$30,000 in the bag!

Guys! Over at the other blog... we did it!

If you want to get in on the last chance to donate for this crazy affair, you can still donate to my 5K run on Sunday. But the important thing is that you don't have to, because I already hit the $30,00 mark.  How cool!!

Dinner to the Shelter

This week Nana agreed to help me take dinner to the shelter in Redmond. They have recently increased their bed count, so now we take dinner for 20-25 hungry young people, which is bordering on too much. Well, perhaps not too many people, but it requires a lot of planning, and careful choices about menu. And you know who I want on my team when there is a cooking project that requires planning and choices? Nana. This week I decided to go with pulled pork, which is crockpotted in 2 crockpots, baked potatoes and salad. My fatal error was to also deciding to cook an apple crisp.

I picked up Nana at 5, and we got back to my house to start with dinner around 5:30. We figured we'd assemble the crisp, cook it, and then do the potatoes (which I foil wrapped beforehand), so that the potatoes would still be warm at dinner. It's ok to laugh a little at this point- we need to deliver dinner at 8:30, and that stuff is simply not all going to happen in that three hour window. Nana and Matt started slicing apples while I made the top and preheated the oven. The crisp went in the oven around 6:30, and I was already starting to think better of my plan. Instead of turning the oven up (since a crisp can pretty much cook between 350 and 425), I just threw the potatoes in there as well. This will get us to the punchline in about an hour.

Next, we shredded 16 pounds of meat. I was feeling good about this- it was tasty, and for once seemed like plenty of food. At about 7, I nuked up some lasagna and the three of us had a simple dinner. Matt kept bragging to Nana that this was special, I usually forget to feed us on the nights I take dinner to the shelter.

At 7:30, I got up from the table, ready to start thinking about how we would move all this stuff, and wondering why we weren't overwhelmed with the luscious smells out of the oven. Picture this, I have a 15x11x4 foil pan brimming with apple crisp on the bottom rack, surrounded by foil wrapped potatoes on all sides, and above that is a tray of more foil wrapped potatoes, which is also surrounded by potatoes. (Dinner for 25, right?) The edges of the crisp seemed bubbly but the middle was... still crisp. Gulp. I figured, if the potatoes were done, I would just pull them out of the way and the heat would get more even in the oven. Worse news, the potatoes are also crisp. My eyes are getting bulgy now.

There is a moment, usually about 7:30, when we are planning to take dinner to the shelter and I think, "Nevermind. This won't work. Is it too late to cancel?" This was that moment.

Nana breezes in to the kitchen and says, "Hm, why don't you turn up the oven? And can you nuke those potatoes?" and then she goes on to cleaning up from all the dinner and cooking. Yes and Yes!  By this point Matt has looked up a real recipe for making baked potatoes (1hr at 425), and we crank up the heat. He starts pulling potatoes out of their foil jackets in pairs and throwing them in the microwave for a couple minutes at a time, then rewrapping them. Matt is watching the clock like a hawk, but I'm confident that dinner can be served eventually. I start loading up the car. Juice. Buns. BBQ sauce. Butter and sour cream. Lasagna pan full of pork. Salad. The longer the potatoes have been in the oven, the less nuking they need. The crisp is starting to soften and smell lovely. We get the last soft potato in the car and hurtle down to Redmond to serve.

I'm feeling grateful that I can afford to donate dinner, and that I have family to support me in the effort, but still a little bashful that we might be a couple minutes late and a fair bit frazzled. When we arrive, the shelter is dark. For one second, I wonder if I misread the calendar, but no, homeless shelters don't take days off. Turns out, we aren't the only ones feeling flustered tonight, the key has gone missing, and the staff are waiting for someone to let them in.

As we wait patiently, more people start hanging out in this dark parking lot, and I'm feeling really glad that we have a trunk full of tasty food to share. Once the door is open, we breeze in like this is no big deal, unpacking and delivering while the now flustered staff and trying to recover from their shortened prep time as well. By the time we left, it seemed like a huge crowd was waiting outside. Several of the guests thanked us for bringing dinner, and we slinked back to out nice warm homes. The next day I got an email that they had more people than beds that night, but they were able to offer dinner, even seconds, to everyone who was there that night.

Updates for the Oversees Readership

Since the parents are inaccessible by phone for the next few months, I thought I might get some leverage out of the blog in place of long, rambly emails.

As the parents were leaving on their grand adventure, my in-laws were in town for a few days. They came for the boat show, after a great adventure of their own to Southeast Asia. (Being retired sounds awesome...). [Note to parents: eating brains, raw blood, or "washed" lettuce are all perfectly valid ways to get terribly ill.] We went to MOHAI, a very awesome Seattle-centric history museum. It had boats, and old Seattle history, and wartime history, and modern stuff too. I'm hoping I can take Nana and Jerry some tiem this month. Matt's step-mom made greek food (yay!), and we all got to watch the Superbowl together.

Over the summer, Mom had helped Nana and I make what seemed like an absurd quantity of freezer jam. It's super yummy, but I just don't eat that much jam these days. The freezer jam was a big hit with pancakes, and the freezer Raspberry jam was to DIE for on the Trader Joe's flourless chocolate cake we had with the Greek food. Even though I managed to not cook even slightly all weekend, it made me feel like a domestic hero to have my own jam on hand.

Oh, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl was played over the weekend. I dunno if you were watching, but the SEAHAWKS WON! There had been a lot of excitement, even on our (suburban, working class) campus, with potlucks, and photo-ops and the like. We watched at Jeffery's house, where we had a huge screen, lots of snacks and a pretty mellow watching experience. This was ideal, since by the half, it was hard to pretend we were biting our nails for the outcome anymore- there was plenty of time to catch up. We went back to our suburban home where not much was happening, but I relished seeing the parties downtown, including Seattle's no-jay walk riots. I know not all my family loves sports, but in this day and age of tv-on-demand and personalized everything, it's really awesome to be able to share a story like that with a large community.

While WA has been spared of most of the brutal winter weather that has been visiting on the midwest and east coast (and TX sometimes, too), this week is actually getting pretty nippy. I mention this only because Matt and I have plans to be camping this weekend in a cabin at Wallace Falls. WE were planning to do a little hiking and a little eating by campfire, but we may opt for a lot of drinking cocoa in our sleeping bags if it stays below freezing.

Updates are still coming in on the fundraising blog- 75% there with Mom's help taking dinner to the shelter last week! I'm starting to feel like when I am done with this crazy project I am doing NOTHING for at least another year. Turns out, $30,000 is a big number.

Barely news

It seems silly to blog when I see my primary readership regularly.  Mom and Nana already know we tried to go to the tulip festival, but instead spent all day looking at PACCAR trucks and eating salmon waiting for the rain to pass before giving up and going home.  They know that because they were there.  Even the stuff we have been up to that didn't include being with the family, they know about because we see them often enoguh to talk about it.  Cool, right?

But, this means I have to come up with other content for blogging.  Matt is off at another race today.  He'll be leaving town next weekend for a work trip (to South Carolina and Ohio, he is not excited). Work is getting a little busier for me as we approach a major deadline, but only so busy that my manager finally said it's time for us all to start working a couple extra hours a week.  To me, the difference between 40 and 45 hours a week is negligible, but I understand that they have been very cautious to ask these things, since at this time last year the entire team was regularly working 80-100 hours a week.

Cooking for the shelter at The Landing has gotten me excited to find some new recipes for cooking for smaller groups. So far that hasn't translated into making food, but I think it might.  Speaking of the other blog, the project has been going along ok.  It's been fun for me to try to find new venues to get involved in the community, but it's pretty clear that it's a big goal, with a (comparatively) short timeline.  Raising $30,000 might take me longer than a year, unless I can find more clever ways of getting other people involved.  So far we are approaching 10% in 2 months (awesome!), but at that rate it will take me closer to two years to complete the project.  Of course, it would still be worth doing, even at that pace. But, I still wonder what I can do to get there faster. Anyway, if you've been volunteering/donating, please let me know because I am keeping records so I can see how this project is coming together.

I want to Master Cakes

I don't think I've really ever baked a cake from scratch.

I'm sure I could. The mechanics aren't that different that other things that I have baked. But I haven't ever taken the time. Now that I have this super fancy kitchenaid that my big brother got me, I feel compelled to bake ambitious things.  Matt and I were brainstorming "things that should be baked" one night, and he started riffing on cakes. Carrot Cake. Yellow Cake.  Princess Cake.  And all with the niave confidence that they will be easy and totally worth the effort.

Now would be a great time for someone to chime in in case this is actually false.

And then I got the crazy idea (I'm having a lot of these lately), that when I recruit people to take part in my 30 for my 30th project with group volunteer things, I should pretend it's my birthday party and offer cake.  I was specifically imagining that I've talked my friends into some trail maintenance which turned about to be a terrible idea, and everyone is brutally exhausted and frustrated, and then I whip out a carrot cake and suddenly everyone is glad they are helping! That could work, right?

As Nana says, if you don't hear about it again, don't ask!

Updates

I just posted the 30 for my 30 blog link on Facebook, so it officially feels like there is no turning back.  I'm pretty pumped that you guys have been excited about this too, because I can't really imagine how I am going to meet this goal myself.

Because.... well, we are busy.  I mean, owning a home seems to take a lot of time.  Matt is re-keying the house today. I'm learning about hot tub chemistry, and we might even get some laundry done. Oh, and we were both exhausted from another long week at work.  I'm ready to start working from home more again though.

The big news at work this week is that we got a new name.  This means I have a new work email address, a new mouse pad and a T shirt with the new name.  I take it for other people it was more of a transition.  New templates, new color palates, server transitions and some online redirects.  I got a series of emails over the week begging me to update my voicemail, contact info, email signature etc, which seems silly.  I've never used my phone, and I only ever email people on my team.  But, it's been interesting to see how something like a cohesive brand identity comes together.  (It's also super easy to see how it would fall apart, so I updated what I could.)

Ok, back to domestic projects.  I would love to finish putting my office together before I start acting like stacks of things on boxes was the look I was going for.

A Subtle Shift in Priorities

Well just take a look at how timely this blog entry is. Ha! Fantastic.

Recently, which is to say 'the last few months', I have not been enjoying the prospect of going to Judo. I would realize it was Monday, my normal Judo day, and my stomach would sink. Judo isn't that bad, not really, but compared to some of the other things I do with my evenings, it just always felt like a waste of an evening. We often spend a frustrating amount of time just talking about stuff, and I've never felt like my progress has been that marked. I got my black belt, I guess, but I still never really felt like I earned it, but just going to judo because it was 'judo day' hasn't really felt right in a while.

I sat down with Jessie to talk about my 'crisis of activities', something that comes up every few years, and she told me exactly what you'd expect her to tell me: if you're not enjoying it, then why are you going? We have our Kinect at home for exercise (and it keeps kicking my ass), there's no need to go if I'm not enjoying it. So for now, I've decided to take a hiatus from Judo. As Jess reminded me: I can always go back. They've been doing Judo for a couple of centuries now, I don't think they're going to quit anytime soon.

So I certainly don't lack from good uses of time in my life, or at least not fulfilling ones. Miniature painting continues to be great fun, and I'm getting better at it with every mini I paint. I even have a permanent home for my painting, now, as opposed to just keeping it in the library and moving it every time we want to play cards or something. I carved out a little corner of my studio and now have my stuff all set up for all the painting I could want. I also shuffled my studio over so it's now in the same upstairs room as the guest bed. We can use the old studio room for...other things.

There's also Piano, which I am attempting to be as diligent as possible about, because you know what practice makes, don't you? I did get a little down on it because, like most of my hobbies, it's not really leading to anything. I'm not going to any recitals, or joining a band, or anything. Though the better I get at piano, the easier it will be to compose music in the future, which is nice. Still, though, playing the opening to Journey's “Don't Stop Belivin'” is a pretty good way to end a day, so I keep at it. If anyone knows of a band in Austin looking for a piano player without a whole lot of time to invest...let me know.

But if I'm cutting back on Judo, perhaps it would be a good time for me to try doing something else with my time, eh? Maybe a little...VOLUNTEERING? Yeah, I know great minds think alike.

I scrounged through various volunteer listings online, hoping to find something that could make some use of my expertise. Something maybe with education, too, because I really, really like education. I ended up signing up for Austin Partners in Education. I start on Tuesday.

I'm volunteering! It's quite exciting. All I saw on the sign-up-form online was that they needed people to help with groups of two-or-three middle schoolers who need help learning math. Sounds up my alley, yes? But I had some questions, which I brought to the lunchtime training session I went to last week. Turns out this group has around 2000 volunteers (!) and what they do is one class a week, the whole math class meets with a group of probably 10 volunteers who guide them through the lesson for the day. The job is to ask questions, get them thinking, and generally show our excitement for the subject matter at hand. I can do that.

I'm coming in the the middle of the school year, which usually means I'll be replacing someone who couldn't make it through the year (Life happens, you know?) so I'm hoping that I'm up to the standard set by my predecessor. If this goes well, and I've only got something like 7 more classes before the end of the year, maybe I'll sign up for a full year next time.

Of course, right after signing up for this, the local community magazine came out with their summary of a boatload more volunteer opportunities, so I can certainly expand if I want. I may have to, if I'm going to help Sandlin meet her goal.

So let's see, what do you need to know about Tyler. He's coming up on his terrible twos. They're not really that terrible, cause he's such a great kid normally, but you can definitely see where the beginnings of a furious little id are going to create a few frustrating afternoons before we get him properly civilized. He doesn't want to share, he gets angry when he can't have is way...you know...kid stuff. On the plus side, the house next door to us sold, and we met the neighbors today while we were getting ready to take Tyler out biking. (We bike, he rides behind). They have a 9-year-old boy, and a 2-year old boy as well. Score! Jess made them cookies. They move in tomorrow. We know pretty much nothing more than that (except their names) but we are going to bring them cookies, so I expect we will be fast friends.

Tyler is starting to sing. You have to know what you're listening for, because he can't carry a tune yet and he only get's about 70% of the words, but we've heard him do 'Twinkle Twinkle', '5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed', 'The ABCs,' and 'The Itsy-Bitsy Spider', with hand motions and everything. He is also really excited because he gets to go to Disneyland for his birthday, or at least near his birthday, and Nana and Grandpa are going to be there too. Though to be honest, at this point the trip is about 30% for Tyler and 70% for Jessie. Also, we get to visit some friends in LA while we are out there, so good fun then, too.

-N

30 for My 30th

I am turning 30 this year.* 

Several of my friends have already been through this milestone birthday so I both expect to survive it but also to dread it quite a bit.  I don't want to dread this birthday, or treat it as just some other day in some year.

And for more complex reasons, I've been thinking about my legacy a lot lately.  I've got this PhD, which is cool, but I don't exactly use it for curing cancer.  I've had some great students, but they were destined to do great things before they met me anyway. I've been living in Totem lake for about a year now, and I don't know a single soul in this community. I'm ok with the fact that I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize, but I think I should still have an amazing life.  That's what it's for, right?

The day that Matt and I moved into our house, we jumped into the hot tub after dark.  The house was a mess, filled with our cheapo college furniture and all our dusty stuff that our friends and family mercifully helped us move over. We were exhausted from the move.  On our back porch, steam from the hot tub glossed all that over and we looked at each other and just said, "This is it. That's all I want."  I felt like I have no more ambition for myself; I've got a great house, a great job, a great life where I have tons of free time to myself.  To quote Noel, "This is why I went to college."

But, I still get the nagging feeling that I could be doing better, living a better life.  Be more connected to my community, and live a life of service.  That's important to me.

A huge amount of my 20s was spent on myself.  Getting through college, getting through grad school, finding a job.  These are things you have to do for yourself, and are important so that for the rest of your life you can focus outward a bit.  Now I feel like I've got those things mostly under control, I'm ready to start thinking outward. I've been thinking about various places I would like to volunteer with and support, and it's hard to find a single thing that seems like it's going to fill up that feeling.  I worry a lot about hunger in my community, but the FoodBank mostly seems to need volunteers during the week.  STEM education is really important to me, but it's hard to know which volunteer opportunities make a difference.

I had this idea on the bus one morning, and I need you all to support me in it.  It's too hard to find any one thing that will be as important as I want to be.  What if I do something HUGE instead?  Instead of fussing over whether one little thing is more important than some other little thing, I'll just do a BUNCH, and that will be a big thing.

Here is my idea: 30 projects for my 30th birthday**.  Each project either takes 30 hours, or raises $1,000 dollars.  Think about it, we could raise $30,000 or 900 volunteer hours- how cool is that??  That will be something exciting to celebrate, instead of just getting a little older.

And, actually, that brings me to the next part.  You know what I want for my birthday this year? Your time or money, invested in our communities in the service on one another.  Help me in my efforts to raise money, or to rack up volunteer hours by taking on a project of your own, or supporting one of mine.

I haven't figured out how I will track all this yet, or what all 30 projects should be, but you will be hearing about it in the coming weeks.  I figure I have from now until my 31st birthday to get it all done.  That's more than a year to do meet this audacious goal, either by myself or with your help. So will you help?

* in July, don't freak.

**I've cross posted this here, where I expect to do most of the tracking for this project. Check there for future updates on the projects (although I am sure I can't resist sharing some of that here as well).