Time to Chill

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted. Work has been crazy lately, and the buzz about an impending second round of layoffs has only raised the level of insanity. Thinking about the economic slowdown just makes me more anxious, and I haven't been able to face my 401(k) statement for the last 3 months. And don't even talk to me about what my company's stock price is doing. Because I just don't want to think about it.

So I am looking forward to this long weekend as a time to relax and cocoon with my guys at home, and think about anything but work. Namely, Food! I made cranberry sauce last night:

Nate requested cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so I made those this morning. The bread machine makes it so easy:

Tom got busy making pies this morning. He made apple and cherry. It sounds like a lot, 2 pies for 3 people, but they will be completely gone by Monday. Tom made an American Flag pie:

He also made an Obama pie:

Crust we can believe in!

Other things that will be happening this weekend...we'll be going to the San Francisco International Auto Show on Friday. That's become sort of a tradition for us the day after Thanksgiving. Nate will be sleeping over at a friend's Friday night, so Tom and I get to have a date night. Not sure where we'll go. Saturday and Sunday are still open, but we probably ought to go get our Christmas Tree one of those days. Our December weekends are filling up, so it's a "now-or-never" situation. Also, I'm hoping to update my Flickr photo stream and YouTube videos.

We like to eat our Thanksgiving dinner later in the day (mainly so I don't have to drag myself out of bed at 5 am to get the bird in the oven), so it's getting to be time for me to get the turkey ready. Pies are nearly out of the oven. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The view from my kitchen window

This is our neighbor's lizard. Isn't he gorrrrrgeous? It looks as if he is trying to claw through the window screen and escape, perhaps to leap across the alleyway and attach his lizard self to our house. Luckily for us (I suppose) he appears only when it's sunny out. The rest of the time he's probably in a terrarium, basking in the purple glow of his gro-lights.


If I am very lucky, I can actually see him turn his head to watch me as I work in my kitchen. Some days I witness the humans in his family talking to him and feeding him treats. Do they make Milk-Bones for lizards, I wonder?

I should get curtains or blinds for the kitchen window, no?

The Home Stretch


I cannot believe Nate is a 4th grader now. That simply cannot be possible. Didn't he just start walking? Or talking? Or reading? Or building DC circuits on the living room rug?

Room 120's end-of-year potluck celebration was this evening. The students presented a fun quiz program on animal survival. There was way too much food. Mr. Kunisaki handed out certificates and gift bags to all of his students, and said something about each student, highlighting their strengths and how they each had made the year special...things they had worked on, etc. For Nate, he said, " This student excelled in all of the subject areas, language and math...if there was one student who could be counted on to know the answer, it was Nathan Siegel." Tom and I are just so proud of Nate, and I hope he is proud of the work he has done this year. It is a far cry from last year, when we were just praying for second grade to be over without anyone needing medication. This time I am genuinely sorry to see the school year end, and I wish Mr. Kunisaki could be Nate's teacher next year.

Nate produced his first-ever report this year. Each student did a research project on a different wild animal and put together a poster of their work. Nate's report was on Black Bears. We were so impressed with all of the posters we saw this evening. I think this was a valuable project for all of the students.


One more week of third grade to go! Then YMCA day camp begins. I leave for MIT in 2 weeks, and then for Shanghai a week after that. And, oh yeah, I need to find a job sometime in the next 3 months. If life starts to move any faster, I'm gonna need some Dramamine.

Thanksgiving

The turkey is in the oven. The dishwasher is running. Pies and bread are baked and cooling on the counter. Having finally found our kitchen string, I am still wondering which box our cookie sheets are in. Preparation of the biggest meal of the year is going fairly smoothly, considering that we started cooking in our new kitchen a mere 2 months ago. We still need to paint and tile, though, so we haven't moved everything back into the kitchen yet. Many of our kitchen items are in boxes stacked in our office room. We've located the cake pans but not the cookie sheets. Finding the bread machine was easy, but we had to dig for the pie plates. And, how is it that both the salt and pepper shakers needed to be re-filled today, right in the middle of preparing the turkey? This will be the third Thanksgiving dinner we have prepared in the midst of kitchen turmoil. I hope our kitchen is finished next year, so that it doesn't become a new Thanksgiving tradition in our family.

Nate and Tom went to the park to hit a few golf balls while I got the bird ready for the oven. They said that you can smell turkey cooking up and down the street. Ours will be ready about 5:30 or so, and we'll eat at 6:00. I like the later time, so I don't have to get up so early to get the turkey cooking. We'll probably have a movie night after dinner, and eat our dessert downstairs while watching the movie.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. Nate seems to be having a great year at school with his new teacher. It looks like we will be able to get him into the GATE (gifted) program, since his teacher really acknowledges and appreciates his abilities. Our kitchen is shaping up nicely. Tom and I both have good jobs, and my work has been going really well lately. We had a wonderful trip to Yosemite, and are looking forward to another great ski season. Nate is making friends at school, and all three of us are pretty happy where we are.

In honor of the holiday, I am going to post an e-mail that Tom sent to a friend exactly 2 years ago, after our first Thanksgiving in our house in San Francisco. We had just moved into the house a week before Thanksgiving, and were patting ourselves on the back for having put together yet another delicious Thanksgiving dinner. As to what happened next, I'll let the e-mail do the talking. Let's just say "pride goeth before a fall..."

Thanksgiving went pretty well, at least until the geysering started.

I know what you're thinking, geysers are not a traditional part of the thanksgiving celebration. This is true even in San Francisco where all manner of non-traditional activities are woven into the fabric of society. Because, really, when you're staring at a geyser, it's a little difficult to think of things to be thankful for. It's true that the geysers in Yellowstone are awe-inspiring. Although, I have to admit that Old Faithful was somewhat less awe-inspiring than I had built it up in my mind. But I am quite certain that while gazing at Old Faithful I was not overcome with a wave of thankfulness.

So, as I watched the geyser I found it difficult to think of things to be thankful for. Particularly when the geyser is your house that you moved into less than a week previous. I suppose I might be thankful that the geyser is in the kitchen and not in the bathroom. And I suppose I might be thankful that the geysering started after dinner and not before. But really, a geyser is not the type of sight that inspires thoughts of thankfulness.

I guess that I would be thankful that I was able to clean all of the dishes before the geysering started. The roasting pan for the turkey. The pot for mashed potatoes. The vegetable steamer and sauté pan for the glazed carrots. The food processor for the cranberry dressing. The pan for the gravy. Not to mention the serving dishes for each and our various plates and utensils. Unfortunately, the geysering started just as the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes and every horizontal surface in the kitchen was stacked with the flotsam leftover from our tradition of over-doing thanksgiving.

As I stood in front of the kitchen sink watching a geyser rise up from the bowels of our new home, I was not feeling thankful. However, in retrospect I find many things to be thankful for. I am thankful that the geyser was not so tall as to hit the ceiling. I'm thankful that the geyser was not so wide as to spray out of the sink. I'm thankful that the geyser was of sufficiently short duration that the sink was able to hold all of its contents. I'm also thankful for paper plates, plastic utensils and Chinese take-out.

As to whether we'll keep the thanksgiving geyser as part of our tradition, I'll have to wait until next year to say for sure. But I'll be thankful if it's not.

I hope everyone has a wonderful, geyser-free Thanksgiving!!

Back to School...

Today was Nate's first day of third grade. His teacher is the soft-spoken father of one of Nate's soccer teammates. Nate said that he is really nice. There were no arguments over homework tonight...it's amazing how easily they comply with assignments when they like their teacher! Of course, tonight's homework was simply to read something for 30 minutes and then write a couple lines about what he read. They are starting out slow. Since we don't allow TV on school nights, Nate would either be reading or playing after school anyway, so it wasn't such a big deal. I'm sure there will be more homework assigned as the year continues.

Nate has said several times that he feels sorry for the second-grade kids that have the teacher that he had last year. That just breaks my heart. He has a really strong self-image, so hopefully the damage that was done by that teacher last year will work itself out. I do worry about the other children that were in the class, though, and whether they will have problems down the road.

Nate is most of the way through the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince...it's what he read for his 30-minute reading assignment tonight. Tom said he read 33 pages in 30 minutes! The part he is reading now is extremely suspensful, a real page-turner. We are all eagerly awating the next HP movie, HP and the Goblet of Fire, which is due to release in November.

Funny anecdote: last week I was unpacking Nate's lunchbox after a day of summer camp, and saw that he had eaten his carrots--he gets a ziploc baggie of 4-5 baby carrots each day, all of which usually end up coming home virtually untouched by human hands. That day, however, the baggie made it back empty of carrots. I commented, "Wow, Nate, you ate your carrots. Good job." He didn't say anything. Later that evening, he came to me and told me that there was a kid on the camp bus in the afternoon who was hungry but had run out of food. He gave the kid his bagel chips (which he loves--they are greasy and garlicky--what's not to love??). "Besides," he said, "I can eat my carrots if I'm hungry." Wow. He empathized with another kid enough to give up one of his favorite snacks, and not only that-- but to do so when he himself was hungry and had nothing else to eat but vegetables! I hugged him and told him that he has a good heart. I'm not sure I would have given up my favorite snack when I was 8.

Ta for now. I hope the rest of the week is as smooth as today was. Hopefully I'm done filling out school forms too...

Anticipation

The kitchen has come a long way in the last week. Cabinets are in, pullout racks are installed, and the countertop template has been made for the granite. The soffits have been built as well. Ed will be back next week to work on the walls some more. At some point the trim work will be done so that we can paint, although we don't know what color to use. My feeling is that we should wait until the granite is in, decide on a tile design for the backsplash, and then choose paint colors. The floor will take about a week from what our contractor described to us, taking into account the time it takes for the finish applications to fully dry.

Here are the most recent pictures:




Note the pullout racks on the two tall utility cabinets. The refrigerator will go in the space between them. The range will go on the back wall. The sink will be under the window, and the dishwasher will be to the left of the sink.

The feel of the room has really changed. It is open and inviting now, and there is so much more storage space. We were discussing how wonderful it will be to make Thanksgiving dinner in our new kitchen this fall. I can hardly wait to get in there and start cooking.

Nate had a great time at Tim's house. We picked him up Friday evening. They swam, rode bikes, played in the yard, and played miniature golf. Other than his sinuses bothering him, he seems no worse for the wear. It is much hotter in Sacramento than it is here, and we were wondering how he would do in the heat. I think it bothered him at first, but he did ok in the end. Being in the pool helped a lot I think. He's glad to be home, back in his own bed. He helped Tom wash the truck today, and was amazed at the amount of work that had been done on the kitchen in the 2 days that he was gone.

Tom and I had dinner at Suppenkueche on Thursday night. Suppenkueche is a restaurant in San Francisco that serves Southern German/Bavarian food. They also have an outstanding selection of German beers. The atmosphere is noisy and cosy. People are seated family-style around large wooden tables, and so you end up eating and drinking with people you don't know, which can be lots of fun. The Sillmans are originally from the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) region of Germany, and the food served at Suppenkueche is pretty similar to many dishes I enjoyed growing up in Ohio. While waiting at the bar for a table to become available, we enjoyed large glasses of dark-brown beer. I had the Erdinger dark hefeweizen, and Tom had an Altbier, which was a little lighter in color than my beer. Once we were seated, we had potato pancakes for an appetizer. These were soft in the middle, with crispy grated potato on the outside, and were served with applesauce. Tom had the bratwurst, which came with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut (of course). I had pork cooked in beer sauce, which came with kraut and a bread dumpling (sort of like poultry stuffing). Everything was delicious--the pork was tender and succulent. I have never eaten pork that tased like that. The dumpling was soft and flavorful, and was very useful for soaking up the beer sauce. The sauerkraut was amazing as well. It was as good as the kraut my mom makes on New Years Day! That is a high complement...whenever we find a restaurant that serves German food, I have the kraut, in hopes that it will be as good as my mom's. I am usually disappointed. In most restaurants, even when the other food is good, the kraut tends to be lackluster. Maybe people don't care enough about kraut because it's "just" a side dish. Or, maybe most people don't like kraut anyway, so the chef doesn't bother trying to make it properly. But the kraut at Suppenkueche is excellent, the atmosphere and the rest of the food is authentic. We will definitely be back. We couldn't eat all of our entrees, so we got a takeaway box. We finished off what was left at dinner today. I got to eat Tom's kraut, since he doesn't like it. :-) Good stuff.

Only in San Francisco







This is vegetation control, San Francisco-style. A large wooded area near our home was overgrown with ivy and raspberry bushes, so the city decided to bring in a herd of goats to chew back the thick undergrowth. Read about it here. I walk by them on my way to the bus in the morning. They are so funny, especially the little baby goats. They sprint and jump and follow their mommies around. It seems like the goats have accomplished their mission, having eaten pretty much everything within 4 feet of the ground, so I don't know how much longer they will be around.

Nate is having a 2-day sleepover with his skiing buddy Timmy near Sacramento, where we used to live. He and Timmy are going to spend a couple days bicycling, swimming, playing mini golf, and generally driving Timmy's mom nuts. Meanwhile, Tom and I get to have an evening out! We might go to Ristorante Franchino in North Beach, or to a German restaurant called Suppenkueche. It was strange to not have to get Nate ready for childcare this morning. I got a phone call from him before I left the house, and it sounded like he was having fun. We'll probably check up on him around dinnertime.

Pat, one of the carpenters had arrived at the house this morning before I left. He said that the granite people would be out to make the template of the top of the base cabinets, so that they can get to work making our granite countertop. Other things that are supposed to happen today are attaching the remaining doors, assembling the pull-out racks in the utility cabinets, and building the soffits over the tops of the wall cabinets. I will post a picture of the kitchen later today or tomorrow morning. It looks awesome!