Jennifer's 365 Project

 Today I had my follow up doctor's appointment for my wrists/elbow. Basically it went like this:

Yay for physical therapy & progress and keep doing what they told you to do outside of physical therapy. But stop going to physical therapy and call us if it gets worse.

Ok...

The novelty of sitting out on a deck hasn't worn off yet, not even in the wake of a thunderstorm rolling in.

I'm enjoying being able to sit out on the deck and enjoy the sunshine after work.

Hooray for books and outdoors!

While it might not be the sunniest (or warmest) of days, the weather today is still relatively nice. What better reason do we need to enjoy dinner on the deck?

A relaxing Monday evening. Just how every Monday should end.

Chris spent a chunk of the day at the apartment boxing up the last of his stuff, plus he did some yard work and other things. Yard work seemed a little ambitious so I decide to bake some things....

I started with lemon poppy seed muffins. I haven't tried one yet but I've been told they're great.

While those were baking in the oven I started prepping some home made samoa bars. The caramel on them is actually cooling as I type this - so they're not done yet.
I also had the bread machine going making a batch of Naan dough. This first batch was pretty tasty, but I already have ideas on how to make it better.

There was also a half batch of chicken cordon blue and some butter chicken (also known murgh makhani). Everything except the butter chicken I made from scratch. I'm still missing at least one ingredient - so I used a mix. Not as tasty as doing it from scratch, but not as terrible as I thought it was going to be either.

Well, I should go finish those samoa bars before it gets too late...

Chris has a pretty awesome coupon for grocery, so we did the most intense grocery shopping I've ever done in my life. We stocked up on every single dry good, canned good, and frozen thing that will last awhile that we could think of.

I'm not huge on shopping (unless it's ducking in an out of something like IKEA super fast - I like mission-based shopping) so I was pretty exhausted by the end of it.
While I recovered from shopping (aka played some Mass Effect 2), Chris did some yard work.

I was so into playing the game I didn't actually realize how long he'd been gone or that he wasn't even in the house. Oops.
Also, Chris is pretty sure I made my Shepard character look like Claudia Christian as Ivanova from Babylon 5. I think he's right. 

I'm sorry, I just can't in good conscious design a character with floppy hair that will get in her eyes. That is just silly. It also drives me nuts when movies and TV shows have women spinning around shooting and ass-kicking but their hair is down to the butt and free flowing.

Yeah, cause in real life that would never cause a problem.....

(I realize that hair is often long because long hair is seen as "feminine" whereas short hair is not - but that's a whole other issue for a whole other blog post.)

After spending an evening with Adam and Comfort on Wednesday, I was itching to play Mass Effect all the more. I'd stopped before we started moving because of my wrists and I'm so close to the end.

I've been doing stretches and physical therapy, so I figured I should test drive the wrists. Right?

Well, that's the excuse I used to spend an evening gaming.

I beat  Mass Effect (note to self - never EVER stop a game in the middle of a climatic point of a game), sat for a moment, then immediately popped in Mass Effect 2.

I hate to say this but game was better than Dragon Age. And I love medieval settings over science fiction/space settings any day.

 The Fontain Street Church hosts a lot of events. I've honestly never been to one, until now.
There was a debate tonight between Susan Jacoby and Dinesh D'Souza on the merits of Christianity in American politics. It was free, so how could I pass that up?

Interesting debate, with both sides pretty well represented in the audience.

ACEN is this weekend, which means Adam and Comfort have another con in Chicago this month, so they swung by again so we could hang out, eat food and...
....take an awesome walk through the park we lovingly call Endor (or, as Adam correctly pointed out, fourth moon of Endor) - which is Palmer Park.

It was an awesome night. I wish we lived closer to each other so we could hang out, talk nerdy things and politics.

They look alright so far. They kind of cast an odd orange glow in the room when they're pulled shut, but that's ok. They mostly just look weird to me for being there. I was getting used to nothing over the window.

I really want to make murgh makhani (aka butter chicken). There are a few other Indian dishes I'd like to try my hand at as well, but it is best to try to tackle one dish at a time.

But what do you need to make such a dish? Spices I don't typically stock. Namely, tandoori masala and garam masala.

So after receiving some awesome direction from awesome twitter people, I headed out today after work to India Town. The guy there was very helpful, pointed me in the right direction, and had a super tasty smelling store (it is probably the restaurant next door).

I picked up a few spices and off I went. My intent was to get something started tonight for a tasty dinner tomorrow, but as soon as I got home I couldn't find the original recipe I'd found and there are a ton of variations with all kinds of other requirements.

I think I need another trip to the grocery store.

Anyway, in the rush of the day I only took a kind of crappy photo of India House. Its more awesome than those white bottles let on, I promise.