Wow. Nice job, West Virginia.

The Navy sub is the coolest.

The future is now.

So, what you're saying is, I don't need to have any skills whatsoever?



Check it out. A camera that captures all the information, so you don't actually have to focus while taking a picture. You can focus later, with the camera or on your computer.

Ansel Adams would have passed out.

Oh wow.

Tightrope + base jumping = Amazing

Eleven down, one to go.

November's meat meal was, by far, the most labor-intensive and scary: halupki.


The labor-intesive part: boiling cabbage and peeling off the leaves.



Then you have a nice big bowl of cabbage leaves and your kitchen smells like brussel sprouts, which is lovely if you like brussel sprouts, and I do.



The scary part: A big bowl of ground beef and pork, which you have to mix with rice, garlic, etc. I nearly fainted.



My very first halupki roll. I was so proud.



Soon I had a lovely mountain of them, and they were pretty, so long as I didn't think about what they were stuffed with.



Into the pot with tomatoes to be braised for three long hours.



And then gobbled up with mashed potatoes. A true western PA delicacy. I love living in an area where lots of Polish immigrants settled.

Anticipation

I just realized that exactly one week from this moment I will be eating a delicious meal with my family, or perhaps we'll have just fininshed it and begun packing up the stuffing to sell on the street (family joke) and started to peruse the game closet for the first board game that will be played. Probably decade trivia. Hooray! I can't wait for this week to go by!

I also just realized this means I only have one week to finish up the Cousin Christmas CDs. I need to get on that.

You see this sandwich as you want to see it, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions.

Dinner tonight was a hot pepper cheese and potato chip sandwich.


This delicacy was imagined up by either Kristen or Alexa or possibly both of them together in one wild and crazy fit of mad GENIUS. You grab some squishy bread, add hot pepper cheese, pop on some potato chips--Pittsburgh style (if the cheese is super hot, go with regular chips, but if it's only regular-hot, go with Gibbles Red Hot chips), and then squish it down like Allison the basketcase in Breakfast Club when she made her Cap'n Crunch/Pixie Stick sandwich.

Yum.

288,000 jelly beans and 1 guitar

So very cool.

Courage

The way the light used to shine...

The skyscrapers that have been built up around it now block the light, but in 1929 this is how glorious it once was to stand in Grand Central.

Salzburg, in pictures

This is the kind of view we had as we drove from Innsbruck to Salzburg. I adore Austria.



The building on the left with the red roof is the abbey where Maria was preparing to become a nun before Captain von Trapp waltzed into her life and changed all that.



This is Barbara (or Brunhilda, as Jimmy called her), our tour guide for Salzburg. She was such a marvelous cliché of the stern Germanic woman. I just loved her, even though she terrified me. She is much like Martha Stewart in that way.



The French Garden at Schloss ("Palace") Mirabell. Mirabell was the scene for the filming of much of the Do-Re-Mi song in The Sound of Music and thus was a highly coveted spot on our agenda.



These are the famous steps that Maria and the children climb/hop up at the end of the song. We were giddy with delight to see them. Frankly, the Salzburgers weren't impressed, and I thought the less of them for it.



Melis had her iPod going to get the full experience.



This is the bower where the children frolic during the song, so of course Melis frolicked.

And then came the re-enactment...



We marched across the edge of the horse fountain...



...hopped down, with "do re mi" in our heads all the while...



...and marched up to the steps in true von Trapp fashion. All that was missing were the dresses made of drapes.



And then we hopped back and forth on the steps like Freidrich and Kurt, imagining our governess climbing octave after octave with that final note. Dorky fabulous.

That look on Jimmy's face is called "my nieces are idiots."



This is the oldest restaurant in Europe. It was established in 803. What I'm saying is Charlemagne probably ate here, and now you can, too. I love Europe.



Me and Kris on a bridge over the Salt River. Kris was giving shooting instructions to Linda and my mom. "Make sure both of our faces are either in shadow or out of shadow." She's terribly clever with the photography.



Party bike! Remember when you could ride these through Times Square? That used to be so much fun. We should have ridden it. I'd have loved to see Barbara on it.



Lederhosen abounds! There was a huge festival going on in Salzburg while we were there. We were given strict instructions not to confuse or compare it with Oktoberfest. The locals would not have taken kindly to that.



The gentlemen spent the afternoon sampling Salzburg’s finest brews…



…while the ladies went shopping and stopped at this lovely little café for refreshment. It was so European.



And this I just had to include. I hated the travel-sized toothpaste I brought, so I stopped at the front desk and asked for a replacement. This is the Lilliputian tube they gave me, placed next to my mom’s travel toothpaste for scale. Yes, that tube on top is travel-sized, not full size.



Here it is next to my Burt’s. It was like dollhouse toothpaste. I don’t know if it would have made it back to my molars.


Up next: Our excursion to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. A snowball fight may or may not have broken out on der Fuhrer’s balcony, and I like to think he wouldn’t have approved.

Seriously, Washington?

This is a map depicting which states fall dead last on various lists of bad behavior. In the grand scheme of things, I guess arson isn't so bad.


Oh, Washington state. I don't even know what to say.

Happy Birthday Cake

Tonight we celebrated Uncle Jimmy's birthday. Jen cooked an amazing meal and Jules and I made him a "happy birthday cake," as she likes to call it. She was very proud of herself and even put the candles in when it was time to sing.




That last one is her leaning over and pointing at him as she sang "happy birthday to you." It was crazy cute.

Beautiful Snack

I love pomegranates. They're tasty, and they're gorgeous to boot (which a snack ought to be if it possibly can). Like a bowlful of shiny little garnets.


No wonder Persephone couldn't resist.

25 ways to wear a scarf in 5 minutes

This is Wendy. She is a scarf-tying GENIUS.

Just in time for winter! For someone like me who's been sticking with the European loop for the past 15 years, this is some welcome inspiration. For winter scarves, I'm loving the magic trick, the fake knot (which I think looks more like a menswear tie than the "men's tie" one), and the braid. The decoration one is totally cute, too.

I just bought a silk scarf in Vienna and I'd really like to try the turtleneck and the bunny ear sometime.

The best part is that at the end of the video, you just click on the scarf you like and it takes you to a complete tutorial of that knot.

Genius.