Lori

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.

I don’t know if you can call it an addiction since I am able to restrain myself when I have to do othter things, but Pinterest sure is fun! Here is my favorite board:

http://pinterest.com/asyouwishaustin/booyah/

and, of course, all my boards:

http://pinterest.com/asyouwishaustin/

If you like to look at pretty things, fashion, good photography, (bad photography), DIY and crafts, home tips/tricks, wedding inspiration, or just about any other interest, you need to be on Pinterest.

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!

Somewhere, a few weeks ago, I looked at some stats about our little blog and realized that if we had advertising, we could cover the cost of our site (and the domain and the email accounts and all the other stuff that comes with it). So, today, I placed an ad spot in the sidebar of our site. I also allowed some to appear in the RSS feeds, so you’ll see something either way you view our blog.

• We can’t, yet, control which ad types appear or don’t. I’ve requested that service, but I don’t know if we’ll qualify. I think it’s funny that the first ad I saw was for children’s clothing!
• Dear readers, you’ll have to let me know if they are too annoying or disruptive. I “watch” our posts, too. But, I get a lot of adds in other sites I read via RSS, so the ads are easy for me to ignore.
• Please, please, please when you are feeling generous, click an ad or two here or there. I want to see if our projected traffic is really as high as they showed me.

Thanks, family/friends!

Oskar, the blind kitten and his first toys. He has a brother, Klaus, who has sight, so if you follow the video thread, you’ll see them both.

Love, compassion, and even sight. Just a few more things to be thankful for!

I am thankful for:

• my husband, my best friend, my everything
• our mutual childfree belief
• our two cats and one turtle who bring us many giggles and lots of love
• that I still have two grandparents living; two finer people might not walk this Earth
• technology that is more often my friend than foe
• reasonable health for us both
• my small business, especially during this economy, and my clients whom I hold dear
• pants that are too big

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving, my third favorite holiday.

I’m craving real/traditional comfort foods for this, my second vegan, Thanksgiving. So, while I can easily “cheat” and have the non-vegan (but mostly vegetarian) versions of these foods, I’m making my own. I think this will be easier than last year’s meal of the traveling Tofurkey with sides.

Vegan Stuffing

I’m using a “Yankee” recipe that calls for sliced bread instead of the typical Southern cornbread dressing. I’m making it one notch healthier with whole grain bread. Maybe next year, I’ll make a vegan cornbread stuffing.

Vegan Green Bean Shoe Peg Corn Casserole

This is my mom’s standard side dish for the holidays. I’ve made it for various potluck dinners over the years and I’ve always tweaked it to my own tastes. This year, I had to make the “Cream of” soup since I can’t buy a vegan version of it. The soup alone is yummy. It’s also quite thick with a nice texture. I think it will do quite well in the recipe.

Mashed Garlic Faux-tatoes

Mashed potatoes are the dog-diggity-bomb and I do allow myself an occasional cheat when we are out to dinner, but I can’t eat these for Thanksgiving (two meals) and leftovers for a few days without risking feeling ill from all that dairy I’m not used to. And, I want the “faux”-tatoes so they are less carby since I tend to eat more of these for holiday weekends. I’m going to modify the recipe to add mashed cauliflower just to give it more good veggies. I’m not going to tell anyone that these aren’t potatoes and see if they notice.

The Recipes

Vegan Stuffing

3/4 cup vegan margarine
1 cup onion, chopped
2 cup celery, chopped
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
3 tsp sage
3 tsp thyme
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp rosemary
1/2 c fresh parsley, chopped
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
16 cup bread cubes
2 cup vegetable stock

Preheat oven to 350
Melt margarine, saute onion and celery until golden.
Add spices, herbs, and vinegar. Mix well and remove from heat.
Combine bread cubes with onion mixture. Mix well.
Toss with half the stock. Check consistency. Stuffing should be moist but not soggy. Add more stock as needed. Taste. Adjust seasonings.
Grease the casserole pan, add stuffing, cover, and bake for 45 minutes.

Vegan Cream of ___ Soup

1 large onion, chopped
4 cup water
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 Tbs soy sauce
2 cup ___ veggie (spinach, mushrooms, celery)
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 c hot soy milk (this weakened the taste and didn’t add much to the texture. I’ll leave it out next time.)

Boil and then simmer onion, potatoes, water, and soy sauce about 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender
Add ___ veggie, garlic, pepper, and nutmeg. Cook for 2 more minutes
Purée the soup, (stir in the soy milk), adjust seasonings (I had to add a lot of salt to make this stand on it’s own, but in recipes, that won’t matter).

Green Bean Shoe Peg Corn Casserole

1 can shoe peg corn
1 can French style green beans
2/3 can cream of ___ veggie soup (make ahead of time)
(1/2 c. grated cheddar cheese – omit)
1/2 cup vegan sour cream
1/2 cup chopped onions (I’ll use 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup chopped celery
Salt and pepper to taste

Topping:
1 “stick” vegan margarine, melted
1 stack (36) Ritz crackers, crumbled

Directions:
Mix together all ingredients and pour into greased casserole dish.
Mix together topping ingredients and place on top of casserole.
Bake at 350º for 45 minutes.

Mashed Garlic Fauxtatoes

2 pounds turnips, peeled and cut into chunks
(add 1 pound of cauliflower)
8 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
2 Tbs vegan margarine
2 Tbs horseradish
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
3 Tbs fresh chives, chopped

Bring to a boil and then simmer the turnips and garlic (about 15 minutes) until the turnips are quite soft.
Drain well.
Mash the turnips.
Add the vegan margarine, horseradish, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Adjust margarine and seasonings as necessary.
Top with chives.