Too Much Fun

Monday, February 24, 2014 – Too Much Fun

It’s happened again.  I scheduled too many fun activities these past few days. The frenzy started on Friday when I hosted a tea party here at Thompson Manor for a dozen or so AHS friends.  I got so excited about all the good healthy snacks I could serve that I spent hours in the kitchen before my guests arrived after school.  As usual, I over-prepared, so we now have a refrigerator full of leftover egg salad, Indian spiced red lentil dip and lemony-garlicky white bean dip (both original recipes), crudités, cheeses, edamame, and more – not to mention all the yummy chips, crackers, nuts, dried fruit, and Trader Joe’s cookies (lemon thins, ginger thins, almond windmills) and candies (chocolate covered cherries! chocolate covered blueberries!) that I can’t resist.  

 

After pigging out all day Friday, I should have given my stomach a break for the rest of the weekend.  However, I didn’t.  Before Cheri and I went to see a play at the DCJCC on Saturday afternoon, we stopped in at Malaysia Kopitiam on M Street for a bountiful South-East Asian lunch.  After the theater, I cooked up a big pot of steamed mussels for dinner.  On Sunday, I joined a group of Hadassah friends for Lebanese lunch at Me Jana in Arlington.  Afterwards, I should have gone home for a nice long nap.  Instead, I went with my friend Michelle to a late afternoon performance of the Mark Morris Dance Group at George Mason’s Center for the Arts.  In case you’re wondering, Elliott did just fine in my absence.

Fortunately, I had a little more downtime today so I’ve been able to catch my breath a bit.  Mainly, I managed to drink a lot of tea and read a couple of chapters in the book for my history class.  And just when I was bemoaning the lack of exciting foreign travel in my life, Elliott has offered me an adventure into the unknown.  He wants to send me up a ladder into the unfinished attic, armed only with a flashlight, headlamp, and a camera, to track down the exhaust pipe from the kitchen fan.  Since there is no floor in the attic, I’ll have to step gingerly onto the beams as I traverse the space.  There’s a good reason for this project.  For several years now, the exhaust fan hasn’t worked properly, resulting in a houseful of smoke whenever I cook a steak or burger in the grill pan.  Now that we’re about to re-do the kitchen, Elliott has decided that we must determine the cause of the malfunction.  My assignment is to take photos that he can study, and to monitor the fan (sounds, vibrations, etc.) as he carries out a series of experiments in the kitchen.  I hope to report the results in my next post.