swine flu

All the hubbub around this has died down, but David and I learned last weekend that one of our direct neighbors had swine flu recently. At first I was shocked, but the swine flu hasn't been that much worse than the regular flu and I haven't been sick, so I just sort of forgot about it. But I figured it makes an interesting story...I mean how many people can say they know someone who had swine flu?

On another note, I planted my vegetable garden. I re-arranged the rows this year, and gave certain veggies more prime spots than others. We'll see how it works out, but i'm hopeful that the crop will be good.

I planted: 3 kinds of tomatoes (1 big, 2 cherry types), zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, buttercrunch lettuce, romaine, spinach, red pepper, yellow pepper, broccoli, basil and cilantro. I plan to plant some pole beans, but I haven't figured out what they will climb on yet, so I haven't planted them. I think that is it....Can anyone tell me how to harvest my lettuces and will they grow back after I harvest or do I just get one head out of each plant?

so much to say

So much has happened since I last wrote. I've been to Google in California for a National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) meeting. Google was cool- they had sand volleyball courts, a ton of different cafes- they grow some of their own food and herbs that are used in the cafes, they have those lap pools that have the current in them for swimming, and everything is google colors. It was a good meeting, although I'm always exhausted after these things.

I swam last monday (first time in a while) and I was so sore all last week. I'm going to swim again today since the doc said I should only be swimming and biking. I've got to get my bike tuned up and everything for the nice weather. It was about 80 degrees here in Seattle yesterday. I couldn't believe it!

Saw Angels & Demons on Sunday. It followed the book pretty closely. Jodi- I think you'll like it. Plan to go see Terminator this weekend. I can't believe there have been so many blockbusters coming out one after the other. Star Trek was awesome too! I remember watching Star Trek as a kid (with Dad?) and the movie really captured the characters well, I thought.

happy mother's day

Here is a little "word cloud" from wordle.net that I created in honor of mother's day (click on it to see it bigger). sorry to post a day late---Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers that I know!

tree pics pt 2

Here are a few pictures of the progression of the new crabapple tree over the past week or so.





Yea for pink flowers!

ankle update

Most of you know I sprained my ankle about 2 months ago. It has still been bothering me, especially after long walks, so I finally went to the sports medicine doctor. The sports med docs here at UW are great--they are the folks who take care of all our varsity athletes, so they really know their stuff.

They took an x-ray and good news- my doc said there were no bone chips or any other abnormal looking things going on in the x-ray.

She gave me some new exercises to do along with the old ones I was doing, and she told me that I need to increase my activity in 3 levels. Level one is non-weight bearing - like swimming and biking- and I should do that for about 2 weeks to see how things feel. If it is feeling okay, I can progress to weight-bearing but non-impact- like ellipticals and stairmaster for another 2 weeks. Assuming that goes well, I can move on finally, to walking for exercise and running. So, I think I should still have plenty of time to get in shape for the running part of the triathlon this summer.

The doctor did say that about 40% of ankle sprains still hurt after 4 months, so I guess I shouldn't have been too worried about it. But I'm glad I know now that there isn't something bad that happened that I ignored.

palouse mountains

I was in Pullman, Washington the past two days. I've never been to Pullman. I was amazed at how beautiful it was. In a very different way than Seattle is beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. I didn't see many trees in the Pullman area (at least not like Seattle has trees). Pullman is in the Palouse mountains.

You have to fly into Pullman on a pretty small plane, and it was pretty empty so I had plenty of space to look out the window and wonder at the curves and colors in this area. Below are a couple pictures I found online that look very similar or just like what I saw. I was amazed at the contrasts between the green and the brown and the varying shades of browns and greens. Some of the greens were SO vibrant it was amazing.



Isn't it amazing?

tree pics pt 1

Here are 2 photos of our new tree.

It is a "Prairiefire" flowering crabapple. It is a medium growing rounded deciduous broadleaf tree, with dark rosy flowers. Flowers are red in bud stage, and it has persistent (ie. non-dropping) berries.

Here is the view of the tree from a seat at the table and chairs on the patio. Notice how it screens the upper windows of the neighbor's house. Or at least it will when the leaves come in and it gets a bit bushier. But it will do a lot toward making us feel more private on our patio as it is.

I'll post a few up-close shots soon.

cheesy but true

I saw this in one of my magazines yesterday and thought that even though it is a bit cheesy- it is true and we should all try to remember it.

To give proper credit, this comes from the June 2009 issue of Shape magazine and its author is Jared Matthew Weiss.

I CAN CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY

Enjoying your life isn't something that happens while you just sit there; it's the result of small decisions you make all day long. You can choose to add a favorite necklace to your outfit in the morning or to spend the evening with people who make you feel good. This month, remember that while a lot of what happens is beyond your control, your happiness is not. It's your choice; what's it going to be?

cheddar, ham and dill biscuits

Oh my goodness. David and I made these biscuits last night and they were SOOO good. This is another recipe (like the frittata one) from the chef, food writer, and soon to be cookbook author I mentioned in a previous post. We met her through a friend of ours (she is his new wife), and we offered to test out some of her recipes. This is the third recipe of hers we have made. Her name is Lorna Yee and she writes a food blog called The Cookbook Chronicles, among other things.


These were the most amazing, tasty, flaky biscuits. I will definitely be making these again! Of course, they used a whole stick of butter...so they will have to be an occasional treat.

time to take photos

Well, we've done a little more work in our yard. I need to take some photos of the new yard addition so you all can see what you think.

We got a new tree. It really helps screen the new neighbors house, or at least it will really help screen it once all its leaves come in.

yea!

Salsa

I have a feeling I'll be eating salsa everyday for the next 3 days. I hear that New Mexico is the chili (spicy) capital of the US.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

forgetful

Don't you hate it when you are going on a trip and you feel like you have forgotten something? Last night as I lay in bed ready to fall asleep I remember counting 4 things that I needed to remember this morning before I left for the airport. This morning I was able to remember 3 of them, but can't think of what the 4th one was, for the life of me. I hope it wasn't super important ;-) I'm going to assume it wasn't that important since I didn't remember it, but that may not be the best assumption.

Went to the public library book sale yesterday. They do this sale in a huge old airplane hangar in Magnuson Park in Seattle. There are books from all genres there. When we went into the building I told david that I wasn't going to over-do it and I was just going to get books I really wanted. Then we split up to search our favorite areas. Well, about 1 hour later, I sent him a text telling him that I lied. My bag was full of books and I was still trying to find more. He came and found me and let me use his bag for some of my books, luckily. All in all, I found 28 paperbacks of fiction that I wanted. Some of them are part of series of books by the same author, and a few are classic fiction and some are by authors I've never heard of but the book jacket and/or title caught my eye, and the book summary seemed interesting.

The only frustration is that I would find 2 books of a 3 part series, and not be able to find the third book. There is a series by Fern Michaels like that. I read something by her awhile ago that was about Kentucky and basically the ups and downs of a family there- which I enjoyed. Well, I found one about Las Vegas, but couldn't find one of the 3 books. Trick is, it seems that the book I am missing is the first one in the trilogy. So, I've going to have to find that one at a used bookstore before I can read the other two.

But I couldn't help but smile to be walking away with 28 books for 28 bucks!

a day early

I'm heading home a day early from my trip. The second school I was supposed to go to got cancelled, so I'll head home on thursday morning rather than friday night. But I head out again on sunday for a trip down to New Mexico (warmth here I come!), and I'll be back from that one on wednesday late afternoon. Then I've got a week in the office and 2 trips after that.

I am happy to be going home early. I think I brought the rain with me to Central Pennsylvania. It has rained every day here. I hope we some nice weather when I get home.

blah

I'm at Penn State for research interviews. Last night I got sick--I think it must have been food poisoning or something like that. I'm feeling a bit better today, am headed out now to try and get some food in me. Soup sounds good.

no vacation?

I'm going to use some of David's words to tell this story...I'm in DC and got an email from him today (and talked to him shortly after) and found out the following:

"So, I discovered this morning that the basement storage room flooded. The carpet is completely soaked, and I'm moving stuff out of the room now. We'll have to tear out all the carpet and padding, and probably strip the walls down to the studs... they'll need to be painted with that mold-retardant paint after they've air dried sufficiently."

When I spoke to him late this evening, he had already moved everything out of the storage room and had torn up the carpet and carpet pad. He basically had to work all day on this and just sounded exhausted when we talked. I feel bad that I wasn't there to help out. We did have some casualties of the water, including 2 Obama posters we had bought and were sitting down there waiting for us to do something with them.

We are pretty sure we know the cause...we had a downspout that didn't have a tight connection and was spilling water out of it over the top and therefore all around one corner of our house. David had tried to fix it before we left, but it didn't work and we had to leave for our trip before we could try something different. pooh! It sounds like money we might have used for a vacation this summer may have to be diverted to fixing the basement and the leak. =-(

par-tay!

This weekend we had a wonderful party to celebrate my mom's wedding and marriage. We had the party in Florida at her house and it went really well. People had lots of fun, we drank most of the beer, and it was just so nice to meet mom and peter's friends and sort of see what their life is like. We also decorated their driveway with chalk drawings. It was fun to create things on such a big scale. I was up earlier than most on saturday (the day of the party) so I was the first to start the drawing/writing. Later in the day everyone pitched in and drew or wrote something. When mom and peter send along pics I'll have to post a few. I especially loved the huge heart that was in the middle of the driveway with their names. Anyway, it was a great wedding reception, and I'm glad that my sisters and I were all able to be a part of it.

Congratulations Mom and Peter!

photos of food

Here are a few photos of the 2 recipes we made last night. We don't always eat this well...tonight we had oatmeal for dinner ;-)

recipe testing

We have a friend who married a woman who is a food critic and chef. She sent out an email and asked friends to test some of the recipes she is writing for a cookbook. David and I get the recipes and have now tried 2 of them. The first was a salmon and goat cheese frittata with red onion and leeks. This was really good.

We also cooked some blueberry cinnamon struesel topped muffins. These were good, although they didn't rise as much as I would have liked. Maybe my baking soda is old? I just bought new baking powder so I know that is not the problem.

We have some other recipes I think we will try out for her and see how they are. Of course, we've got to write our reviews and give them to her. We better do that before we go out of town or we'll never remember to do it later.

lunges

After doing some hard skiing on the ski trip, and feeling the burn in my thighs, I thought for sure that some lunges would be easy work. On Friday David and I went to the track at the gym and did some walking lunges. I did maybe 15 on each leg. How sad is it that I could barely go down steps on saturday and sunday? I'm still a little sore today, but much better than before. I think my ankle might be good enough to walk around the track. I think I'll try it tonight and see how it goes.

leave it alone!

Seriously, why can't I just rest? I sprained my ankle (not a bad sprain) a little over a week ago. When my ankle starts feeling better, I think it is okay to do something and then the next day I pay the price with new pain!

For example, on Sunday my ankle was feeling better, so I took Sam for SHORT walk. I mean, this was only 2 blocks down the street and 2 blocks back. It didn't feel especially bad that night, but I woke up on monday, and it had swollen a bit more and hurt again. So, I laid off of it for a few days and only walked distances I absolutely had to walk.

Yesterday, I went to pilates. I told my instructor about my ankle, and we did lots of modifications so as to not put too much pressure on it. It didn't really hurt at pilates. What do you know- I woke up this morning with it in more pain than the previous few days.

How long do I have to wait to do anything with it? I'm not going to know if it is getting better if I don't occasionally try something, right? I'm frustrated with this...sorry for my complaining.