(mis)adventures of spindlerose

First new kitchen adventure

Or how I burned my dinner.

The new kitchen has a fancy glass electric cooktop. The last time I used an electric stove was 8 years ago when we lived at MIT, and I pretty much never cooked in the tiny kitchen on the really awful toy stove after I ruined a third tea kettle. I kept boiling them dry while wondering why my dinner wasn't cooking because I always turned on the wrong burner. Electric kettle and good friends with real kitchens saved me from myself.

It is going to take a while for me to adjust to this cooktop. The contols are backwards—the button I want to use to make a burner hotter makes it cooler, the one that should make it cooler makes it hotter. It takes a long time for this cooktop to get hot. Boiling water for pasta is an exercise in patience. Getting a pan hot enough to sauté takes twice as long (at least tht's what it felt like to me) as on a gas burner.

After waiting what felt like 5 minutes for my skillet to get hot, I sauteed some chicken breast for chicken cacciatore. It was nicely browned and perfectly cooked. My problems started when I forgot that electric burners STAY hot for a long time after you turn them down. I burned the tomato sauce I added to the pan, and my perfectly cooked chicken pieces ended up a little dry. It was still edible, barely. D's chickenless dinner was perfect since I just heated his sauce gently over low heat. The question is will I remember this lesson the next time I make a pan sauce?

Tour de Fleece 2011

I am a couple of days late starting my Tour de Fleece spinning. I plead moving and unpacking insanity. I really meant to spend a few minutes spinning on a spindle Saturday and Sunday, but I didn't.

My goals for this year:

Finish pink BFL on a spindle

Finish pink and purple polworth on a spindle

Finish green Abbybatts on the Schacht-Reeves

Finish blue alpaca blend on the Joy

Pick something else from my personal fiber club bin to spin

My excuse for not spinning is that D is an unpacking slave driver. But, the kitchen is fully unpacked and everything has a temporary home. I need to do some serious cabinet rearranging, but we did not take the time to adjust shelf heights as we upacked. To a large extent, we put everything where it would fit and not where I want it long term.

We have also unpacked as many books as we could into the tiny library. Before I get to spend time spinning tonight, we need to do a quick organization pass in the office so D has someplace to work for a few hours tonight and I have someplace to work tomorrow.

First home improvement project

I moved with the cats last Tuesday. I thought about keeping them confined to a single room for a few days. D pointed out that they had been cooped up for the movers all day Monday and in the car all day Tuesday, so it would be ok to let them roam the whole house. That turned out to be a bad decision. By Wednesday afternoon, I thought I had found all the really good hiding places and blocked access to the unsafe ones. Sometime Wednesday night, Eliza vanished. She managed to find a basement access point to the subfloor under the laundry room. It turned out to be one of those I can get in but not out access points. There is a cat sized opening above the pipe indicated in the photo.

Friday night, we looked into every corner and concluded that this was the one place she might be that we could not see into. When we heard little meeps and meows from that space after D called her name, we left some very stinky food on top of the pipe. It disappeared. After the movers left on Saturday, we did some minor demolition in the garage and found another access to the same space; this one does not require a blind leap down 3 feet. We left more food at that opening, and it disappeared while we were out having dinner. D decided to camp in the garage to try and coax her out of hiding (since she was still mad at me for forcing her to spend a day in a cage in the car). He had been asleep for less than 45 minutes when he woke up to "meep" and a snuggling cat. He immediately put her into kitty prison (in the master suite with her sister) and rewarded her for coming out of hiding with more stinky food.

This morning, we built the door between the finished and unfinished parts of the basement. In a week or so, we will paint it and do a better job mounting the hinges. As soon as we unpack enough to get rid of the box obstacle course, we will let the cats roam the whole house again. With no access to dangerous places.

Tired

The movers arrived at about 7:00 this morning. The had finished unloading everything, including the piano, but about 11:30. D and I spent the rest of the day unpacking the kitchen. All the boxes are empty, but I still have a lot of organizing and putting away to do. So tired now, more tomorrow.

Halfway through 2011

Back in late December, I posted a list of 10 intentions for 2011. And I haven't posted anything since. All I can say is that finding a house (intention #1) took a whole lot more time and energy than we thought it would. But we succeeded in a  surprising way. In March, D's parents decided to move to North Carolina. In April, we decided to make an offer on their house near Boston. In May, we kept our fingers crossed that it would happen, but only told key people like our employers about our plans. On June 22, we closed on the house David grew up in. This past Monday, movers packed everything and loaded a big truck. Tuesday, I drove north with the cats. D is flying north in his plane right now. Tomorrow, our truckload of household goods (as the movers put it) will arrive.

I'm writing from the kitchen of our new home, sitting on my yoga ball at the desk since it is pretty much the only furniture I have right now.

Here's a mid-year update on my progress toward all 10 intentions. Some are going swimmingly and some need attention.

1. Buy a house. Accomplished! 
2. Pick up after myself. I am slowly getting better at this. I have promised D that I will confine my messes to specific areas of the new house.
3. Eat more fruits and vegetables. This is a continuing challenge. I was doing well until a few weeks ago when I stopped cooking and started packing.
4. Move more. I am. D and I have been taking 2-3 miles walks several times a week, and I am continuing to work on core strength. As soon as we are settled, I plan to find a local yoga studio and personal trainer to map out a long-term fitness plan.
5. Process photos after I take them. Umm, no progress here, unless you count the handful of house photos I took yesterday.
6. Join Spindlicity Stashdown 2011. Not much progress here. I'm about 25% through my first selected fiber.
7. Finish 12 pairs of socks. I have already finished 7 pairs of socks this year. Four of those were either UFOs or knit from yarn rescued from frogged UFOs. One was actively in progress at the end of 2010. I started and finished the other 2 very quickly. I knit both of those pairs from yarn I stashed before we moved to Virginia.
8. Finish or frog 12 WIPs. I have finished or frogged seven UFOs so far this year.
9. Continue to declutter. We did a lot less pre-move decluttering than we should have. I will do more as we unpack.
10. Blog more. No progress yet. My new habit for July is to blog every day. I like the NaBloPoMo swim theme for the month, and, if I spin every day, Tour de Fleece will provide daily blog fodder.