A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads. This week I inched closer to the finish line on early retirement, found a good quickie dinner, and DNF'd the hot It book of the moment.
Werk
Two days to go! At 3:00 PM on Friday I will deploy my standard Last Day Procedure: put company laptop back in the box that it came in, walk it down to the Fed Ex office about half a mile away, ship that sucker back, delete Slack and werk email from phone.
Oof it's been a looooong week.
Eats
On Monday when dinner time rolled around I had no idea what I wanted to make, and it came to mind that I had a partial bag of pierogis in the freezer and had seen an interesting pierogi recipe recently. I cycled through my cooking blog greatest hits and found Jo Cooks sheet pan sausage and pierogies.
Next question: could I make it with ingredients that I had at home, because going out to the grocery store would have been a dealbreaker.
The answer was yes, I could fake it with what I had on hand. We had two servings of pierogies, and then I grabbed a handful of Trader Joe's fire roasted peppers and onions and sliced up three chicken sausages. From there I followed the recipe pretty exactly.
10/10 would make again.
Workouts
I've been talking about going back to Mohican State Park forever and this Saturday the planets aligned and Hubs, Doggo, and I hit the road. We did the gorge trail, which is a relatively short two miler. What it lacks in length it makes up for in difficulty.
Our fall colors are much more muted this year.
 |
The gorge overlook this time last year
|
 |
The gorge overlook this year
|
Mohican's suspension bridge is a far cry from
the Capilano supension bridge, but still worthy in its own right. Doggo was nervous about the bridge but took to it like a pro. Since the bridge isn't wide enough for two way traffic, we had to wait for a bit before we could cross back, but we didn't mind since we met a woman with two dogs, who buddied up with Doggo.
We got to the ladder, and the other dogs went up first.
Doggo started out on the ladder.
And then switched to the hill.
It's a very difficult hike, but so rewarding. Mohican, as soon as I ditch the job I'll be back to hike the rest of your trails.
Watching
Reading
I'm having no luck with books.
The Joy Luck Club started strong for me, but I never got a good handle on which daughter belonged to which mother and by the last section of the book I was completely lost and couldn't focus anymore. I'll give the movie a try.
I've heard all of the raves about
The Correspondent, so of course I had to try it even though epistolary novels usually don't work for me. After the first letter or so, I was on board but then the letters got me. Too many voices, and I wasn't getting any traction with the characters. I waved the DNF flag at the 30% mark.
Peace out! What's the last dinner you made out of freezer staples?
The next time we talk I will be retired!!!
You are so creative with your cooking. I admire you! I need a recipe to cook....
ReplyDeleteThat trail looks really cool! And good for you for DNFing books. Why waste time with so many good ones!
Stay strong through your last few days of work and enjoy shipping of that laptop!
So excited for you, Birchie!!!
ReplyDeleteI feel like you should take a bottle of champagne to the Fed Ex office and have a celebratory drink after posting the laptop.
Did you take these two forest photos at the same time of the month? Or have you had unusually warm weather in the past few weeks? The colours last year were truly spectacular.
TWO DAYS LEFT!!!!!! I have refrained from texting you daily, but I have been All Caps thinking your countdown with delight and excitement.
ReplyDeleteWhat a bummer that The Correspondent left you cold! But you know what, not every book is for every person, and I'm glad you called it so you could move on to better options. Life is too short to read books that aren't doing it for you.
I am super impressed by your delicious and nutritious freezer dinner! I'm not sure I've made a meal entirely of freezer staples, but I have been shopping my freezer for meat lately. Everything is SO EXPENSIVE OMG I am glad that Past Me stocked up on on-sale chicken and ground beef so I didn't have to add that to the grocery bill this week.
IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am so happy for you, omg, Birchie, IT'S HAPPENING!!
Too bad about the books. I have not yet read The Correspondent but there has been so much buzz about it. Sometimes that is a good sign for me but often not. Anyway, I'm still on hold at the library so I shall report back sometime. Also - I loved the Joy Luck Club, but I did refer to the cast of characters page at the beginning quite frequently.