First Day of the New Job and a Few Other Updates

So I started my new job today.  Margo texted me at around 9:30 to ask me how it was going.  When I finally saw her text at 12:30, I had two words for her: overwhelmed and overstimulated.  I don't think that I really appreciated until today what the reality might be of working with patients when they are at their absolute worst, psychiatrically speaking.  Fascinating, yes.  Also a touch exhausting.  Other things that left me a bit unsettled include the fact that I did not have a desk until 4:15 this afternoon, and I still do not have a computer or a phone.  It's going to be an interesting week, to say the least.  I can see, however, that I am going to be challenged and stretched in this job, which is something I am looking forward to.

I have a few other updates as well.  I called both of my parents tonight (just under the wire).  Dad is having surgery on 2/9 for his ongoing case of bladder cancer.  This is something that has been going on for years, so nothing to freak out about.  I do worry each time, however, because they put him under and he's no spring chicken (he just turned 71).  Other than that, we usually don't have a lot to talk about, but it's nice to just connect anyway.  Mom is enjoying college.  She's taking some really enjoyable classes this quarter and sounds like she's having fun.  We had a good talk about she didn't do a very good job of teaching us how to take care of ourselves.  Brought on by the fact that my half of a tooth (which should have been extracted 2.5 years ago) seems to have cracked further and needs some imminent attention.  And the additional revelation that it is a half of a tooth in the first place because I put off a root canal for more than a year.

I've also revised one of my goals.  I had identified a goal of visiting my friend Jenny, but am revising it to allow for buying her a plane ticket to visit me.  I gave her the choice and she would like to come here.  We're shooting for the summer.  I'm pretty excited about it, I have to say.  It will be fun to share this part of the world with her.  You can believe me when I say that you don't want pictures from work today, or of me talking on the phone with my parents, and least of all my broken tooth.  So I'll leave you with a picture of a scrapbook page that Jenny made of the two of us.  The pictures are old, but I think it's safe to say that this is how we both wish we looked now...

Cooking, Fishing, and one day (maybe) Cooking the results of Fishing

Hey, look at me go.  Two posts in the same week.  Which is proving to be a pretty stressful week.  I'm trying to wrap up everything in my old job before starting the new one next week.  It's proving to be exhausting, mostly in the emotional way.  I'm feeling pretty anxious and having a hard time sleeping.  And I haven't even started the new job yet.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the potential of the new job.  But the reality of the situation is that things are going to be pretty rough there for a good while after I start.  Lots of valid, and exciting, reasons for that, but still.

On to the goals update.  As I intimated in my last post, I tried a new recipe Sunday evening (#34).  We had picked up some pork sirloin roasts at Winco (can I just tell you how much I love the Winco bulk selection?) and I had no idea how to cook them without them turning out tough and dry, as they have very little internal fat.  I found nothing particularly useful on my usual go-to recipe site.  So, after a while of googling, I found this recipe.  Basically, if you don't want to see the actual recipe, it consists of coating the roast with rosemary and salt and pepper, browning it in a pan,

cooking some onions, carrots and celery,

adding red wine to the skillet,

plopping the roast on top of the vegetables and wine, and cooking it slowly at a very low temperature (225 degrees).  You are supposed to roast it to an internal temperature of 145 degrees.  This probably would have worked out better if I had placed the thermometer more appropriately.  Not that I put the thermometer anywhere inappropriate, just to clarify.  I made sure to insert the thermometer in the thickest part of the meat, but failed to put it in the center of the thickest part of the meat.  Important lesson.  Here's what it looked like before I did a little pan-frying to alleviate our fears of food poisoning:

While you're pan-frying your undercooked meat, you add additional red wine to the vegetables in original plan and cook for around 15 minutes, followed by pureeing in the blender.

Served it all with some cabbage fried in butter and called it good.  It was pretty good.  The meat was really tender and juicy, and the sauce was actually pretty delicious.  It turns out really tangy, which surprised me a little bit.  It's a good cooking technique for such a lean cut of meat, which I'll probably try again.  This time with correct thermometer placement.

In other news, I bought a fishing license this week (#70).  I ordered it Sunday evening and it came in the mail today.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Now I just have to get some fishing gear and find someone to go fishing with me.  Part of the motivation for getting it was that you get one free vehicle use permit for Fish and Wildlife lands.  So it will be useful for both fishing and birdwatching.  And maybe hiking.

I went to the gym on Monday(#4) and did the Wii Fit Plus today (#18).  I really worked out hard at the gym, which felt really good.  I was pretty sore the next day, but I love that feeling.  Bicep curls without pre or post stretching resulted in a pretty excruciating massage today, however (#45).  The main problems I've been having that got me into the medical massages in the first place have been related to my shoulders, so I had been taking it easy on the upper body exercise until this week.  I guess stretching probably has some benefits...

Whew, that was a lot of goals to update on.  It makes me tired just writing about it, although, to be fair, I was already pretty tired.  Two more days to get through this week.  I'm very much looking forward to plans for the weekend.  Ethiopian food and pie with some wonderful friends on Friday night, cocktails and appetizers with other friends on Saturday night, and seeing a movie (probably 127 Hours, despite my squeamishness) with one of my best friends on Sunday.  All low key and fun.  Now I just have to get to the weekend.

A New Park, A New Position and Other Updates

First, I would like to apologize for my inactivity in recent days.  It's been a busy and exhausting week.  I found out on the 14th that I was getting a new position for which I had recently interviewed, but was also informed that I would be transferring to the new position in two weeks, which is virtually unheard of at the government agency for which I work.  I am excited about the new position, but trying to figure out a transition plan for myself, the team I work on currently and all the patients on my caseload has been overwhelming in many ways.  The other complicating factor is that my supervisor was out of the office on leave until a week after I found out, and she had to rubber stamp any proposed transition plans.  After I had to tell her on her first day back from vacation that I was leaving in a week.  As you might imagine, it has been a challenging week, and this coming week promises to be at least as challenging.

The new position, for those of you who are interested in such things, is clinical social work on the inpatient psychiatry unit.  Still mental health, still social work, but in a different environment with a different acuity level.  Also much shorter term work with patients than I have ever done.  I think it will be a good change; still with a patient population with which I am familiar and comfortable, but utilizing different skills and in a different context.  Here's hoping it's at least not any worse than where I've been.

I also undertook the terribly anxiety-provoking task of returning a pair of shoes that I had worn once to Nordstrom Rack.  Now, I am not someone who returns purchases if there is any way around it.  But I had purchased a super cute pair of Keens that proceeded to rub my heels raw on the one occasion that I wore them.  When I tried to return them, I was informed that a manager would have to get involved since I had worn them the one time.  When the manager finally did appear, she did her very best to make me feel like dirt for wanting to return a pair of shoes that I had worn once.  She made it clear that she was doing me a real favor by allowing me to return the shoes.  The end result?  I got my money back and will never buy a pair of shoes there again, which means that I will never shop there again, since that's all that I've purchased there in the past.  I think it is absolutely ridiculous that you cannot return a pair of shoes after you've worn them ONCE.  It is virtually impossible to determine in ten minutes in the store whether a pair of shoes is going to work for you or not.  So, in the future I will only purchase shoes from a store that has a reasonable return policy.

In other news, Margo and I went to a new "park" yesterday (#41).  Technically, it's an "area" but I'm going to classify it as a park for the sake of my goals.  We drove an hour and half north to the Skagit Wildlife Area on the recommendation of a book that turns out to be less than reliable.  We are on our way to becoming amateur bird watchers, and the book suggested that we would find lots of migrating swans as well as raptors on the Fir Island Farm Reserve this time of year.  Our first sighting, just outside the Reserve, was this fellow:

This is the only thing I took a picture of, in spite of the fact that Margo had graciously packed my camera in addition to hers.  And I took this picture with her camera, not mine.  We actually saw quite a few great blue herons.  We've actually seen quite a lot of great blue herons since we moved to Washington.  Seeing them in flight is quite striking, and they always seem a bit prehistoric to me.  We saw a number of other birds in the Reserve, including bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, spotted towhees, sky larks, and a red-breasted merganzer.  We also saw a number of hunters, as the Reserve is open for public hunting from September 1 - March 15.  Fortunately, we did not get shot.

We saw not a single swan in the Reserve, although we did see a number of them in farm fields near the reserve.  My guess is that they were scared off of the reserve by all the gunfire.  Here you can see some of the swans that we saw.

We had a nice time walking around two different areas of the reserve and enjoyed the dry day very much (although we still ran into plenty of mud).  We ran into the same pair of socially awkward but enthusiastic bird watchers at both areas of the reserve.  They clearly know much more about birds than we do, as evidenced by their excitement about seeing a shrike (I wouldn't know one if it landed on my shoulder) and their lecture about the age at which bald eagles start to look like bald eagles (apparently around 3 years of age, depending on the nutrients available to them, but in Nova Scotia it is ALWAYS at 3 years of age).  Someday, maybe we will know enough to intimidate and impress younger, more inexperienced bird watchers.  We got quite a bit of exercise (#4) and were exhausted by the time we got home.  We also stopped at the Seattle Premiere Outlets on the way home and I purchased six pairs of new underwear (#95) at the Jockey outlet.  Now I can throw a number of other pairs in the garbage.

I'm going to try another recipe tonight, so I'll update you with the results later this week.  My goal is to have something else posted before next weekend, so we'll see how that goes.

Pinochle and Pedicures

So much has happened since Friday night.  Well, maybe not that much.  Saturday was spent cleaning and shopping in preparation for a sleepover that night.  We got four different kinds of cheese, two kinds of crackers and a seeded baguette.  Also, inspired by my recent love affair with the Moscow Mule, I decided to try and make them.  Of course, rather than just use ginger ale and lime juice, I had to make my own ginger-lime syrup and used lime sparkling water and lime juice (and, of course, vodka).

Our friend Heather came over and brought a delicious sour cream lemon pie.  We then proceeded to drink some (maybe one too many) delicious Monica's Moscow Mules and teach Heather how to play pinochle (#54).  Sadly, we were reduced to playing 3-handed, but Heather picked up the game pretty quickly, and I think there's potential there.  Then we helped Heather on her own list of goals.  Because she is a bit more "rigid" about some things, she is doing 100 goals in 3 years.  Because she just couldn't handle all those odd numbers and arbitrary time limits.  But that's one of the reasons we love her.  We finally went to bed around 12:30 and slept in a bit. We then had brunch at Wild Wheat Bakery and Cafe in Kent  with an additional friend (who sadly couldn't make it to the sleepover portion of the party) the next morning.  If you're up for heading to Kent, I would strongly recommend having brunch there (or pastries, or cookies, or just bread).  They don't have a website, otherwise I would be linking to it.  Yelp had nothing but rave reviews, though.

Monday being a holiday, I had lunch and got a pedicure (#67) with my friend Christina.  It was nice to catch up and hold her beautiful baby.  And the pedicure is lovely, as evidenced below.  The picture does not do the brightness and cheeriness of the hot pink justice, but you get the idea.

It's been a rough week or so at work, but I'm getting through it.  It's actually been a great distraction to have this list of goals and the blog to keep me occupied.  There are changes coming for me at work, which I'll have to share another day.

Thanks for all of your positive feedback and support.  This has been such a fun and rewarding journey thus far.  I'm looking forward to sharing more of it with all of you.

A Problematic Pattern and Answers to Some Questions

You may remember that the plan for our date tonight was to dine at Urbane and then go see the Picasso exhibit at the SAM.  Well, as is our wont, we achieved half of the plan.  Those of you who were privy to our Christmas Eve plans (dinner out, then a burlesque show followed by midnight mass: we made it out for dinner and then went home) may begin to see a pattern as I reveal what happened tonight.  We did, in fact, make it to our 5:45 dinner at Urbane.  The food was pretty good, though the prices were a little steep given the quality.  I'll give you the rundown.  But first, let me apologize for the incredibly poor quality of the photos.  I need to read up on how to make one's iPhone take halfway decent pictures.  If you know something about how to do this, please, do us all a favor and tell me.

First we had water

then we had drinks (Margo had a Dragonstooth Stout and I had a Moscow Mule, which is my new favorite drink).  This was, in fact, the best Moscow Mule I've had so far (out of 3 total).  Margo liked her Stout.  We then had a cheese plate with three fine cheeses (a Camembert, Beecher's Blank Slate with Honey and a raw goat cheese), crackers, and the MOST AMAZING spiced huckleberry jam.  I was so enthusiastic about the jam that the bus boy asked me if I wanted him to bring me more.  On to the entrees; Margo had the Hanger Steak Frites and I had the Hazelnut-Crusted Rainbow Trout with D'Anjou pears, chorizo and sage in a delicioius little hash on top.  Margo liked her entree fine.  I loved the little pear/chorizo/sage hash on top of my trout.  The trout was fine, just not that exciting or flavorful.  Also, it was white.  All the rainbow trout I've eaten prior to this has had some color.

On to the dessert.  Oh, dessert.  I love dessert, and this dessert did not disappoint.  I had the lemon pudding cake with housemade ricotta.  And it was delicious.  An excellent balance of sour and sweet.  And the ricotta was the perfect counterpart.  Margo had the pear crisp with ginger ice cream, and it was mighty tasty as well. (I am also apparently incapable of making the pictures display properly.  Just tilt your head to the right and squint.  I think that will make it all look much better.  I promise not to take any more pictures with my iPhone and post them on the blog.  At least not until I learn how to do it better.)

  The service was less than ideal.  The waitstaff kept trying to take our dishes to other tables, we saw more of the people with plates and the busboy than our waiter, etc...  The final blow came when the waiter brought our debit card back with a receipt that showed he had charged us $145 MORE than the total of our bill.  Needless to say, he didn't get a great tip.  All in all it was fine, but I don't feel the need to go back.

Now on to the shameful part of date night.  Margo stood in line to get tickets for the Picasso exhibit.  The earliest she could get was for the 9:40PM entry.  By the time dinner was done, we had decided to skip the Picasso exhibit and go home.  I am sorry to say that we do this ALL THE TIME.  At least this time we didn't pay for the tickets because they are free for members.  But it's pathetic, truly.  We always have these grand plans, which I have to tell EVERYONE about ahead of time, and then we have terrible follow through.  Apparently following through on plans should have made it on to both of lists of 101 goals.  Maybe next time...

Now to answer some of your questions, since some of you have apparently forgotten how to use Google.  The Mycological Society is just a fancy name for the Mushroom Society (the people who like mushrooms and learning about mushrooms and picking mushrooms in the forest).  The Gottman book is The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman.

Finally, the other question I've gotten is about why I want to get rid of my iPhone.  Especially when everyone else is poised to get one, now that Verizon is going to have them.  Here's the thing.  I feel like my iPhone has kind of taken over my life.  I can't seem to do anything or go anywhere without my iPhone.  I check Facebook at least ten times a day, I check my email compulsively, I'm constantly available in every possible way to everyone I know, I check my blog to see how many followers I have at least fifteen times a day, and the list goes on.  Every moment I'm not doing something real I am doing something on my iPhone.  I want to experience life again without the distraction.  I'm trying to watch less television, spend less time on the computer, and have more life experiences.  So I want to ditch my iPhone.  Just have a regular phone with an unlimited text plan and experience what's going on around me rather than Googling it or distracting myself.  So there you have it.

Exercise and Eating Out

I am fortunate to have a partner who is good at helping me keep on track (well, at least most of the time).  My plan to go to the gym after work today devolved into doing the Wii Fit Plus workout at home, to making an offer of dinner and a movie to my LL.  Lucky for me (in the long run at least), in response to my offer of dinner and a movie after she had already agreed to do the Wii Fit Plus with me, I received the following text message "Workout.  No dinner and move."  So after a brief stop at Safeway to pick up some hamburger and veggies for spaghetti (the sauce of which included yellow squash, orange bell peppers and kale, served over whole wheat pasta), home we went to get our Wii on.

One thing I love about the Wii (#18) is that it really just seems like you're playing a game until you notice that you're sweating and you've burned a couple of hundred calories (#4).  The problem I have with the Wii Fit exercises is that they really hurt my feet (plantar fascitis which is exacerbated by my gym shoes being in the car and me being too lazy to go out to the car and get them.  a bit ironic, I guess).  The other thing that I sometimes love and sometimes am really annoyed by is the humor programmed into the Wii Fit.  It played the same joke on each of us in turn tonight, which wound up being a little annoying.  And then I find myself talking back to it, or accusing the trainer of hitting on my LL.  Good times, overall.

Date night this week (we try to do this weekly, but usually succeed in accomplishing 2-3 nights per month) has evolved from eating at the mall food court and going to see Harry Potter (finally), to eating at a new restaurant and trying to see the Picasso exhibit at the SAM.  I'm excited about the restaurant, and had the realization tonight that it is often the dessert menu that sells me on a restaurant.  We are planning to go to Urbane Restaurant and the clincher was, quite honestly, the pumpkin brulee served with pecan shortbread on the dessert menu.  The rest of the menu also looked interesting and delicious, however.  You'll get a full report in the days following and I will try to take some crappy pictures of the food on my iPhone.

I just realized that this bit about date night is apparently about one of my imaginary goals, which I swear I had written down, of trying a new restaurant each month.  Let's just pretend that it's a goal, although I think that the truth of the matter is that it might be my LL's goal.  Oh well.  I'll tell you all about it anyway.  It might get boring if all I ever talk about is my goals.  And eating delicious food is always the goal, even if it didn't make it onto the list of 101.

Strippers, Gourmet Meals and Knife Skills

Thought that might get your attention.  There must be something for everyone in that title.  No major accomplishments today, unless finally finishing the dishes and sprinting for the bus count.  I did receive from very helpful information from several lovely ladies I have the good fortune of knowing related to the goals referenced in the title of this post.

First, the strippers.  Obviously, my original goal is to go to a strip club (#20), but one of my very helpful friends alerted me to an all-women for-women fundraising strip show happening in March.  I'm currently in the midst of an internal debate about whether that will meet my goal.  When I initially wrote the goal, I had in mind your traditional seedy strip joint (or at least my mental version thereof, never having actually stepped foot in one thus far). The fundraiser strip show would certainly provide me with the same (in the most basic way) form of entertainment but without some of the seedier (and let's face it, creepier) aspects of going to an actual strip joint.  In a way, I think that this presents just the first of a number of quandaries I will likely face in the pursuit of my 101 goals:  must the goal be enacted as originally conceived, written and intended, or am I willing to allow myself to start down the slippery slope of allowing a change here and a change there.  Food for thought, that is certain.

Speaking of food, we are also in the process of coordinating a trip to the Herbfarm (#2) with some dear friends of ours.  It's looking like we will probably go in early May for their A Menu for a Spring Forager theme.  A happy birthday bonus for my dearest LL (whose birthday is in the beginning of May).  Here's the description of the them, from the Herbfarm website:  "We go to the field, forest, and seashore in search of wild native plants to weave into a springtime menu."  Nine courses of utter deliciousness, I'm hoping (especially considering the chunk of change we will be dropping on this extravagant experience.

Last, but certainly not least, my dear friend Lisa was so kind as to email me with information about a knife skills class (#24) offered by PCC that is affordable, and we already have a membership there.  Unfortunately, it appears that every knife skills class that they offer through April is booked up solid.  So I guess it's either wait until the next class cycle or find another class. I'll keep you posted either way.

Since I don't have any goal-related pictures to share tonight, I'll leave you with a picture that my LL took over the New Year when we visited my family in Eastern Washington.

Progress on #4 and #34

I'll start with #34 (Try one new recipe each week) since I did it first.  Obviously this is just week 1 of 143, but this week I have already tried TWO new recipes.  The first was a Parmesan-Shrimp Pasta Bake from Betty Crocker One-Dish Family Favorites.  Pretty simple but tasty recipe made from ingredients that we had on hand - 20 minutes of active cooking, 40 minutes of baking, and Voila, Dinner! 

As a side, I made Roasted Nutmeg Cauliflower from The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger.  Again, simple, low-prep recipe.  If I make this again, I'll definitely cut the cooking time by 25% or so.  I would also probably increase the nutmeg significantly or substitute cumin in substantially greater volume.  Also, this meal was sorely lacking in the color variation that I prefer to see on my plate, but pickings are slim around these parts right now.

Now that you're all caught up on what's being served for dinner around here (My LL made orange-cumin black bean chili tonight, one of my favorites), here's the obligatory update on #4 (Exercise at least two times per week).  I went to the gym today, for the first time since before Thanksgiving.  Pathetic, I know, but I did not let the prospect of the gym being jam-packed with resolutioners or my recurrent headache volunteer themselves as excuses today.  I went, and did a solid 30 minutes on the treadmill.  I'm a little wary of over-doing it with the back issues of late and didn't want to kill myself my first day back after weeks of absence and holiday overindulgence.

So there you have it.  You can all go to bed thanking god that I didn't take a post-workout photo of myself to share with you.  I'll try to limit it to pictures of things you actually want to see.  :o)

Welcome, and an Explanation

My lady love and I recently undertook a challenge posed by one of our friends; to come up with a list of 101 goals to accomplish in the next 1001 days.  This seemed like a good opportunity to compile all of those various activities and aspirations in one place.  Turns out that coming up with 101 goals is harder than it sounds, at least for me.  My list took me several days to compile with input from a number of freinds, while my lady love (from here on referred to as LL) took only a few hours, and with no outside assistance.

Having compiled the list, 1001 days now seems incredibly short, but I am excited about doing so many of the things on my list.  Many of these goals are things I've wanted to do for ages, but keep getting pushed aside in favor of things like Stumbling and spending hours in front of the damned television.  Now we have our lists posted on our respective closet doors as a daily reminder of the things we've chosen to focus on in order to make our lives richer and more fun.

Which brings me to Goal #40, Start a Blog.  Here's to checking the first goal completely off of the list (several others are in progress, however).