You Have to Love Bargain Shopping

So in honor of finishing my dissertation chapter I took the day off of dissertating and decided to have some fun.  I wanted to go shopping but I was in kind of a splurgy mood and didn't want to decimate our bank account so I told myself I could only go to the dollar store and DI.  Not counting the boring necessary things I bought at the dollar store, my just-for-me splurge total of the day was $12.  Here's what I got for that twelve dollars:

-Cute vintage wood/metal chair, $5 (Don't ask me where I'm going to put it, but it was $5, I'll figure it out)
-Dark red floral pillow for the living room, $3
-Red and gold striped bag (which looks like it has never been used) $2
-Two fairly gorgeous new scarves that I would have paid full price for, $2

Yeah, that's a fun shopping day right there!

The Demon Has Been Slain

Another nice Halloween subject heading, huh?

Well it may have been two months late, but I finally got my first dissertation chapter sent to my adviser today.  I may, in fact, graduate some day.

The Dreaded Cooking Curse

That title has a nice "Halloween" vibe, right?

Ok, so I'm writing this blog post in lieu of swearing and throwing a baking dish across the room, and since it's a glass baking dish full of bubbling fruity goo, that's a very good thing.

I was planning on going to a Relief Society event tonight.  We're supposed to bring some sort of homemade (they specified) holiday treat or dessert.  Now I needed something low stress and that didn't take an extra trip to the grocery store so I decided to make the fruit cobbler I talked about a few posts ago.  I've made it successfully twice in a row, even with tweaking the ingredients, and both times it came out yummy.  Perfect, I thought, I'll do that.

Yeah, this is where the curse comes in.  It doesn't matter how good I am at cooking for just Tracy and I, or how many times I make a dish, if I make it for an event or for someone else 99 percent of the time it goes awry.  Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but not by much, it's more like 75 percent of the time. The first time I was determined to make Tracy an actual cute frosted birthday cake - wind smashes the plastic wrap down which then proceeds to rip off all of the icing. Taking my tried and true pasta salad to a big Fourth of July picnic --- ranch mix is too strong and runny.  Making my chicken alfredo stuff that Tracy loves for company --- white sauce turns an unappealing brown.  

Sometimes I don't even know what goes wrong, other times I make some small but crucial mistake.  Today in the midst of a sudden decision to the clean the bathroom (Why?  Why did I think that was a good idea?) and a desperate attempt to finish up my dissertation chapter (which still isn't quite there) I quickly, but I thought carefully, made the recipe --- and forgot the baking powder. (Note: this is an edit, I originally wrote baking soda which would have been an even bigger disaster, if that's possible.)

I am resisting the urge to swear.  I am resisting the urge to swear.

Burritos and the Food Processor

This is a boring topic, but I need to blog about something so what the heck.  Tracy and I have finally discovered a solution to Tracy's what to eat for breakfast problem.  Tracy and I like savory things for breakfast, but Tracy goes to work so early he doesn't like to take the time to eat breakfast, and he's kind enough that he doesn't want to wake me up to make it.  That led to a lot of trips to McDonalds.  Finally I remembered an idea I had once read about making large batches of breakfast burritos.  So I made a big batch (two weeks worth) a couple of weeks ago and Tracy really liked them.  It's nice to be able to make two weeks worth of breakfast in an hour or so on Saturday.

In sadder news, my wedding present food processor died today, though getting a small appliance in this day and age to last eight and a half years is pretty good.  However, since I've been trying to streamline the crap in my kitchen cabinets, I think I'm going to try to survive without one.  I mostly used it to make bread crumbs, which you can apparently make in a blender and to grate large amounts of cheese, which let's face it you can do on a box grater and have less dishes.  And, that drawer in my kitchen will now shut without me having to swear at it, so it's probably a good thing in the end.

I admit...that hurts

So, got a good ol' form rejection letter to my query letter today.  I was so excited to get that referral last year and now I realize it actually just made this harder.   Oh well, as my very nice and supportive husband said, it's one rejection letter closer to being published.

Sigh.

Update: Sent two new letters out.  Trying to prevent the wallow. 

Sending My Novel Into the World

Two years and two months.  How long it took me to finish my novel Capstone and send it out into the wide and brutal world of the submissions process.   After laborious proofreading and multiple versions, and plenty of help from Tracy, my writing buddy Pam and my cousin Jennie, I finally sent out my query, synopsis and a chunk of the manuscript out to an agent I had a referral to.

I've long suspected Capstone might be a better commercial prospect than Rell, I guess now we'll find out.  Yikes!

Oh, and just because I can may I also say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE WORLD'S BEST HUSBAND!

Baking

I can, now, at the age of 36, say that I am a pretty good cook.  Not a gourmet cook, or anything, but 95% of the time that I make something, even if I wing it, it turns out to taste really good.  Baking, however, has always been another thing entirely.  Brownies have been my fallback for a long time, because apparently they are almost impossible to screw up and it's amazing how good chocolate frosting (something that doesn't take an oven) can cover a multitude of culinary sins.

Part of it is that I've never really enjoyed baking, especially cookies.   The pressure of getting something cooked perfectly even once is hard enough, but pan after pan of the things - no thanks.  It doesn't help that my grandmother is the queen of homemade bread and my mother the undisputed and quite famous queen of chocolate chip cookies.  They have both assured me that their expertise comes from years of practice, but I also think they have a knack for it.  There's also the fact that baking is largely about proportions a.k.a. math and about chemistry - bleck.

However, in the last few weeks, thanks to our abundance of produce, I've decided to get brave and try making some baked fruit desserts.  Last week I made a cobbler and this week apple pear crisp.   The cobbler was ridiculously easy, the apple crisp a little less so (I'm not a big fan of peeling either) but both came out yummy.  Now, they won't win prizes or anything, and they won't touch my mom's cookies in the "favorite dessert" contest anytime soon, but they both tasted really good and were fun to eat.   So maybe baking isn't so evil, especially if I lower my expectations --- and stay away from trying to bake cookies.   

It's snowing....

This is the time of year when I start holding a grudge against Utah.   The time of year when I think "Who needs a PhD, I'll go be a file clerk wherever this icky white stuff doesn't fall from the sky in October."  (Especially since it was eighty degrees last week and most of our leaves are still green!) 

Luckily, I married someone who hates snow as much, if not more so, than I do, so at least in our case, misery has company.

Family History

So for a couple of months my Grandma Maureen and I have been working on a project to help her write a life history.  I've been sending her questions via e-mail and then she writes up an answer  and sends it back.  Then I compile them in what I hope is some sort of logical order.  We're up to 12 pages now.

It's been a really delightful process,  one of those few moments in life when something completely worthwhile is also easy and fun.   I know I'm biased, but I've been struck with how interesting my grandmother's stories are.  Maybe I'm just at an age where I'm ready to pay attention, but whatever the case I'm glad I get to work on this with her.   I deal with a lot of history in my life,  but doing this with my grandma has reinforced how much more interesting things are when you directly relate to them.  Something to remember if I'm ever in a teaching position again.

Oh and watch out Mom...you're next :-)

Beautiful But Soulless

I've been anticipating watching the new version of Jane Eyre since I first heard it was coming out.  I was finally able to watch it today and was fairly disappointed.  It's not that the movie is bad, it isn't, the cinematography is beautiful and foreboding, it is a respectful treatment of Charlotte Bronte's book, and there were a couple of really nice moments.  I can even forgive the actors for being far too attractive for the characters they are supposed to be playing.  However, there wasn't a lot of emotional spark between the Jane and Rochester characters in this movie (they seemed to try to make up for this with  lengthy make out scenes) and Jane's resilient spirituality and quick and direct intellect, perhaps my favorite things about the book, are almost nonexistent in this version.  To me Jane also comes off as a bit pouty and petulant, which may be the most unforgivable problem with the film.   In any case, it's the third or fourth time this year when I've gone into a movie wanting to love it and come out disappointed, maybe I'm just too hard to please.