Pennsylvania was awesome, we had such a great time with the family there. I went face first into the pierogies and learned of a new Polish dish: haluski (which basically means cabbage and noodles). I’m really getting into the whole heritage cooking bit. Here’s a recipe I found, but haven’t tried yet. The General, who is half Polish, commented he didn’t care much for this. Are you kidding me?! This stuff was amazing!
The craziest part of the 12 hours in a car was the last stretch of curving mountainous highway at 4am. I was driving – and getting very tired, I probably shouldn’t have been driving at this point – and Google maps tells us to take a right hand turn. It was a dirt road. We kinda laughed about it. “If directions to your house include, ‘turn off the paved road,’ you might be a redneck.” And then it went from dirt road to boulder field. We’re in a little hatchback, this car was not designed for a dirt road with rocks as big as one’s head. Remember playing Oregon Trail as a kid and at the end you have to do that river part where you’re dodging logs? Same concept here. Luckily, this was the last road to take, and 5 scary minutes later, we pulled into the homestead at 5:30am. We turned off the ignition, leaned the seats back, and promptly fell into a deep slumber for 3 hours before we woke up for the party. All of my nieces and nephews where there – we got huge family picture – and we had a blast. I played what I called “Polish volleyball:” it’s volleyball where there are no set positions and you serve from the wrong side of the court. It was hilarious, but a lot of fun.
The past couple of days haven’t been kind to me. I decided to head on into an angry looking ocean the other day with nearly head high shorebreak. I got up to my ankles and a big wave came. I tried to block it with my board, but instead, the ocean pushed the board into my forehead and knocked me down backwards, rolled, and pushed me. I have a goose egg on my forehead, which lucky for me, hasn’t started changing colors. My back was scraped up, but the muscular strain was much worse. I sat on the beach for a few to collect myself – I really thought I had a concussion. I’m fine. A little wiser now, too.
Work has been crazy. That place really stresses me out. I have a hard time not getting frustrated. Especially when you’re there for 11 hours and you’re doing some mundane task like counting cells under a microscope when you should be half way through a cup of tea on the couch at home.
I feel I haven’t been using my mornings effectively. I’ve tried to limit my time on Facebook and spend more time in my quiet time, but it never seems to work out on the stage of real life.
I’m not sure if it was from the reunion or my love affair with s’mores, or me being non-compliant with my thyroid Rx, but my weight is on it’s way up. I started back on my vegetarian diet and all was going well until last night: I saw the soup at work was “vegetarian beet” and I was like, “Huh, I don’t care for beets, but I will try it!” Well, the hand written sign actually said “beef” not “beet.” Oops. Oh well, I ate it and it was really good.
I should have gone out surfing this morning, but the waves didn’t look too good on the cam, despite the ocean looking like pepper with all the surfers out there. It was a cool 21C morning, so we went running. Ran a 5k in 34 minutes ::sigh:: It’s racing season and I need to seriously get my butt in gear with some speedwork if I want to actually run a respectable time.
I’m going to miss the summer, but I’m sorta looking forward to fall. I want both. I want some fall days mixed in with those awesome summer days.