My Stolen Day

Wow, a whole day to myself?! Whatever will I do?!

Typically Fridays are spent driving roundtrip from Seattle to Rock Island to get more fruit for the weekend markets. I have been accompanying Leigh for a few weeks now out of love and kindness, but this has proven exhausting for both of us and we wind up spending a whole day in the truck getting nothing else done. Plus I don't get paid for my time, so it's really just been to keep her company. Since we are going to Portland on Monday and Tuesday we won't have those days to catch up on things around the house or run errands. With this in mind I chose to stay in Seattle today so I can get some work done on the library, clean the house, do some cooking and baking, and run a few other errands. Plus I got to sleep a little later and relax. At least one of us will have some energy going into the weekend...

My To Do List is long and varied but mostly involves some officey type tasks at the library, a few business tasks at the house and some wifey duties like cleaning the bathroom and making some food for us to munch on throughout the weekend. My list gets me thinking about how different this summer has been from what I had imagined it to be. Let me recap my list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer and note the ones I have actually gotten around to:

1. Work a lot, save money (CHECK)

2. Practice French with other francophiles ( HALF-CHECK: um, this happened once. Now I always work when these groups are meeting)

3. Start learning German, up to Level Two maybe (FAIL: I've learned a few vocabulary words and about 6 or 7 verbs but I don't have the time or energy for this)

4. Read In Europe by Geert Mak (CHECK: I should have this 800+ book finished in a week or so)

5. Catch up on lots of reading, maybe a book per week (FAIL- no time/energy)

6. See a Seattle Storm game (FAIL)

7. See a Mariner's game (FAIL)

8. Hike at Mount Rainier (FAIL)

9. Visit Portland (DOUBLE CHECK)

10. Spend a day at Alki Beach (does taking a 1 hour walk along the water count?)

11. Go for sushi (FAIL)

12. Enjoy the nightlife (FAIL)

13. Make new friends (FAIL: I only ever spend time with Leigh, my grandparents and whoever is my neighbor at a given farmer's market; then I go home and crash after a 10-12 hour day)

14. "Vacation" in eastern Washington (rafting the Wenatchee River, "Get Down German Style" in Bavarian Leavenworth)

15. Eat well, work hard (DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QUADRUPLE CHECK!!!)

So basically I FAIL at summer. In my defense, it's not over yet. Leigh and I have plans to fit in a Mariner's game and hopefully a Storm game also. We REALLY want to hike at Rainier, but it looks like Leigh's hours are about to increase to working 6 days per week. Hopefully we can take a few days off before we leave for Anchorage to do some vacationy things like that.

In the end I can't really complain because our primary objective was to work a lot to save money and have fun, which we are generally doing. We get to watch Seattle pass us by every day from our farmer's market booths. We eat well from the local, organic ingredients we buy and trade for everyday, we get tons of exercise and appreciate our down time more than we ever have before. So here's to looking at the bright side of things...

Update from Wallingford Community Center, Seattle, WA, USA

Once again I'm stealing WiFi from the Wallingford Community Center whilst waiting for the truck. I'm starving and a little tired, but hoping to do something fun tonight like catch a movie. Mostly I just want my dinner because I haven't eating since before noon today and it's now after 20:00.

Leigh and I have been pulling some very long weeks and were rewarded with two full days off on Monday and Tuesday, which we spent running errands, sleeping and eating a lot. Sometimes the body just needs to recover via indulgence.

Speaking of indulgences, I need to do some serious shopping for my upcoming job as a law clerk. Originally I planned to get a store credit card to take advantage of the 10 or 15% discount those offer on the day of signing up. This would off-set the frighteningly high sales tax in Washington (9.5%) and allow me to pay for my wardrobe over the course of a month or so. Then reality set it: I really shouldn't increase my credit card debt over something so silly when I don't need to, especially by signing up for a credit card with few if any benefits. Instead I'm going to use some money I've earned this summer in a roundabout way and gain air mile points on my Alaska Airlines card. Ultimately air miles points are more valuable to me and, by making a large payment on the card before going shopping, I'm not increasing my debt at all!

But then how do I get around paying the massive sales tax, you ask? Why, I go to Oregon, of course! Portland, OR is only 3 hours from Seattle and has great shopping plus it's a fun city. Leigh and I took a day trip to Portland a few weeks ago and had a really nice time. So we're going for an overnight next Monday and Tuesday. In the end we probably won't save any money because we are getting a hotel and probably having a nice dinner out, but it will be awfully fun and we could really use a splurge after working so hard for several weeks in a row. I may have mentioned in the past that it has been about 2 years since I've consistently slept on a bed (instead I've had airmattresses, futons, hideabeds, etc), so we're also very excited to sleep on a normal sleeping surface even if it's just for one night!

Well, Leigh should be pulling up in Big Red (the old rusty farm truck we use for markets) any minute now so I should sign off. Until next time!

Baking Up a Storm

I've been feeling like I don't have much interesting to blog about these days. My daily life is fairly routine with working the farmer's markets, chilling in Seattle, keeping up the house and hanging out with Leigh. I've fallen behind on some things I wanted to do more this summer like reading intense books and improving my French (my excuse is that the language groups are usually held when I have to work).

One thing I've really gotten into this summer is baking. When I was in France I thought I'd want to learn how to bake pastries but that never really happened because my kitchen was ill-equipped for baking and I wasn't about to invest in the tools I needed only to have to leave them behind when I came home. Plus it was so easy to just buy a treat from a local patisserie, so why bother?

Then I came home and started to miss certain things around the same time really amazing (and normally too expensive) food items became readily available to me at the farmer's markets. Farmers market vendors in Seattle (and maybe everywhere) are known for trading their goods amongst themselves. Through this process Leigh and I are able to get all the fresh fruit and vegetables we could possibly eat in addition to fresh baked bread and goodies, cheeses, etc. The only thing we don't often trade for is meats but we will sometimes go for some fresh fish.

Through this trading process I have found myself with berries, whole grain flours, beautiful vegetables and, of course, my grandparents' own organic apricots and peaches. My first pie attempt was a strawberry pie using spelt flour and local organic strawberries. It turned out really well, but I must admit I had made a strawberry pie once before using conventional ingredients, so I had an upper hand.

Then I was running low on spelt, so I blended it with some whole grain wheat flour and made a pie with organic Rainier cherries. This pie was a lot of hard work because I had to pit each cherry by hand, but it was so delicious that Leigh and I ate the whole thing in two days! I hardly used any sugar or corn starch because I wanted to focus on the unique flavor of Rainier cherries, so the filling tumbled out a little bit upon cutting, but it was still delicious and very healthy.

Then, on Sunday, a Hmong flower vendor brought a few bundles of lavender to sell along with his regular bouquets. I traded some apricots for a bundle of lavender with hopes of experimenting with a lavender buttercream frosting I tasted a few weeks ago. The frosting will have to wait a bit, but I decided to go ahead and infuse the lavender into a naturally flavored and colored water to use in baking.

Basically I pulled off the buds, chopped it up a bit and simmered it in water until it had a heavenly scent and gorgeous purple color. Now I have one and a half syrup bottles of lavender water in my fridge.

I also used some of the lavender along with green tea and spearmint to make a large quantity of iced tea. Then I started in on my next pie: Apricot! I used the lavender water in place of regular water when making the crust and allowed a few of the lavender buds to get mixed into the pie crust as well. Then I crushed some Riland apricots into a jam-like spread (no sugar added) and cut up some firmer Rival apricots for a hearty texture and placed them throughout the filling.

After adding about 3 tablespoons of sugar and some cornstarch to hold it all together I came up with this:

And the final product with a full lid looks like this:

It tastes a lot like my family's Pipitone Farm Apricot Yum, but with big chunks of whole apricot throughout and and nice lavender crust. Delicious! It's also very filling and rich, so Leigh and I wont' be eating it as quickly as the cherry pie.

Our final victory of the day was what I am calling Melange aux Betteraves (mixture of beets) with olive loaf ciabatta bread. Basically a farmer who knows my grandpa came up to me with a huge bag of greens, beets, and squash to trade for some fruit. The bag contained kale, chard, another green we couldn't name, yellow squash and two types of beets. We chopped everything up and sauteed it with some garlic and olive oil. Basically we got an entire organic dinner without spending a penny. The end result was amazing and oh so healthy.

Wallingford Waiting

Just finished the Wallingford market and waiting for Leigh. The wifi here is awesome. I think this will be a regular thing. Of course, it's more fun when hobos don't come up and ask for "gas money," turn down an offer to call someone for them and the $5 you've offered but instead and ask you to use your bank card to get more money for them. The last time I took cash out for someone I got mugged and lost $40. I was 19 and traveling through WV. It was the middle of the night and pretty scary. Plus, at that time, it took me a whole day to earn $40. At least I learned my lesson when I was young and new when to tell him to get lost. He didn't need gas money like he said, he was just begging and thought I was stupid enough to believe his lie. People suck sometimes.

Anyway, today was OK. Leigh made double what I did in sales, which is awesome for her. We've been enjoying the city on our rare days off and recently have splurged for a little shopping. It's amazing how little I came home from France with. None of my old stuff fits (too big) and the stuff I wore in France I mostly wore out completely and so needs replacing. Plus the amount of stuff I'll need starting in the Fall is almost overwhelming, so better to take care of this in stages.

How do you like my rationalization to go shopping? ;-)

Current Job, Next Job, New Job!!!

I'm currently blogging from the parking lot of the Wallingford Farmer's Market using some very impressive stolen wifi. Seattle is awesome in part because it's so tech-oriented. Everywhere has wifi (except my house, of course), the population is more or less educated and working in one interesting field or another, and some awesome companies have offices here (Google, Boeing, Amazon, etc). I've packed my things and am just waiting for Leigh to bring the truck around to pick up our stuff, take me home, and get dinner started. Starving!!!

The market gig is finally picking up speed. We're working 4 days per week now and sometimes running to the farm to get more fruit, so Leigh works 5 days per week and I keep her company along the way those days. It's weird to be the one working the least between us, but it's not a big deal, just something to get used to for the summer. Maybe I should just enjoy it before my clerkship starts, which I am sure will include long hours and challenging tasks.

Speaking of the clerkship, the job I start Sept 1 is working as a co-clerk for a pool of 10 district court judges. Apparently this is more or less commonplace in certain states, but I'm still trying to imagine how two people will do the work of what is most often 10 people. It should be interesting, to say the least.

One of the first clerkship interviews I had back in the winter recruiting months was with a Superior Court judge who seemed to really like me and we had some things in common, including an interest in languages and the love of travel. This sounds silly, but having a common interest is pretty important for a professional relationship like a judge and clerk because the two must work closely together for a year or more. Ultimately the judge did not make me an offer and extended his regrets. This week I received an email from him offering me a clerkship for the 2011-2012 term, the year following the clerkship I'll begin in September.

I thought about this for about an hour before deciding it was a great idea. For one thing, I am now employed for a full two years with a liveable salary and state benefits. Awesome! Plus I will get the chance to learn about the District Court from a very varied caseload (because it's a pool of judges and not just one) as well as a civil docket in the Superior Court. Basically I'll learn an incredible amount in 2 years. This also means I don't have to start job hunting again for at least 6-8 months if not more like a year or a year and a half. I've never been able to look 2 years in advance knowing what my income would be, where I would work, how much time off I would have, etc. I've certainly never been able to count on having health and dental benefits for this long! In short, I was thrilled and a bit relieved to be able to look forward to this extent.

When I spoke with the judge yesterday via telephone I accepted the position! The judge said that he had been thinking about my interview for some time, was still very impressed by me and saw this as an opportunity to hire me in spite of not being able to for this term (I don't know why he couldn't hire me this year, but that doesn't really matter in the end). So that's the big news for now.

Seattle is still treating me pretty well. Work is fun, the weather just turned summery, the food is amazing and healthy (seriously, I've never eaten this well in my life), and there's always something to do- even if that means just hanging out at home reading or sitting on the porch looking at the city and the mountains.

Jobs

Um, I just got a job offer. Another one, in Anchorage, so I wouldn't have to move again for at least 2 years. This job would start right after my clerkship ends in 2011. I didn't apply for it, I applied for this job last year and now it's being offered to me for exactly when I will need a new job.

Totally unexpected and kind of wigging me out. For a long time just getting an internship seemed like a nearly impossible task and now suddenly these things just fall in my lap. Where's the catch?

I'm really excited at the prospect of being fully employed for 24 months rather than just 12 months, but also wondering if I should wait and see what other opportunities I have after a year of clerking. But then again, who turns down a good opportunity when it comes their way??? hmm.....

This will require a bit of contemplation and some discussion with the wife. I hope I make the right decision...