Ballard Is Famous!

I love Ballard. The Tractor Tavern is one of my favorite music venues in Seattle (second only to the now defunct Crocodile Cafe). My favorite restaurant, and home of the best margaritas in Seattle, is in Ballard. And Adam's house is there. His house is far enough from downtown Ballard that he doesn't have the parking issues that you have when trying to visit Ballard Ave, yet is close enough that you can walk to bars, restaurants and movie theatres. It's great.
And now, Ballard has been written up in the New York Times.
I wonder if the neighborhood's growing popularity will help maintain property values?

On A Roll!

Three posts in three days!?! Madness, I know. But I wanted to share with you two recent successes I've had. First, I conquered the little green worms (aka Cabage Loopers) that were eating my basil. After I noticed all the leaves were being eaten away during the night, I did a little internet research about how to get rid of them. I read about a number of pesticides and thought, now why would I put chemicals on something I'm going to eat (don't ask how I justify eat food that *other* people have put chemicals on, I haven't figured that out yet). Instead, I followed one person's advice. I went outside every night after sunset and first thing every moring. I looked on every leaf, and pulled the little suckers off, throwing them unceremoniously to the ground. And now I have a beautiful full basil plant and ready access to fresh basil. As long as I remember to water it.
And finally... pizza. I successfully made pizza. The dough--from Joy of Cooking. How to keep it from sticking to the counter? First, flour. Second, don't try to make it too thin. And third, when you put it on the pan to cook, make sure you sprinkle the pan liberally with flour and cornmeal. It was delicious.
Maybe I'll post again tomorrow. I have some interesting thoughts on the current candidates' health care plans (they both kind of suck, but at least they are trying). And thoughts on this whole "food allergies are making me fat" phenomenon (it may be true, but body weight is a complicated issue, which is why I plan on studying it during fellowship). Then again, maybe I'll save these goodies for NaBloPoMo. Only 4 more days...

Ninety Degree Halloween

I remember trick-or-treating in Idaho, where you would have to get so bundled up in order to brave the frigid weather on Halloween, that it didn't really matter what your costume was--no one could see it. But here in southern California, I attended a pumpkin carving party in 80 degree weather. Something very non-fall-like about it, but a good time nonetheless.

It's great living a short drive from the O.C. Two of my very good friends from college live up there, and it is so much fun getting to see them every once in awhile. Now that we are older, and all living our own lives in various parts of the country, married, starting families, it is hard to find the time to get together anymore. My wedding was the last of the bunch, so we don't even have weddings as an excuse to get together anymore. Chrissy and I decided we need to start planning group vacations. If anyone wants to get on that, I should be free sometime in 2010. :)

I had a lovely time today. Running in San Diego. Brunch in Fullerton. Pumpkin carving in Huntington Beach. A very nice end to a weekend that started off with a very bad hangover. Hopefully it will cool off by Friday so those California kids get a taste of fall. And hopefully not many of them come trick-or-treating at our house, so I can eat the Snickers and Twix I bought to hand out.

I'm Too Old For This

It has been an excellent start to my first free weekend with Adam in months. Friends visitng from out of town. Margaritas. It always lead to adventure. Things I learned after 5 margaritas last night:

1. I take really bad pictures when I am drunk (see below)

2. You should not get on Facebook when you are drunk

3. Even if you make your margaritas with Patron, it is still much more cost-effective to make a pitcher at home than it is to buy them in a restaurant (8 restaurant margaritas = $90, one pitcher of Tracy's Excellent Very Srong Margaritas = $40)

4. I can't count when I'm drunk (there were 4 of us, not sure why we used so many glasses)

5. Even if I drink good tequila, I still get a wee bit hung over

So to recover from last night, we spent the day at the beach. I brought a little light beach reading:

And tomorrow, I'm going to a pumpkin carving party up in Orange County. I'm debating whether to go with the traditional pumpkin:

Or make a political statement with my pumpkin:

Well see what inspires me tomorrow.

Catching Up

Adam is out of town. Again. But this has given me some much needed time to catch up on things. Mainly sleep. Without wedding planning, and now that thank you letters are done and in the mail, there's actually not much on my to-do list. So how have I spent my Adam-free time?

I worked Thursday night, and then had to start my new rotation Friday morning. Luckily they didn't make me work past 12 noon, because if I had had to work any longer, I would have fallen asleep on the drive home. I got home at 1 pm and slept until 5 pm. And then went back to bed at 8 pm and slept until 9 am today. Quite the party animal I am!

I like to try out new cooking experiments on weekends. Today I embarked on a vegetable soup. Rummaging through my food blogs, I came upon a "zero points Asian inspired soup." Zero points referring to Weight Watchers point plan, which basically means it has less than 50 calories per serving. I have several elaborate, rich, calorie-laden meals planned for later this week, so calorie-free soup sounded good. Except it wasn't. First, I decided to make the vegetable broth from scratch. Such a waste of time. In fact, vegetable broth in general is a waste of time, unless you are a vegetarian I suppose. It tastes so horrid--sweet and bland. Blech. $20 worth of vegetables for a pot of foul tasting water. I think I'll stick with my chicken stock--easy to make and quite tasty. I proceeded to throw a whole bunch of other veggies in the broth, and those actually didn't taste half bad, but the broth kind of ruined it for me. And really, when I eat a meal, I want calories. That's why I just had two delicious chocolate chocolate chip cookies with my coffee. Yum. Luckily the other meals I have planned for this week are full of meat and calories and fat, and so should be much tastier. I've found it is very hard to screw up non-low-fat meals.

I finished the pumpkin hats. I made an entire patch of pumpkins, even a little preemie one for our friends' baby who showed up 3 months early. Aren't they cute?

And now I'm indulging in one of my favorite Adam-free activities--watching Hugh Grant movies. I miss Adam, but hey, if I can spend the evening with Hugh Grant, I'll get over it.

A (sort of) 3-Day Weekend

We switch rotations on Fridays. I don't know who thought this made sense... to start a new rotation on on Friday, then take two days off for the weekend, then start again on Monday, but that is the way it is. As of Friday, I started my 2-week stint as the overnight resident. I work from 8 pm until 8 am Monday through Friday. I'm back up for the overnight intern, and I do any admissions that come in after 1 am. It's not a glamorous job, and it means I could potentially go two weeks without actually seeing Adam. I won't sleep well for the next two weeks, because even though technically I should have plenty of time to sleep between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm, I have trouble sleeping when it is daylight outside. The worst part, however, was that I started Friday. I worked one overnight shift, then the weekend started. Not only did I have to make the switch from working a normal day schedule on Thursday to having to stay up all night Friday, but then I had to go back to normal day schedule for the weekend. Suffice it to say, it has not been my most productive weekend, but on the flip side, I don't have to be at work until 8 pm Monday, so it's kind of like having a 3-day weekend.

And what did I do with this long weekend? I made little pumpkin hats:

There is a whole collection of babies aged -2 months all the way up to 1 year who I think would look quite fetching in little pumpkin hats this holiday season. So I've decided to see how many I can make by Halloween. I have no idea what size baby heads are though so we'll see how they fit. I tried it on a box and despite the fact that baby heads are not square, I thought it looked cute.

I also made it to the Farmer's Market. My favorite part of the Farmer's Market is that everyone samples all their produce. So I walk up and down eating slices of peaches and plums and pluots and apples and tomatoes. Yum. I came home with some nice looking tomatoes (notice how they reflect off my very clean counters? Yes, I cleaned the kitchen this weekend too).

Tomorrow? Tomorrow I try to sleep in as late as possible, take a nap around 4 pm, and then back to work for an entire week of the night shift. But, at least I get my weekends!