Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New Beginnings


Blooms to come!

Monday, January 19, 2009

New Dinner

Here's a new recipe I created tonight:

Baked Apple Salad for 1

1 baking apple (center cored out)
1/4 cup apple granola (Trader Joe's)
1/4 cup cut up cheddar cheese
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t demura (sp?) sugar
2 cups lettuce
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 t EVOO
1/4 t cinnamon

Mix up the granola, cheese, cinnamon and sugar and stuff into the apple. Put the apple in a glass baking dish and add 1/4 cup water. Bake in a 350 oven for 30 minutes until tender (more for firmer apples). In the meanwhile, wash the lettuce. Mix the last 3 ingredients well. When the apple is done, cut up into pieces and add to the lettuce. Top with dressing. It was quite good. Salty, sweet, savory. Winter salad.

Wicked Cool

I just hooked up my new wireless printer and tried it out. It's awesome. I can now print from anywhere in my house. How cool is that. Now if only I had a pool boy to bring me my print outs, I'd be all set. Do you think I could train a dog to do it??

Snow For Sale!

I have snow for sale here. Get it cheap while it lasts. I have no where else to put it, so am happy to ship it to you.

I admit to being incredibly jealous of those of you who have temperatures over 50 degrees F. It's cold here and more snow. We are well above average snow fall this year, but somehow are not keeping pace with last year. Though it seems to me like we are ahead. I'm done for the year.

In our last cold snatch, we unfortunately lost power for 4 hrs in the middle of the night. I was surprised when I woke up to find it 46 degrees downstairs. Hmmm... something was wrong with this picture. Called some folks. The heater guy came and concluded that there was nothing he could do with the plastic piping in the heating system frozen! Frozen pipes. This is new to me. At least it wasn't a frozen sewer line - I hear that this happened. So turns out the remedy is just to heat up the house as much as possible. Glad I had two space heaters. They helped on the main floor and I used a hair dryer in the basement to heat the exact location that was the problem. I had things flowing within about 4 hrs of realizing the problem. My neighbors - we share a duplex - on the other hand needed 10 hrs to get one zone working and 3 days for the other!!! Yipes.

Sunny beaches are sounding really good right now!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Being the Best

When I was visiting my family, I observed an interesting exchange between my dad and stepsister. She was saying that she didn't really care if the US was number 1 in the world when she was a grown up and my dad was noting that this is a common thought with the folks that are about 10 years behind me in age. I think I agree but I think that this negativity (or perhaps more precisely this not wanting to be the best or not searching for the best solutions) is a huge problem right now! And not just with a particular age group. Not sure what is causing it, but I have experienced twice since this time someone not seeking to be the best they can be. The most recent happened in a meeting today when someone who is doing some planning for our department said that he couldn't come up with a perfect solution. If you begin a process by thinking that, isn't your outcome just going to be mediocre? The other was with someone looking to change jobs and instead of trying to be the best, he was just trying to fit a perceived limitation instead of what he said he ultimately envisioned.

This goes back to another conversation that I had with my dad about goal setting. He tells a story similar to this in a class that he teaches and I'm debating including it in my class in the future. The story goes something like this. In the Business School at Harvard, there was a survey done years ago about the goal setting of the students. It was determined that out of the class of ~450, there were 15 students that were considered to be goal setters. All of the students were followed after graduation and in the subsequent years the salary of the goal setter fraction (15/450 or 1/30, which is ~3%) was compared to the remaining 435. It was found that the goal setters as a group earned more than the other 97%! This was surprising to me. But I forget that there are people out there who are not goal setters like myself.

My opinion: Set out to be the best, it just might happen! If you set goals, it's probably more likely to happen.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Recently

I've been busy. There have been lots of things on my plate. I enjoyed a trip home. Since I've been back, I have done lots of projects. One of the first things I did was to water my plants and trim those that needed it. I have a violet that is just about ready to bloom and the fushia one is still in full bloom.
I also went to the local outdoor sports store and bought some heavy socks. From left to right, I got a pair of wicking socks, an awesome pair of Smart Wool socks and some grey fleece socks. My feet are no longer cold. I think I need to get another few pairs of the fleece ones. These are definitely a good thing!
Over this past weekend, I took one day off and enjoyed an afternoon at the art museum. I also enjoyed a great Thai meal. I worked on Sunday and that night when I got home at 9 pm, I decided it was time to paint my kitchen. If you'd seen the previous speckled blue paint job that was stained from one too many exploded sodas or other kitchen disasters, it's all gone! It's now white. I was using up a leftover can of white paint, but I ended up needing to get a second can. Too bad Home Depot isn't open at 11 pm on Sunday night. I finished the job tonight. Now I just need to reinstall the pot rack and hang up some new decorations. I'm very pleased with my adventure in painting. It was fun to have an outlet since work has been and will be crazy for the near future.