11/26 Audio Update, 10:54 AM
November 26, 2005
11/25 Journal
November 25, 2005
Today’s my youngest sister’s birthday, so I cooked one of her favorite meals for dinner, barbequed hot dogs. I made mac and cheese for myself since I can’t do the tomatoes thing. I also made corn casserole, which was a great hit. Yesterday’s broccoli casserole and the various puff pastry pinwheels were also great hits.
I should be packing stuff for the trip home tomorrow, but instead, I’ve spent the evening playing with Snuffles, my sister’s poodle (and the one that visited me in September). He greatly enjoys fetching the squeaky ball it appears.
I also got a small bit of Christmas shopping done online. Unlike my sister Holli and my niece, I’m am NOT going to any stores on the day after Thanksgiving. Well, I went to the grocery store, but that doesn’t count. I found a present for my brother online, and I think I have my niece taken care of as well. Now for the rest of them…..
But it’s time for bed now. Too much driving to do tomorrow.
Thanksgiving Day Cooking Never Ends
November 24, 2005
I may never cook again. Okay, not really, though I do feel like I’ve done nothing but cook this entire day.
Actually, that’s a bit close to reality. I made snackin’ food for the Macy’s parade, and as soon as that was over, I began the process of cooking for dinner. I didn’t finish and have people eating till 9 pm.
It’s not that I was truly actively cooking every minute. There were moments of confusion and bewilderment. The biggest issue was that I thought my mother would be making the pumpkin pies, but I ended up being in charge of that too. No problem… except that since I didn’t think I was doing it no one checked the ingredients. We were out of shortening, a key ingredient for pie crust. The bigger issue is that I’m not a pie crust maker in the first place. I buy pie crusts in cute little boxes in the dairy aisle. That won’t do for mom however, so the whole process was a little more complex than usual.
Beyond that, I gave a wag of the finger to the microwave several times for its misbehavior, and ultimately, I put it on notice (after it tried to remove my fingernail). It is clearly an evil appliance. Wag of the fingers also for the knife and the stove top. The pie crust is also on notice for its failure to cooperate when I attempted to roll it out. It may be dead to me. I must re-evaluate later when I’m hydrated again.
11/23 Journal
November 23, 2005
Cleanapalooza is 90% over. The living room is inhabitable again, and there’s enough space in the kitchen to cook.
Spent the afternoon in Salem, with my mom, sister, and niece. Mom had an eye doctor’s appointment, and we went along to give her company. While she was in the doctor’s, we took the car and did a little holiday shopping at a nearby Walmart. Didn’t buy anything overly exciting, but did manage to get some little things out of the way. After Mama’s appointment was finished, we went by the fire station where my brother works. It’s an older building in Roanoke. It was beginning to snow, so we didn’t go inside. Just said howdy, I gave him my leftovers from Sonic, and we were on our way back home. We ordered various pizzas for dinner so that we weren’t distracted from Cleanapalooza.
11/22 Journal
November 22, 2005
Today’s major accomplishment has been grocery shopping. That probably doesn’t sound very exciting, but given that it was time to get all the goodies for the Thanksgiving meal, it was a pretty involved activity. I think that I’ve gotten everything, but we won’t be sure till the cooking is over.
While I was out, I found a couple of cute wreaths for my front door, so they’re in the car and waiting for the return trip to Illinois. Pictures next week.
We still need to do major cleaning on the living room and the kitchen to get the Thanksgiving feast underway. I’ve been calling the event Cleanapalooza. So much cleaning needs done that I’m embarrassed to even share the actual details. Cleanapalooza really gets underway tomorrow. Did some beginning work today. The heavier stuff has to get finished tomorrow though. Since it’s not quite clean enough for the whole family, we went to Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. I ordered a chicken-fried steak and ended up with enough food to feed 3 people. I’ve never seen such a huge portion. Fortunately, there are dogs at home here.
Best Books (Inbox Ideas)
November 22, 2005
The Ideas Section for this week’s Inbox focused on Best Books, pointing to award winners that have been recently announced at NCTE’s Annual Convention and books that have been recently reviewed in NCTE publications.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
11/21 Journal
November 21, 2005
This has been interesting so far. I am split between rooms on two different levels of the house because of space constraints. I’m sleeping upstairs in a bedroom/office, and I have all my clothes and whatnot in a bedroom downstairs. I’ve had no end of trouble getting online. There’s something very wrong with the fact that it was easier to send blog posts from the road than it is to post from inside a house with multiple phone lines and a cable modem. Fortunately, I brought my own Airport Express, and I now have it attached to the cable router, but it took most of the day to get that worked out. I ended up doing my conference call on the book cover interactive for ReadWriteThink without an Internet connection. Hopefully, I’ll have an easier time of all this tomorrow.
At the border
November 20, 2005
NOTE: This image is apparently lost. Looking for the backup. (05/13/10)