Not Buying It

I'm starting a new weekly update called Not Buying It. I 'stole' it from this blog, and I think she got it from someone else, etc etc. Please feel free to take it and run with it, and to add things that you aren't buying in the comments section.

Clothing: I have been losing weight, therefore some of my clothes don't fit. I hopped over to Goodwill and bought 3 pants, 1 dress and 1 skirt and a top for $27.
Food: Cooking has been minimal, for example: grilled chicken and a veggie. I have been making our own bread, the recipe I found on Mother Earth News is to DIE for.
Household: I've been trying to use the wash-and-reuse food storage containers more than the use-and-pitch ziplock bags.
Utilities: No heat and less electricity for summer. AC hasn't been installed yet, we're relying on the monster window fans.
Gifts: I bought a Wintergreen plant for a neighbor.
Exercises/Self-Improvement: Loads of garden work.
Home and Garden: Garden is going, see the garden blog. Broccoli is almost ready to harvest, as are some of the heads of lettuce. Spinach, too. Logs that were laying around have been cut up into **3000** board feet of lumber and timbers that we will use on the garage.
Weaknesses: We did go for takeout on Thursday.
Purging: While at Goodwill I also dropped off 3 Xerox boxes of stuff, 2 of clothes and 1 of housewares, miscellaneous stuff. I have a goal of cleaning out the kitchen cupboards by the end of May, and I only have 1 week left so I'd better get cracking.

I'm baaaaaack.

I'm going to eek back into this blog, but it will be taking a slightly different turn.

In other news, at work on Friday we found out that our current company will be unable to bid on our contract this year due to the fact that they are too big. This means that a) they will have to find a smaller company to sub-contract with, or (most likely) b) we will be working for a new company October 1st. Best case scenario is that we all get picked up by the new company. Worst case is that only some or none of us do. If you want more detail than this, let me know. Surprisingly I found all the oh-fish-ul information and technical documents online, including the list of *25* companies that are interested in bidding. Ain't the internet grand?

Scarf pics

Introspectrus

I've been turning a bit more introspectrus lately. I'm going to take a bit of a break from this blog for a week or so. I'm looking at a format change (visually) in the near future for this blog, possibly the others as well. Stay tuned. I'll absolutely be posting at the garden blog, though.

This Weight in History

Yup, I'm down another 5lb. Twenty total. The last time I was at this weight was sometime in college. I'm shooting for another 5lb by Mother's day. I don't think it will be a problem.

Yah me!!

The Great Spaghetti Harvest

My mom told me about this over and over, she saw the original broadcast.

The Great Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957

Cookies and Gutters, and a Big Honkin' Egg!

It rained allll weekend, so I didn't get outside to do any work. Work desperately needs done outside, so....

Instead, I baked cookies! Not all weekend, of course. I found the recipe for 'Chinese Gingersnaps' online. It calls for 1tbsp of white pepper, 1/2tsp of cinnamon, 1/4tsp of cloves, and 5 whopping tablespoons of freshly minced/ground ginger. If anyone wants the recipe I'll post it, just let me know.

I decided to halve the recipe (I didn't have enough butter) and it still made 56 cookies.

I topped some of them with green sugar, some with regular sugar, some with nothing, and some with finely-minced candied ginger.

Guess which ones I liked best?

Matt went morel hunting Sunday morning. Didn't find any that were pickable yet. Soon. VEEERRRYYY SOOOOON.

There was a kitty hiding behind the tree, Max was going nuts here.

We went to meet a friend of Matt's for coffee, then after we got back we decided that we had to clean out the gutters. In our nice clothes. With the hose. And the muck. Did I mention our nice clothes?

Max helped, though, by barking at the drainspouts. You see, around here chipmunks like to hide in our drainspouts, so he had reason in his mind to bark at them. He also has the habit of grabbing onto them and pulling them off the house. The drainspouts, that is. Not the chipmunks.

He also helped by grabbing plants and pulling them out of our way roots and all. Very helpful, our Yorkie. Fortunately, the plants were already long dead, so no harm was done.

You can see ^ Matt's legs on the ladder, and Max at the far left of the picture, barking.

And here's a close-up of Max staring at the black water coming from the drainspout.

I also recently purchased a treat for myself. It is a peanut butter meltaway egg from Sarris Candies in Pittsburgh. It weighs 1 pound. It is everything I thought it could be. I figured it out, the entire thing is 2300 calories, 143 grams of fat.