post-irma recap donuts, pizza, and keurigs

i'm blaming irma for some of this weight gain...i bought some foods i never would've purchased otherwise! also, since we blamed irma for so many other things, it just seems appropriate.

irma came and went. the night of, while we were at img, the wind was loud, and there were a couple times i was acutely aware of where the boys were in case the roof were torn away with the wind. that said, i can only imagine how loud it would have been at the house!

the next morning, we all piled out of the dorms, and it felt a little like the last day of kamp during summer, cleaning up, loading up and putting mattresses back in their places.

we went back to check on our homes, and realized that i had locked the front screen door, to which i do not have a key (it's glass, so not really a screen...), and the electricity was still out, so i couldn't open the garage door. oops. the only damage outside seemed to be one screen on the lanai. and so we went to shea's and checked it over. the main damage there was the bushes around the house, because the winds formed a wind-tunnel of sorts around the sides. the electricity was out there as well, but it wasn't too hot yet, so i took a nap, and then we saw that the farmhouse was open for business, with wifi, so donuts were on the menu! we went and got donuts to make a couple stops over on the island to give a little sugar-encouragement to a couple families whom shea thought would appreciate it. it was fun hanging out with them- very congenial!

checking out the neighborhood damage-so many trees with shallow roots blown over-fortunately this one missed both houses.

i posted this little guy on my facebook page (please note the banana down here  that looks nonplussed!)

mini donuts!! #sugarsupport

the branches have mostly been blown off of my tree in the backyard, but at least none of the trees were blown over

on the return, we stopped at one of the beaches on longboat key, and got a little video and pics.

this is on the other side of the dunes before walking out to the beach-you can get an idea of water/sand

dear irma, buh-bye. roll closing credits:

then we noticed that there was a pizza place open on the island coming home, so we stopped in and placed our to-go order. we overheard them saying they weren't planning on opening, they had just come to see if the stoves were working and things were in order, and before they knew what was happening, someone came in and ordered a pizza, they said yes (around 4 p.m. and people hadn't stopped walking through the door since, it was now 8 p.m.). this was exciting, as most restaurants were still not open for business, so i'm guessing they made more cash that day than they've made in a long time! we got our order and took it home-it was smelling pretty amazing (especially after all the pretzels, crackers and beef jerky stuffs)! when we got back to the house, the electricity was still off, so we opened the cross doors to get a little wind-flow and set up citronella candles, and just hoping no one would walk in. we live in a pretty safe neighborhood, and to get to shea's you almost have to get lost, so we felt pretty secure. plus there's bruno and chaco, who, while small, make it sound like there are 15 of them when they feel the need.

now i'm trying to remember...i think i had electricity on tuesday...but not until later in the evening. in the morning, we were hoping for coffee, and thought we'd try to power shea's keurig with the adapter in the car (brilliant, right?) yes, well, unfortunately the keurig requires a little extra juice, so we tried to find a plan b. starbucks was still not open.  plan c. i found my 'survival bag' and got the sterno burners out and started heating up some water. it took way longer than is acceptable for any coffee drinker-how did the pioneers do it?! ugh. finally it was hot enough for me to make some oatmeal that 'passed for edible'...and then we let it go just a bit longer to try steeping the k-cups--i would give it a D+. i mean...it was something, and it was caffeinated. and then we may have gone driving around for a bit just to recharge devices and enjoy the a/c...maybe.

we were SO ready to have this coffee experiment work!!

eventually, one of our neighbors was texting with shea and mentioned that there was electricity at her house, which is on my street, so we checked and mine was on too, meaning we were able to get in and get the a/c going...unfortunately internet was still not up. i'm pretty sure it took days to get recuperated on a good sleep. and in the midst, i was trying to plan for a pd in miami. the issue was that we weren't sure about what was happening at our miami site, because our contact had evacuated. so we were planning as if everything was good-to-go, ready to cancel if needed. we canceled our hotel rooms because of the 72 hour policy, and would book later if it were a 'go'.

while we waited to find out about miami, one of the schools nearby confirmed that despite the damage, and chaos, they were still following through with the pd. and this area pretty much took a direct hit, fortunately all buildings were still intact. so i made sure my colleagues knew about it and tried to keep the others informed as soon as i had information for miami!

next up local training- good times!

thankful that with as big as irma was, the damage could have been worse.

julie

it was a one-stop day

i woke up this morning and needed coffee. how do i know? well, as i started the coffee maker, i realized that i didn't have a cup under the mouth of the keurig and coffee was spilling into the reservoir. hence the need for coffee.

and i was thinking about going to get some diet coke, (4 cases for $10..good deal these days), but i couldn't bear the thought of carrying 4 12-packs up to the third floor...especially after the radio man said extreme heat warning-110 in the shade, 120 in the parking lot.but not to worry, it's going to cool off next monday and tuesday it'll be down to 103-104...boo. so instead i went to bed bath and beyond and finally got my soda stream refill..i know, it's taken forever but i just never want to stop in because it makes me get things like this:

i think my feet deserve it after teaching all day!

 i also got a meat thermometer-i know it's hard to believe that i've been cooking all these years without a food thermometer and i have not gotten sick nor died yet! (but i did see something about some people dying because they hadn't cooked their turkey burgers to the correct temp...darned turkey burgers!) when i worked at kamp we drove by the tyson processing plant whenever we went into berryville-and the stench makes me reconsider whenever i think about purchasing turkey...ew. (by the way, i went to the website about berryville arkansas, and it had all sorts of information including most popular name of deceased persons)

so when i got home, i stayed inside because the man on the radio suggested it. and to be honest, it's a yucky hot out there. i've noticed that on hot days i've become a 1-2 stop person. i can't make more stops than that because the diet coke won't stay cold long enough!  and then i found it as i was flipping through the channels-

thank goodness for the hallmark channel! murder she wrote!

she's like an old nancy drew. i love it! intelligent but not sexy-gives us average folk a boost of self confidence. smile. i have always enjoyed angela lansbury..classy yet down to earth. also i loved her voice in beauty and the beast!

so...i've seriously been considering a hyundai elantra (not the touring) in part for the gas economy. anyone have one? i might lease one more time...see how i like the car. i think it has about as much space as my g6 and i don't need a whole lot of room (as long as there are headrests to put up the dog seats we're good).

goodnight!
julie

your flea ointment looks like an alien

so this morning i opened my eyes and bruno was ready to be up. chaco...was hiding deep under the covers somewhere off in a corner. so i told him, "oh chaco! you were in your man-cave!" he believed that it was a man-cave, so that will cut costs in the far off future when we look for a house-all i have to do is throw a comforter on the floor and say man-cave and he'll be happy. bruno on the other hand just sat behind chaco looking at me, shaking his head with that 'i-can't-believe-you-just-told-him-that-and-he-fell-for-it' look. now i just have to distract him if we're ever watching hgtv and they have a segment about man-caves.

after i woke up and checked on my loin. if you're dyslexic, you might think i'm a zookeeper checking on the king of beasts...if you're not, you might wonder what? didn't the men in the bible 'gird their loins?' but if you read last night's post, you will recall that i prepared pork loin and put it in the crockpot. and wowzers! i stepped into the kitchen and i had one last step to prepare it-one more hour. but i wanted to eat pulled pork for breakfast! it is so juicy and sweet! again, i wish this were a scratch and sniff blog!

since it wasn't ready, i just had some caramel truffle coffee with my heavenly creamer! (i was actually introduced to the caramel truffle by my previous roommate, heather-we love our coffee!)

and then when i got the keurig, i loved the kcups. although they can get ridiculous expensive! so thank goodness for the filter! if you have a keurig and haven't heard of them, the filter is a must! it allows me to go to central market and get my texas pecan coffee! melt in my mouth please!

and for the record, once i pulled the pork out, it was falling apart as i tried to take it out of the pot! i may or may not have gone ahead and eaten a generous portion for breakfast...it was so good i really didn't want to stop eating...i kept praying that i wouldn't get full. but i did.(which is actually good so i will have a meal or two more during the week). honestly i didn't use any measurements, but if i were guessing, i used about 3 squirts of honey mustard, about 3/4 cup brown sugar, a little garlic powder, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, and after poking several holes in it, i rubbed it all over with this little mixture and let it go on low for about 9 hours. then i drained it and took about 1/2 cup of brown sugar mixed with dried onion, garlic salt and a little more honey mustard, rubbed it on and let it form a carmelization for an hour..delish!

i know it's hard to tell, and it would look prettier with some colorful veggies, but i thank the pig that gave his life.

 well, we went to the vet for bruno's blood draw (finally) and he came out smelling like alcohol (rubbing alcohol, not like he'd been back doing shots with the techs). and they told me he has fleas. ew. so we got flea stuff for both of them and i couldn't think of where he could've gotten....oh but wait! when we went to the doggie park...? or how many times has he been in the kennels there at the vet over the last week around the dogs there? or...it could have been that wasp banging on the door yesterday-perhaps he was carrying his little flea friend on his back and dropped him off on my balcony-jerk. (remember the old cartoons with the flea circus??) inevitably when one of our students has lice, my head begins to itch. well, today the same thing happened with the idea of fleas.

so i took them for a walk because the weather was beautiful and we were right near the beautiful dog-walk area in addison. so here are some pics from our walk.

again, wishing for scratch and sniff because these bushes with the white flowers had such a light and airy, delicate smell. a little secret garden

this is one of the secret entrances. it's kinda nestled into this neighborhood and you don't recognize it from the street because there is a huge bush wall hiding the area; we just stumbled onto it one day.

this is a view of the length of the pond-walk

duck..duck..duck..duck...CHACO!!

once we got home, i got the flea ointment out and pulled out treats so they would associate good things with this nasty ointment. i think it must tingle because bruno used to go nuts when he was littler..and this time it seemed to affect chaco a bit more. rolling around on every surface possible-couch, floor, chair, stair, anything...

my biggest issue was 1. that it looked like alien ointment and 2. that they are speceists (like racist only against a species-against cats in particular).

and now there will be no dog bathing for 48 hours.

as the Bible says, fleas are evil. oh, it actually says flee from evil,
julie

p.s. i stand with israel-in case anyone was wondering.