What I Was Into – October 2013

It’s November. That’s ridiculous. And that’s all I have to say about that.

On My Nightstand:

Finished Reading in October:

• Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

Partially Read in October:

• Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse

On the Boob Tube: So…. we broke down and signed up for satellite TV again. Tony likes watching football very much and has been limited to seeing just Sunday games here and there for quite a long time now.  He works very hard, and our budget is not tight anymore, so when a good deal came across our radar for monthly programming that included the Sunday Ticket (and would also allow him to watch college football games) I called and arranged for it to be set up.  I’m okay with this.

After weeding out the new shows that didn’t interest us, here’s what we’re recording (my favorites indicated by *):

• Grey’s Anatomy*
• The Middle*
• Modern Family*
• The Walking Dead (and The Talking Dead)*
• The Good Wife*
• Last Man Standing
• The Biggest Loser*
• Parenthood*
• How I Met Your Mother* (except I am NOT loving this season)
• Bones*
• The Big Bang Theory*
• Sleepy Hollow
• Trophy Wife
• Sean Saves The World
• Welcome To The Family
• Scandal
• The Michael J Fox Show
• Top Chef*
• Pawn Stars
• Duck Dynasty
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart*
• Te Colbert Report*
• America’s Next Top Model
• The Carrie Diaries*
• MasterChef Jr*
• Shark Tank*
• Saturday Night Live*
• America’s Funniest Home Videos
• Guy’s Grocery Games

On Netflix:

• Call The Midwife – My business partner mentioned this show in passing on Facebook, and one night when Tony went to bed at 7:30pm and I’d exhausted all new shows and everything else in my online queues, I figured I’d see what it was about.  I watched four episodes in the first night and finished all fifteen episodes of the first two seasons within three days.  I loved it.  This PBS show takes place in the poverty-stricken East End of London in the late 1950s; a convent of nuns and non-nun nurse midwives run a midwifery operation for local residents who can’t otherwise afford doctors’ care. These stories are based off of the books I listed above and read and reviewed last month, and are the mostly-true stories of these midwives’ experiences.  If you have seen and liked Downton Abbey, and like medical shows/babies, I suspect you might like this (although one FB friend said she’s a huge DA and British period show fan and couldn’t get into this one).

Movies I’ve Seen:

• Captain Phillips – Tony and I had a date day one Friday that he had off from work. We went out for breakfast, then went to the matinee of this movie, so it was almost half the price of a regular ticket. But I would have paid full price for this movie. It was just so good. Very intense, for sure; I held Tony’s hand very tightly for the entire two-and-a-half hours, and then cried buckets at the end. Go see it. Or rent it when it comes out on DVD.

At The Theater:

• The Crucible. The high school near our house put on a production of this play, which I’d read in high school and remembered a little bit. I learned to love theater productions when my parents brought me to our high school’s plays, and this is right up Brenna’s alley, so she and I made a date of it. She was hoping for more witchcraft – or at least more references she could understand to the Salem Witch Trials – but she hung in there, tricky acoustics and all. She’s ready to go see more.

• Which is good, because after doing a web search for kid-friendly theater productions I discovered there’s a theater in The City that puts on a new kid production every month. We now have a membership and I’m so excited to get The Critters into this. The Arts are just so important, if not to participate in then at least to learn to appreciate. We’ll attend our first production soon.

In My Ears:

• One Republic‘s new album, “Native”, and in particular their song “Counting Stars”. I don’t often buy entire albums but I’ve always liked this band, and I’m kinda obsessed with this song. It’s just catchy and fun.

On the Internet:

• Humans of New York

In The Kitchen:

• I ended up trying out a lot of new recipes last month. Because I’m not a recipe blogger, I think I’ve mostly decided not to publish any more recipes here – instead I’m linking to those recipes in my weekly-ish “What I Cooked Last Week” posts – and I’m trying to figure out a solution to help me have access to them and which allows me to share them without feeling like a poser in the food blogging world.
• The old fridge that came with our rental house stopped working one Saturday, and by Sunday all the food that should have been cold was merely lukewarm. I flipped out a little bit, and that’s how we ended up buying a new fridge. Long story short: Tony thought the fridge just needed to defrost and then would work again, and he was right. But by the time we realized he was right that one had already been moved to the garage and our new fridge was chilling our food in the kitchen.I feel okay about making this purchase, though, because it was a floor model that was just about half its original price, and well within our budget. Plus it’s so fancy – it has a water and ice dispenser right in the door! We’ve never had a fridge like that before.
• We found a local bakery that makes and directly sells delicious fresh bread for a steal, about $1 for a really large loaf. But even better, they have a dedicated gluten free factory where they make the best taking bread Brenna has had so far. Best part: if we purchase 8 or more frozen loaves in one purchase, they cost $2.50 a loaf. This is by far the cheapest gluten free bread we’ve tried, and also the tastiest. Even Anthony will eat it, and he normally hates GF bread with a passion.
  
  What I’m Looking Forward to in November:

• Getting some serious work in for my job. Last month was a little rough with some unexpected hurdles, but we’re hopefully mostly over those and I can get back to business.
• Getting back on a schedule. Tony finally started with his team this week, and now we know his schedule for about the next year or so. I NEED to have a dependable schedule in order to accomplish everything that needs to get done, and I’ve got a couple big NEW work projects to do that will require my attention.
• Getting back on the exercise bandwagon. (Again.)
• My mom coming to visit for Thanksgiving! Yay! I haven’t seen my mommy in over a year; this is about the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing her. She’s always been wonderful about coming to see us when we haven’t been able to go back to Connecticut, and she’ll be the first family member to see our new home here. Can’t wait!

What were YOU into last month?