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(Not) Lost Generation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA[/youtube] I got this in the email the other day. I liked it. See if you do, too.
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People of the Book
(page from the Sarajevo Haggadah found here) From Wikipedia, where you can also read the fascinating history of this beautiful book: The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display. The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through…
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Crappy One Pot Taco Soup
I have a confession to make. I like ranch dressing. I like it on my salad, on my pizza crusts, and on my fried zucchini or mushrooms. Yummy. I like to mix the powdered dry mix in with turkey to make turkey burgers, or make oven fried chicken with it. So I came across this recipe via Yahoo the other day. One of those “5 nights of meals” articles, and this was one of the recipes. Doesn’t it look good? Don’t be fooled. For one thing, the recipe they linked to doesn’t have tortilla chips, cilantro, OR sour cream, and it has red meat, not chicken or turkey or whatever…
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Lovely Weekend
(Pescadero State Beach, gorgeous photo found here) This weekend, I joined Maya and her girl scout troop camping at Camp Butano, in lovely Pescadero, California. Pescadero is just south of Half Moon Bay, and we were fortunate to get perfect weather. The girl scout camp at Butano is way off the beaten path, with a creek babbling nearby. We arrived on Friday night, and layed low there. Then on Saturday we went to the beach, where we had a lovely picnic, including a loaf of amazing artichoke garlic herb bread, which was hot out of the oven. We happened to be there as the tide was going out, and there…
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Friday Dog Blogging
(photo found here) Did anyone else see this story yesterday, about the poor dog that floated 75 miles down Poland’s Vistula River and into the Baltic Sea, and was lucky enough to be rescued by some Polish scientists doing research? The story is here. There’s video as well. The story is that firemen in a town about 60 miles inland saw the dog floating down the river, and they tried to rescue him, but were unable to get close due to the shifting ice. Eventually he drifted out to sea, where the research boat came upon him. The rescue was somewhat harrowing, because the dog slid off of the ice…
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Missing my Mom
I was brought to tears this morning by Jon Carroll’s tribute to his mother-in-law, who died last week at the age of 98. I started crying, thinking of how sad his wife, Tracy, must be at losing her mother. (Really? Was I really crying for Tracy, whom I do not know? In an abstract way perhaps. But mostly, no. Mostly I was crying for me.) And then I started crying harder, because I still miss my mom so very much. I had to wonder, how is it different to lose your mother when she’s 98 than it is when she’s 66? When she’s 98, people are pretty much expecting it,…
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Read’N’Review Challenge
Here we are, it’s almost the end of January, and I’ve finally gotten off the fence and decided to take a reading challenge this year. I tried to muster some enthusiasm for it back in December, and I just couldn’t do it. But I’m reading nonetheless, and I like having the list of book reviews over there on my sidebar, so I decided to sign up for the Read’n’Review Challenge, hosted by MizB, which is an easy challenge, because there’s no lists of award winners or particular genres that you have to look for. Just list the books that you want to read, read them, and review them on your…
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The unnamed narrator of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a writer, who has recently moved into a Manhattan Brownstone inhabited by a cast of characters, most prominently Holly Golightly, who lives below him. Holly nicknames him ‘Fred’, after her brother, who is away in the army. Fred is a writer who can’t publish what he writes. Holly is a lonely party girl, who makes her money by spending her time with wealthy men who give her $50 every time she has to go to the powder room in a fancy restaurant. As the story takes place in the 1940’s, $50 was a lot of money. The average employee in 1949 brought…
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Ribollita
(photo courtesy of SFGate) This week’s Sunday paper had a drool-worthy section of soup recipes, including a recipe for Ribollita, which is a Tuscan soup with bread in the bottom of the bowl, and a rind of Parmesan simmered within. It sounded perfect for a rainy evening, and I wanted to try it. But when I looked more closely at the recipe, I decided I wasn’t so sure. 3 cans of beans is a lot of beans for a soup, and I’m not that fond of kale. So I thought I’d look and see if Giada had a version I might try. What do you know, she did! So I…
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Friday Randomness
Thanks everyone for your kind birthday wishes. I had a lovely birthday, and a lovely time off from work. One of Maya’s Christmas gifts was tickets to go see Wicked, which was a lot of fun. I’m not a huge fan of the musical as a play, but this one was really fun and interesting and kept your attention the whole way through. Excellent gift, Ted! Btw, Ted wrote a great review of the show for Popdose, and he included a couple of YouTube clips that are pretty great. Along the theme of gifts that are not things, we also received tickets for dinner on the Napa Valley Wine Train,…
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The Road Home
Lev looked at the cloth. He was indifferent to it. He felt indifferent to all that was untrue. Behind him, somewhere, he could hear a tennis game start up and he envied the players. He thought how, in his life in England, he never ran anywhere anymore, but only stood at his sinks or crept into bus shelters or wandered the streets with slow steps, like the steps of a n old man. And this realization wounded him the more because he knew suddenly – as he stood and stared at the shining holly so ridiculously festooned- where he wanted to run to. He stood very still, gazing at the…
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11…22…33…44!
(44 graphic found here) Today is my birthday, and I’m turning 44! I’ve always kind of liked the 11 birthdays, when the two digits of your age are the same. Which got me to thinking about what I was doing at these different stops along my life so far. When I was 11, we were living in Campbell, CA. It was probably the worst year of my childhood, though not for any definable reason. All I know is, we were all pretty miserable and stressed there. The kids were kind of snotty, but I made a good friend. I liked my teacher. Richard was in jr. high and having a…
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Monday Meme
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a meme, but in honor of my SIL, from whom I have never received one of these before, I decided to bring the Monday Meme back to life. And FYI, she watches What Not to Wear. I never knew. I pink puffy heart that show, though I haven’t seen it in quite awhile. Here goes: Three names I am called: 1. Julie 2. Jules 3. MYOB (no, I’m not called MYOB, but I’m not telling the world Ted’s pet name for me. Some of you know. The rest of you, MYOB.) Three jobs I have had in my life: 1. Cleaning out stalls at…
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On the First Day of Christmas…
(image found here) A Facebook friend posted this morning, “Happy First Day of Christmas”, which confused me, because I thought Christmas Day was the first day of Christmas, with Epiphany being the 12th day, and the day that the magi came bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. But what do I know, I’m an atheist. Thanks to the internet, all I had to do was search for ‘1st day of Christmas’, and I found this very informative page, which both agreed with what my Facebook friend said, and what I had said as well. In other words, different traditions and churches celebrate it on different dates. I don’t know about…
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Friday Randomness, Now on Tuesday!
(photo found at SF Gate, here) Does anyone else still get a newspaper delivered to your house, as opposed to looking for your news online? We are suckers and pay quite a bit to support this dying industry. Sometimes I wonder why, and other times, I’m glad. Today I was glad, as I saw the picture above, which I might have missed if I had been looking online. The story is that the San Francisco Ice Co. donated 10 tons of ice to the San Francisco Zoo, which the zoo had blown into snow for the Polar Bears, who look like they’re LOVING it, don’t they? Doesn’t the bear in…