I thought I'd update my summer goals and see how I'm faring.
1. See a live concert. Sort of. I saw a local band that played at a free summer concert and a local musician who performed at the outdoor bar we visited last weekend. Do those count? We are going to the state fair in a couple weeks and at that time we’re sure to enjoy a performance from a band with a name like “Gary and the Gobstoppers.” Although I haven’t attended a true paid-good-money-for-this-ticket-even-the-insane-service-fees-because-I-truly-love-this-band concert, I can report that I fell in love with a new band this summer: Mumford & Sons. I listen to their songs over and over. I looked up their concert schedule only to find that they’d already toured the U.S. and are now in Europe. Could they not have called me in May and let me know? “Listen, you’re not hip enough to know who we are yet, but you will love us come June!” Woe is me.
2. Purchase and prepare a vegetable that is unfamiliar to me. Yes. Well, except for the “purchase” part. My nephew’s fiancée brought me a kohlrabi and gave me some basic preparation tips. I boiled it and then, unsure of what the firmness was supposed to be, I nuked it for a couple of minutes just for good measure. Then I added a bit of salt and ate it. I got a little nervous because one of my friends had compared the taste of a kohlrabi to that of a radish. I would rather eat the gunk I’m always scraping out of Gideon’s yeasty ears than to consume a radish. However, I found the taste to be more akin to a cross between a potato and a water chestnut. It was good. I don’t know that I was so enamored with it that I’ll make this dish all the time, but I’m glad I tried it.
3. Work on leaving the dogs uncrated while we're not home. Houston, we’ve had a setback. The dogs were doing fine for several weeks. Over time, however, we started to notice some mischief taking place while we were at work. Paper dragged out of a wastebasket and chewed up. A’s artwork pulled off the fridgelator and chewed up. And so forth. I didn’t get too upset about the artwork, believe it or not, because my daughter churns out artwork faster (and in greater quantity) than Campbell’s churns out soup. The kicker came when a photo album got chewed up. All of the photos taken over the past six years or so have been stored digitally, of course, but the old stuff is in albums. And needless to say, I have a strong emotional attachment to them. P got mad (when he came home at lunch and observed the photograph-related carnage) and threw all of the pooches back in their crates. However, I’m fairly certain the primary culprit is Kaiser, our foster dog (I accuse him not because he's not ours, but because he is the one who shows the most interest in eating things that don't belong to him). We’re going to try just crating him and see how it goes.
4. Get back to my goal weight. Sadly, no. I did drag my sizable arse to Weight Watchers a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t pretty. The part that makes me bitter is that I feel like I’ve gotten a fair amount of exercise. I walk the dogs a lot, I go to step aerobics fairly regularly, and I ride my bike (including the recent 35k event I completed). So, I don’t know what to do. I’d give up entirely except that I can’t see how that would help anything. I'd rather not reach maximum density if I can avoid it.
I’ll leave you with a video from Mumford & Sons. I do adore a good banjo (which probably explains why I love blue grass but have zero tolerance for country). I also find myself very intrigued by the lead singer – as in, I’d like to know him in the, um, biblical sense. However, I read on their website that all members of the band are “in their early twenties” and then I remembered that I am an old lady.