this little life of mine

I know it doesn't look like much, but there's still a lot of veggies growing in the garden:

We lost one branch of green bell peppers this last week when it broke off due to the weight of all the peppers on it. Mom rescued them all - about eight of them! - so we might have some stuffed peppers in our future! The rest of the plants are doing good and still producing both green and red peppers:

The Japanese eggplant is still producing as well, although they're smaller eggplants than we got earlier this year. Still I could make a good eggplant Parmesan with them:

And, what can I say about these tomato plants? They're loaded! We have several tomatoes still in the kitchen, but I can clearly see several more that will need to be harvested soon.

Apparently God really wants me to start taking this "health & fitness" thing seriously, because just look what He's stuck in my face now: The Lazy Waisters Triathlon.

Yes, I signed up. Yes, I'm terrified (but only of failing miserably, not of the body aches I'm sure to suffer). And, no, I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself.

Except that maybe, just a little tiny bit, I've been longing to be "that girl" again. That active, athletic girl who enjoyed exercise, and was in track in Jr. High (long jump, mile and mile relay; i tried the hurdles, but always whacked my left knee on the top of the hurdle. am paying for that now with pain and stiffness), and took aerobics classes after school from one of the teachers, and started weight training in college, walked everywhere, and took aerobics, badminton, ballet and step classes as electives, and did just about anything and everything to be active. Because it was an addiction back then. Then it went away. And I got addicted to other decidedly unhealthy pursuits, and it's been so so very hard to get back. But I want to. I really do.

Maybe this is Step One.

At the beginning of August I made a list of "August Resolutions". I'd been thinking about doing it in July, then I read this article on Elastic Waist and it was like God was trying to tell me something. Something like, yes, do it, for the love of Me, please! (I posted my resolutions in the comments and fully intended to post them here as well, but never got around to it.) One of my resolutions was to get off the bus at Monterey Street and walk the six or seven blocks to work. Have I done it? At all this month? Even once?

Um, that would be a big, fat no.

So here we are at just about the end of the month and the only walking I've done has been two miles around the track at the gym with my trainer a couple times a week. I think about getting off at Monterey and walking, but, darn it, I wore heels today, or dang it, I'm in such a good part of this book I'd like to read it a bit longer today, and ... well, you get the picture. Apparently my procrastination has annoyed God to the point that He decided to give me a swift kick in the butt (me and a few other people), and forced me to take a walk. You see, the brakes on the bus started smoking (thick, stinky blue smoke - cough, hack, wheeze) about halfway down the Grade this morning, and once we reached Monterey, the driver said he wasn't taking the chance of the brakes failing completely or catching on fire, and would call in for another bus. I don't know how many passengers he ended up with, because I bailed immediately. The stench was overwhelming and my lungs have actually been a bit achy and congested since then. So, yeah, I walked.

And, it was an okay walk. It's not far (and luckily I did have on good walking shoes today!), but rather than the nice cool marine layer that is usually hanging over SLO, it was sunny, warm and muggy, so I was already sticky and sweaty by the time I arrived at work. So much for my "good hair day". Gah.

Still, at least I did it, right? And it wasn't too bad. Who knows, maybe I'll do it Agna, and maybe I won't need a bus meltdown to do it! 

No, not the movie with the cooking rat, I'm talking about the delicious veggie dish I made last night to accompany my slow-cooked roast and leftover Rice-a-Roni.  I used one of our zucchini and one summer squash, two green and one red bell pepper, three Japanese eggplants and about six small tomatoes along with a couple small cloves of garlic from my grandparent's garden (not pictured).

I got a recipe off cooks.com, but varied it a little with another recipe I found in my mom's vintage cook book. It's pretty simple, really: just chop up all the veggies, saute the garlic and peppers, then add the eggplant and squashes, and finish with the tomatoes, some salt and pepper and some basil, and a splash of red wine vinegar. It was supposed to be baked, but it's been too hot to use the oven, so I just simmered it for 20 minutes in the electric skillet. It turned out great: delicious and pretty, too!

We're down to just a few plants left in the garden:

Mom took out the cucumber plants, and ended up dumping the dirt and scrubbing the Earthbox because the roots of the plants were covered with some fuzzy white stuff. I didn't see it, but it sounds like a mold of some kind. Anyway, she totally cleaned out the box to get rid of whatever-it-was that killed the cucumbers. She also removed the dead zucchinis and summer squash, so we're down to bell peppers, Japanese eggplants and tomatoes.

The peppers are thick and lovely and some of them are even turning red!

The Japanese eggplant looks like it's nearing the end of its run, but it's still full of eggplants:

Both tomato plants are covered with tomatoes in various shades of green and red:

I still have some yellow squash and zucchini in the fridge and plan to combine them with some tomatoes, bell peppers and Japanese eggplant to make a (hopefully) delicious ratatouille to accompany the roast that's currently cooking slowly in the crock pot.

Well, the cucumber plants are gone and the yellow squash and zucchini are on their last legs, but the Japanese eggplant, red and green bell peppers and tomatoes are all doing really well:

We already have a bunch of tomatoes sitting in the kitchen patiently waiting to become part of some delicious BLTs I'm planning to make for lunch, and I can see there's plenty more will be ready to pick soon:

I really need to find a recipe for Japanese eggplants:

And bell peppers ... dang! There's tons of them! I think I'll grab a few of the bigger ones and make stuffed peppers for dinner sometime this weekend:

The zucchini and yellow squash plants are nearly finished, but there are a couple promising-looking blossoms on the yellow squash, so we might yet get more of them:

Mom and I are a little disappointed that the garden is fading so soon - particularly about losing the cucumbers when they were just starting to produce! - but we have a ton of produce in our kitchen, so I think we got our money's worth out of these plants:

We have a couple zucchini left, so I think I will make that wonderful zucchini cake recipe for dinner again tonight, then tomorrow I'll deal with a few of those large bell peppers and make stuffed peppers in the crock pot, and for our lunches this weekend it's BLTs! Just look at that beautiful tomato:

So juicy and sweet, and I love that beautiful deep red colour!! Yummy! So much better than store-bought!

So, you might've noticed I picked up a copy of Breaking Dawn Friday night, or rather, Saturday morning. Miss K. and I went to California Pizza Kitchen after work for some dinner and drinks, and were met by her friend L. I made a complete pig out of myself and not only shared an appetizer with K., but had The Works pizza, a Spa Martini and two glasses of Chardonnay.

After dinner the three of us headed to Barnes and Nobel to await the release of Breaking Dawn. We settled at a table in the Cafe, grabbed some books and magazines and hung out. Eventually Miss S. joined us as well as a gentleman from work who brought his daughter and her friend to the event. It was exciting and fun, and I was surprised I managed to actually stay awake for the whole thing! I did have one of the specialty drinks the Cafe was having as part of the Breaking Dawn festivities (the Jacob's Hairy Eyeball, in case you're interested), but I really thought I would need more caffeine to get to midnight. I must admit I was pretty good, and only bought one other book besides Breaking Dawn - Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies - despite having three others I was thinking of getting. One of them -The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner - Miss K. said she had and would loan me, the second one - Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr - I'm going to get from the library, and the third one (the title of which I can't recall right now, but it was about a garden that had special properties and the women who tended it had a special relationship with it, or something like that ... anyway), I decided to just wait on that one and see if I can get it from the library or a used book store instead.

Around 11:30 p.m. everyone in the book store lined up to await the release of the book. To keep everyone entertained, one of the employees read the last chapter from Eclipse which would've been really cool, except everyone started talking so we couldn't hear it. I suppose that's a good thing, though, since neither Miss K. or Miss S. have even finished the second book let alone the throed!

Finally, one minute after midnight, it was time! The line moved quickly and everyone was very well behaved, so all three of us had our book by ten past twelve! We took some pictures of ourselves with the book (don't look at me funny, a lot of people were doing that!!), and decided to call it a night. Miss K. went back to hunt for her friend after saying goodbye to us, and Miss S. and I hit the road and I was back home in bed reading the first chapter by about 1:30 a.m.!

I didn't expect to be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8 a.m., but I was. After breakfast, Mom and I decided to go shopping at the Target center in Paso (which, in retrospect was as bad idea, but we thought it was only going to be in the 90s, not hit a high of 105!), and we picked up a fireproof safe and a new air filter for our furnace/AC, and a new water meter for my grandmother. We looked for a hand-crank emergency radio, too, but didn't see one we liked, and decided we really should do more research before be buy one. Oh, and I got some new workout clothes. Not terribly exciting stuff, I know, but it was just nice to get out of the house and do something fun, even though it was hot enough to melt flesh!

We had lunch at the new Chili's where I had a couple Patron margaritas and the chicken tacos:

It was really delicious! We'd never been to a Chili's before, so it was a nice treat! We wandered through Michael's, OSH, and Famous Footwear while I sobered up enough to drive, then we stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home to pick up some ice cream and frozen stuff for dinners this week, and went straight home before the ice cream became a milk shake!

Last night had Trader Joe's basil and chicken sausages, four cheese risotto and some frozen asparagus, and watched the Doctor Who finale, which was AWESOME!!! However, somehow we missed the very last two minutes or so of the show. It wasn't too bad; after all we saw how everything with the Davros and the Daleks was resolved and really just missed the parting shot on Bad Wolf Bay. We can live with that!

Today has been a lazy, relaxing day. I went up to visit my grandparents, gave my grandmother her new water meter - which she was thrilled to get as she'd misplaced her other one - and checked out my grandfather's brand new computer and 19" flat screen monitor. Wow, it's nice! And so fast! Most importantly, thought, it works, unlike his old one which would shut itself down and announce a "thermal event" or something of that nature. He kept track of how many times he turned it on and it shut down, and the last count was 42 times before it finally turned on and stayed on long enough for my uncle to download all grandpa's stuff to a media card to upload onto his new machine.  It's an eMachine brand, which I'd never heard of before. My aunt really loves hers, though, and grandpa got a good deal on the whole set up (including a new printer which he didn't need, so he gave it to my aunt), so he bought it. I'm very happy for him because he loves his computers! Ever since getting that first Atari back in 1970-something-or-other, he's been hooked! He mostly plays card games and does e-mail and watches my cousin play basketball, but it keeps his brain going, which is so important when you're 92!

Tonight I'm going to try a zucchini recipe I found on The Pioneer Woman Cooks! It looks pretty easy and delicious, and I'll update to let you know how it goes! But, now, it's nap time! Cheers!

Here's what the garden looks like this week:

The cucumber plants are essentially dead. Mom is planning to pull them out sometime this week.

The yellow squash plant is fading fast as well, but there's a few more squash growing there:

The Japanese eggplant plant looks pretty good, though and has several eggplants on it. Now I just need a recipe for them!

The bell pepper plants look fantastic and there are tons of green and red bell peppers:

The tomato plants are huge and we're finally starting to get some ripe ones:

The zucchini plants are sad and pathetic and covered with white and green bugs. I have no idea what they are, but they're very resilient. Mom has been spraying them with insecticidal soap - both store bought and home made - since they were planted, but these bugs just don't seem to die! Anyone have any idea what they are, and how to kill them???

*sigh* We've decided that when we do our garden next year - providing we decide to even have a garden next year! - we're going to spray the plants immediately upon bringing them home, even before planting, and hopefully kill any little bugs or larvae or anything that might already be on them.