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It’s Probably A Good Thing…
It’s probably a good thing that we have given up selling our little condo, because it looks like we live in a construction zone right about now. Some of what is going on is improvements, and some of it is repair type work, and some is just plain mud and mess due to rain, but gosh, if I were a prospective buyer, I wouldn’t even walk through the front door. Heck, even the front door is a mess. We live in a condo complex that is almost 30 years old, and the exterior is shingles, for that lovely ‘Tahoe look”, as they call it. 30 year old shingles start to…
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The Inheritance of Loss
I finally finished The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai. I was so looking forward to reading this book, as I had heard nothing but good things about it. I even asked a woman on BART if she were enjoying, as she was reading it while on the way into the city, and she said that she was engrossed, and couldn’t pull herself away. I started this book almost a month ago, and I’m sad to say that I had a really difficult time getting into it. It’s sad, because the book is beautifully written. It’s the congruent story of a retired judge in Northern India, his granddaughter, his cook,…
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The Rocky LaPorte Show
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx2FKXg060U[/youtube](Update…look, through the miracle of YouTube, you can enjoy the first segment of this sitcom…you could then go back and watch more, if you want…I don’t know WHY you would want that, but hey, whatever floats your boat!) I answered the phone the other day, and the kind person on the other side of the line asked me if I would be interested in watching a 1/2 hour sitcom if they sent me a DVD, and then they would call me back and ask me questions about it. Cool, huh? And, to thank me for my time, I would be entered into a drawing to win $100 worth of valuable…
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Pasta Music
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_emz0o638PQ[/youtube] The other night, I was making dinner and listening to my beloved iPod. First I listened to an episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge, which was mighty interesting, and then I decided on some music. I was making a meal of our favorite spaghetti and meatballs recipe and spinach salad with apple and mustard vinaigrette (thanks, Michelle, it was yummy!). The music that I most enjoy cooking to is The Waifs album, Up All Night. I don’t have any of their other albums, so I’m not sure if I would like them as much, but I really, really love this one. Back when I worked in a…
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I Killed Adolf Hitler
I Killed Adolf Hitler, by Jason, is my first book for the Graphic Novels Challenge. I’ve never tried graphic novels before, and haven’t been a huge fan of comic books since my days of Betty and Veronica, with the obvious exception of the Buffy, Season 8 comics. So here I find myself treading into a new medium, where an entire book can be read during lunch, and more is said in pictures than in words. The example I chose for a graphic, I suppose, isn’t a good one, since most of the frames contain words, but there are pages in the book that don’t contain any. Pages where the deadpan…
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Blog for Choice Day
Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the 3rd annual ‘Blog for Choice Day’. I participated last year, when the writing prompt was, “Why you’re pro choice“, as well as in 2006, when I declared that I think that the rights of the pregnant woman supersede those of the unborn child, and that the answer to the abortion question shouldn’t be to outlaw it, but rather, to improve medical care, education, and family planning access so that fewer and fewer women find themselves having to make this difficult decision. The writing prompt this year is ‘why it’s important to vote pro-choice’. In an election year, especially an…
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What a Challenge
The beautiful C has tagged me for a challenge that I have been mulling over for a few weeks now…The Think Different Challenge. Here are the rules, cribbed from C’s post: The Think Different Challenge is all about finding something in your life you currently have negative thoughts or feelings toward (eg work or your mother-in-law), and deciding to look at it differently. It is about realizing that some things are just a part of life, so we may as well try to find the positives in them. The rules for this writing project are: Write a new blog post in which you “think differentâ€. Follow my suggestions above, or…
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Truly Yummy Cheese
I found myself at Whole Foods the other day, hovering around the lovely cheese department. Can I just say, cheese is good food. Yay cheese! So, there I was, snooping around, and I spied my all time favorite, heretofore only available in restaurants, cheese, Bermuda Triangle, made by Cypress Grove. OK, I lied just there, and Cherry knows it, because I’ve told her of seeing it at a local grocery once in awhile. But the difference is, at the local grocery, I would have to buy the whole long triangle of cheese, whereas at Whole Foods, they’ll slice off as much or as little as I want. At $21 a…
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Shallow Poached Salmon
Here’s another recipe from my new cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters. You want simple? This is just about as simple as you can get. And it was so tasty, we didn’t even miss the crispyness that we get from grilling. Shallow Poached Salmon Season four 5-ounce salmon fillets or 2 large (12- to 14-ounce) salmon steaks with salt. Fill a heavy pan with enough water to come halfway up the sides of the fish. Add: 1/4 cup dry white wine 2 parsley sprigs 2 thyme sprigs A large pinch of salt Bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat to a bare simmer. Add the…
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Go, Ted, GO!
* Yesterday was pretty awesome, because Ted had the opportunity to fill in on his favorite radio show, Forum, on KQED. I’ve gotta say, he kicked ass, and totally rocked that joint! I am SO proud and impressed. Check it out on his blog, where you can click over to a link and listen to him interview folks on the very different issues of ‘the geography of happiness’, and the destruction of CIA videos showing interrogation techniques. Awesome. *Funny the images you can find, just by searching images for ‘Ted’. 🙂
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In For a Penny, In For a Pound…
I’m still working on my Book Awards Reading Challenge, which runs from July 2007 through the end of June, 2008, and requires participants to read 12 award winning books in 12 months. In addition, I just joined the Graphic Novels Challenge, and the TBR Challenge. I’m hoping to join a Non Fiction Reading Challenge as well, though that hasn’t been announced yet. So, what the heck, I’ll join one more, the Man Booker Challenge. The rules of this challenge are to read 6 winners of the Man Booker Prize, or books that were short or long listed for the prize, in 2008. OK, I’m in, though for this challenge, I’m…
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TBR Challenge
Well, it’s a new year, and apparently in the book blogging world, that means, time to take on some new challenges. Amongst the select few books that got to stay when we purged our bookshelves recently, one shelf is full of books that I want to read, but haven’t had a chance to get to yet…in other words, To Be Read books, TBR. This challenge can be found here, and the rules are: ** Pick 12 books – one for each month of 2008 – that you’ve been wanting to read (that have been on your “To Be Read” list) for 6 months or longer, but haven’t gotten around to.…
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Graphic Novels Challenge
Dewey, from The Hidden Side of a Leaf, has decided to host a Graphic Novels Challenge. I’m here to confess that I’ve never read a graphic novel, and haven’t had much interest in them. But there’s a film out right now, Persepolis, which the review in our newspaper said is so much like the graphic novel, you get pretty much the same experience by reading the book that you do watching the film. I’m not sure if we can get to Berkeley before it goes away (which may be soon), and it’s not playing out here in the sticks, so I’m thinking I’ll go for the graphic novel instead, and…
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Gnocci
One thing I like about cold weather is cold weather food…spaghetti and meatballs, meatloaf, roast chicken, chicken and dumplings, eggplant Parmesan, butternut squash ravioli…it all works. One of my favorites is gnocci, which I buy frozen from a locally produced brand, Genova, and cover in a lamb ragu type sauce. It’s lovely. (Can I claim cold weather when our high yesterday was in the mid to high 50s? No? Well, it was foggy at least, which gives a certain damp cold feeling to the day.) So, for your dining pleasure, I thought I’d post the recipe I use for the sauce. The recipe is from my trusty pasta cookbook, Pasta…
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How To Look Good Naked
I caught an episode of Lifetime’s new makeover show, How To Look Good Naked, last week. The premise is that style guru Carson Kressley (of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame) takes a woman who is unhappy with her body, and helps her to come to terms with it…nay, to LOVE it, to flaunt it, to feel sexy in it. You can see an entire episode, if you wish, here. The episode started with the body-hating woman having a picture of her body, sans head, clothes only in her underwear, shown on the side of a building in Los Angeles, where Carson asked passers by what they thought of…