i DON'T heart kitchenaid

remember the mimolette soup? well, i made it this afternoon. it tasted amazing. then i put it in the blender to puree the cooked broccoli. though i've owned a blender for 6 years, i'm a novice at blending. never got into the shake or smoothie craze. but how hard can it be? so i start to blend and our STUPID blender cap fell into the blender while the soup was mixing! so we sit down to eat and the first bite jason takes he finds a big chunk of plastic in his mouth! argh. but: the soup is amazing. you really must try this recipe. and when you remove the cheese rind, try it! it's fantastic on its own. darth vader just scared the poop out of my kid.

Supermom

Just thought I should mention that on Friday when Linus and I were over playing at the Easley's house Annabelle decided to create a beautiful crayon masterpiece on all four walls of her room. Caron's reaction was calm and prudent. Congrats to her.

radio shakedown

i was driving around with violet the other day thinking: it's so easy to have just one kid...but then it's always easier once you get into something tougher and unfamiliar. and then i turned the radio dial to another guilty pleasure: LITE 96.1. but, friend, you'll no longer hear lionel richie or phil collins. it's now THE BREW, 80s rock music. ha! which reminded me of my sister's 7th bday party. 99.9 used to be a top-2o station and i remember calling that station and requesting songs that didn't exist: "hey, can you play "caron"? "hey, can you play spritzer [our dog's nombre]?" or the funniest one: "hey, can you play butthead?" we didn't wait for a respone with that last one.
celine dion songs always get me weepy!

rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey i cry

i made the bread pudding. it was super tasty and, though not at all like mark's recipe, really satisfying. i found a different recipe for whiskey sauce because, really, i didn't want too much whiskey taste. it was a caramel-whiskey sauce. let me know if you want it.

27

after almost 27 years, i just realized that my name, mixed around, spells acorn!

singin'

check out the rockin' singer/songwriter. make that 'cute' performer. caron, you were so CUTE that night!

megachurch, GAP for 40+, etc.

check these slideshows out on slate.com. they're really interesting. i like the megachurch link.
This busy and confusing interior [of the church] points to the peril of trying to "update" a traditional architectural idiom. It's as hopeless as translating Shakespeare into hip-hop.

now verify

don't get mad: i turned letter verification on. you'll see what that means. now i don't have to delete blog spam. and now anyone can comment.

Louisiana Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce

i saw this recipe for bread pudding in martha stewart living last week. it's a good issue, actually. and since we all love whiskey bread pudding so much...i'm trying it on thursday. i'll report back.

TV

i started thinking yesterday about television and something bill waterson said in his speech: Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating... television has never been appealing to me before a recent string of sardonic shows started (tried to avoid the alliteration there!). they seem smart and smug. they seem like they know that they are television...and they're making a mockery of themselves by being so utterly ridiculous so as we HAVE to laugh. how could we not? and then i realized that we are becoming the target audience for primetime television. the new wave of watchers. the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.

Help (please!)

Um, we need some help. We're due with person number two in a couple months and we're having a very hard time with names. We'll be having a girl. Any ideas? If we use your idea, I will buy you a cupcake from Sweet Magnolias. If you are out of town, I won't ship it, so you'll just have to be satisfied with the notion that you helped name a person.

P.S. One idea is Iris. Does it sound too much like Linus (our son)? I mean, would it be hard to distinguish between the two names when, lets say, I'm angry at one of them for melting crayons in the microwave or something ("Linus/Iris get in here this instant!!")?

Other People's Blogs, pt. 3

For the fun of it, here are a couple of my semi-daily reads:

http://www.notmartha.org/

www.domesticgoddess.ca

Donald is a terrible name, don't you think?

Just borrowed the book "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller. Have you guys read it? Any thoughts on it?

adios a los brazos

Woke up this morning and decided to read "A Farewell to Arms". I've also been tempted to read the new Oprah Book Club selection, "A Million Little Pieces". Anyone know anything about that one? [Do I contradict myself? Ha.]

bill waterson

read this speech from bill waterson, creator of "calvin & hobbes". i think we can all relate. especially towards the end of the speech when he quotes thoreau: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

liars; why you can't trust nebraska furniture mart

we went couch shopping this weekend because, if you recall, in july we finally asked for a refund for our wood-framed couch because the frame was splitting. and so, upon asking for a refund, we offered NFM 1/2 of the price to keep the defective couch. "i'm sorry. we have to return it to the factory. we can't do that." and on saturday, when we walked down the 2nd to left aisle at mrs. b's warehouse, annabelle said, "our couch!" and we were astonished. if we were counting, that's the fourth major lie. and yet: we return.

freaks & geeks

we finished our last disc of the complete series of freaks & geeks last night. after violet was born we started a little tradition of watching an episode of seinfeld before we went to bed, to ward off any melancholy that tends to set in with us when this are changing. and then arrested development came along. lindsay weir is my favorite character on freaks. here she is in the final episode, riding off to her summer academic decathalon. but really, in the end, she gets off the bus and hops in a van to follow the 'dead for a week.

five years ago

i was looking at some old photos in my hotmail inbox (5 years ago old!) and saw this one. it's from the very first lydia house benefit show, held at the so-sad-to-see-it-go DAZY MAZE (left). sort of nostalgic for me. A. i was wearing those same pants yesterday. B. someone stole that colorado t-shirt from me THAT night and i've been grieving. C. everyone in the line-up was just having a good time then, not so music-as-a-career oriented.

the picture on the right printed in the paper. hm. i'd say more but i have to poop.

high on poly

Jara and I were both were quite loopy by 6:15 last night as we left the office. we've both been utterly submerged in The Cry all day (but it could be a combo of that and polyurethane fumes drifting up from the floors) jara is saving my life and sanity with her help. I am so thankful for her. today, by the end of the day after everyone had gone home, we were crazy, cracking ourselves up over the dumbest things. I guffawed at her impersonation of me trying to close the oft-frequented-by-who-cares-bloggers chocolate and zucchini blog. jara picked up the recipe for gateau au yaourt from the printer, which I had been perusing while supposedly working on the 2005 ministry summary layout. she was also working hard and staying late, so I should have been setting a good example. I said "don't come in here" with a crack in my voice like I was hiding porn...I'm not doing anything!! Close. Close. Click click click. Cntl + alt + delete. Dangit CLOSE you stupid, slow window! So she picks up the pages and reads out loud the blogs boasts about this MOIST and SATISFYING cake. In a deep, sensual man's voice of course. I cracked--I cackled. We went on with it too long, until others would have been thoroughly annoyed, but it was just the two of us left in the office, so WHO CARES. Get it? who cares. We were so funny to us--I almost snorted.

Sushi Boy

I'm just posting this picture because I think it is a cute picture of my son offering my husband sushi. Shameless, I know.

Gâteau au Yaourt

in an effort to fight off the blues, annabelle and i made this cake that looked so yummy on the C&Z site. and, my friends, it is fantastic. with a little photoshop help, we've got the gaming icon of the century!

What?!? We're engaged!?!

In front of my favorite statue (St. Christopher), on my favorite bridge (Charles Bridge), in my favorite city (Prague) John and I got engaged. Smiles all around. It was marvelous.

Green Mill

yesterday i was in chicago, visiting my old roommate, emily. we went to this place called "green mill," and if you can believe the idiot's guide to slam poetry, it's the place where slam poetry was invented. and the inventor himself was our master of ceremonies. he's a strange guy and the whole night i was trying to figure out who he reminded me of...then it came to me. fred willard. the guy from "a mighty wind" who always says "wha happened"? you know the one. all gimmicky like that.

slam poetry is one of those things where it's really good or really awful. scarely any middle ground. this one was fun. even with fred willard. a man of many talents...

anyway, chicago's the coolest. but it's nice here too. i came home and our whole back yard was full of wild turkeys. you don't see THAT every day...

mimolette

we went to the whole foods market last night and tried some cheeses. we ended up buying two "very aged" pieces and are excited to use them in some soups. and fittingly, as i haven't been able to sleep since 4am, i spent some time on darby's recommended food blog and found a soup calling for mimolette cheese rind! check this recipe.

also, this cheese is "from" flanders, which reminds me of that over the rhine oldie, flander's field.

go yourself

there are some pretty funny comments on the link above. which reminds of our new neighbors. their car has a "go f--- yourself" bumper sticker. they don't seem friendly. they also have a "honk if you're jesus" sticker. i admit to honking once. don't worry, though, i'm not really jesus.

BAD MEDICINE

i started pacing around, almost hyperventilating when i saw this:

BON JOVI
OMAHA, NEBRASKA
NOV 12

ANYONE, ANYONE?

i can't help it. i just can't help it. at least i know i'm corny.

other people's blogs, pt. 2

click the link to get to chocolate and zucchini, the most charming food blog on the web. i would marry this blog (if i wasn't already married to the hottest hottieman i know). i tried to upload a picture, but something's shorting out tonight. go see for yourself.

other people's blogs

if you want to see her blog, click "other people's blogs." there's a link.

it's not as good as ours...

ARREST ME!!

season II comes out today, friends. if you still haven't caught the "arrested development" fever, tell me. we have the DVDs. and for $19.99, you can borrow them for the evening. ha. just kidding. target has season II for cheapest. let's the good times roll.

a heart, a brain, some courage

looking forward to seeing your faces when i come home next weekend.
i'm working on my lesson plans right now.
since starting work at a.c.t. (of the act test), i've been struggling mightily with what i'm meant to do: go back to school? have a baby? work unhappy jobs and cultivate my "real" life on the side? paralysis threatens to set in. so i decided to check out the phd program a little, and found out we go to church with a student in the program.
today i introduced myself. i was planning on being all motivated by what he said, all encouraged. i was praying that my future would be illuminated. something. anything. but it wasn't quite that way. he was a perfect tower of intellectual superiority, suave voice, affected manner, you get it. something about the force of his personality robbed me of all speech and i'm afraid i lost the ability to project intelligence or ambition at all. sputtered while he waxed eloquent on the program and its difficulties. i left feeling squarely in the middle of the uncertainty i had started with. went home and took a nap.

a face in prayer

"I loved my prayer rug. Ordinary in quality though it was, it glowed with beauty in my eyes. I'm sorry I lost it. Wherever I laid it I felt special affection for the patch of ground beneath it and the immediate surroundings, which to me is a clear indication that it was a good prayer rug because it helped me remember that the earth is the creation of God and sacred the same all over." - excerpt from The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Heidegger

Hey, Anne Marie. In my Intro to Graduate Studies class, we read Heidegger. The intro in our book said that he taught at Freiburg. Isn't that nearby you? I thought I remembered you talking about Freiburg...maybe not. Maybe I'm doing that terrible thing of thinking that all foreign things sound and are the same...who knows. Sometimes I do terrible things.

Anyway, Heidegger is hard because he invented so much of his own vocabulary and it's all in German. Oh well...

biscuit

i guess jason took this on saturday morning when alicia & i were walking...but it made me laugh because annabelle is sitting on the potty while reading a book called "biscuit". SLANG for POOP is HILARIOUS!!!

pegasus

our friend stella gave us this coat when annabelle was born. it was a joke. so the other day when i opened the upstairs closet, annabelle's eyes got really big and she said, "what's THAT?" so we took the coat out and she started dancing around like a pegasus on speed.

we asked daphne to babysit AB one morning. when i came home there were pictures of my little 2 month old baby wrapped in that same flying unicorn coat.

if unicorns were real, we would have a mounted unicorn head as our coat rack. now THAT, my friends, would be cool.

being real

cheryl and linus, everyone. they are real.

Just curious

My least favorite word is "moist". I think it sounds gross and it makes me squeamish whenever I use it or hear it used. I'm curious what words are your un-favorites and why. Please comment.