Judo Tournament #6. Only Not.

Tomorrow my club hosts its 42 annual judo tournament. Last year, I was sure that I never wanted to compete, and was patting myself on the back at having dodged it. This year, the only question was how many divisions would I compete in. Until I sprained my stupid ankle. Bah. /end pityfest

When we host, we offer a lunch for the judges, and we have a party after the tournament. It's a potluck, and it being me, I'm baking. The world's best brownies just came out of the oven, and I'm planning to throw together an applesauce cake as well. Tonight I'll help move mats to the tournament location, and tomorrow I'll help with the lunch and party setup. I am looking forward to seeing all the people I miss from judo.

The ankle is well enough for pretty much everything EXCEPT judo. And the physical therapist is hinting that I might be able to start back as soon as 2 weeks from now. The bills have started rolling in, and despite what some people told me, it appears that xrays do not cost thousands of dollars. whew.

We lost a good friend to cancer five years ago today. Fuck cancer. Joe, we miss you. Wish I'd had time to get to know you better.

Just an update

The apricot started blooming right after I took last week's photos. Hopefully it won't freeze too bad this year and we'll get some apricots for apricot jam! I even saw a bee among the flowers.

We seem to have made a tradition of hosting an Easter brunch. It's a lot of fun, and a good excuse to make hollandaise sauce and drink mimosas. We've done it enough times that I feel safe looking forward to it every year. I love traditions! (and eggs benedict!)

This was my second week of physical therapy. (With the physical therapist's ok) I also started yoga and ellipticaling. I'm definitely not up to full speed, and no one wants to discuss how long til I'm back at judo, but at least I'm able to do something again.

No Knead bread recipes are coming along. Dry milk helps the flavor immensely, but I think I need to start lowering the salt. Their method for making raisin bread is a clear winner though. (Roll out some bread dough. Hit it with an egg wash, some cinnamon sugar and some raisins. Roll up, stick in loaf pan, allow to rise, bake as usual. Awesome.)

We're finally making progress on the downstairs bathroom. If the paint/texture of the new half of the ceiling had matched, we'd be done, but nooooo, it never works that way. So we're half a ceiling worth of paint and texture away from cleaning it up and putting it back together. SO CLOSE.

And now that it's spring, there's a ton of yard work to be done - good thing I can walk! I've started cleaning up the winter debris from the front yard, one wheelbarrow full at a time.

It's Spring!

I can tell, all the snow melted. (Not that we won't get more, just that there's not still a big patch of it next to the shed.)




In order: mint, strawberry(!) and oregano are alive. More amazingly, there's some live grass in our backyard. Not enough to be photogenic though.

No new recipes. Not being able to stand much kind of puts a damper on baking. I have been experimenting with Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day - I'm not happy with it as plain bread yet, but it was good for making Bierocks last weekend. My big caveat with that book - all the recipes expect you to use coarse/kosher salt, but the book only says that right at the beginning, not in all those recipes. Even using coarse it's a pretty salty dough, but with table salt it was almost inedible. I'm not a fan of the recipe writeups in the book at all, but some of them are quite good if you can puzzle them out. And the method is super super easy, so I think it's worth tinkering with to get something I'm happy with out of the recipe.

I'm out of the orthopedic boot and starting on physical therapy. I'm going to try going to yoga next week. I'm still wearing a soft brace for most of my walking, but if I'm careful I can walk without it.

I leave you with an obligatory dog photo: