Sunday, February 27, 2011

weekend review...


 Here's our weekend in reverse....Fur Rondy, dinner in Girdwood with the scenic Kenai Peninsula, walking along frozen creek beds with the puppy (make it big, it's worth it!), and the moose at Walmart. Thank God the Bar is over.

 

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Day One: Didn't Die.

Don't stop talking to God on my behalf quite yet, but I don't think i've ruined my chances of passing given today's performance. Here we are studying Constitutional Law.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

i hear darth vader's march music

in my head. it is the sound of my 48 hour countdown to the Bar Exam. ok, that's a little morbid, or at least it is in my head.

So, here's what we've been up to this week. We got our bi-weekly box of yummy things from Full Circle Farms. If you sign up in Anchorage, Seattle or any of the nearby areas...which you should...we are happy to be the referral for you (hint hint). In this week's box was some yummy rainbow chard. So i made a cream of rainbow chard for dinner one night--super tasty. no pics of it, but some pretty pics of the stems. It was a simple heavy cream reduction with fresh ground pepper and salt. Blanched the chard for two minutes. DELICIOUS.  It was followed by a southwestern chicken salad the next night over a combo of argula and romaine. I made a rub for the chicken from chili powder, garlic salt, paprika, corriander, salt and pepper. I know, right about now anyone who knows me is thinking--where did mar go. mar doesn't cook. well my dears the only thing i hate more than cooking is studying for the bar. so now i cook. I'm collecting baking stuff too. the wishlist is a Kitchenaid mixer, silicone mat, and those little bowls for soufles n stuff. Tana, Dhab and Dev got me this AMAZING dessert cookbook as a bridal shower present and i am so excited to have time for making this stuff starting next week.

Anyways back to the box, we got some yummy cilantro...some of which i'm keeping fresh for a few weeks and some of which i'm storing for the months ahead...in ice cubes. seriously.
 

In other food related news, Adam made tacos yesterday. After a few minutes of preparation, a faint, "i think there might be too much cheese" floated out of the kitchen. You can decide for yourselves:
better angle from which to judge....



















And what post would be complete without news of wonder-dog. Well. right this instant she's pissed because her newfound bed just went out the door to the laundry room. But she's been watching the snowfall and pretending not to eat sheets this week:

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

this time next week

my fate will be mostly decided. in honor of that truly depressing statement, here's my cute puppy...although at 3 adn a half months, she's starting to look less puppy like and weighs in at 26 lbs.
She's clutching her squeeky skunk. when she plays with it or the monkey, she growls and talks to them. I assume she's telling them who's boss. I know you are looking at the next one, going what is that....it's neah, sitting on my head.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

"moose don't scare us, we scare moose!"

"that's a good one right?" he asks in response to my question about the title of this post. Adam is refusing to write it himself....so that means the story will undoubtedly end up much more exciting and enthralling than it really was.

he came back in the house (read: hovel) from a long walk with neah in the snow and low double digit weather and said, "um...so...". my heart kind of froze for a second, but i could see neah and hear adam, so i figured, whatever it was, they were still alive. first a momentary preamble, adam likes to let neah run around off lease up the street in this weird deserted turn around with a creepy cabin in the woods. it makes me nervous because its wooded and when she gets stuck on the opposite side of something that frightens her from us, she tends to run the wrong way. Anyways, he started again...so we found the moose.

Next to the creepy little deserted cabin in the woods, there's a turnoff that appears to be where the driveway plow push all the snow. if you walk down it, you are raised up on a small hill and can see all of southeast anchorage through the treetops. Clearly, the best view of southeast anchorage is from the top of the snowplow snow pile. So, loose Neah and Adam were headed to check out the view. the snow is super light and dry right now, so it makes a musical crunching noise--sounds pretty and really great for not getting snuck up on by anything. Anyways, Neah was leading the way and was about to start up the mound when, rising like a "moose out of the snow, a moose rose out of the snow just on the other side of the snow pile." This is maybe 5 feet from Adam and 3 feet from Neah. As Adam points out, where else can you accidently sneak up on a moose?!

Adam's not a good story teller, so here's my exaggeration of what happened next. The moose, having been rudely awakened and not quite yet all with the program, stared at Adam and Neah. Lucikly for Adam, Neah chases you if you so much as jog somewhere (herder instincts). So, when Adam turned and bolted, Neah chased along after him. Also, lucky for Adam because i might have sacrificed him to the moose if she hadn't. He ran, with Neah nipping at his heels like it was a great game, checking over his shoulder to make sure the semi-conscious moose wasn't giving chase too. Nope, moosey just wanted to go back to its nice peaceful nap....and here they were, back in the hovel, only slightly surprised and apparently no worse for the wear.

And thus ends our Sunday adventures. Hope all of you have an adventure filled day too ;)

Saturday, February 12, 2011

brrrr.

The forecast for today said "COLD" just like that, in caps and italics, like it was shivering. I see why. its down almost 20 degrees from yesterday, down to a nose hair freezing -3F (-19C). It would probably have been helpful if i had bothered to look at the handydandy remote thermostat from outside before taking the dog out to terrorize the neighbors with her new found need to bark at all living creatures.

It didn't happen though, the looking to see if i would freeze not wearing 8 layers, because i can only think of one thing: my impending doom. make that two things, my impending doom and my really overwhelming desire to be working, seriously, i want to work, i'm good at it, and yeah. i can't stand sitting in the house. it makes me a crazy person. back to doom, in a week and a half i sit for one of the worst exams in the country. at present, i spend 10 hours a day in a folding chair trying to drill all rules of law into my head, eating endless boxes of triscuits and not much else, and contemplating what dogs dream of when they bark in their sleep. also, i'm allergic to something mysterioius in this apartment (because i never leave. my world is 400 feet big). i have no idea what it is, but it causes various parts of my face (usually eyebrows or eyes) to swell and get red. it's possible i am allergic to my hands, but that would be problematic.

my daily solace comes from having stolen/borrowed/absconded ten of my parents coffee cups out of a collection of 30 or so. today a 20 year old mug with a hen and chicklet are telling me to "Have a sun shiny day!" ok cup, work your magic!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

delayed post re: Planetarium

each year, adam's firm has an annual shareholder meeting. the meeting moves around their various offices from year to year and this year it was here in anchorage. i'm sure everyone was just thanking their lucky stars they got to come here in the dead of winter. anyways, the firm organizes various events to keep people entertained. since adam was the anchorage newby--he had to organize the associate event (drinks dinner and games night at the Captain Cook). The partners organized the next night's event and spouses were included. It was pretty awesome. We went to the University of Alaska Anchorage planetarium.

http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/planetarium/about.cfm
I stole their picture. click the link. anyway, its a pretty state of the art thing. I hadn't been to a planetarium since i was a kid and we went to UNC-CH's. it had one of those light globey things in the middle that shot stars up and moved them around. UAA's was an entirely different experience. we started off flying around alaska and then out into space. it goes essentially 3-D. we checked out a skull flew around inside it and then checked out a mouse and flew around inside it too. The program was on blackholes--although we spent a lot of time at the end talking about pluto and eris the 'not' planets and their 72 friends out there on the edge.
Also, i had no idea that there was a break in Saturn's rings. sure didn't show that on star trek's fly through our solar system sequence. all in all, it reminded me that while i like to think of myself as a big important person in the scope of life, i'm really this infinitisimally (making up words) tiny little thing in the grandiosity of space and time. now if only there was a way to reconcile the two.

Friday, February 4, 2011

unless you wanna talk tort rules....

this is all i've got:

she likes to sleep on the dirty laundry. usually prefers adam's pile, but this one happens to be mine.
Here's us...see she's still little. please note the following important background objects: bookcase my dad made with israeli cloth and way too many books, humidifier, cross country ski poles.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

shake-shake

not that i'm complaining, but our apartment is a 1970s relic. So, weird things happen--strange noises, thin walls, you get the drift. i've been not so eagerly lying in bed each night for the last month talking to God about how, if i'm going to be up here and s/he's going to give the east coast of the US all the snow, (S)He could at least give me some shimmy shimmy shake shake. get your mind out of the gutter--even though i'm married and that's legit.

i've been asking nightly for an earthquake. a feel-able one. not one of those dinky ones when i'm not paying attention or i'm asleep. well, i finally got my wish.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/AK10/55.65.-160.-140.php
i done got me a 4.6 out on the Kenai! it felt like--well, if my floor was a sauce pan, like someone shook it like they were shaking something they were sauteing. yeah, no idea how to spell that. we just got a new neighbor--so i thought maybe she was doing something really strange, but no! vindication was mine when the red box popped up on the map.

moose-check.
snow-check.
dog-check.
cross-country skis-check (never been used, but are acquired)
earthquake-check.

suggestions for things to add to the list?