Category: Personal

Today worked out very well. It was nice and warm this morning, so I braved the Hillsdale Mall for an hour or so. There were lines at both Macy’s and the Gap, but all in all it was a pretty painless experience, and I got what I was looking for without too much stress. About an hour after I got home, the rain started to fall, making me feel very good about my sense of timing.

My other project for the day was making a batch of stock from the turkey carcass and the collection of chicken wing tips that’s been gathering in our freezer since the last time I made stock. We had so much base, I ended up making two pots’ worth. The house smelled wonderful as the pots simmered away.

As I was straining out the flotsam, I found myself channeling my long-since-deceased grandmother. Grandma Bernice, an immigrant child of the Depression, didn’t let much go to waste on a chicken. She would even crack chicken bones in her teeth to suck out the marrow. So as I ladled out bones, mirepoix, and chunks of turkey flesh, I found myself setting the larger pieces aside in a little dish — after all, why throw out perfectly good meat?

Of course, after simmering in the stock pot for 3 hours, the meat was dry and flavorless, which I discovered after it had cooled off. If Scott weren’t on his diet, I could have goosed the turkey up with some cheese and turned it into a casserole, but that’s out for a few more weeks. So into the bin it went. Still, I had a hard time forcing myself to throw it away, and even now, I feel a little guilty for wasting all that meat.

Which is ridiculous, because the turkey wasn’t wasted at all. I have at least a gallon of yummy stock cooling in a water bath right now, and that stock will go into making a bunch of great dinners in days to come.

In the last 24 hours, I’ve noticed something new for the holidays — I’ve gotten three SMS messages from various friends wishing me a Merry Xmas. Either my friends have gotten younger or SMS is getting more mainstream; not sure which.

We’re having an extremely quiet weekend at home. Even though we don’t celebrate Chirstmas, over the years I find that most of the time, we end up spending the day with either family or friends. After all, there’s no much else you can do. Pretty much everything is closed. So being totally on our own for Xmas is a little unusual, and kind of lonely. It doesn’t much feel like a holiday.

However. with Scott on a restricted diet until January, it didn’t seem like a good idea to try to inflict his dietary limitations on any of our friends. So yesterday Scott roasted up a turkey (omitting his usual butter enrichment) & we had a nice dinner of turkey, gravy, potatos, and asparagus — all made with as little fat as possible. It was pretty tasty, too. We’ll be working our way through the leftovers today, and I’m going to make stock out of the carcas.

If the local movie theater is open and playing something worth seeing, maybe we’ll walk on down & see a show. If not, I’ve got DVDs to watch, and a big pile of leftover turkey to eat.

So things are quiet around here, but that’s not necessarily bad. It’s been a really crazy month. Some rest and time to recharge is a good thing.

On Friday afternoon, the final class of 2006 robed up, walked across the stage to the applause of our families, and got our diploma holders.
Afterwards, we had a yummy dinner down at Boulevard, and then hightailed it up to the Sonoma Mission Inn for a round of winery visits, some more great food, a little relaxation, and some precious time with Scott and my parents.
I’m very tired, but I had a fantastic weekend.
Dad shot a brief video of me, which I need to upload somewhere. It’s very short (13 seconds) and not all that thrilling but still, I’m glad he took it.

UPDATE 12/18: OK, I tried to put the video on GooTube. Let’s see if it worked.

That was not a fun final.

I teared up a little at the end, though, because that was officially it.

I’m done.

Unless something goes badly awry, I’m getting my diploma on Friday.

There’s a lot more I could say, and I probably will soon enough, but right now I’m beat. I’m going to cuddle with the kitties & go to sleep early.

Perhaps the reason so many people end up either shuttering their blogs or becoming part of group efforts is the simple fact that there are times when daily blogging is just too hard. Lately, I’ve had to really force myself to blog, and both the quality and quantity of posts here has been declining, as I’m sure my few remaining readers have noticed.

It’s not that there’s nothing going on, either in the world or in my own personal life. The problem is, most of what’s going on in my own life I’m finding it hard to write about — for example, Scott’s health issues are his, not mine, and it’s not really my place to talk about them here. Another big issue is that I don’t know what’s going to happen with my internship after I graduate. I’m so stressed out that it’s a conversation that I just don’t want to have with my boss, yet it’s one that I really need to have: knowing whether I still have a job, and if it is a part-time or full-time gig, and at what rate of pay, is not unimportant information! I have 2 challenging finals standing between me and graduation, and my parents are coming to visit on Thursday which means I need to clean the hell out of my house. And I have no clue what I am going to wear for Graduation under the cap and gown. (Please no dirty jokes)

Dealing with all of that has pushed my ability or desire to pay attention to the rest of the stuff that is going on in the world to the back burner. All in all, I’m feeling overwhelmed, and the more overwhelmed I feel, the less I feel like blogging. It would be nice to have a few co-bloggers to fall back on in times like this. But for better or for worse, Fiat Lux is a solo effort, so as I go, so goes the blog.

This isn’t a “Goodbye Cruel World” post. I’m not shutting down for good. But I suspect that light blogging will be the rule of the day for the next few weeks.

Spending all day on his feet Thursday was really pushing it for Scott, so we’re been staying very close to home since then. I’ve been playing with the new coffeemaker I bought off of woot.com, am finally caught up on all my back episodes of Studio 60, and Scott’s been wresting with an installation of Vista on his computer.

I’ve urged him to put up a post here detailing some of the challenges he ran into and how he solved them, so that once Google gets it, other people will be able to find some solutions. Perhaps he will.

We need to venture out at some point for a few supplies, and we might even get to a movie later on. Thrilling, I know. I need to start posting something more interesting here.