Saturday, March 21, 2009

Real Maple Syrup

I love real maple syrup. That's the only kind of syrup we ate when we were kids (my mom and dad are smart cookies with good taste!), and I've never been able to tolerate the fake stuff. It just ain't right! ;) A couple years ago, my aunt and uncle (Ginger and Tom) gave Chris a bottle of "the good stuff" for Christmas, and although we wouldn't have thought of buying it for ourselves (probably because we were still in that "poor newly married couple" stage), we were grateful for their thoughtfulness. (Poor Chris, I'm the one who ended up eating most of his gift--sorry honey!)

Ever since we ran out of the Christmas syrup, I've been wanting more. Chris discovered that it's Maple Weekend this weekend and next weekend, so we went off to Forestville today to check out a sugar shack. It was a little shack in the middle of the woods and inside was a sap boiler and a kid talking about the process of boiling down the sap to make syrup. I bought a quart and tomorrow I'm going to make buckwheat pancakes for brekkie!!! I can't wait!!!!!

Have you seen my new blog?

I'm still planning on posting my everyday (or maybe I should say "everyweek" or "everymonth") happenings here, but I started a new blog for a very specific topic. Visit blueberryfilkins.blogspot.com to find out what it is, and thanks for reading!!!!! I love you all!!!!

Friday, March 20, 2009

Maple Grove Basketball

I'm a guidance counselor at a tiny little school in Chautauqua County, which is located in Western NY. I'm sure most counselors and teachers say this about their kids, and I'm going to say it about "my" kids, too--they're the best kids anyone could ever hope to work with. I love every aspect of working with them, from the field trips (like the college fair I took them on this past Wednesday) to the Girl Talk group I advise, to the incredibly successful athletic teams.

At this moment, our boys are starting their playoff game in Glens Falls, NY. They left on a bus yesterday for the long trip "out east". I just can't express how proud I am of these kids, and one of the coolest things is that even though they're very successful on the court or the field or wherever they're playing, they're still NICE KIDS.

Here's an article about one of our players: http://www.poststar.com/articles/2009/03/20/sports/today/doc49c3228d10bff935916465.txt

Good luck, Maple Grove Red Dragons. Everyone in the office is cheering out loud for you!

UPDATE

The Red Dragons lost their game by 5 points in double overtime.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Natasha Richardson

I was really shocked to see that Natasha Richardson was in critical condition after a skiing accident, and even more shocked to see that she passed away from her injuries.

I couldn't tell you any shows or movies that she's in right off the top of my head, but we have a very fond memory of seeing the filming of a show that never aired: The Mastersons of Manhattan. I don't know if I feel so saddened by her death because of the fact that she died skiing (something that I've done many times) or because we saw her in person, but I'm really surprised by how hard this hit me. (I'm not sobbing or anything, but my heart is definitely heavy.)

Monday, March 16, 2009

my super cool juice pouch bag!

I have a great deal of respect for people who are creative enough to make amazingly cool things out of, well, "junk." I'm a wannabe creative type, but I can't seem to turn my ideas into any actual products. However, my "friend" from Twitter and the blogging world, Helen, creates beautiful bags out of juice pouches. I entered a contest on the "Keeper of the Cheerios" blog, and I won!!! I'm FINALLY posting a picture of the bag that Helen so kindly sent me. Jealous? (kidding, of course!) Let me know and I'll send you contact information so you can buy one, too!


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I feel like a jerk

I feel like a lot of stupid little things have gotten to me today, and now I'm in a horrible mood. This all started first thing this morning on my way to work and it's been eating at me all day, then I get home to find that the dog has gotten into stuff again. That's really irritating to me, and I'm at the point where I'd seriously like to just get rid of the dog, and probably one of the cats, too. They're destroying our house and our stuff and that's not what a pet is supposed to do. A pet is supposed to enrich your life and make you feel happy. My pets just make me feel angry and stressed.

So the thing that happened this morning--I was on my way to work and stuck behind a car that routinely goes about 5 to 10 miles under the speed limit. Not wanting to be a total jerk, I opted not to pass her for a while, then it got to be too much, and she was going to make me get stuck behind a bus, so I passed her...just as the bus was pulling out in front of me. So I'm following the bus, and it's doing about 40-45 mph. The speed limit on that road is 55, but I'm ok if it's going 50 or so. After all, it is a school bus. Plus, I knew it would have to stop and pick up one of our students not far down the road. But after it picked up the student, it kept doing 40mph. It's hard to know exactly what happened in this series of events, but I imagine I was expecting her to accelerate, which she didn't. When I expect someone to, you know, go the speed limit, I probably tend to get too close to them until they pick up speed. Well, this bus decided to KEEP SLOWING DOWN, which was so irritating. You should probably know that this particular driver NEVER pulls over for cars who are stuck behind her for 3 miles or more. She's the only driver I've ever encountered who refuses to pull over for cars. So anyway, after that, she freakin' brake checked me!!! Then at school one of the students said that she was complaining to the kids about how I was on her tail. I was SO TICKED, I can't even tell you. But here's the other thing...even though I don't feel like I did anything wrong, I felt scolded, attacked, etc... I take criticism very personally if it's not something I intended to do wrong. So this has been eating at me all day. Then I come home to find that Xander has grabbed two sticks of butter that I had thawing in the corner of the counter (I have no idea how he got them) and tried to bury them in the couch. So now the couch smells like vomit. I would really love to kill him.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Greek Dressing

Back in January we had a luncheon at school and someone brought in Ken's Greek dressing. I've bought Ken's dressings before but didn't really like them. I've bought Greek dressing (not Ken's) and was underwhelmed by that, too. The only Greek dressings I really like are ones I can get in restaurants or in Greece, but the Ken's dressing was really good! However, I prefer to make a lot of foods from scratch because then I know what's in it. When you buy pre-packaged foods, they're full of preservatives and partially hydrogenated nastiness. So I went online and found a few recipes. There was one in particular that people raved about, so I finally picked up the last few ingredients I needed to make it. I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It might be a little on the strong side--the red wine vinegar flavor is VERY strong--but it's very tasty. Now I'm wishing I had picked up some feta while I was out at the store, and maybe some olives, because those two ingredients would round out a salad quite nicely!