Maegan's BDay Blitz

For the last weekend of February I went to Tulsa for a quick visit.  I mainly cooked/baked and hung out with family.  These are some of the better photos I was able to take throughout the weekend.  Most of them are of my neice, Nola Jane.  She's the baby and new.  It was also good to see everyone and be able to talk with everyone.  We even managed to get a family picture (minus Chris) because one of Maegan's friends volunteered to take it.  I think she did well, even if Maegan wanted to make a funny face at the camera.  It was the best of a few different shots taken.  Katie was also in town for a baby shower so it was fun to see the family I typically see at Christmas, especially because of our wicked weather last Christmas meant I didn't get to see them.  I also managed to get a shot of my brother's cooking.  I figured it was one for the books since they don't do that often, and definitely don't cook together in the same kitchen often. 

Volleyball Take 2

Well, we played Friday night.  We lost miserably.  We did have fun though.  The team we lost to ended up winning the whole tournament so we kind of got 3rd place, right? 

Anyway, besides for the volleyball and it snowing a lot right now not much has changed since Thursday.  Well, I take that back.  I did manage to make a chocolate sheet cake today.  It is quite tasty.  I hope that I don't eat it all and can take it to small group on Tuesday.  I'll probably want some cake or brownies to take with me to Tulsa so I may have to bake again on Wednesday, and I'll need to bake a loaf of bread so that I can make a sandwich to take with me on the airplane!  I'm super excited -- the bread is denser than most, but I can make pb&j to take with me places now.  Portable food that doesn't require a microwave is a small miracle in my opinion as most of my food is always left-overs. 

Anyway, more volleyball pictures...

A crazy week so far

So this week has been a crazy week.  It started out Monday with us accidentally turning the alarm off.  When we realized that we had 20 minutes to get ready and get to the train station it got a bit hectic.  Way to start a week.  Anyway, since I have a less stringent schedule about when I have to be at work and we made it to the train station about a minute before the train did, I told Chris to get on the train, I'd just take the next one.  I ended up missing the train, but getting to watch the sunrise.  It was a pretty sunrise with clouds everywhere because we were slated to get snow and stuff.  I saw these ice crystals on the window of a shelter.  I thought they looked like the sun and was able to get the sun in them as it was low enough.  This was sunrise on Monday morning.  The burst pattern isn't one of the ice crystal forms I've seen very often so it was neat that I got to see it this way.

Today I took a biochemistry test.  It reminded me of doing the fact master tests in elementary school.  (For facts masters you had to do the math facts in a set amount of time) We had 13 pages of biochemistry structures to draw in 75 minutes.  I ended up being done in 45 minutes.  This means I did really well or really poorly.  I'm thinking its the first as it was pretty much the exact same test as previous semesters.  And it wasn't like it is possible to substitute that many DNA bases into the problem -- I had a 1 in 4 shot to begin with on getting the same one. 

Tomorrow night are the volleyball semi-finals and finals.  Hopefully we'll win again and be champions!  We can do it if we continue to play like we have the past few weeks.  We have to go in and know we're going to win, and have a LOT of energy.  We've got a lot of people so that helps because we've got sheer numbers on our side.  We'll see though.  Chris is going to go be photographer again so hopefully we'll get some more fun shots that I can post this week.

Baking of cinnamon goo

Well, in traditional weekend form, I'm attempting to make something I've been craving with ingredients that I can eat.  I normally sit down and look at about a dozen recipes, each leaving one of my ingredients out and then make up my own.  For instance, I look at a gluten free recipe, then a yeast free recipe, then one that doesn't involve shortening of any form, and one that doesn't involve a lot of milk, etc. and put something together.  Normally I've done okay, but today I failed spectacularly.  I failed in making cinnamon rolls, but succeeded in making something that right now smells very very yummy.  The dough was too wet to roll so it just kind of gooed up in the middle when I went to roll them.  Thankfully I decided that I wanted to make them in muffin tin, so I'll turn out with cinnamon goo infused muffins.  I do plan on icing them, but I definitely don't think that they are cinnamon rolls. 

Well, they did turn out okay.  They are like a cinnamon crumb cake more or less.  But I can eat it :)  Here are a few pictures after cooking and then after icing. Also, there is a reason that the cinnamon mixture in cinnamon rolls goes on the inside -- if it is on the outside it get burned!  Sugar at 375 for 10 minutes becomes a nice carbon char.  They taste good though! 

This week overall has been interesting.  Tuesday we got about a foot of snow.  Not that unusual except that Wednesday morning we had an earthquake.  It was a 3.8 quake in a suburb fairly close to ours.  It happened about 4 am and I felt it, but since the plows were out trying to get rid of the foot of snow on the roads and in the parking lot, I just assumed one had hit our building or something.  Wednesday morning was one for the books though -- we had the earthquake, we couldn't sleep because of the plows (they make the back-up beeping noise which is not very conducive to sleep), another train on our line hit a car that had slid onto the tracks and slowed us down getting into downtown -- and this was all between 4 and 7 am.  The sun did come out though, and it was a pretty day, but it was a long one for sure. 

School wise things are going.  This Thursday I have my first biochemistry exam.  We'll see how it goes.  I think I'll be okay as long as I don't freak out and remember to do things like count bonds to each atom. 

A bit of Volleyball

With the 20s-30s at church I've been playing volleyball.  We've been playing since sometime in October and the play-offs are upon us.  Last night we managed to do fairly well for the first game, got creamed the second game, and creamed the other team the last game.  At least going into the final game having won one and lost one we still had something to play for.  Chris went with me to the game (we braved the icy roads and managed to not hit any curbs, but did some car skating when no one was around.  It was a sudden storm and came with a lot of wind) and took along the camera.  He got some good shots, so here are a few.  He said it was a lot of fun, even if kind of frustrating to work on composing the frame well.  Most of the problems with blur are from the film speed being to slow, so I've got to figure out how to change that on the fly.  We did end up winning the match though so in two weeks we get to play again.  Hopefully in two weeks we'll play 2 games -- and win them both and therefore win the league. 

Carolyn and and other girl ready for play.

 

A good shot of a good serve.

 

We scored a point! 

 

Working with using all three touches, and someone successfully spiking the set from Carolyn. 

 

A team picture.  Since we had everyone there plus a few extras we decided having a team pic would be good.  These are the people we hang out with a lot -- they are our small group from church and so we see them several times a week.  

Any comments on any of the pictures -- from composition or what you think the problem with blur is, please let me know!

Easy Sunday

Well, we've had an easy Sunday so far.  It has been nice to kick back and hang out in pjs not doing much.  I'm about to go for a run -- we're up to the warmest part of the day as it nears 26 with a windchill of 13.  It is sunny though and deceptively clear out, so I'll go freeze for a run then come back in to a warm Chris.

This past week I went to my GI doc.  We discussed my visit to the allergist from the beginning of the month.  I was shocked when she agreed with me that the allergist was a jerk.  We talked about how science is constantly evolving and how the allergist seemed to think that the only allergy was an IgE reaction.  There are many many other players in the immune system though, so it is quite limiting to see only one as being the "true" allergy.  This coming week I'm supposed to see a new allergist -- one who does actual research with my GI doc on food allergy related stuff.  He apparently likes to draw blood for everything so we'll see how pricks it takes to get blood from Carolyn this week.  My GI doc is going to warn him about how much my body doesn't like to have blood taken from it, so we'll see if he listens. 

At work Chris continues to work on taking over the stockroom sometime this summer.  They are trying to hammer down all the details about the position and whatnot.  Hopefully we'll know soon so we know if we both need to be looking for jobs or not.  We're hoping they will be reasonable, but precedent doesn't suggest that.

This week was the first week of quizzes for me.  Since I only have quizzes and tests for grades this term, it was round one of getting an idea of questions and such.  Both quizzes were fairly straight forward.  I got a 9/10 on one of them and am unsure about the other one.  I don't think I did too poorly, probably just some spelling errors if anything.  I got all the chemistry right, just not the spelling.  The project I work on is coming along nicely and is slated to start in the classrooms the middle of March.  We will be holding training in the next couple of weeks so hopefully we won't have some of the fiasco it was last semester.  The professors have agreed to play nice for the most part and all seem to be very enthusiastic.  This will be a first so hopefully it will greatly impact the relevancy that the students see to the lab time.

One fun thing from today is that I made waffles that rose.  I've been having a VERY difficult time getting my breads and waffles to rise, but finally managed to do it.  I also made them with no dairy products, so that's cool.  They were quite tasty, but nutty, as I made them with almond meal and almond milk.  Like I said, they rose though so I'm excited.  I'm really trying to work up to making a bread recipe that I can eat, and getting the flours to rise has been a challenge.  

Not much else is new here so I suppose I should go run.  I need to take water, but am pretty sure it would freeze while I'm out running so it will have to be a short run.

The Lull after Vacation

This week has been fairly uneventful, especially compared to the last one.  After getting back from Phoenix we got through the rest of the week and made it to the weekend.  Then slept a lot over the weekend.  We also went downtown for our friend John's B'day.  It was an interesting time, as going out to dinner with me always is.  I know that each chef thinks they are going to be the ones who can make something for me, but really it probably isn't possible to be original with all the restrictions that I have.  I try and humor the managers and the chef's, but really when the main spices you can have are salt and pepper, the only thing to change is the ratio.  Also on Saturday I made brownies and snickerdoodles.  I made the brownies with hazelnut meal and tapioca starch and they turned out really really good. 

Friday I played volleyball.  We were messing around playing basketball (well, I was showing how poorly I play bball) and a ref was like, "You are in the other gym."  The gym was nice and big.  We think that big was the key because we were able to serve and get it in since we weren't so cramped.  We ended up winning and that was nice.  We've got play-offs in a few weeks now.

Sunday we went to a baby shower.  Several of our friends are pregnant and so it is about to be baby shower season.  This particular shower was interesting because it was co-ed.  As Chris said, "You say shower and it immediately implies that I don't need to be there."  I had made the brownies for the shower and everyone loved them.  Most people couldn't tell they were Carolyn-safe brownies.  Maybe I'll figure out how to box them and ship them to people.  

This week proves that school has started as I have quizzes in both of my classes.  They shouldn't be too bad if I can simply remember the DNA base structures.  My biochem TA and I are going to come to terms though soon.  It is just this feeling that I have.  She doesn't speak English well, and doesn't seem to understand people's questions so that makes it that much more difficult. 

Anyway, I suppose I should get to bed.  We've got blowing flurries (it would be blowing snow if there were more coming down, but I think we've gotten an inch of snow fall in the past five or six hours).  Its just enough to be obnoxious and not really do anything but drift.  Hopefully we won't get lots of ice on the walkways.  It did warm up over the weekend so a lot of the ice melted, so that was nice.  Overall I think things are going well here in Chicago land.  We'll see if it holds true when it gets bitter cold again this coming weekend.