Gavin & Kindli’s News, events, updates & opinions on the weather
This evening I made bolognese sauce for our spaghetti, the recipe called for dry white wine (which we didn’t have, and I wasn’t going to go out and buy), so I substituted ginger ale. It turned out remarkably well and we have just enough for of it left for lunch (or dinner) tomorrow.
I just wanted to share. *Does little happy dance.*
How is married life? The question echoes across the phone, is typed across IM, and is frequently used in e-mail.
Married life is not bad, it is not good, it is different. There are positives and negatives, I will list a few:
+ Someone to try out new recipes on
- Someone to agree with you the new recipe didn’t turn out
+ Someone to snuggle with
- Someone who is WARM, takes the sheets, and throws pillows out of bed
+ Someone to share new adventures with
- Someone to share ONLY ONE bathroom with (then again, that is an adventure on its own…)
+ Someone to help take the trash out
- Someone else who helps create lots of trash
I am enjoying married life so far. The positives far outweigh the negatives.
Married life is also full of BOXES.
Moving boxes (mine), Crate & Barrel boxes (ours), gift boxes from Crate & Barrel (ours), Ikea boxes (ours), Amazon.com boxes (his/mine, depending on the contents), Staples boxes (ours). I am getting to know the UPS man rather well (sometimes its the FedEx guy, it depends), he usually shows up around 11 in the morning and usually has at least two boxes for me.
The first time I opened the door he was rather surprised to see me. Gavin usually isn’t ever home when the UPS man comes, so our neighbor in Apt. 1 was collecting boxes for us. Now that I’m home, I make the third-floor dash down two flights of stairs when I hear the doorbell.
Consequently the corner of the kitchen by the back door between the fridge and cabinets is FULL of boxes. The problem is all our trash must be put in neat little white trash bags in the shed behind the apartment. Once a week the trash truck comes and we’re allowed to put it on the curb… once a week is not enough to rid us of the rapid box accumulation… just when we think we’re done and the corner is empty, the door bell rings and it is the UPS man.
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting packages, almost everyday around here has been like Christmas… “What’s in the box!!!….OOH! a shiny new [insert item here] for the kitchen… I can’t wait to use it!!!” Then it sits on the kitchen table for Gavin to get home and go “What’s in the box!!!….OOH! a shiny new [insert item here] for the kitchen… I can’t wait to use it!!!” (Today it was the mandolin, a set of plates, and some very colorful place mats/napkins). It is rather exciting, the massive amounts of packaging, are not quite as thrilling, although C&B does put pretty colored tissue paper in theirs.
The other day we went to Market Basket. Market Basket is the only grocery store I can think of where shopping for groceries is a contact sport.
This incident happened by the yogurt: a woman in an electric wheelchair felt the need to stop all traffic and yell loudly at a worker to get her the kind of yogurt she needed. She stopped in the middle of the aisle, in the middle of an intersection. All cart traffic came to a stand still for about ten minutes while the woman then proceeded to have a conversation with the worker.
I agree, the world needs more friendly people, but there was plenty of space for her to park her chair and not block the flow of carts. I also wasn’t thrilled when the little tiny woman behind me, literally little, she was barely visible over the cart, felt the need to use her cart as a battering ram, and complain loudly in some foreign language (at least it sounded like complaining, I couldn’t understand a word she uttered).
Once there was even the slightest hint of an opening everyone tried to ram their carts through at once, which created another problem because no one was going to give an inch of the precious progress they had made down the diary aisle. The cart-jam was really quite something to behold and caused more mutterings.
Market Basket is also continually restocking their shelves, that’s a good thing, but it also means that there are huge pallets with boxes in the already rather narrow aisles waiting to be shelved, or in the process of being shelved. This creates more special cart traffic issues, and it is particularly fun when the item you want is hidden by the pallet.
When I told Gavin about this, he simply grinned and said “Wait until you shop there before a snow storm.” I can hardly wait.
Several mornings a week a group I have started to refer to as the Rope Children are paraded past our apartment. It is a group of about two-dozen four year olds that converse loudly with one another as they hold onto their rope.
The rope is held by two Responsible Adults with one at each end (there are usually at least four Responsible Adults accompanying the group). The rope branches out so there is some rope for each child to hold onto as they walk along.
This morning they were singing/chanting.
The leader:
Everywhere we go
The children echoing:
Everywhere we go
People wanna know People wanna know
What do we tell them What do we tell them
We are the preschoolers We are the preschoolers
Then there are loud shouts of:
We’re going to be quiet when we cross the street.
That is a very nice thought.
I think they’re going to go to the park down the street. It is a nice looking park, if I was four I’d want to go play there too… actually, I’d like to go play there anyway, they have swings.
One of the nice things about marrying Gavin is that he enjoys reading as much as I do (or rather, as much as I did until I went to college and reading was no longer for fun, I’m recovering). The nice thing that goes hand-in-hand with marrying a fellow reader is that one’s library expands.
Some of the books are clearly “Gavin” books (all of Isaac Asimov), while others are clearly “Kindli” books (The New Wife). Then there is the gray area in between. You’d think The Demolished Man (winner of the FIRST Hugo Award) would be Gavin’s, it is on the shelf next to Asimov. You’d be wrong, it is Kindli’s. Then, in the middle of Kindli’s German History books, is one book of Gavin’s What we Knew.
My favorites are the ones where both of us have copies, Gavin thought some of them were his, until I pointed out if they were, we’d have duplicates. We only have one boxes set of the Chronicles of Narnia, one set of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass, etc.), and one copy of T.H. White’s Once & Future King. The same goes for most of Thomas L. Friedman’s works.
In my spare time, when I’m not cooking/assembling meals, doing laundry, cleaning or job hunting, I’ve been taking advantage of the newly expanded library in our living room, as has Gavin, he’s in the middle of Lamb by Christopher Moore.
The first few books I read were sci-if/fantasy books by Garth Nix. They were about Special People who had Special Powers and could do Special Things. I guess Ordinary People don’t have books written about them, you have to go out and Accomplish Something Grand (or write a memoir. Me? I’m keeping a blog).
After that, I skimmed through the Fiction section of our bookcase and found Microserfs a book claiming to be about ordinary people (geeks who need lives). The premise of the book is that several geeks have decided to leave Microsoft and start their own company… Not extraordinary, not insanely ordinary. It written in a rather random diary style by the main character, Dan. Parts of it I just don’t get. It must be a geek thing.
Speaking of geeks, Gavin is wearing his /(bb|[^b]{2})/ (to be, or not to be) shirt again.
To celebrate our two weeks of wedded bliss we went to Sears and bought a DeWalt 14 volt cordless power drill (or something along those lines). It was very romantic. We also looked at washing machines, but are holding out until we find the perfect one for our miniscule space (eventually, we’d really like one of those washer/dryer-in-one units, this apartment is *tiny*).
We also looked at stationary exercise bicycles.
The salesman at Sears told Gavin: “You should keep her” (meaning me because I was excited about buying a power tool, who could blame me?)
This afternoon we re-shelved some of the books, we’ve ended up with an entire bookcase of nonfiction (German history has its own shelf, as does Economics), and we’ve come to the realization that sci-fi/fantasy is well on it’s way to it’s own shelf as well… Agatha Christie is dominating a two and almost a half shelves, and the Harry Potter books were also relocated…
According to Gavin, the Asimov section will expand, as will a few others… he likes to say that with a HUGE grin and his *DOOM* voice. As in *BOOKSHELVES OF DOOM.* Right.
Tonight, in celebration, Gavin is going to play WoW (again), and I will probably go to bed early (around 9:30 –again). Tomorrow we have every good intention of going to Church… but the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, so we shall see.
… and taste VERY yummy.
Yesterday I began the process of making some most excellent Cinnamon Sticky Buns, I was more than a little nervous. While most of my lunches/dinners have turned out OK, I was still remembering the incident with the pineapple upside-down cake.
I was mostly concerned about using yeast. I’ve never really used yeast before in cooking/baking… that was one of those mysterious things that my mom occasionally used, and even then I was never around to pay attention.
I followed the recipe closely, put the dough in a buttered bowl and set it in a pool of sunlight in the living room (on top of the little footstools from the Attic/Mom), after awhile, I went and checked on it, it had risen, it was nearly double its size.
That was very exciting, very very exciting, I think I did a little dance around the kitchen, I was that excited.
My excitement was rather short lived, after I cut the roll into slices, I looked back at the pictures… my rolls looked puny, couldn’t be placed that close together (if they were they’d only fill about 3/4 of the pan)… I felt like crying.
Instead, I slid the pan into the fridge and left it there until this morning. I did tell Gavin about them, so he wouldn’t be too shocked to see them in the fridge, but I didn’t tell him of my culinary shortcoming.
This morning, Gavin slipped them into the oven (and forgot to set a timer for 30 minutes). The rolls came out a little doughy, rather gooey, incredibly sticky, and VERY yummy… and some of them looked better than the ones in the pictures.
The website has been updated, pictures have been posted, fun links have been added to the blog, and there was much rejoicing.
Yay.
In other news, I have nearly finished cataloging the 450+ books that inhabit the apartment with us. We have filled several bookcases… the books are in LC order, although that is going to change… Gavin took one look at how “fiction” was organized, made a few very valid points, and we’ve decided that some weekend they’re going to be rearranged into “nonfiction” and “fiction” shelves.
I’m certain by now that nearly ALL of the books are in out online library at LibraryThing (and Gavin has no idea of where to find any of them on the shelves *grins*).
We are still expecting a few more items of furniture from Ikea, the computer desk for the living room, and the L-shaped desk for projects in the office. We have two unassembled bookcases, two sets of doors, and three spare shelves from Ikea as well. We’re keeping them, because when our book collection expands, we will be needing them.
Things are going along quite well, I’ve almost gotten used to cooking with a gas stove, yes, I keep a safe distance from the flame, and YES, I always make sure I turn it off. So far my cooking has been all right, I guess. It’s taken some getting used to, we have a lot of cabinet space, floor space, and not all that much counter space, it’s not the best laid out kitchen.
That is going to be all for now, I’ve been waking up at 5:15 am (blasted day light), so by 9:30 pm I’m fairly ready for bed… where did my day go?
Some quick links to pictures that have yet to be linked from our website.
Thursday night Pizza
Rehersal @ Villa Capri
Rehersal Dinner
Wedding Pictures
My cooking skills have been redeemed, this evening I prepared a scrumptious meal of swedish meatballs and spaetzle in a light cream sauce, and a very well tossed salad. For some color (and a slight sweet tang) some of the cute little red berries from the IKEA jar were added.
Everything turned out perfectly, and finished cooking with in a reasonable amount of time so everything arrived in the office(where Gavin is playing WoW) stayed warm.
The meatballs were cooked in the toaster oven, as the real oven has not yet recovered from the earlier incident, I also saw no point in using the big oven for 16 little meatballs and they turned out perfectly.
Dessert was “Dessert Waffles a la mode” using some of the frozen waffles left over from breakfast. It took about seven minutes, five of which were in the toaster oven. They were greated by cries of “Oh! That looks excellent,” and “this tastes delicious.” I guess I did something right.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Minister’s Wife, Jan, for getting us the toaster oven that has helped to redeem my cooking.
