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| I love this blanket, but I need to be able to get out from under it one of these days! |
I'm over winter. Like, really, REALLY over winter. I like the cold weather and hibernating and snow and all that, but seriously, it's been COLD. I feel like I haven't been outside in weeks, because, well, I really haven't! Just running between the car and the indoors and that is just no way to live. I'm getting cabin fever! I'm getting seasonal affective disorder! I'm developing a vitamin D deficiency! Spring! HELP!
Ok, ok, I'm overreacting a bit here. I know we don't even have it as bad as, say, New England, which I think is still stuck somewhere under a glacier. And it's not just the cold that I'm over. I need some sunlight in my life. I come to work and it's too cold to go for a walk outside and by the time I leave it's dark. I have a window right behind me, so I can't complain too much, but really. I just need a nice walk outside. Just a few minutes and I'll be good.
End rant.
Luckily, there are some fun things that happen during the depressingly cold month of February... Valentine's Day and the Oscars! In all fairness, I don't care much about either, not really. But what I do care about is a reason to celebrate. Celebrate love, celebrate film, celebrate a reason to smile in this dark, dreary month. I'll take it!
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| A very appreciated box of candy from the Employee Appreciation Committee |
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| I try to keep a strict no junk food at work rule, but maybe just this once... |
Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday this year, which meant that Tom and I got the whole weekend to celebrate. Some people find Valentine's Day hokey and a greeting card holiday and what have you. I don't disagree with that, I just don't care. Sure, you shouldn't need a day to celebrate your love (of your significant other OR friends OR family, who needs the limits?), but what's wrong with assigning one anyway? If you are copping out on your relationships the rest of the year that's on you, not on Valentine's Day. And if you don't want to support the greeting card companies, don't buy one. No harm, no foul.
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| The lovely flowers Tom sent me so I could show off to my new office mates how great my husband is. It worked. |
We didn't do much for the weekend, but it was nice setting aside some time to ourselves. We had fun goofing off at DSW for an hour and a half while we waited for a table at the Cheesecake Factory. We were seated in one of our favorite areas, right next to a server station. I can understand why some people would not appreciate that type of ambiance, but we like eavesdropping on the servers muttering curses about their tables and the kitchen and their managers. Plus, if you ever need something, there is ALWAYS someone standing around who can help you. We had a very pleasant meal and our very ditzy, but pleasant server schooled us on how to eat a whole artichoke. We almost missed the best part! Serves us right for thinking we know a lot about food. A wise man knows only that he does not know... or something like that.
I did get a real treat when Tom took to the kitchen to make me some raspberry stuffed french toast, which might be the best thing I've ever eaten. The pictures might not do it justice, but this was a comically large breakfast and I enjoyed every single bite of it.
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| Good thing I don't diet; I'd be really bad at it |
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| That's turkey bacon with it, because, you know, health. |
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| We also played a round of Pandemic. We lost. As did humanity. |
This past Sunday was the Oscar's! Again, I actually don't care much about who wins, who is wearing what, or all that jazz. But it's fun to keep the red carpet shows on in the background while I do my usual Sunday cooking. AND it seemed like a fantastic excuse to get some cheese-journaling on!
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| The brie we had been so looking forward to |
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| Frittata fixin's |
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| We look ready to make crepes! Sadly, we did not. |
Cheese journaling? What's that? Well, fun story...
Way back in the days before Tom and I were dating, I bought him a Christmas gift of a cheap little Wine Journal and an equally cheap bottle of wine. Little did I know that making a hobby of journaling about our wine drinking (and maybe the wine drinking itself) would bring us closer and eventually lead us to the old married couple we are today! Hooray for making notes! And for wine!
Of course, we don't even like wine all that much. I mean, I guess we like it enough. But do we appreciate smoky undertones and notes of blackberry and a hint of chocolate on the back of the tongue? Nope, sure don't. For all the wine classes I took at my last job and all the wine tastings I've been to and all the journaling we did, I can't pick out those subtle flavors. Wine connoisseurs, we are not.
But cheese? On Tom's To-do List there is definitely an entry for becoming a fromagier. And that has been on his to-do list for quite some time. This year I FINALLY got around to remembering that at the appropriate time of gift-giving and found him a neat little cheese journal so that we could have some fun eating cheese and feeling productive about it. Can you say that about your cheese eating?
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| Baked brie with honey, baguette and apples. Fancy ish, yo. |
We skipped dinner, ate a silly amount of cheese and bread and fell asleep on the couch about halfway through the awards show. Funny the little things that show you are growing up...
Before all that happened we actually got to enjoy a fairly warm Sunday. At 40 degrees I was happy to forgo my winter coat for a little hoodie, which was not warm enough, but who cares. 40 degrees! It was like summer! Except in summer I don't usually spend the morning shoveling and salting my sidewalk. Beggars can't be choosers, I suppose.
Perhaps it was the warm weather, but it seemed like a good day to get some gardening going! My desk at work needed some serious plantage and our future backyard needs some serious planning, so Sunday was as good a day as any to start on those things.
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| Our haul from Home Depot (and some gifts from friends) |
We bought some seeds to start this upcoming weekend. I don't know much about gardening. Plant stuff, pull weeds, water it... that pretty much sums it up. I've never started anything (well, almost anything) from seeds. The last few years in our community garden we bought already started plants, which we probably will end up doing a bit of this year as well. But, I really want to try learning to garden from scratch. What a good hobby! Relatively cheap, active, outdoorsy AND it produces food I get to eat!
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| Artichokes, eggplant and squashes, oh my! |
What a test of patience this project will be. You may not get the results you want for YEARS. And that is on purpose! Artichokes and asparagus you aren't even supposed to harvest the first year or two. Supposing they even take to our soil, which is yet to be seen. We haven't spent any time in the back yard since the fall and I can't wait for the ground to thaw so we can start plotting stuff out. I will have to find a picture of the garden I have in my head and then post a picture of what actually comes out... I am sure they won't be quite the same.
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| Just a simple vegetable garden... |
For now, though, it is still too cold to do much. Hopefully the next few weeks will warm up and we can finally get our hands dirty. In the meantime, I'm working on my desk garden. I adopted two lovely plants to bring some air purification to my work space. If you have a desk, do yourself and everyone around you a favor and get a nice, low-light, leafy green plant. Plants are good chi, for one, and for two, they clean the stale, dusty, recirculated air that you are sharing with tons of people.
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| My Peace Lily. Her name? I'll give you one guess |
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| Dracaena Deremensis. Otherwise known as Drake. |
In addition to a leafy plant (or two!) I wanted a nice, fragrant herb. I'm not big on flowers and I don't want anyone around me to have allergies act up from pollen (can that happen inside?), so herbs sounded like just the ticket. I really wanted mint, but there were NO seeds or plants at Home Depot! Anyone know why this is? Not even seeds?
I found instead a nice seed packet for Lemon Balm, which is a lemony herb in the mint family. I think it must have been fate, because it seems to be just what I'm looking for. Lemon and mint scents are known to bring feelings of happiness and alertness, two things anyone could use at any job.
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| I was equally excited for the beautiful pot that I am going to put my herbs in |
This acquisition is two-fold, because in addition to eventually getting some nice herbage at work, I also get some practice starting seeds and growing a plant from nothing! Well, I mean, from a seed, but it will be MY doing that the seed turned into a plant. If it works, that is. Give me a break, it's my first time doing this!
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| Makeshift greenhouse in our Green Room |
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| Grow, my pretties! |
I'm really looking forward to the warm weather and throwing myself head first (not literally) into our garden. It was fun working in our backyard before it got too cold to even think of stepping outside. We've made some great strides in turning our house into a home and I'm ready to take that creativity and energy outside. And, in case you hadn't picked up on this, I'm just ready to BE OUTSIDE!
One last thing. I've hit the three month mark at my new job, which doesn't mean much except that it's not really such a NEW job any more. Now it is just my job. And it is official that I am done with the Legal Seafoods company, as I finally got my last paycheck from them (don't ask why it took so long). Thank you, Roger Berkowitz, for the not-even-fifteen-dollars. I'll try not to spend it all in one place.
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| Don't worry, you'll get one more chance to screw me over at tax time. |
Sheridan's To-do List
- plot out garden
- read gardening book so I know how to plot out garden
- find out if "plot out garden" is the right way to say that
- start seeds
- talk to seeds in hopes they grow super huge!
- plan some summer camping trips (like, a LOT of them)
- start training for the Broad Street Run (did I forget to mention that little thing?)
- pray to the weather gods that I will be able to run outside soon
- take a picture of my new desk with my new lovely plant babies
- write another blog post sooner that this one took me
So what are your expert gardening tips? Any successes or failures you would like to share? I have this picture in my head of subsisting solely off of the food I produce all summer and canning everything I can't eat and maybe never having to set foot in the produce section of a grocery store again... perhaps I am getting ahead of myself?
If you don't have gardening tips, share what you are MOST EXCITED to do once the weather warms up! I'm overwhelmed at the possibility that winter is wrapping up and there is so much to do! So much that... that I can't even think of anything besides gardening and camping and living outside ALL THE TIME. So what warm thoughts are getting your through these cold days?
Until next time faithful readers... keep calm and garden on.
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| Plenty of sunshine coming in today |
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| My tidy work space |
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| "A girl should be two things: who and what she wants." ~ Coco Chanel |
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| Both people who sit in front of me were out today so I managed to take a picture of Lily without also taking a creepy picture of the backs of their heads |
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