Day 20: A Hobby

Erick:

I asked Courtney if she thought I had any hobbies. When I think of a hobby, I think of model airplanes, or those little figurines from WarHammer (yes, I know what that is … I may or may not have done a little WarHammer in my day … Orcs to be exact), or some type of cards (baseball, Magic, etc. … which I also did). But I don’t do any of that anymore. So current hobbies were harder to come up with.

Court said to me, “technology” but I’m not sure if that’s a hobby or an interest. She said, “well, what do you do in your freetime?” I guess video games are a hobby, as is researching “which iPad is best” or “how to take apart my old 3rd Gen’ iPod Classic to reinstall a new hard drive.” But are those hobbies?

I finally landed close to the last thing I mentioned. Taking apart gadgets and putting them back together. Whether that equals fixing them (like James Medina’s old Motorola faux-BlackBerry that was … damaged, which I fixed; or my brother-in-law Kyle’s LCD TV that stopped working … which is still in my living room as I hope to tackle it someday (it’s more complicated than I had initially thought … apparently I don’t understand TVs very well)).

My biggest triumph story was when my father-in-law Rock gave me two of his old work-laptops to fix-up and sell. I was already in the process of fixing up Court’s old HP laptop from her freshman year, so I had three 5+ year old laptops that I fixed up and sold.

Court will tell you it’s an ongoing process for me, looking for the next tech’ project for me to work on. So if you have something that’s broken, maybe I can fix it :-P.

Courtney:

Let me tell you a story.

Not long ago, I had hummus in my fridge. Holy Land jalapeño hummus to be exact. (If you’ve ever lived in Minneapolis for any period of time you know the taste-bud exploding magnificence I speak of.)

Anyway, I had hummus. I really wanted to eat it. But I didn’t have pita bread. Thinking to myself — how hard can making pita bread be? So I made some. Best hummus eating experience ever.

Without hesitation, my hobby is cooking and/or baking.

I love reading cookbooks, or food blogs, or perusing the Internet for new recipes. I really like food. I like feeding my friends and family. I like playing with ingredients and trying new things.

Not every recipe is a keeper — ask my husband about the first homemade mac n’ cheese recipe I made. He made a face. I felt bad. We made a frozen pizza.

Not everything I make is 100% success — ask Erick about the day I made FIVE batches of popovers, but still couldn’t get them to pop just right. Frustrating! But life moves on, and the journey of getting there is the fun.

As with anything, practice makes perfect. I figure by the time my non-existent children are in high school — I’ll be a cooking pro. 🙂