Over the River and Through the Woods

Hey! Supposedly this is de-lurking week in the Blogosphere, so if you’re a reader of my blog, do give a shout out and say hi. I don’t have counters or anything, so I have no idea how many people read this thing besides my faithful 4 or 5. I don’t do this for the traffic, as you can probably tell by my craptastic postings, but I do try . . .

I’ve been seeing a lot of folks posting some extremely wonderful looking recipes, and I’m thinking about giving a few a try. I am in awe of Mac at Pesky Apostrophe for keeping to the “Eat Local” sentiment as much as possible. If I lived close to the super-awesome Reading Terminal Market in Philly, I would just be in heaven! (The super horrid Eastern Market in DC just does NOT compare. If you have never visited The Reading Market, you MUST visit Philly and go, then go back to the Eastern Market and tell me what you think . . .)

Over the weekend, when I was planning my menus for this week, I put Brownie Mix on the shopping list for Mr. Random. Of course, when he came back from shopping I noticed no Brownie mix whatsoever. Hey! Mr. Random had decided that we could very well make the brownies from scratch at home, and offered to make them himself. He did so as a trial run last night, and might I say that they were just as tasty and moist – if not more – than the box kind. He said that it didn’t take any longer than using a mix, except for melting the butter. OK, we’ll see how it goes tomorrow . . .

I really do want to be the sort of person who buys wonderful fresh ingredients all of the time and makes wonderful tasty meals, but reality interferes and I get home and just want to crawl into bed with a cup of soup, if that. The holiday season is the time when my cooking muse comes out and I have the time and presence of mind to experiment and make lots of tasty treats . . .

I need to go shopping at Target this afternoon. Actually, it would be more convenient to go on the weekend, but I really don’t want to deal with the throngs of holiday shoppers that will be out. I’m probably going to do most of my shopping online – I already know what I want to get Mr. Random, it’s just a matter of pruning down the list. Now what I’m getting various family members is another story. That will take a bit of creative thinking to get nice things, but cheaply . . .

The novel is still dormant, but I hope to make progress over the weekend . . .

My ESL class is almost over and I am so, so happy about that. My students are getting fatigued and I am getting fatigued. They were a really good bunch this semester, they gelled together very quickly and helped each other out a great deal. Discussions got a lot smoother as the classes went on, and people were not afraid to try their hand at contributing their $.02 in English. Dealing with the autistic gentleman was challenging but I do think he got a lot out of the class. He needed a much more one on one interaction from me than I could give, and I do regret that. There was one student who was a bit of a pill towards the end, but as I said, there’s only two more classes left . . .

Question to anyone who is doing the Blogger Beta: Have you played around with moving stuff in the layout templates? Was it relatively simple? Did you have to start from scratch and then have to add back in all of your links? Inquiring minds want to know – I may work on the look of the blog if I have time. If I do go ahead and make changes, I’ll let you all know how it goes . . .

I haven’t had a poem in a while, and I don’t think I’ve put this one up here – even if so, I still like it . . .

What I Did to Time
By Kate Light

What I did to time was ball it up, and
throw it out, when I was unhappy,
years ago; chucked it, sprained my hand
wadding it tight, waiting for an end,
the end of a long season, haul
too long to tolerate, questions
I couldn't answer, changes I couldn't make, tall
orders hovering. Couldn't take suggestions
(stubborn pride); couldn't find solutions
(ignorance, fear); but I could hold my breath
and squeeze away a year—nuisance
years fell into faints and met their death.
Now I'd give anything to have that plethora, that stack;
to feel its truth and call its slow pace back.

Until I post again . . .