Daily Life

and thankfully the wind was blowing from the north so Sammie the destroyer, couldn't smell the cat.  The cat was clearly a young indoor cat that got out and had no idea what to do with itself.  Thankfully my dad and I were 1) working on the backporch 2) had nothing in our hands and 3) was two steps away from Sammie.  Dad was able to turn around and calmly bend down and pet/grab Sammie and I followed the cat into the house and scooted him out the front door.    The cat just hung around the side of the house for about an hour which was driving Sammie crazy as she views cats as a cross between doggy catnip, a chew toy and a fresh steak on Christmas morning wrapped in fur.

My first thoughts of the Gaylord Opryland's convention center is why didn't I bring my GPS unit. Ye gods is this place huge and to make things a little more interesting there was a senior prom going on as well which cut off half of the major hallways. I did manage to work up an appetite wandering aimlessly around this multi-level seven acre complex trying to get to the cafes and/or the pubs that were still open.

While it took a while to remember some key time saving steps I'm picking up my veggie bachelor tricks again.

• my weekly shopping list is much more manageable now, all I need is rye bread, veggie slices, beer, eggs, bags of carrots and buttermilk. I try to remember to buy oranges and apples and even eat them sometimes. This goes along with the bulk: jelly, almond butter, quinoa, tempeh, pancake mix, raisins, walnuts, horse radish and dark chocolate chips.
  
• beer makes all meals taste better and is actually an ok replacement for buttermilk in pancakes.
  
• cooking is a lot easier when you make no effort to measure ingredients (except salt), this also makes for lunches (when I remember to put them in the car) and this has also made the dogs really happy.
  

I spent most of the weekend working in the backyard when it was light out and wasn't raining, and the rest of the waking hours organizing the house. I'm trying to arrange things so I can easily move everything away from the walls as I hope to paint before too long, and I might be repainting or at least touching up the outside when it drys out. As for the backyard, weeded the garden, mixed in some soil supplements. I still haven't placed the Kiwis and I'm considering giving them to some friends or family, but I'll decide this weekend.

Oh how you tease me, having the weekend be clear, sunny and 27 degrees,... maybe this is just a way to make me clean the garage and update the homestead basemap. Maybe by 2pm it will be above freezing and worth going outside.