Weekly Round Up: A Millionaire Mishap

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition I made millionaire bars and Doggo upped her counter surfing game.

A Millionaire Mishap

You know what millionaire bars are right?  They have a base of shortbread, a layer of caramel, a layer of chocolate, and lend themselves so well to the saying "you are what you eat".  

I had been craving a batch for a good long time, and finally made it happen on Friday afternoon.  After dinner the Hubs went out to the store and I carved up the goodies.  Hubs texted me with a grocery store question, and I naively stepped away from the counter and turned my back to answer him.  You-know-who sprang into action and was able to reach her snoot onto the counter.  Normally when she surfs she just licks whatever she can get her tongue on, but this time she snarfed up a millionaire bar, took off running, and maniacally chewed as I started with my mouth open.

Of course dogs aren't supposed to eat chocolate, but I instinctively knew that she would be just fine, and sure enough she was.  She was possibly a little more hyper that night, but otherwise suffered no ill effects from her dessert raid.  If you are what you eat, my dog is a millionaire.

It wasn't her only counter surf of the weekend.  On Sunday we had lasagna and roasted broccoli for dinner, and again it is 100% my fault that I left one of the kids' plates too close to the edge of the table and that I turned my back to get the rest of the plates.  Given a choice between something with meat and cheese and a vegetable, which do you think she chose?  Roasted broccoli FTW and in the one second of contact that she had with his plate, she put quite a dent in his portion.  Hubs and I were the only ones in the room when it happened, so we chased her away from the table, laughed, redistributed the broccoli so that everyone had the same amount on their plates, and said nothing to the kids.

In other food news, my favorite hodge-podge dinner of the week was a freezer raid for roasted potatoes, broccoli, and a chicken sausage.  I roasted the broc and sausage in the air fryer, and topped it with the last little bit of the green sauce from the shrimp tacos that I'd made the week before.  It doesn't look like much but it hit the spot.

Workouts

I moved forward with my plan mix it up for cardio.  I'm alternating the 12/3/30 treadmill workout with my short run-walks.  Stay tuned but I think I like this strange new world of mixing it up for cardio instead of doing the same workout every time.

Watching

Hubs and I both brought movies to the table this weekend.

First up: when you're a kid and your parents aren't around so you hang out with the family butler who is a Super Cool Dude.  But then something happens and you're not quite sure what you saw but it sees like Cool Dude may not be the person that you think he is.  The Fallen Idol is based on a story by Graham Greene/produced and directed by Carol Reed==>the same team that made one of my favorite movies, The Third Man.  From what I remember, I first saw this movie as a young 'un, saw it again as an adult at some point, and remembered nothing except that it was a good movie and I wanted to see it again.  My memory was correct - it is a good movie.  It's not as good as The Third Man because nothing is, but it's a worthy lead up from the same team.  But I barely remembered the story at all, so it was kind of like seeing a new movie.

The Hub's contribution to our weekend viewing was The Great Train Robbery.  It was so good that Stepson #1 watched it with us.

Reading

As you know, 90% of my reading for the past few months has been the Linda Castillo Amish murder mystery series.  As of last week I had read all 16 books, and as of this week I have read all of the short stories.  I have no where else to turn except to non-Linda Castillo books until the next book in the series comes out next summer (well, I think she does have some other books outside of the series but for my own sanity I am pretending that the well is dry for now).

So far so good!  The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean is about a teenager who disappeared two years ago and mysteriously returns.  From her appearance, it's clear that she's been through a very bad situation, but she won't talk about it so it's up to the detective assigned to her case to figure it out.  This was a book that practically read itself and kept me guessing.

On the audio side, things are rocking.

I finished Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten and my review is exactly the same as Kathrine Switzer's Marathon Woman which I read a few years ago: Garten's book is nine hours long and Switzer's book is 12 hours long and both books were far too short.  I hold Garten (a celebrity chef) and Switzer (the first woman to run the Boston Marathon) in exactly the same light: two people who I knew nothing about except for having read their memoirs and I could hang out with both of them forever.

I'd had A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings on hold for a good long while, and when it finally came in this weekend, I hesitated for a moment.  I've got quite a few podcasts that I'm dying to listen to in my queue, and my reading this year on divorce and the Christian Patriarchy has already been quite extensive (You Could Make this Place Beautiful, This American Wife, Counting the Cost).  What more was this book going to tell me that besides that being a woman in the Christian patriarchy sucks?  I'd also already heard a summary of the book on the Glamorous Trash podcast (psst...the show is a Nicole recommendation) so maybe I should just skip it?

Well, TBD on that but from the first half hour of the book that I've listened to so far, the writing is excellent and I really like the author.  I'm sure that the conclusion of this book is going to be that living in the Christian Patriarchy sucks, but I don't mind the spoiler.

Another Neat Thing from the Week

On Thursday night around ten, the Hubs and I were in bed.  I was tired, and about to head for the shower but I procrastinated and picked up my phone instead and ended up on Facebook as one does.  We have a town Facebook page which we follow mainly for entertainment purposes.  People use it to complain about every last little thing.

Someone had posted pictures of the northern lights from the park in our neighborhood and noted that harumph, the lights were so dim compared to the sightings that were being posted from everywhere else.  I showed the post to the Hubs and we had a good laugh about how some people will complain about anything and then it clicked: Northern Lights.  Neighborhood Park.  Right now.

Hubs and I both leaped out of bed (thanks for asking, we were both wearing clothes) and ran out the front door.  One kid was in the shower and one kid was sitting like a lump in the living room, and about halfway down the block we thought to text them what was up.  They both made haste to get down to the park.

In all fairness, the lights showed up much brighter in the picture than they did IRL, but we still enjoyed our "inferior" light show very much.  What can we learn from this?  The next time that you want to complain about something on the internet...go for it!  Your lament may lead to someone else's fun family times.
 

Peace out!  Do you have a counter surfing dog?  Read anything good lately?  Seen the northern lights?  Had a good time based on someone else's complaining on Facebook?