"and I am not amused."

- Leki (or what I imagine he's thinking when I interrupt his plotting, or napping)


I decided to wander the skywalk on lunch today rather than hang out at the library.In the DeVos Hall they've put up several pieces of art from students at Kendall, including this piece (one of three).

I'm amused by the string of lights and extension cord, for some reason.


Swirly chocolate chip cookies is what happens when you're too lazy to melt the butter apart from the rest of the ingredients. Oops....


This is not how it's done, Disney. Did no one in your art department learn to read or write cursive?

Unless you meant to say fail...

This really irks me for some reason, and I loathe writing in cursive.

Yesterday I didn't do anything. I didn't even put on proper pants. Chris had mentioned something about needing to get out of the apartment. So we went out.
We went to a bunch of stores around the mall, saw weird things, and didn't buy anything. In fact, the only things we did buy were some groceries at the grocery store.

The shopping scene was pretty dead. I'm not sure if it was just too early (before noon) or everyone was exhausted from yesterday. Either way, it was less horrible than I imagined (though still unpleasant - I loathe Christmas music).
The rest of the day was pretty lazy. There was a nap somewhere in there, and lots of internet surfing. Chris even did some doodling, like the little green guy above.

And yes, I did end the day out with another session of Skyrim.

Not a whole lot happened today. We didn't go out shopping, which is fantastic, and we had leftovers from my parents so nothing needed to be cooked... That basically meant I booted up and played a lot of Skyrim.

I haven't played a game this heavily since the early days of World of Warcraft. I am thankful this is not an MMO and there are no raid dungeons, because I appear to have poor impulse control when limiting myself on video games.

And that photo? That's a photo of my character with an icicle stuck in her skull. Why? One of the numerous amusing glitches in the game. Chris helped me out in getting rid of it.

Come to think of it, outside of Chris coming and researching the issue for me, I'm not really sure what he did all day...

Chris and I headed over to my parent's for Thanksgiving this year and like last year, it was quite the spread of food for the 5 of us.
My little brother at a LOT of food and slipped into a food coma early on. He's a huge fan of whip cream on everything (including whip cream on whip cream).

Everything was tasty and made me miss our family tradition of cooking a turkey on Friday. Why did we always make a turkey on Friday? Because my dad loves turkey leftovers and we always went to my grandmother's for Thanksgiving, hence no leftovers.

Suffice it to say, we were not a family of black Friday shoppers.

It is a short day at work and the day before Thanksgiving, so like a lot of people, I'm baking for tomorrow. I opted not to bake any rolls since my parents already have some so instead it's pumpkin pie (and a few mini-pumkin pies just because) and some tasty graham cracker chewy bars (which we all lovingly call pecan pie bars, because they taste kind of like pecan pie).




The increase in cold weather is an excellent excuse for copious amounts of hot chocolate (served in adorable ferret mugs, no less).


We made a pitstop at Marge's Doughnut Den this morning so Chris could pick up some tasty treats for a co-worker's birthday. Yum!


Complete with home-made raisins!

It didn't turn out the tastiest, but I have all kinds of ideas for the next time.


Saturday was full of all kinds of fun with Adam and Comfort. We watched internet videos, had great conversations; it was sad to see them go at the end of the day.

Looking forward to the next time!


We have house guests! And they are the amazing Comfort and Adam, comic creating duo and authors of Rainbow in the Dark and The Uniques.


Got into a drinking contest and ended up on the other side of the map. This game is full of amusing surprises.




It's getting colder out, but it still isn't cold enough to force me indoors for my lunch breaks.

I wandered down by the river and the Blue Bridge, where I watched some amusing geese for awhile until I had to head back. It was a nice break from the office for sure.


Chris had the day off today so he did some laundry, got an oil change for the car, cleaned, picked up some new bowls and made some delicious chili!

Hooray! More time for Skyrim, less time cooking or cleaning.

He's so awesome.




On lunch today I decided to take a quick stroll through the skywalk in downtown Grand Rapids. It's not freezing out, but it was still toasty warm in all the tunnels. Almost too toasty...


I finally left the apartment as the sun was setting. We took a nice stroll in the brisk weather, where I babbled mostly about dragons, thieves guilds, and other various video game things.

When we got back I booted up the Xbox again.

I'm seriously impressed with Skyrim. I like it so much more than Oblivion. I may not be able to do everything I could in Morrowind, but I'm pretty happy so far.

Ptw Ceiling cat

I spent a lot of time today bonding with my new friend, a Khajiit thief, working her way across Skyrim.

As you can see, Leki eventually settled down after being annoyed at how much I was ignoring him.

And thank up Chris for taking the photo. My hands were full with the Xbox controller...


I wasn't going to pick up Skyrim, which came out today. I was going to spend the weekend beta testing Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. But when my husband picked me up from work with dinner and an awesome epic RPG, I couldn't resist.


This is all I have to say about that.


Chris woke up early in this morning in pain. A little before five he woke me up to let me know he thought he was passing a kidney stone then wandered back into the living room. I watched him pace around for about thirty minutes until he finally decided it was time to go to emergency room.

They're pretty empty at 5:30 in the morning, so we got into a room right away and someone was able to give Chris some pain killer. They ran a few tests, did a CAT scan, and confirmed it was a kidney stone.

After that we were on our way to get his prescriptions filled and I was off to work. Chris worked remotely from home and so far he seems to be feeling better. Hooray!

Here's hoping for a full recovery soon!


And not enough play!

I need more playtime in my weekdays....


Know what happens when you don't feel good in the morning and you're packing your lunch?

You don't pack much of anything.

That lone veggie steamed bun was not enough. I had to eat the emergency food I keep stored at my desk.

Yay for an emergency cache of granola bars!

There was a lot of random stuff going on today. I had leftover sour cream, so I finished that off by making sour cream coffee cake (which turned out more like a cheesecake, if you ask me).
That wasn't enough so I decided I'd also make some rice krispie treats. I'm not even a fan of those things so I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to make them. I did make them via the microwave instead of stove top. Interesting process...
We went out and about for a little while. Chris said something about having to get out of the apartment. I think he really just wanted to get me out of the kitchen and stop me from making more food that we don't have room to store.

So we went to a new store (Anthropologie), looked at all the Pottery Barn-like merchandise, then headed over to Woodland mall.
We also swung by Toys R Us, where Chris came across a Muppet kit he'd been eyeing for awhile so he snagged it.
When we got home I promptly went back to baking things. This time I made what appears to be radioactive brownies, though they should look more like tasty glazed mint brownies.

I need my wrists to not be so annoyed with carpel tunnel so I can play more video games and bake less.

I should probably read more too, so I'll bake less.

Or I could just keep experimenting with new recipes. I'm sure Chris's co-workers don't mind to terribly. At least I hope they dont...


At 4:30 this afternoon I decided it would be as good a time as any to start making Chinese Steamed Buns from scratch. I've been thinking about trying them for weeks and I finally decided it was time.

So I got to mixing the "sponge" which is basically the yeast, some water, flour, and sugar.



After the sponge sat for 30 minutes I added the rest of the ingredients and kneaded away until everything was ready.

Next came the long wait for the dough to rise...



2 and 1/2 hours later, voila!



Now the recipe is supposed to make 24 buns, so I decided I would try and make four sets of six, each with their own color and filling.

Adding the food coloring seemed genius at the time. There would be adorable colorful swirls and the buns would look cute!

Eh...not quite. Instead I ended up with globs of uneven color distribution....



I'd watched a video earlier in the day about wrapping and sealing the steamed buns. Looked easy! None of mine really came out as nice, but at least I got a lot of practice in!



I ended up with quite the assortment of buns. Orange ones were stuffed with pizza ingredients (sauce, cheese, meat), green I stuffed with all the random veggies I could find, blue I tossed Nutella into and the plain ones I left plain.



The first few I steamed stuck to the steaming plate and tore open, oozing pizza sauce everywhere. I'm also positive I rolled the dough too thin. Nearly all of the buns leaked slightly in the steamer.

By the time I got toward the end of the buns the dough was getting hard and the buns had gotten stuck to the parchment paper I'd placed them on. I think they needed to remain covered the whole time while waiting to be steamed. I also probably should have used more flour to prevent them from sticking.

Somethings to remember for next time.



Since my larger steaming plate is in the storage unit, I used the rice cooker's. Doing it that way I was only able to steam four at a time for 15 minutes.

I was finally finished a little after 11pm.

Anyway, they were tasty even if they were not the most beautiful creations. I've got plenty to toss into the fridge and freezer. Next time I'll just have to remember to start earlier and to not roll the dough so thin.




This is how we roll.

Now we have groceries!


I may or may not be obsessively listening to Florence + The Machine that I recently discovered on pandora.

I haven't been so impressed since I discovered Bat For Lashes a few years ago.


I can decide if I feel like I'm flying along the freeway or if I'm getting motion sick from that photo...

Zoom!


..too early. Fall is truly here.