Archive | August 2009

There was squash. There is always squash.

I am in love with Ecto. It’s making my posts so much easier. So I managed to successfully publish the wedding post using Ecto and I think I’ve figured it out. Anyway, I figured I’d do a little recap of the last few days minus the wedding because I haven’t been posting very regularly and I have some pictures.

Let’s see…

There were runs Thursday:

Why is that pink??

Friday:

Saturday:

The Bow is creepin’

and a lonnnng one on Sunday (today):

That last one was the best! The weather was perfect and I had just woken up from an hour and a half nap… I think I’m fully rested now.

Okay time to backtrack…

Thursday, friend Sarah texted and said she was downtown eating lunch by my building. I stopped over and said hello (and forced them to be blogged):

Nothing at work was memorable… After work I stopped at the farmer’s market and got all of this for like $4! Three acorn squash for $1! I was so excited. Oh the grape tomatoes and two jalepenos are from my porch plants. They are in the picture too. I know this because Ecto is amazing and I can actually see the pictures rather than just the HTML. I guess you can do that in WordPress too but I always had problems with it.

I ate one of the acorn squash for dinner that night:

Cut in half, scoop out seeds, microwave upside down in 1/2 inch water for about 8 minutes. Scoop out the inside, sprinkle with cinnamon and peanut butter and enjoy. Seriously try it with peanut butter and cinnamon. It’s AMAZING.

Work Friday went really well! I made a list in the morning of the things that I needed to accomplish and actually got everything done! I love days like that. It went quickly and then I came home and took a nap for about an hour. It wasn’t really a nap. It was more like … dozing. I think that would be the appropriate word. I woke up, showered and then started making enchiladas for a late dinner. They turned out pretty well. I kind of didn’t follow the recipe at all but I’ll post a link to it anyway. I also made basmati/wild rice with a whole bunch of random spices thrown in. That’s how I roll in the cooking department. Baking is another story entirely. I seriously want a scale so that I can be more accurate with my measurements.

Anyway, Friend who will continue to remain unnamed came over around 9:30 and we ate. I think he liked meatless meal #3. We then proceeded to sit around and talk for hours and I went to bed LATE. Good conversation though. Recipe here.

Saturday I was hoping to sleep in because I didn’t go to bed until around 4 AM Friday. I think I woke up around 10 so that wasn’t too bad. I can’t remember what I did in the morning. Hm. I did make eggs for lunch though.

1/4 of a big onion
like 3 cups of spinach
egg whites
salsa on top

As I was cooking the eggs, Sarah called and said she was in the neighborhood so she stopped by to show me her new tattoo! We chatted for a bit and then she left and I got ready for the wedding. The wedding was Saturday night so check out that post for the rest of my Saturday.

Hmmm. I don’t remember exactly what time I went to bed last night. I think it was around midnight. I woke up this morning around 9, got dressed and headed to church. I ate a Larabar on the way. They are so ridiculously good. I definitely like the peanut butter cookie flavor better than this one but this one was good also. I like these bars so much because the ingredient lists are so short. This one has dates, almonds & unsweetened cherries. That’s IT! Amazing.

In church they discussed materialism. I definitely have a lot of stuff. I definitely continue to get more stuff. I don’t need so much stuff! I definitely don’t want to rely on my stuff to make me happy. I need to continue to remember that. Sorry for the small, little tangent. I was just thinking about it a lot today.

After church, my plans were kind of up in the air. I wanted to run but I was hungry. I wanted to grocery shop but I was lazy. I ended up just embracing Sunday and taking a nap. ha. It was such a good nap though. I can’t stay up late like I used to. Oh mid-twenties!

I eventually did wake up and run. Oh it was the best run ever. I was planning on doing about 5 miles but ended up doing 7! I stopped at two water fountains, one of which was the one inside Giant Eagle. Funny. Soo I think my mileage for the week is somewhere around 22 miles! Wooo!

I mentioned to Andy yesterday that I think I’ve burned off my taste buds or something because nothing tastes good to me unless the flavors are really strong. Let’s blame it on the Sriracha:

Okay it’s almost 9 now. I’ve got a few things to do then into bed to read and write!

Goodnight!

But will there be berries??

Aug30

Good Afternoon All!

Happy Sunday! Sooo I downloaded Ecto today. I really have no idea what I’m doing but it seems to be great for those (like me) who don’t have the internet. Basically it’s on offline blog editor that uploads directly to your blog host when you are connected to the internet. It should make my blogging MUCH quicker which will be awesome.

So yesterday (Saturday) I went to a wedding with Andy at Sand Hill Berries. Sand Hill Berries is a berry farm and winery in Westmoreland County(?). It’s about an hour away from Pittsburgh.

I took some pictures as we were approaching the farm. I love farms. I also love being able to now bold text. Oh Ecto you’re going to be awesome I think.

Andy driving:

Almost to the farm:

I like to take pictures of myself:

I was wearing heels but packed my flip flops in my purse because according to their wedding blog, they recommended wearing comfortable shoes. Yeah well we had to walk along a gravel path for a while to get to the ceremony site so I did change into flip flops. Look how beautiful the ceremony location was:

The couple:

The ceremony was pretty short. For music, they had a guy playing an acoustic guitar. I think the procession song was a Beatles song. I can’t remember…

After the ceremony, we all trekked back to the winery area and found a sheep! I made Andy take a picture with the sheep.

And me with the sheep:

I feel like I should censor that picture. Oh well.

After the ceremony, we had hor d’oeuvres and drinks. I had a glass of really sweet white wine and a few chips from Andy’s plate:

I don’t remember why I took this picture exactly. I actually took three though for some odd reason. Ah well, close up of Andy for you:

After cocktail hour, we wandered up to the reception tent. Please note the guest bathroom tent to the left of the big tent. Yes, there was a porta-pottie in there.

Up by the tent, we found a llama!

And a mini-pony!

We found our table. I was guest because Andy never gave them my name! RSVP procrastinator! I’m one of those people that RSVP’s right away. Mr. Mulkerin is not.

Look how lovely:

They had a good selection of beer though I didn’t have any. Andy had a couple of these:

Supporting Pittsburgh breweries.

We had an interesting bunch of table-mates and it was a good time. Finally food time! My plate included salad that was delicious but I found walnuts in it(!) so I was scared to eat it. There are green beans back there too + potatoes and pasta salad. There were also three different meats to choose from for the meat-eaters. Interestingly, 3 of the 8 people at our table were vegetarians.

After eating, they did all of the dances and they played some good music (Neko Case, The Postal Service, Vampire Weekend, JOHN MAYER… etc.). Just a sidenote here: There will be good music at my wedding. I want to have bands play. I mean I have a bunch of friends in bands. Perhaps I will solicit them to play. I wonder how my family will take to that. Funny.

Anyway, the whole day I was looking forward to wedding cake. Once we got up to the tent, I was searching for the cake but couldn’t find it! No! I was concerned. So we ate dinner and there was a giant table of cookies and I was about to resign myself to eating a cookie instead of cake when we saw someone handing out cheesecake!!! Oh glorious turn of events. I ate about half of this. Cheesecake is so rich but delicious.

After cheesecake, we hung out for a bit and watched people dancing and talking and then left around 10:30. We didn’t end up slow dancing 8th grade style because the dance floor was tiny and they really only played like one slow song. Oh well. Next wedding that I attend, I’ll do some dancin’.

It was a really nice wedding and the weather turned out to be perfect!

Balance. A post that’s heavy on the text.

Aug26

Hmm. I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately.

As I get older (quickly hurdling past the quarter century mark), I realize how important balance is to my life. I need to balance work, friends, exercise, healthy eating, faith, reading, writing, learning, etc. etc. Now my life isn’t nearly as busy as some but I still feel like I’m missing out on things. I definitely focus a lot on exercise and healthy eating and sleeping habits. I also do my fair share of socialization though for some reason, I always feel like I need to be doing more of that.

IT’S OKAY TO SPEND TIME ALONE Pamela. I’m sure I’ll more than make up for it later in life.

I spend a good amount of time alone. Even when I was in a relationship, (I’m not in case you’re wondering what with all of these boyz showing up in the blog..), I spent a good deal of time alone. I think it’s very important to be able to rely on yourself for almost everything. Of course social interaction is important and relationships are important but not ALL important. At some point in my life, I guess I’ll grow to be more dependent on someone but right now, I kind of pride myself on being independent and self-reliant. It’s good. I know that I can support myself and live independently.

Anyway, back to the point about things that I’d like to focus on more. I want to focus on new hobbies and meeting new people. Now for those of you who know me well, you know that over the last few months I have been meeting new people and doing different things and that’s good and will likely continue but I’m talking hobbies. Normal hobbies like biking and reading and crafting(?) or something like that.

I want to take up knitting. I’ve been wanting to do that for a LONG time and just never have so very soon I will be purchasing knitting supplies! A fellow blogger, Book a Week Geek, is a big time knitter so perhaps if I get stuck in my self-teaching I’ll ask her for some help. I think this will be a good hobby and it will supply me with winter necessities like mittens (which I love) and homemade gifts for friends!

I would also like to start volunteering my time to something or someone. I haven’t thought about this enough yet but really need to actually make it happen rather than just talk about it. I know that a few of the True Spies were discussing doing a monthly volunteering project but that never got off the ground. We should work on that.

And now a little selfish rant — I should probably try to open myself up to the idea of another relationship (read: boyfriend). I want to be independent and self-reliant but I also want someone to hang out with! Come on. That’s a reasonable request especially due to my lack of family around here and the holidays are coming!

That little paragraph doesn’t sound so independent. We all like a little companionship, yes?

Mmmhm.

Tangents GALORE in this lil’ post.

I guess the point to which I’ve very slowly and indirectly made my way is — It’s good to actually think about what is important to you and what makes you happy and make time to do those things.

BALANCE! It’s a good thing.

And now a quote from this guy:

There is no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.
–Frank Herbert

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