It’s the Simple Things [NOT 27/3/22]

image of sitting meerkat with the text "Go Ahead. Take a break."

Hi, friends!

How did your weekend go? I hope it was a nice weekend and you had time to get things done. Or not done, if your goal was doing nothing. 🙂

One of my errands today was the grocery store and I got a loaf of french bread. I don’t like sandwiches much and I don’t typically keep bread in the house. I also don’t have a toaster. If I want toast, I break out a skillet.

Anyways, fresh bread and soft butter is just one of those simple things that I adore. So I’ve had a nice mid-day snack with that bread and looking forward to repeating that tomorrow after work.

In other news, I’ve finally caught up with the yard work. Now I’ve got a few weeks of nothing until I need to plant tomatoes and start weeding, etc. But all the beds are cleaned and prepped, which felt like a huge achievement.

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11 Comments

  1. nice 🙂 i’m finally eating something today, & getting ready to make dinner.

  2. I rarely keep bread in the house either. Buttered  toast is such a simple but delicious treat.
    I’m not having a very good weekend. Lots of electronic issues. In fact, I’m looking for a volunteer to cover Happy Hour this week if anyone is available. I’m not sure my laptop is going to be functional.

    • I can do that. Friday at what time?

       

      • Thank you! Friday at 4pm. I appreciate it.

  3. Spring Purge!!!

    I went through all the electronic devices I inherited. I donated a Samsung phone to a women’s shelter so that a woman can have a phone where her abuser can’t find/reach her.

    I have a decent Go-Pro; it’s older but dang it takes nice pictures. It’s got all the accessories so assuming my summer trip happens I’ll take it with me.

    Gave the old iPad and Kindle to families with kids who can use them and am setting up an old iPhone to just hold my music in the car….

    Phew, I’m exhausted.

  4. I got a lot done in various areas. Got all the winter toys, like skis and snowshoes, put away for the warmer months, and cleaned/organized the garage in the process as well. Did some yardwork, altered a couple pair of shorts, walked the dogs, went for a run, did tons of laundry and dishes. Placing the grocery order tonight for pickup tomorrow.

  5. Well, I used that coupon for the $16 car wash, got a bit deeper into doing my taxes and bought an electricity converter/adapter for my upcoming trip to Spain. I also enrolled in another course on passing the translation certification exam since I didn’t make it last fall and I may or may not still retain the knowledge from the course I went to Alexandria to take in the before times.

    And I barely keep bread – or, actually, much food at all –in the house, myself: Back when I was traipsing all around town interpreting in person, I got used to eating on the run. Of course, now that I work from home. . . ? Well, maybe I just rationalize it away by thinking about how nice it is to get the fuck out after being here all day.

    • Are you going to be in Madrid? You should go to reopened culinary landmark Cafe Melo in Lavapiés. It’s Galician and they serve zapatillas, which are monstrous grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, essentially. Since we are talking about bread in this thread this is relevant.

      I have an upcoming FYCE for the zapatilla. I tried to find the website where I found the recipe (I had to translate it myself out of Spanish) but couldn’t. Here is an old review of the place that’s the best one I could find. The owner retired and his daughter closed it for a while but it’s now back up and running.

      https://letstalkmadrid.com/zapatillas-and-croquetas-at-cafe-melos-bar/

  6. Mmm . . . well, I’ll still be within the Comunidad de Madrid, but an hour or so outside of the city proper. (In NYC terms, think of . . . maybe White Plains?) Granted, we are taking a field trip to a courthouse in Madrid to witness a trial, but already included is lunch at the equally landmark Casa Mingo that day. (The program organizer seems to have a thing for all of us sticking together and following a certain itinerary as well, but perhaps I’ll get into that a bit more later, if my impressions are proved to be correct.) This Melo’s place looks to have already been going strong there when I was living and pretending to study abroad in Spain at the turn of the century, though, and fucked off on a couple of final exams (and later, inexplicably, even passed one of them) in favor of staying in Madrid for 10 days, so I’m kicking my 22-year-old self for not finding it when I had the chance. Of course, I’d never heard of salmorejo back then, either, and there’s at least a place right next to the town’s train station serving it, so my twice-as-old self is excited for that.

    And wait, you had to . . . translate something out of . . . Spanish . . . ? And it didn’t occur to you to. . . ?

    OK, I’ll pretend this came up around the middle of the month, when I was interpreting for the criminal trial all that week and didn’t wanna know from anybody when I came home every night.

    • Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you but I lived for a while in a Spanish-speaking country and upon my arrival at college was tested and exempted from the foreign language graduation requirement. Lo these many years later I can still read Spanish pretty well (especially a fairly simple sandwich recipe) but I’m sure when I speak it I sound like a foreigner who has somehow married into the Spanish Royal Family because my spoken Spanish is so halting and so formal.

      I wanted to concentrate more on the German-speaking world anyway so I continued on as if I spoke no German (I did, I took three yers of that in high school). And plus also, I went to college in the 80s, and Spain was just crawling out from under the Franco regime in fits and starts, Argentina was unstable, Mexico was kind of messy, Peru, Venezuela, so there would have been few places for me to go much further with that.

      • Ehh, I wasn’t really all that serious about being jealous over your translation, although it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve translated anything – and right now that feels like it would to go that long without doing anything for which there’s a craving, yeah.

        And you’re certainly right that Spain was crawling out from under the Franco regime in the early ’80s, although at least in Madrid there was a bit of a scene going on that would’ve made the crawling rather more deliberate and intentional – or at the very least possibly an effect of the previous evening. It probably almost would’ve even rivaled what was going on in NYC at the time in certain ways, which would have been good and bad, I’m sure.

        Anyway, we all go down our paths and maybe miss out on certain parties along the way. What can you do?

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