To dirty ovens...

Dear future Amanda,

You tried to use oven cleaner one other time before today. It was when you were cleaning your first apartment, remember? Even though you and your summer roommate followed the instructions, the oven looked dirtier than it did before. Then you didn't get most of your deposit back from the landlord despite the fact that the rest of the apartment looked awesome.

Today you thought you would give it a second try. Forgiveness may be divine, but this does not necessarily apply to harsh cleaning products. Again, you read the directions through several times and followed them. This time, the fumes totally made you cough like crazy, even though you held your breath and were well away from the oven when you came up for air. Then, to add insult to injury, the crap didn't even work (despite all the scrubbing you did with your little mask on).

Please do not repeat this mistake again. The house smells bad despite the fans, and now you are super grumpy. Grumpy enough to write a reminder to yourself. Just use the self-cleaning option to burn off the big chunks and then enjoy your dirty oven. In the wise words of Michael Scott, "You know what they say? Fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice, strike three."

Love,
Amanda

A post about bathrooms

We have hard water with a high iron content. This leads to rusty looking everything. When we first moved into this house I tried several rust removers, but nothing worked. This problem is one that only gets worse with time, but instead of trying more cleaning products, I just decided that we would have rusty bathroom fixtures until we fixed the water. It took me a while to get used to it and then I stopped caring, but I still felt bad for guests.

Enter my awesome dad. He found this stuff:



I can't find a better picture, but don't let that stop you from trying it. It is amazing. The rusty stuff is starting to come off of the walls and tub (after only 1 use!). The only thing I don't care for are the fumes. It says that it has a "clean fresh scent" but personally, I feel a little dizzy after using it. I just sprayed it on and then shut the door with the fan blowing. Hopefully this will help a little bit. If the fumes don't go away, I hope that they will kill the ants.

ANTS! IN FEBRUARY!

I get totally crazy about the ants. Today I saw the first few in the bathroom. I have a feeling that this blog may turn into crazy-person ranting about my epic battle to kill any ant that comes in the house. It was fun while it lasted.

Some different worries.

I got a job offer today! I am super excited and am bouncing happily on the exercise ball as I type this. I am really relieved. Well, relieved about finding a job. Now I am worried about a false positive on the drug screen or something crazy coming up on my credit report (I have tried to check it more than once, but it won't let me do it online). But as long as those unlikely things don't happen, I will be working come mid-March. Watch out house, we are going to improve you something crazy once the extra cash starts rolling in!

Unemployment

It really isn't so bad sometimes. This morning I made salad for Scott's lunch and thought, "Mmm...salad. Maybe I will have one for lunch." Then I realized there was no one around to see me eat salad for breakfast, so I did. It was delicious.

If you don't already...

Pandora is a really great way to listen to music. You just type an artist or song, and it plays similar music. It's free and there are no commercials. A friend told me about it a couple of years ago, and I recently remembered it due to the fact that we live far from my favorite radio station. Yay.

Because the internet is dying to know the rest of my weekend

Jeff Tweedy!

You can listen to this while you read:



This is the fun concert we saw on Saturday night. Awesome, awesome. I don't play the guitar, so I never talk about guitar stuff. I can say that I just love, love the way his voice feels so exposed and vulnerable. It was a really laid back, perfect concert. He unplugged his guitar and came out in front of the mic for the last two songs, which brought that teenage girl feeling to the surface. So great. I kind of wish I had taken a picture of him surrounded by his 5 or 6 guitars. It was cute. I just realized I would be really bad at reviewing concerts. Oh well.

So, that was the rest of my fun weekend. I used to just do homework and worry on weekends. What a nice change! On Sunday night we put together some Ikea furniture we bought while up in the suburbs. I took some blurry pictures of Scott putting a wardrobe together. I might get around to posting those eventually.

Another journal-y post

I still don't really know what kind of blog I want this to be. I read home improvement blogs and craft/homemaking blogs, so part of me thinks that would be fun. The problem I see with that is the fact that I don't really do crafts or home improvements often enough to post regularly.

I also like to read journal type blogs. This kind would be easy to update regularly, but they seem a little risky. I think that it is pretty easy to overshare or offend someone in real life when posting mainly thoughts and feelings.

For now, I am just posting whatever because this is still new and exciting. This is what lots of people do, so maybe I shouldn't be so picky. This post is going to be me talking about my weekend. Hope you don't mind.

Thursday night we saw Spamalot with Chicago family people. It was awesome, and I think it is the kind of show that almost anyone would enjoy. One of the highlights was the fact that the cast kept throwing Blagojevich references into the show (we listened to his impeachment hearing on the radio while we were driving to the show). It is so impressive to watch talented actors give the crowd what they want. The funniest part of the show had to be the French taunters. So awesome. This clip gives a general idea:



Lego reenactments of anything are rad in my book.

Scott and I got to spend the night with my brother and awesome fiance and then go spend the next day with Scott's brother and also awesome wife. We are really lucky to have them so close. It is one thing to have siblings (and spouses) that are fun and share similar interests. It is even better to have those siblings within a couple hours drive.

Actually, I think I will finish the weekend fun log in a separate post. This is getting long, and I want to be able to ramble about the fun concert we saw.

Maybe being a thirteen-year-old girl isn't so bad

I got an exercise ball yesterday. I have wanted one upon which to sit for quite a while. Now I am sad that I put it off for so long. It is so fun. Maybe if I ever get a job I can be like Dwight:



This is an edited clip, but the only one that would embed. I am fancy blogging now, y'all (I used to feel like a poser when I said y'all, but now I live in the middle of nowhere, so I feel completely justified in using the word).

Also, I did not realize that the trailer for the next Harry Potter movie was out. OMGWTFBBQ! The sixth book is my favorite one in the series. I just really love the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore. Here is the link to the Warner Brothers site, and below is a different one.



So I have been watching these and bouncing like crazy for the past twenty minutes. Squeeee. Scott and I have been talking about having a Harry Potter party at the drive-in. I think Harry Potter has really helped me to embrace my inner squealing teenage girl. I never went through that phase--not even close, so I guess I am making up for it now. I will also admit here that I like the Twilight books and movie. Not in the sense that I think they are excellent pieces of literature, but in the sense that I enjoyed reading them. I love Michelle, and especially loved how after she saw Twilight she told me, "Apparently I am a thirteen-year-old girl, because I loved it." Here's to having fun middle school style.

The best apple muffins I've ever made

I was going to take a picture of these bad boys, but I am not quite that dedicated to blogging yet. There were several apple muffin recipes that looked good, so I took my favorite parts from each and smooshed them together.

Apple Muffins

muffin part:
1 egg
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup yogurt
1 Tablespoon oil
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 dash allspice
1-2 dashes nutmeg (I really like nutmeg)
1 & 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat pastry)
1 apple, chopped into tiny bits (I used a Granny Smith)

delicious topping part:
1 Tablespoon butter (straight from the refrigerator)
1 Tablespoon flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

I never mix the dry ingredients together first because I hate dirtying another bowl. So this is how I assembled them:

Heat the oven to around 400 degrees F (maybe a little less) , and grease a muffin tin.

Beat the egg in a large bowl, then stir in the applesauce, yogurt, and oil. Next, stir in the brown sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Once this looks all even, add the flour and stir until everything looks nice. Then dump the apples into the bowl and give it a couple of victory stirs. Batter is done.

Now take a smaller bowl, and mash all the topping ingredients with a fork until it kind of looks like a strudel topping. I stole the topping from this site.

Scoop some batter into the greased muffin cups (this made 11 muffins for me). Then sprinkle the topping over each muffin and pop them in the oven. Bake between 15-20 minutes, depending on your oven (mine is old and has a mind of its own sometimes, so I don't feel like I can predict what other ovens will do). Poke them with a toothpick to make sure they are done.

Let them sit in the pan until they cool a little bit, or until you have decided that burning your hands and mouth is totally worth having a muffin. After they have cooled enough to not fall into pieces, run a knife around the edges and pop them out of the tin. After they cool completely on the counter, you can put them in your favorite storage container.

Mmmm...muffins.

Second Post

I've decided that I want to pick this blog up again. For the record, this is a bit out of character for me, since I tend to start things over if they don't begin as I'd hoped. I expected myself to want to start a new blog to avoid more than a year's gap in postings. But here I am. Awesome.

I honestly didn't expect to post very much last year, since I was in school. The only thing I wanted to talk about during school was that it was lame--which it totally was most of the time. I am super glad that I have a degree, and am truly indebted to my family, who helped me finish. But, physics was this kind of weird no-man's land for me. On the one hand, I was capable of doing the work, so I felt like changing my course of study was giving up and taking the easy way out. On the other hand, I wasn't quite smart enough to really enjoy it as much as I could have. I spent so much time and energy slogging through things just to keep up that I rarely had enough left to appreciate the elegance of what I was doing, to enjoy the reward. No regrets, though. It's pretty easy to be happy when the work is done.

So, now. I am in the middle of interviews. I have the second interview for my "first choice" job next week, and if that goes well then I will have a sweet job come March. The schedule is not ideal (Saturdays), but other than that I think it will be a great fit for now, as well as a good way to open doors for later. I couldn't really ask for more, especially taking this crazy economy into account.

A quick look at the calendar will tell you that there is quite a bit of time until March. So even if things go according to plan, I will have some free time before a job begins. Here is my confession for the day, internet: for the past several years I have been really bad at enjoying free time. I just spent it worrying compulsively about the next class, assignment, or semester. I tried to relax and have fun, but just couldn't do it (seriously, it was really pathetic). This new non-school free time is super-rad, and for the first time in my adult life, I am looking froward to the upcoming break. Sure, I am excited to start a career, but I am even more excited to practice all the fun things I will be doing outside that career.

This was a bit of a catching-up post. I plan to make these a little more fun in the future. So watch out, because I have plans.