48 Hour Book Challenge: Update Five

Time spent reading: 27 hours
Books read: 6-ish
Under the Tuscan Sun (only had a few chapters to go when I started the challenge)
ttfn
l8r, g8r
V for Vendetta
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel (My one audiobook - and it turns out I had only downloaded part of it. Oh, well!)
The Sandman: The Doll's House (so close to being finished!)

I only have two chapters left in The Doll's House, but Mom just called to remind that it's Sunday, which is our family dinner night. Also that she needed me to stop by the store and pick up some groceries for her on my way over. We're making Italian, so at least I'll have good food in my belly when I get back to reading.

Recipe Tuesday: Pesto Risotto

My little sister graduated from college a few weeks ago. She didn't want to attend the ceremony (it would've been pointless, really, as there were too many students for them to be called individually), so Mom let her pick where she wanted to go for lunch instead. Sis chose The Swan Coach House. Apparently it's an Atlanta landmark, but I had never heard of it before, even though it turned out to be located pretty close to the starting point for the Great Urban Race from last month.

Knowing my sister, I figured it would not be the kind of place I would typically enjoy. For one thing, it's only open for three and a half hours, Monday - Saturday, and there's usually a one-hour wait to be seated. Also, they do not accept reservations for groups smaller than (I think) ten. And this is stuff she knew before we even got in the car to drive down there! When we pulled up to the restaurant, all I could see were groups of women in floral print dresses and high heels (definitely NOT what I was wearing). The inside looked like an Easter basket had exploded - there's a photo gallery on the website to give you an idea. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and out of my element, and we ended up walking around the gift shop while waiting the hour for our table.

But then we were seated, ordered, and prompt served our food. Oh, the food. It was delicious! Worth every minute we stood around waiting for the hostess to call our name, and definitely worth having to stare at a sea of flowery dresses and Pepto-Bismol-colored walls. Luckily my sister had picked up a copy of the Swan Coach House cookbook (in the aforementioned gift shop) and I was able to flip through it and find some really excellent recipes to make at home. My first attempt was the Pest Risotto, which turned out to be the BEST. RISOTTO. EVER. I made a few adjustments to the original the second time I made it, and it turned out even better. How can something be better than the BEST, you ask? Well, I don't know, but this risotto is it.

Ingredients
1 small zucchini, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 small yellow squash, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
4 cups vegetable broth
2 gloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
1 cup arborio rice
1/4 cup pesto
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
black pepper to taste

Put the zucchini, yellow squash, and broth in a small pot and simmer over medium heat. Saute the garlic and onions in the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until tender. Add the rice and cook for three minutes, stirring continuously. Remove the cooked squash and zucchini from the broth and set aside. Add one cup of the warm broth to the rice and cook until the broth is mostly absorbed, stirring continuously. Add another 1/2 cup of the broth and cook until almost absorbed, stirring continuously. Repeat until almost all of the broth has been absorbed. (This will probably take about 20 - 30 minutes.) Stir in the pesto. Add in the remaining broth, cooking until the mixture is creamy and the rice is al dente. Stir in the cheese, squash, and zucchini and season with black pepper to taste. Serve and enjoy.

Note: This picture is from the first time I made the recipe, before I added in the vegetables. But you get the idea.

Christmas

I hope everyone had a happy holiday. I spent yesterday with my mom and stepfather (my sister was at her in-laws'; we'll see her for lunch on Sunday). Our tradition is to have a small dinner and open presents on Christmas Eve. Even though Mom swears that I'm not getting anything else, Santa always finds something to put under the tree Christmas morning. :) Then we have a late lunch with turkey (tofurkey for me!), mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, etc. Then Mom and I go to a movie while my stepfather works around the house. This year we saw Valkyrie, which was really good!

Now for pictures:
This is the stuff I got from my parents. We agreed to not spend a lot of money this year; Mom wanted our gifts to be handmade. I got a tin of popcorn (yum!), a cookbook (yum!) with a hundred dollar bill stashed inside (yay!), and a reusable shopping bag full of yarn, crochet patterns, and some new, smaller hooks (this was the gift left by "Santa"). See that blue pillow? That's what my mom made for me, and it is awesome. She called it a "quillow." It's the biggest project she's finished since she started quilting, and I'm so excited that it was for me! It's a pillow, but instead of stuffing, it's filled with fabric.
The fabric can be unfolded from the pillow (but it's still attached to the pillow fabric), and it turns into a blanket!
The top part is a terrycloth-like material. Mom made it so that I can take it to the beach with me and use as a blanket there. She also added a strap, so that when it's folded up like a blanket, I can carry books, sunscreen, etc. in it like a bag. I love it!

I also got some cool stuff from my Secret Santa through the Friendly Book Nook's Christmas Book Swap. My Secret Santa was Leah, who posts at The Friendly Book Nook.
She sent me some yummy chocolate and mint candy (which probably won't last long!), a foot scrub (which I could really use - being a teacher, I'm on my feet all day), a notepad (which is now sitting next to my computer) and a copy of Donna VanLiere's The Christmas Promise (which is now sitting on top of Mt. TBR). Thanks, Leah! :)

One last gift: I actually got this one a few weeks ago. My best friend and I went to an art show and I fell in love with one of the paintings there. Actually, several of them were great, and I really need to write a post about the artists we saw. But, there was one in particular that I just couldn't stop staring at. The painting itself was over $1,000 - way too much for me to spend. Luckily, we noticed that the artist, Timothy Michael, also had some prints for sale. He had ONE LEFT of the painting that I was so enamored with. I kept picking it and up and putting it back down again. Then this other woman started eying it, which made me nervous. I really didn't have the money to buy it myself at the time, so my BFF bought it for me as a Christmas gift. Bask in the wonderfulness of my first real piece of art:
I have no idea why I find this particular painting so great - it just really speaks to me. The color isn't great in this photo; if you visit Michael's website you'll probably get a better idea of how it's supposed to look. This piece is off to get framed, so that it can hang on my wall and make my other pictures jealous.

So, how were your holidays? Did Santa bring you lots of books and toys? I hope everyone had a safe and fun time with their loved ones. :)

Christmas already?!

So, after all the drama I had this weekend, I figured the rest of the week would be cake. And then I found out that my great-aunt died. She was 101 years old; she lived a very full life! The funeral was yesterday and I was somewhat hesitant to go, mainly because the last time I took a day off my fourth period class took advantage of the sub and went completely crazy. This time, I went overboard - silent reading, ten pages of worksheets, and I asked another teacher to look in on fourth period for me (he has planning that period, and we have a lot of the same students, so he was happy to oblige). The funeral was nice, under the circumstances; I rarely get a chance to see my dad's side of the family, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up and reminisce about Aunt Hazel . And my classes, by all accounts, were well-behaved and worked hard.

Now, on to the Christmas-related postings. I signed up for two Christmas swaps this year:
Dewey and Nymeth have organized the 2nd annual Book Bloggers Christmas Swap. Details are here.
And The Friendly Book Nook is having a Christmas Book Swap. Details are here.

Not Christmas-Swap-related, but still a good idea:

I'm actually pretty low on cash this season (who isn't?), so the majority of my gifts will be homemade. For my "big" purchases, though (family and close friends) I will be buying books, and you should think about doing it, too. The Buy Books for the Holidays Blog has more info and bookish gift ideas.

And with all the drama from this weekend, I completely forgot all about last week's Weekly Geek post. I will get around to announcing a winner soon.

Peachtree Road Race

A week later, and I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from the Peachtree Road Race. This was the first year I was actually able to be in the race - my mom did it two years ago, she and I both applied last year (and were denied), and we didn't make it this year, either. Fortunately, a friend of hers decided not to go and agreed to sell me her number. Unfortunately, I had stopped training. It really wasn't too bad, just a little over six miles. I didn't even notice "Cardiac Hill" because it was nothing compared to the steep hills in my old neighborhood. The best part was getting to do it with my sister, Liz, and my friend Jen (this was her fourth PTRR). We didn't take a camera with us, but my sister had one on her cell phone.


The starting line, way in the distance...
There were over 55,000 people running this thing. My number put me in group 3, but Liz and Jen were in group 8 so I went with them. The race started at 7 am, but the groups were released every 20 minutes or so, so were stuck waiting around for almost 2 hours. Liz had a stopwatch and pedometer on her phone, too, and she had to restart them four times. We kept thinking, "Okay, we're REALLY going this time!" and then we'd walk about 10 feet and stop again.


FREE BEER!
One of the best perks of being in this thing: random strangers stand on the sidewalks to cheer you on and give you stuff. We hadn't even completed the first mile when a bar started giving out beer - at 9 in the morning! Jen and I ran to get some, and my sister joked that it would be the only time we'd actually run for the whole race. That wasn't entirely untrue.

My mom called to see how we were doing right after this picture was taken. She wasn't quite as excited about the drinking-beer-while-completing-a-10k as we were.

Some people dressed up:


We weren't sure if this was a tribute to Reno 911's Lieutenant Dangle, or just some guys celebrating Pride Week, which was also going on that day.


Guy in a banana suit. Don't know why, but I'm sure he was sweating like crazy...
There were also girls wearing t-shirts declaring their love for Clark Howard, a local radio personality who runs every year. I didn't see him, though. I also missed the pub crawlers, although I saw them two years ago when Mom did the race. Those guys are hardcore; they walk all 6+ miles, stopping at every bar along the way. I'm sure it takes them a while.

And finally...


The finish line!
It didn't actually take us 3 hours. According to Liz's pedometer, we walked 15,675 steps (or thereabouts) in an hour and 48 minutes. I'm not sure if that includes all the stopping-and-starting at the beginning, but it certainly gives me a time to beat next year.

Fun in the sun

Pictures from our annual family trip to Hilton Head last week:


the view from our balcony

Sand sculptures!

a land shark eating a sunbathing tourist


an eel (?)


the requisite sandcastle


starfish

I didn't actually make any of these, but I thought they were cool and wanted to get pictures of them before the tide came up and washed them away. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that taking my camera from the nice, cold air conditioning into the hot, muggy sunshine would make the pictures come out fuzzy. Oh, well. I also have pictures from a kayaking trip we took through the marsh, but I used a waterproof disposable camera for those and am still waiting for them to get developed. I did make something on the trip (Mom and I both brought our creative outlets; she quilted, and I crocheted), but I'm still working on it. It's actually for Dragon*Con this year, and I'm hoping it'll be a big damn surprise for one of my fellow convention-goers.

Updatey

My baby sister* got married this weekend! And I only cried, like, 60% of the time. Mostly while I was trying to give my toast, which was really embarrassing. And it's preserved on video for all eternity! Or at least until HD-DVDs become obsolete.

So, one thing down...next up is graduation on Friday. I don't really HAVE to do anything for that, but I was given a chance to rework some of my assignments for a better grade. I already have my job lined up for next year (I just need to sign my contract...) so my summer will be spent working occasionally, getting lesson plans together, and participating in the 1% Well-Read Challenge**. My last challenge didn't do so well, but I'm thinking this one will fare better. Hooray! More info to come.

* She's actually 25, but you know what I mean.

** I've already read quite a few of the books on the 1001 List, so I'll be more like 2% well-read. Nyah-nyah.

Bugs the Easter squirrel

Happy Easter! Today was very eventful. Mom and I were up before the crack of dawn to go to sunrise service, and Liz, the Chad, and Hunter came up in the afternoon. After a thoroughly exciting Easter egg hunt, Liz, Mom, Hunter, and I played Monopoly (longest game EVER, especially when you let a 3rd grader play banker), while Ralph and Chad supervised the smoker (ew). A baby squirrel, which had fallen out of tree, wondered up to Chad. We didn't touch it (rabies and whatnot), but he managed to get it into a bucket and we left it under a nearby tree with plenty of acorns. He seems to be doing okay. Meet Bugs, the Easter Squirrel:

Farewell to a friend

My mom and dad both had busy full time jobs when I was born (Mom at the Treasury Department, Dad at the Gwinnett Daily News), so when Mom was ready to go back to work she went through the newspaper to find a suitable baby-sitter for me. She found Karen, a wonderful woman who had three teenage children, no driver's license, and a blueberry bush in her back yard. Two years later, when my little sister came along, Karen agreed to watch both of us. That lasted exactly one day, after which it was decided that I would go to daycare and my sister would continue going to Karen's. Two years later, my dad died. We ended up moving to Snellville, my mom started her own CPA office in our house, I started school, and we saw Karen less frequently. We did keep in touch with her and her family - I spent one "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" at the mall with one of her daughters, learning all about managing a candle store. Karen moved to Europe with her husband, who traveled everywhere for work. My sister and I would receive a postcard and a doll from each new country they visited. My mom made half-hearted plans to fly us out to France to visit them, but we never actually went. Karen eventually moved back, but her new house was farther away and we didn't see her as often as we once had.

We found out today that Karen is dying. Her husband called to let us know that she has cancer. It's terminal, and they don't think she'll last that much longer. She's at home for right now. They have hospice workers coming over daily, and they give her lots of medicine to keep her out of pain. I'm really upset right now, and not just because her family waited so long to tell us that she's been so sick. I'm mad at myself for not going to visit her sooner. I feel guilty because there have been so many times that I've thought to myself, "I really should give Karen a call." My sister recently got engaged, and I know she really wanted to go visit Karen to tell her about her fiance. We had talked about going to visit her, but never actually did it. I feel really bad for her, because she was always "Karen's little baby" and I know she's taking this harder than anyone. We're going to visit Karen tomorrow, to say goodbye. It's a visit that's long overdue, but I'm glad that we have the chance.

The next shark lady?

There were a bunch of guys fishing in the surf last night after dark, and one of them caught a baby shark. It was only 2 feet long, if that, and it looked like a (mini) great white. It was so perfect, it almost seemed fake. They threw it back, thankfully. That little shark was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's also the first wild one I've ever seen, even after 20+ years of visiting the ocean.

Every time I go to the beach with my family, my mom asks me why I decided to study Literature instead of Marine Biology. Growing up, I was obsessed with dolphins and sharks. I wanted to be the next Eugene Clark. We started talking about it again this trip, and I've been thinking. How hard would it be to get a second Bachelor's degree in something like that? There's a great program at UGA. It's not a serious idea by any means, but still something to ponder. I'd love to be a perpetual student, and just keep studying something new all the time.

Oh, well. Time to go pack for my next trip. I couldn't find Heir to the Empire or Eragon at the library, which makes me seriously question the quality of the Fulton County Library System. Well, not really. Instead, I picked up Citizen Girl, about a women's studies grad student who starts working at a non-profit agency, and Vox, a transcript of a conversation between two people who meet on a phone-sex party line. Don't judge - my friend Ian's been raving about this book for forever.

Yay! Beach!

My vacation so far:
Woke up, 2 hours late on Saturday, feeling like hungover crap. Called Sis, who was supposed to have been at the house by this time, got packed (!) in 20 minutes, and drove to Hilton Head. This is the view that greeted us when we arrived:

Man, I love the ocean.

Sunday, Sis and I went to the pool, then the beach, where I saw more conch shells (inhabited by whatever mollusk lives in them - conch, probably) on the shore than I ever remember seeing before. And we've been coming to Hilton Head every year since before I was born. Anyway, I also saw a few people collecting them as souvenirs, which really bothered me because they're animals, you know? And all they're doing is taking them and killing them and then bleaching their homes so they have something pretty for their desk back home. Grr. Anyway, it's now my last full day here, so Mom, Sis and I are out shopping, and then we'll be going back to the beach, then the room for a tradition beach dinner of...spaghetti. Huh. Then it's just two days til Jersey! :)

It's just not a Vegas wedding without Elvis

My cousin, Derek, got married to his girlfriend (Liz) this week. On 4/20. His idea, I'm sure. They had a small ceremony out in Las Vegas. Sadly, the King wasn't present.



I'm happy, because Liz is awesome. In addition to reading comics (she introduced me to Fables, actually, for which I am eternally grateful), she also speaks Spanish (Bueno!). Sis is happy, too, but also slightly annoyed because now that side of the family will forever refer to her as "Lizzie" to differentiate between the two of them. Hee.