Okay, so it's been a few days since I last blogged. Nothing cricital's happened; I've just been crazy-busy.
Wednesday night, Evelin called from her sister's in New Jersey to let me know she was going to take the early train home, which meant she'd get into D.C. around 9:15 a.m. Since we'd finished things up with the contract publishing job the night before, I figured it wouldn't be any trouble to come into the office late on Thursday morning, so we scrapped plans for Evelin to hail a cab, and I met her at the train station.
It was great to get Evelin home and to get her settled back into the house after a few days away, but once I got to the office around 11:00 a.m. I ran into a crisis -- three of the files for the contract-publishing project had been corrupted and all the data lost. So, Thursday (which was supposed to be my chance to catch up on my regular work) was spent largely updating week-old files to the version that was approved by the client and final proofed.
Friday, was spent working on my regular newspaper: I got two-thirds or so of it finished, and I need to edit a few more things before I can layout that middle third to finish things on Monday.
Evelin had a doctor's appointment (she needed to see her new GP to get a referral for the amniocentesis), so I was taking Metro to/from work. When I got home, I found out Evelin had some spare time during the day to make lasagna. Yum.
Actually, the lasagna I got to eat was made from the leftover materials from the lasagna she made for friends of ours, P--- and J---, who had their baby two weeks ago. Which brings us to Saturday, when we drove up to Philadelphia to see P---, J--- and their 11 pound, 4 ounce, little boy.
We had a good visit and got to hold the baby and pet the greyhounds, but not at the same time, before heading out to J--- and M---'s new house to dye Easter eggs.
Evelin's been wanting to dye eggs for a few years now, but we never got around to it; in fact, earlier this year, she threw out the two or three PAAS egg dying sets that had been bought in previous years but never used.
[ASIDE: We started wondering during the egg-dying festivities where the PAAS name came from, especially when we noticed the company address (Signature Brands LLC) was in Ocala, Florida. It turns out to be a term for the Easter season (comparable to Yule and the Christmas season), according to entries in various online Webster's.
Paas is not in my American Heritage 3rd Edition, but the Webster's gives Pace as part of the definition, which might yield some clues: pāce is the ablative of the Latin pāx, or peace. While I can find some online Easter prayers that include the phrase "a season of peace," that phrase seems to be more closely identified with Yuletide. Easter seems to mark the season of hope. So that looks like a wrong turn.
Digging some more into information on the church calendar, it looks like Paas could come from or be a variant of Pasch, which is derived from the Late Greek πάσχα or Passover, which until the fourth century or so was celebrated by early Christians who gradually replaced Pasch with the Easter feast.]
Much fun was had with the dying, only one big spill of blue dye (and J--- had wrapped the table we were using in plastic packing wrap, which made clean up easy and permanent color changes to the table nearly impossible) and three or four eggs that fell from hands to crack on the table.
Evelin won the prize for egg decoration when she was trying the EggAround wrapper. Basically, EggAround is a heat-shrink sleeve to that’s placed around the egg and then dropped for a few seconds into boiling water to cinch around the egg. Evelin managed to get the wire egg holder trapped under the EggAround before dipping it into the water effectively creating a handle for her plastic-wrapped egg. The prize was a pint of Ben & Jerry's Terra Fuela "super nutrient-enriched intervale organic potting soil complete with sow-your-own [sunflower] seeds."
Today, thus far, has been alternately rainy and sunny but really windy and cold. We took a look around the garden and there are signs of life in the pea patches and spinach bed (although it looks more like neat rows of grass or weeds than spinach at this point), as well as on the raspberries and apple tree.
On the downside, about half the rosemary bush looks like it was serious frost damaged/killed during the winter. We'll have to see how much of it comes back. And a freeze is predicted for tonight, but hopefully everything will weather it well.
Evelin's also been cooking up a storm today: <NewEnglandAccent>cown chowdah</NewEnglandAccent>, apple pandowdy, and she may be thinking of some bread or something else. However, because the kitchen floor is cold, she is refusing to be barefoot while cooking …
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