Summer of Never-Ending Sinus Problems

For what seems the millionth time, my head and eyes are heavy with sinus pressure and my throat is tickly. Murrrr! When will it end?!

Things were the same nearly a year ago. Remember July 19? When hardly anyone in the stinking city had power? Fun times, fun times. I think there should be a power outage festival to commemorate that time. My sinus problems last year were due to sleeping outside in the un-conditioned air.

Last year at this time right now, we were at the Gay Games in Chicago. Truly fun times.

But What About Now?
As summer weekends go (read: weekends during which Porkchop works 12-13 hours shifts at Six Flags), this weekend was great.

After a leisurely wake-up on Saturday, we hit the Soulard market. But, before getting out of bed, I had a brief cry about Porkchop's upcoming trip to Albuquerque. We were looking through the New Mexico books that my mom gave us and becoming excited about tooling around the desert, taking a day trip to Santa Fe, and trying lots of New Mexican food. Then I thought about coming back to St. Louis and how I will be so sad and lonely. After my cry, I squeaked my right eye on Porkchop, which cheered me up some. (P.S. P-chop found a fully furnished (as in silverware and bed linens provided) apartment with Internet included just a block away from Tamarind.)

Porkchop became excited about the Soulard farmers' market when she realized that she could buy doughnuts AND freshly made pork rinds.

I was excited for tomatoes and cantaloupe. Here I am checking out tomatoes:


We also bought rosemary-olive bread by the Black Bear Bakery (hey, support your local anarchist bakery!) and avocados (from Mexico).

Upon returning home, Porkchop left for the park, and I started making crostini toppings for the Boob-Ha-Ha event. Both toppings were goat cheese based (Goatsbeard Farm = best goat cheese ever). One topping used roasted beets, while the other used avocado, tomatoes, and basil. I don't think the other Boob-Ha-Ha attendees were too keen on the beet one, but I love it. So, here's the recipe:

ROASTED BEET AND GOAT CHEESE CROSTINI

Trim 3-4 medium beets of their greens (also, washing is important). Put on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Toss with cut up rosemary and thyme (4 or so sprigs of each) and pepper (around 15 grinds). Roast in 400 F oven for 40 minutes or until tender. Shake the pan every so often.

Let beets rest for 15 minutes. Remove the skins and quarter. Pulse the quarters in a blender or food processor. Don't overdo it - you want chunks.

Crumble in 4 oz of goat cheese (I used goat cheese that had been rolled in pepper - yum!). Also put in juice of half a lemon.

Serve on crostini. Yum! Also, pretty!

For the rest of Saturday afternoon, I knitted:

Grumperina's Odessa, if you don't already know. I'm using that luscious Debbie Bliss Rialto stuff.

So, Saturday night was the Boob-Ha-Ha party and live auction. It was enjoyable and nice to meet other bloggers in real-live person. Of course, I was also suffering from a sinus headache and felt a bit blechy. But, lots of money was raised. There will be hair dying and possibly some head shaving going on later.

Porkchop and I slept late late late (well, at least until 9:30) on Sunday. After finally getting up, I made brunch using leftover crostini toppings. Scrambled eggs with the avocado and tomato one and a big piece of olive bread smeared with the beet topping. Yum!

Porkchop also found this:


Our first tomato!! AWESOME! I've found another pea-sized tomato on the same plant, which should result in yellow Roma tomatoes. Grow, tomatoes, grow!

The rest of Sunday was cleaning, knitting, yoga, and grocery shopping. I finished the Odessa hat at 11:30 last night. Porkchop made tons of fun of it because it looks little, but it seriously stretches out to fit a regular-sized head. Hopefully the recipient has a regular-sized head. If not, we're in trouble.

And Today
The financial director at work stopped by my office and asked me if I was okay. I realized that I must have been grimacing the whole morning. Stupid travel reimbursements. Hate them so much.

We're (read: me) also starting to clean up our contacts database because our school is switching to a CRM system. This means we have to figure out which of our 6,000 records we want to import and clean up those records. Another major pain.

On the plus side, I am still SO GLAD to be at my center. Whenever I hear the crazy racist and classist comments that the general public makes, I realize that I work with some freaking terrific people.