A Time For Everything

Some time in January, I talked about buying better quality meat. I didn't follow through at the time, but a few weeks ago, I was caught with my office door unlocked and in came the guy from Grillmasters. They have a base of operations here in the business park.

So long story short, I bought meat from them. It'll take me five or six weeks of short-buying my weekly groceries to pay for it. I'm three weeks in. Not terribly awful and the meat should last for four to six months--supposedly. We'll see.  And I do still have some cheap meat products floating around my freezer.

The steaks are all delicious. The burger patties, not so great. The one variety of chicken we've tried I wasn't impressed with. The sausage was pretty good. And we haven't tried any of the other pork items.

But these are all premium cuts and while that's not a bad thing, I don't really need premium cuts for all of my meat needs.

I don't think I'm going to go with Grillmasters again. I think next time or perhaps when I need other things, like stew meat or ground beef, I'm gonna try the meat market.

If only I could everyone to eat more vegetarian fare, like veggie soup rather than needing to always put beef or chicken it.

Well, maybe once the kids are all gone, which might not be as far in the future as I once thought, I'll convince DH.

If you've got an easy recipe to share, meat based or not, I'd love to try something new!

So I took on my writing group's newest biggest project--a writing contest for published works. We had a former board member who suggested it, the board discussed it, and we (**I**) researched other similar contests and decided to go for it.

For various reasons, I then volunteered to be the coordinator. Luckily, our group has been sponsoring an unpublished works contest for many many years and we did not have to re-invent the wheel for most processes. The gal who has coordinated that contest for more years than not is still a member and has been an invaluable resource for me. She's also a dear friend--THANK YOU, ANGI MORGAN!

Anyway, Feb. 14th was the big moment for our contest--the closing to entries and the sending of same to the judges. It was a daunting task, assigning entries to judges and judges to entries based on the judges' preferred romance category and heat levels. I started with the categories that had fewer entries, but discovered I should have started with those that had more entries and more judges. Note made for the next coordinator.

Once I made sure I had final round judges selected and entry/judge assignments set as well as I could for my first time, it was time to email all the judges with the books. There were over 260 judges and over 130 entries. About half the possible entries and half the necessary judges if we'd had a full complement of entries. Some judges received more than one panel of entries.

I spent four days, as much time as I could spare or handle, emailing out book panels to the judges.

That's what happened to last Friday's post...I was busy and exhausted and just didn't get to it.

But the bulk of the work is done and it's all downhill from here. Thank goodness!

I've created FAQs, recommendations for next and future years, I've broken the jobs out into small chunks so hopefully others will take on some ownership and responsibility.

So my reward to myself for making it through last week is this purse:


I can hardly wait for it to arrive. I'm not really much of a purse person, in that I use them, and I'm picky about them, but I just have one. I don't have a closetful and I use the one until it falls apart and then I have to go in search of a new one. I hate that part.

Is it me or what??

The bulk of the work for my writing group's new contest (more on that Wednesday) is done.

I spent the weekend worried that there was something I should have been doing. I kept pondering what that might have been. I kept up with questions and judges acknowledging receipt of panels, but other than that, there wasn't anything that needed my undivided constant attention. Whew.

Instead, I puttered around the house. Something I haven't done in ages and it felt good and nice and a tad bit indulgent. I still kept thinking that some task for the contest needed doing, but I couldn't think of what aside from what I was already doing (see above).

Of course, I did the usual must-accomplish weekend chores: grocery shopping and laundry.

I also cleaned out a closet. It's practically empty now. Some stuff went straight in the bin, some went into the donation pile, one box had an assortment of old VHS tapes. I'd been wondering what had happened to Gone With the Wind! There were some other movie treasures in there that I think I can make some money from at some point, but that's a post and project for another day.

 The house still needs a good going over, though. Once I'm working part time from home, I plan on getting back to my old method of cleaning house (another blog post for later).

As for my future, a few weeks ago, I mentioned DD had talked about moving out by May when Sonshine graduates from high school. Then the plan sort of stalled for a few weeks. But it appears to be on again and the move-out date has been moved up to no later than mid-March. I mean, she packing her room up and making lists of must-have things for her new abode...

So soon I will have a bedroom to decide what to do with and then redecorate!

Here's what it sort of looks like now:



Sonshine has requested a guest room, though I'm not sure why since we rarely have guests that stay overnight. Well, except a random friend of his, but they usually end up crashing on the couch.

I guess it's time for a trip to Lowe's to look at their paint cards. I like the ones that show the rooms painted already rather than just the cards with variations on a shade.

Any suggestions for my new room?

One of my favorite morning snacks for quite some time now has been a fiber bar in a coconut almond flavor (I could pretend it was an Almond Joy!).

A few months ago, it was brought to my attention that most kinds of "bars," granola and otherwise have a certain chemical that is not very good for you. Don't ask me what it is. I can't remember what it is except that it starts with an M. So I've been considering giving up those fiber bars since I came across that info. Aside from that M chemical, they have all kinds of other things that can't be that great for you either, right?

I just haven't known what to replace it with.

The other day, I was reading one of my latest free reads, How to Kick Your Fat in the Nuts by T.C. (Tony) Hale and something he said sorta hit me upside the head. He was talking about counting calories and he said, "...try eating 2200 calories per day of just chicken, eggs and green vegetables for two weeks.  For the following two weeks, try eating 2200 calories per day of Twix bars and let me know which two week period you had better weight loss results."

And I thought, "Huh."

I mean that makes a lot of sense to me.

But what could I replace my fiber bars with for the same or fewer calories? On the other hand, if you're eating real food, you could probably consume a few extra calories without too much harm. Well, I glean that from the quote above and some of Tony's other comments. What do you think?

Although, healthier and natural and real, I was leery of more fruit. I already eat a banana every day and I put honey on my oatmeal every morning, and sugar is one of those things I try to consume less rather than more of.

Well, when I was at the grocery store Sunday morning, I was perusing the produce and saw a bag of celery.

Now there's a great snack as it seems like you can burn more calories in the act of eating it than you do once you've digested it. And think about all that lovely roughage. Something else we could all use a little more of.

Of course, you can't eat celery plain, but salad dressings--specifically ranch dressings--are also full of that M chemical. But what other tasty treat is synonymous with celery?

That's right--peanut butter!


While my new snack has over twice as many calories (yikes), my quick research says that peanut butter is really very very good for you. It's low in sugar, high in fiber, and insanely high in monounsaturated fats which reduce the risk of diabetes, among other things.

So I'm going to give a try for a week or two and see how things go. And maybe, just maybe, I can convince a few other members of the family to eat it as well.

Are you a fan of the celery and peanut butter??

..with my blog and my faithful readers!

Yesterday, I had every intention on working on a post for today, but my writing group's contest closed for entries and it's my job to sort the judges and assign entries. And so that's what I spent the majority of yesterday doing, along with my regular Sunday tasks like grocery shopping and laundry.

So dear blog readers, I have nothing much to share today other than I'm pooped and I cannot wait until "THIS" has passed. I have several things I'm waiting on to pass, but one day at a time...

Hope you had a lovely weekend and here's to a pleasant week.