3/26 New Recipe

Wasabi and Panko-Crusted Pork with Gingered Soy Sauce
Cooking Light March 2006

M and I really liked this dish. I served it with brown rice and steamed peas and carrots. M definitely wants to have this again. It has a lot of flavor but is very yummy!

A Love/Hate Relationship

Birds are can be such beautiful creatures, and there is nothing like walking outside in the morning (or anytime of day really) and hearing a bird singing. While they are beautiful, I have always read and heard that birds are truly dirty creatures that carry all kinds of disease.

The hate part of my relationship with birds began when I was in late elementary school or early middle school. If this has ever happened to you, you know how incredibly disgusting it can be. When I was a kid, we used to go camping in Fun Valley, CO. It was this really neat place that was somewhat closed off unless you had a parking permit to get into the camp. Because it was closed off, we kids could run around all day and our parents could enjoy time without us. There was a stream or river going through the camp where you could fish or go tubing. They had miniature golf, horseback riding, and other things to do as well. It was a really fun place to go on vacation. One year, I was walking across a bridge with my mom and dad when I felt something hit my head. I told my mom that I thought a bird had pooped on my head. She told me that I must be wrong and that it was most likely a raindrop. So I asked her to look at my head. Right where my hair was parted from my bangs, I had bird poop on my head. Thankfully, there were showers at this camp so I was able to wash my hair.

Even though it had happened before, I was still surprised by this next event. The year after I graduated from college, I went home for Mother’s Day. My mom and I were out on a Friday afternoon running errands. We had just finished looking around at Michael’s, when we were getting into her minivan. After I had opened my door and was getting into the car, I again thought I bird had pooped on me. This time it landed IN my ear! I showed my mom who thankfully had baby wipes in her car. I must say however, that using a baby wipe to get bird poop out of one’s ear does not make the ear nearly clean enough. This has been the most disgusting of the bird poop incidents thus far.

And yet again...After M and I were married, I went to church one Sunday without him. I can’t remember why. It was a nice spring or summer day. As I was walking from my car to the sanctuary, bird poop landed between my foot and my sandal. I could not get to the women’s restroom quick enough. Thankfully, it did not land in any crevasses like in situation #2.

I hope in this case the third time is the charm. I feel like I have certainly had my fair share, don’t you agree? Maybe after writing this, I should walk around with the protection of an umbrella or something.

3/24 New Recipe

I tried the following recipe from my March 2006 issue of Cooking Light. I have several years' worth of this magazine with so many recipes I haven't tried. I am trying to go back to the issues from previous years to see what I missed that sounds good. There were a lot of issues that I barely glanced at while studying for the CPA exam so I am sure to find some recipes I would like to try.

Skillet Chicken Breast Aglio e Olio

I could not find hot cherry peppers while shopping for this recipe so I purchased mild cherry peppers. I added many more than 4 to the dish. I think next time I would add even more so there would be more flavor. The chicken was moist which rarely happens when I cook chicken so I was pleased about that. We ate this with brown rice. I forgot to fix a veggie to along with our dinner. Oops!

7 months old

Max is 7 months old today. He is still growing and is probably between 75 and 80 pounds. He doesn't look nearly as big as what I thought a 75 to 80 pound dog would look like. We're not sure if he'll get much bigger or not. I guess we'll find out soon enough. He's not really doing anything new. He has been crate trained. He's gotten so big that he can't comfortably stand up in his crate. So M decided last week while I was in Utah to put him in the laundry room during the day. He's been in there several days rather than in his crate, and I think he enjoys the extra room. M would like to leave him in a bigger room, but right now he still chews everything so I'm afraid he would ruin things during the day. I know at some point he'll get over that, but he's very much still a puppy.

We took him for his afternoon walk after work today. It didn't take very long for him to get worn out chasing his Flying Squirrel. That thing is a great toy! I think he must still be recouperating from playing with the 6 dogs yesterday.

Happy 7th month Max!

He is risen!

And I am eternally grateful that He is risen indeed!

We had a lovely Easter weekend. Saturday we stayed home and relaxed. I got some things done around the house, but I also read an entire book. While we were eating breakfast, we noticed it was snowing a bit. At first, it was nice…it was fluffy, snowing very lightly, and not sticking to anything. It reminded me of cotton floating around from cottonwood trees back in Texas. By the end of the day though, we had snow covering the ground though. I was disappointed that we were going to have a white Easter. Even though it was a white Easter, we had a wonderful time of worship and studying the Word at church. Our pastor moved here from Florida about 7 months ago. He said he shouldn’t have been surprised by the white Easter…he’s experienced his first white Halloween, white Thanksgiving, white Christmas, white New Year’s, white Valentine’s Day, white St. Patrick’s Day, and white Palm Sunday. Wow! Even though we haven’t had a bunch of snow this winter, I guess we’ve had snow a bunch of days. By the time church was out, all the snow had melted and the sun was coming out. We went home to change and then left for M’s aunt and uncle’s house which is a little over an hour away. When we left home, it was 34 degrees outside. By the time we got to their house, it was 50 degrees. We spent the afternoon and evening with M’s aunt L and uncle J, cousin M and her daughter M…as well as 7 dogs. The dogs outnumbered the people. Max had a terrific time running around with all the dogs. He was exhausted when we got in the car to come back home. I think he slept the whole way, slept all night, and wasn’t ready to get up this morning. It’s nice that he was able to play and get so much exercise.

Utah before the sickness

Until I got sick, the Utah trip had been kind of fun (enjoyable, but I still would have rather been home). I went with a girl from work who was the first accountant actually hired for this region. In the beginning it was just the 2 of us on the team. Now only 3 years later, our team has around 13 people on it. Because I work at a satellite location, I don’t spend much time with the team so it is nice to be around and work with other people at times. We didn’t get nearly enough sleep while on the trip (which may have contributed to my getting sick). Sunday afternoon we flew into Salt Lake City and, after checking into our hotel (which was not creepy like the last one), drove immediately to the store in Park City. This is a ski town and you can see the ski jump from the 2002 Olympics when you drive into town. It's a very pretty location. We helped out at that store, ate dinner, and I didn’t get to bed until around midnight. Once we pulled into the hotel parking lot, my teammate noticed that she didn’t need to turn the car lights off. We’re not sure, but we think we may have driven from Park City back to our hotel in Salt Lake City (probably close to 25 miles) without the lights on…around 11:30! This is entirely possible because we were both so tired. I was so delirious that I just started laughing with tears running down my cheeks. Even the next day while recounting this to M, I still was laughing so hard I was crying. After working at 2 stores each, we met up for dinner Monday night and then went back to the hotel to work. I had another late night.

Then Tuesday, the sickness began. A couple of weeks ago when I was in Utah before, two other folks from my team were there as well. One girl had 6 laptops and a projector with her to aid in training the folks at the stores there. While she was there, all 6 laptops and the projector were stolen. The guy who was there stayed an extra day to go snow boarding. He ended up breaking his wrist. Here’s to good ole’ Utah.

So sick

I had to go to Utah again for work Sunday through Tuesday. This is not usually a big deal, but this was during my close week. I have a week 1 (which is my close week – generally busy), week 2, week 3, and week 4. Then we start all over again. This schedule gives us 13 periods to close rather than 12 months. It stinks! Almost every holiday falls during week 1. Anyway, I was going to be gone to Utah to help two stores with their first close. On top of that, once I got home I needed to close the 5 stores I normally close as well as 2 more that I picked up this period. Add to that the 2 stores in Utah I was helping, and I had a total of 7 stores to close and 2 to help with the beginning of their close. It was all overwhelming, but I was taking it in stride…until Tuesday morning. Around 9 am, I decided that I must have the flu. I’m not positive that’s what it was, but it sure felt like it (in addition to getting sick, I was also cold, shaky, sweaty, achy, just all around yucky). There’s nothing like being sick away from home. I was miserable. I got sick (and I think you know what I mean when I say “I got sick”) 4 times in Utah – 2 times at one store I was working at, once at the gas station on my way to the airport, and once at the airport. I was almost crying each time because I felt so bad and didn't know if I should just get a hotel room for one more night or go home. Three times I made it to the bathroom – which wasn’t fun because it was a public bathroom where little girls were asking their mothers what was going on in the other stall – and can’t those public bathrooms be gross anyway? Unfortunately, at the airport where I was catching an earlier flight home, I didn’t make it to a bathroom so I got sick in the trash can next to the jet way. If I hadn’t been feeling so miserable, I would have been embarrassed. I was terrified that I would get sick on the airplane so I prayed the entire flight that I would not. I was so thankful that I didn’t have to go into that tiny bathroom to get sick while in the air. I am sure the other passengers were thankful as well…at least they would be if they saw me before boarding the plane (which I am convinced many did). I am also thankful for the passenger who switched seats with me so I could be on the aisle seat of the last row right next to the bathroom. He got seat 5E in return…sorry for the middle seat pal. Once home, I had to drive an hour and a half home from the airport. I got home around 7:45 pm Tuesday and slept until 11 am Wednesday. I got up for bits of time Wednesday but pretty much slept all day. So that left Thursday and Friday to close my 7 stores. Yippie. Let me just say that I did not give 110% this time around…unless you give me some kind of credit for going out of town and being sick. I am SO glad it is Friday and I can continue to rest this weekend as well as get away from work.