Blue Lime

2012: Prioritize Joy, Now!

Touched by my friend Nanette (whom I’ve met IRL a couple of times, but feel I’ve known in my soul for a lifetime or two), I give you my newly-stolen 2012 mantra:

“Prioritize joy, now!”

Now, go read her words of inspiration and the post that instigated her’s.

And Nanette, Friend, though we’ve known each other briefly in this short life, please know that I love you. (#7 was a close second for my 2012 mantra thievery.)

Your Turn

Do you have theme/mantra/slogan for 2012? If so, please share! And, if you have resources for the, please cite/share. We all love to share the love.

We joined two childfree friends for a quiet New Years Eve celebration with the games of Talisman and You Don’t Know Jack for Roku. Hours of gaming fun! Even though I was last-place-by-far, I was quite surprised to learn it was 11:30 and we should freshen our drinks and find the new stand in for Dick Clark. Time flies when you’re having fun.

Jeff and Judy are fabulous and comfortable hosts, so we had plenty of options for snackage and drinkage. They got a Hickory Farms gift for xmas filled with summer sausage, cheese, mustard, fancy crackers, etc.

They also shopped a little. Wallace and Gromit fans: we got to try Wensleydale Cheese! (Come On! Say it in your best Queen’s English Accent, “Weeeeeennn-sley-dale!!!”) I was tempted to have more that just a taste. nom nom nom. I didn’t expect to like this exact one because it was laced with cranberries (texture issues) but it was divine and smooth! Emil liked it too, which says a lot about the cranberries adding to the flavor in a good way!

We had some great beer and wine options, but since I was officially skipping a dose of Codeine for a respiratory infection, I kept a slow pace. They did send us home with a lovely bottle of Innovac!ón wine. It’s a Tempranillo Malbec from the Mendoza region in Argentina. Bliss. In. A. Glass. I hear it’s at Specs and even Costco!

Judy was the only one who would eat Hoppin’ John with meat, so she made one like none I’d ever seen: with collard greens and ham. Interesting. It smelled good and inspired me to add greens to my next vegan version of the same.

Emil grabbed his usually favorite party snack tray from HEB and about 30 bottles of Dr. Pepper.

I made two new things that were just lovely, in my vegan opinion. (And, since both casseroles I made for xmas were so bland I dumped all of them down the disposal, this was a nice change of pace.)

Vegan Chili-con-queso

• 1 can vegan chili (Some are just beans and tomatoes with seasonings. Others have textured soy protein for a “ground meat” feel to them.)
• 1 8oz tub of vegan cream cheese

1. Bring the cream cheese close to room temperature.
2. Heat the chili for 2-3 minutes in a microwave.
3. Blend the two together.
4. Microwave again as necessary to blend and/or just before serving.
5. Serve warm with tortilla chips.

This is the closest thing to a real queso I’ve had and it was good. Judy liked it, too! The beauty is that any of you can pick up a can of Wolf Brand chili and cream cheese and do the same non-vegan version. The recipe didn’t call for heating it, and it is good when it’s no longer warm, but it was so much better heated up! One advantage of the vegan version is that there is nothing in it that will spoil if it sits out all night for a long party. So, if you are taking this to share, you might consider keeping it vegan for convenience.

Cream Cheese Sandwich Spread

• 1 8oz tub of vegan cream cheese, room temperature
• fresh garlic, minced; to taste. (I used about 2 Tablespoons and it was quite garlicky.)
• 1-2 bell peppers (the small red one I was was not quite enough. I’ll use two colors next time.), diced
• celery, diced (based more on taste/texture than anything. I used about half a small bundle. I’ll add more next time.)

1. Bring the cream cheese close to room temperature.
2. Mince the garlic and dice the veggies.
3. Blend all together.
4. Serve with crackers, baguette pieces, Melba toast, etc. Or, use as a spread on your favorite veggie sandwich.

I’ve been in a hummus and guacamole rut, so this got me right out of it. I can’t wait to try it again with other veggies (carrots? tiny broccoli?) and on a sandwich with fresh veggies to compliment. Again, if you aren’t vegan, use your favorite cream cheese and some crisp veggies for fresh noshing. This will be great in the summer (and since it was 78 degrees on New Year’s Eve in Austin, it was a welcome refreshment.)

Whatever way you found to celebrate, we hope it was grand.

What a great  Cristmas Emil and I had.

We got to see both sides of the family  and made time for oursleve, too. And, this is the first time in a long time that we didn’t get each other a same gift.

Armed with new toys and gadgets (this blog post is coming to you from our couch via the new bluetooth QWERTY keyboard for my iPhone), we have a few days of R&R planned. We’ll see you all in 2012.

Happy New Year!

.

At Thanksgiving, we learned that one oft he Amanda’s is pregnant. Today, we learned the other one is too. The first cousins will be born in June and July. If my count is correct, these will be our 20th and 21st great neice/newphews. That’s a lot of babies in just 10 years.

There has been much debate over the last few days over the definition of the term Childfree. I feel the spectrum is best described with a graphic. Unable to find one on the web, I made one.

Best viewed with a browser that will re-size the graphic to fit the window.

From people who happen to have children, to parents, to the childless, to the childfree, this graphic I made describes the whole spectrum.

.

.

Diet is a Four Letter Word

For the last ~2 years, we’ve been working on getting @Purrrrrl‘s weight down.

Boring How We Got Here Story

While we used to free-feed them dry food, we switched to canned for a while. Her sensitive tummy, means days of mixing food and lots of accidents. Canned food was a pain if we wanted to go away for more than just the day, but we made it work. At the next “Kitty Weight Watchers” “weigh in”, we learned she’d only lost a few ounces. She’s a cat, so that’s good progress, but she needs to lose several pounds, so when the next “weigh in” showed she’d gained, we went food shopping again. Another pet store owner told us about this grain-free dry stuff. Well, it makes her sick. We kept trying it because she kept showing signs she was getting more accustomed to it. However, she has proven to me that, given the right circumstances, she can poop faster than I can clean. After trying for too long, we went back to the canned.

New Game and Some Kitty Conversation

Because we are feeding them limited amounts and on a schedule, I have an alarm in my phone for 9:00 each 12 hours. They can’t eat until my phone meows. Still, anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours before 9 o’clock, they beg. Today, Purrrrl sat next to me at the computer at 8:50am and the conversation went like this:

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Not yet. Ten more minutes

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: No. Ten minutes.

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Eleven minutes?

Purrrrrl: Meow

me: Twleve minutes?

Purrrrrl:

I knew cats could show angst and be flippant, but who knew they could count???

On October 12th, I deactivated my facebook account. True to form, facebook reactivated it (those bastards), and I deactivated it again on October 18th.

In the first ~10 days after closing my facebook account, I noticed a substantial–journaled/documented–increase in productivity.  Now, let me be frank: I never played games on facebook. Furthermore, I was ruthless about junk posts and hiding stuff that wasn’t useful to me for the way I used facebook. (I’ll also admit that I was a timid user given my history of bona fide stalkers who used this information to find me.)

Productivity? What’s That?

In the week after I killed my facebook account, I lost count of the tasks in the productivity spike I had.

• I’ve cleaned up and cleaned out several areas of our home. I’ve done that once-a-year stuff like wiping down the insides of the cabinets and cleaning out the areas known as “I wonder what we keep in there.” I’ve kept up with laundry, dusting, etc. I even bound my computer cables to keep Marble out of them. I don’t know how many boxes of paper we recycled. I have another box to shred. And, I know have a “projects” box full of stuff I can do in shorter bursts…which means it might get done.
• I not only had the bridge installed, I’ve been working on whitening the rest of my teeth (all part of the plan).
• I’ve gathered a charity donation and made a lunch date with a friend so I can deliver it.
• I’ve been shopping (shopping!) for things I’d put off much too long.
• I set up some small marketing for our #CroKnit group.
• I’ve planned two small parties, attended another (& I took/processed/posted images), and prepped for a wedding (some bigger tasks within that, this time).
• I ran one marketing project for As You Wish, booked a client from it, and am prepping the next offer/message to go out in a week or two.
• I’ve done half a dozen administrative tasks for me, us, our home, and As You Wish.
• Shot a wedding
• Duped/backed up images
• Edited and posted the images
• ..and I still went to Miami’s watch party, #CroKnit, and other weekly routines.

What I Have “Missed” — that I know of:

• One person wondered why I unfriended her…and then immediately realized I must have finally deleted my account.
• One person wondered if I was the reason his friend count dropped by one. Yep, that was me!
• One friend said she’d invite me to her daughter’s birthday party, but never did. I’m guessing it went out on facebook. Other friends only use facebook to invite friends to events. I’ll be sad to miss the ones where they don’t think outside facebook.

What I Have Missed with Elation:

• Being invited to events in places like Toledo or San Francisco.
• The pure drivel of some. I had hidden most of those who wax poetic in ways other than those I can appreciate, but there is only so much you can do.
• Religion, I expect a “separation of church and state” attitude. Have your religion and enjoy what comforts and supports you. Do not push your faith onto me. I have friends/family who range from Jewish-to-Catholic-to-Christian/Evangelical-to-Hindu-to-Buddist-to-Agnostic/Athiest. I’m respectful–even celebratory–of holy events of others. I share others’ celebrations. I do not acknowledge anything shoved down my throat. (Funny how that’s always some form of Christianity, huh?)
• Politically, Emil and I don’t vote alike, but share a lot of views. Unfortunately for facebook, it’s the most prolific/asinine who use social media as a platform….and ruin the experience for the rest of us. I had to unfriend and then block the one terrible “friend”. If they don’t know me/us, then how can they dare get “upset” when I call them out for using social media cred for furthering someone else’s agenda. (Yes, that really happened.)

And Then There Is Time

Again, I didn’t play any games on facebook. I severely restricted the suck factor that drags you into viewing photos of people you don’t even know. I had all the gadgets and widgets to control my flow of information. I used fb purity and better facebook. I had blocked feeds from many apps and several people. I had blocked all “non-friends” so I wouldn’t see their stuff, but more importantly, so they wouldn’t see my posts.

None of it worked. When I quit facebook, I had the most productive week of the year. Even with all the “lock down” versions of content I was willing to read and friends I really wanted to connect with, it was a huge time suck. Losing access to facebook caused very few “I miss” moments, but gave a lot of “I’m kicking ass!!!” reasons to be proud of my work. If I had realized exactly how MUCH of a timesuck facebook was (even when I had it filtered like crazy), I’d have dumped it a lot sooner.

This is not exactly what Purrrrrl or Marble look like in the car. I mean, after all, they travel in a box/carrier.

Day 3 was a relaxing “get back home” day for us.

After cleaning up the cabin and packing, we headed back to “town” for lunch. On the way out, Emil drove us over the river so I could grab these pics.

We tried the Wimberley Cafe for lunch. Good thing we were leaving because we’d tried all the good restaurants in the town! I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of vegetarian options; my veggie sandwich sans cheese was quite good. And, this was the WiFi hotspot of the town. Lots of folks were there to work.

Even though Lizzie had told us that the old store was only open on the weekends, Emil wanted to try to go see what she had described. Of course, it was closed, but the drive there was pretty. The Devil’s Backbone is the top of the ridge line with valleys on both sides. It’s quite pretty, even at this time of year. We drove on up to Blanco. We tried to find their buggy museum (as in “horse and” not as in “grocery cart”), but it wasn’t at the address we had and we didn’t care enough to look further. I guess we are pretty lazy tourists at times.

Just north of Blanco, we spied a “lighthouse” tower of some sort, so we drove closer and found a vacation rentals place that must have a fabulous view! Maybe that will be our next adventure…

Day 2 of our mini-vacay brought us much fun!

After a late night of hot tubbing, we slept in. Actually, I slept until about 8am when I could no longer breathe. I blogged and wrote our Yelp reviews from the day before; Emil was up by ~11am. We ventured out to have some lunch. The Leaning Pear was too foo-foo for Emil and a too carnivore for me (but the Fried Green Tomatoes sure were good). It was just lunch, so we were fine. It was nice to see that they make an effort to use local farms and organic ingredients. I made a note to blog about the differences between vegetarian/vegan and organic and raw. Many assume those “land” among the others. This is not the case.

Next, we hit the “other side” of the street to patronize the businesses we missed on Day One. A couple of them were weak. They need a secret shopper in this town to tell some of the business owners that the “perfume” of the business is too strong. :/ I will say this about Wimberley, they certainly include the “girly” in any girl. From petticoats to jewelry to wine-oh-MY, they reach the BFF and Girls-gone-not-too-wild weekend crowds.

We finished shopping just in time to leave for our Zip Line Adventure Tour. Getting there early, waiting to gear up, and “Flight School” was brrrrrr cold on the windy day, but the rides were well worth the effort. Once we got properly geared, the rides were super fun! And, now that we’ve been on one of the Adventures, we are eligible for a night tour complete with glow sticks! We also learned there is a zip line tour in Austin, so now, we’ll need to check them out. The whole event was well worth the price of admission and the red wind-burned cheeks on this blustery day.

It would seem that riding a zip line would be lazy work, but there was a lot of hiking and other effort to the whole Adventure. After the tour, we headed to a local fave, Kate’s Place, for supper. I was lucky to find several vegetarian items that could easily be made vegan. Our food was delicious and the service was impeccable. The funny part of our visit here was the group of four grandparents (three women and one man, apparently all just friends) who were celebrating the end of the Thanksgiving weekend and that all their grandchildren finally went home! LOL! Emil and I just grinned to each other when we heard them. Ah, problems we’ll never have!

After a fine meal, we drove back to The Junction to visit the Devil’s Backbone Tavern. I had a couple of beers, we played shuffleboard, and we chatted a lot with the bartender (Lizzie) and some incredibly friendly locals, including one guy I’m practically certain I know from working at Texas A&M. Who’d've thunk?

Our late evening consisted of trying to get the hot tub, well, hot, while I wrote up this diddy about our day. It’s a great day to be a Luza, except for that failing hot tub thing.

Last Spring, on our way home from Canyon Lake, we saw lots of traffic on I-35 (surprise) and chose to take the back roads, instead. We drove through the little town of Wimberley and decided it would be our next destination.

We weren’t able to make it to Paris for Thanksgiving this year, so we took advantage of the long weekend (and a couple of days off for Emil) to get away from it all.

Emil found us a great cabin that was well within our budget.

We spent our first afternoon shopping at some of the quaint and fun stores and dined at the Cypress Creek Cafe. When we checked into our cabin, we learned the town has a new Trail of Lights sponsored by the local theater group. To cap off a great day, we went to Brewster’s for a sampler flight of the seven beers they currently have on tap. We had a lovely time chatting with the owner’s dad and his caregiver. Bruce, the owner, played NFL football and was on the 49ers teams when they won the ’88 and ’89 Superbowls. The place is covered in his memorabilia. Back at the cabin, we took advantage of the big-tub-of-hot water. Mixed with the cool breezes, it was quite relaxing.

Great day one!