in which i delineate my weekend thus far, and a few plans, and grouse about global warming
Andrew and I had a productive day yesterday. While he was teaching at his karate school, I picked up two new pairs of glasses. Yay! *does the I-can-see-clearly-now dance* Went to Microcenter to get him a USB drive he needs for school, then a relatively quick food-shopping trip. He wanted to learn how to make chili, so we parboiled the beans in the morning and left them to soak, then returned home to cook 'em some more.
I had not slept well at all the previous night - possibly got 3 hours of frequently-interrupted sleep - and there was no real reason for it, but I understandably was feeling groggy after all this morning activity, so I decided a nap was in order. Took sleep meds as an insurance policy, and sacked out for almost 5 hours. Felt SO much better when I got up. Andrew had tried to move the chili along while I was sleeping, but he didn't realize he should fry up the meat and green peppers - he just tossed them in the pot with the beans. So we had a bit of a flavorless beef-bean-pepper soup on our hands, but I showed him how to fix that in a hurry - drain out most of the liquid, put it in another pot to reduce thoroughly, and fry up some onions and garlic along with chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper. And within an hour we had a mild (because A. does not like hot) but flavorful 3 quarts of acceptable chili. I found a pound of Manchego cheese in the fridge that I had completely forgotten I bought last week, so we grated that on top in lieu of the Jack we didn't have - and it was fine. (although Manchego tends to gum up a little instead of melting smoothly, so it wasn't texturally perfect.) And we giggled about our Tex-Mex/southwest-meets Upper Darby gringo-meets La Mancha fusion cuisine. ;)
Later I made some cocoa and talked to horvendile for awhile about ice skating, and how winter used to actually be cold enough to engage in it outdoors where we live, and backyard rinks, and the relative practical values of metric and weirdo-American measure (both temperature and linear), and how we're both currently enthralled by dead white guy writers. Then I played around a bit on the computer, did 2 loads of laundry, and sacked out around 2 am. And I woke up feeling rested today, which is how it should be, so the sleeping meds were a good idea.
Here I should note that this winter's aberrant weather patterns, while granting us some unbelievably lovely days, overall are sucking mightily for me, for the following reason: Remember how 'way back in October or so I was told to call back my allergist "in the dead of winter" so we could schedule a week for me to go off my antihistamines, and, if I could tolerate the withdrawal week, start up allergy shots? I'm not sure how exactly that's supposed to happen when the winter, she is vibrant and lively and green, and - with temps consistently topping 50F - quite polleny and/or spory. I can feel it in my nose, and in my eyes, and on my skin, and when I go "ah-chooo!". Sigh. Perhaps I should move to the high Arctic. (Are there allergists in the high Arctic who play nice with my health plan?)
Today is pay bills/go to ATM and deposit checks day, with a side of de-clutterifying and de-danderifying. And it looks like Steve will probably be home Friday night/Saturday morning, so that is most welcome news.