Low-key Friday evening

Have you dudes ever tried roasted Brussels sprouts? Turns out: they're fucking magical. 


Andy and I like those things to begin with, but roasting brings those tasty little bad boys to a new level. And they're easy as hell to make! Easier than steaming, even, which, until today, was our go-to method.


I had a few parsnips (we got two, for some reason) and a buttload of carrots from our CSA to use up, so I chopped that stuff into biggish chunks, slapped 'em on a baking sheet with the cleaned and halved sprouts, tossed everything a few healthy glugs of olive oil and some generous pinches of salt, and roasted them at 400° for about half an hour. We ate them with some pork chops that we smeared in peach butter. It was delicious.


Now we're about to watch a movie and veg out, to celebrate not having any plans tonight. This is the first night this week that we're just staying home, so I'm knitting and we're probably going to bed early. Hooray!


I'm going to try to talk Andy into a Christmas movie. The lace knitting I'm doing on my mom's sweater takes a lot of concentration, so I can't really knit and watch something with an intricate plot, or I'll fuck the lace all up (again). But if we watch a movie I know by heart - basically, a Christmas movie or Newsies - I can be entertained AND the lace survives!


Wish me luck. Something tells me Andy will be resistant to my brilliant logic.

Three things I like and one thing I don't

Like:

1. It's Friday, and we're having our party tomorrow, and Andy has done 100% of the decorating for it.

2. I really like grocery shopping with my husband. Is that weird?

3. There's a new comic up over at Hyperbole and a Half, and it's fucking good. The comments that are all "you're too awesome to be depressed! cheer up!" are seriously misguided and come from people who almost certainly have never dealt with depression, but most of them are awesome. (Also, I thought I had talked about my depression here before, but I just checked real quick in the googles, and it seems to indicate that either I haven't really talked about it much (I mention it here) or I used secret key words I no longer remember. In summation: I have dealt with depression. It fucking sucks. Telling a depressed person to cheer up, or trying to put depression "in perspective" by pointing out how much worse other people have it, will not help. Ever. Also, I'm much better now, thanks.)

Dislike:

1. Knitting lace. So, so awful. Reading charts takes a million percent of my concentration, so I can't even zone out on a good movie while I knit. Ugh.

What are you planning to be for Halloween? WANT TO COME TO MY PARTY?

Late November scurrying!

Hello, internets! I hope you all had a lovely holiday and that being back at work today wasn't the absolute worst. Our Thanksgiving was as smooth as these things tend to be: we had one startling moment where some squash we were warming bubbled over, causing the oven to fill with smoke; Andy's uncle's girlfriend (who made the sweet potatoes for me last year) remembered that I had mentioned that my dad's a diabetic, so she made the squash and her amazing cranberry relish with honey instead of sugar, so it was slightly better for my dad; Andy's dad only made one overtly racist comment; my homemade pies were very well received. Overall a smash hit!

We're making serious progress on the nursery in our spare time these days, which explains much of the silence up in this joint. And we finally dropped my computer off to be fixed on Saturday, which explains the rest of it!

Are your Christmas preparations in full swing? I'll be putting up our tree on Thursday when I get home from work, and we'll decorate it together when Andy gets home - our tree always goes up on December 1st. I'm knitting like crazy trying to get everything done, and I'm something like 3/5 of the way done with the awful lace on the sweater I'm working on. Hooray!

How was your holiday? How's your Christmas prep coming?