hmmm

Last night my dad moved up to Canton to stay with his parents for two weeks, maybe longer. My aunt’s been staying with them for the past couple weeks helping to take care of my grandma. All of which means that for the next two weeks, and possibly longer, Kevin, Andros & I have the house to ourselves. Which is kind of wierd. We haven’t all lived together, with just each other, in almost a year. So, I think it’ll be nice to have a little ‘us’ time.

Tonight, Kevin got to grill for the first time in a long time – a leg of lamb. It turned out very good, and so we got to feast on lamb, sweet potatoes and sprouts. Mmm mmm good!!

On Wednesday I made mushroom-cheese ravioli with fresh pasta. It was VERY good, though the pasta was definetly too thick since I just couldn’t get it to roll out any thinner. I’ve definetly decided I want/need a pasta rolling machine if I ever think I’m going to be making fresh pasta. And if they’re really as easy to use as it sounds like I think I probably would. Rolling it by hand is just way too hard and way, way, way too time consuming!!

On the sad side, this week include my cousin passing away from pancreatic cancer. He survived for longer than most, but ultimatly he too succombed. His struggles have made all of us think about what we would do if we were diagnosed. And no-ones too sure. He spent lots of time and money fighting th disease… On saturday we went to dinner with most of the family. It was a nice time, nice way to remember him…

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Easter

Well, we got back from easter weekend at Kevin’s grandparents’s in North Baltimore yesterday. It was a nice weekend of relaxing and hanging out with his family. Everbody was enthralled with just about anything and everything that Andros did. Unfortuantly we forgot our camera though, so no pictures right now. Hopefully some of his family will send us some of the better ones.

Andros is getting really, really good at walking around. He can lean down and pick stuff up and keep
going every time now. It’s pretty cool. We went outside and played some outside today as it was a pretty nice day – the sun came out and it was just nice and breezy. A nice, albiet slightly cool, spring day.

My dad has decided to take two weeks off work to help out his parents, starting on Sunday. So, Kevin, Andros & I will have the house to ourselves here. It’ll be an interesting and likely very nice change for the three of us. It hasn’t been just us in a long time. Hopefully by the time Dad has to go back to work, Grandma will be more mobile and able to take care of herself again. Otherwise, I have no idea what will happy. Maybe Carol will come back or something. We had been talking about us moving up there for a while, but it doesn’t sound like they think I could take care of both Andros and grandma at the same time – which is probably true. Especially since their house is far from babyproof!!

Driving through a flood!!

So today we went up to Canton and had lunch with my mom at Chipotle’s, and then we went and hung out at my grandparent’s house for a little while and visited with them. My grandma seems to be doing better, and she’s definetly happy to be home. And its awesome that my aunt’s able to be there and help out for a couple weeks while everyone gets used to being home again. After she goes back to california, we might move up there and stay with them for a little while, untill grandma and grandpa figure things out again.

On our way home, we forgot about all the flooding thats been going on (went through Carrollton on the way up, so we didn’t have to worry about flooding, much), and so went the normal ‘back’ way home. We got to magnolia and found that 542 was ‘closed’ but decided to keep going – sometimes a road is ‘closed’ but not really unpassable. And there’s definetly a difference!!

Anyhow. We got right up to the lake and found that, yup, sure enough the lake was over the road. So, we took some back roads around that section, and popped out farther down it… and drove untill we found that it was, once again, flooded over. But, other cars drove through it peachy fine… so we did too!! It was pretty crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever driven through so much water, and certainly not in such a little car (2002 Honda Civic LX))!!

It was pretty exciting – a bit of an adventure, thats for sure. I’m not sure I can ever remember the lake being so high. I assume it has been at least as high before, but not in a long time, and certainly not this early in the year. You expect flooding later on, but not so early. Certainly makes me worried for the rest of the year. If this kind of weather keeps up, well, the lake will become truly impassable, that’s for sure!!

It’s been a while

So, its been a little while since I posted last. Andros’s birthday party was cancelled unforuantly due to the monstrous storm last weekend, and while we initially thought we’d still have a party we’ve decided not to in the end because it’d just be kind of silly – easter’s next weekend so we’ll see most of Kevin’s family then, and most of mine we see fairly frequently anyhow. We had a fun day anyhow – lots of snow, playing with toys and coconut cake with cream cheese icing. Its pretty crazy to think that he’s really one year old already. Over the past week (starting like 1 or 2 days before his birthday), he’s been really learning to walk, and he’s gotten pretty good at it now. Walking across teh room from one thing to another is ‘old hat’ now!

Andros has been sick for the past few days, which has’t been fun, though he is finally getting better. He had a fever and a really runny nose and horrible cough for a couple days last week, but its mostly cleared up now.

My lifeguarding class is going well, starting week three now. On wednesday we start backboarding which is the really big important part of the class as far as I can tell. From the sounds of it we might actually get done a week or so early, which would be awesome… but we’ll see.

Lifeguarding

Today I had my first lifeguarding class. It was a long, but interesting class. The first half was all classroom work, which was basicly going through the book and reading brief passages and being told to study this or that, and what our homework was (of which there is lots!!). Kind of a wierd way to ‘teach’ but I suppose it works OK. The second half, was all swimming. Lots, and lots of swimming. I’m definetly going to be getting into shape, of that I have no doubt. I’m not sure how many laps we did but it was at least 20 or so.

I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast this morning, which turned out very good. I suspect cooking breakfast is going to become fairly standard for me over the next several weeks, at least once or twice a week. That and early dinners.

For dinner I made “wendy’s chili” – which is of course just american chili made in the same style as Wendy’s. It turned out very good, as usual. Tomorrow will inevitably be Kevin’s “Irish Nacho” creation, which is just french fries with chili & other nacho toppings (cheese, jalapenos, onions, etc) on top.

Life & Politics

Yesterday we finally got up to Canton to see my Grandma, who broke her left leg last weekend. She was in the hospital down in Columbus till Thursday when she was transferred up to a rehab center in Canton. She looked OK, but was pretty out of it when we saw her. Personally, I think its the drugs for pain that she’s on that are making her a little loopy.

Anyhow, when we came home I made Braised Lentils Moroccan Style, which turned out very good. I’m having so much fun cooking totally new things lately, its amazing. I haven’t made the same thing twice in weeks, and there’s still a lot of recipes I really want to try. As I cook more and more from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, I like it more and more. The recipes are good, easy, and mostly pretty quick.

On the political front, Clinton’s campaign just keeps getting slimier and slimier. First there were the “3am” commercials, which were far more fear-mongering and rovian than anything that Obama has ever put out. And now there’s talk that she’s trying to play dirty in Texas’ carcases? It’s really pretty sad that she’s ready & willing to do literally anything to win, even if it means breaking the rules and cheating to do it.