First day of spring

I am heading off for a whole week in Boston, which should be fun if I can get over worrying about what will happen to my younger son with the house to himself all that time ... the range goes from eating McDonald's everyday to hosting the party of the year .... (tho he did that already at Christmas, and all the nights I am gone this time but one are school nights)

It also seems to be a morning of frustrations over things I can't do much about, at least not immediately, the accountant needs more infor to do my taxes; my older son's mouth hurts 'cuz he's recovering from his wisdom teeth extraction, but now he's back at school 77 miles away; at work I am trying to help students currently enrolled in a program sign up for their summer & fall courses, and also get a new batch of students through the application process to start the program next fall - every check of email brings a new type of misunderstanding .... good thing I need to get on the plane and go.

it's a little bit like my cooking experiences of the weekend ... I made a really nice cake, Nigel's pistachio almond one, and a salad with roasted squash, to take to a dinner at the friend that has the same b-day as my older son on Saturday. They live out in the country, and since I had to wait for kids to come home and let me use a car, I got there so late that no one ate salad (although the cake was almost all eaten). Then for breakfast Sunday, I made hash browns (boiled the potatoes and let them cool while I went for a walk/jog, then grated them and cooked them like big latkes in 8" skillets in butter & oil, inverting onto a plate and sliding back in with more butter & oil to brown the 2nd side) & bacon & eggs, but not as many eaters showed as I thought might, plus John & Jake had extra extra crispy hashbrowns, since the taters had to wait in the oven while the boys played video games. The final blow was assuming that there would not be any kids for dinner, so not only did not start pizza dough rising in the morning, I threw out the mushrooms & argula that could have gone onto the pizza (so they would not rot in the fridge, while I am in Boston) only to have to go out and buy more 'shrooms, plus pre-made pizza crusts & cheese, and the grocery only had the presliced kind of mushrooms, the ones that got pitched were organic from the co-op, ... at least the pizza did get devoured, and most of the salad, too, so I can go off with an almost guilt-free fridge.

But I also wanted to rant a bit about how the guy who does Daily Kos says he make 70 - 80K per year as a blogger while Julie Powell, of Julie and Julia, a blogger and published author, says she is dead broke