Are you like me and in total disbelief that it is only Tuesday? Here’s a recap of the last week or so, and what has been going on in my world.

1. Mark’s house is completely gutted downstairs. Walls, floors, cabinets—everything had to come out from the water damage. All of the animals are finally home and he has been working diligently to safeguard the house for them, while they are all pretty much confined to the upstairs portion of the house. This week brings dealing with contractors and starting to figure out the redesign. Big fun.

2. I ticked away the six month mark of being seizure-free. This has NEVER happened, so I am pretty optimistic about heading into the next six months. If I can go a year, them the doctors will slightly entertain the “R” word. R-E-M-I-S-S-I-O-N. They won’t even breathe it right now. I did have a scare on Sunday, because I was feeling a little off after the Nazi yoga session that I have yet to figure out how I am going to make Mark pay for. I didn’t have a seizure, thank God, but I felt the aura. We think it was low blood sugar that caused it, but I’m not sure. Watching it.

3. Sticking with the Yoga/Pilates. It pretty much goes like this: yoga day, pain day, pilates day, pain day. Repeat. Depending on the instructor and consecutive days of class, pain level fluctuates. I am waiting to get used to it. Another session at 5:30am this morning. The pain means there is some benefit, right?

4. Had a couple of friends in the LA area fall victim to downsizing and the economy. If you know anyone looking for a Linux guru/network administrator, e-mail me.

5. Rob and Jill had a bouncing baby boy! Kristoffer Wilhelm was born on Friday afternoon, weighing in at 6lbs, 8oz and measuring 19 1/4″ long. Mom, Dad and baby are all home and doing well. Grandma is thrilled.

6. Our LA trip got sidetracked this week, and instead, Sheryl and I are destined to spend the weekend at a hotel pool with the kids. I had an issue with the tire inflation warning light on my car, and was afraid to risk a long road trip across the desert with spotty cell phone signal and two kids in the car. Hopefully problem will be resolved this week, or I MAY HAVE TO KILL SOMEONE AT THE BMW DEALERSHIP. Paypal bail money.

7. Ryan Russell broke down and succumbed to the Apple hype and bought an iPhone. He has been Twittering all the fun he has been having with it. Rev got a brand new Mac Book Pro. Me? I got no new toys, and can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be giving long distance Mac lessons to Rev. Boo. Hiss.

8. I found out yesterday that Baby Geek has been placed on immunization hold at school, and can’t register. I get to take her to the doctor this morning to get shots updated. OK, so I get some entertainment today. Feeling is strong I will be Satan again by mid-morning.

That is what has been going on here on my end. What about you? Anything exciting?

On the site, I use quite a few plugins. Some of them more robust than others, but the little ones still serve a purpose even if they are not so friendly to manage. I really love the new Wordpress which lets me know what plugins are out of date and enables me to automatically upgrade them with the click of a mouse. Right now, I only have one that needs to be updated, but when I tried it the other day, it fubared the whole site, so I had to roll back to a prior version until they fix the issue. Should only be a few more days as the Wordpress 2.6.1 update was just released recently. Make sure you do the upgrade, if you haven’t already.

One of the warnings it gave off today was my Subscribe2 Plugin. This is the plugin in the right sidebar that allows you to subscribe to the blog and be notified via e-mail upon a new entry. I went through the automatic process and in less than 30 seconds, the newer version was running. Sunday nights, I usually go in and purge all the spammers that have tried to subscribe to my blog during the week. I normally have to do this every couple of days, because there are so many and Subscribe2 did not allow for bulk deletion. So, I would have to delete them one at a time.

No more of that, though. I can now process subscribers in groups because check boxes have been added, and you can now select/deselect all and perform a group operation. A very nice add to this tool, and I always like to acknowledge an effort that listens to their user base and delivers. Good job! It will make managing subscribers much easier for me. If you are not using this on your Wordpress blogs, you might want to check it out. I know that these kinds of features on sites are a thing of the past with RSS feeds and the like, but I have always liked having it and it creates a way for me to communicate with a group of readers at once. I am happy to see this much needed improvement implemented.

About every week on Twitter, I read tweets from Hellpuppy or GonZo (and sometimes Tift) that talk about what is brewing up in their crock pots at home. I never really thought about it, until I started reading these messages, and it brought me back to when I was a kid. The stews, chilis, and all other kind of yummy goodness that would come out of one that had been cooking all day. It made me really miss meat, because a crock pot is fairly useless if you are a vegetarian/pescetarian. Or so I thought.

I went onto Food Network, and found this recipe below b Paula Deen, for Shrimp Creole. I just love watching her, and often think I am going to end up as one of these sassy Southern ladies when I get older. Anyway, last night I tried this out and it was really good. The creole part, not so much the slightly undercooked rice by Mr. IE.

Anyway, I thought I would share it with all of you. If you know of any good vegetarian recipes for a crock pot, let me know in the comments. The recipe here is very easy, but the shrimp cooked a little longer than three minutes until it was done. We topped it off with an organic bread with baked in garlic cloves and topped with olive oil. Enjoy!

Shrimp Creole
Recipes courtesy Paula Deen

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup diced green bell peppers
1/2 cup diced onions
1/2 cup diced celery
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 (14-ounces) can tomatoes
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon white sugar
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp
Green onions, for garnish

Directions
Preheat crock pot on high.

In fry pan, heat olive oil. Add peppers, onions and celery. Cook until softened. Add chili powder and saute until caramelized. Remove from heat and pour into crock pot. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, hot sauce, Worcestershire, white sugar, salt and pepper.

Cook for 3 hours. Add shrimp and cook for about 3 minutes. Serve over rice. Top with chopped green onions.