The Last Day

Today is the last day of Christmas vacation for me. Today I've been pretty productive too. I almost got up at 6am, but then came to my senses and went back to bed. I got up at 9:30 and made a pot of coffee and started cleaning up my kitchen. It was a mess. Then, I made some brown rice since I found my favorite brand at the grocery store the other day. I usually make about 4-6 cups of it, portion it out into freezer bags of 1/3 c each (a serving of brown rice) and freeze it. It makes for a quick lunch with about a cup of frozen veggies (chopped broccoli or mixed veggies are my favorite ones). Throw it together in a microwave bowl, season with Lawry's Seasoned Salt & freshly ground pepper, and in 2 minutes you have a very nice lunch that stays with you through the afternoon.

I decided I needed to cook up some pork loins I had in my freezer, so I had defrosted them the other day for cooking today. I fried them in my grill pan (a rectangular teflon coated pan with raised grill marks) with some Essence of Emeril seasoning, let them rest, chopped them up, and added them and 3 cups of brown rice to my new enamel coated cast iron casserole dish that I had mixed 1 package each of frozen peas & carrots, frozen green beans, and one can of whole kernel corn. One can of cream of mushroom soup, about 1/3 cup of light sour cream, and two cans of canned mushrooms (undrained) joined the mixture with one onion and one minced garlic clove. Seasoned a bit more, stirred it all up, and baked it for about an hour or so. It made about 8 servings. So, I portioned it all up into freezer bags for my lunch this week. I had some for lunch today, it was pretty good. The corn was a nice addition.

Then, I cleaned out my linen closet that I use to store old bottles of lotion, shampoo, otc medications/creams, etc and a bunch of other junk. I threw out a whole 33 gallon garbage bag of junk from that closet!!! I've got room now to stock up on some good salon quality shampoo & conditioner liters that are on sale now at JCP. I don't intend to work there forever, so I am planning on stocking up a bit on my favorite hair products. I also went through my bathroom and threw out all old stuff like hair products, lotions, bodywashes, etc that I've had hanging around for ages.

Next is my dreaded table. That will get done this evening. I will then clear off my BeautiControl items, throw any open things I haven't used in more than a month, and divy up the rest for sale on eBay. BeautiControl is very similar to Mary Kay and I've been a "consultant" for about 3 years now. I haven't done a party in a year and have no plans to be an active seller for those products. I'll keep the stuff I use and want, and sell or throw the rest. I think I'll keep my consulting status because I do use their skin care line, so I can get a good discount on those items in the future. I am stocked up to the end of spring, however. I won't get to that until maybe next weekend, but my table will be my evening project.

Last night I got my DVR down to NOTHING in it. I had 100 hours of memory (my maximum) and only have 3 hours on there right now because I recorded Dark Knight on pay per view this morning. I don't want to spend over 2 hours watching that today, so I'll save it for another day. I did, however squeeze in time this afternoon to watch The Jerk. That's such a funny movie!!!

Tomorrow I get back into the grind of work -and I'm kind of looking forward to that structure. When I have extended times off like this, I have extended laziness -staying up late and getting up late while doing nothing but sitting around all day. I'll be going to the Morris area on Friday to do some interviews for my study, so I have to prepare for it during the week. Before I left for Christmas vacation I did all of my lesson planning, so I'll just have to "show up" tomorrow and execute them. WoooHooooooo!