Saturday, April 17, 2010
We took Dean's Gs out to dinner in Storrs for his dad's birthday, and brought Apples to Apples to play at Starbucks afterwards! It was SO FUN!!! I won two games, and Dean won two. He says I should be the winner because the wins were in this order: Dean-Laura-Laura-Dean, so therefore I won two out of three and we could have stopped there. But I didn't want to stop! :-)
Posted at 7:49:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Friday, April 16, 2010
I swam 36x across the pool again, underwater on the sixes! I had trouble getting all the way across on one breath today. NEAC was fixing their hot water, and there wasn't any in the locker room (I knew that before I went in, since they'd posted a sign), so I waited until I got home to rinse off. Mmmm, I feel really relaxed and non-stiff.
Posted at 1:12:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
When I was getting out of the pool, this older lady came in, and asked me if the pool was warm or cold. I said, "Warm!" then added that it felt cool when I first got in, then got nice and warm after I swam a few laps. She went on and on about how NEAC is such a horrible establishment and she wants to quit but signed up for two years so she can't, and she has her own outdoor pool at home and is going to use that as soon as possible because they keep the pool way too cold. Sure, it's fine for strapping young people like me, but if you're 75 years old with blah blah blah and blah ailments, it's a total outrage, and they are just too cheap/can't afford to keep the pool at a decent temperature because they're such an appalling club.
I just nodded sympathetically, but I wanted to say, "Look, lady, Excuse me, ma'am, this is an athletic club, not a senior center. Most people come here to swim laps, not float around on a noodle." As we all know, I'm a scrawny lizard who needs about ten layers to get through an hour of scuba in the tropics. If I'm warm, the water is not cold, and real lap swimmers who are doing serious exercising, or people taking cardio aqua classes, would be HOT. Plus, she's insane. NEAC is an incredibly nice gym. It's clean, non-crowded, has great locker rooms with a sauna in the downstairs one, tons of cardio machines, weight machines, and free weights, zillions of classes that are free with membership, a room with super fancy expensive non-free pilates machines, a court for playing ball or whatever you want, a freaking heated pool, offers massages, personal trainers, a dietitian, free use of the ice rink next door, free consultations with the physical therapist next door, and probably other stuff I don't even know about.
Heh... I just called the gym to ask, and the water is 83°!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Making huge Italian steamed artichokes with extra-long stems! I didn't measure them, but these stems were almost a foot long! And the artichokes weren't even thorny, so I didn't have to trim the leaves with a scissors to prepare them! Just lots of stem cutting and cramming. Oh and I peeled the stems first. I set the timer for two hours, so we shall see how they look then...
Posted at 5:44:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: That was the BEST artichoke EVER. That is all.]
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Wow! I can't believe it worked! I just tried shirring with my new sewing machine, and everything went perfectly. All you do is buy elastic thread and hand-wind it onto a bobbin (you have to be careful not to put any tension in the thread when you wind it, but I guess I did okay, because it worked totally smoothly), and use normal thread in the part that goes into the needle. When you sew with it, it automatically gathers itself up, and the more rows you add, the tighter it gets. Some of the skirts I bought at Honolua Wahine in Hawaii have waistbands like that, but I didn't know how it was done. I researched online when I was in Hawaii and found this tutorial and tried it just now. It's so easy! I am going to try to make a skirt with a shirred waist using the fabric I bought in Hawaii.
Posted at ?:??:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I should have eaten a bigger breakfast. I got super-hungry and everything was bugging me! (People talking, kids, the cigarette smell and the music at Stew's sunny bench spot). Happy now, chocolate frozen yogurt eaten, pink FL grapefruit procured, sipping a coffee at Shrunkin' while "Surfer Girl" and "A Summer Song" song play. Stew's coffee tasted like soap to me, so I had to pond it and get another one to cancel it out! Shrunk has dark roast now! I didn't notice until after I bought mine though. I'll have to try it next time. In retrospect, Jo-Ann's, Dick's (they didn't have my swim cap) and Stew's weren't the best places to go while easily irritated.
Posted at 4:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
!!! Pink grapefruit from Florida. At Stew's right now. Moanfully good, with just a touch of vanilla sugar sprinkled on top. Must buy more!!!
Posted at 10:07:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Little baby buttonballs! ♥ London Plane Trees at Whole Foods in Glastonbury. My heart leapt when I saw this!
Posted at 3:32:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 3:18:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Barista at Hebron SBUX: "You are going to ENJOY this cappuccino!" He was so impressed by his own foam that he made the other barista come over and look at it. Me: "I'll have to take a picture of it." Pretty good work, I must say.
Monday, April 12, 2010
36x across. I swam on the bottom on 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36.
Posted at 2:21:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
