I awoke pleasantly to a deliciously long email from my good friend Raeleen, and spent a good 45 minutes replying. We don't talk often enough, but I think that's been true ever after the year we were roommates as freshmen in college. The exception is when Ben was in the hospital, and she and Andy dropped everything to visit very often. We joke that they're our "foul-weather friends" in fact :) They're there for us when things are rough, but we all get busy when things are good.
Then, I planned out some meals for the week. Ben and I like to get recipes from the Single Servings column at allrecipes.com, but we usually pass over the seafood ones so I picked out several of those. Tonight I made a combination of this tilapia one and this one. Yummy!! I also experimented by mashing rutabagas, which I hear is done in England, but they came out more fibrous than fluffy. Some caramelized onions on the side made them very edible still though.
Before I was "up" I got a call from Marcie, one of Ben's co-workers who helped us move. We hit it off - she seems to be an interesting, joyful person, and on top of that I couldn't help but notice that she is near my age! We were going to take a hike today, but she got tied up so we rescheduled for next weekend.
After that... I spent four hours cleaning our old apartment so we wouldn't have to pay for someone else to do it. Not so fun, but at least I got to talk on the phone to my sister Cheryl for about an hour of that time. She's visiting in a couple of weeks so we planned and generally caught up. Towards the end the our wimpy vacuum died, but I was glad of an excuse to say "I'm done!" and leave.
Cleaning accomplished, I handed in the apartment keys at the office and headed home to get my computer ready to ship out! The CD hardware is broken, so I have to mail it to Dell support center... unfortunately since my laptop is also my work computer these days I had a problem with that. However, Ben saved me by borrowing a laptop from his office and even updating it :) So I've been transferring files from one computer to the other and installing the software I'll need on this laptop as well as backing up my entire laptop to an external hard drive- I guess there's a chance that they'll either completely reformat my computer or just send me a new one.
Yikes. And now I need to get some more work done before Monday. Don't worry, I'll try to relax a bit more tomorrow!
Yup, but rutabagas are called 'swedes' over here. They do come out a lot more fibrous than potatoes... Just have to make sure they're way boiled, way mashed, and way buttered, salted and peppered. They use ice cream scoops here to serve them in nice little balls, but Heather thinks that's gross.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is 'intro/extroverts unite!'
Ah yes, I could see that you would be an intro/extrovert too. I think UCU certainly does push one towards extrovertedness.
ReplyDeleteNiko the parrot loves mashed "swedes".