Easy as pie

We got the first bag of grape tomatoes from our CSA last week.  Unlike the beets- which neither of us like- or the rest of the veggies- which both of us like- tomatoes are 100% my responsibility.  And I don't really like raw tomatoes.  A bit of internet searching came up with a zillion recipes for a tomato tart/pie, so I threw one together with ingredients we happened to have around, sliced it into quarters, and now I have lunches for a week.

Easy tomato pie-  

Ingredients:

• One refrigerated pie crust (I used Pillsbury from Target)
• Tomatoes- any kind you want- sliced so they'll lay relatively flat on the crust (I used the lovely orange ones shown above)
• Cheese- something melty (I used Gorgonzola because we had quite a bit left over from a previous dinner)
• Seasoning- Whatever you think would taste good (I didn't use any because Gorgonzola has a lot of flavor on its own)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400ish.
• Place pie crust in a pie pan or a round cake pan.  Bake for about 10 minutes while you cut up the tomatoes.  The ingredients cook way faster than the crust, so it's good to give it a head start.
• Remove pie from oven and layer in cheese and tomatoes.
• Put the pie back into the oven and bake until the crust is brown and the cheese is melty.
• Devour or allow to cool and slice into lunch-sized pieces and store in Tupperware for later

I had a slice for lunch yesterday and thought it was really tasty for the tiny amount of work involved.  Can't say I'll be sad to eat this 3 more times.

What's your favorite quick and easy thing to throw together for lunch?

And with that, it's time to fly.  115lb bench press- you are mine!

One year

It's not often that I can remember almost exactly what I was doing about the same time a year before, but this year- like last year- I spent most of yesterday at the Sugar Maple Music Festival.

Polka!

Yesterday morning while I was running, I started thinking about all the similarities and differences between this year and last.

• Last year I was training for the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon and I started the morning with a 20 mile run.  
• This year I slept in and was glad I didn't have to run 20 miles because it was hot.

• Last year I didn't do much strength training
• This year- Tuesday, in fact- I'm planning to try for a new 1-rep max on the bench press (115lbs.  That's a 35lb plate on each side. Light weight, baby!) and did 3 sets of 2 reps at 150lbs on the deadlift last Thursday.

• Last year I spent most of the day reading a murder mystery (A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley)
• This year I spent most of the day reading a murder mystery (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).  Both are great books but certainly very different.

• Last year Daniel didn't have a beard!  Wow, I forgot what that looked like!

• This year he has been fully integrated into society.

• Last year, after the 20 mile run and the music festival, we went to see a friend's band play a late night show.  I was like deliriously tired in that picture.  And I'd planned to do a 5-mile recovery run the next morning.  That didn't happen.
• This year we got that out of the way the week before.  I'm also not doing a 5-mile run this year, but I am planning to hit up a yoga class in the afternoon.

• Last year we went to a wedding the day after.  Wow, that was a lot of stuff in one weekend.
• This year we still see almost all the people in this picture on a regular basis.  And one- second from left- is due with her first baby in October!  

It just doesn't seem that long ago!

What has stayed constant in your life since last year?  What has changed?  What do you think this time next year will bring?

If I had a million dollars...

Periodically I get a clothing catalog from a company called Boden out of the UK.  I hadn't heard of it before, and I'm not sure how my name got on the mailing list, but I enjoy going through it and picking out all my favorite items.  Not only are the outfits cute, but it's one of the few companies I've seen that carry clothing that *I* consider truly warm enough for getting around in the winter.

I bet this red coat would raise January vitamin D levels all on its own:

 
BUT, all the items are super pricey.  Ever wondered what a $200 hoodie looks like?

Now you know.  Granted it's made of cashmere, but a $200 hoodie?  Really?  Better not spill anything on that.

Out of curiosity, I added most of the items I'd flagged when I was flipping through the catalog to the online shopping bag, just to see what would happen.

Actually, $2400 is less that I thought the total would be.  I must have missed some shoes!   Anyway, the fun is in the shopping, not the buying.

Have a dream kitchen/clothing/jewelry/housewares/sporting goods/whatever store you love to look at but is waaaaayyyyy out of your price range?

Looks like I need to go click "remove" 18 times and then head out for a run.  We're going to a music festival this afternoon, which will provide a lot of good listening and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo reading relaxation.  Have a fun Saturday!




 

Party like an undergrad

Saturday was my annual night out after 10pm!  Daniel and I went sent to see a friend- the husband of second from right- play at Quaker Steak and Lube (yep, a gas station themed restaurant/bar).

Smile if you normally go to bed at 9pm!

This was kind of a "reunion show" for our friend's band- except this year he didn't play with a band, he played with a guy who wasn't in the original band- I think?  The dynamics were kind of confusing.  The important part is that I'm fairly certain I haven't been out that late since his show last year.

Then I slept in until- gasp!- 8am the next morning.  My life is a Katy Perry song.

Although I don't remember anything about her making her own nectarine fro-yo ice cream sandwiches.  Mmmmm.... sprinkles.

Yes, that's exactly what it's like...

Nation's Optometrists Finally Starting To Recover After Raucous Optic Disc Expo 2011

It's pretty exciting when The Onion parodies something specific to your own life.  Not that I think the writers of the article had ARVO (the vision conference we attend almost every year in Ft. Lauderdale) in mind, but they got some great coaching on eyeball terms.

An excerpt:

While days were reportedly filled with "mind-blowing," "wild," and "f***ing amazing" presentations on hyperopia in baby boomers and new ways of reducing bilateral papilledema, optometrists said they also spent long nights in their hotel rooms talking with colleagues well into the morning hours on wide-ranging topics such as the vessels that supply blood to the retina and slit-lamp biomicroscopic examinations.


The eye specialists told reporters that when they returned home from the intense weekend of nonstop optic disc lectures and discussions they "immediately passed out."


"I got maybe three hours of sleep the entire expo," said Dr. Cyrus Patel, who had to cancel nearly 40 appointments this week because he was too exhausted to go into work. "I kept telling myself I was allowed only one more optic disc drusen seminar and then I had to go to bed, but that would mean missing Dr. Lappen's keynote on optical coherence tomography, and it's like, you only live once, you know? It's not like there's another Optic Disc Expo next month. This is it for 2011."


Yesterday was not the funnest day ever at work (at least the AC was fixed), so it was a great surprise when someone found this at 4pm.  I need to go raid the bins to get a couple paper copies.  As someone who spends waaayyyyy to much time thinking about "vessels that supply blood to the retina"- heck I'm hoping to have three papers on that topic accepted this year- that was probably my favorite line.  I've talked that topic to death but fortunately not in the wee hours of the morning.  Unless I was having nightmares.

Things are basically back to normal with the cooling systems on campus, and the gym is open again today.  I'm chugging coffee to try to wake up because we were out late last night at the Gillian Welch concert (fantastic!).  Hopefully I won't have to fight anyone for the squat rack as I am feeling slow and dimwitted.  Have any fun plans for the weekend?  My sleep schedule is going to be further disrupted by seeing a friend play a show Saturday night, but that's about it other than the usual chores, etc.
 

Good news, everyone!

From the UW website:

Relief, in the form of cooler and less humid air, was delivered Wednesday to the 47 campus buildings that went without air conditioning early this week.

As Madison struggles through a stifling heat wave, campus facilities officials were able to restore cooling capacity to the affected buildings and most workers and students returned Wednesday morning to find cooler, more comfortable conditions.

With the exception of a few isolated areas, the added air conditioning was reducing both temperatures and humidity levels. Facilities officials reported that temperatures in most of the affected buildings had dropped to between 72 and 75 degrees Wednesday morning.

OMG.  OMG.  OMG.  It was so hot on Tuesday.  So so so so hot.  My office was 90 degrees, and there was no air circulation.  Anything that was "cool" in comparison (the bathroom, the stairwell) was covered with a layer of condensation.  My building is one of those tall, 70s deals where no windows can be opened, and it was not meant to be inhabited without the HVAC system.  The lawyers got sent home Tuesday morning, and the transportation office got moved.  I lasted until 1:30pm and gave up and went home to lay on the floor in front of the AC.  I had to take a 1/2 day of vacation to do it, but it was totally worth it.  I just pretended like I was on vacation at the Sun and had gone back to my hotel room for the afternoon.     

Yesterday was MUCH better.  I borrowed someone's desk fan to get a little air circulating because I still wasn't getting any actual AC in my room.  However, there was AC coming into the rest of the building so it was cooler and smelled less like asbestos and bathroom.  

Unfortunately because of the heat, the gym is still closed:

IMPORTANT CLOSURE: 

THE SERF AND NIELSEN TENNIS STADIUM WILL BE OPEN THURSDAY, JULY 21. THE SHELL AND NATATORIUM WILL REMAIN CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. GENERAL PUBLIC MEMBERS AT THE SHELL MAY USE THE SERF WHILE THE SHELL IS CLOSED. REC SPORTS REGRETS THE INCONVENIENCE OVER THE PAST SEVERAL DAYS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND PATIENCE.

The SERF weight room is closed for maintenance, but I'm hopeful that because the temperature is a bit cooler the rest of the week, they'll open the Nat again in the next couple days.  

I saved the best news of the entire day for last.  Here's an e-mail from our apartment complex:

Residents of XXX:

Due to the extreme amount of millipedes migrating through your part of the neighborhood, our pest control contrator, Anderson Pest Solutions, will be spraying for millipedes behind your buildings today. They will be spraying the exteriors of the buildings and the stairwells to the basement and some of the vegetation directly behind the buildings.

The product they use does not have an odor and is safe to be used in residential applications. Hopefully this will help control the millipedes so they do not continue to come into the buildings.     

Normally I'm anti-killing, but when they write "extreme amount of millipedes", they aren't joking.  The whole walk to the laundry room through the basement is "crunch, crunch, crunch" because every step crushes at least 20 of them.  Plus they were all over the walls.  And the dead ones smell horrible!  After three trips down doing laundry on Tuesday, I thought I was going to vomit.  So yes, death to millipedes!  I only hope that they've contracted someone to get rid of the dead millipedes.  

Well, I'm off to run while it still "feels like" it's in the 80s.  What's the best news you've heard lately?  

     

H-O-T

I did not sign up for this.

I signed up for this

And this

And this

But did not sign up for highs in the high 90s with a heat index in the 100s.  It's only fair, don't you think?

After a Bikram run yesterday morning and a disgusting sweaty bike ride to work, I thought I had it made, sitting in the AC all day.  But no.  Three chiller plants on campus broke, and all the remaining cold air production capability was diverted to the hospital and to buildings with animals.  Okay, I don't really have an argument with that, but I thought this line of the press release summarized the attitude of university leadership/state government toward university employees perfectly:

This means human comfort will not be a top priority in chilled water distribution until the chillers are back to full capacity.

I work in one of those tall buildings that don't have windows that can open, and our office started to get steamy by the afternoon.  There was a huge rush to get more of our stored samples to a place with AC because trying to keep samples at -80F in a room that is 100F will kill the freezers.  And then there are our servers...

The most recent update from the university says that one of the chiller plants is working again, but they are kind of non-committal about what that will actually mean for the AC situation.  I'm guessing that if it's super warm in our building most people will work from home.  I'm going to try to stick it out, but I'm not above doing that, either.

This is going to make Al Gore cry, but we've been keeping our window unit on at our apartment during the day set to 80 degrees so it's not miserably hot when we get home in the evenings.  In fact, it feels pretty good right now.

Well, I'm off to do some Bikram weight lifting followed by some Bikram SAS programming.

How are you staying cool today?