Measi's Musings

Archive for March, 2008

Blessed Ostara, Purim, and Easter to those who celebrated this weekend.

My weekend was celebrating food in all of its forms – St. Patrick’s Day, Belated was the closest we came to celebrating any real holiday. And we did well, I think.

I was released from work at 3 p.m. on Friday, and since the schedules are screwy for the mid-afternoon MBTA trains, I bought an Amtrak ticket, then caught the RIPTA bus home… where I found scuba_mo hanging out in his car in front of our house because he didn’t have a key (I may have to solve that little issue shortly…)

Erich got home at his normal time. whishastar arrived a couple hours later, and we had a relaxing night of watching Torchwood, goofing off, and hanging out.

Saturday will forever be known as The Day Mel Cooked A Lot – I started with fresh scones to start the morning, served with clotted cream (woots! I found it!) and a choice of either blueberry or black cherry jam. The entire batch of scones disappeared quickly – and everyone liked the clotted cream… it will become a common thing in our household, I think! While we ate and had the morning coffee rounds, we caught whishastar up on some episodes of X-Files.

Around noon, we headed out to do a little shopping – first to Newbury Comics (where almost all of the Who action figures are on sale, I might add). I bought my regeneration set, so I now have Doc Nine and Doc Ten in the black leather. (Erich promptly started putting them in gay sex poses on the table when the package was opened at home, the brat!)

Bought issue #2 of the Who comic. Then went to pick up the final couple things I needed for dinner at the next door supermarket. We ate lunch, and then went over to Best Buy, where I bought a very spiffy and probably way too expensive backpack (after tax, $100) for commuting – my current one is starting to rip apart a bit, has a hole starting in the base, and most importantly… is sadly smelling a bit of cat pee despite having put it through the wash. So, yeah – time to replace it. *sigh* The new one is quite spiffy, has pocketses for everything, and should serve me well for at least four years like my last one did.

We then went home, and I started the big corned beef, cabbage, and veggies dinner for St. Patrick’s Day that I just couldn’t have cooked on Monday due to work. Around 6 p.m., Tone and Robin arrived, and he promptly started making the jokes that despite centuries of the Irish boiling food, it took the Polish girl to make corned beef that he liked – and continued to rave about it for the rest of the evening.

It did come out very well, I have to say – took about four hours, all told… not too bad. I’ve made notes on my recipe to make sure to get the brisket next year – we had one piece of brisket and one piece of whatever the other available cut was… and the brisket was far more tender with less fat on it. I liked the multi-colored potato mix (white, red, and blue… how patriotic). Cabbage was eh… I’ll probably cut down on that next time because most people don’t eat much of it, and it really didn’t cook quickly. I adapted the mustard sauce my mom often put over carrots when we were younger – it worked great as a side sauce for whatever people wanted to use it for.

We had leftovers, but honestly nowhere near what I thought we would. Six people went through about five out of the six and change pounds of corned beef. We do have enough for another dinner, though, I think.

And I also managed to cook Monday night’s dinner while I was at it – my grandma’s kielbasa and kraut recipe. It’s definitely one of those “gets better second day” recipes… so it should be fantastic tomorrow.

It’s cabbage week at the household de Mel – and not intentionally.

Maybe we’ll have corned beef rubens later this week.

Tone also brought an external drive… because after months of pushing him to watch Doctor Who, he finally came around via watching Torchwood (which he didn’t know upon first viewing was Who-related… hee!). He’s now NetFlixed the first two seasons of Who, but got the third from me… and I told him to get his butt down to our house for S4 on April 5th. It very well may happen.

scuba_mo hung out for most of today. We watched a couple episodes of Blake’s 7, I did a ton (translation… about 150 stitches) on Fantasy Tryptich, filling in a couple of the horse legs.

And now the house is quiet, and I’m off to celebrate the official 6 month mark since getting married with my husband.

Back to reality tomorrow…

vylit_rain, working on the response to your question on the meme, but it’s a difficult subject for me to get into words… so it may take a while…

With more and more news coming out this week and scheduled TV appearances, I think it’s safe to start planning dates here. Please note that if the series starts on April 12th (confirm probably coming this weekend), these dates will be pushed back one week.

So…

Where: Mel’s house, Providence
When: Saturday afternoons, April 5th- July 5th (a couple afternoons to be skipped in there). New episodes will be “aired” as soon as the torrent comes through (4 or 5ish).
What: Bring your crafty stuff, bring food/drinky things, and enjoy some time with a lot of women who need time to bitch, stitch, and enjoy Doctor Who

Notes:

1) I can pick anyone up from the MBTA train station in Providence, but as last year, let me know a day ahead of time that you’re coming so I can coordinate things with Erich. MBTA schedule is here. The traditional train for last year’s SB&W was the one that gets in around noonish to Providence. Please don’t plan on a train earlier than that noon train – I’ll need mornings to tidy the house.

2) People crashing over on either Fridays or Saturdays are cool, providing you give me advance notice. I have one bed, one futon, and one couch. I also have plenty of room for airbeds if you have one.

3) New folks are welcome – just be warned that the normal crew knows each other well offline, so please don’t be intimidated if you see a group of folks who really seem to get on well. Sorority sisterhood does that. Band geekery makes it worse.

4) Days are subject to be cancelled due to RL events. Known cancellations are for Eurovision in May, since Who will not air, and a LAN event in June (dates TBD).

5) We have a grill, and aren’t afraid to use it – so if you’re dying for grill food, that’s cool. Want to bake cookies? That’s cool, too. Mi kitchen es su kitchen.

6) I have enough seating in my living room for seven people. If you have folding chairs or floor pillows that you prefer to use… bring ‘em along.

7) It’s spring, ergo it’s shedding season in our house. I will keep up with it as best I can with vaccuuming – BUT… bring your meds if you need them.

Trips to JoAnns, Michaels, or AC Moore can be happily arranged day-of. Trips to Hoops and Needles or knitting stores need a bit more planning.

Well, one candidate gets it.