Please Plow Your Sidewalks!!!

I need to vent for just a few lines to start off with.  I'm sure many of you experienced the ridiculous amounts of snow that we had this week.  Grand Rapids did a fine job of plowing the roads.  They were nice and clear today.  But as for the sidewalks on my way to work:  NONE OF THEM WERE PLOWED!  I take that back.  About ten feet had been plowed, and then the plowing abruptly stopped.  Before I left for work this morning, Eric told me to please walk on the sidewalk, even if it hadn't been plowed, because it makes him nervous to have me walking in the road.  I agreed.  It's a pretty busy street, and the cars often don't move over for pedestrians, so I had every intention of slogging through the snow.  When I got there, however, I plunged into snow up to my thighs.  I had worn boots and tucked my jeans into them, but it didn't matter anymore.  As my boots sank to the bottom of the drift, snow poured in around my cold feet.  Yuck.  I waded through the snow drifts for, eh, maybe 50 meters or so, until I was winded, and nearly stuck.  I knew I would never make it to work on time if I kept going like that... so I fought my way out onto the road.  When I finally got to work, I took my boots off to change into the shoes I had stashed in my purse.  Snow that had been packed in between my jeans and the boots rained down onto the floor and swiftly turned into a puddly mess.  I scooped up what snow I could and molded it into a snowball that I deposited in the toilet to melt.  Then I mopped up the rest of the water with toilet paper.  The walk back home was only slightly worse.  The snow in the road was turning to slush... so as cars whizzed past me, I was repeatedly sprayed in the face.  One kind lady pulled over and asked if I would like a ride.  I declined.  She insisted.  I declined again.  Getting in cars with strangers makes me nervous.  Another car honked at me.  That made me mad.  I would GLADLY have been on the sidewalk instead of in the road... but no one seems to think it necessary to plow the sidewalk for pedestrians.  And since pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way... I don't think people should be honking....  Oh, and, I almost forgot to mention, while I was at work, snow that had been caked on the insides of my boots melted... so the boots that I walked home in were soaking wet :(

We might look into borrowing a car from a friend for a few days, at least when the drifts are this high.  The walk itself isn't bad... but seriously Grand Rapids!  Plow the sidewalks!

Alright :)  Now that I got that out of my system, I will write about more pleasant things :)  Like... food!!!  So... this week I made a nice dish called Artichoke and Feta Fettuccine.  The recipe was really simple to make, and it tasted quite good too!  It's basically as though you mix a few ingredients together and make your own flavor of Ragu :)  You should give it a try too!  Here's the recipe:

Artichoke and Feta Fettucine

2 6-oz. jars marinated artichoke hearts
1 (14 1/2-oz.) can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
2 garlic cloves (or more to taste)
1/4 C. sliced black olives
1 lb. fettuccine, or angel hair pasta
6 oz. feta cheese
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Put artichoke hearts, tomatoes, garlic and olives in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.  (Can be done by hand in large bowl.)  Put in saucepan and simmer.  Add the pasta to boiling water and cook until tender but still slightly firm.  Drain and put in large bowl.  Top with artichoke-tomato sauce and 1/2 the feta which has been cubed or crumbled. Mix well.  Top with remaining feta and a few grinds of pepper, if desired, and serve immediately.

I had never tried an artichoke before, so I ate one straight out of the can.  Not so yummy really.  I've had artichoke dips and things... and those are good.  But as for just a plain artichoke all on its lonesome... really kind of gross.  That worried me since it was going to be one of the main ingredients.  But once it was mixed in with the tomatoes it tasted great :)  I wasn't sure whether or not to pour the vegetables and their liquid into the food processor.  The recipe doesn't indicate whether or not you use the liquid from the food cans.  I did.  It worked fine.  But you might get less watery sauce if you threw the liquid away.  Does anyone else have issues with their fingers stinking like garlic for a long time after cutting up garlic?  Sometimes the smell seems to last for days, and sometimes it goes away really quickly.  I do wash my hands and shower, lol!  Any suggestions for how to get rid of the smell?  Once again, the food processor was quite a success.  I really like it, even though I had never used one before I bought it.  It really speeds things up in the kitchen.

Our largest pot is currently in the refrigerator holding chicken soup... so I only had two other pots to work with.  One was needed for the pasta and one for the sauce.  The sauce went in the small one and the pasta in the larger.  Both pots were rather too small for what they needed to hold.  The sauce kept boiling over even though it was barely simmering, and before the pasta was done cooking, the water had almost all disappeared (I couldn't fit enough water in the pot to begin with).  But everything was cooked eventually. 

Poor Eric didn't get home that night till 7:45PM, which meant that the sauce simmered on the stove for a loooooong time.  The pasta I tried to preserve by coating it with butter and placing a lid over the pot to keep it warm.  It worked alright :)

As for exercise... well, in addition to walking, lol, I've been doing lunges.  You've probably all done them before.  It's basically slow walking where you drop into a kneeling position with each step, but never actually touch your knee to the ground.  It KILLS your butt and thighs to do lunges.  (I do mean kills in a good way ;P )  I also read online that if you do these while holding one weight up above your shoulder on one side (then switch to the other shoulder after a bit) it's supposed to work your ab muscles too.  I'm not sure about that.  They said that you are making your body unbalanced by holding the weight there, and so your abs will have to work to maintain balance.  I don't know.  I could feel the exercise in my butt and thighs... but not in my abs.

That's all for now folks :)  Good night!

Crockpot chicken

Well, cooking the entire chicken  in the crock pot (even though it was still partially frozen when I put it in) turned out to be a success.  No giblet bag was discovered inside the bird.  And after we removed the chicken, we added some water to the crock pot along with all the skin and bones, let it keep cooking all night, and in the morning we had lots of chicken stock for soup!  I did, however, make Eric give the bird the final "cooking complete" ok when he got home from work.  I did not want to be the one responsible for possible sickness in case it hadn't been cooked long enough ;)  We both survived nicely, however.  So crock pot chicken can work out rather well :)

Now, as for the recipe I used the first batch of chicken for... Eric would probably say that it was not one of the most successful, lol.  But not because I cooked it poorly.  The recipe used a lot of mayonnaise, which neither of us enjoy a ton.  It was a little overpowering.  The recipe was for broccoli chicken casserole, and I will post the recipe for anyone who enjoys the taste of mayo.  I figured that, since the mayo was mixed with plenty of other stuff, you wouldn't taste it much.  You do.  So... if you like that taste, this recipe is for you!  (I still liked it pretty well though, honestly :)

Broccoli Chicken Casserole

2 (10 1/2-oz.) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 C. mayonnaise
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 C. shredded sharp cheese
3 to 4 lb. chicken, cooked, deboned, and cut into bite-size pieces
1 bunch broccoli spears, or 2 10-oz. pkg. frozen broccoli spears, cooked
1/2 C. bread crumbs

Layer the broccoli spears in the bottom of a casserole dish or oblong 13x9x2" baking dish.  Then layer the chicken pieces on and around the broccoli.  Next layer the shredded cheese.  Mix together the soup, mayonnaise and lemon juice and layer this mixture over all other ingredients.  Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top of the casserole and bake at 350 for approximately 25 minutes, or until bubbles can be seen around the edges of the casserole.  Serves 8.  Can be made the day before and refrigerated before baking. 

I was a little unsure about how to prepare the broccoli.  No laughter, please!  The directions were just a little unclear to me.  I thought it was saying that you were to layer either fresh broccoli, or frozen broccoli that had been cooked, into the bottom of the dish.  So that's what I did at first.  Just layered the fresh broccoli spears.  But then it dawned on me.  Perhaps you were meant to cook it whether it was fresh or frozen.  The punctuation just seemed a little unclear.  So... I took out all the broccoli and set it in boiling water for about two minutes.  Perfect!

Like I said before, I waited for Eric to come home and pronounce the chicken well-done enough to eat before I took it out of the crock pot.  Perhaps I need to work on the whole realm of self-confidence, lol :)  He looked at it a little, then cut off a piece and put it in his mouth in order to decide.  That was our test.  In all the many shower gifts we received, we realized, we never got a food thermometer.  That should maybe be an investment soon, so that taste-and-wait-for-sickness is not our only option for determining when food is ready!  We then lifted the bird out into a huge bowl, and started tearing off all the meat.  There is a reason why buying chicken breasts is so popular.  The whole chicken, bones and skin and all, is really quite unappetizing.  Even once it is cooked ;P  Our chicken was 5 lbs, so we used some of it for the casserole and saved some for soup.

As for bread crumbs for the top, well, we substituted saltine crackers crunched up individually by me.  It probably would have been quicker to have put them all in a ziplock bag and crunch them with a mallet.  But instead I just crumbled each little cracker between my finger and thumb.  I need to work on efficiency too!

I'll be honest, I totally fell through on doing sit ups this week.  But I wasn't feeling very well some days... and, well, I'll see if I can do better next week.  As for a new dinner, I will be attempting Artichoke Feta Fettuccine :)  Look out Olive Garden, here I come :)

I have a job!

Well folks, I have a job now :)  And yes, it is the one at the children's boutique that involves me walking looong distances in the cold.  But it's a job :)  And at the interview, I was told I would be working ten hours a week, but I'll actually be working closer to twenty on average.  So that is a very nice thing :)  And, I will be working about half and half between their two locations, so half of the time I can cheat on my walking and take the bus instead!

I keep forgetting to do sit-ups I'm afraid.  But I'll keep trying.  I've only been doing three sets of ten... yes, pretty pathetic.  But once I started out doing 120 in one sitting, and then I couldn't get out of bed the next morning.  So slow is not always bad.

I have an entire chicken cooking in the crock pot right now.  Which makes me nervous.  It fit nicely.  But... despite taking it down out of the freezer to defrost in the refrigerator yesterday, it was still somewhat frozen this morning.  Some stuff I read online assured that it was fine to put frozen things in the crock pot.  Others warned that it was a recipe for bacteria growth.  But the consensus seemed to be that as long as all parts of the chicken were cooked through thoroughly, any bacteria that might have developed would be killed off in the cooking process.  I'm just not sure how long to leave it in.  Seven hours was recommended for an unfrozen turkey. 

I just find raw meat so gross!  LOL.  I'll have to get over it... but it's all slimy and mushy and potentially disease inducing if not handled properly.  I think there is usually a bag of giblets inside the chicken... but I couldn't find one... so hopefully it wasn't in there?  (I dug around with a fork because I didn't want to stick my hand in... :{  Anyway, it's smelling pretty good.  Not really looking forward to dissecting the entire thing once it's cooked... but I guess you get a lot more chicken for a lot less money by doing things this way.  We'll see how it turns out!

Waiting for a job...

Well, it's Sunday, the start of another week.  I'm supposed to find out by Tuesday if I got the job at the clothing boutique or not.  I REALLY hope that I get it, because a) we could use the extra money and b) I could use having more schedule in my life, I'm getting lazy!  I just wish that it wasn't quite such a long walk to get there.  There are actually two outlets, and if I get the job, I would work sometimes at both of them.  The one is more accessible by bus, and that would be a nice thing.

Last Saturday we took the bus to go get groceries.  What fun.  At least there were two of us, so the carrying of the bags was less of a struggle.  The bus comes on half-hour intervals... so we determined that we would get through the store in 25 minutes and be back out to the bus stop.  No such luck.  We powered through our shopping, but managed to get back to the station a few minutes after the bus had already gone by.  So there we stood at the un-sheltered bus stop, shivering and staring at our watches, realizing it would be another 25 minutes before the bus came back.  If only we had stayed in the store!  We got colder and colder, and hungrier and hungrier.  We hadn't had lunch, and it was already after 4 in the afternoon.  Surely there was something in our bags that we could snack on.  Not so much.  We had purchased things like:  lasagna noodles, a pepper, an onion, cans of condensed soup.  The best things we could find were a bag of cherries and a bag of shredded cheese.  So we stood at our bus stop eating shredded cheese out of the bag and sneakily chucking cherry pits back onto the sidewalk.  We got a few stares from passing cars, but we contented ourselves by calling out (not loudly enough for them to hear) "We're richer in happiness!" :) 

Three Hour Lasagna...

So... there is one other new recipe I tried this week... chicken lasagna.  Now, I have never made lasagna before.  And, to my extreme embarrassment, I have never cooked chicken either.  Yes, shocking, I know.  I have simply heard too many stories of how full of disease and bacteria chicken can be if it's not prepared properly, or how sick it can make you if you forget to wash your hands.  (Either that or I heard all that once and just kept replaying it in my mind after that... lol).

I decided, however, that it was time to face my fears.  In college, whenever I ate chicken, I bought it pre-cooked.  But now, there was a package of chicken breasts sitting in our freezer that my husband had purchased before I got here, and it really would have been ridiculous if I had gone the rest of my life scared of cooking chicken.  So I thought I'd better go for it!  The recipe is courtesy of my friend Bethany's mom, Cheri, and I got it at a lovely shower some friends threw me before the wedding.  All of the guests were asked to fill out a recipe card and give it to me at the shower.  The end result was incredibly tasty, so, as promised, here is the recipe:

Chicken Lasagna

1/4 c. chopped green pepper
1/4 c. chopped onion
3 Tbsp. butter
2 cans cream of chicken sp
1/3 c. milk
1 - 4 oz. can mushrooms (drain)
2 c. shredded cheese
6 wide lasagna noodles cooked and drained
2 whole chicken breasts cut up and cooked
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese

Saute green pepper and onion in butter till tender.  Stir in soup, milk, mushrooms and cheese stir until blended.  Lay 3 noodles in 9x13 pan, layer 1/2 of chicken, sauce and Parmesan cheese, repeat this, then cover and bake at 350 for 45 min - 1 hr.  Let stand for 15 min to set before serving.

This should be a very simple dish to prepare.  Yes, very simple.  But it took me a grand total of 3 hours to prepare it.  Eric called me from work around 5 in the afternoon to tell me he would be home in about an hour.  Knowing that lasagna takes a while to bake, he said I might want to get started on it a bit early.  But I was a few steps ahead of him!  I was already standing in the kitchen.... 

Now, I don't know how many times I've done this, but I NEVER remember to take meat out of the freezer to thaw the day before.  Or even a few hours before.  So I have to revert to defrosting in the microwave.  A rather stickier, less predictable method.  I needed two chicken breasts for the recipe.  There were three in the frozen package.  I cut open the plastic and tried to crack the meat sections apart.  No luck.  I banged the frozen hunk against the counter.  Still nothing.  I even took a knife to it.  I didn't want to thaw all the meat, but there was nothing else but for it.  I put the meat on a plate.  It was too big and hung over the sides.  I did NOT want raw chicken juices dripping all over my microwave.  I found our largest plate and set the microwave to ten minutes.  After five minutes I was able to sever the extra chicken breast.  But it probably took between fifteen and twenty minutes of total microwave exposure before the chicken was soft all the way through. 

Having, as I said, never cooked chicken before, I figured that I should consult the internet as to the best method.  I can't even remember what term I came up with... poaching, maybe?  The idea was to set the chicken in a skillet with boiling water and cover it, then just let it sit for about fifteen minutes.  That seemed easy enough.  Fifteen minutes didn't nearly do it though.  When I cut open the meat, it was still completely raw on the inside.  So, I took a knife to the meat (yes, a knife in my new nonstick pans = dumb, but no damage was done).  Ten minutes later, the meat was no longer pink.  Crikey! 

The recipe says to saute the pepper and onion.  I definitely chopped up too much onion.  I stared at my neat little pile of minced onion and wondered if adding it all would overpower the recipe.  I could just eat it, I supposed.  So I scooped the extra into my mouth.  Another poor idea on my part.  That much raw onion eaten entirely plain... the aftertaste stays with you for awhile....  I wasn't exactly sure what "sauteing till tender" was supposed to look like.  So I figured I could just call five minutes good.  At about three minutes everything looked pretty brown.  I figured that was probably already a few stages past "tender."  I mixed together all the liquid ingredients easily enough, but then looked with dismay at my recipe. 

Doh!  I was supposed to have already cooked the noodles!  Everything else for the lasagna was prepared and ready to go... except the noodles were still dry as could be in the unopened box.  I grabbed a pot and filled it with water, then sat and watched for it to start bowling.  They say a watched pot never boils.  It did seem to take an inordinate amount of time.  I set the noodles in the pot, and immediately regretted my choice of pot.  I had not grabbed the largest one, and the noodles were only able to submerge about 1/4 of their length.  I poked and prodded until there were soft enough to twist around the circumference of the pot. 

That was when Eric got home.  The preparation up till this point had taken me two hours.  I had the guiltiest smile on my face.  "I'm sorry; I don't quite have it in the oven yet."  "That's fine.  So it'll be another twenty minutes or so then?"  "Actually?  About an hour...."  We had a good laugh over how poorly I had allocated my time while preparing the dish, but we watched a movie while we waited, and the finished product really was quite delicious. 

This next week will see me breaking out the sit-ups :)  Talk to you later :)

Apple Dip and Angel Biscuits

As far as adventures in the kitchen... I would have to say that things have been fairly successful so far!  I tried two recipes from the "Alpharetta Elementary" cookbook.  From the "Awesome Appetizers" section, I tried making Apple Nut Dip.  This recipe was incredibly easy (good for me!)  My husband liked it, and we enjoyed it on fruit and on toast until he accidentally brought it to work when he mistook the container for leftover tortellini and it sat unrefrigerated for too long :(  Eric did say that I'd have to make it again sometime though... so I think it was a winner.  Here is the recipe:

Apple Nut Dip

1 C. sour cream
1 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 apple, shredded
1/2 C. chopped nuts
2 T. brown sugar

Beat sour cream, cream cheese and cinnamon in medium bowl.  Stir in remaining ingredients; chill.  Serve with fruit dippers, pound cake or angel food cake cubes.  Makes 3 1/4 cups.

My big challenge here was to master the shredding mechanism on our new food processor!  It was a cinch!  It only took about 20 seconds to perfectly shred the entire apple.  I was quite pleased :)  As far as fruit for dipping, I got strawberries, which were perfect.  Bananas might be good too.  Or apples.  I, however, tried buying two tangerines for dipping also.  Not good.  The citrus and the cinnamon are not a winning combination.  Plus, I had no idea, but tangerines have seeds!  Or at least the ones I bought did :(  Each tiny little tangerine slice had three or four seeds that needed to be extracted!  I tried to accomplish the de-seeding with a knife.  Eric found that it worked better to just use his teeth.  At any rate, tangerines are rather more work than they are worth!  My only other comment about the dip, it is very similar in taste to many of the flavored cream cheese containers you can buy.  So if you want to go easier on yourself... just pick up the pre-mixed variety to begin with.

From the "Baaad Breads" section of the cookbook, I tried my hand at making biscuits.  They called for yeast, which made me a mite bit nervous, because the last time I tried to make dinner rolls with yeast, I couldn't make it activate, and the rolls were small, hard lumps of dough when they came out of the oven :(  But if at first you don't succeed, I suppose you can always try again.  In the end, these biscuits were quite good as well :)  Here is the recipe:

Our Favorite Angel Biscuits

5 C. self-rising flour
1/3 C. sugar
1 tsp. soda
1 C. Crisco
2 pkg. yeast, dissolved in 1/4 C. warm water
2 C. buttermilk

Combine first 3 ingredients.  Cut in Crisco.  Add milk and yeast mixture.  Bake at 450 for 10 minutes.

I must say, the instructions for this recipe are some of the briefest I've ever seen!  First of all, I did not know what self-rising flour was.  You probably do, but I'll tell you anyway :)  It's flour that has had baking soda and some other things added to it already so that you have to do less mixing yourself.  It's a little pricier than normal flour, but I was afraid the recipe wouldn't work if I didn't use it, so I went out and bought myself a bag of it.  Now, when it came to the yeast, I was in a conundrum.  The backs of the yeast packages had instructions on them.  They specified 1/4 C. of warm water + sugar for each yeast package.  You were supposed to mix this, and then wait five minutes for foam and bubbles to ensure that the yeast was live and activated.  The recipe, however, says nothing about sugar and calls for only 1/4 C water for two packages.  I figured I'd better follow the recipe.  There were no bubbles in my yeast :(  Eric called just then from work, and I told him my sad tale of how the yeast was, once again, not activating and how our biscuits would be a failure.  He said that, from a chemistry standpoint, I needed to add the sugar for the yeast to work.  The moment I did, up it bubbled!  (He later pointed out to me that, since there is sugar in the recipe, I could have just mixed the yeast and water and put it into the dough and everything would have been fine... oh well!)  The dough was holding together pretty well, so I assumed it probably needed to be rolled out and then cut with a biscuit cutter (I used the top of a wine glass :)  The recipe yielded TONS of biscuits.  I only baked mine for about 8 minutes though, otherwise they started to get pretty crispy. 

So... now I know how to use a food processor, and how to activate yeast for breads!  What a week :)  My next attempt will be at making Broccoli Chicken Casserole.  If any of you have cooking tips, or a recipe you'd like me to try, feel free to comment with it on my page!

Happy cooking :)

And I would walk 500 miles...

Hello folks!  Hope you have all been well and healthy :)  Time for me to provide some updates on my resolutions so far (well... a little past time... but better late than never?) 

Let's start with the walking.  OK, I'll be honest.  There have been quite a few days since my last post when I didn't actually get up enough gumption to walk out in the cold.  But... some nights, after dinner, Eric and I would walk down our driveway, across the street, and around Calvin's campus for awhile.  Except for the relative frigidity of the air, this is a pretty enjoyable way to get exercise :)  The road that our apartment is on has a pond with a bridge and a gazebo.  For Christmas, they strung white lights up all over the gazebo and the bridge, so walking outside at night can actually feel quite magical.  Not to mention that it is all reminiscent of a thing called "Calvin walks."  While in college, it can be hard for couples to actually find a time or place where they can be alone.  So, after dark, it was quite common to see couples strolling hand in hand all over campus, sometimes stopping in some darker shadows to make out for a bit.  Going for a "Calvin walk" meant that, indeed, your relationship was progressing to an official level.  So, now that we're married and Calvin alumni (of a few months), it's fun to walk around the campus and pretend like we're still going for a Calvin walk :)

That was the enjoyable part of walking.  The rest of my walking experiences have been somewhat less romantic and mostly performed out of necessity.  I am trying to find a job.  Since we don't have a car, whenever I see a potentially interesting job posting, I check the bus route to see if I could access the location.  No sense in applying otherwise!  There's a handy little tool called the trip planner on the bus's website.  Here, you type in your starting address and ending address, and they suggest routes for you to take, how long it will take, and how far you will have to walk.  Last week I applied at a cute children's clothing boutique.  I typed the address into the trip planner, but the result puzzled me slightly.  I couldn't find the bus number anywhere.  It simply said:  number of transfers 0, total walking distance: 1.3 miles.  It took me a minute, but then I got it.  It was suggesting that I simply walk the 1.3 miles on foot.  Lovely.  Well, walking is good for you, so I decided to to make the trek to the store for an application.  I pulled on my tallest boots, put on my warmest coat and gloves, and plunged out into the cold.  The route I take leads me through Calvin's campus and back through its soccer fields and cross country trails.  This road had not been plowed.  The whole ordeal felt very much like trying to run through loose sand.  Every step was sinking and uneven.  My knees actually started to ache from all the twisting that my legs had to do in order for me to maintain my balance.  I was, shall we say, not amused.  I did find it slightly funny, though, to see a man standing in the road, watching his dog trot around beyond the fence, barking happily as he circled the sign that clearly read:  "No Dogs, Bikes, or Golf Balls."  Perhaps the man had also missed the several earlier signs that read:  "Dogs must be leashed and kept on the road."  Oh well, at least Mr. Puppy enjoyed a good romp. 

I thought that after wallowing my way through Calvin's snowy back roads I would emerge more or less directly across from the clothing store.  That was an incorrect supposition.  I came out at a four lane road marked 50 miles an hour with cars whizzing past me and no sidewalk to be seen.  The snow was piled high on the side of the road, probably at least knee-deep, so I walked, very sullenly, along the edge of the road itself.  Cars rushed past me.  I was honked at.  I was miserable.  I could have reached out a hand and touched any of the cars as they drove by.  If this was what it was going to be like to walk to work each day....  Eventually I came to a stop-light that had a pedestrian crossing light.  Lo and behold, there appeared to be a sidewalk on the other side of the street after all!  It just hadn't been shoveled so it was impossible to see before.  Now why would the city of Grand Rapids go to the trouble of creating a sidewalk if they weren't going to keep it shoveled?!  After crossing over, I could see that there was a narrow line of footprints outlined in the deep snow.  The shoveling had taken place about 20 yards into the block, and then stopped altogether.  Lovely. 

Well, I interviewed at the store yesterday, and will find out sometime early next week if that long walk is to become a more frequent occurrence!  By the time I got home that first day, I had worn a hole in my brand new pair of socks, as well as a hole in the skin on the back of my heels :(  Guess I'll just have to toughen up!  More to come... !