The Beginning of the Semester

Finals stole my life for almost 4 weeks. Then the holidays kept me captive, and then Egypt. But now, I'm in the beginning of the semester. The time of year when 15 hours of class and keeping up on the reading leaves gobs of free time to enjoy.

So in my spare time, I've been blissfully doing normal stuff. Cheerfully, I filled my car with gasoline at my regular station. Grinning, I picked up and dropped off stuff at my dry cleaners. E and I sleep in the same bed, talk about nothing, watch the Simpsons, and have already put in an appearance our favorite pho joint (after a record breaking absence of 2 full months!).

Ecstatically, I made a grocery list and went food and wine shopping. With my spoils, I made bolognese sauce from scratch and froze 2/3 of it for future use.

With the remaining 1/3 of the bolognese sauce, I made lasagna. I took a risk and tried the newfangled barilla no boil lasagna noodles. The noodles worked fairly well. Next time I use them, I'll go heavier on the sauce, since it appears that they soak up more liquid than boiled noodles (in hindsight, this seems fairly obvious...). Unfortunately, the last lasagna I made, I made the noodles from scratch and the memory of that lasagna put this lasagna to shame. But, we still had company over for lasagna, wine, and conversation that night and we've been living off of lasagna leftovers.

And last night, a group of E's friends and their significant others went out to celebrate birthdays, weddings, etc. Eleven of us sat around a table at Maggiano's and socialized while eating family style. I got to order the wine, because people are kind and like to indulge me. What did I do? Giddily, I ordered a magnum of Querceto Chianti Classico.

Magnums are cool. 12 glasses of wine in one bottle. It's even better when they are reasonable priced and you get both a huge cool-looking bottle at the table as well as decent dinner wine at $4.50 a glass. My selection was a hit and we ordered a second magnum to go with the second course.

So, other than this crazy waking up early thing I've got going on, my life is back to normal with chores, friends, activities, and food. I'm happy.