The bad news: I'm discontinuing my Weekend Recipe feature. (Remember that? How I used to sporadically post recipes once in a while?)
The good news: I'm compiling all of my recipes online, in a separate blog, found here: Heidi's Collected Recipes.
Mostly this is for myself. My previous system for recipes was to write everything down in one of four notebooks used for recipes, or on random post-its and scraps of paper. By putting everything online I'll be eliminating the hassle of carrying notebooks with me when I travel, as well as the time it takes me to flip through any (or all) of those notebooks to find a particular recipe.
I figured that putting all my recipes online would be an easy way to share recipes with those of you who are interested, as well as keep things organized for myself. It's not really a food blog -- I'm not going to describe how to make anything or write any reviews or take any photos. I post the recipes and write a few notes about what works and what doesn't. I'm also using it to post recipes that I haven't tried but would like to when I get the chance, so if you're going to make something I've posted, be sure to check the notes and see if I've ever made it.
I've been in the process of transferring my collection to the new blog for a few months now, so head over and check it out if you're interested!
26 May 2009
midweek recipes
24 February 2009
oh, right, i have a blog.
Hello, blog readers. You may not have noticed, but I haven't blogged in a while. I don't really have a good reason or even a decent excuse for not blogging. When I tried to pull the "my camera is broken" excuse on my sister, she was quick to point out that words can actually be posted on a blog without accompanying photos. And now that Greg has fixed the camera, I can't even use that weak excuse anymore.
So I guess it's back to blogging, if I can remember how to do this. I'll ease back into it by posting a video. Evan has been composing adorable zombie songs all morning, so I'll share the best one I managed to catch on video.
That's all for now, but I'm hoping to return to regular blogging, so I'll be back soon!
17 December 2008
hiatus
Thought I should drop in on the ol' blog to say that I've been way too busy with holiday stuff (and a little bit busy with practicing my laziness) to think about writing any blog posts, and in two days we're leaving for a two-week vacation at Greg's parents' house. I expect that once we're there I'll still be busy with holiday stuff, as well as catching up with the family and playing Rock Band, to do any posting any time soon, so consider the Jungle to be on temporary hiatus.
I don't know whether I've officially mentioned it here, but I'm on Twitter now (see sidebar). I will probably Twitter while I'm away, since that doesn't require much time or effort or thought, so you can still check in here for my Twitter mini-updates, or follow me on the Twitter site if you're eager to know how lazy and/or indulgent I'm being over the holidays.
I hope the next couple of weeks are fun and happy and healthy for everyone, and I'll see you back here in January!
02 June 2008
back-ish
Things have been fine for the last week or so, but we've been very busy and I haven't really thought much about blogging. Once you take a break it's kind of hard to get back into it. What's there to say at the moment? We had a really fun weekend when Greg's brother John and his girlfriend Elizabeth came to visit. Other than that things have been ordinary, and time marches on with few changes. Only I'm not feeling sad about that anymore.
So. Summer is approaching; one of my babies is nearly three years old; my other baby is nearly finished with kindergarten; my boyfriend is nearly finished with his doctorate. And I am watching the progress of all three of them with pride and happiness.
19 July 2007
i have not been posting lately because
We have found an apartment (another townhouse, actually, almost identical to the place we're in now, except that the new place has a DISHWASHER!) and we are moving over the first weekend in August. So I'm beginning to pack, pack, pack, putting away all of the things we can live without for two more weeks. It's strange: the walls are nearly bare now, and surfaces cleared of decoration. Yet the rest of the house is messier than ever, and that's saying something.
The other major thing that will keep me from posting for the next week or so is the upcoming release of the last Harry Potter book. Yup, Harry Potter. We are, like all good fans, having our copy delivered on Saturday, and I will read it as soon as I finish re-reading the first six books in preparation. I should probably go see the new movie, too, if I really want to call myself a fan.
So there it is: moving, and Harry Potter, two things important enough to keep me away from the computer for the near future.
16 March 2007
friday photo
Have a good weekend!
22 January 2007
why i'm pro-choice
Today is Blog for Choice Day* here on teh Internets. I wasn't going to post about it, because I write a tiny blog read only by a handful of my family and friends, so what would it matter? But women's reproductive health is an important issue to me, and after reading many blog posts on the subject today, I feel compelled to write about it.
Why am I pro-choice? I was pretty adamantly pro-life from the time I became aware of the issue until I became pregnant at the age of 19. When I found out I was pregnant, I was between my sophomore and junior years of college, my on-again, off-again boyfriend and I were off again, I was preparing to study abroad in Milan, Italy in the fall, I had no money, and I had plans for the future that didn't involve an unexpected pregnancy.
I went through a lot of agonizing and soul-searching about what to do, and I very seriously considered abortion -- seriously enough to get a list of abortion providers and phone numbers to call to schedule a procedure -- but eventually Greg and I decided to have a baby. It wasn't an easy choice to make, but I wasn't aware until I was faced with the decision how difficult it would have been to choose abortion. Like many pro-lifers, I assumed women who aborted were irresponsible sluts who took the easy way out. Only when I was in a position to consider abortion did I realize how ignorant I was.
What really turned me from being pro-life to pro-choice was that decision-making process. If I hadn't had the chance to choose for myself what was right for me, for Greg, for our lives and circumstances, how might things have been different? How would I have felt had I had no choice? Would I have resented my baby if I were forced to have him, instead of choosing him? I think it's incredibly important that I was able to choose my son, and because I was able to choose him, I understood how important it must be for other women to make a choice for themselves as well. I chose to have a baby, but I can no longer judge a woman who makes a different choice.
I became pro-choice because I learned first-hand how important it is to be able to make such an enormous decision about your own life. I've become more and more strongly pro-choice over the years as I learned first-hand what pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood are like, as I've learned more about what life is like for women who aren't allowed to choose, as I've learned more about the dangers of illegal abortions, as I've learned more about how much better off women and children are when children are wanted and planned for, as I've learned more about the realities of women's lives that don't fit neatly into the black and white pro-life mentality.
Recommended posts by women who are far more eloquent than I: Jill at Feministe has an amazingly comprehensive post listing dozens of reasons to be pro-choice, and an old post from Bitch, Ph.D. asks whether or not you trust women to make decisions for themselves.
Share your pro-choice stories or links in comments!
*Edit -- Forgot to add that today is Blog for Choice Day because it is also the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Hooray!
06 January 2007
maybe i'm just secretly immortal
I was randomly looking at my blogger profile today, and something looked wrong to me. Wait a minute, I thought, I wasn't born in the year of the Rat. I was born in the year of the Cock. Then I saw my age: 250? Haha, I thought, somehow an extra zero got tacked onto the end of my age. When I logged in to fix my age, though, I saw that it wasn't my age itself that was messed up, but my birth year. Which was listed as 1756.
Now, there's no way I made that kind of typo. I don't know what's going on, but I think it's pretty hilarious that 1756 is even an allowable number to be entered into that box.
(I also think it's pretty hilarious that I take a paragraph to tell what could basically be a one-line story, but maybe that's just me.)
22 October 2006
updating
It has been raining and/or gray outside for almost an entire week, and I'm getting tired of it. Greg is, at this moment, competing in an Adventure Race in Pennsylvania, and after coming home late tonight he'll be leaving tomorrow for Colorado, for work, for four days, so I'm single parenting for close to a week. I had my last ultimate frisbee game today, and we barely had enough players so I played almost the entire game, so I am tired, but in a good way.
So things are okay. I haven't had the blogging urge lately -- partly I'm feeling sluggish and uninspired, partly I'm feeling guilty about how often I update the blog versus how often I write personally to people. (You thought my blogging was infrequent? Try waiting for an e-mail from me: you can watch water boil, watch paint dry, and you'll still be waiting for me. Maybe I have some kind of disorder. I refuse to believe I'm just incosiderate.) I'm thinking that if, instead of writing a blog post every day, I write an e-mail, then I'll be caught up on my correspondence in a week or two. No reason I can't do both, I suppose, but I'm trying to prioritize, which has never been one of my strengths.
So, long story short: I will not be attentive to blogging this week, and possibly after that.
(But who knows? Every time I say I'll update, I don't, and when I say I won't, I do. It seems to work out that whenever I have the time, I don't have any ideas, and vice versa. Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but if you know me, that's the kind of thing I'm good at. Indecisiveness.)
16 October 2006
ending my absence
James and cousin Molly among the pumpkins at a local farm
James and a pony at the same farm
At the waterfront in Salem, MA
The boys with Aunt Ren and some monsters at a street fair
Aunt Ren and her nephews outside the Rainforest Cafe04 October 2006
31 July 2006
too hot for blogging
I've been comparing our weather with the weather in the Pacific Northwest, to where we'll be travelling at the end of the week for a much-anticipated vacation, and though they're apparently having a warmer summer than usual, I don't see anything above 81 degrees for their forecast this week. Hooray! Our weather here won't be too much warmer in degrees, but the crazy humidity makes me want to melt. Hey, Mother Nature? 75% humidity, without precipitation, is not cool.
In other news, even though I feel it's too hot to blog, it's apparently not too hot for frisbee, so I'm going to spend the rest of my energy this afternoon psyching myself up to run around and sweat buckets at my game tonight. To entertain yourselves while I'm not posting anything for a while, you can check out our July photos to get your fill of adorable kid pics.
05 May 2006
03 April 2006
a few items of business
1. Can y'all let me know if you're able to watch the video I posted? I think I've fixed things so that it should work for everyone, so if you couldn't see it before, try again and let me know whether you can see it now.
2. I'm all about uploading videos now. You can see more of my wonderful family by clicking here (again, let me know if that works for you -- I think it will, but I'd like to be sure).
3. I briefly overcame laziness today and uploaded my photos from February and March. Click here to see the insane cuteness.
4. Interesting posts will resume one of these days, I promise.
28 March 2006
and i'm back
I realize that I've been delinquent in updating this blog, and I'm sure the four of you who read this are terribly disappointed in me. Forgive me! While I was away for the weekend, our computer crashed and died and we had to re-install Windows and re-do practically everything, and in the process I lost the notes and outline I was working on for a really fabulous post. (Yes, I made notes and an outline for a blog post -- I was intending to include lots of links, and was attempting to stay organized and coherent rather than just throwing together a post. And yes, I know the computer problems don't explain why I wasn't updating for weeks before that. So what?)
I'm not sure whether I'll attempt to replicate the post; I'm not sure the topic would be current enough now that I've read about it in a million different places. I'll have to figure out whether or not I have anything new to say about the issue. (You'd love to know what the topic is, wouldn't you? All four of you.)
The boys and I were at my mom's this weekend, seeing my sisters (and one sister's family) for the first time since November. The influence of being in a crowded, noisy house for a weekend has turned my baby into a screecher. Excited? Frustrated? Happy? Tired? Screech! And it over-tired both of my children to a nearly intolerable point, a condition which we are working diligently and quickly to remedy.
And it's spring! The trees are budding, plants are emerging from the earth -- even in my little garden which gets literally no sunlight, some little plants are beginning to peek out of the ground. And now that the weather is nicer, I'll be able to send James outside more often, leaving me plenty of time to blog, you lucky readers! All four of you.
06 October 2005
welcome to the jungle
As the only woman in a household with three males, sometimes I get overwhelmed with testosterone. Okay, the baby doesn't really factor into that (yet!) but the boyfriend and the preschooler are enough to make this a very masculine household at times. Video games, legos, race cars, Star Wars, volcanoes, superheroes... These are all well and good, and some actually more fun than I would have expected before I had sons -- but sometimes a girl just needs a break.
It may sound strange that I'm taking a break from the boys by... blogging about the boys. But despite the exasperation, the exhaustion, the testosterone, and the volume, they are, quite simply, my life. Without them I wouldn't have much to say here. And although this will be primarily a family blog, I reserve the right to write about anything I deem relevant to my family, including but not limited to parenting, society, current events, entertainment. I'll try to stay off the soapbox, but I can't make any promises.
My goal is to post something every day -- a picture, a quote, an anecdote, a milestone -- in part to keep family and friends updated on our lives, and in part for myself, to record memories, to remember and appreciate the small things that make up our everyday lives. So welcome to the family; I hope you'll find something here to interest you.
