Weekly Recap

The Thursday before last I made a trip back to Seattle for the the annual Green Ronin summit. The summit itself was Friday and Saturday, so I was able to spend Thursday night and all day Friday with Julia. I was just home two weeks earlier and somehow it felt like I hadn't even been gone. I can't wait to get back home full-time again.

Friday we spent some time running errands, including the tiniest bit of cleaning at the condo (which is up for rent again, in case any of you are looking for a place in Renton). Then we went shopping to prepare dinner for Shana, Hays, and Lilly (Jen and Hays' baby. Jen was out of town for a wedding.) We've picked up a number of cook books over the past year or two, so we decideed to pick out some recipes to try. We spent all afternoon cooking and here's what we made:

A savory cheesecake with roasted red bell peppers and apricot jam on top. Served with homemade pita chips.

Apple and thyme martinis including homemade thyme simple syrup. (I'm pretty sure it was thyme. I forget my plant names pretty easily.)

A cooked beet dish prepared with lots of garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and ground pepper.

Oven-cooked hamburgers with toasted buns.

Dessert was ice cream.

And let me just say that the food was all awesome! The burgers were a little overdone, which surprised us, but we'd never cooked hamburgers in the oven before, so it was hard to judge. Everyone was pretty impressed. We had such a good time and cooking with Julia was probably the best part.

Saturday morning Julia dropped me off at Green Ronin headquarters so she could take the car for the day. She had a hair appointment that morning. Yes, it's cute and she's lovely. Anyway, I spent the day talking with the Green Ronin folks, planning out the next year of releases, shuffling things around, and generally making some excellent plans. At about six o'clock they all headed out for dinner and Julia came to get me so we could spend the evening together.

Sunday was basically a repeat of the previous day: dropped off, meetings, had a late lunch with the crew, took a group picture, recorded a podcast which will hopefully be appearing soon, and then getting picked up by Julia.

That night we had dinner, I packed for my trip, and we went to bed pretty early because I had to be to the airport by around 5:30 Monday morning.

This week has been very busy between the deadline I was working on at work and the different assignments that came out of the summit. The most pressing things are done now, but work is still pretty busy -- again, mostly because I don't have enough training yet, but things are better day by day.

Jim's car's been acting up pretty badly for about the last week. We've spent a couple of hours waiting for tow trucks and going to the auto shop. That's where the car is now after being fixed and returned to him once already. I know it's been a really big pain for him. I think he'd give up on the car, but he needs it to get to and from work in a reasonable amount of time. Anyway, hopefully that'll be taken care of soon.

Last week, before the trip home, I finally ordered my new home computer. I found a good deal online, talked it over with some of the more computer-savvy people I know and finally took the plunge. It's supposed to arrive in just over a week and I'm very excited. Hopefully I'll get to post a bit more once that's set up. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, my housemate is leaving as of the end of this month and Jim is thinking of renting that room. I don't know exactly where that stands, but I think it'd be great. The current guy is . . . uptight and actively unfriendly, so any change is good.

I'm off to do some work.