1. As you can imagine, the last week of school before the Christmas/winter break is challenging for classroom teachers -- at least in elementary schools.
Today, Debbie arrived home earlier than usual to rest up a bit after an intense school day. Her students would be performing at 6:00 at the high school as part of a concert featuring students in grades 3-12 in the Kellogg district.
Her early arrival home gave me a start, a good start, I might add, and I wondered how soon she wanted to eat dinner.
"I'm really hungry."
"Okay. I'll get right on it."
One reason I love cooking with the wok is that I can have a dinner ready to eat in 20-30 minutes.
Tonight, I took out a large frying pan with vegetable and sesame oil, got the Trader Joe's Thai Wheat Noodles heated up and ready to eat.
I then did some chopping and slicing.
I'd thawed a couple of small, thick strips of tri-tip steaks. I sliced them into small pieces.
I sliced a red onion, chopped a half a red pepper, sliced and chopped an eggplant and half a yellow squash, and had sliced mushrooms on hand, ready to go.
I heated oil in the wok and then stir fired the beef with the onion and red pepper, added in the eggplant and yellow squash, and saved the mushrooms for last.
I dressed the noodles with soy sauce, added ginger and red pepper flakes to the stir fry and PRESTO! in fairly quick order, Debbie and I had a delicious dinner ready to eat -- Debbie nourished herself and had some more time to rest before the concert.
2. Debbie left for the high school and then, a short time later, she called me from our driveway. At the high school, so many people were attending the concert that Debbie couldn't find a parking spot.
No problem.
I hopped into the Camry and drove her back to KHS and dropped her off with a plan that she'd try to find a ride home or would call me to pick her up.
She found a ride.
3. Debbie wanted to go with potables more powerful than Hazy IPAs when she came back home and asked me to go to the liquor store and pick her up gin and Cointreau.
Which I did.
This led to me experiencing a small but exhilarating triumph.
You see, I'm not a skilled handyman.
I'm especially lousy when it comes to doing tasks requiring fine motor skills.
I'm clumsy, especially with small batteries, clips, screwdrivers, and other tiny things.
Well, on my trip to the liquor store, I had both Debbie's and my fob in the car.
I'd had an experience on my trip to Oregon that led me to believe my fob battery was getting low.
This evening, a message came up on the control panel telling a fob's battery was low.
Only mine?
Debbie's too?
I didn't know.
When I got home I found a YouTube video I've watched in the past for instruction, got new fob batteries out, and slowly, clumsily, inexpertly, and patiently removed each fob's battery, replaced each one, tested them by locking and unlocking the doors to the Camry, popping open the trunk, and testing the ignition.
Success!
I don't know what runners feel like when they finish Bloomsday or the Boston Marathon or an Ironman race, but my sense of accomplishment and triumph at completing this task must have been pretty close to those athletes' joy.
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