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My Wise Child
I’m sad, because I lost one of my favorite earrings the other day. They were little gold hoops, but with a delicate pattern etched into the gold. My bestest friend, Rosemary, gave them to me a few years ago. I’ve worn them pretty much every day. They had a little click attachment on the back. Well, on Sunday, I was wearing them, and I lay down to take a nap. I forgot to take off my earring when I did so. When I woke up, we went to the shops to get a few tops for our growing girl. We walked all over Old Navy and the mall. I came…
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Crap
Does this mean I have to give up my diet coke addiction? I have a lot of the risk factors for osteoporosis…but on the other hand, I don’t want to turn into one of those people that overreact every time a medical report comes out warning of the dangers of this or that. So if a report says don’t eat butter, I look at the evidence, and try to decide whether or not I’ll eat butter. Generally, my motto is moderation in all things, and you’re fine. But I don’t drink diet coke in moderation. I drink 4 or 5 diet cokes a day. It clears my head and gets…
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When You Lay Down With Dogs….
…you wake up with fleas. Again and again in U.S. foreign policy (and world history, to be fair), this idiom has proven itself to be true. When I was an International Relations major at San Francisco State in the late 80s, the focus was on Central America and our involvement there. Now, the focus is on the Middle East. Watching “Frontline” on PBS last night, the focus was on the Taliban, and the support that they have received by our ally, Pakistan. Watching the fanaticism and rage that is held by these people, it occurs to me that the history of our involvement in this region has been a disaster…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Seeing as how Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, why not celebrate it twice a year? The second Monday in October is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and, since Ted was born in Canada (Belleville, outside of Toronto), we decided to make a celebratory feast in his honor last year. This year will be no different, and I’ll make some turkey, stuffing, yams, veggies and cranberry sauce. I’ll be giving thanks for my Canadian born husband, my Canadian conceived daughter, and our neighbors to the north. I hope that next month, on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., I’ll be giving thanks for good election results. Keep your fingers crossed. Since this post…
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Shrimp Recipe
Tuesday night, we tried a new recipe, plus a semi-new recipe, and the combination was a winner. First of all, I made the Saffron Orange Rice, and then I served it with yummy Garlic & Orange Sauteed Shrimp. The only problem was that the Shrimp was supposed to be a pasta dish, and the pasta was supposed to be tossed with the sauce, which didn’t happen, since I served it with rice. I didn’t catch on until too late, so some yummy sauce ended up being wasted. I’ll give you the recipe for the Shrimp with pasta, and then if you want to make it with the rice, you can…
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One Reason Condo Living Sucks
Hello Melissa and Lotus recently posted pictures of how they manage their books. Lotus has a very asthetically pleasing solution. Melissa’s house looks pretty much under control, though I’m not so sure about her DH. They asked the following question: How do you keep your books organized? Always looking for a chance to humiliate myself, I thought, OK, I’m game, I’ll take some pics and show you all the disaster that is our book collection. We started out well, even having a custom bookshelf built to fit our little hallway, to make room for more books than store-bought shelves were going to afford. But, we live in a little condo,…
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Time for Bloggy Love
Last month, I was on the ball, and gave a ‘perfect post’ award. I kind of thought of doing that again, but for me to do that would mean keeping the idea in the back of my head all dang month, and remembering which blog would be worthy, and comparing it to others that would be worthy, etc. etc. etc. I know, I can copy and paste the URL into a draft, or I could go all 20th century and write them down on a piece of PAPER or something, but instead, I just think, “Wow, that was good stuff”, leave my comment, and move on. I read great stuff…
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Autumn
raindrops pattering cool crisp air in our faces first rain of the year That was my first attempt at a haiku. Sorry ’bout that. For those of you who live in green states, meaning states where it doesn’t turn brown and dry and brittle in the summer, where you get rain or snow all year round, you don’t know how refreshing it is to know that the green hills will be returning…it’s nice. Last night was our first rain this season…we went out for a walk in the drizzle, and listened to it pattering down on our umbrellas. We had to towel off the dog when we got home. We…
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13 Recipes You Should Try
Yesterday’s Chronicle listed the 20 best recipes from their last 20 years of having a Food Section. A couple of them were intriguing, and almost tempted me into making them. But I’m more of a cook, (“cooker”, as Maya would have said in her youth), not so much of a baker, so these were just a bit too much for me. That got me to thinking of other recipes that I really like, and that maybe some of you might enjoy as well. 🙂 So, here are a few from the Chron, and a bunch that we really enjoy. Twice-Baked Goat Cheese Souffle. I’ve had this at Zax Tavern in…
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Fashion DON’TS
You all know of my obsession with What Not To Wear. I love to see them take a person with a misguided sense of fashion, and turn them into a lemming fashion plate in one short week. Really, for all that the folks DO tend to come out looking a bit cookie-cutterish, they ALWAYS look 150X better than they did going in. Well, after a particulary entertaining episode yesterday, when the victim participant (Eddie, over there on the left) reminded me of no-one so much as Bobcat Goldthwait in Scrooged, I had to go look at the website. While there, I saw that one of the host/stylists, Clinton Kelly, had…
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Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Did anyone watch Ellen yesterday? I don’t usually watch that format of TV, no Oprah, no Ellen, etc., but for some reason yesterday, after I knocked off from work, I turned it on. Her guest was Sheryl Crow, talking about her fight with Breast Cancer. When she went for her mammogram, they told her they had concerns, and she should come back in 6 months for a follow up. Thankfully, her OB/GYN didn’t think waiting was such a good idea, and she got her treatment started right away. Coincidentally (or maybe not, since October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month), the other day I was flipping channels, and came across…
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Weekend Wrap Up
This was one of those weekends where we didn’t do a whole lot. I like those weekends. I like busy weekends, too, but they’re definitely a different experience. I spent entirely too much time working on my blog. I finally got through all 350+ posts and have them categorized the way I want them. I didn’t have a lot of luck with photos…seems like if I want them to be there, I’m going to have to upload them to flickr. Bah, what a pain in the butt.  Might not happen. Don’t hold your breath, just in case. 😉 I had some reading in mind…I bought a few magazines at the store…
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Determined by an actual conversation in my house…
Meat/Animals I will eat: Chicken Beef Buffalo Turkey Lamb Venison Fish (including oysters, clams, crab, etc.) Rattlesnake Iguana Meat/Animals I will NOT eat: Veal Brains, Liver, etc. Cat Dog Horse Mr. Spock (because he’s 1/2 human, DUH) The Blob from Outer Space (don’t know what it is….might make me sick) Cylons from Battlestar Galactica UPDATED TO ADD: I will not eat eyeballs of any kind, squirrels, or possum. For those of you wanting to know. ;)Â
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Yummy Rice Recipe
I posted a recipe last Sunday, for a vegetarian dish. Today I’m going to post a recipe for Saffron-Orange Rice, which is VERY yummy. My step-mom makes this recipe. I know it’s from a cookbook, but I don’t know which one. I’ve had it on previous trips to Portland, but I never thought to make it for Ted, because he’s not a fan of basmati rice AND he thinks dried fruit is devil food AND he’s not generally thrilled by nuts either. So I was excited when he raved about this dish, and said he would like to have it again. Right away, I emailed my step-mom for the recipe.…
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Misc. Friday Stuff
1st off, I’m really enjoying Maya’s caterpiller. Yesterday, I thought it was getting ready to go into its little cocoon, so I moved it into my ‘office’ so I could watch it. (Maya was at school all day, so she wasn’t missing it or anything.) It didn’t cocoon, though, it was just molting, but it was very cool to watch it eat eat eat all day. It’s a VERY hungry caterpiller. I tried to take a beautiful picture of it, but my camera isn’t up to the task, and they all came out blurry. If you want to see a beautiful picture of what I was going for, check here. (Used without…