Wednesday digest

Sydney, May 2013 - nearly-winter here not quite the same as nearly-winter in Canberra!

 

Here I am again, getting caught up with the latest happenings around casa RL.

Work/school Pleased to report that DP worked from home one day last week! I can’t remember the last time that happened. He did school drop-off and pick-up, and we went out to lunch alone together for possibly the first time since before we left Missouri last May. Miss B is immersed in Term 2, and the other day ran in the school-wide cross-country event. Each senior student (years 3-6) in her school is assigned to one of four houses, which compete against each other in various events, so on cross-country day they divvied up the entire school into houses, who sat on the junior oval, cheering on their housemates and generally making a ruckus when it wasn’t their turn to run an event. With the rest of the kids born in 2004, Miss B ran two circuits of the grounds, for a distance totaling 2 km. Given that a) Miss B is the smallest kid in Year 3 and b) kids who were born in 2005 who tower over her only had to run one circuit, I was thoroughly impressed with her perseverance and spirit in finishing the course. As for me, I am already up to my ears in preparations for my .org’s next major meeting, which happens in mid-September. Even though I know rationally that this is four months away, it feels as though it’s just around the corner because there’s so much stuff we’ve got to put in place now, before people start booking their travel arrangements.

Recreation This kind of overlaps with work, but I was thrilled to discover another member of my .org who is based in Canberra. (This brings the total, as far as I know, to three of us.) She brought her two little ones over for tea (adults), slab scones (everyone), and a play (children) the other day. Between bouts of wrangling three children among two adults, we managed to have some grownup conversation about work stuff that we’re both interested in and might collaborate on – very nerdy and enjoyable. Makes me realize how much I miss having people around who understand what the heck I’m talking about most of the time. In other news, we took the new car out for its first road trip and went to Sydney for the weekend. DP not only voluntarily went shopping on George Street (Sydney’s main shopping district) on Saturday afternoon, it was his idea. (This is ‘what have you done with my real husband?’ territory.) He took Miss B to a hobby shop so that could look at trains and planes and so on, and I got to browse in Dymock’s by myself. For a whole hour. It was blissful.

Food Nothing revolutionary to report on the cooking front; I’ve been trying out some other people’s recipes, and revisiting some of my own favorites:

• gnocchi with bacon, spinach, and cream (roughly based on this recipe)
• roasted pork belly (I sat this on top of a bed of chopped carrot, celery, fennel, and red onion, and roasted some potatoes for Italian potatoes with oil alongside)
• a variation on the chicken soup with orzo recipe from the Dinner a Love Story cookbook (you can see a picture of it here)
• and more soup – a fridge-clearing vegetable soup using my soup spec
• and a batch of sweet and spicy nuts, just to have something around to nibble on

Weather All the soup is because it’s suddenly cold for real in Canberra – as in, time-to-break-out-the-winter-coats cold. And getting dark at 5pm. Still weird to have that happening in May.

How about you?