Jennifer's 365 Project

Today was day one of physical therapy for my tendinitis and tennis elbow. It was weird. First I hung out in some heated corn husk thing that's supposed to loosen muscles.


Then they used electrodes to run a current in my arm across where the pain is. It was supposed to give a few hours of relief. I didn't notice anything.

I'm skeptical of these doing anything....


In other news, I used redbox for the first time. What an adorable machine that spits out tiny cartridges of DVDs. So cheap too!

Chris and I both got off a little early from work to hang out with the awesome Adam and Comfort!
I'm happy I prepped the main course yesterday because I spent more time than I thought making the breadsticks and brownies. I fail at planning, apparently.
We took a walk down a few different trails. Adam and Comfort love to walk trails so it was great to be able to hang out and walk them with them.

We hung out all night, watching random internet videos, talking about all types of random things, and just hanging out.

Totally awesome day.

Tomorrow Adam and Comfort (The Uniques) will be in town, hanging out on their way to C2E2. Because they're vegetarians, I decided to prep dinner the night before so we could hang out longer and easily warm things up when we were ready to eat.
I made Lasagna Rolls (tofu ones and meat ones). I spent quite a bit more time than the recipe suggests to make these, or than I thought. Partially because this is the first meal I've ever made with tofu (and I was paranoid I'd do something wrong) and partially because I was making some extra meat-only rolls for Chris.
 While I was busy prepping the main course for tomorrow Chris was downstairs hanging the last of the drapes in the bathroom. Hooray for privacy!

It's Monday, so it's a low key day. I spent a chunk of it reading a book on my kindle (I checked out my first ebook yesterday from the Kent District Library - less painful than I'd anticipated).

Chris was awesome enough to hang the drapes we picked up Saturday. He did a much better job than I would have. For one - things are level. I totally would have made a mistake, said who cares, and moved on.

I am not a patient person.

We headed out in the morning for the east side of the state to spend Easter with my parents. We got to spend some time with my little brother.
I watched my parents fuss in the kitchen making the final meal preparations. Swedish meatballs!
Plus, while we waited, there was a delicious basket of treats to nibble from. Peeps, chocolate things, and all sorts of tastiness!
I took a photo of this butter-holding cow because it amuses me. I dont know why.

Anyway, we spent a few hours hanging out with my family, talking about various things like the new house, bad rating systems, just a whole bunch of things.
As it started to get later in the afternoon Chris and I left my parents so we could swing by IKEA and pick up a few things.

We got there around 4:45pm. They closed at 6pm.
We raced through the various sections, ignoring whole areas that we knew we didn't need anything for.
About 45 minutes later we were walking through the final warehouse setup before the checkout.  15 minutes after that we were checked out and headed to the car.

IKEA in an hour? That's my kind of shopping!
We ended the day driving into the sun. It was like this almost the entire way until we hit about Lowell. Then it was just a wall of clouds.

Yesterday was another moving day and today was going to be general "get things done" and "prepare for Easter" day. First up? Buying some drapes for the living room.

In the afternoon I started baking some things to take to my parent's place tomorrow. I decided on mini-cheesecakes (a regular staple at most family get togethers)

I also decided to try a hot cross bun recipe (after being recently inspired by a tweet from an awesome person). I was originally going to make it by hand, but after all the moving I decided to give my wrist a rest and use the bread machine.
the first batch came out a little lumpy. I'd cut down the recipe since my bread machine can't make such large batches, and I may have messed something up. The obnoxiously direction of putting "2 eggs into 2-cup measuring cup. add enough water to measure 1 1/3 cups" didn't make me too happy either. Why exactly aren't we on the metric system? Gah.
While I was messing around in the kitchen Chris assembled the lawn mower and decided to mow the lawn. The cat enjoyed watching out the front door.
Unsatisfied with the first batch, I decided to make another batch from a different recipe in the bread machine.

While I was waiting for the bread machine to churn out another batch of dough, I made a small basket for my parents and a bag for my brother. I don't usually do anything for Easter but I dont know. This year I wanted to. I was probably partially motivated by a desire to have a bunch of candy in the house.
When 9pm rolled around, the second batch was finally ready. This time I think I overcooked them slightly, but they were not as dry as the first batch. To the first batch's defense, Chris really liked them.

Next time I'll have to remind myself to start cooking yeast recipes earlier in the day. Mid-afternoon is probably not the best time to start.

I dropped Chris off at 7am to pick up rental truck, grabbed a tasty drink from Biggby, then headed into work for a few hours.


Chris ran a truckload from the apartment to the house while I was at work. When I got home later that morning we headed out to our storage units (yes, units) to grab some stuff.

Most of my stuff has been in storage the last several years. And I have a lot of stuff.


Three truckloads later (we probably could have done it in two, honestly) we had living room furniture, another bedroom set, dining set, exercise gear and more. Basically another house-load of stuff. We completely emptied my storage unit. Which is awesome.

Chris and I could both easily furnish a house. Finally integrating everything is proving an interesting experience.

We are going to need to have some kind of garage sale soon.

We live within two blocks of three trails and two parks (two of the parks have nature trails). That's pretty awesome! It also explains why last week we saw a fawn darting through the neighborhood.

Most of the kitchen stuff has been moved to the new place, which means it is time for some home cooking!

I made a tasty, modified version of bruschetta chicken (as in, more veggies, less chicken). It came out good and I'm happy to report the oven in the new place works perfectly.

This house has a laundry chute on the main floor, which is all kinds of awesome! I've spent the last several days tossing dirty laundry from the bedroom down the stairs and into a pile to be tossed down the chute.

Each time I toss a piece of clothing down the stairs I think of how unamused my mother would be.

Look mom! I still bite my nails and toss things down the stairs. Bad habits die hard.

As I went to Leki's food dish tonight I noticed there was a massive cluster of small ants crawling around his food.

His food dish has only been in this house since Saturday night....

So I got rid of the ants, scrubbed the area, and we took a trip to the store for an anti-ant solution...

Oh well, at least it isn't mice, right?

Today is round two with the truck rental and my wrists are screaming at me to stop using them. Oh god we have a lot of stuff between us....

Because we just have the car, Chris did a quick shopping trip yesterday with the rental truck to get some heavy duty shelving for storage in the basement. He also picked up a few other things that we can't fit in the trunk of our car.


We went back to the apartment in the morning to get more stuff and to dismantle the dining table I was using to pack stuff on.

Mostly I sat on the floor and tried to nap while Chris hauled boxes down into the truck. I helped him with the heavy TV stand we have but he pretty much did everything else. He is so awesome.

At the end of the day we ended up with the majority of things we need. That's not to say there isn't a ton of stuff left (Chris has three massive bookshelves stuffed full). But we can get that stuff in increments and, since we have the apartment for several weeks, we certainly don't have to kill ourselves moving everything in one weekend.

I really didn't like that plan at first. I wanted to move everything in one weekend. But after seeing how long it took to move what we did, there's no way we can empty that apartment and our storage units in two days. I'm way too wimpy for that.


Back at the house the cat seemed to be settling in nicely. The garage door scares the crap out of him, but other than that he is almost 100% back to normal. That includes griping when you try to push him out of your way.


And we have already started to load up some things on the shelves Chris assembled this morning.

Now to munch on some brownies I made in our "new" oven!