Wow.  How ready am I to come home?  This afternoon I was so tired I could have been asleep in three minutes if I'd been given half a chance.  And after dinner I started laughing at something and kept on hysterically for probably twenty minutes.  Tonight we're going out and I plan to sit at Starbucks with a coffee frappuccino and draw lines on paper.  Of course, as soon as I get home, I'll be back on the road and going for another week, followed by a week of scrambling to fit things in and get ready for camping.  *sigh*  No rest for the weary.  At least I'll end on a relaxed note.  Camping, here I come!

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Real gold fears no fire.

 During a short break in my busy schedule the other day, I decided to go for a walk.  I didn't have that much time so, to avoid going up to my room and changing shoes and then having to change back, I thought I would just walk barefoot.  Yeah, I'm smart.  I had done it earlier in the week without any trouble, but after my fifteen-minute circuit of the parking lot, I discovered a thumb-sized blister on each heel.  They had me limping the rest of the night.  I considered lancing them...but thought better of it.  By next morning, I could feel them only in certain shoes, and today, not at all.  Besides that, I've just been partying it up in Claudia's apartment last night and going to a three-hour Shabbat service with Katie at a friend's church.
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Real gold fears no fire.

It seems I have the most to write about when I have the least time and energy. Oh, the irony. Friday was bursting at the seams with things I had to do. Getting ready for Saturday's banquet and still putting meals in people's mouths kept me going in four directions at once. I'm serious; I was doing four thing at the same time. That was the day that, one of the two times I went to light the griddle, the pilots were out and, when I lit them, the gas was on. Yeah, not so smart. So my eyelashes were blonde-tipped for a day or two. But I made good things! Everyone devoured the grilled sandwiches that came from the 'poof' incident and the naan from that evening turned out very well and was perfect with the Indian food. I made Indian food, people! Chicken tikka masala, spiced basmati, garlic naan, mango chutney, cucumber raita...mango chutney being the only thing we didn't make from scratch. It's so weird how all those crazy-different flavors...taste the best together! Anyway, Claudia, who's been bugging me to make Indian food for forever, had an option to go out to Indian food a couple of days after, but decided against it because, "it probably wouldn't be as good as Anna's." !!!

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Real gold fears no fire.

 Have I told you about the cheese crisps?  I've made them twice.  The first time I didn't cook them long enough so they were...chews.  Tasty chews, but not what I was going for.  Last time, they turned out perfectly amazing and wonderful.  I lined sheet pans with parchment paper and dotted it with pinches of shredded asiago, flattening each little mound as I went.  Into a hot oven they went, until they turned toasty brown.  Barely cool before I had to 'test' one, they met my expectations in every way.  They were the perfect accompaniment to fettucini with baked tomato sauce and the best chicken caesar salad I've ever had.  If I do say so myself.

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Real gold fears no fire.

Tonight...I outdid myself. Dry-rub sirloin steak with fresh fruit salsa, lemon couscous, summer squash carpaccio salad, and strawberry breeze pie had everyone exclaiming and cleaning their plates. Saturday I will have another chance to top even that. For the father/daughter banquet we are having mixed greens with avocado and fruit, sirloin steak with hunter sauce, risotto-style mushroom barley, honey-balsamic green beans with onions and walnuts, rosemary wheat rolls, and petite cheesecakes. Imagine that. We're having steak twice in one week! I don't know how I'm ever going to live up to that.

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Real gold fears no fire.

 Well, the weekend is over.  With all the stuff I did this weekend, it should have been longer.  We went to a wedding in Fort Worth on Friday and got back at midnight, I got taken on an 'I know how it can be cooped up at a training center so let me take you out' outing to the mall on Saturday, Starbucks included, and, even better than the mall, Whole Foods.  Came back and served dinner to a very small crowd and afterwards played with a basketball and a volleyball outside till dark then watched a movie with Katie and Claudia and went to bed at midnight...again.  Sunday got up early to go to choir and crashed when I got back for a two hour nap, made dinner, and turned in early after our John Piper video.  Okay, I'm done.  Let's make tonight an early night too.

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Real gold fears no fire.

 Well, it will be at least a week before the air conditioning gets fixed because the repairman is in North Dakota until the end of next week.  In the meantime, we'll just walk around like zombies every afternoon.  But we are finally getting our stairs re-carpeted.  After a year of trying to get somebody to deliver the carpet...we decided to go with someone else.

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Back to the Grindstone

 I was able to scrounge enough food together for two decent meals today, but I'll have to make a run to the store for tomorrow's lunch before the order comes in.  The a/c is out for the kitchen so it was 88º in there today, and muggy.  I come up with lots of reasons to go in the fridge when it's like that.  Choir practice tonight, early to bed, early to rise, farmers' market, grocery store, meals, orders...  When am I going to unpack?

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Real gold fears no fire.