stuff done: Saturday-Monday

1. Started making paper fruit for a new counter display at the rental office -- by which I mean I chose line art from online, copypasted it into Word documents (and resized and tweaked until I had about six iterations per page), and printed it out on colored paper. Miss Cactus already started cutting some of them out and adding detail with thin-point Sharpie pens. I am not sure whether I will arrive on Tuesday to a finished display, or whether I will get to do some cutting and coloring myself during any slow periods.

2. Acquired a new houseplant. See, a tenant couldn't bring the plant with them to their new apartment, but felt bad throwing a living thing away, so they brought it to the office and asked if we wanted it. I said yes. I then transplanted it from the dinky plastic store pot into the slightly larger ceramic pot the tenant had been using purely as decoration because apparently transplanting is hard. *sigh* Anyway, hopefully I will manage not to kill it.

3. Put three nails into one side of my oldest bookcase, to hold parts of my paperclip collection. (Context: I string paperclips in chains of ten onto keyrings, 25 chains per ring, and then hang them up for display. All the paperclips must be 'found' items -- I can't purposely buy them -- which is why it has taken me literally twenty years to collect a thousand paperclips. Well. A thousand and three, as of Saturday.)

( more items under the cut )

18. Called Vicky and caught up for an hour or so. :)

19. Chopped onions, summer squash, and a large bell pepper and made a batch of veggie sidedish. Tomorrow I intend to bake some chicken.

All in all, I think it was a fairly productive weekend.

wherein Liz prepares to embark upon a culinary adventure... tomorrow

Today's entry in the 'weird things I have acquired from tenants' department: a Blue Apron box.

The tenant left for the summer and did not cancel their subscription quite fast enough, so whoops, one extra box arrived. Fortunately this particular tenant is generally on top of things, and upon receiving the package notification email, promptly called us to say they weren't in town and we should just make the food ourselves.

Mom Boss and Aunt Boss were not interested, and I wasn't sure the food would keep long enough for Miss Cactus to choose any on Thursday, so I just carried the box home myself. (The whole mile and a half. Exercise is good for you! *flops*)

The recipes are as follows: crispy catfish & spicy vegetable curry (with charred lime); seared steaks & salsa verde (with fingerling potatoes, asparagus, & radishes); and Persian-style chicken & crispy rice (with zucchini, currants, & lemon yogurt).

They all claim to take only 15 minutes of prep time. Considering one of them involves mashing garlic into a paste, and the other two involve making lemon or lime zest from scratch (wtf), I call bullshit. I mean, I am game to try these things! They sound tasty! But I am pretty sure they will take about an hour of prep time each, plus the listed cooking times, plus slop time for cleaning dishes (I don't have the biggest sink, nor do I have endless counter space), so... I think two hours total per meal. Blargh.

Anyway, I have put the things that need refrigeration in my fridge, while the others are sitting in the box on a table, and I will probably attempt either the catfish or the steak tomorrow evening.