Whee and Wii

It is so nice to be home, I haven't been this excited in a long time! We spent the past 12 days house sitting for Pidgeon's parents, who were on a family ski trip in Europe. It was nice house sitting, I got to take the dog out for a walk a lot and we raided their pantry supplies, but there's just something about being in our own apartment. I missed my bed, my TV, my VOIP phone and most of all, my kitchen.  I ended up getting hit with a bout of insomnia last night - I blame it on the pepper spray incident - and when my alarm rang 30 minutes after I finally passed out there was just no way I was rallying awake. So, I switched the alarm off and turned around and went back to sleep. A few hours later, I woke up and realized I missed class, and Pidgeon spent 45 minutes making me feel a lot better about it.

We packed up our room, tidied up in the bathroom and then went downstairs to say hello to his parents and daven. Before Pidgeon could put on his Tefillim, we were given presents from abroad. I got a really nice burgandy scarf (although, with this incredible springlike weather I doubt I'll be using it anytime soon!) and Pidgeon got a really nice dress shirt and a pair of swim shorts. And then, the gave us the new Nintendo Wii and we were clueless as to what it even was! I pride myself on being "in the know" but I have no idea about Nintendo. Truth be told, I just am not a big gaming person. Pidgeon felt the same way, but we both thanked them profusely for the extremely generous and kind gift, and then brought it home with us this afternoon. 

By the time we got back to our apartment, it was past 2:00 p.m. and we still hadn't eaten breakfast! So, we decided to enjoy the warm weather and treat ourselves to an affordable lunch at New Deli on Emek. I had the New Deli salad with Pastrami and Corn Beef and a side of Hot Dog (no bun) while Pidgeon feasted on my hot dog bun and a grilled chicken sandwich. It was just what the Dr. ordered and we really enjoyed a nice, relaxing lunch. We then trekked back to Derech Beit Lechem to run some errands, stopped off at the post office to pick up Pidgeon's bi-weekly supply of comic books, and came back home to settle down.

After unpacking and putting up a much needed load of laundry, we decided to see what this whole Wii thing is all about. The instructions were pretty simple and we set everything up, until we got to the part where we have to unplug the TV from the cable box in order to plug into the Wii. Well, since we are such TV junkies, the thought of unplugging the cable box from the TV just didn't appeal to us. So, we hooked everything else up, set the Wii next to the TV, and just put on the TV and watched a Tivoed episode of CSI: New York. It was a perfect afternoon!

I've been working on a story for my thesis which is part of the reason why I didn't sleep last night. This is the evolution of a story I had written for class last year, but after getting feedback that it was reminiscent of American Pie, I just knew something had to be done! When Pidgeon woke up this morning, I told him the new premise and he agreed that it was much better than the old one. I wrote about a page of the new story this evening and I'm hoping to get the bulk written tomorrow. 

We have a huge food shopping to do tomorrow and I sat down this afternoon to write my list. I decided the menu for Shabbos is as follows:

Friday Night

First course: grilled steak salad and homemade techina

Main course: sweet and sour meatballs, white rice, asian 5 spice chicken, carmelized onion and fennel stir fry, cauliflower kugel

Dessert course: chocolate cake (courtesy of our guests) and fruit

Shabbos

First course: Israeli salad, purple cabbage salad, homemade coleslaw, techina, olives and pickles

Second course: chulent soup

Main course: corn kugel, grilled and fried schnitzel, macaroni and meat, leftover cauliflower kugel

Dessert: apple pie and fruit

I'm hoping to start cooking sometime on Thursday morning and after our cleaning lady leaves on Thursday night. Friday, I'd like to take it a bit easy, and hope to spend most of the time just getting the apartment ready for our sleep over guests. I'm hoping we won't need the heaters as the apartment should be full of kids! I'm really looking forward to that and have my Hebrew version of Eric Carlysle's Caterpillar book all ready to go!

Well, I'm off to start on dinner before Pidgeon has to run an errand. 

Erev Tov from Baka!