My First Masterpiece

Ok not even close to a masterpiece but here is the fruit of my labor! I got to perform my first song last Sunday. I'm enjoying this songwriting thing :)

I needs to buy me a guitar so I can be more legit, lol.

Elisa and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Week

This week was quite taxing.

At the expense of sounding like a whiny-butt, all of the following events took place in a measly 7-day period:

-The kitchen sink is clogged. Uber annoying.

-A tube running through the wall of my room busted, flooding my bedroom more than once.

-There was some problem with the electricity at my place, causing some voltage oscillation that caused it to go too high and blow out all my light bulbs. At the same time.

-Said electrical problems caused me to disconnect my fridge because I was afraid that it would burn out. All my food is now rotten. It was packed full too, since I had just done my grocery shopping for the month.

-Threats of an anti-government protest with potential turn for outright violence and vandalism loomed near the city center... a few blocks from where I live. This caused me to stay sequestered away at the Tadeus until things calmed down.

-I had a big event going on at work that kept me up late a couple of nights this week preparing reports. Last night (while still at the Tadeus'), Chinha's baby was crawling around nearby where I was working. He somehow got tangled up in my modem cable, causing my computer to freeze up, which in turn caused me to shut everything down, which in turn caused me to lose a couple of hours worth of work.

-This afternoon, at the end of the event, I had a conference call scheduled with some of the global head honchos. Well, the network refused to cooperate and I was never able to log in to the conference call. Had to reschedule. Very frustrating.

-Traffic was a major pain in the hiney today. More so than usual.

-I finally made it to the Tadeus' (STILL staying there, lol, ya me emocione...). I exhaustedly sauntered up the driveway and started chatting with the guard. Well the guard dog, a huge German Shepherd, decided he wanted to rip some flesh off of me or something because he charged at me and was able to snip away a nice little itty-bitty chunk off my back (I had to act fast to arch my back away from him so he couldn't get as much flesh as he was trying to...). AND he ripped my awesome green tshirt. Not cool.

Pics taken after I got back from the clinic where they disinfected me and gave me an anti-rabies shot...

But alas... the week is now over. Sunset is here (yay for Sabbath!!!) and I get to hang out with the kiddos at the Tadeus' home which never fail to bring some sunshine into my day! :D

Almost Complete

I've made a bit of progress... Here are some pictures of the transformed living room:

Before

After

Genius, That's What I Am

Cooking beans or legumes of any kind has been a pain in the hiney for the most part since I've been living on my own. Why you ask? because I have no pressure cooker. Now that may not seem like a big obstacle but what that means is that it would take me 6 to 7 hours to cook beans. No lie. And they STILL didn't come out tender like I like them. I would soak them overnight to try to decrease the time it takes to cook them, but to no avail. I had to set aside a whole Sunday afternoon to dedicate to being at home so I could watch the beans (I've come to learn that beans in Angola are different from beans in the U.S. They're extra hard or something, because beans in the U.S. don't take that long to cook even without using a pressure cooker.)

So I was desperate to find a solution to this irksome problem. I need to eat lots of beans (for protein) and I had resorted lately to buying canned or bottled pre-cooked beans here and there, but I don't want to create an unhealthy habit so I needed a more permanent solution. And that's when it hit me: If I don't have the time nor the money to hunt down a decent pressure cooker, I'll MAKE MY OWN!
And so, in an amazing feat of engineering skills and innovative brainstorming, I give you, the Elisa Pressure Cooker Extraordinaire:


It worked like a charm. I'm not even kidding. The beans were tender as can be and the infused flavors of the condiments were absorbed by every delicious grain. I had some major water spilling going on until I learned how to work with the right amount of water... so I created a big mess. But it was SOOO worth it, the beans took about an hour to cook.

Mission: Accomplished :)