Weekly Round Up: Let's Catch Up!

A weekly round up that's not very weekly since I'm catching up several weeks: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Let's start with life updates!

Life Updates - Fam Edition

We've had some pretty major (happy) changes at home:

• The College Empty Nest Era has begun!  Both boys are living their best dorm lives.
• Hubs has a new job, and is now WFO - work from office.  Once he's fully settled in to the new gig it will be a hybrid role, but right now he's commuting five days a weeks like it's 2019.  

So the ol' home life has become quite different recently.  It's peaceful, but a little too peaceful, you know?

Life Updates - Me Edition

You guys I quit the jobby job for real!!!  We'd left things kind of open ended where they were going to look into making it a part time role and I was not going to let work stand in the way of my travel plans.  I had a lot of issues with boundaries on the BC trip and (1) said no to doing some obnoxious, time consuming tasks that could/should have been done by other people and (2) ended up working way more than I wanted to.  I have a bad habit of letting other people call the shots and seeing what happens, but I was finally ready to put my big girl pants on and quit.  I think that me turning down work plus working irregular hours for two weeks made an impression, because for my first one on one meeting with my boss when I got back, she asked if I still wanted to leave.  I have never had an easier time saying yes.  My boss asked me to write a resignation letter to make it official, and I happily complied.  As of right now my job is posted and they're interviewing candidates.  Freedom is in sight!

Eats

Doggo really has gotten so much better about the counter surfing, and this is a very rare sight to see nowadays.  So you've got to ask yourself, what's in the sink that's drawing her attention?

Would you believe that it's a can of black beans draining in a colander?  I feel that Doggo loves all sources of protein equally.

So what did I do with the black beans?  I made Boyhouse enchiladas (my version of one of the meals that Nicole made for me, which was originally an enchilada recipe).  I diced a sweet potato and sprayed it with oil and seasoned salt and air fried it for 20 minutes, and then roasted up a can of black beans and an orange bell pepper with the same seasoning for about 10 minutes, and then hit everything with a drizzle of lime juice.  I topped it with salsa and quickie guac (avocado mashed with onion powder and salt).  Now mind you, it would have tasted better at Nicole's house but it was still a great quick meal that made a ton of leftovers.  Doggo enjoyed a couple of the black beans and a few bites of sweet potato very much.

The next thing that we need to talk about is that SIL#3's garden is doing well, and she needed our help with her extra tomatoes and a cucumber.  Well, family is family and of course we pitched in.

I did a repeat of last year, which was to look at a recipe and totally wing it.  I threw the tomatoes on a sheet pan, added diced red onion that had been in the freezer for who-knows-how-long, a few garlic cloves, a dose of oil, and a sprinkle of dried thyme, salt, and pepper.

I roasted the whole kit and caboodle for about 40 minutes at 400.

I blended everything up and voila, it was the best pasta sauce the world has ever known.

Now how about that cucumber?  Well, thinking back to the BC trip, remember this gorgeous tofu bowl that I had when we went out to lunch?

You know I was dying to make my own version.  There is a base of rice, the cucumber, mango (thawed from frozen), avocado, air fried tofu doused in Trader Joe's sweet chili sauce, and a garnish of green onions and furikake seasoning.  Obviously the better choice is to go to BC and have lunch with Nicole, but the homemade imitation was very good as well.

The last thing to tell you is that life is simpler now that I'm cooking for two, but it's still for two people with wildly different taste buds.  I made half batches of two recipes for this week's dinners, which meant two servings of each so two nights of dinners in the new normal world.

Hubs got Jo Cooks moo goo gai pan:

And I got Recipe Tin Eats firecracker beef.  I would definitely make this again.

Workouts

When I got back from BC, the August heat was in full force for a few weeks.  And then everything calmed down and suddenly the weather is lovely.  That means the bike trail is back baby!  Hubs and I started riding a 100 mile bike trail in out and back sections last year, and left off about 30 miles from the end.  We finally got a chance to pick up where we'd left off.

It will take two to three more biking dates to finish it off.

The cooler weather also means that longer hikes with Doggo are back on the table.  When possible we try to meet up with SIL#3 and her dog.

Watching

Doggo continues to watch Hubs and me watch Seinfeld.  We're about five episodes from the end.

You might recall that when I was in San Francisco I did an Alfred Hitchcock walking tour and got to see several locations that were used in Vertigo.  I was dying to see the movie again, but never managed to find the time until I flew to BC and watched it as my inflight movie.  Apart from the scene at the Golden Gate bridge, the SF setting never really registered with me, but now that I've been there, SF is almost a character in the movie and I enjoyed it even more for that.

However, I have a nit to pick with the movie.  Without getting into spoilers, there is a situation that takes place at an old museum/historic site/church where things are not as they seem.  The thing that doesn't sit right after all of the museums and historic sites that I've been to in the past few years is that someone is always watching the visitors to make sure that they behave and aren't up to anything that they shouldn't be.  I know that they didn't have security cameras back in the day, but the idea that extra people could sneak in and do [whatever it is that is done in Vertigo] without the entire museum staff seeing them is laughable. C'mon now!

The last TV thing to talk about is that Netflix made all of my dreams come true and did a tell all on The Biggest Loser.  As if that wasn't enough Aubrey Gordon from Maintenance Phase gets to chime in!  Overall the documentary was a piece of trash but it was an interesting and highly entertaining piece of trash.

(Spoiler if you would like to do something else with three hours of your life - losing weight is hard, and losing a lot of weight in a reality TV setting is harder.  Jillian Michaels did not participate in the documentary, and conveniently she's the villain of the piece.  Look, I've got issues for days with Jillian but the claim that everyone else was a saint and had no idea what was going on just stinks to high heaven).

Reading

The only thing to tell you after the big book catch up from the last post is that I am further in to The Road to Tender Hearts and I have fully bought into the hype.  Folks, it's good.

That's All Very Well But I Came Here for Dog Pictures

Doggo is always happy to help with that, and she would like to pass on the life advice that you should keep your friends close and your tennis balls closer.

Phew, we are finally caught up!  See you next week for another round of the same ol', same ol' and then I will fall behind in blogging again because I'm headed to Nova Scotia to hang out with Elisabeth!!!