Caesar!

Saturday was a great day - I slept pretty well and far longer than I had Thursday night (yeah!).  Awoke to watch my cooking shows which made me hungry (as they always do).

We had comped tickets to see STOMP! at Gallo Center for the Arts - a show we selected when we won the four sets of tickets in a raffle - but my heart just wasn't in it.  My weekends are just so incredibly precious to me and I didn't want to trundle off for a 3PM show.  So J. went alone and he said after that while he enjoyed it, he thinks I probably wouldn't have cared for it much - I am blessed to have a partner who doesn't mind me claiming my need to 'do my own thing' for a few hours and will happily go do his with no drama.

I did a great job yesterday continuing the great clean-out of my closets, dresser and armoire - five huge bags ready to go and a couple more huge bags well underway.  I feel ashamed of all the 'stuff' but then I feel blessed.  Blessed to have a husband who doesn't judge and just says 'if you don't wear it anymore, it's OK to let it go'.

WinCo shop was also on my list - I procured our 'regular' supplies for the week as well as stuff for dinner last night.  Crafted a delicious Caesar salad from scratch including homemade croutons - and it was one of the best Caesar's I've had in my life (if I do say so myself and apparently, I am!). Delicious croutons; wonderful dressing made with no raw eggs.  Then pasta with Alfredo sauce (which I took major shortcuts with but it was still delicious - translation: sauce from a jar but I jazzed it up with some freshly ground nutmeg).

AND - best of all things - one of the items cooked on the show was short ribs which I've wanted to cook since The Pioneer Woman made them on her show awhile back.  I looked high and low for short ribs that weekend and found none - but WinCo had them - and Amy Thielen made them on her show yesterday morning (Heartland Table - LOVE IT!) so now I can make that for dinner this evening.

After the wonderful meal last night, my cell phone rang - my assistant lives across the street from one of our schools and she said 'there's a fire engine at the site and they used bolt cutters to get into the gate'.  I grabbed my keys and sprinted out the door - kids had set a nylon jacket on fire near a ball wall. The campus is safe and we still had enough chain left to re-chain the gate shut.  Nothing like a fire truck using bolt cutters to jump start your energy level.

Today, I'm heading into my office for a few hours - haven't done that in a long, long time but I'm working on a lot of budget stuff.  I felt so accomplished last week as I did make huge progress during normal work hours but honestly, it was hard.  The regular 'noise' of a group of people doing their thing combined with a job where frequent/constant interruptions are the norm makes accomplishing complex tasks that require calculations to balance and re-balance challenging.  So today, I head in for a few hours of 'just me time' and will plow through massive amounts of stuff that needs plowing.  It's another week of out of the office more than in - so the few hours I spend today will be time well spent.
J. is at church this morning.  H. will enjoy a day off before starting his new job.  Sunday dinner will be in the oven shortly after noon - and  I think another Caesar salad is on the menu.  If they turn out that great every time, I could actually live on them - just add various protein items to the mix.

Which reminds me:  I meant to add shrimp to the pasta last night and totally forgot about it.  Got so lost in the Caesar making that I forgot the protein for the pasta dish.  Oh well.  No one seemed to notice -