let the projects begin...

...not necessarily the New Year's projects, but there are certainly some of those, too. (Most will be in a later post...I know, it's already January 3 and no New Year's "intentions" or "goals" posted but who says you have to do that in your blog on January 1?) These are more of the "I'm back in Austin and not back in work yet and there are some things I've been wanting/meaning to do" projects.
Project #1: Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon
Let me just say that Julia had A LOT of time on her hands. I really enjoyed pulling together this recipe - beef, beef stock, bacon, red wine, carrots, onions, thyme, tomato paste, mushrooms, butter...how can you go wrong with those ingredients?! Yum. It was like my own little creative adventure on New Year's Day. But really, it was probably the most intense cooking project I've tackled to date. I think I started at 4:00 p.m. and didn't pull the dish out of the oven until almost 10:00 p.m. (Luckily I had already planned to have something else for dinner!) Thanks to Jess, I made a few substitutions to make this recipe a little more waist and heart friendly. Honestly, the real recipe calls for so many "pats" of butter that you'd be "patting" everyone with your hips as you walked in any semi-narrow, semi-crowded space! Tonight I finally got to really enjoy my creation...and every minute of stirring, braising onions, sauteing mushrooms, etc...was worth it. A VERY nice beginning to my cooking challenge of 2010 - make one new recipe a week! I had fun, I learned a few new tricks in the kitchen, and I discovered that (for me) cooking out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and country music don't really mix and that when cooking something like this in a condo the size of mine you are likely to leave EVERYTHING smelling like whatever you've cooked. Let's just be glad I didn't cook cabbage!

Project #2: hanging t-shirts in my office
Starting with my very first group of senior advisees, it's become a tradition for (ideally) each of my advisees to give me a t-shirt from the college that they choose to attend. The variety of shirts is really neat, but what means more to me are the (usually!) sweet notes that they write on the shirts. It sounds cheesy, but every once in a while if I'm having a bad day at work, I'll look up at the t-shirts and read just one or two of them to remind me that at some point in someone's life I made just a tad of a difference. I know, it's silly, but these t-shirts are really special to me. And for a while now, I've had about 8 that have been needing to be hung. But hanging them in my office is no small deal. My office has REALLY high ceilings. Translation - my office is a tower. Yes, a verifiable tower (think only a little shorter than "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair" 's tower!). I'm the only person in the tower, and I'm on the ground floor so there is a lot of space above me. With these tall ceilings, a colleague and dear friend thought that filling the space with t-shirts from my advisees would be a neat thing to do. And it is. But I've now reached the point where I must have a ladder to hang the shirts - no more standing on my desk or on a chair or on the built-in bookcases. So, I grabbed the theater ladder that was outside of the chapel today at school and hauled it over to my office.
A little hint about me, I'm TERRIBLE with perspective, judging quantity, judging distance...pretty much anything spatial. What does this have to do with this t-shirt hanging project? Exhibit A - a ladder that is MUCH too large for the space. Not one to be daunted by technicalities, I moved some furniture and set to hanging these t-shirts...I was determined not to go one more day into 2010 without these on my office wall! The result, many a view like the one in the picture to the left...and finally, t-shirts on the walls! Feels good!

Project #3: do new things, be more vulnerable, take more risks...well, that's the general "theme" of one of my goals this year. And I think that Saturday night was my first step in fulfilling that goal - Blazer Tag. Not entirely new but it's been a good ten years. So at least new for this decade! Makes you vulnerable, for sure, even if this isn't exactly the type of vulnerability I was talking about! And the game itself and the games that followed (Dance Dance Revolution namely!) involve putting yourself out there at risk of making a total and complete fool of yourself. I shy away from those opportunities too much so I'm trying to face them down and meet them with a grin in 2010. And Blazer Tag and DDR definitely got me off on the right foot...no pun intended. Great times. Big laughs. New skills. Well, maybe not so much the latter!

Here's to the rest of 2010 and all of the projects - both tangible and intangible that I'll tackle...I think it's a year of ETG embracing all that life throws my way - even if it takes me outside of my comfort zone.