Another Lego Day

So now that Christmas is over, we spent a nice lazy day playing with lego. Which happened to result in more of our TV console being covered.

We also got more lego for christmas so we started with what looked like a fairly substantial amount.

credit: (from left to right clockwise) Steve, Judi & Nick, Binoy.

So we began to build. After we had used up all the thinnies, we had only added one more covered partition and some facing... argh.

 So, I decided to do some redesigning to try and use up some of the fatties we have. Its hard to get Lego sets (impossible actually) with only thinnies, so a fair amount of our wedding/christmas gifts were fatties. 

I demolished the end wall and rebuilt it as fatties, which left enough thinnies to cover up the front of the console. The last two partitions aren't fully covered at all, and the flat surface of the shelf housing the cable DVR thingy is only covered up to the front of the box.

From the front  it looks pretty good. My picture-taking skills however leave a lot to be desired. Trust me, it looks better in real life!

So now mostly all we have left is to cover the top. I used every single usable piece of lego we had today. All we are left with are the weird bits and these:

Finally.

Christmas dinner, which I forgot to take pictures of while I was doing it so here are the results...

Corn bisque with creme fraiche and roasted red pepper puree

Mustard crusted prime rib done to a perfect rareness!

Christmas Cocktail!

Vodka, cointreau, white cranberry juice, lime juice, simple syrup.

Garnished with frozen cranberries.

Merry Christmas!

This Is What I Am Like

Its a planner. For Christmas dinner.

Hey, before you judge me, let me explain. This meant I could plan the meal backwards.

And allow time for things like pre-heating the oven. Which always mess with my timeline because I always forget about things like that.

Romit, if you're reading, you should totally do this!

Christmas Dinner - Corn Bisque, Step 2

First, wake up from the nap you accidentally took.

Second, pulverize the corn mixture that has now gone cold

Third, Strain it. (This is the part I hate most, I always drop some lumpy stuff accidentally into the strained stuff and then have to dump it all out and strain it again.)

Fourth, put the strained stuff in the fridge till Christmas day.

Christmas Dinner - Corn Bisque, Step 1

We ate a lot of soup in Utah. It was cold, soup was warm. We also ate a lot of things called bisques that were not. In my head, if its lumpy its not a bisque. Then on the last day at a very nice restaurant they had a corn bisque that I almost didn't share with Rick.

So when we were planning our menu for this Christmas lunch, I decided to try and make something like it

And because I have nothing better to do, I decided to make the base in advance. Yay for me being organised!

Ingredients:

One 1lb frozen corn

3/4 cup carrots

1-1/2 cup shallots

dried thyme

chilli powder

chicken stock

Chop up the shallots and the carrots and drain the corn.

Melt some butter in your pot.

Add the shallots and saute a bit.

Add the Carrots and saute. You can also add celery but I hate buying celery because invariably I only use about one or two sticks and the rest disintegrate into a soggy green mess in my fridge drawer. Also, I hate how it tastes except in a bloody mary.

Anyway, when the carrots and shallots look nice and soft, add the corn,

a teaspoon of thyme, and a quarter teaspoon of chilli powder. I would add a little more chilli powder but Rick's family is... spice-averse.

Mix it all up and saute for a few minutes.

Add 4-1/2 cups of chicken stock, bring it to a boil and then turn the heat down and let it simmer for about half an hour.

And that is step 1. Take a break, clear up the counter (So you can mess it up again in step 2),

eat a snack.

Christmas!

This year we added the strings of red beads, and realized that the fishing line we had used the last couple of years was not strong enough...

Of course that was after we got back from the supermarket to discover the tree flat on the ground with about half the glass ornaments crushed to dust under it.

So we switched to 30lb fishing line, which is only a little more noticeable, and made up for the broken ornaments with small Ikea balls.

Happiness Is A Wall Full of Books

-colour co-ordinated!

...Will Eventually Land - Hard.

So we're finally back from Utah, with all bones and limbs intact! The bruises however are another matter altogether...

Things I Learned:

1) People in Utah take their skiing very seriously. There's nothing like having a train of four-year-olds zip by you on a blue slope to make you feel suicidal.

2) The words "Blue Slope" mean totally different things in California and Utah.

3) Good Mormons go to church on Sundays, and Salt Lake City is full of good Mormons, so if you find yourself with a weekend to go skiing, don't go on Saturday.

4) Three Days is as long a time as anyone ever needs to spend in Salt Lake City.

5) There are no brown people in Alta
6) In spite of this, there is a weird Indianness in Utahn food, we were fed chicken curries, vegetable curries, and worst of all, curry soup. 

6) If I try to get the TSA to hand check my undeveloped film, they will interpret that as a confession, and will rub me down (in public) for explosives*

7) If you are Rick however, they will let you get on the plane with a corkscrew and a bagful of unidentified gel. Go figure.


*So I have a question, if I had handled explosives, wouldn't it be worthwhile to at least check my hands instead of wiping down my clothes which surely I would have been smart enough to have changed?

What Goes Up...

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10,500 Feet

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Alta

View from our window

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Whose Idea Was It

That a chorus of frogs is a soothing sound? After lying in a dark room for half an hour with needles in my head listening to the entire North American frog population, I am beginning to feel quite well disposed towards snakes. 

The Library - Part II

So after all the painting was done, we built the storage

 boxes from the parts we had finished in San Diego.

1) Clamp first side to top of box

2) Drill holes and screw the two together

3) Clamp and attach second side to the top

4) Clamp and attach back to the top

5) Attach the base to sides first, then back.

6) First box done!

7) Repeat twice for all three boxes

8) Attach the Extend-O-Legs (22"long pieces of 2x3" studs)

 to each leg of the ladders with two 1" steel plates

9) All three ladders done. At this point decide that you do not like the way 

the old 2x3s and the new 2x3s were such different colours... so:

10) Make a quick trip to Target and buy three pairs of knee high socks 

in two different patterns, stripey and argyle, and sock the Extend-O-Legs

 Add the boxes to each ladder and there it is!

Each box has wheels (with brakes!) so I can climb up on 

them to reach the topmost shelf.

The Library - Part I

So we have always hated the mint-greeniness of the spare room, (the one I optimistically call the library, but which ends up being a bedroom for some member(s) of my family for most of the year) and three weeks ago I finally got around to painting it.

Well, I finally got around to start to paint it. Unloading the books took a whole day - all 29 cubic feet of them - and moving all the furniture to the middle of the room took another (because I had to stop and sort the thousands of pieces of paper I unearthed in the process). 

Then in the middle of all this the doctors started sticking needles into me so that kind of put a crimp in my plans...

Anyway, in the middle of painting the room, we figured we might as well take advantage of the fact  that the bookshelves were empty and add some more shelves. We've been toying around with a plan to raise the bookshelves and add storage below them for a while now, but been too busy to do anything about it. So last Saturday we took ourselves down to San Diego and appropriated the backyard, garage and tools of a friend.

So after two days of sawing and sanding we finally had all the pieces we needed, so we went back home and I got back to painting.

Things I Learned: 

1) Covering mint-green walls needs two coats of primer and three coats of yellow.

2) If I actually watched the ads I would know that you can get paint with primer already added to it, so you only need to do the three coats of yellow.

3) When you live on the seventh floor, it's very disconcerting to find people walking along outside your windows (our building is being painted and there is scaffolding outside our flat)

4) Painting the top of a twelve foot wall high is scary - especially next to a window that looks down seven stories...

The Most Difficult Part Of A Wedding...

...is getting your guests to leave!

Filler

So, for my legions of fans who want to know why I haven't posted anything in the last three weeks, well the short answer is, I was asleep.

The long answer is complicated and involves a chemically induced haze for the first two weeks as my neurologist and pharmacist used me as a guinea pig. (Maybe What I Should Do Next is a comparison of various drugs and their side effects? hmm?)

In the last week I actually did something but I have no idea where the connector thing for my camera is and so can't put the pictures up.

So I'll post this instead:

also what I have been doing in the last three weeks...

Blinky Bugs.

Last weekend (or maybe the weekend before that? Time runs together a bit when you don't have a job) I was at Oktoberfest* with Evie and Rene and when I was leaving Evie presented me with a bag and told me that I was going to help her with the decorations for hallowe'en party that she was going to have for the kid.

In the bag was:

Evidently, because I made Paper flower boutonnières for the wedding I am now qualified to make cut-outs of ghosties and hang paper bats for a four-year-old's party.

After I had made sure that I didn't have to do this in the midst of fifteen four-year-olds I was fine with it.. not that I had a choice. Also, this way I could get rid of some of those thousands of LED's and dying batteries that I have post-wedding.

It helps if saturday morning is cold and rainy, and you have someone to bring you things that you discover you need halfway through something complicated (ie. needs both your hands) so that you can make bugs while you're all snug in bed.

Basically the bugs are two LEDs and a coin battery, with 'antennae' made from piano wire to complete the circuit. After you put those together you tart them up with pipecleaners, feathers and pompoms. 

Secretly we both had a lot of fun, and maybe one of these days we'll stop finding little bits of piano wire and tape in our bed... and the bugs turned out fine though in retrospect the one with six eyes was pushing it a bit.

* About Oktoberfest.. Does it seem pointless to anyone else? You wait in a queue to get in (unless you're like me and join a friend who has been waiting in a queue just as she gets to the front - that wasn't luck), then you wait in a queue to get beer, then you wait in a queue to get food, then you have to search for a place to get out of the way of all the frat boys and girls who can't hold their beer (their beer mind you!) and to add insult to injury, you have to do this all the while having your ears assaulted with the most ghastly polka music...