Burnout

Oh please please tell me that I'm not getting burned out already. Please tell me that the lethargy I'm feeling today is just from my weekend of excitement and too much good food. Speaking of which...

After Saturday's decadent meal of pizza with green chiles, Chef Patrick struck again with some more fancy feasts on Sunday. In the morning, I got up and watched the Packers game with Wisconsin's very own Patrick Smyczek (shown here in his super-tight team colors):



While I watched the game, Patrick made me little English Muffin sandwiches with avocado, onion, tomato and cream cheese. So good!





After the Packers won (somehow), I met up with Ana and she drove me out to Trader Joes on the NE side. I didn't really have much in mind but was able to find a few things, including a Triple Cream Cheese that I took to Patrick's later that night.

Yes... Once again Patrick hosted the weekend barbecue at his house. This time it was grilled Chicken Breasts stuffed with mozzarella, tomato, onions and green chiles! The vegetarian option was a bow-tie pasta with homemade creamy pesto sauce and sauteed onions and mushrooms. Pat also grilled some vegetables (asparagus, zucchini, etc) and even fired up an acorn squash (which accidentally got left on the grill until 1:30am). To top it all off, Alex made a delicious Blueberry Cobbler and Ana brought some pumpkin cookies... both of which we smothered in ice cream.

Here are some pictures of the food. Needless to say, I'm not going hungry here.




More Spiders

I've found a lot of spiders around my front door lately (on the outside, Thank God). So I've made a habit of checking when I come home, to make sure I don't run into any. A few days ago, I found this little medium guy trying to get into my house. He was right on my doorstep, scratching at my door. I think it is a Brown Widow, but I couldn't get a good look at the underside, so I'm not entirely sure.



Then today I come home... do my usual inspection and find a freakin' BLACK WIDOW hanging out near the bottom of my door at the hinges. I didn't really know what to do. I didn't want to kill it. I didn't want to get near it, really. But I had to go inside... and it was in a spot where if I opened the door, it was sure to come inside with me. And it did! Blech.

I was feeling a bit sad about having to kill so many spiders lately. And I really didn't want to have to kill the Black Widow. But it FOLLOWED ME IN THE HOUSE! I had no choice. I grabbed my trusty 20 year old can of Ant and Roach killer and sprayed it until it was rolling around in circles on my tile floor. Once it stopped moving I stuck it in a Ziploc so I could get a closer look (also because I'm creepy like that). I tried to scan it for you, but the weight of the scanner lid proved to be too much. Yuck. Well, at least you can see that I'm not entirely crazy. If that isn't a Black Widow, I don't know what is.



Printing

Things are still busy on the Tamarind front. Today I was scheduled to sponge all day on the Pro-Side, but I was able to get out of it for the most part. (Thank you Myungwon!) I helped Alex finish printing her first edition from the stone and we worked on getting our stones and plates ready for the next part of the project (solvent washes).

The Cardinals played a make-up game versus the Cubs at Wrigley Field and they totally blew their opportunity to make up some ground in the NL Central. They've now dropped four straight games... Maybe that's why I'm feeling so down today.

To cheer me up, Ana played X-Men in the graining room.