Tag Archive | personal: weekend

New Wardrobe! Stuff I bought yesterday with the help of Freosan & T.

Mar20

I got three pair of Basic Dress Pants in black, grey, wheat. (same exact pant)
I got a cute dress that will be cuter when I lose 10 lbs but is pretty cute now
I got a nice little sleeveless shirt I have to figure out how to tuck in.
and and
a “ballet cardigan” which is one that comes to the waist and then ties, no buttons.
and a nice scoop-neck shirt.
and a couple plain shirts.
also, a bottle of wine for my soon-to-be-former boss-boss, a bottle of wine for my Awesome Reference co-worker, & 2 bottles of wine for my wine cellar.

Good haul!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1078597.html. You can comment here or there.

This weekend I will…

Mar12

* Install a sink (with husband) – stalled, need supplies
* Get all of the dishes that are my responsibility cleaned
* vacuum at least one room
* Bake a loaf of bread. Maybe two. – baked
* Start sorting my wardrobe, with an eye towards a capsule wardrobe idea
* write at least 1300 words, mostly of catch-up on goals – 550 written, halfish of catchup.
* if possible, turn over 1 or two garden beds and plant some pea seeds & maybe some carrot seeds – 1 turned over and carrots/beets planted – second turned over and peas planted.

ALSO:
Inventoried seeds (woah) and started garden plan list.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1076927.html. You can comment here or there.

Productivity Today!

Sep27

Today, so far, I/we (T & I) have:

* Pulled the chest freezer out from the garage, thawed it, and cleaned up the exploded apple goo from the bottom (Cider jugs have a variable amount of headspace. Sometimes it’s not enough.)

* Run a batch of tiny apples from the Spare Trees through the squeezo set up on the mixer (T. chopped ’em and put ’em to boil a couple days ago)

* Boiled down the last of the pico de gallo from the company picnic into a passable tomato sauce & froze that

* Picked more tiny apples

(* took a nap)

(* Had a very tasty fried egg & jowl bacon w/ pico de gallo & chives for breakfast and very nice not-at-all-traditional latkes w/ more chives and sour cream for lunch)

* cut new supports for the mailbox front out of plastic wood

* Made a sour cream apple coffee cake (it’s currently in the oven) (this recipe) with sour cream from the company picnic

(The company picnic was catered by Moe’s. Next up are fried cinnamon-and-sugar tortilla chips…)

* Wrote an Aunt Family Piece for [personal profile] kelkyag/Patreon & created a Canva picture for it, though it’s not my favorite design.

Next up:

* Pick more apples, take a walk, write the last kitty Patreon piece for the month, do some Day Job, maybe do some Edally & This Other Project Thing writing. Have dinner, hang out with husband, pet cats.

* Clean up the kitchen, put the freezer back in the barn

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/986804.html. You can comment here or there.

Pictures Forthcoming, I promise (Last Weekend/SCA)

Jun12

I have been quiet for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I started focusing on longer works, with the intention of working on one project each day of the week (Mondays for my Doomsday-with-Cal project, Tuesdays for Edally, Wednesdays for Inner Circle, and so on). (You can see one of the few exceptions here. If I don’t win the contest, I’ll post it here, too.) The results of this experiment have been mixed… probably in part because of the second reason.

I spent almost every moment last week that I wasn’t at work working on My First Garb (technically, second garb, but the first one was in my early 20s, soo), a kirtle/cotehardie based on http://medievaltailor.com/kirtles-overview/kirtle-pattern/ but with back-lacing and belled, lined sleeves. For My First SCA Event (for realsies, although back in my early 20s I attended a few fencing practices and one baronial meeting, and I’ve been to one fencing practice locally, when Rion was living in my attic).

The kirtle came out pretty nicely. I got a couple compliments on it, despite it’s non-period and slightly time-travelling elements. 😀 😀 There are a few things I’ll fix, but I can fix those later.

And I had a blast. People were friendly, everyone smiled, I was with my friend Q and his giant giant giant dog Mouse, so any time I got stressed out, I could hide behind the dog (which I did more than a couple times). Q. & his girlfriend were also really patient with my need to ease into the whole “people” thing. I’m already looking forward to “when can I do another event?”

Of course, then I immediately got sick and spent Tuesday and Wednesday unable to write a word. But that’s okay, I’m better now, and wrote 1300 words on a submission yesterday. Yay!

(and I’ve been spending every spare minute pinteresting, googling, and generally wondering “okay, what do I make/acquire next?” Current list, possibly not in order: Feast Gear (I have some), Belt, Cloak (brr!), tote/haversack/pilgrim’s bag.)

*cough* So how’ve you all been? What are your current projects?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/949199.html. You can comment here or there.

Meeting People!

Dec22

(This icon (in DW) came up in random choice three times out of ten, and it’s the only “Lyn” icon to come up. Soooo.)

I met [personal profile] kelkyag! (and not-certain-of-user-name? <.< sauergeek)

We went hiking!

I learned a bit about geocaching!

It was awesome!

🙂

Also, on the way there and home, I contemplated details of Potential Dream home.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/869449.html. You can comment here or there.

The Thornes Go to Hershey (#altonbrownlive)

Nov16

We’ve been watching Alton Brown on TV for years. We watched Good Eats nigh-on religiously, watched Next Iron Chef when there was nothing else Alton-y to watch, and watch and love Cutthroat kitchen.

We’re the sort of people that brine our turkey every year; I make biscuits by Alton’s recipe for our soup and we do own two of Alton’s cookbooks. I think it’s fair to say we’re fans.

So when the live show was coming to Hershey, PA, well… that’s only four hours away. We’ve driven three and a half hours to Albany three times between September and October (there was a wedding); we can drive to Hershey.

T and I don’t take many vacations. We used to do conventions with the Camarilla™, back when we belonged to said world-wide live-action Roleplaying game, and we did Dragon*Con once – in neither case did we pick the hotel. We’ve turned weddings into vacations for ourselves – again, we didn’t pick the hotel. I think this may be the first time we’ve chosen the hotel… ever.

Ahem. Alton Brown.

The show was awesome. I hadn’t done a lot of research about it, so I didn’t go in expecting anything in particular – but it was everything I could have wanted. He ranted about food, he did wild food tricks, he sang. It was two hours of pure Alton.

My only sad point? He took audience questions via twitter w/ selfie. Awesome… except for the 1% of us (me) that came sans smart phone.

But all in all – awesome show. I don’t think we learned anything about cooking, but we had a lot of fun. (Also, in his song about EZ Bake ovens, I got to examine how lucky we are to live in a sub-sub-culture where the fact that my husband does 9/10 of the cooking is entirely acceptable.)

Back to the hotel. So, I was a little hesitant about staying in a Howard Johnson (hotel snob), but it was the only one on the main drag that was a) well-reviewed and b) had a king-sized bed. So.

Turns out, it has a phenomenal restaurant underneath, and an absolutely tasty brunch place right next door. So not only did we get to listen to our favorite TV-food-personality, we got to eat delicious food, too!

All in all, a very good vacation, & back home in time to feed the kitties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/847683.html. You can comment here or there.

Look, not a #Nano post! Things Learned about Gardening This Week/end

Nov9

Gardening – well, anything really, but today I’m talking about gardening – is a learning experience. Even harvesting.

This weekend, we learned:

Hot Peppers: The very tip of a hot pepper isn’t indicative of the rest of the pepper.

T. cut off the tip for me to taste, to gauge hotness so we knew how much to put in our enchiladas. Nothing. So he sliced off another tiny slice.

Burning, so much burning. Drinking milk, drinking cider, crying. Well, not quite crying. So much burning.

Turns out those were the ghost peppers. Whoops!

Hot Peppers, part II: When drying hot peppers in the oven, check the oven before turning it on to make cookies.

Then again, it’s not the first time we’ve learned that. You could smell the capsaicin all the way in the other end of the house.

Carrots: Can overwinter just fine in the garden, just mulched over a bit. Also, given a raised bed with fresh compost + peat, they go wild. These things are huge!

(Also purple. But that was on purpose).

Kale: a fitted queen bedsheet works great as a row cover on frosty mornings, esp. for a 4×6 foot raised bed. On the other hand, kale doesn’t give a shit about frost and the bed we didn’t cover was just fine.

Tomatillos: aren’t supposed to get ripe. Also, if you plant a tiny free tomatillo plant and let it go, it will take over a whole bed.

Broccoli: get huge! if you let it flower.

And, considering the tomato blight and the ridiculously sad squash harvest, we’re really glad we don’t depend on our garden for our food.

All in all, an educational week!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/845650.html. You can comment here or there.

Gone Sailing!

Sep5

It’s almost the weekend again, but oh, wow, was last weekend fun!

I went on a boat! And Drank Wine! And ate Tapas! And drank more Wine! And then it was Christmas!

My dear friends E.Mc & Pivin gave T & I, for Christmas, a gift certificate for two people’s ride on the Schooner True Love – they also got themselves two tickets, as a promise to come visit sometime in the summer.

And, sliding in just under the wire, they came to visit last weekend!

So we went out on this lovely sailboat – about 60-something feet – for about two hours, tacking back and forth across Seneca Lake.

It was awesome. (My new icon for [twitter.com profile] thornewrites is me on the boat, just before I lost the hat). I haven’t been on a sailboat in probably a decade, and it was the most soothing feeling. Also, the best day for it – warm, no rain, but not oppressive, plenty of breeze.

The rest of the weekend was just as awesome. We checked out a new-to-us tapas place: Mia and ate lots of tasty food, then unwound at Autumn Leaves, a used book store on the Commons – I bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages!

Then it was “Christmas” – technically a mutual celebration of birthdays that took place in April, April, May, and June. All the gifts!

And then there was wine, but this post is already dragging long. More for next time! Cheerio!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/803330.html. You can comment here or there.

Anniversary Saturday – Wine and BBQ

Jun22

Yesterday, for our 12-year anniversary, T. and I went out to the Keuka Wine Trail for a “Wine and BBQ” tour – each of the seven wineries gave us wine tastings (about 5/winery) and a small plate of food pairings – things like grilled chicken, pulled pork, beef brisket, with a little side corn salad or mac salad, something like cornbread, and usually a little dessert.

It was pretty awesome.

For one, Keuka Lake is lovely. It’s a Y-shaped lake, with a lot of really nice vistas. Google Image Search doesn’t quite do it justice.

For another, the food was almost universally tasty (There was one protein where I had to ask T. what I was eating – turns out it was pork – it was slow-cooked and very bland, very sweet).

And for a third, the wines were just good. Sometimes, on a tour, you get a winery where you’re just… “mm. thanks. Bye.” There was none of that – a couple thinnish red wines, but the Finger Lakes is not really known for its red wines.

In the middle of the tour, we spent an hour in Hammondsport, which is an adorable little village full of tasty food & neat antique stores.

All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a morning & afternoon.

And then, in the evening, we stacked wood ;-D

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Wine, and then some more wine, and then some herbs (Cayuga Wine Trail event)

May5

This weekend was the Cayuga (Lake) Wine Trail Wine & Herb Event.

The 17 wineries on the trail (All alongside and many within view of Cauyga Lake) participate.

You start at one winery, where you get a map and a glass, and at each winery along the way, you get a tasting (2-6 types of wine or, in one case, cider), a potted herb (or tomato, or lettuce, or pepper) plant, a recipe using that plant, and a sample of that recipe, cooked (or prepared), usually with a wine pairing.

Seventeen wineries. 2 to 6 tastings at each. /falls over/

Okay, really, we did it over two days. We tasted seven wineries up the West side of the lake, spent an hour at the outlet mall, had Dim Sum and tea for lunch, and hit the much-more-spaced-out 3 wineries on the East side; Sunday we picked up the seven we’d missed on the west, stopping for lunch at Knapp Winery in the middle.

There was a lot of really good wine. Even wineries I’d blown off before as being not complex enough, too tannic, or just too boring, were in good form this weekend. Everyone had out their best wines, the food tastings were very good, and I have seventeen little plants to put in the ground or pots as soon as Last Frost is past. Even the food tastings were good.

If I have a disappointment with the event – and I’d say this is the only one – it’s that I ended up with three basils, and I really would have liked one of them to be a mint instead.

But all in all, it was an immensely fun weekend of wine-ing. Will definitely do again.

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