Holy absence from the blog, Batman!

I know, I have been absent from the blog. See, I started this new job, then Brian was looking for a new job (didn't know that? oh yes, he was!) and then Brian went on many interviews, and then I got addicted to Animal Crossing, and then Brian stressed out about taking a new job, and then Brian accepted a new job, and then we have been getting our house ready to sell. Because we are moving! To Florida! Where Brian will be an actual tenure-track assistant professor and not a "we really just use you until there's nothing left" research-track assistant professor. And he'll be at Florida State, where they actually care about nurturing their young scientists, and not at Duke where they eat them alive. And that means that I have to leave my fabulous new job and find something else.

So anyway, thats what we're doing!

We aren't moving until August. Thank god too, since its going to take us until three Augusts from now to sell our house. And also, really excited about keeping the house showing-ready with four cats, a dog and a two year old.

More recent pics

A few more recent pics from the Museum of Life and Science


(this following one is from our house... ick)

Yearbook yourself!

At this website, Yearbook Yourself, you can upload a picture of yourself and then it will put your face on pictures of people from high school yearbooks ranging from the 1950s to 2000. Here are a few of my faves.

Here I am in 1956...


1960...


1962... (it took me ages to get my hair to do that!)


1966...


1968...


1982


1986...


and 1992...


Obvs. I could not stop at myself, and I had to do Owen. You can see some of his stylin pics on his blog.

pictures from this weekend

Owen and I had a busy weekend while Daddy worked on grant applications and job applications. More pics on his blog, but here are some of the pretty things we saw at the Museum of Life and Science or at Duke Gardens.

Look who is in our wren house!

Yesterday (as we were getting ready for the Wiggles concert - see Owen's blog for deets) Brian called me outside to look at something. There was a little nose and hand sticking out of the hole in our wren house.





This flipped us out a little bit, because it looked sort of like a squirrel (although not really right - like, its eyes were too big for its head and too close to its nose) but we could not figure out how a squirrel could get out of that tiny hole. Later in the evening, after the concert, we went out to check to see if it was still there. I sort of shook the wren house (which is on a very tall pole), and the little squirrel came out.

It was VERY small. Had a thin, yet slightly bushy tail. It was on par with a chipmunk in size (at least it seemed like it was) but didn't have any lines on its back, and was really agouti (yes I am a mouse nerd) and not that sort of reddish color that chipmunks are.

Today I was trying to figure out what it was, and I think its a Southern Flying Squirrel. Cool!! Now we just need to catch it flying.

Fin.

The Biggest Loser competition at work has finally ended, and I am celebrating with a piece of leftover (fabulous, and thank you Kara!) pie.

Oh, you didn't know I was a biggest loser AGAIN? Of course. Last time I was losing the pregnancy weight (easy). This time I was losing the pre-pregnancy fatness.

Things really went downhill when I was finishing up my Ph.D. I think that plus Ed's death (these two events were not that far from each other) really conspired against me, turning me into a total lard-ass. Also, even though I was not yet pregnant or even trying to be, we knew this was in the cards in the nearish future so I always thought, why bother? Why lose weight that I'm only going to put back on? I'll just wait and do it all at once.

Oh well.

So at the end of last years TBL competition (our team won due largely to the heroic efforts of two of the men on the team) I finished off the last of the baby poundage. Then I set about getting rid of the rest. It was hard while I was still nursing, but once that was all done and my body belonged to me again, I went back to work.

It hasn't gone quickly, for sure, but so far I'm 26 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. Woo! I lost 8 pounds during this years TBL competition, which I am happy with. I was much stricter with myself these last 8 weeks because my team was depending on me (and also our team captain is a slave driver...no, i'm kidding. mostly).

Of course my journey of deprivation... I mean lifestyle changes, and exercise does not end here - my goal is to lose 11 more pounds. %$#&.

CSA week....9?

We are getting less leafy green food in our box and more of the kind of vegetables I actually use normally. This week we got a bag of red potatoes, a bag of green beans


(all of the potatoes and some of the beans are here)
some red cabbage (the savoy cabbage I bought at the Farmer's Market this weekend)



also carrots, scallions, more beets and two tomatoes. Okay, yes we did still get some leafyness in the form of braising greens (will be stirfried, most likely) and more chard. Brian is particularly excited about the chard and refuses to eat it.

Another funny new comic in the paper

Our paper continues the comics trials. One that we have now I find particularly funny, 'Scary Gary'. It only recently started in our paper, but it appears to be about a vampire and a monster who now live in the suburbs, among normal people. You can read it here.

We also have another one that seems like it might be decent, Pooch Cafe.

Pictures

Taken in our backyard and at Marbles Kids Museum.

CSA week OMG PLEASE STOP THE SPINACH!!

I still have two weeks of spinach in my fridge, and yet we are getting MORE SPINACH this week! And more swiss chard! Yow. Don't get me wrong, I like it, but I'm feeling like I'm drowning in greens. I have finally admitted defeat with two things (aka thrown them out) (and I wish I could say 'composted them' but I cannot):
a bunch of collards
a head of lettuce

We were planning a dinner with a friend who is also in a CSA. His wife is out of town this week, so he was telling me that he was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the greenery at his house and not knowing what to do with it. Here is an email exchange between us:

me: want to meet up for dinner tonight or tomorrow? i just can't do it on thursday.
Brian: Or D you're welcome to come over to ours and eat lots of leaf. We have lots of leaf, many shades of green leaf, some with yellow veins running through them.
D: ...as far as leaf goes, thanks, but we are fighting our own losing battle. i can't be responsible for eating yours, too.

This week I made swiss chard rolls that I just sort of made up. Mixed a container of ricotta cheese with some pesto and a beaten egg, spread it on some chard leaves, rolled them up like enchiladas and put them in a baking pan. I also made some tomato sauce and put that over the top. It was good, but I think it would have helped to have at least blanched the chard before hand, to make it easier to work with and maybe not release quite so much water (made it a sort of soupy mess).

I also found that chard makes my teeth do the same funny thing that spinach does. They feel like they are dissolving.

I ate a lot of the broccoli in salads and I'm actually mostly caught up with the lettuce, finally. I saved the snow peas, a head of baby bok choi and some broccoli to stirfry, probably tonight. I also sort of made this, which was ADDICTIVE. I used 2x the soba, left out the mixed greens, used extra bok choi, went REALLY EASY on the oil (i think I only used maybe a tablespoon), didn't have any peanuts. It was fantastic. I am totally making it again. We are getting more bok choi this week.

We also had baby turnips cooked the way my boss likes them, in butter. They were tasty.