo good to sleep but it meant I was too hungry and low energy for yoga, unfortunately. I fixed us up some delicious potato kale soup with leek, and it was AMAZING. I toasted some bread cubes and pumpkin seeds and that took it to a whole new level. Soon after we ate we both realized we didn’t have near enough calories for the day, so I suggested maybe we get ice cream from Dairy Queen. When we started walking, I opened Pokémon Go to find I had an EX Pass! Gasp! And it isn’t for this weekend, thank god, since we went be in town this weekend. I practice,y yelled at Steve to check his phone but didn’t want to give it away, so I got to watch his face light up at his own surprise invitation. It’s for next Tuesday to catch MewTwo and I could not be more excited.
We made the short trek to DQ, he got a seasonal fruit blizzard (small) and I got a salted caramel blizzard (mini). They were perfect to our needs and a great treat to end the day, but I was SO thirsty by the time we got home.
Today was another long day. At Nokomis I started going through and organizing my files intermittently, and then I went up and pulled Idrew to talk about his services for next year. Janice had caught me in the hallway and said he seemed a little less happy to see her, and she was worried he was upset about qualifying. So he and I had a really good conversation about what the services will look like for him - they won’t be much. At this point it will just be a study skills class to help him with his work. He is smart, so he’ll be in gen ed classes all the way. I gave him the rundown of the structure of the day there, how teachers will help him, how he’ll definitely make friends (and several of his peers will be attending Parkway too). At one point I asked him what his biggest fear is about going to middle school, and he gave the cutest answer: “Like I’m the new kid and everyone will be staring at me.” Awwwwwwww.
I went back to Parkway to finish testing Miracle, and that took almost 2 hours because I was giving her breaks and chatting with her and Aazariah. I hadn’t had a chance like this all year to really connect with her, and I know both of their older brothers. I never had either of them in class, but Miracle’s brother Tre was in my buddy room a lot. He seemed like a cute kid, just some difficulties with focus and I know he has an untreated hearing problem. Miracle told me he got arrested this year for breaking into someone’s house, and she went on at length about how he’s not a bad kid and he’s been mixed up with a bad crowd since going to high school and his life has been threatened as a result of the fact that he’s trying not to run around with these other boys after going to court and having house arrest. She’s really worried about him and said she’s still mad at him for behaving that way. I know she’s just really worried about him and her family means so much to her.
After testing I drove us to Dairyette. It’s like a Dairy Queen, but it’s a one-off establishment that’s been around forever on the east side. I bought them each a treat for staying so long after school with me. While there I ran into Gustavo! He goes to the high school closest to Parkway. He seemed good, he asked about anime club and the kids he was hanging out with completely reminded me of the group in Spider-Man: Homecoming - unapologetically geeky but also really funny. He seemed sad that I wasn’t gonna be at Parkway next year even though he never even visits, lol.
I walked the girls across the street to the apartments where Miracle lives. She harassed her mom about,eating us in, banging on the door and calling her several times in the span of 30 seconds, and her mom came storming to the door yelling, and the look on her face when she saw me was hilarious. She of course stopped yelling immediately and apologized to me, saying that Miracle will often call her from WITHIN the tiny apartment. I told her she didn’t need to apologize to me, and that I had told Miracle she was being annoying. Lol. We talked about Miracle for a bit, she signed the papers I needed her to, and I was on my way home.
Once I got home I realized I was so damn tired. Steve and I laid down for what we thought was only a short amount of time, but turned out it was almost 2 hours!! We must have been really tired. It felt sooo good to sleep but it meant I was too hungry and low energy for yoga, unfortunately. I fixed us up some delicious potato kale soup with leek, and it was AMAZING. I toasted some bread cubes and pumpkin seeds and that took it to a whole new level. Soon after we ate we both realized we didn’t have near enough calories for the day, so I suggested maybe we get ice cream from Dairy Queen. When we started walking, I opened Pokémon Go to find I had an EX Pass! Gasp! And it isn’t for this weekend, thank god, since we went be in town this weekend. I practice,y yelled at Steve to check his phone but didn’t want to give it away, so I got to watch his face light up at his own surprise invitation. It’s for next Tuesday to catch MewTwo and I could not be more excited.
We made the short trek to DQ, he got a seasonal fruit blizzard (small) and I got a salted caramel blizzard (mini). They were perfect to our needs and a great treat to end the day, but I was SO thirsty by the time we got home.
30//Closings, cuddles, and cute couples
Jun. 2nd, 2018 11:09 pmWard 6 is this local hip place that serves amazing brunch food, located on a busy street on the east side of St. Paul (read: not a super great neighborhood). It was one of the catalysts to revitalizing the street, where several new establishments have cropped up and people want to spend their time walking up and down it. The problem with Ward 6 apparently was their business model: serve high-quality, sustainably sourced food from as many local places as possible while keeping prices reasonable. I guess they have been losing money for a couple years, and they’ve decided to close. Such sadness! Steve and I have gone there almost every Sunday for the last at least 2 years. I’m glad that we’ve been supporting the,, and they were always crazy busy on weekends, but I guess the same can’t be said for during the week? I went there twice for dinner and it was packed then, too.
It doesn’t appeal to locals; most of the people I saw there were white people of the sort you find in the suburbs (hi pot, it’s kettle - I have been trained to notice such hypocrisies I am a part of). That’s not to say PoC didn’t go there, but the food there again was to different tastes - whereas every weekend just across the street is a Hispanic family that sets up a roasted corn cart that seems more appropriate. What I mean to say is, everything at Ward 6 is catered to a white perspective of tastes, even if they have chicken and waffles and chilaquiles.
Still sad to see it go, it was bittersweet and only a week’s notice was given. They were out of many of the main items, of course, and it sounds like people who like the place have been pouring in. We enjoyed one last meal and said goodbye.
Picked up a few things at Mississippi Market co-op and then headed home. Because I have so many things I want to do, and so many things I NEED to do, I found myself in the classic Leah anxiety paralysis and ended up snuggling a ridiculous Nero cat basically all day while Steve played ITG and we watched Hearthstone. The cuddles were amazing and made me so happy, Nero was in the snuggliest mood and helped me feel better. I didn’t do NOTHING all day... I went to yoga right away in the morning after a quick cup of coffee with Steve. Hannah’s hot class yay! It felt sooo good to go again. Can’t wait to keep going.
Nick and Scott came over, and I tutored. Dinner was a homemade lentil soup, yum. The Office was watched, Nick continued Uncharted 2, Scott scrolled, and Steve continued Owlboy. I spent the rest of the night watching The Office and working on my entries for the previous two days because I’d fallen behind. I also spent a significant amount of time flirting with Steve over text (using my mac to type and send texts is so fun), which built a stupid amount of excitement and had a fantastic culmination after everyone left. Ehehe.
It doesn’t appeal to locals; most of the people I saw there were white people of the sort you find in the suburbs (hi pot, it’s kettle - I have been trained to notice such hypocrisies I am a part of). That’s not to say PoC didn’t go there, but the food there again was to different tastes - whereas every weekend just across the street is a Hispanic family that sets up a roasted corn cart that seems more appropriate. What I mean to say is, everything at Ward 6 is catered to a white perspective of tastes, even if they have chicken and waffles and chilaquiles.
Still sad to see it go, it was bittersweet and only a week’s notice was given. They were out of many of the main items, of course, and it sounds like people who like the place have been pouring in. We enjoyed one last meal and said goodbye.
Picked up a few things at Mississippi Market co-op and then headed home. Because I have so many things I want to do, and so many things I NEED to do, I found myself in the classic Leah anxiety paralysis and ended up snuggling a ridiculous Nero cat basically all day while Steve played ITG and we watched Hearthstone. The cuddles were amazing and made me so happy, Nero was in the snuggliest mood and helped me feel better. I didn’t do NOTHING all day... I went to yoga right away in the morning after a quick cup of coffee with Steve. Hannah’s hot class yay! It felt sooo good to go again. Can’t wait to keep going.
Nick and Scott came over, and I tutored. Dinner was a homemade lentil soup, yum. The Office was watched, Nick continued Uncharted 2, Scott scrolled, and Steve continued Owlboy. I spent the rest of the night watching The Office and working on my entries for the previous two days because I’d fallen behind. I also spent a significant amount of time flirting with Steve over text (using my mac to type and send texts is so fun), which built a stupid amount of excitement and had a fantastic culmination after everyone left. Ehehe.
Today was the beginning of Second Weekend, yay! Steve has the week off and I have Monday off, but I’m also taking tomorrow off - I’d like to say it was pre-planning for our anniversary, but I didn’t actually look at the date before I decided I was going to take it off. Just luck!
We took our time waking up, and then I made us some smoothies following Rawvana’s 5-day plan. The smoothies are mostly “green” and I know Steve likes fruit smoothies, but I thought it would be fun if we followed the plan together for the week to jumpstart our health process. Guys, the smoothies are hilarious. They make 60 ounces of liquid. Howwww are we expected to drink that much at one time?? I hate consuming a lot of liquids at once, and if you take too long with smoothies, they get frothy and thick, almost chunky. Steve was able to get his down and then decided to go mow the lawn. I decided to get going on lunch and try to finish my smoothie. Lunch is a Mexican salad, and it’s really good when you actually measure the ingredients right. I had a mishap where I actually used way too much cumin for one set of the salads and it made for sooo much intense salty flavor. But it was all right. Even though Steve took over an hour on the lawn, I still wasn’t finished with my smoothie by the time he came in. He stood over me while I finished it (lol) and then we ate our salads. Other than the extreme saltiness, it was good!!
Next on our agenda was to go to Steven Be yarns, because they were having a 25% off everything sale. Steven himself was there, along with his mom, and she is a very old first-generation German immigrant. She even referred to her marriage as “I married an American”. She told a slightly awkward but funny story about how her friend or sister had encouraged her to buy Steven a Barbie doll, and she refused and bought him a truck that he never played with, so for his next holiday the friend bought him a Barbie, which he loved and played with and made clothes for. His mom had her own yarn shop and obviously passed all that down to him. They made a book together and it was really cute, but the items in there are too intense for me - extremely textured, chunky yarns, flamboyant colors and combinations. But the stories in there were pretty neat.
The thing that is just a little too much about Steven Be isn’t that the store is overwhelming with choices - because even though that’s true, I love seeing so many options and samples, it’s that everyone is trying to be so helpful that it feels like when you’re at a garage sale and the sellers are eyeballing you hard while you look at stuff and you feel a huge pressure, like they’re gonna take it personally if you don’t like everything. I ended up only buying one skein of yarn, a beautiful gradient that I wanted last time but was too expensive for a single skein at $61. With 25% off plus 2 more percent bonus, it was far more reasonable.
It was hot as as balls out, my car sitting at 103*, but we really wanted to do some Pokémon Go. This week’s Advneture Week, where you get crazy experience for spinning stops you’ve never visited, so we drove around that area of Minneapolis for quite some time to find stops. Oddly, we found a cemetery that was just FILLED with stops. Feeling a little weird, I drove in there and we slowly drove past the stops we could, but eventually we got out and walked around to get the rest. We marveled at some of the massive headstones, sculptures, and crypts that were there, noting that as people stopped being able to afford the luxury of headstones (or as cultural views of grave sites shifted), many more recent sites only have the small flat slab. It was an interesting way to spend a half hour! There’s even a gym in the cemetery?? Just seems a little inappropriate, but I’m not complaining too much, we got so much experience from that one area.
After that, we drove around a bit more, stopping at random place for more pokestops and debating whether or not to get ice cream. Initially we totally were going to and even came across a random ice cream shop, but literally when we were going that way, the weather changed to be ominous, windy and dark, and threaten rain.
So we finished the raid we were doing in Pokémon go and decided to head to The Wedge for a couple of things. As I was turning the car around, I saw a couple people walking down the street. My head thought, “oh, that looks like Aimee!” And it took a few seconds for me to realize Oh wait, that’s Pat with her! And THEN my brain started to panic, because we were turning around right in front of them and ohmygodwhatiftheylookintothecarwhatdowedothen?! Steve didn’t look up or over to see them, and they didn’t look into the car. We drove for a few blocks while my brain screamed with anxiety and adrenaline, and I debated whether to tell Steve. I made a basic pros and cons list, because I was the only one of the four of us who knew this happened, and what a crazy near-miss it was. We had JUST been on that street, and if we were 20 seconds later getting into the car or they were 20 seconds earlier, we would have walked right into each other. And it would have been the worst. I never want to run into either of them, anywhere. Too scary, too awkward, too terrible. In the end I decided to tell Steve, because I didn’t want him to think I was keeping something from and I also wanted someone to share in the “what are the odds”?!?! Because we were in the most random of areas, AND make a joke that the universe turned the weather so that we would leave the area before disaster struck.
After a bit of conversation and talking it through, I think Steve and I got to an okay place (it of course brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for Steve), we got to the wedge. We picked up a few things, like half and half, sprouted bread, tea and crackers. After that we decided to head home.
Home was cooking dinner, which was a potato soup. For this soup I ended up using all of the remaining red bell peppers (pretty sure we bought 12), a bunch of potatoes and sooo many Roma tomatoes. While that cooked, Steve and I watched Hearthstone and played a game of rummikub, which I narrowly won after an entire game’s worth of being crazy behind.
We took the soup downstairs for more Hearthstone, and it was so hot for so long, lol. Finally we got to eat it and it was delicious, but a lot. It’s crazy how full liquids can make you. I bullied Steve into drinking all of his broth, to encourage water intake and flushing out his system. When he let his food settle enough he decided to play ITG. I think he had a decent day, he was playing some challenging songs the whole time, and some new ones we’d never seen before that seemed pretty neat.
I was working on knitting, but for some reason when I wound the ball I was using, there must have been a tangle that happened deep within the ball, because my yarn kept catching on itself and getting twisted. Instead of dealing with it and being more and more annoyed, I went to get to the root of the issue. Turns out something just went horribly horribly wrong, because I never did pinpoint on specific thing, and I ended up needing to cut the yarn because I needed to weave the yarn in and out of itself - it had just gotten so insanely twisted up! It took an hour and a half (aka the rest of my night) to resolve, but NOW the yarn is ready to be used nicely.
Also during the evening, after dinner, I gave Steve his anniversary gifts. As always, I had so much fun getting gifts for him. I like to vary it up between gifts on his Amazon or backloggery, unique gifts and gifts that are practical. For him this year, I got:
-tickets to a Final Fantasy music show that we’ve seen before, because it’s local and intimate
-new wallet, handmade from Etsy and Splatoon themed
-a new mug for his new job, with an Undertale theme
-a KitKat sampler from Japan, with really fun flavors
-the newest Kirby plush, ice Kirby (he’s trying to collect them all)
-a Hollow Knight figurine, super gorgeous and neat, also from Etsy
-a complete in box copy of Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GameBoy Advance. I was so damn excited for it because the box is like MINT, and I knew how much he’s been wanting this game.
-a card I ordered from Catana comics with a heartfelt message inside
He of course loved the gifts and was so happy about the card. We love giving gifts to each other and I’d been waiting SO long to give them! My big gift this year of course was this iPad I’m typing on, and I love it, but I know he was feeling a little weird about getting one big thing (he did the same thing at my birthday when he gave me my Apple Watch) because we’re so into these many thoughtful gift situations, but I am eternally happy about having both and it has just as much sentiment as the other ones. So much loooove.
We took our time waking up, and then I made us some smoothies following Rawvana’s 5-day plan. The smoothies are mostly “green” and I know Steve likes fruit smoothies, but I thought it would be fun if we followed the plan together for the week to jumpstart our health process. Guys, the smoothies are hilarious. They make 60 ounces of liquid. Howwww are we expected to drink that much at one time?? I hate consuming a lot of liquids at once, and if you take too long with smoothies, they get frothy and thick, almost chunky. Steve was able to get his down and then decided to go mow the lawn. I decided to get going on lunch and try to finish my smoothie. Lunch is a Mexican salad, and it’s really good when you actually measure the ingredients right. I had a mishap where I actually used way too much cumin for one set of the salads and it made for sooo much intense salty flavor. But it was all right. Even though Steve took over an hour on the lawn, I still wasn’t finished with my smoothie by the time he came in. He stood over me while I finished it (lol) and then we ate our salads. Other than the extreme saltiness, it was good!!
Next on our agenda was to go to Steven Be yarns, because they were having a 25% off everything sale. Steven himself was there, along with his mom, and she is a very old first-generation German immigrant. She even referred to her marriage as “I married an American”. She told a slightly awkward but funny story about how her friend or sister had encouraged her to buy Steven a Barbie doll, and she refused and bought him a truck that he never played with, so for his next holiday the friend bought him a Barbie, which he loved and played with and made clothes for. His mom had her own yarn shop and obviously passed all that down to him. They made a book together and it was really cute, but the items in there are too intense for me - extremely textured, chunky yarns, flamboyant colors and combinations. But the stories in there were pretty neat.
The thing that is just a little too much about Steven Be isn’t that the store is overwhelming with choices - because even though that’s true, I love seeing so many options and samples, it’s that everyone is trying to be so helpful that it feels like when you’re at a garage sale and the sellers are eyeballing you hard while you look at stuff and you feel a huge pressure, like they’re gonna take it personally if you don’t like everything. I ended up only buying one skein of yarn, a beautiful gradient that I wanted last time but was too expensive for a single skein at $61. With 25% off plus 2 more percent bonus, it was far more reasonable.
It was hot as as balls out, my car sitting at 103*, but we really wanted to do some Pokémon Go. This week’s Advneture Week, where you get crazy experience for spinning stops you’ve never visited, so we drove around that area of Minneapolis for quite some time to find stops. Oddly, we found a cemetery that was just FILLED with stops. Feeling a little weird, I drove in there and we slowly drove past the stops we could, but eventually we got out and walked around to get the rest. We marveled at some of the massive headstones, sculptures, and crypts that were there, noting that as people stopped being able to afford the luxury of headstones (or as cultural views of grave sites shifted), many more recent sites only have the small flat slab. It was an interesting way to spend a half hour! There’s even a gym in the cemetery?? Just seems a little inappropriate, but I’m not complaining too much, we got so much experience from that one area.
After that, we drove around a bit more, stopping at random place for more pokestops and debating whether or not to get ice cream. Initially we totally were going to and even came across a random ice cream shop, but literally when we were going that way, the weather changed to be ominous, windy and dark, and threaten rain.
So we finished the raid we were doing in Pokémon go and decided to head to The Wedge for a couple of things. As I was turning the car around, I saw a couple people walking down the street. My head thought, “oh, that looks like Aimee!” And it took a few seconds for me to realize Oh wait, that’s Pat with her! And THEN my brain started to panic, because we were turning around right in front of them and ohmygodwhatiftheylookintothecarwhatdowedothen?! Steve didn’t look up or over to see them, and they didn’t look into the car. We drove for a few blocks while my brain screamed with anxiety and adrenaline, and I debated whether to tell Steve. I made a basic pros and cons list, because I was the only one of the four of us who knew this happened, and what a crazy near-miss it was. We had JUST been on that street, and if we were 20 seconds later getting into the car or they were 20 seconds earlier, we would have walked right into each other. And it would have been the worst. I never want to run into either of them, anywhere. Too scary, too awkward, too terrible. In the end I decided to tell Steve, because I didn’t want him to think I was keeping something from and I also wanted someone to share in the “what are the odds”?!?! Because we were in the most random of areas, AND make a joke that the universe turned the weather so that we would leave the area before disaster struck.
After a bit of conversation and talking it through, I think Steve and I got to an okay place (it of course brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for Steve), we got to the wedge. We picked up a few things, like half and half, sprouted bread, tea and crackers. After that we decided to head home.
Home was cooking dinner, which was a potato soup. For this soup I ended up using all of the remaining red bell peppers (pretty sure we bought 12), a bunch of potatoes and sooo many Roma tomatoes. While that cooked, Steve and I watched Hearthstone and played a game of rummikub, which I narrowly won after an entire game’s worth of being crazy behind.
We took the soup downstairs for more Hearthstone, and it was so hot for so long, lol. Finally we got to eat it and it was delicious, but a lot. It’s crazy how full liquids can make you. I bullied Steve into drinking all of his broth, to encourage water intake and flushing out his system. When he let his food settle enough he decided to play ITG. I think he had a decent day, he was playing some challenging songs the whole time, and some new ones we’d never seen before that seemed pretty neat.
I was working on knitting, but for some reason when I wound the ball I was using, there must have been a tangle that happened deep within the ball, because my yarn kept catching on itself and getting twisted. Instead of dealing with it and being more and more annoyed, I went to get to the root of the issue. Turns out something just went horribly horribly wrong, because I never did pinpoint on specific thing, and I ended up needing to cut the yarn because I needed to weave the yarn in and out of itself - it had just gotten so insanely twisted up! It took an hour and a half (aka the rest of my night) to resolve, but NOW the yarn is ready to be used nicely.
Also during the evening, after dinner, I gave Steve his anniversary gifts. As always, I had so much fun getting gifts for him. I like to vary it up between gifts on his Amazon or backloggery, unique gifts and gifts that are practical. For him this year, I got:
-tickets to a Final Fantasy music show that we’ve seen before, because it’s local and intimate
-new wallet, handmade from Etsy and Splatoon themed
-a new mug for his new job, with an Undertale theme
-a KitKat sampler from Japan, with really fun flavors
-the newest Kirby plush, ice Kirby (he’s trying to collect them all)
-a Hollow Knight figurine, super gorgeous and neat, also from Etsy
-a complete in box copy of Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GameBoy Advance. I was so damn excited for it because the box is like MINT, and I knew how much he’s been wanting this game.
-a card I ordered from Catana comics with a heartfelt message inside
He of course loved the gifts and was so happy about the card. We love giving gifts to each other and I’d been waiting SO long to give them! My big gift this year of course was this iPad I’m typing on, and I love it, but I know he was feeling a little weird about getting one big thing (he did the same thing at my birthday when he gave me my Apple Watch) because we’re so into these many thoughtful gift situations, but I am eternally happy about having both and it has just as much sentiment as the other ones. So much loooove.
It was a bit of a lazier day, getting up later but not too late, still before 11. Noah wanted to maximize his game time and probably ease the strain on his budget, so he requested a quick breakfast. They went out and got BK, and brought me home a bagel from Caribou. I really took my time easing into the day, reading PostSecret and journals/blogs, and getting my list for meal prep for this week. We agreed that beginning tomorrow we’re gonna tackle the correct eating HARD and I like to support us by finding delicious and not-too-complicated of recipes, though I’m still struggling to find enough food in a day to support a grown man vs an average-sized woman.
After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.
Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.
We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P
Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.
Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.
So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!
Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.
I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!
After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.
Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.
We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P
Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.
Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.
So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!
Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.
I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!
I write so slowly, lol. An entry takes me anywhere from a half hour to almost two hours, depending on the entry. I take my time really thinking through the day, my thoughts, conversations and interactions I had, what I want to write about and what I'm okay forgetting. It's like I relive the day as I write it, and that takes time!! But in that way then it's like everything is in limbo or pause, because Steve can bang out an entry SO FAST and then he's just kind of waiting around for me. He's not TRYING to pressure me but it totally does because I feel stressed that I'm taking too long and wasting time!!!!
In the morning we took our time waking up. Steve and I were gonna go shower but first we got distracted, and that was amazing. But then! Shower. The three of us went to Ward 6. It wasn't quite as hot as it would be, so we sat outside, and that was perfect. Our server was kind of weird, like he gave me spastic energy vibes, and he was barely outside. I was super thirsty for water because of the alcohol consumption the night before combined with the fact that it was hot out, so I didn't drink a lot of my coffee during the meal, but that didn't mean I didn't want it! I ordered the belgian waffle per usual, and for the second time in a row of waffle-ordering, I got a crispy waffle :/ I want FLUFFY and SOFT waffles, not burnt hard waffles that chafe my gums. Ward 6 always has a fresh fruit compote that changes with what's in season, and this week it was apricots and cherries I think. That was the best part of my waffle. At some point during the meal, Steve went to tell me something and addressed me as "Nero." Pronounced Narrow. The short version of Habanero. NERO, OUR CAT'S NAME. It was so goddamn funny. Thank god for something funny during the meal because when Steve went to pay the check the waiter TOOK my FOOD AND MY COFFEE! I wasn't finished!!!!! But it was like, my mouth was full, the waffle was lame, and the coffee was hot and I didn't wanna make a scene. It was way more entertaining to be indignant and mournful than to fight for two more bites of waffle.
Yesterday Noah talked about how he's working on getting healthier, but that he knows gamer weekend isn't the best time for that, and commented that he's on MyFitnessPal. Steve suggested we all get on it and start using it again. it was fun when we were using it with Nick and I think we should definitely do that kind of thing with our friends. Noah is a big guy and has lost a decent amount of weight already, but he's still got a way to go for his goal weight. Steve and I also would like to lose a significant amount. What better way than to support each other on MFP?? And Steve really wants me to be happy with how I look, and find the best way to encourage me to exercise, especially with going to yoga, which makes me feel strong and happy in addition to nourishing my body and soul.
After Ward 6 we dropped my car off at the nearby car place and walked home, playing Pokemon Go. It's rock-type weekend so we've been into hurrying up on our evolutions in that area. Also adding some walking calories to our MFPs ;)
After we got home I played ITG for a couple hours. It was my second time playing using the FitKicks, and this time I started with two pairs of socks right away, and for the most part that worked well. I didn't feel the need to adjust as much, just kind of tapped my heels occasionally to shift my foot further back in the shoes. I noticed more soreness or tension in my shins than in a very long time, and it's probably because with shoes I need to actually pick up my damn feet instead of sliding them. I think overall I did better than last time, not as much sticking to the pad because I dragged my feet, but it is weird how such a thing can make a huge difference in performance. It was clear that I'm worse right now than I was because I'm adjusting to a completely new style - my feet hit the arrows at different times, and those milliseconds MATTER. I did improve my Disconnected score, which was nice, and AGAIN I KNOW can get a really solid score on Kagami, but little dumb things keep getting in the way. I'm also reading at faster and faster speeds... It just FEELS much better. I was trying to explain to Steve how it's just a feeling, a thing I can sense, when the speed is right. It just "clicks" in my head when reading it and it seems so clear. Right now I'm reading between 1005bpm and 1012bpm.*
Overall it was a really fun day, playing mostly randoms with Officials mixed in. I basically quit because I got too hot and my shoulders hurt and I spent a long time laying on the floor cooling down and drinking water. Since then my left elbow has been giving me twinges of pain, and that sucks, but hopefully it resolves itself soon.
After that I had to shower and do Cafetalk with Riria and Shinpei, my two cutie regular kiddos. That was good. I made the mistake of letting Riria choose our next book since we finished Charlotte's Web, and she chose Hachiko. We read chapter 2 today and they are definitely building up to ruining my life. Shinpei showed me his most recent programming skills on his robots, and we practiced his reading. I've been throwing in math puzzles, some with words and some without, because I think his stamina for reading is lower and I can keep him in good spirits if I give him some math inbetween. This child just turned 10 and can QUICKLY do things like 2-digit by 4-digit long division. I think because he's so smart, English being a real challenge for him to read is frustrating. So I try to keep his spirits up.
After that I caught up on LJ and blogs and joined Noah and Steve downstairs and *gasp* picked up Persona 5 again. Hence where the title of this entry comes from. Noah was like OH MY GOD NOW WE'RE ALL PLAYING GAMES. And he really wanted the three of us to play RPGs this weekend, and he REALLY wanted me to play Persona 5. It took a bit for me to remember what I was doing and get the hang of the play again, but now it's good and god is it a pretty game and I'm happy I was pushed into playing it again. I'm working my way through the second dungeon and working on my social links!
*I have talked a bit with Ben about reading speed, and he mentioned recently how he's slowed down his reading speed I think to the 800s? Low 900s? I simply don't understand how to do that. When I try to slow things down, the arrows jumble together and I can't read them! On HIS machine I read more slowly, because it's farther away and the SM5 plays slightly differently than SM3.9, but it's still in the 900s. DDR players seem to read in the 600s, and Dmac and Dave read pretty slowly too.
In the morning we took our time waking up. Steve and I were gonna go shower but first we got distracted, and that was amazing. But then! Shower. The three of us went to Ward 6. It wasn't quite as hot as it would be, so we sat outside, and that was perfect. Our server was kind of weird, like he gave me spastic energy vibes, and he was barely outside. I was super thirsty for water because of the alcohol consumption the night before combined with the fact that it was hot out, so I didn't drink a lot of my coffee during the meal, but that didn't mean I didn't want it! I ordered the belgian waffle per usual, and for the second time in a row of waffle-ordering, I got a crispy waffle :/ I want FLUFFY and SOFT waffles, not burnt hard waffles that chafe my gums. Ward 6 always has a fresh fruit compote that changes with what's in season, and this week it was apricots and cherries I think. That was the best part of my waffle. At some point during the meal, Steve went to tell me something and addressed me as "Nero." Pronounced Narrow. The short version of Habanero. NERO, OUR CAT'S NAME. It was so goddamn funny. Thank god for something funny during the meal because when Steve went to pay the check the waiter TOOK my FOOD AND MY COFFEE! I wasn't finished!!!!! But it was like, my mouth was full, the waffle was lame, and the coffee was hot and I didn't wanna make a scene. It was way more entertaining to be indignant and mournful than to fight for two more bites of waffle.
Yesterday Noah talked about how he's working on getting healthier, but that he knows gamer weekend isn't the best time for that, and commented that he's on MyFitnessPal. Steve suggested we all get on it and start using it again. it was fun when we were using it with Nick and I think we should definitely do that kind of thing with our friends. Noah is a big guy and has lost a decent amount of weight already, but he's still got a way to go for his goal weight. Steve and I also would like to lose a significant amount. What better way than to support each other on MFP?? And Steve really wants me to be happy with how I look, and find the best way to encourage me to exercise, especially with going to yoga, which makes me feel strong and happy in addition to nourishing my body and soul.
After Ward 6 we dropped my car off at the nearby car place and walked home, playing Pokemon Go. It's rock-type weekend so we've been into hurrying up on our evolutions in that area. Also adding some walking calories to our MFPs ;)
After we got home I played ITG for a couple hours. It was my second time playing using the FitKicks, and this time I started with two pairs of socks right away, and for the most part that worked well. I didn't feel the need to adjust as much, just kind of tapped my heels occasionally to shift my foot further back in the shoes. I noticed more soreness or tension in my shins than in a very long time, and it's probably because with shoes I need to actually pick up my damn feet instead of sliding them. I think overall I did better than last time, not as much sticking to the pad because I dragged my feet, but it is weird how such a thing can make a huge difference in performance. It was clear that I'm worse right now than I was because I'm adjusting to a completely new style - my feet hit the arrows at different times, and those milliseconds MATTER. I did improve my Disconnected score, which was nice, and AGAIN I KNOW can get a really solid score on Kagami, but little dumb things keep getting in the way. I'm also reading at faster and faster speeds... It just FEELS much better. I was trying to explain to Steve how it's just a feeling, a thing I can sense, when the speed is right. It just "clicks" in my head when reading it and it seems so clear. Right now I'm reading between 1005bpm and 1012bpm.*
Overall it was a really fun day, playing mostly randoms with Officials mixed in. I basically quit because I got too hot and my shoulders hurt and I spent a long time laying on the floor cooling down and drinking water. Since then my left elbow has been giving me twinges of pain, and that sucks, but hopefully it resolves itself soon.
After that I had to shower and do Cafetalk with Riria and Shinpei, my two cutie regular kiddos. That was good. I made the mistake of letting Riria choose our next book since we finished Charlotte's Web, and she chose Hachiko. We read chapter 2 today and they are definitely building up to ruining my life. Shinpei showed me his most recent programming skills on his robots, and we practiced his reading. I've been throwing in math puzzles, some with words and some without, because I think his stamina for reading is lower and I can keep him in good spirits if I give him some math inbetween. This child just turned 10 and can QUICKLY do things like 2-digit by 4-digit long division. I think because he's so smart, English being a real challenge for him to read is frustrating. So I try to keep his spirits up.
After that I caught up on LJ and blogs and joined Noah and Steve downstairs and *gasp* picked up Persona 5 again. Hence where the title of this entry comes from. Noah was like OH MY GOD NOW WE'RE ALL PLAYING GAMES. And he really wanted the three of us to play RPGs this weekend, and he REALLY wanted me to play Persona 5. It took a bit for me to remember what I was doing and get the hang of the play again, but now it's good and god is it a pretty game and I'm happy I was pushed into playing it again. I'm working my way through the second dungeon and working on my social links!
*I have talked a bit with Ben about reading speed, and he mentioned recently how he's slowed down his reading speed I think to the 800s? Low 900s? I simply don't understand how to do that. When I try to slow things down, the arrows jumble together and I can't read them! On HIS machine I read more slowly, because it's farther away and the SM5 plays slightly differently than SM3.9, but it's still in the 900s. DDR players seem to read in the 600s, and Dmac and Dave read pretty slowly too.
19//An off kind of day
May. 22nd, 2018 11:01 pmThe weather was cooler again today, but with the sun it ended up warming up and I was fine in a 3/4 sleeve. Steve and I did the thing where we let the laundry get all over the place and barely had any clothes that we could wear to work... whoops! The morning was off to a lame start when I realized that I forgot my coffee at home and didn’t prepare anything for breakfast! I was able to make some muesli cereal and that was good at least.
First block was spent getting everyone organized again and talking about how we wanted to organize the rest of the year, and I think we came up with a good plan. 2nd block was fine. Nokomis is doing field days and concerts and other things this week, so my schedule there is a little wonky. I ended up spending a lot of time looking for pics of the students graduating from 8th grade from the past few years. That was fun!
When I got home, I was super tired and decided to nap. I’m struggling with sleeping still, constantly dozing in and out and feeling like I’m never really sleeping. It leaves me feeling so damn tired by the end of the work day. I slept more than I anticipated, getting up at 5:15 after having fallen asleep probably around 3. It felt good though, and when I woke up, I found Steve downstairs and we decided to get some food. It was Naf Naf again. Steve, being sweet, offered to pick it up for us, but I was thinking it would be nice to eat outside! On the way, we stopped at a gym in Pokémon go, and Steve mailed a package. We had a really funny moment when I told Steve I was gonna get my excellent curveball throw on this random wheedle (for my Mew quest), and I TOTALLY did. It was hilarious and also I’m a bamf.
Naf Naf was good, but since I’ve continued to feel gross about myself and STILL keep eating out and not making my own food and exercising not that often. I know part of it is my energy struggles, especially when I’m sleeping worse at night, I end up using so much of my available free time then catching up. Ugh. Haley was just chastising me and Bethany and most people yesterday how we don’t have as “intense” of personalities or extreme willpower to follow through but she does. I declined to point out that Haley literally has no other hobbies other than laying in bed and watching YouTube videos (no, really) so of course she doesn’t feel like she’s giving up one enjoyable thing for the cooking or working out or whatever. It’s annoying that there’s so little time in the day to split things up, but I really, REALLY want to get going. I know summer break is coming and I’ll have more time available to get it together, but I don’t understand how other years I made time for yoga or ITG and it’s so much harder now. Part of it is probably how into knitting I’ve gotten into and how much time it takes, but still. Sucks!
Speaking of knitting, I started the Local Yarn Shawl tonight. It is really amazing so far. The yarn from my last post is super pretty, and feels light and easy to knit with. I completed one round of the repeats and can’t wait to do more.
Tomorrow Steve’s company is doing a happy hour for him at 4:30 and I’m meeting them there! Now that he’s leaving I’m gonna meet his coworkers :P
First block was spent getting everyone organized again and talking about how we wanted to organize the rest of the year, and I think we came up with a good plan. 2nd block was fine. Nokomis is doing field days and concerts and other things this week, so my schedule there is a little wonky. I ended up spending a lot of time looking for pics of the students graduating from 8th grade from the past few years. That was fun!
When I got home, I was super tired and decided to nap. I’m struggling with sleeping still, constantly dozing in and out and feeling like I’m never really sleeping. It leaves me feeling so damn tired by the end of the work day. I slept more than I anticipated, getting up at 5:15 after having fallen asleep probably around 3. It felt good though, and when I woke up, I found Steve downstairs and we decided to get some food. It was Naf Naf again. Steve, being sweet, offered to pick it up for us, but I was thinking it would be nice to eat outside! On the way, we stopped at a gym in Pokémon go, and Steve mailed a package. We had a really funny moment when I told Steve I was gonna get my excellent curveball throw on this random wheedle (for my Mew quest), and I TOTALLY did. It was hilarious and also I’m a bamf.
Naf Naf was good, but since I’ve continued to feel gross about myself and STILL keep eating out and not making my own food and exercising not that often. I know part of it is my energy struggles, especially when I’m sleeping worse at night, I end up using so much of my available free time then catching up. Ugh. Haley was just chastising me and Bethany and most people yesterday how we don’t have as “intense” of personalities or extreme willpower to follow through but she does. I declined to point out that Haley literally has no other hobbies other than laying in bed and watching YouTube videos (no, really) so of course she doesn’t feel like she’s giving up one enjoyable thing for the cooking or working out or whatever. It’s annoying that there’s so little time in the day to split things up, but I really, REALLY want to get going. I know summer break is coming and I’ll have more time available to get it together, but I don’t understand how other years I made time for yoga or ITG and it’s so much harder now. Part of it is probably how into knitting I’ve gotten into and how much time it takes, but still. Sucks!
Speaking of knitting, I started the Local Yarn Shawl tonight. It is really amazing so far. The yarn from my last post is super pretty, and feels light and easy to knit with. I completed one round of the repeats and can’t wait to do more.
Tomorrow Steve’s company is doing a happy hour for him at 4:30 and I’m meeting them there! Now that he’s leaving I’m gonna meet his coworkers :P
13// A day mostly in pictures
May. 16th, 2018 09:52 pmMy morning summed up:
1. Vincente in Reset (hiding in the chair)
2. Malik putting binder clips in his hair
3.Self-explanatory XD
4. Tre'Kari loves taking pics on my phone
The best part of my day was getting rid of my compliance stop signs, making phone calls and planning meetings. I talked with Vincente's mom today and she said he's acting up because he's been at his dad's a lot more lately and she going into the hospital for a week starting on Friday and he's really struggling with it. She sounded so sad, but we had a good talk.
After work I came home and napped a little, and then Steve needed to go get fitted for his suit for his friend Andy's wedding (he's a groomsman). That took us to Grand Ave, which then of course afterward we needed to eat somewhere on Grand, and we went to Cafe Latte. I got a cheese sandwich, salad and broccoli cheddar soup, with a decadent turtle cake slice for dessert. It was amazing. Cafe Latte used to be the "go to" place for the girls group to go in high school for birthdays. We would always either go there, for sure with Bre, Lindsey, and Holly, and sometimes Brittni. We would ALWAYS get the cheesecake. If we didn't go, the others in the group would pitch in for a cheesecake from there for the birthday girl. It was an exciting adventure because we lived just far enough outside of the Twin Cities for it to be out of the norm.
This was my bday cheesecake in 2008-
After Cafe Latte we made a pit stop at Mississippi Market Co-op and got some food to tide us over. Mostly fruits and veggies, and some other things like chia seeds, Ripple milk and agave. It was really warm today, 87F/30C, and it was so nice. Looooved it. I wore a dress and that really helped. Periodically I listened to snaps from Haley and Bethany.
After we got home it was already past 8. We went to the park for a little Pokemon Go, and then I watered the plants when we got home before doing a little Instagram scrolling.
Oh, and our leaning apple tree has started blossoming and it's adorable (don't you dare judge the apple tree; its doing it's thang!)
-----------------------------
It's really interesting how I generally struggled to write entries on a regular basis, but now that Steve and I write them together and make it a part of our routine, it's so much easier, and we enjoy how much we often find that we have to say about each day. Some things are pretty samey, but there are so many little details that get lost if you wait too long to write about them. I'm really enjoying that we are doing this.
I didn't get a chance to do any things of "substance" today, such as knitting, playing ITG or reading. But it was still a relaxing and fun day.
I'm feeling increasingly worse about my body though, I'm around the heaviest I've ever been, at 159lbs. My face looks fine and I think I wear it well, but I don't really like being as hefty as I am. Especially in the arms and belly area. This summer is the summer of getting fit again. Steve and I talked a little tonight about the fact that there's a good chance we won't actually make it out to Cincinnati this summer because of the timing of his new job (among other things), but we were planning on going to Disney World this winter with Ben and Sean and we have weekend trips vaguely planned. With that out of the cards, I think it will be a really good opportunity for me to get a handle on my eating and exercise legit regularly and not randomly.
1. Vincente in Reset (hiding in the chair)
2. Malik putting binder clips in his hair
3.Self-explanatory XD
4. Tre'Kari loves taking pics on my phone
The best part of my day was getting rid of my compliance stop signs, making phone calls and planning meetings. I talked with Vincente's mom today and she said he's acting up because he's been at his dad's a lot more lately and she going into the hospital for a week starting on Friday and he's really struggling with it. She sounded so sad, but we had a good talk.
After work I came home and napped a little, and then Steve needed to go get fitted for his suit for his friend Andy's wedding (he's a groomsman). That took us to Grand Ave, which then of course afterward we needed to eat somewhere on Grand, and we went to Cafe Latte. I got a cheese sandwich, salad and broccoli cheddar soup, with a decadent turtle cake slice for dessert. It was amazing. Cafe Latte used to be the "go to" place for the girls group to go in high school for birthdays. We would always either go there, for sure with Bre, Lindsey, and Holly, and sometimes Brittni. We would ALWAYS get the cheesecake. If we didn't go, the others in the group would pitch in for a cheesecake from there for the birthday girl. It was an exciting adventure because we lived just far enough outside of the Twin Cities for it to be out of the norm.
This was my bday cheesecake in 2008-
After Cafe Latte we made a pit stop at Mississippi Market Co-op and got some food to tide us over. Mostly fruits and veggies, and some other things like chia seeds, Ripple milk and agave. It was really warm today, 87F/30C, and it was so nice. Looooved it. I wore a dress and that really helped. Periodically I listened to snaps from Haley and Bethany.
After we got home it was already past 8. We went to the park for a little Pokemon Go, and then I watered the plants when we got home before doing a little Instagram scrolling.
Oh, and our leaning apple tree has started blossoming and it's adorable (don't you dare judge the apple tree; its doing it's thang!)
-----------------------------
It's really interesting how I generally struggled to write entries on a regular basis, but now that Steve and I write them together and make it a part of our routine, it's so much easier, and we enjoy how much we often find that we have to say about each day. Some things are pretty samey, but there are so many little details that get lost if you wait too long to write about them. I'm really enjoying that we are doing this.
I didn't get a chance to do any things of "substance" today, such as knitting, playing ITG or reading. But it was still a relaxing and fun day.
I'm feeling increasingly worse about my body though, I'm around the heaviest I've ever been, at 159lbs. My face looks fine and I think I wear it well, but I don't really like being as hefty as I am. Especially in the arms and belly area. This summer is the summer of getting fit again. Steve and I talked a little tonight about the fact that there's a good chance we won't actually make it out to Cincinnati this summer because of the timing of his new job (among other things), but we were planning on going to Disney World this winter with Ben and Sean and we have weekend trips vaguely planned. With that out of the cards, I think it will be a really good opportunity for me to get a handle on my eating and exercise legit regularly and not randomly.
Today I got up at 5:40... finally! A reasonable time! Showered and got coffee, but still took too long to sit down; Steve and I only had like 15 minutes. After he left, I just... could NOT get myself motivated to leave. I left so unbelievably late that I texted Tealie so she'd know I was coming in, and tell Malik and Vincente I'd be late. As I was walking in, I got a text from her:
Malik, "A couple minutes does not mean 20 minutes!!!!" I walked up soon after and we laughed sooo much about it, and Malik came flying out of the room trying to look extremely indignant, asking if I got Tealie's text. Still laughing, I told him I did, and apologized, and he couldn't help but crack a smile.
First block was a nightmare, they were just being so annoying. Nothing really egregious to note other than Darius, who is this tiny EBD child who I could palm in one hand and crumple him up, but when he gets mad, starts calling us the meanest names he can as if he can have any bearing on us other than annoyance. Today he was asked to leave when he kept shouting "ear rape," and he refused for several minutes, with lots of fuck you's etc. Tealie and I then convened at the front of the room, just sort of quietly venting and developing a backup plan for if they can't show they can cook, but we must have looked so serious that some of the kids got really concerned and they shushed each other into silence, staring at us, which was actually really interesting and amusing. I'm guessing Darius kept muttering to himself as we used the opportunity to talk to them about our newly developed plan (usually it's a lot of "No one cares" and "Shut up"s), because several different kids in his vicinity separately told him to stop, and Darius REALLY should know not to say anything about me in front of Vincente, because he is my biggest defender. They almost came to blows but I was able to direct Darius out of the room while Tealie managed Vincente. While I filled out his write-up and figured out how I wanted to talk to him, he had his head down on the table and called me a "piece of shit" a bunch of times (LOL!!!). I was just annoyed, not even mad, as usual. I'm so TIRED! I just don't want to deal! The end of the year is usually really fun, because we do so many projects and get to hang out with the kids, but this year it's like they're very different. Closed off, not as relaxed. Sucks!
When I was finishing up with a couple of phone calls at work, Haley texted me asking if I wanted to get lunch. I assumed she was doing laundry at my place today because she told me yesterday to leave the door unlocked but never came, but no, she just wanted to fill some time. At the TIME I thought she was already in the area so I agreed, but I had a lot of errands to run today and I wanted to get them all in. Turns out she was just at home and met me at my place after I got my eyebrows and lip waxed. Omg, getting my facce waxed feels sooo good. I love when they brush, trim, and pluck the eyebrow hairs after waxing (I only have them get the stray hairs), and even though I mostly get peach fuzz on my upper lip, I can't stand the feeling of having a mustache so I get that waxed too. So smooooth.
We went to eat at JSelby's, a vegan place in St. Paul. I got the Chili dog, fries, and their carrot cake soyclone, which is like a DairyQueen blizzard. All of it was quite good but I was so full I felt sick after. While we were there we talked a lot about Haley's boyfriend/ex-boyfriend, mostly. She was fine when we were hanging out but she spiraled later when Derek liked an instagram pic of another girl.
Dropped her off at home so she could leave, and then I went to the DMV to order a new license (because... ah... I lost mine........ again). Did you know if you have an expired license and the yellow paper that it makes your old license valid until you receive your new one?? I found that super interesting. I plan to test it out when attempting to buy drinks. Anyway, that took about a half hour of waiting in line, then I stopped at Cub for cat food. I ran into Jason, Steve's old coworker/friend, and we exchanged pleasantries. It's always good to see Jason, but this is at least the second time that I've gone to say goodbye and RIGHT then someone would come talk to him and I've ALWAYS been behind him. Today it was a random old guy at the self-checkout, and I was in his blind spot, and I stood there for such a long time like trying to lean into his line of sight* that I began to feel really awkward about overstaying my welcome, and just turned and made a break for it.
After that I picked up Steve and we went to Menards for a watering can for my hangy plant and some grass stuff. When we got home, Steve decided to mow the lawn and I cleaned out my car. It is SO GOOD to have a clean car again! The sweatshirt pileup was getting out of control, and it sorely needed a vacuuming. I also got to listen to fun music! When Steve was mowing I swear to god I looked to see if any neighbors were around and I didn't see any, so I knid of flashed Steve (just a lot of cleavage) and then I looked again and the damn neighbors across the cul-de-sac were in their driveway. lol.
Our lawn literally overnight exploded with dandelions. Lord.
When I was finished with my car I came inside and picked up a bit, going through some knitting books, needles and knicknacks Steve's mom brought down of his grandma's for me to pick through. When my phone is charged enough I'll add my favorite from today's books. When I was going through her stuff at her house, I think the oldest thing I found was a small knitting catalogue from the 1950's. She did actually have a few useful things for me - some decent needles, a few crochet hooks, and giant knitting needles!!! She had a set of 4 size 35 DPNs for god knows what, and ONE size 50. I need to find another 50 ASAP so I can REALLY make that giant blanket.
I blocked the cowl and my Pi Shawl. I'e never knit a large garment with lace before, and they weren't kidding about how much it grows! I was really pleasantly surprised.
*Real time: ~10 seconds
Malik, "A couple minutes does not mean 20 minutes!!!!" I walked up soon after and we laughed sooo much about it, and Malik came flying out of the room trying to look extremely indignant, asking if I got Tealie's text. Still laughing, I told him I did, and apologized, and he couldn't help but crack a smile.
First block was a nightmare, they were just being so annoying. Nothing really egregious to note other than Darius, who is this tiny EBD child who I could palm in one hand and crumple him up, but when he gets mad, starts calling us the meanest names he can as if he can have any bearing on us other than annoyance. Today he was asked to leave when he kept shouting "ear rape," and he refused for several minutes, with lots of fuck you's etc. Tealie and I then convened at the front of the room, just sort of quietly venting and developing a backup plan for if they can't show they can cook, but we must have looked so serious that some of the kids got really concerned and they shushed each other into silence, staring at us, which was actually really interesting and amusing. I'm guessing Darius kept muttering to himself as we used the opportunity to talk to them about our newly developed plan (usually it's a lot of "No one cares" and "Shut up"s), because several different kids in his vicinity separately told him to stop, and Darius REALLY should know not to say anything about me in front of Vincente, because he is my biggest defender. They almost came to blows but I was able to direct Darius out of the room while Tealie managed Vincente. While I filled out his write-up and figured out how I wanted to talk to him, he had his head down on the table and called me a "piece of shit" a bunch of times (LOL!!!). I was just annoyed, not even mad, as usual. I'm so TIRED! I just don't want to deal! The end of the year is usually really fun, because we do so many projects and get to hang out with the kids, but this year it's like they're very different. Closed off, not as relaxed. Sucks!
When I was finishing up with a couple of phone calls at work, Haley texted me asking if I wanted to get lunch. I assumed she was doing laundry at my place today because she told me yesterday to leave the door unlocked but never came, but no, she just wanted to fill some time. At the TIME I thought she was already in the area so I agreed, but I had a lot of errands to run today and I wanted to get them all in. Turns out she was just at home and met me at my place after I got my eyebrows and lip waxed. Omg, getting my facce waxed feels sooo good. I love when they brush, trim, and pluck the eyebrow hairs after waxing (I only have them get the stray hairs), and even though I mostly get peach fuzz on my upper lip, I can't stand the feeling of having a mustache so I get that waxed too. So smooooth.
We went to eat at JSelby's, a vegan place in St. Paul. I got the Chili dog, fries, and their carrot cake soyclone, which is like a DairyQueen blizzard. All of it was quite good but I was so full I felt sick after. While we were there we talked a lot about Haley's boyfriend/ex-boyfriend, mostly. She was fine when we were hanging out but she spiraled later when Derek liked an instagram pic of another girl.
Dropped her off at home so she could leave, and then I went to the DMV to order a new license (because... ah... I lost mine........ again). Did you know if you have an expired license and the yellow paper that it makes your old license valid until you receive your new one?? I found that super interesting. I plan to test it out when attempting to buy drinks. Anyway, that took about a half hour of waiting in line, then I stopped at Cub for cat food. I ran into Jason, Steve's old coworker/friend, and we exchanged pleasantries. It's always good to see Jason, but this is at least the second time that I've gone to say goodbye and RIGHT then someone would come talk to him and I've ALWAYS been behind him. Today it was a random old guy at the self-checkout, and I was in his blind spot, and I stood there for such a long time like trying to lean into his line of sight* that I began to feel really awkward about overstaying my welcome, and just turned and made a break for it.
After that I picked up Steve and we went to Menards for a watering can for my hangy plant and some grass stuff. When we got home, Steve decided to mow the lawn and I cleaned out my car. It is SO GOOD to have a clean car again! The sweatshirt pileup was getting out of control, and it sorely needed a vacuuming. I also got to listen to fun music! When Steve was mowing I swear to god I looked to see if any neighbors were around and I didn't see any, so I knid of flashed Steve (just a lot of cleavage) and then I looked again and the damn neighbors across the cul-de-sac were in their driveway. lol.
Our lawn literally overnight exploded with dandelions. Lord.
When I was finished with my car I came inside and picked up a bit, going through some knitting books, needles and knicknacks Steve's mom brought down of his grandma's for me to pick through. When my phone is charged enough I'll add my favorite from today's books. When I was going through her stuff at her house, I think the oldest thing I found was a small knitting catalogue from the 1950's. She did actually have a few useful things for me - some decent needles, a few crochet hooks, and giant knitting needles!!! She had a set of 4 size 35 DPNs for god knows what, and ONE size 50. I need to find another 50 ASAP so I can REALLY make that giant blanket.
I blocked the cowl and my Pi Shawl. I'e never knit a large garment with lace before, and they weren't kidding about how much it grows! I was really pleasantly surprised.
*Real time: ~10 seconds
5// Extra tired and work training
May. 8th, 2018 09:12 pmI made the mistake of staying up past 11 last night, and this morning I could NOT drag myself out of bed. It was basically impossible. Thankfully I had my work training today, and even though it started the same time as school, I was still able to sleep in a lot later somehow. Probably because I didn't put on any makeup or shower, and I wore a hat. lol.
Brian was harassing me about some special ed documents over email before I left, and then he CALLED ME even THOUGH he knew I was at my training. TWICE. I was sitting in the very front and the trainer lady kept standing DIRECTLY behind me breathing down my neck (and spent a lot of time just being by our group), and Brian did not help my case. I definitely got the feeling she was trying to intimidate me somehow, and I'm really not one to be messed with when it comes to that stuff. I was knitting the whole time, but I was also doing the work. I didn't need to look at my work, and I ended up starting and finishing an entire fingerless glove today, and it was the first time I'd ever knit a glove starting with the thumb and attaching it to the ribbing. The yarn I'm using is gorgeous and vibrant; it's a hand-dye I got at the Sow's Ear.
We were surely the most remedial group (me, Tealie, and Rachel): Tealie can NEVER not talk at things, I was knitting, and Rachel is a space cadet. It was a pretty redundant training anyway. We did get our next project updated using their conceptual framework and added into their resources page, so we weren't total jerks.
Oh, and if you want to see my classroom (with the lights on, ew - we NEVER have the lights on) and Tealie, here's a short video that was filmed of her last week!
We had to leave a bit early to go to Jocelyn's budget meeting. It DOES sound like they got the money for a half time Montessori coach, so Tealie's gonna see what that's about. Steph was clearly upset about the Montessori 101 class and something else to do with electives, but Parkway isn't losing much staff positions next year, and the ones they're losing are due to misuse of funds anyway. She didn't let anyone know who is leaving, and I finally got the opportunity to tell Jenny that I was leaving. She had a Jenny-style sad reaction (a little tearful) and said she's extra sad because she had been secretly hoping I'd be able to co-teach with her next year. A high compliment, I must say. Jenny is such a sweetheart and I miss her a lot. But she understands, and is supportive and happy for me.
I came home, texted with Bethany and Haley about food, weight loss and Haley's boy drama before kind of napping for an hour and a half while Steve played ITG. He improved some tough scores and I'm disappointed I wasn't awake for them, but I'm proud of him and there will be other times. I was too tired to function!
Dinner tonight was rice and canned indian for Steve, and a homemade tofu soup for me (with broccolini, napa cabbage, carrots, and bok choy), an herb and greens salad with Drew's roasted garlic and peppercorn dressing, and a little bit of rice and tamari.
After this, we're gonna have a little date of playing a bit of Rummikub and then reading some of Ben's book in bed. Hopefully we'll get some real Z's tonight. It's gonna be tough to leave this spot though because of this huge orange purr machine nestled deep against my arm.
