4-day weekend

With my every other Friday off schedule (through July), it just happened to make this a 4-day weekend! Not that we can really leave the house since Chris still has cripple foot and it's Chico State graduation weekend so everything and everywhere is so crowded with people. Ugh. But we do have a special guest star staying with us this weekend to keep up a little company.

Wilson and the Canadian, two of my favorite miscreants (enjoying a little quiet time at Barnes and Noble yesterday). Wilson's home for her best friend, Raquel's, graduation from Chico State today plus attending another friend's wedding the same day. We're basically just a flophouse for her since she's got a pretty full schedule this weekend. Plus, I think she's staying away because she knows she's in the doghouse for forgetting my jalapeno garlic olive oil at home after numerous reminders! Busted. That's okay though because  we have lots of racing to entertain us all weekend. F1 in Monaco, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Indy 500 (aka the greatest testicle in racing).

Chris and I went out to the movies earlier in the week and saw the new Star Trek movie in 3D. We double dated with my co-worker, Josh, and his wife. We met for dinner at the Pour House (the old La Salsa at the corner of East/Cohasset) and then walked over for the 8:00 pm showing. This was a good movie for 3D, unlike Tron, and was really enjoyable. I really like these new Star Trek movies.

I volunteered to make Thursday treats again this week for work, eyeballing a pretty easy breakfast roll recipe out of one of my Gooseberry Patch cookbooks. Getting up at 5:00 am Thursday morning I got busy making delicious orange cream rolls.

The recipe utilized canned crescent rolls and gave directions for a orange flavored filling made of cream cheese, almond extract, sugar, and orange zest. The filling is spread on each roll before rolling up and baking.  After 15 minutes they were nicely browned and I poured a glaze of powdered sugar, almond extract, orange juice, and orange zest over the warm rolls. Everyone at work loved them. Even the Canadian was a huge fan of the two I left behind for him. 

Today's plans include making two batches of my jambalaya to take to a family at church tomorrow. One of the ladies I sing with recently had surgery after which she had complications that landed her back in the hospital. So people from church have signed up to bring the family dinners for the next few weeks and I signed up for tomorrow. I picked up a loaf of kalamata bread from Safeway, fixings for a green salad, and bought a big ziplock tub to pack all the jambalaya into so that they can just dish it out and microwave it up to temp tomorrow. I'm not making it with my normal sausage and shrimp since I don't know if everyone in the family can eat shrimp, so I picked up some chicken to go with the kielbasa. I'm sure it'll still be tasty. Now if I could only talk myself into getting started in the kitchen rather than taking the nap that sounds so much better. 

Weekend in photos

Our weekend involved some hot and sour soup at Ginger's, a service call by a heating and air company when our A/C died, The Players golf tournament, and a little Paris/Prague travel reconnaissance work at Barnes & Noble.

Go ahead, marvel at the excitement of our lives!

Liquor, ladies, and lunch

Today was my Friday off from work so I had an ambitious to-do list, including grocery shopping and lab work, before still heading up the hill for a birthday lunch at noon. A month or so ago a bunch of us work gals got together at Ikkyu (world's best Japanese restaurant in P-town) for a birthday party and ordered half of the sushi rolls on the menu. Today we ordered the second half.

We were celebrating our Town Clerk, Joanna's, birthday so we all came bearing gifts.

Four of us pooled our resources together and each bought Joanna a bottle of red wine and a piece of jewelry which then Dina (Joanna's office co-worker) arranged beautifully in a gift basket. I think it's so much more fun to get a big basket full of numerous goodies than a bunch of separate smaller gifts. She LOVED the multi-strand silver and turquoise necklace I got her and immediately swapped it out for the one she was wearing (which was a previous year's birthday gift from me!). And to finish off our luncheon was a dessert of sliced, tempura fried banana slices covered in a peanut butter sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. To.Die.For.

I think this whole booze and baubles gift basket idea would make any of the ladies in our group happy as a birthday gift. We might need to repeat this idea next month for Kari and Sheila....

Chocolate cinnamon bread

Two very important things happened this week. One, I found this fabulous recipe for a gluten free mock Starbuck's chocolate cinnamon bread and two, bible study was cancelled for tonight which meant that I could make the bread for our Thursday morning treat at work. I've had the regular Starbuck's version of this bread and it is magically delicious so I was thrilled at the chance to make a gluten free loaf. After mixing copious amounts of chocolate, sugar, and butter together, I pulled this little beauty out of the oven;

It's got a top crackled crust of cocoa, sugar, and cinnamon. If the cooked product is as good as the raw batter they're going to be in heaven! 

Yard Sale Queen

Much to my "delight", I was one of four workers forced, I mean volunteered, to coordinate and hold a surplus sale at my work today.

Since it was government surplus, we had a limited audience of interested customers. We got there at 6:00 a.m. (which meant I was up this morning at 4:45 a.m.!!) to set up and the sale was scheduled from 7:00 a.m. to noon. We had pretty steady traffic all morning and apparently sold $500 worth of crap, including this sweet, sweet, gold crown necklace;

I'm so gangsta'! After making our recycle and landfill piles out of the leftovers, we were finally got out of there at 12:30 pm so that I could come home and take a nap because waiting on creepy customers wearing sweats and fanny packs is hard work!

We'd better brush up on our French....

Because we're going to Paris!!

We are booked and paid for a two-week trip from Prague to Paris from November 14-27th with Viking River Cruises. When we sat down to figure out our vacation dates for Boston we both agreed that we really wished we were doing the cruise instead, but according to their catalog the 2-for-1 deal expired at the end of February. Thankfully after a chance visit to their website, we found that the deal was extended until the end of April. So, on a whim, we both tried requesting the time off on Monday and got it approved so we bit the bullet and booked the cruise. We can't think of a better way to celebrate Thanksgiving!