At first the meeting convened and everything seemed to be going as planned:
But pretty soon the attendees got rowdy…
…and eventually the weapons came out:
It’s Texas, what did you expect?
How was your holiday weekend?
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When Mark and I were in Honolulu last June with friends, we had one especially spectacular dinner at BLT Steak. It was one of those occasions where you order way more appetizers and sides than you know you’ll need, just because it all sounds so good. Imagine our surprise when the waiter brought out the bread course, which consisted of popovers the size of footballs! Well, maybe Nerf footballs. But trust me, they were huge. BLT brings the popovers out with a little card that tells you exactly how to make them, and enough people have fallen in love with those popovers that you can easily find the recipe online. I do have a popover pan, but you can make them in a muffin tin if necessary. They won’t be quite as enormous, but that means you can eat more, right?
The pan was a gift last Christmas, but I put off making them because I was sort of nervous about it. I have read that you have to follow the recipe just so, and I was afraid to do something wrong and end up with unpoppedovers. Finally, my craving for popovers was too great to deny, and I decided I was going for it. I halved the recipe, which turned out to be a good call because apparently my pan is not quite as enormous as BLT’s.
If you have never had a popover, they are airy, eggy, and super-moist. BLT adds gruyere to theirs, which is delicious, but they are just as good plain. We used parmesan on some of them, but it doesn’t melt like gruyere, so it flakes off and is a little messier. I couldn’t fit all of the batter in my pan at once, so I stored the remainder in the refrigerator overnight and let it come to room temperature the next day while dinner was reheating. I don’t think you’d want to try using it cold, since part of the instructions are to heat the pan before you add the batter, but at least I’ve proven to myself that popovers aren’t nearly the fuss they appear to be! We don’t eat a lot of bread these days, but I think we may be eating a lot more of these…
Happy Memorial Day weekend! I will be poolside, so posting will resume on Tuesday. Be safe, have fun, and eat something delicious! One of the perks of my job is that my company has a suite at Minute Maid Park, and one of my colleagues entertains customers there a few times every summer. He almost always has some spare tickets to spread around, and last night Mark and I were two beneficiaries of free tickets and prime parking.
The suite is always packed full of delicious food. Minute Maid has some pretty amazing ballpark food, and our admin ordered beef empanadas, chicken and steak fajitas, jalapeño poppers, spinach artichoke dip, mini cupcakes, and of course all the important baseball snacks — peanuts, cracker jacks, popcorn. Around the 7th inning they bring the dessert bar by all of the suites. Most people go for the custom sundae in the souvenir batting helmet, but this time I saw an enormous chocolate mousse cake and had to sample it.
Since it was a 7:00 game on a Monday evening, a lot of people started filing out of the stadium in the 8th inning, when the Astros were down 3-1. Their record is pretty poor this season. Possibly even worse than most seasons, but I don’t really follow baseball so I’m not sure. Anyway, the pinch hitters blew a few and then the team miraculously came back in the bottom of the 9th. The game-winning hit splintered the bat. It was easily the most thrilling baseball game I’ve been to, and it was fun to see the stadium erupt in glee (and fireworks!). The man who drives the orange train (see if you can spot it) got to do his thing, too, so everyone but the Dodgers went home happy.
Been to any of your home team’s games this season? Though I am not a Buddhist, I like the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. It’s difficult for me, as for many Americans, not to become entrapped by things. My nature is that of a magpie, or put less nicely, a packrat. I like things, darnit! I mean, obviously. It wouldn’t be so bad if I were better at getting rid of the old things, but I’m not. Mark is very good at aesthetic asceticism. He owns maybe three pairs of shorts, two pairs of long casual pants, and two pairs of dress pants (granted, he does get to wear pajamas to work, but I still don’t think the count would be much different otherwise). The man once moved cross-country with all of his worldly possessions in the bed of an F-150! But when he suggested that I transfer all of my cds to a leather binder like the one in which he keeps his, I thought, “And throw away half of the album art? What about the ones that came in cardboard cases?” Eventually, however, I realized they would all be far more useful there than jumbled in a big tub as they’d been since we moved, and decided this would be a good time to practice non-attachment. He said, “The binder holds 100 cds. Do you think you have more than 100?” ”No, definitely not!” I said several times, despite the fact that I hadn’t actually seen them in three years. One hundred is so many! So I stacked them up and got to work:
Oops, that kind of looks like more than 100. Fortunately there were a lot of mix cds that I’d burned myself, which I no longer need now that I can connect my ipod to my car stereo. If I had wanted to keep those, I’d have really been in trouble. This was the pile of empty cases and discarded cds when I was done:
Et, voila! All my cds, many of which I forgot I owned, finally accessible where I can enjoy them again (and the ones that didn’t fit in the case, stowed away under the bookshelves):
Oh, and I don’t suppose this case would have done me much good anymore, anyway:
Okay, I haven’t done a shopping post in a while, but that doesn’t mean things don’t still follow me home sometimes. From the internet. Remember my Whiting & Davis bag? I love that bag, and carry it often. I always check out sample sales of Whiting & Davis bags, but I haven’t bought another until now:
It’s pretty plain, but that’s the point. I kept finding myself needing a gold purse for various dress-up events and never having one, so a couple years ago I bought a cheap little gold pleather clutch to fill in until I found just the right gold bag. Well, it turns out the right gold bag is bronze! Lately I am really loving metals like bronze and rose gold, and mixing them with other metals. The length of the strap is perfect for me as well — I don’t like long straps, but a clutch can be very inconvenient in a mingling situation. And heaven knows I find myself in ever so many mingling situations. Quiet, it happens. :) Tonight I was scheduled to be an evaluator at my Toastmasters club, and I decided to use an evaluation technique that I learned at the district conference. I guess it worked pretty well:
The evaluation portion of the evening works like this: each scheduled speaker is assigned an evaluator, who takes notes during the speech and then has a little time to assemble their observations into a 2-3 minute presentation. I think evaluating is, in many ways, harder than being a speaker. You can’t prepare ahead of time and you really want to provide meaningful feedback because you know how much time the speakers have put into their presentations. For me, I’m usually anxious enough that I forget to read something in my notes as I’m presenting. When I sit down afterward, I always think, “Wow, I hope that was coherent.” Tonight I felt pretty good with the new technique, and I think I covered everything in my notes. I will definitely use it again in the future! Have you taken any risks lately that paid off? I spent Friday afternoon and all of Saturday at my Toastmasters district’s spring conference, and it was awesome!
I got to hear the district’s top evaluators, top speakers, and attend a bunch of educational sessions on topics like leadership and effective presentation. The hardest thing was choosing which sessions I wouldn’t get to go to. In writing that, I realize how dull it sounds, but being at a Toastmasters event is like hanging out with a couple hundred good friends. Everyone is extremely friendly and enthusiastic. I did attend one session the first day that was kind of a dud, but I still managed to get good information out of it, and everything that followed was fantastic. I can’t wait for the fall conference, which will feature the humorous speech contest and the table topics contest. Mark might even attend with me just to see those! The speech contest was absolutely phenomenal. I couldn’t stick around to find out who won and will advance to the contest in Las Vegas this summer, but I do know the judges had a tough choice to make. One thing I found exciting was that of the district’s six top speakers this year, one was male and none was Caucasian. The conference was probably a pretty even mix of men and women, but I would say the average attendee was a Caucasian person in their late 40s. Toastmasters is an amazing way to hear a lot of different people’s stories. I came home from the conference all fired up with ideas for improving my club. All clubs are supposed to be having elections this month for new officers, and though I haven’t yet heard a word from our club leadership about it, I am planning to throw my hat in the ring so I can try to implement some of these ideas! This incoming weekend is brought to you by a Maine kitty with two different-colored eyes:
…and a Maine lobster doing a headstand:
Don’t worry, he got a beer for his efforts: Oops, or maybe not…
Spoiler alert: they all got eaten. I never shared what we brought home from Playa del Carmen! We have kind of a Dia de los Muertos thing happening in our bookshelves. We both love Mexican folk art, and my birthday falls on the first of the two days of celebration. Shopping for folk art in Mexico as a Texas resident feels a little strange, since we can easily find much of this stuff practically in our own backyard, but Mark and I did come across a couple things that called out to us. And with these latest additions, I think we are reaching official theme status!
And the rear view:
The wooden one came from a random store along the stretch of shops where they kept trying to sell Mark marijuana. We spied a cart full of the ceramic ones on one of the first nights and I enquired, in Spanish, as to the price. I understood about 10% of the response, just enough to determine that we would buy one another night when we weren’t headed to a bar. Mark and I quietly discussed getting it home safely on the plane, and I don’t know whether the woman had understood us, but she picked one up by the eye sockets and began banging it on another to show us how strong they are. Okay then! We told her we’d be back otra noche, which she seemed to take as a haggling tactic, so Mark told her we had to beber. She smiled and we parted ways. We went back on our last night and picked one out. Choosing a color was the hard part! I have a feeling we might bring home another if we go back… Where would we be without good mothers? Personally, I would be not eating my vegetables, burning the house down with candles, and not watching out for the crazies on the road.
I also wouldn’t have someone to enumerate my best characteristics to me when I need to hear it most (and even when I don’t). I wouldn’t have a safe place I can always run to if I need to hide from the world. I wouldn’t know that no matter where I go and no matter what I do, I am thought of and loved. Thanks, all you moms out there — especially mine! |
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