Happenings

1. Black cat brought a dead rat inside tonight while I was watching a movie with boyfriend (on a related side-note, boyfriend LOVED Swiss Family Robinson. He sat all leaned forward with his elbows on his knees for most of it).  She took it under the kitchen table and attempted to play with it. The rat didn’t seem too into it. Boyfriend almost peed his pants.

2. I had a whole conversation with an Indonesian today about arm hair. They are truly fascinated. The conversation ended when he asked if he could have some of mine.

3. I mailed a Christmas box to my family today. That is truly amazing. Christmas shopping in 100 degree heat in October. Who ever heard of such a thing?

4. Boyfriend and I cooked dinner tonight – an impressive Indo version of taco soup. It only took 3 of us. I sent my helper to the market earlier with a list of fresh ingredients while I hit up 2 different import stores to find tomato sauce and a can of black beans. Then we met back up at the house to wash and prep all the fresh stuff. Cooking is tough when you don’t have canned/frozen items readily or cheaply available. Do you know how long kidney beans have to boil for before they’re soft enough to eat?? A WHOLE DAY! Ah, well, such is life. And at least I’m eating semi-organically. I left all the chopping and dicing for boyfriend to do when he got came over after work because he dices like a guy selling knives on an infomercial. It is truly amazing. Also, I can’t chop onions without sobbing my eyes out, so I definitely left those for him. But the bottom line is that the soup was delicious; however, I overshot the amount of ingredients (it’s really hard to know how many ears are in “1-10 oz bag of frozen corn”) and we have LOTS of leftovers. So tomorrow we’re making tortillas and chips to go with it.

5. I consider my week off over today since it is the last official day “off”. Tomorrow is Saturday, then comes Sunday, which I would normally have off anyways, so it’s not special anymore. I’ve made several things this week which include the following:

6. Besides Christmas shopping, I also did some shopping for myself this week. That includes supplies for most of the crafts above. I actually found a very limited and highly controlled selection of paint cards that I used for the calendar. I swiped as many as I thought I could while a store employee stood over me watching. I also found a store that sells wool yarn, one size of knitting needles, and BOLTS of cross-stitch fabric. Fun, fun! I think my most useful purchase of the week though was this:

Which is a definite upgrade from this:

I don’t even know what happened to that one on the right. It just turned brown one day. None of them cut worth a darn. That’s what I get for buying 40 cent knives at the open air market. So I splurged a little bit and got a knife set with a block. I’m a big fan already. So was boyfriend earlier with the chopping and dicing. I fear for his fingers.

7. Lastly, here is proof that you can get a sunburn in the shade in Indonesia. No joke. These pictures are from last weekend. Two days in a row of sitting under a tent watching a soccer tournament. It was ridiculously hot, and the only time I wasn’t sitting in the shade was when I was walking 20 seconds to the food tent or 30 seconds to the bathroom. I even wore sunscreen the second day and got burned AGAIN!

Obviously, I am awesome at self-portraits.

 

OK, that’s all for now. Bye!