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the weekend: you're doing it wrong.
November 19, 2012
I am so busy these days that I want to curl up and die. I am not really feeling any better than I have been, but the workload ramps up for me this time of year, both in the office and at home.
Last weekend was fruitcake baking; a major undertaking that took pretty much the entire day, since I needed to do two this year and am too cheap to spend 5 bucks on a second loaf pan (NEVER AGAIN!!). And the weekend was followed by a week of frenetic activity in the office, plus multiple after-work shopping and errands. Including buying a new outfit for Thanksgiving--ugh. Trying on clothes after a long workday, when the clerk doesn't have anyone else to bother...but I did luck out and find a beautiful, perfect outfit, plus a new pair of my favorite navy work pants, for about 40% off.
The outfit is simple, comfortable, and the exact level of dressy-casual I like. A two-piece top: a floaty, silky, blouse in a jewel-toned print, with 3/4-length sleeves, worn open over a purple scoop-neck tank shell. I bought a nice pair of tailored dress slacks in black to wear with it, and once I add my good black flats & my beautiful amethyst earrings from Auntie, and I will be comfortable, but dressy enough for brunch at the Pfister.
Also in the after-work chores line: picking up my new microwave (prepaid online) from the Blueshirt Brigade...and having the unfortunately bad timing to do it on the day "Call of Duty: Black Ops" was released. Double Ugh. And dental appointment on Friday afternoon--TRIPLE Ugh. Especially since I have to go back at the end of December and have the little dealy-bobber my partial clips into re-seated in my back molar. They wanted to shove me off till after the first of the year, but since I have met my 2012 deductible, I pressured them to get me in before.
This weekend was more baking: A loaf of my special, dark date-nut bread, loaded with pecans and BLACK walnuts(mmmmm...black walnuts...), to send to Auntie as a Thanksgiving treat. Which turned into TWO loaves of date-nut bread, because the first one, although gorgeous-looking and delicious-smelling and generally marvelous...decided to come out of the pan in three pieces.
So.
Had to turn right around and reboot the entire process. Good thing I had enough of everything on hand to make more than one! And I took no chances with the second one: heavily greased the pan with Crisco, then lined the pan with a parchment cradle running lengthwise, down, across, and back up--then I sprayed the parchment with PAM, and finally, gave it a thorough dusting with flour.
Yeah, number two practically jumped out of the pan. And I get to eat the un-pretty, but delicious, first try. Which is not a bad consolation.
A prolonged stretch of baking was far from the only thing we got done, though. Saturday started with breakfast at Pete's, followed by a major step into the 21st century: we changed our banking.
The small, local credit union we've belonged to for 15 years got taken over by some big outfit from Minnesota, and the service has taken a major nosedive. A few weeks ago, I broached the subject to Spouse, but couldn't overcome his inertia with this stuff. Then, I brought up the subject of maybe getting a pre-paid credit card/debit card, so he could have a card for online shopping (I am the only cardholder/authorized user in the house) and could carry less cash, etc.
He was more amenable to that, so we did some research and found the a card that seemed to be rather well-suited to our needs. When we dropped in to a branch last week to discuss it with a rep, we got blown away by their amazing customer service, and in addition to a new prepaid card, Spouse walked away convinced about changing banks. They offer so much that the CU can't--or won't, that even he realized it was time to change. And since he is a veteran, they have an amazingly loaded up checking acount product that is no minimum balance and totally free--including checks, debit cards, etc. Here's the kicker--that pre-paid card is also free, with one of these accounts. For him AND for me.
So this weekend, we opened a checking account. And I got a free pre-paid card for myself. And I am about 3/4 of the way convinced to move my credit card over to them, as well! We didn't do any other running around town on Saturday, because Spouse had to put in a full shift at work. While he was out of the house, I tackled the laundry--in addition to the aforementioned baking, and washing the two loads of dishes that produced. Plus some early Christmas geekiness I will go over below.
On Sunday, we did our weekly chats with Mom and Auntie (I slept in till 7:30, and Mom called me because we hadn't phoned her yet!), we tackled the weekly cleaning together, I packaged up Auntie's loaf for shipping, and then we got cleaned up and headed out to do errands--we had our annual Thanksgiving shop for the Shalom Center (3 families this year; between 12-24 people.) to buy and drop off, plus our own shopping to do, mailing the package from the satellite post office, and then home to put stuff away.
Side note: I bought a $20 immersion blender set at the Aldi. Hoping it works okay; it isn't the Kitchen-Aid version I wanted, but it isn't $55-$85, either.
Oh, and at various points in the weekend, I also re-boozed the fruitcakes with French Cognac, and took my newly re-energized dog for a couple of walks, did some mending, made a trip to the post office for priority mail cartons, and bought, wrote, stamped and mailed greeting cards to Auntie and the 'Rents.
And I embarked on my annual "Christmas music for Auntie" project--the geekiness I mentioned earlier. And I got nearly all the way through the hard part--got my playlist figured out, got my songs ordered the way I want, got everything either ripped or downloaded, designed my cover, and basically the 2012 Merry Mix is ready to go into production. I got some CDs & cases on the way home. Mom also wants a copy this year, and I think I will burn a couple of extras, too. I burned Mom a copy of Merry Mix 2011, too, since I have that on the computer still.
I didn't make a super-big one this year; just 11 songs. I tried for a nice mix of "Christmassy" "Religiousy" and "Funny"; I hope everybody likes it. The song selection was a little tricky this year--I felt that a lot of otherwise beautiful songs were off-limits, since this is the first Christmas without Uncle, and SO many songs are on a "Christmas is kind of sucky without YOU" theme. Amazon's preview feature and Spouse's input were a big help this year, too. I ended up with everything from Sixpence None the Richer doing "Angels We Have Heard on High" to The Royal Guardsmen doing "Snoopy's Christmas"--with stops along the way for Brook Benton, Gordon MacRae, The Mills Brothers, and The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, among others.
This is something I generally love to do, but I was kind of dreading because it is a major time-suck. I can get lost in this stuff, and HOURS will go by in a blink. But since I have precious little time these days for hobby stuff, it was kind of nice to "bliss out" for a while. And not that it is out of the way, I can get started on the cookie death-march with a clear conscience.
Starting this year off with Pfefferneusse, I think. Spouse has been talking about my Pfefferneusse for about a month now, so I think I will have to whip up a sacrifice 1st batch to throw his way, just for him to be piggy with. This year's plan of attack is to sequester a portion of each batch in ziplocks, in the basement freezer, so he doesn't snark them all up as fast as I bake them.
Anyway--we wrapped up the weekend with a tiny bit of relaxation, a nice dinner of steaks and thick-cut potato slices on the grill, with a salad. Then Spouse realized he didn't have any cookies, so I baked him some. Well, I threw a dozen of the frozen sugar cookies from GFS in the oven, anyway! No big whoop--that's what we bought them for. He plainly wanted them badly, and was being so sweet about not asking me to do it, that I couldn't not.
And to top off the whole dizzy weekend, right before I went to bed; we got a phone call from Nephew--letting us know that Niece was in the emergency room with chest pains and vomiting. Fortunately, she just bruised her sternum roughhousing.
May I please go lay down now?
Reading: �The Outdoor Girls in Army Service� (1918), by Laura Lee Hope.
Not a lot of reading time these days, but I'm making my way through the TOG series. This one is #8, I think.
Listening: Rickie Lee Jones, The Black Keys, Blind Melon, The Stray Cats, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
At Random:
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