Alfred loves peaches

Last night I went to my book club meeting. I could have blogged about it last night, but then I'd have nothing to write about for today! It was kind of nice, there were only 5 of us there for a change, it was nice to be able to actually be able to hold a conversation and hear everyone. Usually there's so many people that you don't even end up talking to half of the people there because the table is so long. And I like all the girls who came, so that was good, too. 2 of them were pregnant. One is about 7 months along, she's due in October and doesn't know what she's having yet. Also, she's freaking gorgeous. The other girl was due yesterday. Her stomach sticks out so freaking far, I don't understand how she stays upright. She's having a little boy.

The book we read wasn't my favorite ever, but we didn't really talk about it much because only me and one other girl had read it. I don't know why I even bother, except that it gives me ideas for new things to read. And I like to read.

On a different note, teachers went back to work today for most of the counties around here. It's a good thing I didn't try to hold out for a teaching job, because obviously, that would not have worked. I heard through the grapevine that there was an unofficial hiring freeze and that they would hire like crazy the first 2 weeks of August, but if that's the case, I certainly never heard about it. I applied for tons of jobs online, mailed out resumes to several principals... nothing. It's kind of discouraging that I didn't even get a single call for an interview. I never got a call about any of the other types of jobs I applied for this summer either. I got 2 emails, one acknowledging my resume and one saying they had filled the position (2 different jobs), but that's it. I guess I'll just hang out at the museum for the rest of my life, since I apparently can't get hired anywhere else. Thanks a lot, Cornell!

our weekend, of course

Good times were had. Saturday we worked like mad outside, we cleaned up the yard, I weeded the brick walkway, and Alfred mowed the front and back yards, so it looks all nice again. I also cleared out part of the garage so my car can fit in there too. Stuff sort of leaked out from around the walls since we sold my Civic. Oh, and I repotted my plant to give it some more space, it's much happier now.

Saturday was also my day to finish watching So You Think You Can Dance. What an awesome finale. I'm kind of sad it's over for another year, I'm totally going through withdrawal.

I made some banana muffins Saturday with the bunch of bananas we forgot to bring with us for our house sitting gig. Alfred had the genius idea to make muffins instead of a loaf so we were able to try different additions. We tried blueberries (which was Alfred's favorite), dried cranberries (my favorite), and chocolate chips. And plain, of course. Pretty good, for banana muffins. I made some of my soon-to-be signature cookies too. They were tasty, if I do say so myself.

We started getting into the Olympics last night at oh, about 10pm. Good timing. We watched 2 world records get broken (in swimming) so that was exciting. Alfred finally turned off the tv and forced us to go to bed. Good thing, cause otherwise I might still be watching. It's strangely addicting. We're watching it again now!

I also just ate literally one bite of a peach, and I can already feel my throat getting tight. Usually it takes a lot more than that to bother me, maybe peaches are more potent than apples. Very weird.

various culinary experiences

First, I would like to thank Alfred for his assistance with this post. I'm writing this on Thursday night, but don't have the cord to get the picture from my phone to include it, so he's going to put the picture in and post it on Friday morning. Because we can't just have picture-less posts willy nilly every week. It's just not right.

So we went out to dinner Wednesday night with Ilya and Mercedes. We went to this new place with a Spanish chef and a big tapas menu, it was right up Mercedes' alley. It's the same place we went for my last lunch before I went back to the museum, but this time we did it right, we just ordered a bunch of tapas and all shared. We had squid, chorizo, shrimp, chicken, a Spanish tortilla (kind of an omelet with potatoes in it) and of course sangria. It was really good, even though some of the bigger pieces of squid looked like centipedes. Then afterwards we went out for ice cream at the super delicious ice cream place by Alfred's office. Somehow Alfred managed to resist the frosty goodness, that's my sundae he's holding in the picture.

Tonight we went out again, but just to a bar and grill type place. It's really good too though, I had a meatloaf sandwich with the best pasta salad ever, and Alfred had a sandwich about 5 inches thick. And we had empanadas with some ingenious dip (ranch dressing mixed with salsa, delicious!) as an appetizer. We had a gift certificate from restaurants.com so it was cheap, too.

After dinner tonight we stopped at the grocery store to get some blueberries for breakfast. There was a lady in there who was going through the blackberries and literally touching every single one in each package to find the best ones. She was just standing there and opening each package, poking and touching and squeezing each and every berry. I stood there for a minute just staring at her in shock and she totally didn't notice, she was way too engrossed in manhandling the fruit. It was kind of disgusting. Take home lesson: always wash your produce!

introducing

The museum animals: Mama Kitty and Marc Anthony the Second.

Marc is doing what he does best in this picture: coming after Mama. For some reason she is terrified of him, even though a) she's bigger than him, and b) she's a damn cat, and cats eat birds. He'll chase after her while she's just hanging around, he comes into the office while she's eating and scares her away, he's basically kind of a bully.

Marc is maybe 2 or 3 years old, we got him from our vet. Our old chickens both died (Marc Anthony the First and his girlfriend, Cleopatra) and our vet's son had a few chickens of this breed, so he gave us one. I got to go pick him up. He crowed a lot on the drive. It was loud. I think he has a complex since he's so small, and has a crooked toe. He gets his food served to him in a bowl every morning. My first morning back I forgot that and just threw it on the ground. The second morning, he walked right over to his bowl when I went to get his food, like bitch, get it right. I've been putting my plant outside to get some sun; he pecked at it a little to show it who's boss.

Mama, on the other hand, is very sweet. We named her Mama because she kept having kittens at the museum. Mose was one of them, he was our pet at the museum for a few years until he ran away and broke my heart. We were pals. When he was little he'd go to sleep on my chair, then when I came in he'd either stay there and share my chair with me, or crawl into my lap and sleep there. If he was near me outside and I squatted down, he'd come over and climb into my lap just to snuggle with me. I loved that damn cat. I was so sad when he went missing.

Anyway, Mama was very skittish around people and used to run like hell if we so much as looked at her, but we started feeding her and eventually she became somewhat comfortable with us. We caught her a couple of summers ago and got her fixed, so her name's kind of funny now. Every morning she comes to the office for her breakfast, body slamming herself against the door until we open it for her, and then we have to prop the door open for her or she freaks out. But she lets us pet her, and she'll hang around me outside if there's no one else around.

We used to have a couple of sheep too, but they live with our vet now. I told a teacher that once and she was like "oh, they died?" I thought that was funny.

new vs old

So I mentioned that they're building a new museum. It's way bigger, and will have 8 programs instead of our current 3. We're supposed to move sometime before our fall groups get started, which is in the middle of October. Hopefully it's done, or at least done enough. We're not going far; right now we're on the southwest corner of the intersection, and the new place is on the northeast corner. I took this picture this morning from my office.

On the left is the main entrance. There's going to be a gift shop and visitor information center inside. There's going to be a fort build behind the fence on the right so you'll see the fort walls and gun tower as you drive down the street. It should be cool. I would have gone over and taken a better picture, but there were workers there already when I got to work this morning and I didn't want to look like a goon.

The current museum is looking a little run down. They've started taking some of the supplies over to the new place already and have sort of stopped doing some repairs. But since it's summer and it's been raining a lot, there's lots of nice plants all over the place.

We even have corn growing at the corn grinding table.

And the grape vine they planted a few years ago has grapes on it!

Today was our last group of the summer, probably the last program ever to be conducted at the old museum (knock on wood). It felt sort of momentous.

weekend

We had a pretty good weekend. We didn't get home until Saturday afternoon because we spent Friday night at Billy's, then stopped to show Robyn my car and pick up some goat milk. We didn't do a whole lot the rest of the day, just watched some tv and relaxed. We got pretty creative with dinner; we didn't want to have to go to the store, so Alfred had the idea to make breakfast.

It was damn tasty! We also made some split pea soup in the slow cooker and let it cook overnight, so we've got that meal ready for this week. Sunday we really got to work, made some yogurt and granola, went for our walk (we saw a dead sting ray up on the beach, which was kind of cool), then made some Indian food for dinner.

We came up with a new diet plan along the way, too: add an extra teaspoon of red pepper to whatever it is you're eating. Works like a charm. To be fair, I just followed the recipe, I didn't add extra and mess it up.

We get to house sit all this week, yay! It's not so bad, it means we get to go out to dinner because we're sort of afraid to use their kitchen. It's just so pristine.

Also, I got my first full tank of gas in my new car. I got 30.7 miles per gallon. Not bad. Not quite as good as my Accent or Civic, but not bad.

look what I got!

We drove up to Georgia last night and bought me a car!

Isn't she pretty? It's a 2005 Hyundai Elantra, I got my four doors and automatic transmission, and even got a sunroof and mp3 player! It's a champagne color, which makes me want to name it Andre. It drives really nicely, it's a smaller car but feels nice and big from the inside, it's got a nice size backseat (for carseats, maybe....) and overall I'm just really happy with it. So, yay!