Work in progress

I loved Gertie’s post the other day.  She is always an inspiration, but what I liked about this post wasn’t so much that it was inspiring, (which it definitely was) but that she made the comment:

I didn’t start my blog until after I turned 30, and I’ve recently been feeling so inspired creatively, like I’m getting closer to what I’m supposed to be doing. When I’m 40, maybe I’ll be even closer. I’m a work in progress, no doubt.

I think that as a young person, it’s hard to know how great getting older can be, especially in our youth-obsessed culture.  I don’t know if I’m noticing the trend of respect and, more than respect, admiration of age more because I feel like my age suits me in a very different way than it used to, or if there really is a trend.  I’ve enjoyed TLo’s posts about some of the beautiful older women gracing the pages of the fashion magazines.  I’m excited for my housemate, who’s quitting her job and moving across the country to go work on a farm, and just heard about another 30something who recently did the same thing and found the experience very rewarding.  Although my review last week at work was a little rough, this week went very well, and with the boyfriend and job going so well, and my decision last year (which I thought I blogged about, but I guess I didn’t) that I really like the way I look, I feel like it’s good to get older.  It’s not all about growing up, it’s about doing the things I want to be doing, and knowing that I’m doing the things I want to be doing.

Anyway, that being said, I’ve been spending all sorts of time on ancestry.com making a family tree (which I know my parents have done before, but it’s so cool to find ancestors in very old censuses, and I love seeing that although my family was always extremely working class, we were on occasion ribbon makers, silk weavers, engineer’s pattern makers, bakers, and green grocers).  I have lots of projects, including the new logo for our frisbee team, and my Lady Grey Coat – if I ever finish it it’s going to be too warm to wear – but I’m getting things done slowly but surely, like my new kitchen worm bin.  So, even though I know that sometimes I’m not doing my projects, I am doing the things I want to be doing.  Oh, and I really will take pictures of the party dress soon, because it turned out so well that I bought the Bridal Couture book that I had been renewing from the library!

So, with that little brain dump, I’ll go put some laundry in and get back to some of my works in progress, including me!

Winter Meals

When I was in grad school, I learned a trick from a friend for eating healthy homemade meals on a tight schedule. It wasn’t a big revelation, since I’d already tried it myself, but her method worked far better than mine. She had drawn up weekly meal plans, including a schedule, a grocery list, and a combination recipe so that all of the week’s dishes could be made in one coordinated cooking session, then stored in Tupperware ready to go out the door.

I have been doing a great clean up and organize effort this year, which has a way to go yet, but I thought I’d revisit her old meal plans the other day. They’re especially good in winter, since it’s not as easy to head to the garden or farmer’s market for fresh bits and pieces. When I looked at her old plans two weeks ago, though, I wasn’t that inspired, so I thought I’d do some new plans. My friend was much more concerned about variety than I am, though, so be forewarned that if you want more than four meals in your rotation, my meal plan is not for you. Here are my plans, which are sourced pretty much from Epicurious.com and smittenkitchen.com

White wine week:
My favorite dish of the week was Orzo with Shrimp, Feta Cheese, and White Wine, from Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/107904?mbid=ipapp)
I also made a delicious chard and white bean stew (http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/01/chard-and-white-bean-stew/), and chicken and mushrooms in white wine sauce (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/1940?mbid=ipapp). Each of those three dishes called for white wine, and I finished the bottle with a dried fruit compote (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/231666?mbid=ipapp). To top it off, I bought a few extra carrots and a full bag of celery, plus some fresh tomatoes and lettuce and I made fresh green salads whenever it felt too wintery. I also steamed some broccoli so that I’d have another cooked green.

This week of food actually lasted closer to two weeks, and I didn’t get tired of eating anything. I did have an unfortunate incident with the pepper grinder and the stew, so finding whole peppercorns in the stew was probably the low point of the week, but using a whole bottle of wine and most of a package of thyme were great perks. Cooking for one can be difficult that way.

Green olives week:
This week, I’m planning to cook a moroccan stew, a barley risotto, and some lamb chops, with a side of escarole or other leafy wintery greens, and some cous cous, probably with raisins involved. I have some white beans left over from the previous cooking session, and the green olives and escarole carry nicely through the recipes. I’m going to do a bit more planning and substituting to make the shopping list more straightforward, but I think it will be another wonderful week (or two) of food.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/squash-and-chickpea-moroccan-stew/

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/barley-risotto-with-beans-and-greens/

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/06/lamb-chops-with-pistachio-tapenade/

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/351173?mbid=ipapp

Do you cook for a week at time? What are your favorite meal plans? Are you interested in having the shopping lists and combined recipes for my weeks? I’d love to hear your story if you try one of these two weeks of food.

A new direction

I’m thinking about taking this blog in a new direction.  I’ll start with this little lunchtime post.

I’ve been imagining what I could do with this fabric for a few months now:

Spring in the Alps from Gorgeous Fabrics

Then, today I was looking at TLo’s post on Monique Lhuillier’s pre-fall collection and saw this dress:

That seems like just the right thing for this fabric.  Although I’m still imagining that what I’d do would be in shirt form… but maybe both.

Images from Gorgeous Fabrics and Style.com

Summer

A month has passed since my last post, and a lot has happened, to be sure.  The most notable of which must be the fact that I am gainfully employed, full time, as a designer at an architecture firm in Eugene!!!

Yes, that gets three exclamation points.  It’s been keeping me busy, which has resulted in the radio silence on this blog, and complete lack of effort on the portfolio website, but I can’t say that I’m too sorry about that.  As you may know, finding another job in Eugene wasn’t my intention, but all of the pieces kind of fell into place.  The women’s utimate team that seemed just out of reach for the past four years is finally coalecsing, and I felt very sad at the prospect of leaving town without having a season with them.  We came in second at Solstice, the tournament here in town, and we absolutely had a blast.  I also got a great new housemate, and hey, well, I got this job, and I really like it.

I’m working at Nir Pearlson Architect, and in the short time I’ve been there, we’ve submitted two projects for permitting.  Next week I’ll turn in the third, and I’ll do it by myself because Nir, my boss, is in Israel for the next two and a half weeks.  I’ll be manning the office alone, working on a few other projects and trying to keep everything going while Nir’s gone.  I think I’ll take the opportunity of the slight lull to make sure that my IDP hours for this job get counted, and to actually work on that online portfolio.

Summer in Eugene is pretty nice – I’m eating cherries as I type, and heading to a barbeque in an hour.  I’m enjoying working with Nir, and I know he’d like me to stick around a while longer and work on a few more jobs.  But although this job, this frisbee team, this housemate, and these cherries are fortuitous and fantastic, I still wonder how long it can last.

Up at Potlatch last week, I was reminded again of life in the city, and the different opportunities to take advantage of there.  Yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening with friends and we talked about San Francisco and Portland, and about living in the city.  I’m trying my best to be here, but, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been having a tough time with that for some time.  I just want to peek ahead, find out where the plot’s going, but unfortunately that’s not an option.  So, I guess I just keep doing what I’m doing until it stops working.  And, I guess that after a few more weeks of just enjoying employed life,  I’ll start thinking again about the long-term plan again.

In the mean time, Potlatch was tons of fun, seeing all the little babies together a few weeks ago was fantastic,  I’m looking forward to Seaside and some sore beach legs, I can’t believe I get to play in Labor Day with my ladies, and I’m still hoping to head to Colorado to visit the brother.  I’m also hoping to get a few more hours of sewing in in the next few weeks because I keep buying patterns and fabric, so I keep needing to make beautiful things.  I’m catching up on Mad Men and thoroughly enjoying Friday Night Lights, and I’m trying to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while, too, whether it be through email, phone calls, or unexpected visits.  So, in sum, life is full, and I’m going to do my best to get the most out of it.  I hope you’re doing the same – summer is so short, so love every minute of it!

Rain, progress

I’m at home right now because it’s raining, and it has been for several days.  Usually I’d be at the frisbee fields, but having gone over there and seen that they were a little more lake-like than is optimal, I found out that our team postponed our game to mid-June.  I was looking forward to the social time, and to running around for a bit of exercise.

I’ve been quite focused the last few days, finally accomplishing some longstanding goals.  I completed my portfolio revisions to my satisfaction.  While I may still work on some of the diagrams I had in mind and didn’t have time to realize completely, I’m very happy to have updated the work to show a few more key skills and ideas.  In addition, I quickly put together a web portfolio.  I’ve wanted to do that for a while, but using GoLive was never that pleasant, and I always seemed to need workarounds to accomplish the actions I was trying to achieve.  While my new effort is elementary, and obviously blog based (I may yet shell out for the hosting so that it can just be rachelauerbach.com and not rachelauerbach.wordpress.com), it gets the job done and has been fun to produce.  It was always tedious to get anything made in GoLive, let alone something that looked even remotely decent, so it’s nice that making this new portfolio was fun and easy, and that I know enough from the old days of html to make it a little better than basic.

[note.  I've just been trying to add a simple slideshow to my portfolio blog and have been foiled.  WordPress doesn't allow javascript, so even though I could script exactly what I want, I am stuck with only being able to use the somewhat clunky slideshows they allow with shortcode.  Maybe it is worth it to pay for the hosting... or maybe I'll just have long galleries.]

The other big milestone for the week was sending out several applications today, all to firms that are quite interesting to me.  It’s been very isolating to not have a job, and especially now that all of my friends who are in school are working overtime to get ready for finals, I sometimes feel like even my social life doesn’t make up for sitting alone all day, every day, working in front of the computer.  Now that I’ve got things to send, though, I can go back to a more varied routine, with time for sewing and reading.  I can also set up some more informational interviews, and hopefully something will progress to the point where I get hired and am once again part of a team – where at least I’ll be sitting with other people all day, every day, even if I’m also working on the computer all day, every day!

On a final note, though I delayed it because I didn’t go back to school this year, I’m doing my annual rereading of Atmospheres and Thinking Architecture now.  So many projects floating in my mind!