I came across a handful of “savory pancake” recipes lately, and found the idea intriguing. It’s like breakfast. For dinner. Or maybe for breakfast. Whatever.

• Chinese Scallion Pancakes
• Paneer Parathas
• Savory Bread Pudding
• Summer Latkes

popularity: 48%

One year ago today, while I was in the car home from shopping, called to tell me that my Aunt Shirley had died. I still think about her almost every day, which surprises me. I’ve been wearing the necklace she gave me as a gift for graduating college lately, and the other day it got caught on my towel and the clasp broke. I took it and the jewelry of hers that my cousins gave me to the Skyway jeweler, and he fixed it up proper. I can now wear the watch. The ring, as suspected, will remain in a drawer (it’s no longer black, but it’s not really wearable) with my Grandma’s high school class ring. The bracelet is also wearable. The pocket watch is still broken, but as I suspected, it’s worth more than we thought (and will run upwarsd of $100 to fix, so it can stay broken). There are a few other pieces of jewelry from my aunt that didn’t need fixing and are still in circulation in my wardrobe (though to be honest I don’t have many opportunities to wear black pearls).

seems to have handled his grief well, all things considered. Grandpa too, though it’s much harder to tell with him. My cousin Katie, her youngest daughter, gave birth a few weeks ago to her first child (my Aunt’s… eighth grandchild, were she alive), and it is heartbreaking to think that she didn’t get to share that experience with her mom (with either of her moms actually, since her birth mom died shortly after giving birth). We donated $100 to ’s team for Chicago’s Race for the Cure this year, in support of and in memory of Aunt Shirley.

said that my uncle, who was also my junior high principal, is selling his house and moving permanently up to their cabin in Door County. Most of my cousins live out of state (out of Illinois, that is, so all of them live out of state to me), and we won’t be going home for Christmas this year (gotta switch it up between the families, it’s only fair), and it’s horrible to think that the next time I see my cousins will be at another family funeral.

Most of all, what I really wanted to say is that I still miss my aunt and the wonderful person that she is. No one should die so young (60), and cancer is bad. Go hug someone you love, and donate something towards the fight to end cancer.

popularity: 31%

And I don’t have that much time today either, because I’ve got a project to work on and a meeting with someone, but I did say I’d put pictures up from the orchard, so here’s what I’ve got from the weekend (the rest are in my Flickr Photostream)….

Also, I sent some fabric out to California for the BTRS Swap.

proved that isn’t the only one who likes to sleep on my stuff.

And, while taking pictures of our house (most of which turned out horribly due to bad lighting and my failure to look at them on the computer until a day later - oops), I took this one of our new blinds, because I like them very much (which is good, because they were a tad pricey and took a lot of time to install and custom-fit).

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But perhaps some of you can still find this helpful. Recipes for that stash of zucchini you’ve acquired! (Having recently discovered that zucchini is not, in fact, disgusting, but rather quite delightful if cooked correctly and not made into a soggy, slimy mess, I started collecting these. And then school started. You can see where that went.)

• Zucchini Bread (this is the recipe I used back in August and everyone agreed it was delish - I added cinnamon and nutmeg; just so you know, it makes 2 full loaves or a crap-ton of muffins)
• Geeky Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread
• Zucchini Pancakes (an interesting idea)
• Zucchini, Cheddar & Bacon Cakes (a savory dinner side dish - they look divine!)

popularity: 38%

1. Hearing :: Aid
2. Aggression :: Therapy
3. Charged :: with a Felony
4. Traveler :: ’s Checks
5. Hydrate :: -ion
6. Detox :: Colon
7. Qualify :: for a loan
8. Prison :: Term
9. Frontal :: Full ___ Assault
10. Pep talk :: Coach

popularity: 30%

Work is conspiring to annoy the crap out of me (since last Thursday, actually). I currently hate several co-workers and they are on my “list” (that is, they really shouldn’t come over here and ask me things in person, because I’m likely to be less than cordial to them).

The weekend was mostly good. I’ll get pictures of the orchard visit up later today. I got Friday’s homework done and rewarded myself by shaving, something I’d needed to do but hadn’t had time for since Wednesday. I know, such an exciting life I lead. I interspersed cleaning with the homework, because Friday afternoon we got a call saying that someone wanted to come look at our house Saturday afternoon.

So we cleaned all Saturday morning. It’s not that our house was particularly dirty, but that there are always other projects to do to make it look better, and having a showing is a great excuse to get them done. spent quite a while scrubbing at the mat between the kitchen and the garage and now it’s black again (instead of dirty grey)! We left the house at about 12:30 (the showing was 1-2), got lunch, did some shopping (OK, tried to do some shopping, but couldn’t find anything I was looking for), and returned home around 2:30. It didn’t look like anyone had been there, and the Realtor didn’t leave a card, but sometimes that happens, people seem invisible. I checked my email a bit later and saw that I had an email from our agent telling us the showing was CANCELLED, at 1:40! How rude! Like what I really needed this weekend, chock full of homework, was to spend 3 hours cleaning and lose another 2 to being out of the house. Grr.

I did get my homework for Saturday finished, however, and my reward was going out for a margarita. Haven’t done that in quite a long time. We went to the Friday’s by the MOA at about 9 pm, which is really something we don’t do, but it was fun. Had some good conversations and a yummy Rocky Road mini dessert. (Yes, I’m giving myself rewards these days for getting my homework done - Every day between now and my cousin’s wedding on the 18th, I have either homework to do or a class to take, and I sense that my motivation will wane easily, so I’m bribing myself. No harm in that. I need to stay on track.)

Sunday morning and afternoon was the orchard visit, so I’ll cover that later. When I got home, I wrote my paper, looked up the scoring system for my annotated bibliography and discovered that she gave me a horrible grade (which I was afraid of) and that I’m going to have to argue with her about the inappropriateness of that (something I’ve never done). I feel very anxious about that.

Then I tried (for the third time) to make a pair of pajama pants for , and failed yet again. How can this be so hard when it was so easy to make some for myself? I don’t understand. I gave up (though realized while lying in bed this morning what I’d done wrong and how to fix it, so the current project might still be salvageable) and told him we’d need to pick out a real pattern at the store and some fabric and do it the “right way.”

Some dinner, some football (Go Bears!), and some grocery shopping, and the night was over.

And now I’m stuck here with people who are trying to make my life miserable. I’ve got some greasy but delicious apple cider donuts sitting here to commiserate with, but I’m trying to NOT eat all of them before lunch. You know, because that’d be bad. And irresponsible towards my health. And delicious. I mean, bad.

popularity: 30%

Quickly, three versions of bran muffins (for which I bought bran cereal over the summer and still haven’t made):

• Bran and Flax Seed Muffins
• Bran Muffins with Figs
• The Official Kelloggs All-Bran Muffins

popularity: 35%

I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed by stuff to do since the semester started. Don’t get me wrong, because I am totally enjoying my classes, and I know that I have also taken on some extra things like that quilting class, and our house is still clean and we eat dinner together regularly, so obviously it hasn’t all gone to heck. In fact, we still have date night on Thursdays, so that’s a homework-free zone (and computer-work-free, and crafting-away-from-your-loved-one-free).

But on the same path, I haven’t had a phone conversation lasting more than 90 seconds with anyone in weeks, haven’t seen my friends since… sometime in August maybe? Or was it (sadly) July? I don’t even know. I haven’t baked cookies in forever. Even if I was motivated to go to the gym, I don’t know when I’d go - I think I’d have to sacrifice sleep, and that is not the way I’m willing to go with that.

There has been a significant amount of homework this semester, mostly reading, some paper-writing, and the big parts aren’t even here yet. Looming on the horizon are 15 volunteer hours at a local school (thanks, RMS, for not responding to my email yet, 3 days later) by October 22, one individual 30-minute presentation, one group 55-minute presentation, and applying to the UTP program by December 1 (though that may just get pushed back to next semester, because there are classes I can take this spring without it, and it requires another 15 volunteer hours). Oh, and a trip out of town for a cousin’s wedding in October.

My already-packed weekend just got another 1/3rd of a book thrown onto it, because time is coming up fast for it to be read and it wasn’t in my planner yet. I started thinking yesterday that this was all just a bit too much, and not really my style (to be overbooked). And then I corrected myself, thinking about when I was in college (the first time around). Oh, yeah, most semesters I took a full or overfull courseload, worked 1-3 jobs, and volunteered with a youth group, as well as numerous other campus activities. But, that was a decade ago, and I could still pull all-nighters then, and had the relief of summer and Spring Break and a month at Christmastime. Not so with Metro State, where I had a weekend between Spring and Summer, and 10 whole days between Summer and Fall. I’m not looking up to see what my break between Fall and Spring is, because it might make me cry. (Have I mentioned I’m taking next summer off, because it’s just too much and I need a break?)

I seem to remember having a whole lot of fun in college, though, so… what’s with that? How did I manage to have fun and have such a full schedule? Especially that summer I worked in San Francisco, when I worked 18 hour days? How did that all go down?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not asking to relive those days. I’ll definitely take now to then. I just wish I felt like I had things a little more under control.

popularity: 32%

If, like me, you find that your weekend plans include a trip to the Orchard, and you know that the result of said trip will be more apples than you currently know what to do with (because the only really good apple crisp recipe you had disappeared years ago and you have yet to find a replacement, and the boy you married doesn’t eat pie, or whatever your reasons might be), here are some possible ways to eat those apples (most, if not all, found via TasteSpotting):

• Apple Turnovers
• Apple Crumble for an Army - might it be possible for this to replace my lost apple crisp recipe? I hope so!
• Almond Apple Cake
• Mock Apple Pie (in case you don’t actually have any apples at home)
• Apple Blondies (second recipe down)
• Mini Apple Pies (how cute!)
• Apple Crumble (if the earlier recipe doesn’t work, perhaps this one will)
• Spicy Apple Raspberry Crisps
• Apple and Macadamia Nut Crumble (love the addition of macadamia nuts - definitely will have to try this one)
• Spiced Apple Crunch (oh, at this point, I just can’t decide which one to make first!)
• Apple and Cider Beignets (should I really try deep frying again? Maybe I should get a thermometer first)

Did I mention that not only does not like fruit pie (I really only like apple pie - all the rest of the fruit pies are yech), he doesn’t really like baked fruit at all? So, um, I might be eating all the apples myself. Sweetie, if you’re reading (which you probably aren’t, having been quite busy lately), could you let me know which ones of the above you might eat, if any?

and , I hope you’re taking notes, since you’ll soon be in the same predicament as me….

I’ve got another backup of recipe links to share that I should get a handle on (wasn’t that nice for a while when they were auto-posting for me, because I’d done them all up in advance? Oh, the joys of WordPress…). Stay tuned.

popularity: 39%

Get your own Wordle!

popularity: 30%

I now present to you, quite proudly, photographic proof that I have been productive lately.

My newly finished “Christmas Star Wall Hanging” quilt top (finished at about 8:47 last night in class):

The pincushion I made a few weeks ago and finally finished (I needed buttons) on Sunday night:

My first embroidery project, finally photographed:

(Click here to see the full set with close-ups of all the little fruits and veggies)

I also finally got recent fabric purchases photographed, as well as some patterns. Not of interest to you, perhaps, but of interest to me.

I did not take photos of all the reading I’ve done (almost entirely out of “Impossible Subjects,” which you can find in the right sidebar under “currently consuming”) or of vacuuming or anything else that even I wouldn’t find entertaining. There are a few other pictures, only mildly amusing, in my Flickr photostream.

popularity: 31%

Having [mostly] given up caffeine, and considering how much trouble I had falling asleep last night and how tired I was this morning, shouldn’t I be very sleepy right now, instead of brimming with excess energy, concentrated entirely in my legs? (Yes, that would be Restless Legs.) Grr. If I had been going to the gym with any sort of regularity (instead of the two times back at the beginning of the month, and then promptly forgetting about it), perhaps a sudden lapse in gym-going would be to blame. Alas, it is not. I’m just… jumpy. And I hate that feeling.

It seems especially torturous when my job consists of sitting in front of my computer, surfing the internet, waiting for the phone to ring. At least when I’m a teacher I’ll get to stand and walk around a lot (and I’m sure I’ll complain a lot about it then, especially where comfortable shoes, or lack thereof, are concerned).

Quick dinner tonight that is nice enough to cook (can I squeeze in a trip to Michael’s on the way home to see if they have Sulky pens? only if traffic isn’t slowed to a stop due to the rain; and a stop at Goodwill to see if they have any sheets? not likely, even though it is Tuesday Tag Sale), then off to quilting class. I am glad that I got my squaring up done last night, and even half-packed my bag of supplies, so I’m mostly ready to go.

Will someone do me the favor of planning our trip next month to Michigan? I just don’t want to. Yes, I probably have the time and resources while at work to do it, but I’m not feeling it. & co aren’t going. is flying. We’re taking the scenic route (but not the super-long driving around Lake Michigan route) by driving to Milwaukee and then taking the ferry over to Muskegon, and then driving down to Grand Rapids. But I still need to talk to the ferry people and see what their parking facilities are like, and we need to reserve a hotel room, and rent a car (assuming parking is acceptable)…. Maybe tomorrow. It would help if I liked my cousin (whose wedding we’re going to), or if she had had any matters when RSVP’ing for our own wedding (let it go, let it go).

Maybe a load of laundry before I leave for class? The fabric I bought last night (some lovely $3.99/yard linen) to make a purse out of needs to be washed before I can embroider on it, and I need a new embroidery project, having finished embroidering the apron (the apron itself, however, is not done, since I have decided it needs to have a back, and maybe a top as well, since it is only a half-apron, and I have some lovely black polka-dot that I think will look really cute).

popularity: 32%

Man, was I productive last night.

• Dinner - check.
• Finally take care of store-bought roasted chicken and turn into stock - check (not nearly as flavorful as the last batch, but it’ll still work for making rice).
• Write paper - check.
• Vacuum - check.
• Quick trip to JoAnn - check (one of these days I’ll be home while it’s light out and take photos, promise).
• Quilt blocks squared - check.
• Paper recycling dealt with - check.
• Fabric that arrived on doorstep taken care of (washed, dried, ironed, folded, not photographed or put away) - check.

Phone calls last night - 0.
Emails sent - 0.
Superfluous web surfing - none.

I was so good last night! So very productive. It has carried on to this morning, unfortunately, which means that all the very important things I had to do today have all been done, leaving me with nothing. Well, a few things, but I can’t actually do any of them until people email me back the answers to my questions.

Let the web surfing begin! (Might have some fun over at the FabricMatcher, pointed out to me by Mrs. Schmenkman and some others.)

popularity: 32%

It’s practically obscene, my writing 3 posts in one day (well, only if you count Unconscious Mutterings).

Here’s the thing. I’d like to write my paper, really I would. But, you see, my legs are quite jumpy right now (which won’t change whether or not I write the paper), and my pantyhose are dreadfully uncomfortable (what was the chance that out of the 2 clean pair, I’d grab the most uncomfortable one that I’d worn most recently? Pretty good, apparently), and I’m slightly itchy.

There was a major (for me) allergy flare-up this weekend. I ran out of Zyrtec on Thursday, but I figured I could go a few days without it, until I remembered to pick some up (why not? I can go several days without Wellbutrin, and that’s a bigger deal to me, or at least I thought it was, until the soon-to-be-mentioned incident, which has me contemplating which one I’d rather give up, if I had to, and I think I might keep Zyrtec). So, I continued on my merry life Thursday, Friday…. I was having some itching on my legs, but that happens periodically and I didn’t think anything of it (there was an actual rash-like spot that showed up before I ran out of the Z, so it’s unrelated). Saturday morning, I woke up terribly congested, thought that odd, but then continued with my life, totally unaware that I was still without Zyrtec.

Until Saturday night, when I was upstairs trying to fix that pair of pajama pants for . I was standing at the ironing board, trying to measure things, and kept getting interrupted by the constant need to scratch my eyes. They were watering, and then I realized that I’d been sniffly for quite a while, and then I realized I was out of Zyrtec and quite possibly could I be having an allergy attack? Quickly looking at the clock, I determined CVS was open, popped on shoes, pulled out the door (OK, not so much), and skedaddled down the street to get me some drugs. Also, I found some wonderful eye drops for allergies that put the kabosh on my itchy eyes right away (after much tearing up, of course). I am so thankful that the OTC allergy medication that happens to work for me also happens to be the one that is fast-acting (according to their commercials, 2 hours faster than Claritin, which did absolutely nothing for my itchiness). I finally stopped needing to blow my nose and randomly scratch by bedtime.

Well, that was a shocker, that since I’ve been taking Zyrtec for 4 months straight now, that I practically need it at least every other day to exist peacefully within my own body.

Man, I need to get my paper-writing groove on. I do not want to spend the entire night doing homework.

popularity: 32%

Remember when I used to bake cookies? Yeah, I miss those days. This weekend was spent… doing homework. I also finished my first embroidery project, though I have no pictures to show for it right now. I decided embroidery is an exellent hobby because I did it all entirely while I would normally have been doing nothing (i.e. while riding the bus, watching television, waiting for water to boil….). So, essentially, no additional time was spent and yet I feel more productive and creative, and I have a fun project as a result. I’m actually quite pleased with what I figured out how to do. Chain stitch still eludes me (there’s a very wonky version on my apron), but I got French knots down, wrapped stitches, and satin stitch. Yay me!

We also managed to add some more Ikea into our lives, in the form of a new lamp, so that when I do homework in the bedroom (the quietest place in the house), I no longer have to choose between going blind (sitting in the Poang chair in the poorly lit corner) or breaking my back (alternating between laying and sitting on the bed, with no wall to lean up against). So that’s major progress. And we bought groceries. And I managed to get the shelving unit in our loft much cleaner (a project I’ve been meaning to tackle since before we put our house on the market). (That was a grand total of about 2 hours spent outside of the house this weekend.)

sent me a link to this video today, of my very dear :

Grant Eating with a Spoon

There’s an explanation needed. It was all being recorded with the camera in their Macbook, so the screen was facing the Grantster. It seems he was more enamored with watching himself than with eating (and showing the whole world he can eat with a spoon). Very cute. 2 1/2 minutes.

Also, I did not finish (or start) the paper I was supposed to have written this weekend, so I am going to attempt to do that this afternoon, or this evening at the latest. is out through tomorrow and there’s not much work to be done other than listening for the phone, which has not been ringing much. Currently the only work I have to do is to remove one sentence from a Word document and re-post it to our website. Woo.

What I need to get done tonight is the “squaring” of the quilt blocks I finished a week ago, so I can bring them to class tomorrow night and be ahead of the game (the instructor showed me how and told me I could, but I don’t have to). I like being ahead, as it means I have much more put together by the end of class, which means less homework. I suppose anything leftover tomorrow won’t really be homework, since there isn’t a 3rd class, but it still needs to get finished eventually (or, more precisely, before the second series starts in October, on the actual quilting aspect).

I also need to vacuum, desperately. We did get the house picked up this weekend, but kitty hair piles up quickly, and it’s been at least a week, if not longer, since vacuuming.

ran a 10K this weekend (with , who wrote about it on her blog), while I slept. Most of my homework was reading (on the history of illegal immigration), which I just can’t do before lunch. It makes me sleepy.

No sewing (some ironing though), no laundry, no fun baking or cooking (maybe tonight - stuffed shells?), no photographing, no outings, no trips to JoAnns (one very short trip to Michael’s for the lime and tomato-colored embroidery floss I was missing). Wait, that’s not right. I did do some sewing, in the form of an ill-fated pair of pajama pants for . They didn’t fit. At all. I even spent some time modifying them, and they still didn’t fit. Very boo. I decided that he just couldn’t have them. And then after some more thought, I decided I could try again. They’ll just have a seam part-way down the thighs, because I’ll have to re-make everything north of that. All those gorgeous flat-felled seams (where you make French seams and then sew them down, so every seam is sewn 3 times!). It’s so sad. But I will prevail!

So if you didn’t catch on what my plans for this week are, after getting done what I can tonight, and then going to quilting class tomorrow, I’ve got [real aka college] class Wednesday night, again on Thursday afternoon (that’s this semester’s schedule, and I’m starting to get the swing of it, though it doesn’t feel natural at all), date night on Thursday, and then it’s the weekend again. I believe we’re going to the orchard this weekend, on our 5th or 6th annual trip. I can never keep it straight. It’s a good thing and put their heads together to pick dates, because I just wouldn’t have gotten it together by myself this year. I’m a little lost in a place I like to call homework land.

popularity: 34%