As is traditional, I ate WAY too much yesterday and now, in that perverse way it has after being stuffed, my body is ravenously hungry. I'm telling it to sit on that thought for a while, then I'll feed it. I have left over dinner rolls from yesterday and Mom's rolls are always nom-worthy, but tea first and then a roll (or two) instead of giving in to what my stomach thinks it wants and eating all of my share and Shar's as well.

( Dinner recap )
So today I have a little leftover turkey, the previously mentioned rolls and two dirty pie plates to go with the rest of the dishes I left out. The weather tells me there will be no yard work and Black Friday tells me that I will not be going anywhere near a store, so those dishes will get dealt with, the floors will get vacuumed and there might even be some decorating. I expect some portion of the Friday Night crowd to descend on us tonight, though I will be surprised if it's more than a small fraction what with Dicken's opening today, people being out of town, etc.

And tomorrow it looks like I'll be heading out to Dicken's myself to do some shopping, browsing, ogling, dancing and birthday greeting. Yay long weekends!

In the oven are two pies, one apple and one pumpkin, for my family's Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

I have to be honest -- they are UGLY. Lumpy, bumpy and, in the case of the pumpkin, slightly uneven around the edges. I have faith they're going to taste good though, and really, if there's anyone you can take an aesthetically unappealing pie to, it's got to be family right?

Of course, having left work at lunch time and spent the afternoon baking, my brain is now in full Friday mode and I keep thinking I should start getting things together to head to Fremont for the evening. I think Poe would be a little surprised if I showed up on her doorstep unannounced on a Wednesday though... =)

And so begins the longest of long weekends for my year. I've been looking forward to this all month. Work went from slow to very hectic in a day this year - almost no ramp up at all - and I've been running at full tilt most of the month, so a break is feeling really really good.

I have almost no goals for the weekend. Pies today were probably the most ambitious of my actual plans. Tomorrow I get to spend the day with my family (including the Seattle contingent) and then I have three blissfully unscheduled days to play with.

Since Friday is a good day to stay at home, I'm contemplating doing some more yard work and digging out my Christmas decorations. Shar and I did a little shopping and picked up a tree (yes, artificial - he's allergic to the real thing), and I plan to actually decorate this year, for the first time in a long while. It feels good to be able to plan to do that. I remember really enjoying decorating when we lived in Campbell and then at the Murrieta apartment and on 5th Street, but with all the moving around and just not being entirely happy with the last house, I haven't had the drive the last couple of years. It's nice to have the space to have a tree and the motivation to put it up.

And the pies are almost ready - so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone if I don't get online again tomorrow. May you all have a wonderful, relaxed holiday...or, if you can't manage that, may you at least have the opportunity to recover from whatever holiday you do have.

A question (or six) for my fellow office drones...

I've been pondering my lunchtime choices. For several years now I've been getting sandwiches from a nearby shop with very little variation. I've started mixing that with some other things (pizza, Chinese, etc), but ultimately, I'm still doing basically the same thing for lunch everyday.

I haven't really gotten bored with this, but I have started thinking about what I eat, how much I pay for it and what my options might be if I started bringing my own lunch to work.

Therefore, my questions:

What do you do for lunch? Do you bring something from home or eat out? What motivates you toward one or the other?

If you do bring your lunch, what do you like to pack for yourself? How do you transport it?

Do you find that bringing your lunch makes you more likely to eat at your desk? Or do you take your PB&J/pita wrap/bento box to a nearby park or other scenic location?


Any and all answers welcome in the interests of satisfying my curiosity. :)

My house smells yummy.

The first round of Christmas Eve Cinnamon Rolls are out of the oven and cooling on the stove. Two more pans just went in and I have the last handful prepped and ready to go. (They're behemoth, loaded with sugar and cinnamon, and I think I put more sugar in the dough than I was supposed to as well.)

I've got about twice as many I intended to make, due to a "yeast snafu" ... I thought I'd killed the yeast in the first batch by proofing it in water that was too hot, so I started a second batch, just in case the first one never rose. And moved the first batch off the table by the window where it was about 65 degrees and over to the stove with a warm burner nearby where it was probably more like 80. Lo and behold, by the time batch two was started, batch one was rising nicely.

Oh well...I'll have some for myself this year I guess. Or my father in law will get some extras. I'm sure he'll complain. =)

I think one will be sacrificed to the gods of tea and snacking though. I'm realizing I had breakfast around 10 am and haven't eaten since. I should get on that.

And Leiland has been successfully provided wire, so if you're looking forward to a present from her, you'll get it. ;) Really this is less a chance to help out Leiland and more a chance to see her and Lairian before Tuesday. *evil grin*

I've successfully sorted out her project and should bring it in and put the finishing touches on while the rolls are baking.

Or I could pull out the book that Snoopy brought me...I'm pretty sure I made enough "ooh...that's ... OOOHHH!" noises in glancing through it that he's not concerned about whether I'll appreciate the addition to my reference collection. =D

Shar is napping, the heater's keeping me comfortable, the presents are wrapped, I have Firefly in the DVD player and Romeo should be home soon. (Yay! I barely see him any more, so I'm glad I'll get at least a little while to hang out before I leave for the night. I wasn't sure I'd see him before Tuesday when he left on Friday afternoon.)

Definitely feels more like a holiday now. =)

Homemade macaroni and cheese...a pleasure I have not indulged in for several years at this point and a meal I'm heartily anticipating eating shortly. The cheese sauce is ready, the pasta is bubbling away, and I have bread to go with it if I so choose.

Of course I made WAY too much...I learned this recipe for a family of five that included three hungry, snarling wolves teenagers. I've pared it down for two, but never tried to limit it to one serving...so I'm sure I'll have some in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.

This makes me happy.

So does sunshine, which we FINALLY had some of today, causing me to engage in flights of fancy where this isn't our one nice day before we go back to two weeks of rain and grey clouds. (If the weatherman is right, this might not be such a flight of fancy...but I don't really believe the weatherman.)

It's amazing how fast a dose of sunshine perked me right up. Glum droopy mopey feelings? All gone. I feel happy and cheerful and ready to deal with life again.

And tomorrow I'm buying a climbing harness, which isn't really big news but does add another dimension to the sensation of all being right with the world.

Ooo...pasta's done... *bounces off to enjoy childhood comfort food*

So Shar has taken up with LoneRomeo's game group on Thursday nights, effectively emptying the house for me. It's been a while since I had a night to myself, to do with as I please...and I plan to do exactly as I please once I get re-accustomed to the concept, so be warned. ;)

In the meantime, I officially declare Thursday to be "Experiment with Food" night.

Tonight's project -- cheddar potato soup. I love the stuff they sell at Togo's. (It's the only one of their soups I have any fondness for at all.) Unfortunately, they always sell it on some night other than Monday, which is the only day I'm ever there.

So I decided to try to make my own. So far, it is tasty...but it's cooling a bit so I can confirm without scalding my mouth beyond kissability.

I could probably have added a bit more cheddar, but the seasonings worked out quite well. I think next time I will only dice half the potato as small as I did, and leave the other half in big chunks that will survive the cooking process better.

For my own reference ( the recipe )