Sunday, April 30, 2006

Pita Power!

So today has been the day of great procrastination. But that is okay. I found one more thing to do to procrastinate writing my term paper... and now I am blogging about it to procrastinate some more... man I'm good at this! So basically I went to the library because I just had to get some vegetarian cook books... had to! Sure I did. Anyway I ended up finding a book called "Pita the Great" and they are right, Pitas are great. But what is not so great is that some one tore the main recipe... you know the one... the one where almost every other recipe in the whole book says something like "follow steps one through five on page 22." I think that person, is 1. selfish 2. not book lover 3. not a library lover 4. doesn't respect other people 5 . doesn't think about how their actions effect other people.... basically an all around selfish, nasty, hateful, not knowing how to use a copy mechine person that should be eradicated from the earth! Anyway there was one recipe for whole wheat honey pitas, so I used that recipe instead, but I don't have any honey! what is a girl to do? I dumped in some canola oil and black strap molasses and some sugar... don't ask me how that equals honey in my mind but it turned out great! Not quite the same as sweet honey, but that's okay. It was so much fun to see them puff up in the oven. I've never made them before, but I think it's going to be a weekly ritual to bake pitas on sunday.

Sorry this blog is turning into a text only format, but hopefully by the end of the year I will get a digital camera and be able to put up picutures.

Updates

So, I successfully finished my ride and am proud to say that I went the full 20 miles. I think next year I'm going to try to do the 55 mile ride, but we will see.

I successfully finished my term paper and prepared for my art history and french exams.
Only one more paper and 2 exams and 2 paintings and 2 weeks to go.

I made a canvas shopping bag that perfectly fits into my new wire handlebar basket! It will be good for many things other than shopping:
1. trips to the library
2. holding yarn and needles and a book
3. picnicing
4. art stuff
5. whatever else comes to mind

I'm trying to reduce waste in my life... I am a stong believer that every choice I make has an impact, whether I can see it or not.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Trails for Tails

The day of the big ride! So in about 2 and a half hours I will be on my way to ride 20 miles in 3 hours. I have great news too! I just decided to do this ride last week, so I figured that a target goal of $100 in pledges would be kind of ambicious. So, with my last pledges coming in yesterday, I doubled my target goal and have $205 in pledges! My sister really helped by setting the standard of $2 a mile. Before that I was getting pledges of about $5 per person, which is good, I couldn't have made my goal without them! But after she made that pledge 2 other people followed suit in the next two days! Thanks so much to my big sis! Thanks so much to those who pledged! Seriously, every little bit does help.

I did a trial run yesterday and I am glad to say that everything went smoothly and me and my neighbors had a good time. We road from Bush street in dekalb to the far end of downtown Sycamore. I think it was about a 18 mile ride all in all, because we road back and forth quite a bit in Sycamore. Also we stopped at a ritzy hotel restaurant in Sycamore and split a portabella blue cheese burger and some clam chowder.... the waitress must have thought we were crazy to split a burger 3 ways, we did tell here though that we were riding to dekalb afterwards so we couldn't eat much or we would get sick, I think she just thought it was funny and of course that we were crazy. It was such a good time.

It was supposed to rain today, but now they say it is not, in fact it's supposed to be partly cloudy and 65 degrees! perfect weather!

Wish me luck and thanks again for the pledges!

Monday, April 17, 2006

Horay! It's my birthday!

So, I have not posted in awhile because mainly I work too much and I have a lot of school work to get done before the end of the semester, but as it is, today is my birthday, which desearves a little post at least.

I was gifted a lot of cool stuff... what was the best gift? I would have to say a really neat bookcase from pier 1 that my sister got for me. It is the perfect size and there was no assembly required. The sides fold out on hinges and the shelves fold down on the same. It is great! I was able to get all the books off the floor and onto it. In fact, with just the books on the floor I filled up 3 shelves! I didn't realize that I was reading so many books.

Top shelf: library books and books i'm reading for fun and craft books that I am working out of
Second shelf: school books that I am reading and books for my research paper
Third shelf: books that I have recently bought that are in que to read, or books that have been given to me that are in que to read
Bottom shelf: half full of articles in folders that I need to read for school.

In other news:
I am going to ride 20 miles for the Tails bike-a-thon.... basically, people make pledges per the mile that i ride or a flat donation, and then once I ride a rediculous amount that I have not tried to ever ride all at once before people say well good job, here's the money and then i turn in the money to the VEG society at NIU and then they turn it into Tails (the local no kill shelter). After the ride we are having a bocca burger bbq! what fun! and it's all for the cats and dogs and other little critters that end up at the shelter. If you would like to donate, post a comment saying so, I will then contact you and give you my info (so you can send a check to me) and i can get your info so I can write down your name and stuff to turn into VEG.

I cut down my hours at work so hopefully I will write a decent paper and do okay on the exams I have coming up.

I love my bike!

Oh yeah, i finished some projects!
1. baby booties
2. water bottle sling of my own design! woot!

That's it for today