Hard Tack Candy

I put up some pictures on the family food blog Y'unz Can Cook of our hard tack candy production last winter. It is a fun but very sticky process.

21

11.11.11

It was fun.

But I didn't even get carded.

Relativity Pie

Just put up a short post over at the family food blog Y'unz Can Cook about this amazing pie that I made last month. No recipe, just ramblings.

All Hallow's Read

I freakin' love holidays. Traditions and such. I am thinking popcorn balls this year for Halloween.Of course, I won't be able to give them to trick or treaters; they will be for family, coworkers, etc. If I like making the plain ones, I might branch out. More on that later if I succeed.

Another tradition to consider this year: All Hallow's Read. Introduced last year by Neil Gaiman, All Hallow's Read is the practice of giving scary books on Halloween, or the week leading up to Halloween. This is not meant, in any way, to replace trick-or-treating, costumes, wandering around at night, or intense sugar consumption. Instead, it would supplement the current Halloween activities with a further source of nightmares. Neat.

Pottermore

I have magic! I missed the Pottermore clue yesterday because I had no idea how it was going to work. Today I've been waking up every hour to check if it was up yet. Not sure how long I will have to wait before I can get into the site (apparently it still might be a few weeks).

My Mini NYC Adventure

I had a 4 hour layover at the Port Authority bus station on my way to Pennsylvania.  Since I've never been to New York before, I figured I might as well explore.  So I wandered around the neighborhood for a few hours.  Port Authority is right next to Times Square and Broadway, but I thought I would have more fun exploring.  Here is the Google Map I made of my short-range wanderings.  The day I was there it was ridiculously warm, so my Pinkberry melted the second that I stepped outside.

Original with mochi, blackberries, and kiwi.

Don Giovanni Ristorante-- I didn't get a good picture, but the walls in this place were covered in pictures of opera singers.  It was pretty great.

Wood-fired pizza with sausage, spinach, red peppers and onions.  Delicious!  For some reason I didn't have them box it up to take on the bus.  I must have been scared that the other bus-riders would be super jealous.

I had some sort of cupcake (mocha?) and a cappuccino at the Cupcake Cafe, right across 9th Ave from Port Authority.  They were strangely unfriendly here and the cupcake was only slightly above average.

Statue of Ralph Kramdem (played by Jackie Gleason) from the TV show The Honeymooners outside of Port Authority.

Hopefully I get to visit New York sometime for real, but in the meantime I am happy to live in the most delicious, artistic, and friendly city: Portland, ME.

Mini Med School was fun, but now I have no idea what kind of doctor I want to be. Everything was so simple before I knew how interesting the other options are.

Sleep Quilt Complete

Actually, I 'finished' it a few weeks ago.


It still needs a border of some kind. And quilted.

Graduated!

I am graduated! B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies, summa cum laude!

Moving

This is what my apartment looks like now:







All I need to do is have it packed and cleaned by Saturday afternoon (2.5 days). Besides that, I just need to spend a morning volunteering and have lunch with a friend. Then I'm moving to Portland!

Derby!

Posted over on the family food blog about our Derby Day celebrations.

Ripple

Finished printing the Ripple, VOX's feminist and social justice 'zine, for the semester. Party tomorrow.

The Smell of Summer

If I ever needed proof that memories are tied to smells, I don't anymore. Put on sunscreen for the first time this year (no, I don't wear sunscreen in the winter, even though the snow reflects; I would if I went skiing) and immediately felt happy. Totally relaxed and calm. Serene. Blissful.

It took me about 5 seconds to realize that I don't just really, really love the smell of my sunblock. It smelled like summer. More specifically, it smelled like swimming.

The only sad thing about moving to Portland is that I won't be swimming much this summer. I'm going to miss having the river right down the street.

PS--That's the first dandelion of spring. Can't wait until there are fields full of them.

Sanna Sanna Ho

Posted a bit over on the family food blog about my delicious Easter.

Spring peepers!!!!!

Definitely one of my favorite sounds.

Notable First Sentences: The Hobbit

by J.R.R. Tolkien

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

Spring!

Saw these on Thursday:

The Return of the Sleep Quilt

The plan:
Note: the original pattern included time spent baking bread (green striped), which was later removed for simplicity's sake.

When I left my mother's house in May 2008, I had cut out all the pieces and finished about 1/4 of the sewing.
I want to finish it before I graduate.

Mercedes the Millipede

Today we got to hold Mercedes in zoology lab. She is in the genus Archispirostreptus (I think that is the right species as well).It felt a bit like being walked on by a toothbrush.

I love Harry Potter.

Cried for the last 50 pages. As always. (But not the epilogue).

Last sentence (of the not-epilogue):
""And quite honestly," he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime.""

Maine Maple Sunday

Our first stop:
Breakfast: Crepes, Bacon, and Baked Beans
The second stop:

The evaporator at the second shack:
It smelled really great in there. Wood smoke and maple sap.

Curry Chicken Salad (Y'unz Can Cook)

I've posted about a voodoo-inspired adventure in citrus fruit and my wonderful curry chicken salad recipe over at the family food blog Y'unz Can Cook. Check it out.

Notable First Sentences: Harry Potter

About once a year I reread all of the Harry Potter books. This year, I was prompted by the realization that I can no longer remember all of the little details of the books (what does the boggart turn into when it is attacking Lavender Brown?). It also seemed like a good time to inaugurate this blog and my first series of posts: Notable First Sentences.

Without further ado, the first sentence of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling:

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."