Thanksgiving 2010

We stayed home and cooked and celebrated with just the two of us this year. Alex helped with the chopping – he minced ½ cup of garlic – and had him help cook some other things. He half-heartedly complained about it as he was doing it but turned out the things he helped with were the things he liked the best!

Our menu:

Turkey – baked with rosemary and garlic

Ham – a Honey Baked Ham that was given to me

Stuffing – used a Stove Top package and added sauteed onions, mushrooms, celery, and grated carrots. Per Alex’s request, we actually stuffed the turkey this year rather than cooking it on the side.

Green bean casserole from Pioneer Woman – added mushrooms, subbed red pepper for the nasty pimento things. I did have some bread crumbs taking up space in the cabinet, so tried using them. If I ever do that again, it would be with ½ cup, not a full cup of crumbs. Chances are good I’ll simply leave it off completely. I did not think it added anything except to make it grainy.

Corn casserole – recipe from high school Home Ec class, but added onions, green and red bell peppers for color. It uses creamed corn and cornmeal. I used to love it, I haven’t made it in a while, and it was still ok but not as exciting as I’d remembered.

Mashed potatoes – cooked them the day before, then mashed and baked again.

Sweet potatoes – I baked some sweet potatoes to make the peanut yams recipe, but decided I had plenty of carbs and yellow items on the table so saved them for later.

Mini Cornbread loaves – came from Boston Market and were leftovers from a food distribution at church

Pumpkin pie – came from Walmart and was a leftover from a food distribution at church

Cranberry Cheesecake pie – the result was visually odd, but the taste was good

Nutella Cream Cheese Pudding – Alex requested something chocolate. I was looking through my printed recipes to find my corn casserole directions, and came across this recipe that I’ve had for eons and had never tried. It has a nutella custard that gets layered with a nutella glaze. I made the custard on Wed and made Alex do the glaze and then create the layers. There’s something that gives a strange taste, I think it is the honey in the glaze, but he was very pleased with it.

We certainly have plenty of leftovers to stuff ourselves with over the next few days. We have so much to be thankful for!

How to feel like an idiot

Ever since my disastrous problems with the previous laptop constantly crashing hard drives, I've been trying really hard to make sure I have relatively recent backups of my current system. Yesterday, I realized it was a month since I'd backed up my email, and figured I should update that. I plugged in the backup drive... and promptly copied the old version onto the laptop, rather than the other way around.

Intelligence is highly overrated.

If you've sent me anything in the past month that I had not responded to, you probably aren't going to get an answer now. So sorry! I've now learned to change the name of the backup file so it is more obvious which one is which. I did look at the path names, but the string is so long I couldn't see the beginning of it, which is what included the drive designation. I did realize the error as soon as it started copying, but the "cancel" option wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped; the transfer stopped, but apparently Windows deletes the original file before moving the new one over and the delete had already taken place.

I would try to blame the head cold/sinus infection for my befuddlement, but sadly, I really don't think that had anything to do with this particular act of genius.

Growing Up

Alex is getting older.

• I acknowledge the calendar says he's 16.
  
• I know he is a junior in high school.
  
• I realize he's taking classes with titles like physics and trigonometry.
  

It just doesn't truly sink in. Maybe his behavior contributes to that...

I'll tell you what smacks it in your face, though. Two weeks ago, he ordered his class ring. Ouch.

Last week, his first college recruitment pamphlet arrived in the mail. Gulp.

Watch out, world. Ready or not, here he comes.

Junior Year Schedule

The junior year schedule looks like this:
1st: Physics
2nd: Latin II
3rd: American History
4th: Trigonometry / Calculus (one semester each)
5th: English
6th: Network Infrastructure

He liked the Latin teacher he started with last year. Halfway through, she joined the Peace Corp and left. His new teacher was ok, but not as much fun, and he did not learn it as easily. Unfortunately, now there is no local teacher at all. To avoid having to restart with Spanish and do another two years, we are doing the Virtual School option for his Latin II class. He has a teacher, and she will be in contact with us periodically. He can also contact her with any questions. Otherwise, it is primarily a work at your own pace as you teach yourself sort of thing. Not our preference, but better than starting over.

Hello, everyone

I knew it had been a while since I’d posted anything, I just hadn’t realized it was quite so long as it has been. I was extremely busy with the census for those months in between, and just did not have time for sleep, never mind blog posts.

However, my employment with them ended a couple weeks ago, so I’m trying to get life back into some semblance of routine and normalcy. Not to mention looking for a job!

Here’s a recent funny moment: We were driving past a company with GTO in big letters on their sign, with smaller letters underneath. I was driving, so that’s all I saw. Alex read the whole sign, which said Gates That Open. His comment? “Gates that do NOT open are called fences.”

I think he has a point.