Pork Tenderloin Salad

I hope that you all had a fabulous weekend.  I spent this weekend all on my own, for the first time since I moved to New Jersey.  Since I moved in with boyfriend!  He's away this week, spending time with his parents then off to a meeting in Florida.  I was invited along, but being a newbie at my job, I haven't got access to my vacation time until I hit the 90-day mark.  So, here I am, chilling out in New Jersey on my own.

What did I do this weekend?  Terribly boring things!  Saturday I spent the afternoon in New York City, shopping.  Now that might sound exciting, but I had a shopping list full of boring items.  I was on the hunt for new t-shirts, tank tops and underwear!  Underwear shopping might be exciting for us girls, but I think boys care very little about the actual purchase of these things.  Same thing with my trip to the Gap to buy black and white t-shirts.  Saturday night was spent watching HGTV and eating a huge Panera salad.

Sunday I had big plans to make lots of candy for Candy Challenge 2011.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans for me.  The torrential rain that poured down all day Sunday was not the best weather to boil sugar, make toffee and temper chocolate.  Instead, I wandered around my new town, stopped by the library and watched a movie at our local theater.

Boyfriend doesn't come back home until Thursday, which means I can take up the whole bed, sleep with the windows open and turn on all the lights when I wake up.  Generally I try to be more courteous, since I wake up at 5:30 in the morning.  This week I can do whatever I want!  Sadly though, there is no one here to taste test my food or bring me drinks when I'm too lazy to get off the couch.  Who will do the dishes when I make a mess in the kitchen?  Come home boyfriend, I miss you!

Orange Cinnamon Bread

While I may be the queen of trains, they don't always like to obey my commands.  This is unfortunate, because I have to rely on two different train systems to get to and from work.  Back in March, boyfriend moved to a great little apartment in New Jersey.  He had transferred to the New York office of his company and thereby moved closer to me (while I was still in Connecticut).  In May, I received the offer for my dream job on Long Island and, as you know, I jumped at it.

So, now I travel from New Jersey to Long Island everyday.  I am subject to the trials and tribulations of both the New Jersey transit and the Long Island Railroad and the two systems do not like to cooperate with each other.  Inevitably one train will be late, and the other will be right on time.  This is a problem and I'm the girl you see, running through Penn station, mowing down little old ladies with big suitcases.  I had to hurdle over a toddler once.

Okay, I'm not really jumping over children and knocking down grannies.  But I am that blur you see out of the corner of your eye.  Why do my trains always come in on the furthest apart platforms?  LIRR - platform 21, NJT - platform 1, blurg!

In the past three weeks there have been three different problems.  1. "Police situation" held up my LIRR train for an hour, then it rained on me.  2. Lightning struck some important train equipment, keeping all LIRR trains from entering New York city.  3. A derailed train in Penn station caused all NJT trains hours of delays and rerouted trains.  And I've only been commuting via train for a month, I can't wait to see what the future of train travel brings me! 

I will tell you this, I know all the ins and outs of Penn station, like which bathrooms are generally the cleanest.

Vegetable Risotto

Growing up in Western New York, I got used to driving everywhere for everything.  My parents home is in the middle of no where (i.e. two miles from the grocery store and five miles from the mall).  I would have to ask for a ride to go anywhere, even school was a really long walk.  I took the walk only a few times, on the last day of school.  I love to walk, bike and occasionally rollerblade places.  (I was a much better rollerblader in my high school days).  Hometown, western New York is not a walkable place.

When I moved to New Haven last year, I was so excited that I could walk to work.  My apartment was right downtown and just under a mile from my lab, I could make the walk in just under twenty minutes.  It was rare that I would drive to work, I even walked in when there was a quarter-inch of ice on the ground.  I soon realized that it had been a few weeks since I had driven my car.

My beautiful, gold, Toyota Matrix.  It was the first car that I bought all on my own.  Granted I had just gotten it two years earlier, but it was a big deal (and an awesome car).  I was sad that I had been neglecting my pretty little Goldie, but you save so much money on gas when you don't drive your car!  When it came time to transfer my insurance over to Connecticut I decided it was time to give Goldie away/return her to the dealership.  On March 18th I dropped Goldie off with a nice man at Toyota, he said he would wash her (something I only ever did once) and find her a new family.

I'm now a commuter, or professional train rider, as I like to call myself.  I miss my little Goldie car, but now I can walk everywhere that I want to go.  And I'm saving major dollars a month, insurance in the Northeast is expensive!