Something to think about.

Do you realize we are only four years away from this?




Marty's adventures in Back to the Future: Part II took him 30 years into the future.

To 2015.

Yeah. Where's my hoverboard?

Fascinating

I'm wretchedly ill, so I'm going to keep it short today and just tell you that this:


was fascinating.

Bilbo!

Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! Tolkien geeks, my people, have a look at this:


EW just released a few photos. I do believe I see Thorin in the background, there, looking severe and awesome.

Cannot wait!

Super easy in-between-Sauce-Days sauce.

You know how sometimes you've used the last of your sauce and you're craving pasta and Sauce Day isn't till the weekend? Maybe you've been watching Goodfellas, or maybe you just read Taylor's post about her exquisite Florentine meal, but you need pasta.

That's where I was tonight, so I made up a little recipe that's super easy and works in just such a pinch as this.


Throw some olive oil in a pan and heat it up. Toss some minced garlic in and let that cook up a bit. All good things start this way, am I right?


Next, add some tomatoes. Diced or crushed, canned or just out of your garden, whatever you prefer. Then tossed some fresh basil in there and let it all simmer while your pasta cooks.


Yum city.

Oh, AMC. Wherefore?

Did you all watch The Killing? Way to take 13 episodes of carefully crafted mystery and character development and flush it all down a filthy toilet in the last five frustrating minutes.

I will not be back next season. I don’t care a fig who killed Rosie Larsen.

You don’t know how I suffer.

Short story: I have an earworm and it's driving me mad.

Medium-length story: This weekend I went with J to Harrisburg for our friend Melissa's birthday party. We listen to the 80s station on Sirius when we roadtrip, and this weekend there was a particularly awesome run of 1984 hits that was strangely punctuated by a hideous song from 1987. Breakout by Swing Out Sister. Wretched. If one song were going to infiltrate my brain, it couldn't be Footloose or When Doves Cry; it had to be that clunker.

I have tried everything. Listening to other songs, singing other things in my head, Liz's Billie Jean trick... nothing WORKS. I am suffering. It's not unlike the two weeks I spent in Mississippi with Murray Head's One Night In Bangkok torturing me. Swing Out Sister is vicious.

There are, like, two people who read this blog who will know that song, and to those people, I sincerely apologize for passing my earworm on to you. It is inexcusable, but I am in pain and I cannot be responsible for my actions.

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

I have been having a hankering for chocolate chip cookies. All right, if you must know, I’ve been having a hankering for chocolate chip cookie dough. And in that case, you have to bake them yourself to have dough access; you can’t just wait around hoping someone will present you with some cookies. I grew up on the Toll House recipe, but this time I decided to try the recipe from America’s Test Kitchen.

I love America’s Test Kitchen because they approach cooking like a science, very much like Julia Child did. If your dish turns out poorly, it’s not because you’re just not cut out for cooking; it’s because something is wrong with the formula. You need to find the fault in the formula and fix it, and your dish will be corrected. I love that approach because it makes me feel like cooking is not some mysterious thing for which only certain people have an innate knack. It is a skill that can be mastered by anyone.

I especially love America’s Test Kitchen’s approach because they tell you exactly why their recipe is going to give you awesome results. In this case, they told me that browning the butter, leaving out an egg white, and boosting the ratio of brown to white sugar was going to give me a more flavorful, chewier cookie than the Toll House recipe could provide.





A triumph. I celebrated by watching the Julia parts of Julie and Julia. Bon appetit!

The beauty of baking

This is so gorgeous. My favorite part is the soft, crumbly brown sugar.

beet cake from tiger in a jar on Vimeo.

La dolce vita

Made possible by the cuteness of my niece and the hospitality of my aunt and uncle.

And I'm off!

I've decided to embrace summer, so I'm headed here:


...for a very awesome, very lazy, very long weekend. Later taters.

The answer to that question would be: the people of Mozambique.

Overheard at our table on Trivia Night, after taking an early lead...

Travis: We're changing our name to Team Capone!
Ali: Why?
Travis: We're untouchable!
Ali: Umm, wouldn't it be Team Ness?
Travis: Oh. Yeah. Forget it.


20 minutes later, apropos of nothing...

Travis: I'm so bummed it's not Capone that was untouchable!

"Hey! I'm just as cool as Capone."

(BTW, that's Elliot Ness.)

Alas, we tied for second place and we lost the tie breaker, which bumped us down to third, but we were still pleased. Because the Cheater Team (my nemesis) did not place at all. Ha!

Hey, did you know that Mozambique has an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle on its flag? Neither did we. Actually, Eric thought so, but we disregarded him because we thought, "Who puts a machine gun on their flag?"

Sorry, Eric.

Spellbound

I wish someone would release a quarter of a million bouncy balls on my street. I would stand there and watch, spellbound, much as I did with this video.



This one is also pretty amazing. My favorite part comes around the 30 second mark, when a rainbow of color explodes up the tower.

I'm doing 90 down Memory Lane.

I enjoy my iPad in many ways. I read books on it. I fall asleep to my Pandora Stations on it. I watch movies on airplanes with it. I even keep Julia occupied by letting her snap virtual bubble wrap on it. But all of that is nothing compared to my new obsession:


Cousins! It is just like the arcade game Pap had in the Rec Room for us! It plays the songs, the pretzels are worth 700 points, it dings at 10,000 when you get your bonus life, the ghosts stay really long when you get to the first Chase board. It is amazing.

I don't want to do anything or go anywhere. I just want to sit hunched over my coffee table and play like we used to when we had all-night tournaments.