Thursday Thirteen # 7

1. My Lily has trouble digesting egg, corn, and wheat. She has been out of sorts for days and spent the night throwing up. Which leads me to believe that I inadvertently fed her something which I shouldn't have. However, I cannot for the life of me figure out what it was that is making her sick. Very frustrated, and very tired.
   
   
2. I made my dad a website as a project for one of my classes several months ago. Now it is an official website. Spike's Pickleball Paddles. I have to update the content a bit. I originally made the website according to the teacher's instructions -without using any web authoring programs (typing out the HTML by hand). Now I can use web authoring tools. But, the truth is they all confuse me. I am leaving the logo on my blog with a link to his website. Feel free to put it up on your website if you feel like giving my dad some free advertisement. Or going over to his new website to buy yourself some pickleball paddles.
   
   
3. I start my next class May 29. This one is introduction to Oracle and SQL, which is data base coding. I am very excited. I already got the book, can't wait to start reading it.
   
   
4. I joined the paperback book swap, the link is on the sidebar. It is a free service, you join by posting 9 books you are willing to mail to anyone in the club who requests the book. For the first 9 books posted you receive 3 credits. Each credit allows you to order a book posted on the website from another member. There are currently over a million books posted. They are all organized and categorized and it is easy to find something you like. Every time you send a book to another member you get another credit. I am loving it. I usually donate my old paperbacks to thrift stores or friends. I read many books that I have no intention of reading again and they accumulate all over the place. Now I can send them off in the mail and get another book for free. Also, they tell you how much the postage is, so I don't even go to the Post office, I just wrap up the book and stick on some stamps, put it in the mail box and put up the little flag. I am loving it, just so you know. You pay for postage when you send and don't pay anything when you receive. You can list hard cover books and audio books as well.
   
   
5. Speaking of books... I am currently reading Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weirner. It is a really good book. However, I miss my bookclub, bookwormsrus. Let's start reading books again, guys. Instead of making Angel do all the work, why don't we each take turns hosting the book club. I can start, this month I will host the bookclub on my blog and then someone else can volunteer for next month. Or we can do it every other month or every three months. Anyone interested?
   
   
6. My lemon tree out back has a ton of little green balls on every branch. I couldn't be more excited. The Gardenia bush is also blossoming and the Magnolia trees all over Mississippi are beginning to bloom.
   
   
7. Does anyone know how to quilt? I took a quilting class about a year ago. It was so much fun. Now my grandma who is an expert quilter is sending me some squares she made and I am going to be putting them together to make an actual quilt. I am both scared and excited. The only time I have ever sewed anything was at the class, not even sure how to thread my machine. But, I am hoping to get some quilting books, bite the bullet and learn to sew. Maybe I should take another class?
   
   
8. Now that we are all done moving. Now that my parents have come to visit and gone home. Now I have no exciting adventures on the horizon. We don't have any summer trips planned. No exciting vacations to exotic locations. I have dreams of someday going to far away places. But, for the foreseeable future my plans are ... I have no plans. I am having a very hard time with this fact. I am missing the lure of the next adventure.
   
   
9. Do you have your Harry Potter plan in place yet? Our closest bookstore is not sure if they are going to do the midnight sale. Mandy and I are planning to find a midnight sale somewhere and we also ordered one from Amazon just to be safe. So if all goes well she will start the book at midnight and I will be able to read the one from Amazon instead of having to wait for Mandy to be done. Last book, she read it straight through in one day. Took me a week. I had Mandy read Misery in case Harry dies so we could have a plan as to how to resurrect him. I am not sure Mandy is over Dumbledore yet. If Harry goes, we shall never recover.
   
   
10. Most days Lily and I get up around 6 or 7. We like to take it easy and piddle around the house until 10 or 11 and then get out of the house and do our thing. I would really like to change this schedule so that we get out of the house at 7 or 8. The conditions outdoors here in Mississippi as we edge closer to summer are not as favorable in the afternoon as they are in the morning. Change is hard though and I am finding it extremely difficult to get out of the house before 10.
    
    
11. I would really like to incorporate some exercise into my schedule as well. Change is hard.
    
    
12. I have been working very hard to make a Lily friendly cookie, see # 1. My gluten-free blogging buddies, Laura (recipe blog here) and Natalie have inspired me to keep on trying. I have been tweaking and baking several batches of cookies per week. I am getting closer with every batch. The last couple batches have been so good that Lily will no longer eat the store bought gluten-free cookies, my parents and Jeff both said they were good, and the last batch even got the thumbs up from Mandy. This is big because Mandy doesn't pull punches and she, my parents and Jeff are not on gluten-free diets so their feedback comes from a different place than Lily. I still have a couple of kinks to work out and then I will post the recipe. It is a cocoa and peanut butter cookie with sour cream subbed for the eggs. There is too much butter in it though and I would like to get it to be a little less of a heart attack cookie and a little more like a snack than a treat if you know what I mean.
    
    
13. I found an Asian market in my area. Instead of having to drive two cities over into a bad area of town I can go just down the street to a lovely clean well lit store. I bought a box of instant Dashi (Japanese fish broth) and have been making all kinds of delicious foods. I used it to make miso soup by sifting a couple of tbs of miso paste into the broth and then adding veggies, meat, and noodles. I used the dashi in place of chicken broth in some of my stir fry recipes, so good. The dashi tastes to me like that broth you get at a Japanese restaurant with the green onions and crunchy stuff. The instant stuff is as easy to make as boiling water and tastes perfect to me.
    
    
    
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