Luzern, Schweiz

I am in Switzerland again for work, on some sort of top secret Special Ops Engineering mission with another Sr. FAE. On his advice, I flew in the Friday before our three day stretch in-office, and have the weekend to myself. Friday was consumed by the rigors of arriving, napping, adjusting and finding something to eat for dinner. I'm staying at the Walhalla, which is close to the Zürich Hauptbahnhof, instead of at the Seefeld which is further down the lake. We traveled to the Seefeld to see another co-worker, who departed early Saturday morning for home.

On Saturday, I took the Zug (train) down to Luzern to go exploring. It's the first adventure I have had here, outside of walking the Altstadt in Zürich. It was supposed to be rainy and cold, but the weather held out for the day. I met a nice couple from Omaha on the train, and we decided to adventure together through Luzern. They wanted to go to the top of Pilatus, and it sounded like fun to me, so I was the translator and our trio headed by bus, cable car, and sky gondola up the mountain to the -6 deg C weather at the very top.

After the mountain, we made our way back to the city center, explore the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) and walked to the Löwendenkmal. I took the 16.50 train back to Zürich, sharing a quick conversation with M via SMS before his morning class began, and set about getting the photos online when I got back to my room.

I've spoken more German in the last two days than I think I have in the previous five years. Most of it is asking for directions, or ordering food, or buying tickets. Now and then there's a bit of polite chit-chat, or an unexpected aside from someone who does not know I primarily speak English. I'm getting by, which surprises me (pleasantly) since it's been 12+ years since I had any sort of fluency.

Today is rainy and cold, and three days of interrupted and shallow sleep have caught up with me. I had designs on visiting Basel or Rapperswil, but I think I'm going to take it easy and hang around here. Catch up on some sleep. Maybe wander around the old city if the rain lets up. The purpose of my trip is to be useful Monday-Wednesday at work, so I should make sure I'm up for that. Maybe I'll just find somewhere to sit, sip Milchkaffee and watch the weather and the Limmat flow past.

Luzern photos, on Flickr.

February

Spring

I had great plans to write all about Thanksgiving, and our recipes, and our family fun, but then time passed too quickly and all my plans got away from me. Thanksgiving was wonderful. There was a requisite turkey-related mishap, but it was very small and didn't impinge on the holiday. We had an abundance of cheesecake and just enough leftovers. We liked the turkey thing enough that we made another for Christmas, and then learned that a turkey for just the two of us is way, way too much bird.

We're still using up the frozen turkey stock, eight cups to go.

Christmas was lovely. Instead of a mountain of presents from my grandparents, we got exactly what I'd hoped for: hand stitched ornaments for our tree. Little things to treasure, and pass down, and celebrate. It's worth more to me than a bunch of stuff.

We have an abundance of stuff.

My mom spent a lot of this winter telling me about the mountain of stuff at her mother in law's, which my mother and her husband are sorting through and fighting with E's sister about. It sounds terrible. Stacks of old, unopened toothpaste. A lifetime supply of Tums. I don't remember the specifics, and the truth is that they don't even matter -- there's just too much stuff. Too. Much. Stuff.

In some sort of reflexive reaction to these stories, M and I made a stab at organizing the garage room this weekend. It is going to take many, many weekends for us to really get a handle on that space, but we're started now and that's very important. The bad part is that we're trying to get the space organized so we can put more stuff in that room and less in the rest of the house (which ultimately leads to more stuff everywhere, I'm pretty sure).

This is the closest to Spring Cleaning I get, people.

Outside of the Stuff Wars, we're doing okay. We sort of mid-review on a lot of different levels. We're two-thirds done with our taxes, reviewing our investments and savings plan, waiting to see what my raise is going to be and how last year's bonus will pay out -- February seems to be when I clean house financially, if not literally. M's rounded the half-way mark on school, and that's sitting better with everyone. We've earmarked a few house projects for this year, and bought our plane tickets for this summer's vacation.

I've also had a few unsubtle reminders to keep in perspective how much seemingly little things can affect other people for the positive. Sometimes we downplay the effect we have on other people's lives, or miss acknowledging it entirely. It seems to be an object lesson at the moment, one the Universe has on repeat.

On outside matters, our tiny garden has started looking like Spring. There are lettuces peeking up and the Apricot's in bloom. M bought a lawnmower with some of the Christmas money, and keeps hacking at the palm trees in his spare time.

I wax in and out of love with my job. Right now I am very much in a holding pattern, waiting to transition into the next stage of my life once M graduates and our opportunities free up again. I don't know if this job will be part of that next great adventure, but it's still integral to our Now. Part of this great journey is finding reasons to love it until we don't need it any more, and that's easier some days than others.

Voila!

These are some of the embellished IKEA pillars. They look a lot better than $3.50 finds and were kind of fun to make. I just finished the biggest one tonight. In order of decreasing size, they're decked out with a vintage pear garland image, Debussy sheet music, an antique dictionary page scan, and the first paragraph of a German fairy tale (from a book I bought in a Castle's bookshop).

The picture's kind of askew because I snapped it quickly on my cellphone.

More preparations

The families are coming. Now that the guest list is sort of settled, and I'm not too terribly worried about the meal planning bit, I'm trying to get the house in order for a holiday gathering. Stop Laughing. It's possible.

And by ready.... I mean that it should look a little more finished after three and a half years of occupancy. So I'm sprucing up some simple stuff: Restore the front door, hang sheers on the front window, evict the cardboard box garden growing in front of the window, unearth M's rocking chair (possibly recover M's rocking chair), find a storage solution that works for our DVD mountain, hang a picture above the piano, dust the piano, corral the music, find Inez's metronome...

That's just the living room. It's not so much decorating as it is Acting Like A Grown Up And Putting My Shit Away.

In the kitchen/dining room, we have a lot more of ALAGUAPMSA to do, and I need to find/hang some wall art, clean up the sawdust from having the door/windows installed, move out the curio to make room for a sideboard, repurpose the white table/sewing table/guest room table into said side board, and clean clean clean.

The bathroom is pretty lovely, so that just needs to be clean-clean-clean-ed. And the hallway can be decluttered and as long as we shut all the doors no one will notice too much that there's chaos brewing within.

The back patio needs to be cleaned up, too, but that may be beyond the scope of the holiday. The front entry needs to be cleared off, swept, the metal entry door needs to be cleaned and repainted. The trim below it is ugly ugly ugly, but filling/sanding/painting that out is more handy-man work than K-work. The gross wicker chair thing needs to go to the dump, either in pieces in the trash or on one good haul with a borrowed truck. (If the latter, then we should also dispose of the pruned tree limbs and other clutter in the back yard).

I'm getting tired just thinking about it. Phew. But I love all the areas we've cleared up lately. And I'm hoping we'll be able to keep on clearing up spaces, and eventually get to the painting of walls and fixing of electrical outlets and other little repairs we need to do.

Preparations

My mom has hosted Thanksgiving every year in memory. Sometimes family comes. Sometimes family is pointedly excluded. Sometimes it's themed. Most years it's duck. This year, she's mired in transitioning E's mom through a rather substantial lifestyle change and doesn't feel up to hosting. Which means, for the first time in my adult life, I could actually host Thanksgiving.

So I volunteered.

And M didn't leave me.

Mom & E, Russ & Elaine, me & M, and possibly a couple last minute additions to the roster will be falling in around our gorgeous (yet impossible for us to find linens for) dining table. And then it struck me: I don't have eight of anything, as far as linens go.

Since I have recently discovered top stitching, and how it makes things survive the washing machine better, I decided to make my own. They're a bit eclectic -- just like everything else in our house -- but they're colorful and should cheer up the table under all that stylish china and crystal. Good thing we picked a neutral tone pattern. :)

October

It's no big secret that we had a difficult Summer, and that that Summer is bleeding into a tense-yet-resolving Autumn. M's school situation took longer than we'd hoped to sort itself out and instead of joining the flock of undergrads at UCSD this year, he's working through his CS program at National.

A lot has changed at UCSD since I graduated, and not all of it for the better. After watching the admissions process from the outside, I think I'm happier that M's at a school that addressed his goals directly, offered him a clear path to graduation, structures their coursework for people with real lives and other commitments and genuinely seems to want to see him succeed. I can't say that about UCSD. That disappoints me sorely. When the alumni letter arrived, asking for donations, I almost wrote Chancellor Fox a pointed letter instead.

Ultimately, I refrained.

We go through phases, at home, of trying desperately to become more organized. And failing miserably at it after making one or two valiant stabs at progress. I cleaned out a corner of the office today. I found the other half of my desk -- it's disorientingly empty right now, and yet "messy" by any one else's standards. I had enough space last night to procrastinate by playing with watercolors while M was in class.

It's occurring to me, maybe for the first time, that the things I take for granted in their solidity and ability to endure actually require maintenance. A solid wood door, for instance. Growing up with just enough abundance to lose touch with the idea of things that last for generations, I think many people my age have to hard-reboot some part of their brains when it comes to home ownership. I now have things that I have personally bought and owned for fifteen or more years. Some of them are in great shape. Others have started to wear.

We chipped one of the green bowls in the dishwasher the other day.

The front door looks remarkably better after an hour of work and some elbow grease. (Though I doubt anyone but me will notice. And M, because I pointedly instructed him to notice.) ... (And also my mom, because she reads this, and she'll feel compelled to comment in hopes that I will actually do more pride-of-ownership home repairs if given sufficient positive reinforcement.)

I feel like some of the cobwebs in my head are starting to loosen up, unbind, let go. Restarting a sewing project -- bright colors, bold patterns -- and clearing out some of the unnecessary, unfortunate background noise is helping. I'm learning to balance the fact that I married M, and I love him, with my refusal to adopt his almost ascetic way of interfacing with the world. In my life there's bright colors, rich textures, adventurous foods, deep and thought-provoking conversation, good music, craft beers or nice wines, and a lot less digital-anything. Rather than waiting for him to want any of these things, maybe it's okay for me to just go enjoy them and hope he comes along now and again.

I've been angry, sad, frustrated, indifferent, passive aggressive, plain old aggressive -- you name it -- for the last several months. Maybe it's because I don't really believe there's any challenge out there that determination, ingenuity and hard work won't fix. Which doesn't really jive with the economic-jobs-wall st.-politico scenario of the times. I have a solid job, we make our ends meet, we've refinanced into an even more affordable house payment, we have more stuff and food and opportunity than we really need but I'm just not one of those people for whom sufficiency is enough. For the last couple years we haven't really had a mission statement. It is depressing to be an Architect without anything to build.

So I've decided I'm just going to build stuff. Sometimes it'll be great. Other times we'll throw it away and ... never speak of it again. But if I don't have projects, milestones, things to conquer or achieve, then I'm unhappy. Even if I have to change paths multiple times, or delve into things I don't know yet -- especially if I have to recalculate, rethink, rework, improve -- I'd rather be working on something than sitting idle.

Blame it on my parents. One's a perfectionist and the other has to know everything about everything. I've struggled through figuring out that sometimes good enough is just that, but I can't shake the need to know-and-understand just about anything that comes to my attention. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's also a little unrealistic to expect that other people want to know everything about everything and spend their web hours working toward just that. Maybe I should give my husband a break for not exhibiting this borderline-madness/voracity for new things and new topics and new experiences. Because, hey, somebody in this household needs to know how to slow things down now and then.

Right?

PS: I'm doing M's C++ homework on the weekends, after he's already finished with it. This way I can finally actually learn to program. But I don't benefit from getting to attend lectures and my grasp of algorithms is really rudimentary, so I'll fall behind fairly quickly. For now, though, it's great fun.

Pizza Night!

PS: I have it on good authority that his name is "Ungle Myga."

Apple Butter

My mom came over and helped us strip down the apple tree. We got the last of the apples off and into the kitchen, then mom pruned down the tree as much as possible, and M helped bag up the green waste. You can see the fence through the tree now, and there are a few stragglers left at the very heights, but we're otherwise done with apple season.

Mom took away a bag full of apples, and Mary (M's Mom) sent us her apple butter recipe to try. I gave it a chance, even though I'm not a fan of apple butter -- or thought I wasn't a fan. This stuff is tasty. And easy! Between letting the crock pot run overnight, and using the food mill to seed and skin the resulting sauce, I think there was more prep work in canning the butter than making it. Then again, maybe I only think that because I'm pretty much on autopilot while chopping apples now.

While we were out looking for canning jars -- which are harder to find than you'd think -- I got a cheap fat quarter to cut up for fabric lid covers. They look so much cuter with a little (red) gussying up. (I updated the picture now that we have some 8oz jelly jars too -- K, 5 Sept).

On the front lines of the kitchen counter, we're down to nine apples. Two go into muffins for the week, so that brings us to seven. We've got a second batch of apple butter in the crock pot that I hope to use for seasonal/holiday gifts, and don't forget the twenty cups of apple sauce. We apple-wood smoked some pork chops at dinner, too, to use up some of the thickest cuttings. When I measure out the rub recipe, I'll put that up too.

Mary's Overnight Apple Butter -- very slightly adapted
Makes 4 pints.

**5 lbs apples, cut into large chunks
1 1/2 C. packed brown sugar
3/4 C. apple juice or cider
1 T. cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Combine all ingredients in a 5-qt or larger electric slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 10 hours or until apples are very tender. Ladle apples a cup or two at a time into a hand-cranked food mill and process to remove skins and seeds. Repeat until all apple mixture has been run through the food mill. Return to slow cooker and cook on high for 1 1/2 hours or until mixture is thick, stirring occasionally. Ladle apple butter into clean hot jars leaving 1/2 inch head space. Seal. Process in a boiling water bath canner 10 minutes for pints, 5 minutes for half pints.

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**Moment of truth: I didn't count, measure or weigh the apples. I kept cutting until our slow cooker was almost full-to-the-brim, and then I dumped in the rest of the ingredients and hoped there was enough head space for all of them. After 30 minutes, I gave them a quick stir. At 1hr, I gave them another stir. Then I left them alone until the next morning. Ours took 2 hours to thicken up enough after going through the food mill, but the extra time gave me a chance to boil the jars. Our first batch filled 4 pint jars, with enough left over to spread generously on a couple pieces of stale ciabatta.

Applesauce-Yogurt Oat and more Apple muffins

We have an abundance of apples. Yesterday, I filled the sink with apples from our backyard tree and proceeded to cook my way through as many as possible without descending into apple-scented madness. Yesterday was also the hottest summer day we've had in awhile -- excellent timing on my part -- but the tree waits for no one!

Twenty cups of applesauce later... I still have almost two dozen on my counter, and countless more on the tree. We've given them away -- more than two dozen to my mom -- made pies, crisps, apple pancakes and now muffins that do double duty at whittling away our applesauce stash AND the lingering apples on our counter.

While I'd like to say that the substitutions I made from the Cottage Cookbook original were driven by some healthy-eating ideal, the truth is that I just wanted to find something to put all this applesauce into. After changing around the recipe, I spent some time with google to learn just how virtuous we'd been. I'm sure I'm officially a grown-up now, because I found myself thinking "if we added some bran to these, they'd be down right healthy." Followed up by "maybe some grated carrot, too." I would try reducing the sugar, except our apples are so mouth-puckeringly green that it wouldn't work very well at all. If you use store-bought applesauce or red apples, please think about reducing the sweetener.

Gods help us.

Without further ado, I bring you today's adventure in breakfast (and apples... so very many apples).

Applesauce, Yogurt, Oat and Apple muffins
2 eggs
6 Tbsp softened butter
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1/2 cup applesauce (our homemade stuff is very thick)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup old-fashioned oats
**2 cups cored and chopped apples
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a muffin tin. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, butter, yogurt, applesauce, brown sugar, oats and apples, mixing well. Add cinnamon, clove, baking powder, baking soda, salt, mixing well. Add in flour, stirring until just blended. Fill the muffin cups to the top. Bake for 25 minutes. The muffins will seem fairly moist, but do not overbake or they will get dense and dry. Let stand in tin for 5 min before removing to a cooling rack.

Makes 12-14 muffins (depending on the size of your tin).

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**The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup raisins and 1 1/2 cups apples. I dislike raisins, so I left them out and upped the apples. Chopped nuts might make a nice inclusion too. I also leave the skins on my apples, but the original recipe says to peel them. I view it as a matter of preference, except in a few critical circumstances.