Blogging again

I think I'm going to start blogging again. I'm not sure if it's all going to be food-related, but some of it definitely will be. Right now we're moving, time is passing so quickly, and I want to record what's going on for posterity. Or something.

A lot of the women who participate in Hackbright have kept blogs to chronicle their experiences and I've really enjoyed them. It's given me some insight into what it'll be like in the program and has helped to ease my worries about how it's going to go. I think I'd like to do this, if I can keep up with it. It'll help me to focus (I hope) and stay connected with people in Austin (because I haven't begun to emotionally process the fact that I'm leaving behind 6+ years of friends in less than 2 weeks).

And since I firmly believe that most blog posts are enhanced with pictures, here's one that we took of Ramona during bluebonnet season. It's only about 5 months late.

Maybe I'll get motivated and redesign the blog. The possibilities are endless!

Last day of school

I had my defense today and it went well enough that I passed.

And now I'm going to nap forever.

We're Moving!

Image by Chloe Fleury found here.

I've been waiting for the right time to post this, and now seemed like a great time.

We're moving to San Francisco!

At least, we're moving to the Bay Area. We don't have a place yet and Colby is still looking for a job, but those are just details, right? I'll be a Hackbright Fellow in the fall, where I'll learn python, how to network, and hopefully I'll be able to line up a job for the future. My hope is to be a software engineer or a data scientist.  I am beyond excited and I'm hoping that I'll have the time to blog about my experiences. 

More later and please keep your fingers and toes and eyes crossed for me because I'll be defending in a week from today.

Oh hai.

So. I'm still here. I've intended to resurrect the blog so many times that I've lost count, but I'm pretty sure that it's going to be mostly dormant between now and when I defend. By the way, my defense is scheduled for August 11th. Please don't tell me how many weeks away that is, because I might have a full blown anxiety attack. I had an over-caffeinated freak out this afternoon, but I talked it out with Kyle. So I'm good, as long as I don't think too long about how much I have to accomplish (and do well!) between now and then. In fact, I'm required to give a draft of my thesis to my committee by July 11th and that is entirely too soon for my tastes.

If you'd like to watch my thesis meltdown much closer, I'm on instagram (again). I'll be taking pictures of pens and lattes and the odd picture of the back of Ramona's head.

It's a very cute head.

Notes from the underground

screenshot from my talk

There are so many things going on right now, it makes my head spin.

Last last week, my collaborator came into town. We spent a really intense week working on my papers and I had a committee meeting and subsequent talk. It went. Although the collaboration went really well.

I'm going to jinx myself, but I think I finally have a defense date in August. I'm so looking forward to that being over, I can't even tell you. BUT there's so much that I need to do before I finish for real (write an introduction to my thesis, a summary to the thesis, resubmit a paper, and submit another paper) that I'm not quite sure how I'm going to make it. I do know, however, that I will. Because I have to.

Ramona is a trooper. I feel bad because I'm an insane person right now and she's really starting to learn empathy (I don't know how, if you've ever met Colby or me). She sees me going crazy and then says "sorry, mama" since she knows that makes some things better. It warms my heart. It's also part of the reason why I'm not going to really work on weaning her yet because we need that time together when I can just focus on her instead of everything else for a change.

We're selling our house. If you'd like to live in a diversified neighborhood that's not super expensive and like 15 minutes from anything you'd ever want let me know. Last week we secured an apartment next to Ramona's school. We chose that place specifically so she could stay in the same place. So much is changing, and so we wanted to keep that the same for her.

Colby's parents are coming to help us get the house ready and then my dad and step mom are coming too. I'm hoping that we'll have everything ready so that we can officially put the house on the market. I love this house and it's sad that we're selling it, but it's for the best. Ramona needs to be in a better school district for the future, for sure.

There are some other HUGE things on the horizon that I'm not at liberty to specify (no, there will be no siblings for Ramona, unless you know something that I don't, especially considering that I've newly discovered the moscow mule)... yet. But they're good and I'm hopeful for the future. I just wish that it would hurry up and get here so I can stop freaking out.

Saturday night jams

That feeling when you have so much to do, you can't do anything because you're paralyzed by a combination of fear and stress.

So I'm listening to angsty music I used to listen to in college. Because I was really fucking angsty.

Slow Cooking

She is way cuter than an ugly slow-cooked meal

To say that things have been tumultuous lately would be a vast understatement. The uncertainty of the future combined with the incredible stress that comes with finishing a thesis would be bad enough, but having to maintain some facade of sanity so as to not terrorize my 2(!) year old, makes it a lot more challenging. One thing that is abundantly clear is that we need to really start saving money because my last guaranteed paycheck comes in May.

We've started using the slow cooker a lot more. We actually have two of these, and they've mostly sat in the pantry neglected, only to come out during the holidays to warm whatever alcoholic beverage we're serving (think spiked hot chocolate or mulled cider). My main issue with the slow cooker is something that I still don't understand. If you have a recipe that cooks in 6 hours, how exactly do you time your slow cooking so that you don't come home to a giant mess of over-cooked food or do you just eat at midnight?

I thought that I'd link to a few recipes that we've tried with some notes, mostly for me.

Chicken Philly Sandwiches
This recipe calls for "Dale's Steak Seasoning", which I gather is basically just Maggi with some other things in it, but we didn't have any and neither did Central Market, so I used ~3T or so of Pecos 83 BBQ Marinade. I also added some Zehnder's Chicken Seasoning (although I have the one with MSG in it because yum) because I somehow have two bottles of this stuff and I have no idea what to do with it. This turned out really well.

Barbecue Pulled Chicken
I'm not even sure that this is the recipe I used, but it's close to what we did. What you should NEVER do is use Sweet Baby Ray's. That shit is a) nasty and b) way too high in sugar to slow cook because it burns. I'd probably use that Pecos 83 BBQ marinade and try to make this again.

Beef and Farro Stew
Admittedly, slow-cooking is the opposite of pressure cooking, but I'd been watching a lot of old school AB lately. We had almost all of the ingredients on hand, minus the beef, so I figured we'd give this a go. I substituted farro for the barley because we have a lot of if and I have no idea what to do with it. I also subbed in sage and thyme because I hate rosemary and we don't have any marjoram and obviously, I used prepared beef stock. At the end, I added a big dash of porcini powder and some frozen corn that we had on hand. The first day I was super disappointed because it was so one-dimensional (i.e., it was like tomato stew with other things in it), but after sitting in the fridge for a couple days, it made for great leftovers.