recap and pancakes

I made pancakes this morning.  I'm out of practice, some.  I used the same recipe but it came out thicker.. and that made the heat and timing a little off.  But, the new bottle of real vanilla extract was noticeable.  The pancakes smelled strongly of vanilla.  Everyone ate two (Esme's were large) and liked them.  It's getting to be winter weather temperatures (according to Mark) so I'll need to get more practice.  Also according to Mark the refrigerator is not a place to let butter warm up... compared to the freezer my brain said it would soften up nicely in there.  He pointed out that the refrigerator is 30 to 40 degrees and my polar bear heritage from Minnesota was showing greatly.

It's the perspective.

But yes, it is getting colder.  The bed warmer was turned on this afternoon and apparently that was all I needed to get sucked into a two hour nap.  I'm not sure how good of an idea that was considering I now have a full week of getting back on early mornings from a week where we all slept into 8 or 9 every morning.

The recap.  I've gotten all of the presents I really planned to get for Esme's birthday.  Mark still has one thing he needs to pick up.  And - we have two weeks or so to go.  I do plan on buying some nice wrapping paper.  And there will probably be spontaneous something. 

I was really coming along in the Outlander book before the nap zone got me.  I made the pancakes, we cleaned up (Mark did the dishes, I did some other house maintenance), and then after all of that adulting was done (I'm not really for saying 'adulting' but a friend said it once and now I can't get it out of my head)... I sat down to read.  Claire and John Grey both think Jamie is dead.  Wow.  They've gotten married to keep Claire from being arrested as a spy.  That's a twist.

I have some (probably harebrained) cookbook diet book I ordered for four dollars off of Amazon.  It is supposed to show ways to balance the chemistry of the food you eat so the glucose/insulin effect is more metered by the natural digestion of the food combinations.  I've been trying to eat less sugar and more fat/protein to tide me over in between... so there might be something I can get out of it. 

I've made two more posts on Niume today.  It's an interesting site for one-subject articles I've been thinking about writing about.
Visualization while reading   
Esme and I were talking about what the best thing about reading was - and I related to her someone at my work who says they cannot visualize while they read.

 I've started shopping differently
A little article about how I've started couponing and looking at shopper ads before I shop now, and have been saving money doing it.  Does the time spend outweigh the benefits?