Serious weekending--Weekly total

Whew! We've had a busier weekend than any in a long time. Three separate events on Saturday night alone which we were invited to (I chose two, Shane chose one, and we left the other out entirely because it was going on all weekend so there were other events to go to) with many friends driving or flying up from Anchorage for the different things. I won't go into details about everything (how do you describe all of it?) but it was fun. Usually Sundays are my day to relax, get housework done, and generally gear up for the week. Not yesterday. I started the day by making a big breakfast for five guys, over to play games. (Zucchini pancakes for the win!) We actually went out to dinner, a send-off for a friend who ended up missing his flight back to Anchorage. And I was almost late for my first rehearsal for "The Music Man".
Next weekend won't be any easier, and all I can tell myself is that this is only a taste of the business that summer will bring so I'd better get used to it. It's almost a good thing that our winter is so drawn-out at the end, because I end up needing all of that time to get ready!
For this week's total: I don't have one. I'm guessing about $100, but I honestly don't know. Shane won't tell me how much he spent on the stuff for Valentine's Day, so I'm guessing based on what he bought and what I spent. Totally worth it. Most of my amount was toiletries, rather than food, but it was still a big month for spending money. And the next one will probably be just as big, with our birthdays coming up.
One final happiness, however: basil sprouts!

I hate sitting still, a.k.a. How not to go crazy at work

If you're like me, you've been dreaming about Friday afternoon since you opened your eyes on Monday morning. It's not because my job is so onerous or difficult (maybe a little boring), it's because I work a desk job. And I really, really, really can't stand sitting still. I've never been able to. Now, as far as I know I don't have ADD or anything like that. It's not the concentration part I have trouble with, it's just that I don't like to be sitting still. Even when I'm sitting and doing something active (like playing in the Symphony) I have a foot tapping. I need to fidget, and I need to be active.
So having a desk job is possibly one of the worst things I could have done to myself. It's a special kind of torture we people have invented for ourselves, and many studies and articles have shown that it's not good for you to sit all day. (There are four different links in that sentence.) I do get to do some things which don't chain me to my desk, but they're few and far between. Summer things, mostly. Or once per week tasks. So how do I keep myself from going crazy every day? I have a few tips for others like myself.
The first is making reasons for myself to stand up frequently. We have a coffee pot at work which I use to make tea in the morning. This serves a dual purpose since I not only get up to fix my cup of tea, but I then have to pee a whole lot. :) (And it helps warm me up when it's cold out, and it ensures that I get enough liquid...ok, so maybe more than a dual purpose.) Even just the short break to stretch out my legs is helpful. If you don't like tea or coffee, just go get yourself some plain water. But be sure to get up frequently, and make reasons if you have to.
Next, I go to the bathroom at the far end of my building. There's one right next to my office, but that doesn't give me much of a chance to move. The other one isn't so far away that anyone would notice me taking an extra long bathroom break or anything, but it's definitely more of a break from the sitting.
Once I'm in the bathroom, provided it's empty, I do a few simple exercises. My favorites are easy to do while I'm washing my hands. The first: I lift my leg out to the side, fairly high to work my obliques a little bit. I do fifteen reps on each side. (This also gives my hands a little chance to dry, since I've stopped using paper towels at work.) Then I do a sort of mini squat. Legs together, I just bend my knees a little bit, doing another 15 reps of this. It doesn't take long at all for these moves but it helps me a lot.
Even if you don't take a lunch, everyone gets 15 minute breaks. Use them! I take one of mine to go for a short walk after eating (which I do at my desk, since I don't take an actual lunch). It helps me digest, gets me out in the daylight for a few minutes, and gets me moving. Rain, shine, snow, -50, whatever. I always get out for at least a short walk. If you take an actual lunch hour, how hard would it be to spend 15-20 minutes of that walking or jogging? Especially if you pack a lunch, rather than going out to eat.
The final piece of advice: sit on anything except a chair. It's too easy to slump over in a chair, no matter how ergonomic it is, and it's bad for you. After just a few months of working at my job I would go home every day with my back hurting. The very day I switched to sitting on an exercise ball instead, my back stopped hurting. I've never since gone home with my back hurting from sitting. Of course, the ball also provides a way for me to fidget. I don't know how much of a core workout I'm getting, but I certainly have new ways to move around. Mostly I bounce, but sometimes I'll sway side to side or front to back. I've read many articles saying that switching to a ball can help you lose weight. Well, I don't know about the losing part, but I definitely stopped gaining weight after I made the switch.
One note about the ball, though. Be prepared for odd looks from your coworkers, questions, and if you work in a public area like I do, stupid comments and jokes. (And I do mean stupid.) Even people peering over my desk to see why I'm bouncing is very common. In fact, I think I've only had a couple of days go by without a single person mentioning it or asking about it. So be prepared.
Sometime soon, I want to ask about getting a standing desk instead. I'm sure the surplus department has at least one, and an appropriate chair in case I do need to sit. This is something Shane has been urging me to do for a long time, but it's never been the "right" time to ask my boss. Moving the furniture would disrupt operations in my office for at least a few hours. So I'll probably ask this summer, when things are quiet.

Less-consumer Valentine's Day/Pseudoversary

I say our celebration was "less-consumer" because we did, in fact, buy special things for our meal. It was also the celebration of our "pseudoversary" (our anniversary is our wedding day, so the marker of when we started dating is our pseudoversary) marking 5 years of togetherness. Shane complained, as he does every year, "Why do girls make such a big thing over how much time you've been together?" I replied, "Five years, Shane. How many relationships do you know that have made it to five years?" He thought for a second and nodded his head, because it's true. Even among our married friends (and my one married sibling) a lot of their relationships haven't made it to five years. Some of the older people we know (like family friends and relatives) who've made it beyond the five year mark are suddenly breaking up and divorcing right and left it seems. So while the concept of "Valentine's Day"--a day marketed as being all about you and your love, but which really just guilts you into thinking you need to buy something for someone else--escapes me, marking the time we've been together is important. It's not just about the time, it's about the quality of that time, how much we've changed together and done for each other, and how much we still love each other.
So what did we do? Well. Because I had Symphony rehearsal on Valentine's Day (which I couldn't miss because we video recorded the national anthem and the Alaska Flag Song for the upcoming Governor's Cup hockey games!) it ended up being more like a half week of celebration. On Monday night, I made cookies. Not just any cookies. Apricot cookies with a lemon glaze. They're out of the "Indulgence Cookies" cookbook, if you care to try them. Which you should, because they're amazing. (The book also has some of the best maple cookies I've ever tried. It's worth getting. Or borrowing, if you live near me.) They're rich and buttery and I don't make them that often, so when I do they're a giant hit. I had them in the fridge cooling and at one point I saw Shane casually going into the kitchen so I yelled, "Don't eat the cookie dough!" And of course he said, "What? I would never!" around a mouthful of dough. (If you're concerned about salmonella--which I'm not, particularly--these cookies don't have eggs in them.)
Since Shane was planning to make more than one item for our Wednesday dinner, I figured that we'd be too stuffed to want dessert anyway, so making it early was a good choice.
He absolutely would not tell me what he had planned for dinner, or let me see the preparations. Since he also warned me, "I've never made any of this before," it could have been any number of things. He asked me later what I'd thought we were having and I said that I didn't even try to guess. Then we bickered about whether or not there were infinite possibilities that it could have been. (I won with the argument, "There might be infinite combinations of food items, but there are not infinite combinations of things you'd actually serve to me." And then we came up with as gross a menu as we could think of.) Since I wanted to hang out with him while he cooked, I ended up turning on "The Princess Bride" in the living room so that we could watch it "together". Toward the end, though, Shane made me pause it and go back to the bedroom to read while he finished getting dinner ready.
About ten minutes later he came back to put on a nice shirt, then cover my eyes as he led me out to the living room. He sat me down and when I opened my eyes, he'd lit a bunch of candles around the room so it was lovely. He had music playing (he made a Pandora playlist based off the song we danced to at our wedding) and on my plate were shrimp fettucini alfredo, chicken bruschetta, and garlic toast. There was a bottle of chianti. (We don't usually have wine with dinner, but we did pretty much every night in Italy.) On the computer he had the slideshow of our honeymoon pictures going. He recreated a little bit of Italy for me. <3 At one point I looked over and said, "Well, it's almost like we're eating by the Colosseum again."
It was a lovely evening, and the perfect way to celebrate a pseudoversary. I showed part of my thanks by doing a load of dishes for him. :) I hope everyone else's V-Day plans turned out just as lovely.

More on women's rights, and why I'm angry

I read this article earlier today about a law in Virginia (as yet unsigned by the governor, but that same governor has promised to sign it) that would mandate a non-medically necessary probe of a woman's vagina when she seeks an abortion. The absurd-but-in-no-way-funny part is that the people who signed this into law are the ones most likely to claim that they have "morality" on their side. After all, they're defending the Rights of the Unborn! Protectors of Children and all that is Godly! But the truth is, they're mandating the rape of a woman by medical instrument. They're going to force good and honest doctors who want to help their patients to go against the Hippocratic oath. You can't even treat your dog this bad. And yet, somehow, in the minds of these people it's perfectly fine and even justified to treat women this way.
And that gets to the heart of the matter for me. There are people who are actually trying to treat women as less than human. They're trying to undercut, undermine, and just plain roll back basic protections and human rights for women under the guise of "morality" and "family values". Does the family no longer include the woman? I'm confused. Perhaps this is their sneaky way of saying that gay couples are actually better?
Are these really the types of values we want our children growing up with? Because it kind of sounds more like the Taliban is trying to take over the U.S. government. I don't know about you, but I want all the children near and dear to me to grow up with "moral" figures who actually are moral, who walk and talk and preach exactly the values they truly believe in. (As in, if you're going to claim to be Christian then you need to actually do the things Jesus said to do: love others as much as you love yourself, be kind to the poor and care for the needy....) Maybe I was under the mistaken impression that "morality" is about more than just "what I believe is always right so any measures I take to force my views on you are also right". But that's what a lot of our political (especially on the conservative end) discussion has devolved into. It doesn't have anything to do with morality, but claiming that your beliefs are more moral does seem to work for some people.
This really is a war on women's rights. Topeka, Kansas, said for a while that it would not prosecute domestic violence because it, apparently, wasn't in their budget. (I'm betting that prosecuting minor drug crimes was in their budget, but not basic protections against abusers.) After much outcry, they reversed the proposal (warning, that article has a stupidly loud ad that you can't get rid of), but not until after some women had been turned away. Considering that most domestic violence is never reported, those women represent just a small number of the abusers in that city. The bravery they showed in stepping forward, in trying to escape their situations, will never be heralded. But it is a brave act. I hope they got the needed help, and that their abusers are appropriately punished.
I get so mad at the rhetoric saying we're the "greatest country on Earth". Actually being the greatest country would require more than saying that we are. It would take work and effort that our politicians seem unwilling to understand or to put in. Because, you know, no one gets into politics to actually work and solve problems, right? You get into politics because it's prestigious and there's lots of money to be made. And as long as you can keep telling everyone that we're the greatest nation on Earth, they'll eat it up and reelect you whether or not it's true, and despite the fact that you've done nothing to make it the truth. And never mind the fact that you're trying to treat women worse than some third world countries do, and to violate international human rights. You have Morality!
If it was one isolated incident or just one state government that was trying to limit women's rights, that in itself would be worrying but minor enough that I could merely shake my head and bemoan people's stupidity. The fact that there are at least five different states that are attacking women's rights on multiple fronts, as well as the federal government, and all of the Republican candidates, and religious institutions. (Just check how many different links are in that sentence. It's staggering what roughly two minutes of internet searching will turn up.) And now it's not even just abortion, it's contraception too. (I should point out here that it's not all Republicans who are stupid when it comes to women's rights.) In a country where almost everyone uses, has used, or will use contraception at some point in their lives (including 98% of Catholic women) it's an absurd thing for a major political figure to try to stir up controversy about. It's downright baffling in its stupidity. And it's dangerous. Contraception is one of the biggest innovations in the field of women's health in all of history. The fact that women can limit their pregnancies, can avoid unwanted pregnancies if they have a known condition for which preganancy is potentially life-threatening, and can space out their pregnancies alone are good reasons to keep it. The fact that women and even children are healthier because of access to contraception doesn't seem to have any bearing on the political discourse, however.
Beyond the health issues, anyone interested in actually helping or preventing more children being born into poverty should be interested in providing free birth control. It's not only good for the parents to not have so many children, but it's good for the children too since most children born into poverty will never escape it. However, I often find that it's the people who are most rabidly against government supports, "big government" and abortion who are the ones most prone to making statements about how "poor people should all be sterilized". Apparently the exception to that is if someone comes up with a policy which is effective at preventing pregnancy. Do they realize that they're being inconsistent? (Probably not.)
Anyone who thinks that they want to limit or ban abortions because of women's health is deluding themselves. In places where abortion is outlawed, you get situations where women throw themselves down stairs, or use coat hangers. You also get situations where abortion by violence becomes the norm for getting out of an unwanted pregnancy, such as in England in the middle ages. (Please also note that the modern Catholic sentiment that "all abortion is Evil" doesn't fit with their historical mantra. It used to be believed that a child didn't develop a soul until the "quickening", or the first discernible fetal movement. Any attempt to limit or get rid of a fetus before that time was totally legit in the eyes of the church. Why the turnaround?)
I demand to be treated with the same rights and privileges that any human being should be endowed with. I'm saying right here and right now that I have more rights than a fetus. I have the right to make decisions for myself about what is best for my body, myself, and my family. I will not be treated like a second class citizen because I'm endowed with a vagina. I refuse to be treated like an animal in matters of reproductivity, or to let someone else dictate my choices. I refuse to let myself be treated like I'm incapable of making "the right" choices. I'm an intelligent, rational person and it's time my government started treating me like one.

Living Alaskan

Last night as I walked to Symphony rehearsal, I saw a moose. Don't worry! It was decently far away, and no threat. But it was a reminder that I live in a place unlike any other. After all, how many other parts of the U.S., or even the world, can claim that very large wildlife are a regular part of day to day life?
My standpartner and I have decided that someone needs to video record our rehearsals and put together a "best of" video for our conductor. He's amazing. The faces he makes, the things he says, all of it. Last night he was telling us how a phrase should be played and it went something like this: "It's pum-pa-ta-PUM-PUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. Not, PUM-pa-ta-pum-pum, DA-dum, DA-dum. It's lovely that way, but it's not how Beethoven heard it." I started giggling. (Get it? Because Beethoven was deaf, and couldn't hear anything, so it's funny....) If I sound like I'm mocking Dr. Zilberkant, I'm really not. It's fabulous to have a conductor who's so passionate about the music. You want to work hard for him.
On the way home, the Northern Lights had just come out. Big green ribbons across the sky, shifting and moving gently. I actually get to see the Lights so rarely because they seem to either come out when it's super cold and I don't want to be outside longer than I have to, or they pop out in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping. So it really is a treat when I get to see them. Shane doesn't care, unless they're moving rapidly or there's more than one color. (Green is the most usual, with purple being next in my experience. But you can also get blues and reds and maybe even some yellow?) When they're dancing, there's nothing else like it that you'll ever see. (The video I linked to is time-lapse, but sometimes I've seen the Lights moving and dancing about that fast. They shift across the sky in swirls and bands and ribbons and you stand there with your mouth hanging open, trying to take it all in at once. It's breathtaking.) Last night, I scurried to get to a place without so many streetlights for better viewing. They were not nearly the best I've seen, but still magnificent. After all, this is one of those things that not many other people in the world can claim to have seen firsthand. I thought about rushing home to try to take a picture, but decided to enjoy them while I could. It was a good decision, since they were almost gone by the time I got home.
This morning, I didn't have to be at work until an hour after my usual time. By the time my alarm went off this morning, it was already starting to get light outside. This is the first time I've woken up to light on any but a weekend morning since the dark season started, and it was a lovely way to wake up. Now, with the return of light, is when people start thinking, "Spring is right around the corner! And then, summer...." It's a tantalizing, seductive thought, and it's false. February does this to us every year. We leave the darkness and the cold of January behind for the relative warmth and light of the start of February. (It's been about 20 to 30 above, rather than 50 below.) But I know, I just know, that sometime soon the temperature will drop again and we'll be back down to -30 or even -40. It's like the weather plays with us, toys with our emotions. It's hard to know which is worse, the almost absolute darkness and the cold around the solstice, or the temperature drop after the first taste of spring. Those are the two times of year when people here are just grumpy constantly. So every day I remind myself: this warmth will not last. Don't get used to it.

Weekend fare--Piroshke

I know I've mentioned piroshke before, but they're so amazing that I have to talk about them again. Piroshke is what Shane calls "Russian Hot Pockets". In the tradition of pretty much every country ever, where portable food ends up being a necessity for somebody (think: sandwiches, Irish pasties, Italian stromboli, things of that sort) a piroshke is simply bread wrapped around a filling and cooked. They're delicious, versatile, and perfect for when you know you'll have a busy week and want to prepare something super easy to grab on your way out the door.
I say they're weekend fare because it does take some time to make them. At least, if you're going to do them right it does. (You could buy pre-made bread dough, but that defeats the purpose of cooking at home I think.) I was actually taught how to make these by a Russian, so they're as authentic as they can be.
Basically, you have two parts. There's the bread dough, and the filling. The filling can be whatever you want it to be, so how you make the bread depends entirely on what you want to fill it with since they can be either sweet or savory. For meals I usually do a moose/onion mix and a cabbage/carrot mix. You can also do mashed potato filling (for a starch and carb overload), and I was thinking of trying a broccoli/cheddar mix sometime. (If you try it before me, let me know how it turns out.) I've only once made a sweet dessert-like piroshke, but there's a reason for that. It turns out that homemade blueberry pie filling/cream cheese makes a dangerously delicious combination.
Make bread dough like usual, either plain white or half wheat/half white works well. (Don't do sourdoughs. They wouldn't taste right.) You can make as much or as little bread dough as you want. For the two of us to eat a few meals of these I find that two cups of liquid makes the right amount, although that would probably only feed a family of four for one meal with a few leftover.
If you're making a sweet piroshke, up the sugar content to make the dough sweet.
Set the dough out to rise. When it's almost risen, start preparing your filling(s). This last time I did half a cabbage with one grated carrot, cooked until the cabbage was tender but not mushy, with just a bit of salt for flavoring. Since Shane hates cabbage, the other filling was a pound of ground moose meat with 3/4 of an onion (leftover from something else) chopped small. I sweated the onion first, then added the meat to brown. Play around with seasonings. I did salt, pepper, garlic powder, and two dashes of allspice. (It's really yummy dipped in barbecue sauce.) But I've also thought that Worcestershire sauce would be a good addition (I'm trying that next time) and you can season it however you prefer.
When the bread is done rising and the filling is done cooking, then you have to put it all together. You'll need another pan or skillet for this. (We use an electric skillet, but one on the stove top would work just as well.) Pour some oil in and get it heating up. (Any oil works. I've used canola, peanut, and olive oils. All work well, all are tasty.) Don't fill up the oil as if you're frying chicken. Just a little bit is good. The dough will absorb it during the cooking process, so you'll need to add more periodically.
Grab a small ball of dough and pat it flat in your hands. (And I do mean flat--just be careful not to create holes.) I make them about the size of my palms, maybe a little larger. Since the bread has only risen once, it will rise again when it's cooked and the piroshke will end up much larger than you think they will. Making it the size of my palm at the start means they're almost as big as my hand when I'm done. Scoop a little bit of the filling out of your pot and into the dough. If you do it right (I rarely do) you can fold the dough around the filling like an envelope. An envelope filled with deliciousness. But the filling can be kind of tricky to work with, so usually I end up making amorphous blobs of bread and filling. If you end up with a hole in the dough, just patch it up with more dough. Two notes: one, keep your drink away from the filling process. I accidentally dumped some cabbage into my tea because I had it right there. Next: fill over a pot, like the pot you cooked the filling in. I kept forgetting and my dog feasted on dropped bits of moose meat. This is why we can't keep her out of the kitchen.
When the skillet and the oil are hot, drop the piroshke in there (gently) and brown on either side, then on the ends. It takes a little bit of time (and be careful not to get the skillet too hot--our electric one does well between 325^-350^) but most of the time you're not actively doing anything. I get the first few started and then make the rest while those are cooking. Sometimes the skillet gets too crowded and I can't add anymore, so it's helpful to either have a movie on or a book handy. (A book that you can get messy. :)
The piroshke is done when it's lightly browned on each side. Allow a few minutes to cool so you don't burn your tongue off, then feast. They're super easy to microwave later on (although, like a Hot Pocket, they will be lava-hot in the middle so eat warily) although they don't freeze as well as you'd hope. That's never mattered to us, since they go so quickly.
One final note: if you have a picky eater, or someone who doesn't like one of the fillings you're making (ahem...Shane...ahem) they're very hard to tell apart once they're done cooking. It helps to try to keep them in separate parts of the pan, but that doesn't always work, because if you're anything like me you'll lose track after a while. So you might just have to tell them to deal with it. Or, if you're super nice, you can offer to eat any that they mistake for a different kind.
Two-three of these make a thoroughly filling meal for an adult.

Seeds!!!!!

My seeds arrived! I'm so excited, can you tell? In fact, I already planted a few (basil) in another milk jug pot. When starting seeds, it's good to keep them warm. Some people put them on top of the fridge for that purpose. I think that the milk jug will be easier, though. I placed it in a spot on the table that gets plenty of sunlight, made certain it had enough water, and put the top back over it to get a little greenhouse effect going.
One project today is to start some of my seeds at work. I ripped out my old tomato plants a couple of weeks ago after they stopped producing. So into those pots I'm going to plant two peas and one bean plant (these plants will use different nutrients from the soil--plus, they fix nitrogen into it so the soil will be better for tomatoes or something next year). Of course, I want to get more large pots to plant more things in. And I need more tomato cages. But the Botanical Gardens are going to be taking their plants back in the next week or two so I'll have plenty of space.
The only seeds or starts left that I wanted to get were some strawberries and some sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are like regular potatoes because they don't actually have seeds, you need a little part of the root itself to start them. And I don't really trust the ones from the grocery store. (They're usually treated so that they don't sprout, so it would be hard to grow from them.) Strawberries take a year before they start producing, so it's best to buy small plants rather than seeds. We'll see what my budget says about how many I can get. I'm trying not to go over a total budget of $100 in materials for my garden this year and I still need to buy more dirt for planting. If I can find some large pots to upcycle as tomato planters, that would be awesome. Anyone have great ideas for free/recycled things to use as planters or cages?