rain

Yesterday we got completely soaked. Here is some of the aftermath. Other clothes were sent upstairs to dry. It started raining mid-afternoon. There was some hail. A bit of lightning and thunder, but nothing like an awesome Kansas thunderstorm. In the evening Brian asked if I would pick him up from campus. Between our front door and the car WITH an umbrella, I got soaked. It was difficult to see or hear anything while driving yesterday. "Downpour" definitely characterizes our rain yesterday. Unfortunately, my picking him up did not prevent him from getting soaked or hailed on, but at least he didn't have to be out in it as long. Today oscillates between gray/cloudy/rainy and clear/sunny/bright just-after-a-rain lighting. I guess the earth is getting all varieties of presents for her day.

spring break: up'n down and seven-toe

One great thing happened over spring break: Mark and Brian got the Commodore 64 going. Oh, it was sweet. It had been many years since I had played these games. I loved hearing the old music. So fun! Barbie Goes on a Date, World Games, Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, Harrier Attack, Up'n Down (the best of all!). I don't remember which other ones we got working. The only disappointment was that Donald Duck's Playground didn't work. But the important thing is that Up'n Down did. Enjoy a picture.

Mark playing Up'n Down

Enjoy it well because you may never see it again. Because I might have ruined the whole system when I dropped it on the concrete floor of the storage room when we were putting it away. :(

A second great thing. We had been encouraging Seven-Toe (actual name Cleo), seen below, all week to have her kittens while we were home.

Seven-Toe from when she was a little tyke back in November. She has seven toes on each front paw and six toes on each back paw (if you don't know, most cats have five on each front and four on each back).

Seven-Toe is a sweetface.

Finally, the day before we left, this little cat (who was huge with pregnancy) had eight tiny kittens! They were so, so sweet. Seven-Toe is a small cat, but has been able to keep eight kittens fed! What a good mother. We were curious to see if the extra toes was a dominant or recessive trait (assuming that it was quite unlikely she bred with a male cat who has extra toes). We guessed recessive, but three of the kittens are also seven-toes! Cute!

spring break: the pre-home portion

Spring Break was a few weeks ago. At the beginning of our spring break, Brian's family came to visit. They also did us the wonderful favor of driving our belongings here in a moving truck (and this nice gesture was after the nice gesture of, together with my parents, packing it up for us!). We got to move into a larger place and finally have our own furniture again. We are loving our new space. I had forgotten just how comfortable our bed is. I think still, weeks later, in a half sleep state every now and then I will say to Brian, "This mattress is just so comfortable!"

After the weekend was over and our visitors had returned home, we finally had a chance to make it back up into the mountains for some skiing, which is always a fun time. The second day we were going to go, it started sprinkling while we were still in town. Partway up the mountain, it turned to snow and the roads were already getting snow-packed. We made the disappointing but oh-so-wise decision not to continue in our little car. However, I called the bus route and found out there would be a bus leaving in 30 minutes; we decided to go anyway, even though by this time it was mid-afternoon. On the mountain, it was snowing, snowing, snowing. Riding the lift we would get covered in snow. They had gotten 8-10" of fresh powder just that day, so skiing was fun and difficult, and the snow was really stinging on the exposed skin of my face. Fun times, though. We got in 3 or 4 runs before the lifts closed. We boarded our return bus. We headed out. The bus driver stopped in the parking lot to wipe off his windshield. And then we were stuck. After 30 minutes and the application of tire chains and even then still being stuck for a while, our driver was able to get us going and down the mountain we went. What is normally a 20-30 minute drive took us 2 hours total (including the time we were stuck). The roads were quite awful. I slept most of the way home, but I did see at least one small car stuck on the side of the road. We were so, so thankful we had not driven. It's likely we would have gotten stuck or at least had a really tough drive home, and our phone does not get service up there. Good thing we are not very good at getting going early in the day because had we left for skiing in the morning, we certainly would have driven and had no idea how terrible things were going to get.

Brian's brother was actually still in town for a conference, so we got to meet up with him in the evenings. One evening we went to his hotel to swim and hot tub. The hotel has a sweet, monstrous hot tub outside, which was torture getting to and getting back to the building (because of the freezing outside temperature), but was so sweet while we were in it. I love outdoor hot tubbing in the winter. It was fun to grab snow from the ground nearby and see how quickly it would melt in the hot water. :) I can't imagine their electric bill, though.

general update

I slept 12 hours last night.

In some ways it feels the semester is going quickly, however, my main comment on this semester is that it's overall uninspiring, which makes it also feel slow. I don't have even one class that I love. I have memorized many, many muscles and their origins and insertions and actions. Oh, boy. I feel like the batch for the next test is even larger. Yikes. I am, though, feeling grateful I am not in one of the classes that some of my classmates are in because it sounds so hard. What a thing to look forward to for next spring!

I have two semester projects going on. One is for a research methods class, and my partner and I are collecting data to add to a 20-year study. That is the cool part. The not so cool part is that this means we have often been dependent on someone else to complete her responsibility before we can do anything. It can be frustrating at times. I think we will finally get to begin our data collection next week. Another not so cool part is that we are supposed to find 30 participants. They have to be undergrads. This is quite difficult, especially since it is completely volunteer-based. Wish us luck! (Oh, "hi," partner! I just realized you might be reading this!)

A highlight of this semester was all of the basketball we got to watch. We ended up getting season tickets and really, really enjoyed getting to go to games. I grew up loving to watch KU basketball and love the (Big 8)/Big 12 conference, so it was great to see those teams. We were picked to be last in the conference and ended 8th, so that was quite good. I anticipate good things for the next couple of years! Tonight, Kansas represents -- the state's two teams will battle it out to be champion of the conference tournament. Hopefully KU can pull off their 3rd win over KSU of the season. Then it is March Madness time! I have high hopes for KU.

Next week is our last week of class before spring break. I feel fortunate that I don't very often feel overwhelmed this semester, but even so, a break will be nice, especially since we are planning to go home. This is the only time we will go home this semester, which is kind of a sad realization. I am glad we will get to spend our summer there.

But perhaps the most exciting event in our near future is our move! We get the keys to our new place on Thursday! We will not quite double our square footage, but it will feel so much bigger! And we will have another room. I am so excited. I feel like we will finally be settling into the place we will stay for the next couple of years. I can't wait to have our own furniture. I think it will finally feel like we are home. It could be interesting at first though because we are as of now unsure exactly when our stuff will be driven out (whether someone will bring it to us next week or whether we will bring it at the end of break). So it could be Thermarests and sleeping bags for several days for us! And no place to sit.

We are beginning to have some really beautiful days. I want to have hope that winter is over and spring is here. We will see. I love spring.

an outrage, i tell you.

I've never been much of a chicken nugget person. I can't even tell you how long it had been since I had had Chicken McNuggets. I think the last time I had them they looked more breaded and were all a uniform S/parallelogram shape, but I may have just made all of that up. The Olympics advertising for Chicken McNuggets (as much as I pretty much hated the McDonald's ads) got to me, and I wanted to try the sweet chili sauce (limited time offer...you know, to eat like the Canadians and Olympians at Olympic Village...).

Earlier this week, Brian went out to get McDonald's for us, and I requested Chicken McNuggets. I could NOT believe when he reported to me that a six-pack cost $3! $3, I tell you! That. Is an outrage. 50 cents per nugget?! Ridiculous. Had I been there for the purchase, I probably would have passed on them, but they were tasty.

Second. This was mere days after the closing ceremonies. Not weeks. Not even one week. Brian was informed that they no longer carried sweet chili sauce. It was still on McDonalds.com right before he left. Disappointment.

The real kick in the shins about this? My bag had an Olympian snowboarder on it and it ADVERTISED SWEET CHILI SAUCE! I told Brian I refused the bag, but I don't think I taught McDonald's any lessons.

you're kiding, right?

I had a test in my first class of the day today. It was kind of crappy, and the 10-page study guide I typed out (from the professor's given study questions) was not much help. Glad I spent the time on that. After the test, a girl from the class who I do not know sat down in the empty seat next to me for our following class. She asks,
"We have a test in here [as in, the 2nd class] on Friday?"
"Yep."
"Over, like, everything?"
"Um, yep."
"And what are we doing today? More information for the test on Friday?"
"Yep, and some review for the test, I think."
"Oh. I think I'll go."
And she does.

Are you kidding me? You are the last person who should be skipping class! Plus, these tests are hard. Definitely doable if you put the time, but hard.

Speaking of, I better start my studying for it. Ugh.

food. food. oh, food.

Yesterday I snapped pictures of two food items I wanted to blog about. This morning when I was uploading pictures, I found a third food I had photographed to blog, so this will be a food-rich post.

First up: Monster Cookies.

Sometime before Christmas 2008 I had asked Emily for the monster cookie recipe we made at her house in Ohio during spring break of junior year (these things apparently stick with me). This recipe truly is monster. I took the time last year to quarter it, but never got around to actually making them until a few weeks ago. Quartered, this recipe made well over 50 good-sized cookies. Good thing I did not make a full recipe because I fit whatever I could into a gallon freezer bag. This took up the remaining room in our freezer at that time. And we still had more than 20 cookies sitting out for consumption. Oh...yum.

I couldn't resist making one true MONSTER cookie.

No more room! These are pretty delicious out of the freezer, FYI.

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Second: Mini Chocolate Cheesecakes.

Cheesecake = love. Chocolate Cheesecake = true, forever love. I love, love, love chocolate cheesecake. Luckily, Brian likes it too because I made this as dessert for Valentine's, and it would be kind of selfish if it were purely for me. Despite my love-love relationship with cheesecake, I have a love-hate relationship with making cheesecake. Several times it has turned out just fine. A few times have been iffy. Once was doomed from the beginning when I straight up substituted Oreos for graham crackers for the crust and didn't take into account that the Oreo cream would do some of the binding action and not as much butter would be needed. We tried to salvage what we'd already done, but that crust was very stuck to the pan. And then the middle of that one was kind of soupy. And of course it was for an actual event. This seems like the appropriate place to mention that I do not like graham crusts very much, at least not for true, actual cheesecake. They are ok for the Jello-type cheesecakes and probably other things I can't recall right now. To me, a perfect cheesecake has an Oreo crust. Also, making the crust for the cheesecake is probably my least favorite part.

So there is all of that, and on top of it the fact that I don't have a spring form pan. Kind of necessary for making cheesecake. Then I was thinking about Oreos and how, really, they are already their own perfect crust...just for smaller cheesecakes. Seriously -- twist apart and scrape off the cream and what do you have? A mini crust. No sides, but who cares? Crust is not the best part of cheesecake. The less of it, the better.

I set off reading chocolate cheesecake recipes to find the one I wanted to make. I had decided that a recipe with two packages of cream cheese would be a good amount for the number of mini cheesecakes I wanted to end up with. No recipes fit this criterion, so I knew I would have to adapt. The egg to cream cheese ratios I was finding in recipes made this tricky. But then after realizing how each recipe had its own ratio, I decided I could do what I want and it would probably be fine. Here's the recipe I ended up with (oh, as I started typing it, I remembered how goofy it is given the adaptations...you may just want to skip it):

2 pkg. cream cheese
2/3 c + 1/4 c sugar
2/3 of 2 T flour ...see what I mean about goofy?
1/4 c + 2 T cocoa
2/3 t vanilla
2/3 of 1/4 c milk
2 eggs

Even though it's goofy, I certainly didn't measure those "2/3 of..." exactly, so it doesn't make it much more difficult than a regular recipe. If you don't want it to be chocolate, you can leave out the cocoa and the extra 1/4 c of sugar. And if you want sour cream in it, you can substitute it for the milk and maybe leave out some of the cream cheese. Whatever. I ended up deciding that the recipe couldn't really be screwed up, but I haven't exhaustively tested that theory.

Let's see. I got the cream cheese and sugar good and mixed. Carefully mixed in the flour and cocoa (if you don't know about cocoa, it takes it a bit to mix with liquid, so it stays powdery -- READ: messy -- for a while). Mixed in the vanilla and milk. Added the eggs one at a time, mixing gently/only just mixing until combined.

I lined muffin tins with foil cups. I want opinions: would paper cups work for this? I couldn't decide. But now I have tons of paper cups because I save all of the ones from between foil cups, which I've used for a number of recipes, plus I have paper cups I bought as paper cups, and I want to make this recipe again. Anyone? Anyone? I dropped in one half of an Oreo (cream scraped off). Then I used a 1/4 c scoop to put in the cheesecake mixture. I made about 18 total, but I think I would make only 12 with this recipe because it didn't expand all that much and you know I like a greater cheesecake to crust ratio. I might also next time try crushing the Oreos (cream and all) and dropping a little in the bottom of the cup instead of putting in a whole cookie. Just for variety and to see how it works. And to have a less thick crust.

I read several mini cheesecake recipes (none of them what I wanted for the recipe) to try to guess at baking temperature and time. One said 350* for 35 minutes and one said 375* for 16 minutes. I tried 350* for 30 minutes, but I think it should be less. I would check it at at least 20 minutes.

I have never cared if the top of my cheesecake cracks, so I've never tried to correct for that. All I care about is the flavor, and chocolate cheesecake is delicious.

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And, finally, if you are still here: Sushi.

Family Housing has all kinds of clubs/activities. Most of them haven't interested me (scrapbooking club) or I don't have time for (book club), but I was so excited to see a poster for a new club go up: cooking club! Awesome + all of the ingredients provided for you? Perfect. The first meeting was this week, and we made sushi. This wasn't our first time making sushi, but it was our first time to be taught by a Japanese person. Fun! It was great and tasty. She showed us how to make rolls with the outsides being: nori (seaweed), avacado (shaped how a Dragon roll comes -- it looks so cool), and rice (and then rolled in sesame seeds). Of course, it was all very tasty too. I made mine at the beginning of the evening, and we split it there, so I have no pictures, but Brian brought his home, so I photographed it yesterday. Which also means it's not as fresh as right after it was made, but I still think it looks really good. So I'm very excited about cooking club. People can sign up to teach each month. I don't know for sure if I would want to, but what ideas would you guys have? We thought about cinnamon rolls or bohne berrogi (except neither of us has made it before/knows how to make it!) or flat pancakes or knepp...