Happy Belated Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter. Houston weather is, as always, unpredictable. Lots of rain was forecast, and we got some of the rain and lightning, but thankfully no tornados or hail. The rain was heaviest, of course, as people were arriving with dishes of food and trying to dart into the house without getting too wet. We ate our meal, and I ate too many sweets! and in the afternoon the rain actually passed on through and it was a gorgeous day outside! Our nephew and cousins were able to hunt Easter eggs and we took some photos out in the front yard.

I helped one of the cousins open her plastic eggs to see what kind of goodies she got, and most of the candy was what I remember as a kid, in the exact same packaging - sweetTarts, nerds, the round chocolate discs that look like money, and my favorite, the peanut buddies. but the ones that she was the most excited about I had never heard of? Am I the only one who has never heard of Krabby Patties? Once I saw it was related to SpongeBob I knew why I'd never heard of it, I don't watch SpongeBob (except for right after Hurricane Ike). It didn't look particularly good to me, but was oddly cute, like a hamburger.

Busy Tuesday

I am so tired. After dinner tonight we worked out in the front yard to finish up the flowerbeds. We finished trimming the plants and got ALL of the mulch down (I lost track of how many bags we used). It was exhausting, especially after a full day at work, but it looks great and feels even better to have it done! Now we'll just have to keep up with the weeding and watering. I am so glad that it didn't freeze at our house last night, some areas did have freezing temperatures - in Houston in April?!?!

For dinner we tried out a new recipe I'd gotten from Self magazine, and it was a success. I followed the recipe fairly closely and will add what we did differently. It had a good flavor. Next time I'll make it a little hotter, but its a success when its good enough that we eat it and even better when we actually WANT to have it again.

Five-Spice Shrimp
Classic Indian seasonings give this shrimp dish a fiery jolt.

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1-inch piece ginger
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/8 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 medium tomatoes, pureed -- we actually used a can of peeled tomatoes
  
• 1 pound large shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 2 1/2 cups cooked rice
• Coriander sprigs - we omitted, I didn't feel like buying at the store
  

Preparation

Heat oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Sauté onion until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Grind ginger and garlic into a paste; add it and remaining spices and tomatoes to pan; simmer 5 minutes. In a separate pan, sauté shrimp 30 seconds. Add sauce and stir continuously on high heat, 2 or 3 minutes, until most of the liquid evaporates. Serve over rice. Garnish with coriander.

After simmering the sauce, we blended it to make it a smoother consistency. Also, because we used more tomatoes ( a can instead of just 2) there was a lot more sauce then the recipe (and photo) indicated, but I like a lot of sauce, so it worked out.

I was really pleased with the smell of the dish and we plan to play with this combination of spices to try out some other Indian dishes.

workplace Internet leisure browsing

Who knew that internet browsing at work actually had an acronym? It is "WILB", according to this article about a study in Australia that found that web surfing actually increases productivity. I've known that for years. I have to take "brain breaks" from working on the spreadsheets, queries, and other detail-oriented work that I do, otherwise I'd go bonkers! I don't think this will change the minds of any companies that block the internet, or certain websites, but we can hope.

It has been a long week at work, so I am ready to go home and do some relaxing, and a lot of yardwork.

New Countdown clock

Karmen suggested a website that has countdown clocks for all occasions, so here is a countdown clock to our vacation:

MySpace Countdown Clocks

Thanks for the help Karmen! Check out her brand-new blog. I wanted to put the countdown on the sidebar but it was too big, so I'll have to work on figuring out how to resize it. I am such a novice at blogging, the last time I tried to put an HTML gadget on my page, I couldn't get it to work, but Allison helped me. Many thanks for her help, and hooray that she and her husband should be back in the states soon.

Countdown

I can't wait for my vacation! We leave in just over a month to go to NYC. Its the first time for both of us. Rare, because we've been to nearly opposite places so usually when we go somewhere I've been or he's been, so its fun to pick out a place that is new to both of us, and NYC seemed like the perfect place. I have been reading about the city and what to see and do, and just can't wait! and, pictures from fellow bloggers' recent trip to NYC make me want to go even more. So, I decided to try to find a countdown gadget to add to our blog, but couldn't find one :( I did find that Blogger doesn't know how to count since I was viewing: 1 – 25 of 17 matches for the word "countdown", how I can view 25 when there are only 17 matches?

So, old school countdown: 32 days (21 work days) until we leave!

In my searching I did find a Lost countdown, so that is now added to our blog. I love that show, it is so complex that I know I'll never understand it all and time travel starts to hurt my head after a while, but we love to disect it and try to figure out what will happen, and what is this island! I also love silly shows, much to Kevin's dismay and now that we have AT&T uverse I can see more of them because we can record/view FOUR at a time, no more TWO that comcast limited us too (bad during football season).