Everybody left after River Retreat on Tuesday so it is just us in the house now :) This week, I've done a lot of working at Target which has left me pretty exhausted by the weekend. Tuesday is tutoring night so I just made an easy meal of chicken meatballs. It was pretty good & fed me all week for lunch. Jeff has been pretty stressed out with school lately. He has to turn in his proposal for his PhD defense in the next few days so that he can take his written exams & become ABD (all but dissertation). Until he does all of this he cannot apply for any grants or scholarships. This is stressful because we just recently found out that UNC only gives funding to students for 10 semesters. This is Jeff's 10th semester. We are pretty worried. We already knew that we would have to pay for Jeff's student fees next year (about $4-5,000) but add UNC tuition on top of that & we will be looking at having to get a loan so Jeff can finish & graduate. It seems really unfair if this becomes th e case, considering that Jeff graduated with a Masters after 3 years at UNC & started over as a 1st year student with his PhD. But this is a sore subject for Jeff & a source of constant stress & worry for us, so family please don't mention it to him!
I have been learning how to run the cash office at Target lately. It's been good, if a little tedious & boring. The person that is teaching me is beyond Type A & those not know me really well know that that is a personality trait that I cannot understand & generally cannot tolerate. Otherwise, Target is still going well & I am still hoping to start the business college there very soon!
Kimberly has started tenatively planning her wedding. We unsuccessfully went gown shopping on Monday but I think it was still good because we talked a lot about wedding plans & I gave her some tidbits of things I learned from my wedding & would do differently. I really love being able to help her during this time!
This weekend Jeff & I had a few "dates." Saturday after tutoring we went to Raleigh for lunch at an irish pub (yum!) & then attempted to see the Genghis Khan exhibit at the museum. Attempted because they were completely sold out! We bought tickets to see it Sunday. After buying tickets, we went to Jeff's parents place because we had plans to have dinner with them. We arrived somewhere between 2-3pm, waited for 30 minutes to see if anybody would come home & then went grocery shopping....only to wait some more. We finally got a call from them around 5pm telling us that they bought a car & would be home soon. They came home with a 2011 Prius. Good for them! But we missed our movie so instead we went to the 8:30pm show of The Artist. If you haven't seen it, go! It's really REALLY good! I'm a very big Gene Kelley fan & it was so resemblant of Singing in the Rain that I was enamored. Sunday we went to see Genghis Khan, which was also really interesting. They had a lot of cool artifacts, including a Mongolian Princess mummy! We really enjoyed ourselves.
Besides the meatballs, this week I have made roasted pork tenderloin with peppers and onions. I also made a bread pudding with gruyere cheese & carmalized onions. The onions didn't brown & I am wondering if that is because I really REALLY need a dutch oven. Unfortunately they run $100-200 soooo I'm not getting one for myself anytime soon. I also made a chocolate buttercream cake. It turned out excellent! Did you know that egg yolks only make for a very light & airy batter?! I made it in my springform pan & I tested it with a toothpick to make sure it was done but after it cooled in the pan & I attempted to take it out of the pan did I realize how undone it really was! Ugh! It went back into the oven & finished cooking while I made the icing. It was a lot of work but at the end I was satisfied until I dumped the chocolate in only to forget that I really should have melted it first! LOL! So the cake was iced with buttercream icing & chocolate chips. Tasted fine, especially with the chocolate glaze I put over it as a finishing touch ;) Tonight I am making chicken parmatouille, carrot muffins for my breakfasts this week, and a peanut butter chocolate tart for dessert. For all those that will be watching the game tonight, go niners!
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