Recently Consumed: Quarantine Edition

Yes, it now takes me three weeks to rack up enough content to write a post.  Sadly, I have not grown better at capturing the moments that have been lifting us up and keeping us occupied.  We have watched a ton of movies, I’ve actually gotten back to reading, we celebrated my sister’s birthday (six feet apart and with masks in a big outdoor area) and this weekend, the weather was so so nice and we spent lots of time outside.  Yet, my camera roll is just pictures of Andi and Cream of Wheat.  What is wrong with me??

Anyway, since my life is now just a list of things I’ve consumed, I thought I’d just break it down into some categories: things watched, things read, things eaten.  Here we go!

Things Watched:

  • I think we’ve talked about watching The Sopranos for ten years, but we finally pulled the trigger (no pun intended :P) and are already a few episodes into Season 2!
  • Can you believe we’d never seen any of the Lord of the Rings films?  In my mind, it seemed like some big time commitment and I’d made it my whole life without them, so it didn’t feel pressing but we plowed through them a couple weekends ago and I LOVED them!  The plot was interesting, the graphics really held up (Helm’s Deep is how you do a nighttime battle scene, Game of Thrones) and Orlando Bloom really made being a fairy seem cool.  Halfway through Return of the King, I told Joey “if one of these hobbitses die, I will lose it!”  Why did I wait so long??
  • My sister told me I needed to watch Broad City and she was right!  Every time Joey would catch part of an episode, he’d laugh the entire time.  It really is funny.
  • Joey flew through Misery so after he finished, I promised I’d watch the movie with him.  He wouldn’t even tell me if there were more torture scenes than that one torture scene, but I survived and actually thought it was pretty good.
  • We’ve watched like a thousand other things, but I’ll end here 🙂

Things Read:

  • In all honesty, though I’ve technically read parts of three books during this quarantine, two of them I’d started way earlier and I’m only halfway through the third one.  Don’t be like me and get into a habit of looking at your phone instead of reading at night!
  • The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip.  Unless you count Harry Potter, I don’t think I’ve read a true fantasy story maybe ever?  I got this one at our book swap in December and vowed to actually give it a go.  I didn’t love it, to be honest, but I’m glad I gave it a chance.
  • Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  If you know me, you know I love Taylor Jenkins Reid.  This one wasn’t as good as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but I still really liked it.  She has such an knack for creating characters that feel so real I often find myself wanting to Google them before I remember they’re fictional.  
  • Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver.  I’m only halfway through and something like ten years removed from the last time I read a Barbara Kingsolver book, but I really like this one!

Things Eaten:

  • Asparagus Quiche with a Polenta Crust.  When your mom already makes the best classic quiche, it’s best not to even try making something similar, so polenta quiche it is!  We’ve been making this for years and it’s truly creamy and delicious.
  • Kale Caesar Salad.  We’ve definitely forgone our weekly salad-in-a-jar habit, but we’ve been trying to throw in a dinner salad here and there.  This one is old and I actually made the recipe up myself, but it’s delicious and the only update I’ve made is this technique for homemade croutons (they are crazy good!).
  • Sesame Soba Noodles.  Joey made these for us and then I think I ate the leftovers four days in a row.
  • We’ve also ordered a lot of take out.  Ramen from Uncle will never get old!

A pup who likes to sleep with his tongue out // A blossom update // A snowstorm that ruined all those blossoms // Aforementioned polenta quiche

In other news, we close on our house this Thursday (and it’s in person, ugh!!!), so that’s something to look forward too 🙂

Weekend Things

This Weekend I…

Braved The Rooftop at the Rockies game.  It is a mess of young drunken people who don’t even know they’re at a baseball game and a DJ playing club music.  In other words, it’s godawful up there, but that’s also where they keep all the good beer.  We got in and got out as quickly as possible.

Drove home in the worst rain I’ve ever seen in my life.  We’re talking SHEETS of rain that made it hard to see the front end of your car, let alone anything on the road in front of you.  The walk from the car to our house had us both soaking wet.  And then we were greeted by our flooding basement, yay…

Dug up weeds, nailed landscape fabric into dirt and pushed rock around our yard on my hands and knees.  Yeah, that six ton rock delivery took up the majority of our weekend, but man did it transform our front yard!  Then Mother Nature was nice enough to send a few rainstorms to wash those rocks off for us.

Treated myself to a strawberry caprese salad for Saturday lunch.  Can we please exchange tomatoes for strawberries in all caprese salads from now on?  Strawberries > tomatoes, amiright?

Finished Top of the Lake and started Game of Thrones.  I thought Top of the Lake was really meh.  As much as I love Elisabeth Moss, I just really didn’t love the plot of this miniseries.  And I mostly just kept thinking “none of this makes any sense!!!”  GoT (is that how we abbreviate it?) seems interesting so far!  But what have we gotten ourselves into?

Brewed ice coffee!  I had my first glass today and I think I may have either messed up the ratios when I brewed it or messed up the ratios when I poured it this morning.  I’ll have to do some experimenting with that, I guess.

Walked to Sunday breakfast.  We met Bobby and Becca at our favorite neighborhood joint and fueled up for another day of “landscape duty” with sunshine, laughter, sweet iced chai and a cheesy bacon scramble.  Um, yes please!

What did you do, watch, eat, drink this weekend?

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P.S. DJ “Lhieu” is my new favorite nickname for DJ LEMAHIEU.