Afexion’s Neighborhood

The only good thing about the snow storm is I had no plans to leave the house today.  But with my luck, it won't be sufficiently melted by Monday morning and I'll slip and slide to work . . .

I'm still in a bit of a shock that's it's already Thanksgiving.  When did that happen?  Wasn't my birthday a couple weeks ago???  I plan to spend a couple days with my family and then a couple days at home.  The perfect Thanksgiving in my mind.

Work: No change from September.  Which means it's still chaotic and unorganized and no one knows what the hell going on.  Add in the fact that there has been discussions of those of us at the capital to the other building (which is a good 30 mins away from the capital) and I'm frustrated and incredibly disappointed with certain people.

Home: No progress at all beyond cleaning out the craft room closet.  And all of that stuff is still sitting in my hallway *eyeroll*

Crafts: I finished the holiday gifts last month.  So I made this cute scarf for myself.  I just need to finish up the green socks I started a while ago so I can start on some newer larger projects.

Flute!: I finally got around to contacting a flute instructor and had my first lesson last week.  I've decided one hour biweekly lessons is the way to go.  And it's coming back to me despite it being 2 years since my last lesson.

And Car:  And I will keep it clean.  Some idiot (who lives several doors down from me) decided he could not wait for me to turn left into my driveway and decided to go around me.  On the left.  Which means my car is now sporting a large dent above the driver's back wheel.  Needless to say I was beyond pissed.  That he got charged for following too closely is the only bright spot.  I'm waiting to hear from the insurance to get the fixing details worked out.

I hope everyone has a marvelous Thanksgiving! 

Seeing how I can't curl up in a ball and take a nap . . .

Work

• Between the state fiscal issues, the new CIO, the reorganization due to the new CIO and general division nonsense, things are all over the place.  I'm kind of wishing I had applied for a local job I saw though it would have involved a pay cut (via more expensive benefits).  We'll see.
  

Home

• I had a small cookout for my birthday and so everyone could see the house.  It was a lot of fun.  I ended up having a dessert table and got chocolate from a number of family, friends and co-workers.  They know me so well :o)  The weather was suppose to be perfect but it rained after everything was cleaned up.  Annoying but the timing could have been a whole lot worst.
• Other than cleaning and normal maintenance for the party, nothing has changed since the shutters.

Crafts

• Started a few things and haven't finished anything lately.  Given I have 17 books checked out of the library the past couple weeks and another 2 are waiting to picked up this weekend (as I just *had* to research 2 topics at the same time), I think things may be on-hold for a little bit . . .

Other

• Babies, babies and more babies.  One friend just had her twins.  Another friend is having twins at the end of the year.  Another three friends plus an acquaintance announced pregnancies in the past month.  To complete the set, all I need are a call from my best friend and emails from two other friends . . .

Before:

After:

So I've been on vacation since July 2.  Needless to say I am not looking forward to next Tuesday which will be my first day back.

So far I've:

• Cleaned the house
• Went to Home Depot once and Lowe's 5 or 6 times in 3 days.
  
• Trying to take the damn shutters down so I can paint them.  All of the metal screws have gone to pot after 48 years of element exposure.  $30+ later and the damn things are still up.  So they are next on the "Dad, I need help!" list.
• Repainted the cabinet in the bathroom so it doesn't look as grungy
• Cooked garlic chicken & pepper kabobs and corn on the cob on the grill
  
• Knitted
• Saw Up, which I enjoyed
  
• Saw the butterfly exhibit at the botanical garden.  It was nice but in no way did it compare to the awesomeness that is the Butterfly Center at Callaway Gardens.
• Spent 3.5+ hours in a new-to-me used bookstore and brought a bunch of books
• Checked out the new JoAnn and had a smoothie
• Read
  
• Took my car for an oil change, alignment and getting one new tire.  It so should not have taken 3 freakin' hours to do. 
  
• A couple days later I took the car to get the annual inspection and the tech did my car first since I was waiting so that only took an hour instead of the 2-3 hours I was expecting.  So I guess it evens out in the end.
• Mowed the front yard
  

Other stuff:
Work -- we're finally finished with the build.  Halle-freakin'-lujah.  Our agency merged with a larger agency; so far this has been pretty much a non-event.  Things are still up in the air, though, about what we will be doing long-term.  So much for state gov't stability.

House -- I finished the front flower beds and think they look oh so much better than the boxwoods and azaleas.  I'm planning to redo them this fall/next spring as I want to make a flower bed near the driveway (so I have less to mow :o) and plant some dwarf azaleas, some dwarf crape myrtles and some hyacinths and maybe crocuses.

Crafts -- I finished both pairs of teal socks.  Holiday gifts are up next.

Other -- No ALA annual conference for me this year, which is sad as I enjoyed Chicago last time and will miss seeing everyone.  But next year is in DC, so I'm planning to crash that one (seeing how I let my membership lapse).

Work
*sigh* I'm still working on the same damn stuff that was originally suppose to be done mid-April.  Now it's looking mid-June.  Add to that the number of unknowns related to my agency merging with another agency and things are becoming incredibly frustrating. 

At least my coworkers are a bright spot.  Nothing like seeing one take a cane Office Space-style to a piñata. :o)

House  
The only progress inside is a ceiling fan in my bedroom and rehanging things in the living room.  

Progress outside is at a crawl.  Dad helped me get rid of the boxwoods and a privet bush.  I chopped down the azaleas the other day and got rid of the branches in my car (which of course made a mess I had to clean up).  I finished moving the damn landscape rocks out of one flower bed and am slowly clearing them out of the other one.  Once that's done, I need to till the beds and buy some plants to plant.  Hopefully it'll be done in the next few weeks.

Crafts
I haven't made much of any progress on the navy & teal socks and actually made negative progress on the other teal socks when I had to rip out part of the heel to redo the sizing.  

Other
My trip to NYC was a lot of fun.  The highlights: Thai food, Indian food, marvelous gelato, yummy cupcakes, the Staten Island Ferry, Central Park and the musical Coraline, which was absolutely amazing.  

What's your favorite movie of all time?

Princess Bride of course :o)

Snow redux
We will give thanks to entrepreneurial people who shovel driveways for a small fee.  That saved me so much hassle.

Work
Argh!!!!!  'Nuff said.

House 

• Not much progress is being made inside.  I did get a few more things on the walls and I made the shower curtain.
• Dad is coming up this weekend and hopefully we'll make some progress on getting the ceiling fans up (which requires 2'x4's in the attic to mount against in the 3 bedrooms plus running ground wire to all of the ceiling light fixtures *sigh*).
• The forsythia is about 1/4 the size it was though I really only chopped off half of the branches to the ground.  I didn't realize so many of the branches were top heavy.  Good thing we didn't get an ice storm over the winter.
• The first mowing of the year happened last weekend.  I also dug up the two rose bushes, a sickly azalea and what I found out later to be a lilac.  There was also some unexpected tree trimming which went from removing a couple suckers to "that entire limb needs to go".  My little garden hand saw was a great purchase.
• For four Saturdays in February and March, I took a really interesting landscape design class at the botanical garden.  So now I have a plan (which I may or may not stick with) for the yard.  The main thrust of the entire thing was get rid of almost everything and start over.
• I was going to wait to work on the yard but on Monday I decided the huge boxwoods in the front had to go.  Now.  So Wednesday after work I took the saw to them.  The root system of three of the boxwoods are huge so it's going to take some work to get them out. 
  
• I also chopped up the Ligustrum by the driveway as it was also huge and looking a bit sickly. 
  
• After the azaleas finish blooming, I'll probably dig them up too. 
  
• I figure I'll plant annuals in the two beds in mid-May and then in the fall and next spring, plant new bushes and azaleas.
• My other goals this spring are to dig up the grass around crape myrtle in the front yard and put down mulch.  That will eliminate the need to mow around it (though that's less of a problem now that that limb is gone :o). 
  
• I'm still planning to follow my landscape design and do a plant bed with hostas and perennials around the redbud and maple by the driveway.  
  

Crafts
I finished the purple socks and the purple sweater.  Now I have a pair of teal & navy socks going at work and another pair of teal socks at home.  And all of the color choices were entirely unintentional :o)

Other

• My trip to NYC is coming up rapidly.  I'm so looking forward to seeing the play Coraline and hanging out with hollycrome.
• The cat fell off the couch last night.  I felt bad for her and she's fine but it was funny.  
  

So about this time last year I was first trimester pregnant. We'd just moved into a new apartment two weeks before and basically I'd spent most of the time wrapped in a comforter sitting on a chair trying not to hurl, weakly telling everyone where to put things in my kitchen. Then we went to a friend's wedding and our flight was delayed so I think our annual corned beef and cabbage dinner wasn't a big deal. I don't even remember if I made it? I know I didn't do it the day of. I didn't care. I felt like crap.

This year I have a six month old baby. You'd think that might curb any plans we'd make for a big St Patrick's Day. Ha! No one ever said I was smart! If I were, that would make these entries a lot less funny to read. Hey, remember when she made the Guinness pie and sprayed beer all over the kitchen? Ha! Awesome! Anyway, this year's preparations have been a lot less disastrous, surprisingly.

First on the menu is the usual corned beef and cabbage, using the Tyler Florence brine and a head of cabbage, a packet of baby carrots and a whole white onion. Putting that together went surprisingly well, other than I discovered someone had put my container of allspice berries away instead of recycling it so I used the ground stuff. Hopefully that won't make much difference. bringing it last night went smoothly and putting it in the crock pot also not a big deal. I had visions of losing a finger while chopping up the veg but thankfully that one didn't happen. When I was home for lunch it smelled lovely.

Next up are the roasted potatoes. This is a Rachael Ray recipe I make where basically you chunk up the potatoes, toss them with olive oil, salt and rosemary, then roast them. I'm a-thinking these won't be a problem. They usually aren't.

It isn't St Pat's if I don't make a Guinness recipe, and this year there are two. First up, Guinness chocolate cupcakes, found here. I did some searching for recipes that didn't include sour cream, because I didn't remember having any, but a quick check of the fridge proved me wrong so all systems go! Things went together without me spraying my kitchen with Guinness- of course, now that my kitchen's got dark wood cabinets, sigh- and they went into the cupcake cups. The recipe said makes two dozen. I figured that mean two dozen if you're stingy and fill the cups halfway so I set out 18 cups. Imagine my surprise when I filled those 18 cups. I mean filled, like when I'd set the cup down- I should probably mention I have silicone cupcake cups here so you're not confused- it would leak a little. Huh. I filled the other six cups and... still had enough to fill two little pot pie tins. Wow. That actually was a blessing in disguise because the recipe calls for cream cheese frosting and last night when the husband was trying to get the baby to sleep we ate one of them and tried to decide how to frost them. Cream cheese was quickly discarded. Just putting whipped cream on them became the decision, but this morning I thought hmmm, what about chocolate whipped cream? That became "How about I make whipped cream with a shot of mint Bailey's?" Ding ding ding! That, I do believe, is our winner. of course, we'll see when I get to that point how tired I am.

Recipe number two is this one for Guinness bread with molasses. It went together easily while I was home, it came out looking nice, we'll see how it tastes. After all, the Irish soda bread looked nice too... Oh well, we have two loaves of rye from a deli here in town in case of epic fail.

This year's fun story was the Protestant orange jello. Since having the baby, my work schedule has changed and the husband finds himself, more often than not, making (or, more to the point, buying) dinner. Because of that, my idea of what's in our pantry is a little fuzzy. That's why I thought we had vodka in the freezer, but when I pulled it out after pouring the hot water in the jello, I discovered we had vanilla vodka. Ah well, it looks like we'll be having Protestant dreamsicle jello.

More details later, after dinner's been eaten. 

when I walked outside this morning and saw this:

I had no idea what it was but I definitely wasn't expecting that.  So I think I'll give it a good pruning instead of digging it up (which has become my default plan for the random things someone planted in the backyard :o).  I wanted something in the yard that signals that spring is around the corner and it fits.