Another One Bites the Dust: New Restaurant Round-up

While I wasn't looking, I also managed to finish my restaurant item! We don't go out to eat very often, so I set the bar low, and that worked to my advantage. Here are the places I've tried:

• Two 8 Two
• Lupa - This one was for our 11 year dating/2 year wedding anniversary.  I could write a whole entry just on this one, but in the interest of time, I'll just say it was fabulous AND counted for a date night.
• People's Republic of Brooklyn - We ate in the back garden, so this one was one of our al fresco nights. 
• Cubana Cafe
• http://www.stoneparkcafe.com/

Part of what I wanted to do with the books, movies and restaurants was write more. I think that with all of these items I bit off more than I could chew (which leads me into some thoughts about how to morph this blog into something a bit more simplified and targeted next time around, but I'm getting ahead of myself).  To remedy this, I'm reverting to lists and will focus my writing on the places that really call for it (some Brooklyn Forager posts are coming!). 

A Lot of DVDs Going On

I have been streaming loads of Netflix movies and TV since my last Netflix update (I know, 10/10.  That's sad.). But making a list of those streamed discs seemed daunting.  So I let the list get longer.  I sat down tonight to count actual discs as a start, with a couple notable movies from streaming thrown in.  And lo and behold! I finished this item with a couple to spare.  Very exciting.  Here are the movies that got me here:

• He's Just Not That Into You
• Ironman 2
• Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone: Part 1
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Big Love Season 4 (3 discs)
• Whip It!
• Inception
• Alice and Wonderland
• The League Season 1 (2 discs)
• Scott Pilgrim v. The World
• I Am Legend
• My Sister's Keeper
• Kick-Ass
• Damages Season 2 (3 discs)
• Dexter Season 3 (3 discs)
• Big Love Season 3 (1 disc)
• Mamma Mia! 

Since I actually managed to finish this one so early, and because I'm so behind on my other items, I'm reading the tea leaves and seeing that I need to really focus on my other activities.  Which is sort of the point of this whole list.  I've got a couple of things lined up, so now I just need to take this sign and run with it. 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I wrote this a long time ago, but just got the pictures posted: Ladies and gentlemen, that time of year is here.  Last year, I was not ready for the holidays and, for some unknown reason, fought the coming of Christmas and winter tooth and nail.  This year, I saw the Christmas trees going up in Honolulu before Thanksgiving even arrived and I was nothing but excited.

I kicked this year off with a cookie day with a friend and her son.  We made a (semi-successful) batch of double chocolate peppermint cookies, sugar cookies of all shapes and sizes and gingerbread cookies.  I'm going to post each over at the Brooklyn Forager since they were fun recipes and I'm a bit behind in my weekly posts and new recipe counting.

Here are some of the creations we made:

I'm a Winner!

Ladies and gentlemen, at 50,121 words, may I present to you a NaNoWriMo winner! I went about writing my novel in fits and starts and spent a lot of weekend days focused on driving the number up, while remaining woefully behind.  The best advice I have for anyone who wants to try this is to jump off the deep end and give it a try.  The amount of concentration it takes is insane, but the very act of finishing makes it seems so much more fun.  And even possible to do again.

Sometime.

In the future.

Couch to 5K: Complete!

After an excruciatingly long period, I finally finished the Couch to 5K program! Some might argue that my on-again/off-again approach was less than orthodox, but all things considered, the goal was to finish and I made it through the week 9 exercises running more than a 5K and feeling pretty awesome about it.  That sounds like goal achieved to me!

I considered going through it a second time since I've had a setback in my general training, but I don't think I need to go back to the start, so I'm going to close this bad boy out and think about new fitness goals for the rest of this year and next.  I still have to work on my yoga and getting to a place where I can knock off the 4x a week workout goal, not to mention the 5K race which is tentatively scheduled for November 21. Stay tuned!

De-clutter the Office

If I'm honest, we've done this a couple of times since I started the list.  I promised myself that I wouldn't cross it off if we weren't really going to keep it nice and useable instead of using it as a storage space for things we don't want anymore but are too afraid to get rid of for one reason or another.

Today, I'm confident we can cross this one off the list.  We're preparing the room for my sister to come visit and really thought about how to make it more comfortable.  Books I haven't read yet have been boxed up and stored (another issue to deal with, but for now they are comfortable stowed and not in anyone's way) and the closet space has been cleared and re-organized.

We still have too much stuff, but I'm starting to feel really confident that the space is being used by things that at least I love and will use when we have a different living space.

Deerfield River Whitewater Rafting

I set off to Vermont this past weekend with some friends.  Usually our Vermont weekends are relaxing, but not so very adventurous.  This time we decided to head down to Massachusetts and go whitewater rafting.  The experience was fabulous and I can't believe that I didn't do this previously.

We spent a couple of hours on the Deerfield River near Charlemont, MA.  There were about 7-9 rapids all either Class 3 or Class 4.  I am definitely going to do this again - so much fun! (The picture above isn't our group, but that's the same company - Moxie Adventures - out on the same river.)

Boat Quay, Singapore - A Couple's Project

In my silence, I've actually been moving forward a bit on this list.  This one was a surprise even to me! I'd been keeping my eye out for large puzzles to tackle, trying to balance price with my interest in keeping it around as a momento.

Imagine my surprise when a puzzle made its way to us via mail order.  Austin picked out a puzzle as a present both to support my list item and to do as an inexpensive and fun activity together.  I think we found another couple hobby by accident! It was so much fun to put together the puzzle that we avoided TV (me) and video games (him) more often than not to put it all together.  We'll definitely be doing this one again....

A Place to Rest my Head

At some point after high school, I decided that I would consider myself "arrived" if I had a real honest-to-goodness bed.  I had a lovely bed growing up, but that devolved quickly into the old metal bed frames in college and even a handful of years with the bed on the floor.

My day has come !

Our Garden Grows in Brooklyn

A few weeks ago, as Austin and I trekked from home improvement store to home improvement store, it occurred to me that the terrace garden was finally becoming the bigger project that both of us had dreamed of previously.  We had taken the time to draw out plans for potter placement in 2009, but threw things together rather quickly in the past two summers. 


This year, we visited several stores and spent much more time selecting our potters and thinking about the sorts of produce we wanted to consume throughout the summer.  Austin is really the gardener, so he did the heavy lifting in terms of researching the needs of each crop, while I mainly thought with my stomach and made requests for things I'd like to have accessible. 


Because of this team approach that we worked out, we also realized that, for the most part, this has become our collective hobby.  That knocks off both #67 and #89.  I'd thought our hobby would be something with set practice times like tennis or something that we would incorporate into our travels like wine tasting or kayaking.  For now, this works out well and may take us on interesting adventures as we pursue urban gardening and farm-to-table dining throughout the city and beyond. 

When life gives you lemons...and oranges...

I have been given the gift of more free time these days which makes achieving some of these tasks a whole lot easier (and of course some a lot harder).  This week, I made my first solo attempt at jam - a Meyer lemon and Cara Cara orange marmalade for my canning project.  It almost feels like cheating because this task fulfills another blog post, a new recipe, the first of 12 canning challenges, jams from scratch (this fueled the fire so much that I'll be making a Raspberry Lime jam soon which will more completely fulfill "jams" and of course more jams to come in the canning project), and now I've blogged about it and am putting the cash in my special fund.  That's a whole lot of mileage out of one task, but it actually felt so great to set my mind to it and get it done.  So I'm going to just appreciate that I was successful and will go on to try more canning recipes. 

Of course, I never really liked marmalade, so the next challenge will be using it up, but I think it'll have a lot of good uses and I'll learn to like it!

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First task completed

I should hardly get credit for completing the task, but I did put getting an external hard drive for the mac on the list, mainly because I thought I'd have to do it myself to get it done.  But I was pleasantly surprised with a late Christmas gift (since anything within two or three weeks on either side of Christmas is a gift, right?).  I'll back everything up tonight which will be great.  Now I've blogged about it and put $5 in the special fund to celebrate, so that's moving forward on two additional tasks as well.  One down, 1000 to go!

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