Jennifer's 365 Project

It's Tuesday and the first official day "vacation" day of the work week. Today is the only day we really have plans (for the four days we're not working) and those plans are driving to Flint to see Adam and Comfort.
It wasn't long after we go there that Chris was demonstrating all the new magical apps he'd downloaded to his iPad recently.
After a little while we headed to downtown Flint to check out the much raved about Flint Crepe Company. It's a very adorable little restaurant with a hipster bistro feel. To top it off they're using iPads and Square to take credit card purchases.
They even sell Calder Dairy & Farm milk in fancy glass bottles. They remind me of the Shelter Family Dairy milk I fell in love with from up north (seriously, their chocolate milk is like liquid ice cream). Adam and Comfort really liked it.

We headed back to their place for some awesome entertainment ala RiffTrax. Seriously, they really do make horrible movies better.
Before we headed home we stocked up on Withers Mountain Honey Farm honey. I've also learned that there are early and late season flavors that taste very different. I really liked early season, but for cooking purposes I think the more robust and stronger flavored late season will go better with granola and the like. Next time I'm out there though I'm going to snag some early season too, just to have both (going into this I didn't even know there were different flavors - I feel like a whole cooking experiment door has opened!).

Mr Withers was even kind enough to gift us with an adorable little bear of Candy Cane Honey. This means a lot of my hot chocolate is going to be spiked with peppermint honey, and I'm ok with that (by the way, the bear comes with a delicious sounding recipe for just this sort of beverage).
It was a long drive home and the cat was very happy to have us back.

Peppy the ferret is getting up there (7 years old), and she's not quite as finicky about sleeping spots as she used to be. Mostly that means I can scoop her up from her makeshift nap spot behind the chair and she'll pass out relatively quickly if I give her somewhere equally warm and fuzzy.

This afternoon between reading and dozing off myself, I grabbed her from her napping spot and whisked her onto the cozy bed for a brief snuggle. I had intended to nestle her against Chris who was reading there, but she passed out before I got that far. She stayed put for a good five minutes, then promptly woke up and looked for the bathroom in the typical ferret fashion (frantically searching for corners).

Chris was even kind enough to stain the miniature clothespins for me so they'd match the coloring of the paper (I was nervous about making a mess if left to my own devices so I'm happy he stained these for me).

Chris and I both got off work early today, so really we had no excuse to not cook dinner...but neither of us really wanted to.

So out we went to snag a ton of Chinese food for me and a delicious pizza sub for him.
We spent much of the evening hanging out and even watched Return To Oz since Chris had never seen it (it's still awesome I think).

All the while I had my ipod touch plugged into my computer, updating to iOS 5.0.1. I've been holding out updating from 4.2.1 because my ipod is jailbroken and I didn't want to loose that functionality. Admittedly, I missed the bit where there's an untethered jailbreak for 5.0.1 that came out a bit so I apparently could have done this sooner. But I digress...

A long story short, the upgrade to the latest iOS went smoother than expected (much MUCH smoother than updating the non-jailbroken ipad) and the jailbreak itself took only a few minutes. Much less painful than when   I did this the first time around.

I've already downloaded some tweaks to the UI like 5 icons instead of 4 on the dock. Huzzah!

When Peppy was younger, she ate anything. She'd munch on the special Wysong ferret food I bought Cloud (even though he wouldn't) plus all manner of ferret treats and different types of ferret food. Seriously, she'd even follow in the footsteps of Atrix and eat dog food when she could get at it. She'd eat anything.

Over the last few years the local Pet Supplies Plus has more or less always been out of my preferred ferret food, Totally Ferret. So I've been buying her Marshall Pets and she's been eating it just fine. So imagine my delight in seeing a package of Totally Ferret Monday at the pet store? I snatched it as quickly as a I could and scampered home to refill her food dishes (since she was all but out).

Fast forward to a few days later and I noticed that the food in her dish wasn't going down. Odd.

The I noticed her digging around in her cage trying to get bits of old ferret food that had fallen where she couldn't get at it. But she had a full bowl of food...

Fast forward to last night and she had confirmed my suspicion. I counted out pieces of food, put the dish back, and watched as she ate none of it. None. She was turning her nose up at the food she used to eat and love and refusing to eat.

So today on lunch Chris picked me out and we snagged some of her normal food. I'm going to slowly mix it in and try to get her used to the Totally Ferret package I bought.

While I've heard and read that ferrets (or pets in general) can be finicky about switching food brands, I've never actually had any problems with any pet. In fact, she was the one ferret (in the seven I've had through the years) that ate every single thing offered to her. Atrix came close, but even he turned his nose up at Wysong.

Weird.

But at least she's eating and I've learned that tastes change and to never assume it's ok to switch brands.

On another note - Leki is really interested in her tasty expensive ferret food.

I've always liked the tree the Grand Rapids Public Library downtown puts up. Seems appropriate.

What better way to start a cold, sleety morning than with doughnuts?

I didn't do a whole lot yesterday, other than play with the pets and played some video games so today I needed to do something more productive. I've spent quite a chunk of the day reading (mostly while Chris has been doing laundry-themed activities) and another bit prepping food for the dehydrator.

I had both grapes and apples in the fridge waiting to be dehydrated so I set to blanching the grapes and slicing up some apples. As you can see, my slicing skills leave something to be desired. I'm terrible at making even thin slices. Still, these should be tasty and wonderful in any future recipes (such as granola) I toss them in.

Now I'm sort of wishing I'd put some blueberries in with them. Maybe tomorrow when there is more room....

Part of today I had carved out for some time in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The I was going to do other things, like cleaning and cooking. Little did I know that the small slice of time I was going to spend on this game would morph into half the afternoon thanks to being trapped under an adorable purring cat.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

(in other news everyone in the apartment had a lovely day including the ferret who scampered about in her toys like it was Christmas morning)

We got to my parent's house and there were a fair amount of sweets. Every time I visit there's a plethora of tasty goodness out that I don't remember being there when I lived there. Maybe I'm just remembering things wrong.

My brother made the rumballs this year, which meant they were extra strong. I ate quite a few even though I've never liked rumballs.
We don't eat a traditional Christmas meal when we get together. I loathe ham. Never liked it as a child. I don't remember if Jeff liked it but I do know everyone in my family does like lasagna, so we always have that. I can't really remember a time when we didn't have lasagna (although I'm sure there was one or two).
We hung out for quite a bit after lunch (or I suppose you could call it dinner, since it was the main meal of the day). My parent's have drastically changed the house since I moved out, so it's always weird to see no sea of blue carpet and new furniture.
Some things haven't changed though. My little brother is still younger than me.
We did presents early this year. Rather than waiting till it was dark my mom asked and both Jeff and I agreed - anytime is the right time for presents.
I ended up with a pretty awesome array of toe socks and a badass kitty hat. It. Is. Awesome.
Even Chris looks awesome in it.

All in all a fantastic day. Plus, I made out like a bandit with a gigantic cache of cookies and Chris has all kinds of flavored popcorn.

It's the day before Christmas eve and there are presents I need to wrap for tomorrow. I popped in A Fish Called Wanda and set to wrapping. Leki was very helpful, as you can see.
It took me the length of the movie (mostly because there was an orange sausage of fur that insisted all surfaces were for napping) but I finally wrapped the gifts for my family tomorrow. At the right angle it's almost like the presents are under our miniature tree. Almost.