Pinewood Derby

Gavin and I made a car for the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby. Gavin was pretty pessimistic and named his car the Green Hornet, after the Silver Hornet in Peter Sellers' Pink Panther ("ehhh, the Hornet is overdue for a service . . .")

 

Turns out our car was awesome! Our secret: nickels superglued to the underside of the car to bring it up to the limit of 5 ounces.

 

Gavin's troop watching the races.

The Green Hornet leads the pack!

Third Place trophy!

Best Week Ever

I had such a great week this week. Lots of wonderful and mostly unexpected things happened, one after another. I will probably never have such a good week again so I'm posting it here to save for posterity.

 

1. Sabbatical!

 

I knew this was going to happen, but I didn't know how incredible it was going to feel to NOT go to work on the first day of class! No lecture prep, no needy students, no department meetings! I created a little temporary office for myself where I can work from home in my pajamas, which is pretty much where I spent the week. It was glorious.

 

My sabbatical nook.

2. New Computer!

 

I took my computer in to IT late last week to have them fix a bug in my Firefox program, and when I came to pick it up on Monday they gave me a brand new one! The timing is perfect: just as I'm about to sit down and do a whole lot of writing during my sabbatical, I have a new machine to work on.

My best friend for the next 6 months.

3. I won an iPad!

 

This one was totally unexpected -- I have never won anything in my life! I didn't quite believe it when I got the email, and neither did anybody else. (Lucy said "Mom, you didn't click on one of those banner ads did you?") But sure enough, a new top-of-the-line iPad Mini arrived by FedEx on Thursday. It has retina display and 128 GB and Siri and cellular capability, things I didn't know I needed but I'm sure I will discover I can't live without. All for donating $30 to a great charity that builds houses for child soldiers in Uganda. A win all around.

The kids love to talk to Siri and make iMovies.

4. 60lbs of Free Meat!

 

On Friday I was sitting in my little sabbatical office playing with my new iPad, when a farmer knocked at the door and delivered two coolers full of organic, farm-raised, grass-fed meat! Apparently this was a barter payment for some legal work Austin did, but I think we got the best end of this bargain. The only downside is that I had to reorganize my chest freezer to make room.

A six month supply of beef and pork.

 

5. Bagpipe Lessons!

 

I saw a posting from a Norwich student this week offering bagpipe lessons, and mentioned it to Austin thinking he would find it funny. Next thing I knew, Austin had the old chanter out and the practice pipes and was getting ready to meet with his new bagpipe teacher! He had his first lesson on Friday and loved it. The teacher said he could be marching in a pipe band in a year. Now that I can't wait to see.

Twenty minutes of practice per day.

6. Banty Eggs!

 

OK, maybe this is not the most momentous thing ever, but I thought it was so fun. A friend brought me a dozen eggs from her banty chickens, which just started laying. These are the cutest eggs imaginable. They make adorable fried eggs, just teeny little things. And they are delicious, of course. Now the kids want us to get banty chicks. Banty hens are about half as big as the girls we have now, so maybe there's room for a few in the coop. 

A big egg and a banty.

7. Sherlock!

 

Tonight is the premiere of season three of the best thing on TV. I have spent an unconscionable amount of time lately catching up on seasons 1 and 2 so I am all ready. What a perfect way to round out an amazing week.

Be still my heart.



Lots of other nice things happened this week too. Gavin and I had a super fun BookKids meeting on Monday where we got to Skype with an author. Friends volunteered out of the blue to drive us to the airport and pick us up when we go to Germany. The case I ordered for my new iPad arrived less than 24 hours after I ordered it. Austin made fancy dinners (even used a recipe!) two nights this week. Lucy and Gavin each won a race at their swim meet today. The cheap space heater worked better than the expensive one. The weather was above freezing and the sun was out almost every day. Seriously, it doesn't get any better than this!



Swim Pentathalon

Today was the Icebreakers Pentathalon, the home swim meet for Lucy and Gavin's team.

They both swam tough.

 

Getting ready to race.

Lucy's Freestyle.

Gavin's Butterfly

Gavin's cheering section.

Gavin competed in three events and Lucy competed in all five. Lucy won her heat in the 50m Breaststroke and Gavin destroyed the competition in the 100m Individual Medley. They each got a rubber duck for winning a heat! 



Duckies!

Planetarium and Biodome

Another January, another long lazy weekend at the Sheraton in Montreal while Austin runs the Mid-Winter Thaw of the Vermont Bar Association.

 

He was in charge this year, so he was very busy and stressed. The rest of us, not so much. We just got to relax in the hotel suite, shop, and play. It was an absolutely glorious weekend.

 

The highlight for the kids was Montreal's brand-new planetarium, connected by underground tunnel to the always-popular Biodome. We rode the Metro out there on an icy, gray day that was perfect for inside activities.

 

None of us know what this is.
Labels are all in French.

Reconstructing Pangaea.

Sailing through the solar system.

Watching the star show from bean bags. Awesome.

Biodome Monkey.

Biodome Kids.

Portholes on the aquarium.

Cool Canadian seabirds.

Kitchen Rockstar

I made this the other day:

 

 

I wish this picture had sound and scent. If it did, you could hear the crust crackling as the loaf cooled and smell the heavenly aroma of fresh baked bread. I seriously could not believe I made this. Still can't, even though I made another loaf the next day just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

 

I hadn't intended to start 2014 by turning myself into a self-styled kitchen rockstar. But I suddenly got inspired when Gavin's friend's mom had them make "elf bread" during their boys-only Lord of the Rings marathon. (Held while the girls were doing a Harry Potter marathon at our house. 21 hours of movie watching joy. They were zombies by the end.) Gavin came home raving about how delicious his homemade bread was, and brought the recipe so we could make it. Meanwhile, I was browsing through the Williams-Sonoma catalog and noticed that they were trying to sell a clay "bread cloche" for $60 so your oh-so-perfect artisan bread could come out of the oven with a crusty Parisian crust. The pictures looked so beautiful I was a little tempted . . . until I remembered that I have a perfectly good clay pot already: a Romertopf I swiped from my mom to make clay pot chicken in. To be used from now on for crusty artisan elf-bread to die for.

 

The perfect accompaniment for homemade crusty bread: homemade hummus. I've been making this for a while now, totally over the store-bought variety that will never taste good to me again. This is SO easy to make. This time, I skipped the big heavy food processor and made hummus in my Magic Bullet blender so there was hardly any cleanup. Talk about magic.

 

So then I started thinking: if I can make bread that looks, sounds, and tastes like Paris ... what other kind of bread should I try? I decided on Naan bread, which is impossible to find in Vermont grocery stores. I searched out a recipe and went for it. Turned out pretty good.

 

The thing that turned out BETTER than pretty good, to my surprise, was the Dal. I came across a recipe for Dal (Indian lentil stew) online. I haven't ever been a big fan of lentils but this looked interesting and I had some old red lentils somewhere in a cupboard and most of the spices the recipe called for. Oh wow, this may be my new favorite food.

 

So, who wants to come for dinner? I'm on a roll!