These 3,000 pieces are the reason we haven’t eaten at the dinner table since July.

Dave and I have been rather busy this fall.  Lots of fun things!  Certainly things that could be blogged about…cough.

This last weekend, however, we had a break from all the fun.  Sleeping in forever on Saturday and a long bike ride to Lake Michigan on Sunday was the perfect change of pace.

With two busy jobs, we don’t always keep up with the things of daily life.  And we don’t always take the time to step away from the madness.  Time to change that.

When a person sends your husband home with a whole bunch of tomatoes, I wish that person would also teach your husband how to cook…or send along a recipe.

Any ideas what to do?

This is how Dave and I celebrated Easter earlier this year.  Don’t worry, it wasn’t as sacrilegious as it may seem.

This photo has nothing to do with this blog post.  We went to the Chicago air show last weekend.

So, to keep up a blog.  I read an article recently that described blogging is a dying form of communication.  A bit funny for a form of communication which didn’t even exist not that long ago.  It seems Facebook makes single sentence updates so much easier.  I rather like the idea, however, of keeping the “more traditional” blog alive.

What can I say in the form of an update?  In all honesty, this year has been a bit odd.  Good things happened.  Bad things happened.  We mostly survived it all.  Let’s see what I can do to provide interesting details and not further contribute to the death of blogging.

I grew a patio garden this summer.  Starting with basil seeds and a couple seedling trays resulted in a lot more plants than I thought it would!  I also have three tomato plants, but they haven’t grown quite as heartily as the basil has.

My harvest from last weekend included a whole bunch of basil.

I thew the basil into the food processor with garlic, pine nuts, cheese and olive oil, and we have enough pesto to last a very long time.  I divided it into small portions (the perfect size for pesto pizza) and froze most of it.

I think I’ll do a garden again next year, but maybe diversify my herbs a bit.

#38 – Memorize every last French flash card.

#39 – Hire a French tutor to work with me once a week (6 months).

I’m taking a different approach to getting my French up to speed, and Dave is coming along for the ride!!  We found a native French speaker who has been coming to the apartment once a week to help us out.  One of her first comments to me, “Flashcards are boring!”  She spends an hour talking to me, and correcting my goofy grammar, and she spends an hour teaching Dave the basics. 

I know French much more as a spoken language than a written one…this comes through two summers of total French immersion in Quebec 10 years ago, as well as a customer service job speaking French on the phone.  Revisiting the basics through Dave, while spending time each week just talking in French, have been really valuable and fun. 

Dave’s homework is focused on memorization, while mine is focused on reading and writing things I am interested in, focusing on improving spelling and grammar.  I’ve enjoyed doing this with Dave, and our different talents in life help each other learn.  That’s to say that I just say anything in French to get my point across, while Dave focuses on spelling and pronouncing thing correctly.

The goal is to take our summer vacation in Quebec in 2012.  It would be wonderful to introduce Dave to that time in my life, as well as reconnect with the family that I lived with.

This did get done this winter…with kinda mixed results.  The good news is that I passed all of the physical eye tests.  My vision is better than 20/20.  The challenge, however, is that I didn’t get answers to any of my concerns.  I know that my vision has changed in the last couple of years.  Just ask any of my coworkers…they will all complain that I save documents at 130% size.  And I’ve always had floaters, but they now get stuck in my direct line of sight, while that never happened before.

I really wan’t pleased with the opthomologist that my general practicioner referred me to.  Three hours in the office, and about four minutes with the actual doctor, didn’t seem cool.  I will not be going back.

Not sure what my next step is here.