19 days to go

(Have I mentioned there are elephants everywhere?)

This whole "we're leaving Botswana in three weeks" thing is really distracting. I feel like every day is sort of sliding by with very few noteworthy accomplishments (I did fix the internet in our apartment all by myself today, though). So many big things are happening whether we like it or not--we have to pick an apartment this week, I have an interview for a job I'm excited about, and we're theoretically selling our car.

And at the same time it feels like we are so close to leaving Botswana with (fingers crossed!) no major problems to speak of, except one shotgun wedding, one broken rib, and one week stranded in the Namibian desert.

I think my tendency now is to sort of curl up and keep my head down and try to just get through the rest without screwing anything up.

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Probably that is why my major concern today is chickpeas. Specifically, dried chickpeas. Does anyone else have trouble with these?

I'm trying to get through all the it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time purchases in the pantry, like risotto and dried beans, before we move to Penn housing.

But every single time I try to plump up dried chickpeas they're still "al dente" (as A says) by the time I give up. I started boiling these yesterday morning, turned off the heat and let them soak 10 hours, then boiled again, turned off heat, let them soak another 20 or so hours, and now they've been boiling for an hour and a half (on high! in fresh water!) and they are. still. hard.

Is it because I used them as gelt in a game of dreidel last Hanukah?

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There's some kind of theater festival going on and Friday evening we had the option of going to one of three different plays. Needless to say, we were so overwhelmed by these possibilities that we spent the night at Fego and then watched The Wire in bed.