Meet Vintage Country Girl

My girlfriend Lorie has a nice blog about her life on her little hobby farm. She has a fun vibe for home decor and manages to recreate some costly looks with found objects and bargain purchases. She's having a giveaway to celebrate one hundred followers to her blog. Congratulations, Lorie! I cannot imagine. Why, you're practically famous. Check out the giveaway. I kinda want that stuff. And by kinda, I mean, really. A lot.

I think I'm going to sign off from my computer for the night and try this project of Lorie's. I find myself totally into scarves right now and this seems cute and the jersey from a ratty old t-shirt would feel blissful right up by my face.

Turkey Hangover

We had a thankful day yesterday. Our family stuff is later, so I planned to make a feast for just us. I learned that some friends of ours had no plans so they accepted my happy invitation to join us.

I used the brine recipe that I used last year, with some tweaking. I didn't do any special shopping for the recipe.... I used the cider that I had on hand, but I was still a cup and a half short. Since it called for the citrus flavors of orange peel, I decided that the grapefruit juice in my fridge would be just the thing to round out the rest of the liquid. I also increased the amount of garlic in the brine. I'm telling you, the bird tasted better than last year's. The flavor permeated the meat better, which was my desire.

I suppose I did some overeating, but I didn't go crazy. Today, however, I am so sluggish. I guess that kind of food, even in moderate amounts, really isn't great for us.

Today, Sophia, with no plans on the agenda (which drives her crazy) offered to make supper out of the leftovers. She made barbequed turkey sandwiches - delish! - and potato pancakes - better than I've ever turned out.



And the thankfulness continued.

Piano Recital

My students did a very nice job at their recital on Sunday. There were some wonderful performances, some brave perseverance through nerves and some delightfully awkward bows.

Followed by Snickerdoodles in the church foyer.

My Latest Obsession

Let me introduce you to my new boyfriends and my latest obsession. The obsession is the NBC show, The Sing-Off, hosted by Nick Lachey. It's a game show, essentially, in which a cappella singing groups prepare a number or two, based on the theme of the week. One group is eliminated every show with the last group standing getting a record deal, I guess.

My new sweethearts are the Dartmouth Aires, Dartmouth College's oldest a cappella singing group. Lawd, these guys are good. And such personality! I just adore them. The performance above was done on Rock Legend Night. Each group was assigned a different Rock Legend (I use that term loosely, as Brittney Spears was one of the "legends") and had to prepare and perform a medley of that superstar. For me, it didn't hurt that they were doing Queen. I was the victim of a near-lynching last week on Facebook when I suggested that Freddie Mercury was more talented than Michael Jackson. Too soon, I guess.

Click on the above link now, thank me later. And tune in tonight for R and B night. Swoon.

My City Half Marathon

Two Saturdays ago, my SIL Sarah and I participated in my town's half marathon walk. We are lucky enough to have some extensive trails around town, some of them in picturesque locations. This year was the 3rd annual half marathon walk.

Sarah and I were so proud of ourselves! Sarah is the type of person who, once she commits to something like an athletic event, googles training programs for such a thing. The programs all said that you would be able to complete a half marathon walk without training, but regular walks as exercise would be a smart thing to do.

She and I spent the late summer and early fall walking as often as we could get away together, but couldn't seem to put aside large enough blocks of time for really long walks. Finally, the week before the event, we managed an eight mile walk, which just about killed us.

To say we fretted over the additional 5.1 miles we would be walking the next Saturday was an understatement.



But the Saturday of the walk rolled around and in the cool October morning air we found the distance more manageable. We were proud of our pace and even did the second half a half-hour quicker than the first half. We felt better after ten miles than we had after eight the previous week. In fact, we felt so good around ten miles that we jogged for a little bit. (After three hours of a brisk walk, we were feeling the effects of the repetition in our hips and in the whispers of the start of blisters on our feet. Jogging had us move the strain to other parts for a short amount of time.)

The last two and a half miles or so were tough, though. We finished in 3.5 hours, well under our expected finish time.

Yay, us!

(These photos were taken by the photographer on the staff of the city's downtown organization.)

Fall Back

Whomever invented Daylight Savings Time was certainly not a mother, who expects her children to go to bed on time and who sees the necessity of a full night's sleep in order to have a pleasing, smoothly-running home. When we move the clocks in the spring I grumble and know that we will all pay for it for days.

But tonight I move the clocks back and hum.