A Traveler at Home

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

2011-12-11T18:54:00.001-06:00

Only two weeks to go, can you believe it? I have not yet done enough shopping, clearly, but I'll get to it - I am an expert last minute shopper - my dad taught me well. I was too busy this weekend anyway. On Saturday, Andy and I had our two sets of parents over for dinner. I forgot to actually take any pictures of people, but I did take some photos of the food (of course):

Herbed Roast Chicken, from Simply Recipes. So, so good.

Steamed broccoli & cauliflower. A Lentil/potato/tomato/goat cheese salad. Also excellent.

Our lovely table. I bought the place-mats and napkins this last week to match my dishes. Note to readers: They can be acquired at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

My parents got along well with Keith & Lois, I think. We laughed, we told good stories, we had some excellent wine and cocktails with our meal. And, in true French fashion, we ended it all with some seriously good cheese. Calvin was also a star - everyone loved him and he was remarkably well behaved. Only a little bit of attacking people's feet took place. I tried to get a photo of him for all of you just now, but he was much more interested in attacking my camera:

He was in the middle of cat-in-the-bag, after all. I should have known better.

One More Thanksgiving

2011-12-04T15:42:00.001-06:00

As we do every year, the extended Miller family got together yesterday for our Thanksgiving pizza party. It was a slightly abbreviated group (I wasn't relegated to the kids' table), but I believe a good time was had by all:

The snow storm that was going on while we were there couldn't even dissuade us from some holiday cheer. Today, we woke up to a winter wonderland of sorts. Andy and I decided it would be a great opportunity to go the free ice rink near the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul:

We had the place to ourselves as we got there right when it opened. Even when we were ready to leave, there were only about 10 other people. It was super fun!

And now, since a blog post wouldn't be complete without it, a photo of Calvin:

He's cute. I think I may have been playing Angry Birds.

Dance Your Cares Away...

2011-11-30T19:49:00.001-06:00

... worries for another day. So here it is, the last day of our yearly epic blogging adventure. I hope everyone had fun - thanks to all my family members for playing along with me. It's always neat to see what we come up with to fill the space for 30 days in a row. As Santini said recently, we are not all lucky enough to have a kitten as an endless source of inspiration/blog material.

I normally end this whole NaBloPoMo thing with a summary post of sorts. However, since Blogger was acting up yesterday, I am going to skip it and recreate yesterday's intended post instead.

In my Muppet post a few days ago, I apparently got a key detail wrong about the reason we have Fraggle Rock on tape in the first place. I'll let him explain, for those of you that don't obsessively read my comments:

Fraggle Rock was on in the morning while you and your mother were still in bed. I had to get up earlier than either of you in order to make it to work early enough so that I would be off in time to pick you up at Pat's within the time frame that was what Pat wanted.

Every day I got out of bed, turned on the TV to HBO, started the VCR and went about the business of preparing for work. I would come up from taking my shower usually as the Fraggle Rock episode was wrapping up.

Dance your cares away,
Worries for another day,
Let the music play,
Down at Fraggle Rock.
Down at Fraggle Rock.

So I guess my dad is more awesome than I thought. And it also turns out that my (and my mom's) sleeping in habits began at an early age. Good to know. I decided it would be appropriate to post a video of the Fraggle Rock intro to follow up. Turns out, YouTube had more than I bargained for. Here, in its' entirety, is the very first episode of Fraggle Rock:

I don't expect you to watch the whole thing, but you should maybe at least listen to the theme song. It's a classic.

That brings to an end this years' NaBloPoMo. I think it has re-energized my enthusiasm for blogging like I thought it would - expect slightly more frequent posts from now on, although nothing like daily posts. After all, I'm sure you'll all want to know how Calvin is doing. Here he is, one more time for November:

Taken during a brief pause in his nightly crazy cat performance. Still cute. :-)

Blogger Technical Issues

2011-11-29T21:52:00.001-06:00

Blogger seems to be having some issues this evening - I have twice composed a great post, only to have it lost before I could hit post. So instead, I offer just this for tonight, a picture of Calvin:

And I guess it's not such a bad one of me, either.

My great post will have to wait until tomorrow, the last day of NaBloPoMo. Seems fitting. Right now, some local news and bedtime seems more pressing.

Cat Ownership Vol. 3

2011-11-28T19:43:00.001-06:00

A final tip for this month of blogging: Toys can (and do) come in all shapes and sizes - paper bags, felt covered mice, the greatest cat toy ever (seriously, those plastic things are awesome)... but never, ever underestimate the appeal of a bright red dot:

We love our kitten, can you tell?

A Muppet Movie

2011-11-27T17:20:00.001-06:00

When I was a kid, there were two puppet-themed entertainment options that were a huge part of my TV watching repertoire. The first was, of course, Fraggle Rock - we had most of the episodes on tape, since it was on during nap time. I watched them over and over again. So, when the DVDs came out last year, I was SO excited to have access to them again (my VCR has long since stopped working, and what's the point of getting a new one?).

The second puppet-related thing was The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Mahattan. They were both the kind of movie that I could watch over and over again, particularly if I was home sick from school. The adventures of Kermit and his gang never failed to entertain. So, when I heard they were making a new Muppet movie, I was pretty darn excited. Then I heard it was going to involve an actor I really like, and one of the guys from Flight of the Concords. Where do I sign-up? All this to say that Andy and I went to see the movie today. It did not disappoint, not one bit. I expected to like it because of the nostalgia factor, but Andy and I decided it was actually good on it's own merits. Yay! Here's the trailer for everyone to enjoy:

*Sigh* I still really love the Muppets. More clips available here on YouTube if you want to check it out.

Calvin was happy to see us when we got home. He's been so spoiled the past 5 days - his people have been here ALL the time.

Charles Elvecrog

2011-11-26T20:29:00.001-06:00

Today was another day with the family but, unfortunately this time, for not very happy reasons. My grandpa's younger brother Charlie was diagnosed with a brain tumor a few months ago and the prognosis was not good. Fortunately, my mom was able to take my grandpa Bud up to Aitkin to visit Charlie back in October. It was really good that they got to do that. We were all sad to hear of his passing about a week ago. Great Uncle Charlie came along on every single one of our camping trips when I was a kid - he could make the best S'Mores marshmallows I've ever seen, and he treated us all like his own grandkids. I have nothing but fond memories of him and Elaine and their massive camper. And aside from the unhappy occasion, it was nice to see a part of the family today that we just don't get to see very often. Goodbye Charlie, may you rest in peace.

As a result of the trip to Aitkin, not much else happened today that was bloggable/photograph-worthy. It's a long drive there and back. Andy and Calvin were waiting for me when I got home:

Cute as always. :-)

Friday, really?

2011-11-25T19:17:00.001-06:00

I haven't been to work in so long (well, comparatively) that today felt like Sunday. And yet, it's apparently only Friday? I'll take it.

Our first trip outside of the house was over to Grand Ave to stop by the Potter's Pasties food truck. It was their official last day out on the streets and, since I hadn't tried them yet, I'm glad we caught them. SUPER yummy. From there, we were off to J & J Recycling to get rid of our surplus microwave. This is much harder to do for Ramsey County residents than it was when I was a resident of Hennepin County. For one, in Hennepin County, they'll take most things for free. Unlike today where we had to pay them $10 to take our used microwave. Oh well - there were at least quite a few super adorable junkyard kittens. Andy even went over to pet them before we got back in the car to leave. It was pretty endearing, even if the guy loading the dumpster onto his truck probably thought we were nuts.

Then, just like we did last year, Andy and I had tickets (thanks to Andy's dad) to the post-Thanksgiving Minnesota Wild game. Our opponents this year were the Edmonton Oilers, which means I got to sing along with both the Canadian and US National Anthems. "Oh, Canada...." It was fun. Here's a photo of the game, just as it began:

Unfortunately for MN sports fans, this year the Wild were not victorious - they fell to the Oilers 5-2. But there were a lot of Edmonton fans in attendance, so good for them.

And now it's only 7:30 and it feels like it should be bed time. It's been a weird day, and there are still two more days of weekend left. Calvin is probably excited to have us both home for that long.

This is perhaps not as adorable as the picture my dad posted today, but I've done my best.

A Warm Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T19:34:00.001-06:00

Today in the Saintly City we almost hit a record high temp for this particular day in November. As a comparison, here is what it looked like last year on Thanksgiving:

This year was definitely an improvement at least in terms of weather, even if the P.S. Ter could not join us. We thought fondly of her over in Norway (NORWAY!). The Thanksgiving prep started yesterday, with Mom and I making the traditional family cranberry bread:

Then today we headed over to Jim's house, where two other chefs were hard at work:

That's a seriously good looking turkey. The beans were also quite excellent.

We ate, we went for a walk, we came back and had some pie... A perfect Thanksgiving, all in all. The weather was just an added bonus.

I think Calvin missed me while I was gone though...

Then again, maybe not...

Plumbing Repairs

2011-11-23T18:46:00.001-06:00

The toilet in our bathroom had been flushing/filling really slowly and the water would sometimes run for up to 15 minutes before stopping, and then randomly start up again later. After putting up with this for a few weeks, we finally broke down and called our apartment management people. I can officially say that today is a GREAT day to be a renter:

This looks like it would have been mighty expensive if we'd needed to pay for it ourselves.

The guy got here at 8:45ish or so. I left to go have lunch with my mom and Andy called at 12:30 or so to report that it was finally fixed. It only took two trips to the hardware store and quite a bit of sawing. Did I mention that it's a good day to be a renter?

Calvin spent the time the repair guy was here in the living room, mostly looking just like this:

He's so adorable. :-)

Cat Ownership 2.0

2011-11-22T22:09:00.001-06:00

Tip #4: Invest in a good piece of cat furniture:

We got ours at Purrniture in St. Paul. Calvin is a fan. He evens takes naps on it occasionally.

Tip #5: When a cat is napping on you and you need to get up (to use the bathroom, for example), do not be afraid to move the cat to any available surface. The cat will more than likely go immediately back to sleep:

Even if that surface happens to be a glass table. :-)

Cat Ownership 101

2011-11-21T20:07:00.001-06:00

First rule of cat-ownership: When coming in the front door of the apartment, watch out for the cat. He will be sitting in this chair, excited to see you and wanting to escape into the unknown lands of the hallway:

Second rule of cat-ownership: Don't leave your shoes out by the door. Shoelaces are one of his favorite toys, and I prefer mine un-shredded:

Final rule: Don't pretend to know what they are thinking. Here he is, pretending not to care that I'm sitting in his favorite chair. Don't worry, he's about to attack my feet:

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

2011-11-20T20:43:00.001-06:00

So remember all that pontificating I did yesterday about being happy I had gone to the Farmer's Market one last time before the snow fell? That turned out to be very apropos. About an hour or two after I posted, the snow arrived. Fortunately, I was at the mall with my Michigan coworker, and man do they do their decorations right:

They've got two of those giant trees in the rotunda there. Super awesome. Bill was suitably impressed by the mall - we walked through what is now Nickelodean Universe and every once and a while he'd exclaim "There's a roller coaster IN THE MALL! Who thinks of that?" It was pretty fun to experience with a newby. I take all that stuff for granted. But really, he's right - who puts a roller coaster (much less THREE of them) in a mall?

It continued to snow through the early evening yesterday - the roads got really slick and this is what I woke up to this morning:

Can I once again note how HAPPY I am that the new apartment has a garage? It's already 100% worth it after only one snow fall. :-) It seemed like a good day to sit inside and do not much of anything. So that's what I did - I finished the newest Sandford book, got lots of laundry done, and spent some serious quality time with the cat napping on my lap. An almost perfect winter Sunday.

P.S. - We got Calvin his Christmas present at Target today. Don't tell him - it's going to be a surprise:

St. Paul Farmer's Market

2011-11-19T10:08:00.001-06:00

One of the things I really like about living in St. Paul is the Downtown St. Paul Farmer's Market. Andy and I go fairly often - we just walk down a few blocks to catch a bus that takes us right there. It's a great Saturday morning activity. Today we ventured out for probably the last time before the snow falls. As you can see, everyone was bundled up appropriately:

In addition to the somewhat limited selection of fruits (mostly just apples) and vegetables (potatoes... lots of potatoes), there were also a lot of holiday-themed home decorations for sale. These were my favorite:

Granted, we can't really ever have those in our house - Calvin would have a field day, and a lot of the stuff in those decorations is not good for cats.

It was chilly but it was nice to see that quite a few of the vendors were still around. The market even runs in the winter, although it's mostly just meat, cheese, and eggs at that point.

I don't know if I'll be brave enough to go once there is snow on the ground, but I was glad to get in one last trip before it really is winter time.

And now, cute kitten photo of the day:

Calvin and I, enjoying some quiet time. I am almost finished with the most recent Sandford, and Calvin wanted a nap.

Happy Hour

2011-11-18T22:12:00.001-06:00

At work, we have a colleague from our factory in Michigan visiting us over the weekend - I picked him up at the airport this morning. He is one of the friendliest, most enthusiastic people I work with, so it's been fun to see him. We had a happy hour after work with our department, which turned into dinner, which turned into just sitting around chatting about all sorts of stuff. All this to say: I just got home and don't have a lot of bloggable material this evening. Instead, I offer you yet another adorable Calvin photo. He really does love sitting in the sink:

I think it's because it puts him almost at the same level as us. Plus, the faucet is FASCINATING. He likes to try and catch the drips as they fall. It's hilariously cute.

Our Chosen Local Liquor Store

2011-11-17T19:35:00.001-06:00

Or Party Store, for those of you reading this from Michigan. When we moved into this apartment, after we had found places for all the furniture etc, one of our next steps was to decide which liquor store in the vicinity was going to be "our" liquor store. Andy is a bit of a beer snob, you see, so not just any liquor store would do. They had to have a good beer selection. This is where we ended up:

Photo courtesy of Flickr user EC Leatherberry.

It is at the intersection of University Ave and Raymond. As has been reported elsewhere in our family blogosphere, that intersection has been severely disrupted by light rail construction, which you can see in this photo. That was part of the reason Andy decided to start going there - he is all about supporting Light Rail adjacent businesses so that they are still around when the (totally awesome) train is up and running. Another reason we like it? There is a US Bank across the street and the good people at Sharret's go there and get $2 bills to give people as change, just as a matter of course. I am perhaps more amused by this than Andy is. Plus, you know, they do have a good beer selection. But mostly, I am going for the $2 bills. I've been collecting them since I was a kid.

We went tonight (no good photo opportunities) because it is Beaujolais Nouveau release day! We bought some, to be enjoyed semi-pretentiously sometime this weekend. Should be fun!

And now, the reason we're all here - the cute kitten picture of the day:

New Hair Cut

2011-11-16T19:56:00.001-06:00

Around about the time I was 6 years old, the woman who had been cutting my hair my whole life up to that point, as well as my mom's hair, left the salon and moved away. We were forced to find someone else to cut our hair. My dad, a patron of the same salon, suggested to my mom that we try his stylist, a new-ish girl named Terri. We owe dad for that suggestion - I went to get my hair cut today, and it was Terri as usual, as it has been for the last 22 years. I think since I was 6 only maybe 3 hair cuts have not been done by her, and one of them was while I was living in France. Needless to say, I have complete faith in her at this point. Plus, it's kind of fun to chat with someone who has known me my whole life, and who knows my parents. We always have lots of stories to share. It's amazing how much our lives have changed since then. I wonder if I make her feel old? She must be at least in her 40s at this point, but she certainly doesn't look it.

So here is the result of today's hair cut (with Calvin, as a blog post is not complete without a cat photo):

Nothing too radically different, just a bit of a trim. But it was nice to catch up with Terri, with a bonus pre-hair cut stop over at Chez GZMoohoo. TOPWLT was not present, but I left her a little something for when she gets home. All in all, an excellent work-night evening.

CICB: In Concert

2011-11-15T21:08:00.001-06:00

It is Tuesday, and that does mean I had the band today. However, this particular Tuesday was special:

Andy was nice enough to take some video. The image quality is not great (too dark, it was inevitable), but the sound is good. This is us playing "Chanteys."

I even had more than one fan! My friend Jill and her husband Andrej also came to see us play. I thought it went very well.

And now, Calvin photo of the day. I understand there were some complaints yesterday.

He's trying his best to be a hunter. I don't think he'd know what to do with a real mouse.

Flickr: All Time Most Viewed

2011-11-14T19:27:00.001-06:00

I find myself extremely uninspired today for some reason so, though it seems a bit early in November for a photo montage, I present to you today my 3 All-Time Most Viewed photos from my Flickr site:

The mini golf photo was the front runner for quite some time, only to be unseated by the Sahara Casino after it closed. The popularity of the mini-golf photo continues to perplex me.

Yoga

2011-11-13T17:54:00.001-06:00

Andy and I joined a new gym when we moved to St. Paul, and I have been enjoying going to the yoga class on Saturday's at 11. So yesterday, that is exactly what I did. It was a good class as always and it seems like I'm making progress. However, it seems I went a little too far - about 2 hours later, my back started to hurt. It still does, unfortunately, so we went to the doctor today. I've got some muscle relaxants and pain killers, so I should be all right. Note to self: don't over do it at yoga. Ouch.

Since that trip to urgent care took up most of my afternoon, I am just not going to have much blog-able material today. Mom did come over for a lovely lunch (and to drop off a heating pad) but it was not a particularly photogenic moment. So instead, yet another video of Calvin - this time with musical accompaniment!

I'm telling you, YouTube stardom is obviously not too far away. Andy and I are formulating a plan.

91 Years Young

2011-11-12T18:23:00.001-06:00

My uncle Jim (of the non-Miller variety) has decided that, once you reach 90, you deserve a birthday party every year. So we all gathered at his place today to celebrate the 91st birthday of my beloved Grandpa Bud. Even two of the three cousins that live out of town made the trip to MN for the party. Here I am with the birthday guy:

And of course, there was cake:

And some presents:

It was great to see everyone and the food was super delicious! Happy Birthday, Grandpa. I hope we have another great party next year. :-)

Calvin the Video Star

2011-11-11T11:14:00.001-06:00

I am not going to have very much bloggable material today - it's a day off of work and, after about 1 or so, I probably won't be home again until late. With that in mind, I am presenting a Calvin video today as my blog post:

He really, really likes that scratching post. He'll be a YouTube star in no time.

Bicycle Storage

2011-11-10T19:55:00.001-06:00

Since two of my cohorts in this blogging experiment spent some time recently talking about their bicycle storage systems/arrangement and what have you, it is apparently an entirely bloggable subject. Woo! One more thing I can talk about to get through this whole entire month of blogging thing... I brought this on myself, really.

First, our gear (with some bonus kitten-related paraphernalia):

We started out with two of these but our gear required more storage space.

And now, the bikes:

The two nice ones are inside posing as decorations.

And the other 3 not-as-nice ones are in the garage. I love our garage.

Our neighbor has taken on a more restrained approach:

And now, gratuitous kitten photo of the day:

Adventures in Cohabitation

2011-11-09T19:37:00.000-06:00

In an effort to not have one person do all the cooking, all the time, Andy and I sort of have a system for who cooks dinner. On my two late nights, Mon-Tues, it's up to Andy to get some food on the table. I usually then make something on Wed-Thurs, then the weekends just sort of work themselves out. Today I was supposed to go out with a friend who cancelled at the last minute, so I arrived home and had to plan something (and entertain the cat, of course). Here's what I ended up with:

I think it was all a success. Calvin wanted to help too:

The Band

2011-11-08T21:45:00.000-06:00

That's what Andy calls it, anyway. Not "Did you have a good time at band? or How was band?" Instead, "How was the band? or Did you have a good time at the band?" It's pretty amusing, mostly, and I think it's a veiled reference to the Simpsons in some way. He's been doing it for so long that I don't really remember where it came from in the first place.

In any case, today is apparently the point in NaBloPoMo where I traditionally talk about my participation in CICB. It was a similar date both last year and the year before that. I am nothing if not a creature of habit, as are we all. Normally at this time of year, we would have already had our first concert. However, this year, our first concert of the season is not until next week - a joint effort with the Minneapolis Washburn High School band. It is also the 30th Anniversary year of the CICB - we do still have some of the original members, amazingly enough - and we will be putting on an anniversary extravaganza concert in December as well. All of this means we have been rehearsing Christmas music since the beginning of October, which is just wrong. Despite all that, I am still really enjoying the experience. I always loved the actual playing part of band in high school and college - it was the practicing part that got me down. With this, the music is challenging but not so much so that I have to spend hours working on it at home. Which is perfect, as I am not really inclined to practice at home very much (both of my parents can attest to this), and it would probably freak out the cat.

Speaking of the cat, time for today's daily cat photo:

This is Calvin on the day we got him, exactly one month ago today. Look at how much he's grown already - he's just a little tiny thing in this photo.

Andy was going to get a cake to celebrate the one-month Calvin anniversary. At least, he said something like that over the weekend - we love the cat, have I mentioned? But since the cat can't enjoy the cake and really, we don't need that much sugar, I think we're probably not going to do that. Maybe we'll have a celebratory cupcake or dish of ice cream over the weekend? That seems slightly more appropriate.

John Sandford's Certain Prey

2011-11-07T21:05:00.001-06:00

In retrospect, reading the entire book the day the TV movie aired may have been a mistake. I think it was too fresh in my mind, so therefore the details they got wrong were too obvious to me. My watching companions seemed to get lots of enjoyment out of it. The general consensus is this: Mark Harmon is not sexy enough to play Lucas, nor did he play the character with the appropriate swagger/cockiness. Instead, he played it a bit jokey. Not quite right, but still good. Also, at her first appearance on the screen, we all exclaimed "That is NOT Marcy," but she grew on us in the end. I mean, the looks are all wrong, but the character itself was pretty spot on. And one small thing - why didn't they let Carmel have a bright-red Jag like in the book? The blue one just didn't have the same pop. Despite all that, I'd say that, all in all, it was a quite excellent TV movie that I would recommend even to non-John Sandford fans.

As for today... it started off on the wrong foot - the alarm clock did not go off like it was supposed to. Andy was a half hour late to work and I had to cancel my planned trip to the gym. But after that, I kept busy at work, and we had some business partners in from Chicago for a meeting and a trip out to dinner. We went to the relatively new Pittsburgh Blue. It did not disappoint - seriously delicious. Plus, Calvin REALLY likes the bag they gave me for the leftovers:

Everyone loves Cat-in-a-Bag.

Lazier Sunday

2011-11-06T16:38:00.001-06:00

I love the daylight savings switch-over in the fall. A perfect excuse to sleep in without actually losing any time. Lovely. Plus, it's a Sunday - a day made for relaxation and laziness.

Compared to today, my day yesterday was positively jam-packed. Since that movie is on tonight, I decided after breakfast that it would be a good idea to get at least part of Certain Prey re-read, so I could remind myself of the basic plot points, character descriptions, etc. So that's what I started to do. Around 11, Andy biked over to his brother's house to give Brad his birthday present. I was still reading. Andy returned around 12:30 and made some lunch for us both. Still reading.

And now, here we are at 4:30 or so and I have just finished the entire book. Apparently I got sucked in. It is the first Clara Rinker book, with Carmel Loan and her blood red Jaguar. Sandford and Davenport at their finest, I think. At least now the plot is fresh in my mind for the movie tonight? I can't tell if that means I'll be more or less disappointed in the final result. I guess we'll see!

And now, the cat photo of the day. Calvin as I left him about 5 minutes ago, enjoying a cat nap:

I hope everyone else had as nice a weekend as I have had. Enjoy the film tonight - I expect some commentary tomorrow!

Lazy Saturday

2011-11-05T21:03:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a long time, possibly since July, I had absolutely no specific plans this weekend. I can't tell you how happy that makes me, particularly when coupled with my day off yesterday. I decided to take full advantage and not too anything too terribly stressful.

With that in mind, we had a leisurely breakfast this morning, read the paper, and played with the kitten. I mosey-ed on over to the gym for a Yoga class that started at 11, my first scheduled event of the day. The yoga was excellent - I like the teacher at this new gym. I think I'll make the 11am Saturday class a regular thing. My other big plans for the day? Epically large amounts of laundry. We packed it all up and headed to the local laundromat with reading material and plenty of quarters:

We do have laundry in our building, but there is only one washer and one dryer for the 5 apartments. I decided doing 4 loads all at the same time was worth the extra 75 cents per load. Or was it 5 loads? Well, all of those silver machines were mine, for sure. And I think it was 6 loads, now that I think back on it. We also did all our sheets and towels etc. Laundry has never been so efficient.

From there, an afternoon of laziness and being entertained by Calvin. Here he is with his second favorite toy, a scratching post:

Tomorrow I think I'll be equally as non-occupied. My big plans? Watching the John Sandford movie on the USA Network. It's Certain Prey, one of my favorites! I hope they don't butcher it too badly.

More tomorrow... Side note to Santini - Nikki got some nice boots. I heartily approve.

A Trip to the Vet

2011-11-04T20:35:00.001-05:00

We started out our day (that we both had off of work) with a trip to the vet for Calvin. He needed a vaccine booster shot. It went much, much better than last time - aside from meowing at us in the car, there was no complaining at all! He even got a nice treat from the vet for being so good. :-) Maybe he won't complain so much next time we're on our way there?

After a quick trip to the gym to work out, I headed down to Bloomington to see my grandparents for some lunch and cards.

Mom, counting the cards to make sure we had the required 52.

Me, dealing a rousing round of Oh Heck for all of us.

We played several rounds of Oh Heck, a family favorite. Grandpa won one of the rounds with a score one point more than his age. It was impressive. A good time was had by all.

From there, I headed on over to MoA (Mall of America - not to be confused with MoK, or Mirror of Korea) to meet Andy. Ecco, his favorite shoe brand, opened a store there today so we had to check it out. I am thinking of getting these boots in black - what does everyone think?

We also rode a few rides:

One of the newer rides at what is now dubbed Nickelodeon Universe.

It was super fun! After a dinner outing, we're back at home to hang out with the kitten and perhaps catch up on some more Mad Men. We're finally on season 3. Only one more to go and we'll be all caught up!

And now, today's requisite kitten photo:

My guys, getting ready to take a nap.

Cooking Adventures: Tofu

2011-11-03T19:51:00.000-05:00

I think I'll start right off with the promised daily kitten photo. Here's Calvin, playing with one of his favorite toys:

Yep, a paper grocery bag. Cats are so easy to please.

And now, back to the title of the post. Kelsey cooks often with tofu, and I've had a tofu dish at Mirror of Korea that I absolutely ADORE, so it seemed like I should give it another shot as a home-cooked sort of thing. With all that in mind, I found a recipe online that looked similar to the MoK dish and gave it a shot. After a few tweaks, this is what I ended up with:

Here's the recipe if anyone is interested: Seasoned Tofu.

Serve with these and some rice and you're all set.

It's still not quite the same as the MoK dish, but it's getting there. It was definitely a really satisfying dinner. A little salty, perhaps, but yummy.

I have a bunch of paid time off to use up at work before the end of the year (or they'll take it away), so I've got tomorrow off. Calvin has a vet appointment (vaccine booster - not his favorite) and then I am headed over to my grandparents' to have lunch with them and my mom and play some cards. Should be a really nice day.

Calvin's First Halloween

2011-11-02T19:37:00.000-05:00

So did you hear that we got a kitten? Andy still declares that day to be his "best birthday ever." Given that he's had 28 previous to that one, it is not an insignificant statement. Calvin has been taking up most of our non-work time lately. He is also generally the main topic of most of Andy's conversations. So really, we're happy with the cat.

Calvin is a black cat, so I got all sorts of Halloween related questions - was I going to dress him up, did we have a pumpkin for him to sit in, etc...? I figured since he's already black, no costume was required. Plus, forcing a squirmy kitten into a costume was probably not going to be an injury-free experience for Andy and I since he does still have all his claws. Instead, I picked up a simple Halloween decoration from the dollar bin at Target and we did our best to get a good photo. So here's Calvin on his first Halloween:

See what I mean about squirmy? He just would not sit still for any of our photos - it was the middle of one of his hyper active periods. Silly kitten.

How was everyone else's Halloween?

NaBloPoMo 2011!

2011-11-01T21:45:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again, the month we've all been waiting for - National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo for short. I know I'm excited!

I have been neglecting this blog lately so I am hoping this month of making myself post every day will re-energize me, get me back in to the spirit of blogging. Plus, now that it's getting to be dark when I get home, and it's dark when I go to work, I'll have a lot fewer fun things (biking, for example...) to distract me from it. So for this month, expect LOTS of photos of my new kitten, and various tales of exploring St. Paul, my new-ish city. Who knows, there might even still be biking if we can work it in there somewhere.

Today is Tuesday, which means I left the house at 7:15am and I will not be home again until 9:30 or so. Tuesdays are LONG, what with work and band rehearsal keeping me away all day. So today's post is going to be abbreviated. More to come tomorrow, I promise. For now, I leave you with a photo of the activies from last weekend, already posted elsewhere on the intertubes:

For those of you participating with me, here is blog with helpful daily writing prompts. And away we go!

Welcome to St. Paul

2011-10-09T20:59:00.000-05:00

So wow, what happened to September? Wasn't I just blogging from Michigan and it was prime blueberry season? Since then, in bullet points:

My work meetings wrapped up well. But it was a LONG time to not be home.
Andy and I did some camping. Turns out we will be carrying out my childhood traditions, as we both really, really enjoy it.
I had my 10 year high school reunion. I was on the planning committee and it turned out really well. Nye's Polonaise was the perfect venue and everyone had a great time. And we all went home with gift certificates good for free pie. Who doesn't like pie?

Finally, the day after the reunion, I moved into the new apartment that Andy and I are now sharing. (YAY!) As of right about, more than a month later, it's finally starting to look like home. Plus, it's in St. Paul, not too far from the big new house (Sandford readers know what I mean), which makes my Dad very happy. Here are some photos:

The living room. That ancient desk on the right belongs to my friend Sarah, the previous tenant. Thanks, Sarah! And that's our office chair, Fuego.

Dining room 1, showing our bookcases. We picked that small one up today at the local antique mall, just down the street.

Dining room 2.... that seemed like a good place for the nice bikes. We have 3 additional bikes in the garage.

Kitchen. Of note: DISHWASHER! Oh, how I've missed having a dishwasher. I HATE dishes.

Oh also, as you may have seen elsewhere, Andy and I got a kitten yesterday. Meet Calvin:

He really, really loves that mouse toy. Hopefully that means we won't have any actual mice in the apartment.

Ok, that's about it. Now that I'm all settled and life is going to less crazy, I hope to blog more often. We'll see how that goes.

Coast Guard Festival & Tunnel Park

2011-08-07T15:10:00.001-05:00

After some morning rain yesterday, it cleared right up as thought we'd planned it, so the formerly small loud ones, Nancy, and I headed on down to the Coast Guard Festival in downtown Grand Haven. It was HOT but nice to walk around and see the sights. We checked out the craft fair, had some mini donuts, and then headed to the main attraction, the ships:

There was an even bigger one moored directly to the left of the photo, but it was hard to get a satisfactory picture of it. This one, though, came all the way from Duluth, MN. That's a long trip.

The Coast Guard Fest also had a selection of cheesy arcade/carny type games, including my all time favorite with the golf balls and the horse race. We won a prize:

He's a little lopsided, but mostly adorable. And sitting in the chair of power. An enviable position, to be sure. After a late night watching some bands play and getting some diner food with Nancy and friends, we woke up to yet more drizzling. Boo. Nikki decided cookie baking was therefore in order:

But, just like yesterday, it cleared right up, so we headed out for the always fun and extremely traditional walk over to Tunnel Park. Sylvia has pictures with actual people in them on her blog. Mine are of the scenery:

It's good to be back in Michigan again. I don't know why I stayed away so long.

Michigan 2011

2011-08-06T07:56:00.000-05:00

In the last 6 days, I have worked 57 hours both prepping our meeting for work, and then actually attending and working at the meeting. We have a new boat and it's very exciting:

Cool boat or not, that's too many hours. Fortunately, it was over yesterday at 3 and I started my drive to Holland. As soon as I turned off of I-196 at the Walgreen's over there, everything began to look very familiar. Such is the case here at the beach house:

Granted, not quite everything is the same:

It's good to be here, if only for just the weekend. It is an amazingly great lake out there.

Out for a Walk

2011-07-04T14:44:00.002-05:00

I am at Andy's today and he wanted to go for a bike ride this morning. Since my bike is at my house, I decided to follow the example of my older/wiser relatives and take a nice walk. Photo highlights below:

St. Paul Cathedral

MN History Center, now idle due to the government shutdown.

Some statuary near the grounds of the Capitol.

The MN Capitol building, now closed to the public.

The Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul, photographed from Rice Park.

The James J. Hill house (also closed), at the top of the 188 steps I climbed on my way home.

It was just a little bit too hot, but fortunately the downtown Walgreen's was open so I stopped for some water half way through my walk. There were not very many cars or pedestrians out and about so it was nice to feel alone in a big city for a bit.

We're off to the festivities chez Gzmoohoo and GRider shortly. I for one am looking forward to some hot dogs. Happy Fourth, all!

Long Weekend

2011-07-03T18:45:00.000-05:00

I don't know about all of you out there but, for me, this is the first weekend where it's actually felt like summer all the way through. It's not just me, right? Appropriate for the 4th of July, I suppose.

My weekend got off to an excellent start:

It seems Andy finally got the hint about flowers. :-) It only took three or more years. But still - aren't they nice? That was actually Thursday night, but as Friday was only a half day, I am going to count that as the start to my weekend. After said half day, and Andy's unexpected day off due to complete governmental incompetence, we decided to make the most of it. Happy Hour was enjoyed at the new Kieran's, and we had some super yummy Ethiopian food at Fasika. It's a total hole in the wall off the intersection of University and Snelling, but I can't recommend it enough.

Saturday was also OOTNDITHOD (tm Gino), so I enjoyed my neighborhood and did EPIC amounts of laundry while Andy enjoyed his bike ride. Seriously, it was super nice, so I walked around the neighborhood and/or sat outside while waiting for clothes to dry. I love my neighborhood, have I mentioned?

Today is once again a beautiful day to be in Minnesota. After a morning of helping his friend move, Andy and I met up for lunch, then headed over to a place full of childhood nostalgia, at least for Andy:

Regular readers of GZMoohoo will note that this is near the super-creatively named Marydale park. They do indeed have 20+ different flavors of soft serve. I tried Mango last time, I think? It was delicious. This time we split a raspberry shake, also delicious, and perfect for a hot summer day like this one. Ice cream was followed up by a stroll through our potential new neighborhood, and a movie at one of my favorite theaters in town, which is within blocks of the potential new place:

They show slightly off-the-beaten-track type movies, as opposed to huge blockbusters. It's a great old theater. Tomorrow is, of course, the 4th of July and since the government of MN didn't pass a budget, we can't go to our usual horse races. Without a government there is no one to regulate the gambling you see. So instead, GZMoohoo and GRider are having us over for hot dogs etc. on the grill. I hear talk that we may even get to play ladder ball. Seems an adequate and no less fun alternative activity.

P.S. - Turns out mine were also right where I left them:

Wisconsin and other Adventures

2011-06-11T21:11:00.000-05:00

After a week of wild temperature swings and totally weird weather, this weekend looks like it's going to be pretty nice. Maybe not quite as nice as we would like for June 11th, but at least it's not 103 or raining. I'll take it. Today, I definitely decided to take advantage.

My roommate Maren had recently discovered a Groupon offer for a vineyard tour and wine tasting at a "local" vineyard in St. Croix Falls, WI. Today was the day. After an hour or so's drive through some very pretty Minnesota small towns, we arrived in Wisconsin at the Chateau St. Croix winery. It turns out that they were having an arts festival at the vineyard this weekend, so we picked a good day to go! After having some food and checking out the various local artists (I got a very pretty new necklace), we had a tour of the place and sampled their vintages. The Zinfandel and Syrah were both quite excellent, so I may have to keep an eye out for their wine at my local liquor store. On our way home, we stopped in lovely Lindstrom:

We definitely stopped at that donut shop and had a donut. They were excellent AND they cost less than a dollar. That's the thing about getting out of the city - almost everything is cheaper.

Andy arrived at my house almost the same time we did - he took his "riding around" bike over, so we could ride to dinner and enjoy the beautiful evening. Some of my dear readers may remember the story that appeared elsewhere on the internet about the Wireless Trek. Well today, I took it out for its' inaugural ride of the season:

First stop, Jack's Cafe for some lovely food. This was our starter of spicy cheese curds:

From there, my riding companion and I went over to Minnehaha Creek to check out the new pedestrian bridge at Bryant Ave S.

I have never seen the creek this high, or flowing this fast. We must have gotten a lot of snow, or something?

Finally, here I am with the aforementioned Wireless Trek. It's actually a much nicer bike than I remember it being, aside from the twist shifters, that is.

On our way home past Lake Harriet, the sunset was begging me to stop and take a photo. So that's what I did.

All in all, it has been an EXCELLENT day. Plus, my MN Twins beat the (non-undefeated) Texas Rangers today. I am going to the game tomorrow, so I hope this trend continues.

Not Paris, but still pretty good

2011-05-28T11:45:00.000-05:00

In an effort to ward off jet-lag related lethargy this morning, I decided to get up off the comfy couch and walk on over to the brand new Fulton Farmer's Market. It's a gorgeous day out there, after all, so it seemed a shame to waste it, even if the French Open is on TV.

I am really glad I decided to head out. Some highlights of my walk (note: these photos were taken with my shiny new cell phone. It takes nicer photos than my first digital camera):

A lovely street on my walk. I LOVE all the trees.

Southwest High School

Finally, I arrived at the market. It's small, and it's a bit too early for any good veggies or fruits, but there was still a pretty decent crowd:

I picked up some potato/flax bread from Sun Street Breads and some sheep's milk Camembert. I plan to enjoy both of them as my lunch. :-)

It was only about a 15-20 minute walk over to the market, but I am SO glad I got out to enjoy the day. It was pleasantly warm-ish with some beautiful sunshine and blue skies. Clearly, I brought this weather back with me from Paris. On my way home, a stop by the lake seemed appropriate:

I still can't believe sometimes that this is so close to my apartment. Lake!

Finally, the caretaker of my building has been hard at work on the flower pots out front:

Aren't they lovely?

And now, some French Open on TV and a yummy lunch in a bit. So looking forward to two more days of weekend after this.

Paris 2011: Adventures in Strasbourg

2011-05-26T20:04:00.002-05:00

Let's see, where did we last leave off...?

Oh yes, that's right, a morning train to Strasbourg! We left the apartment on Tuesday morning around 9 for our 10 o'clock train (one of the many benefits of train transportation vs. air transportation) and made it with plenty of time. 2ish hours later, and we had arrived in Strasbourg, the capital of the Alsace region, as well as the seat of European government. Here in photos are some highlights of that first day:

Place Kleber, one of many squares in town.

A small garden near the cathedral.

One of the lovely canals found throughout Strasbourg.

We also took a tram and a regular old city bus to the town of Kehl in Germany. Andy needed to arrange train transportation for the next leg of his journey, and of course buy a bottle of his beloved Mezzo Mix soda.

I tried some. It's not so bad, actually.

We passed our afternoon on a lovely boat tour of the canals/tributaries of the River Ill that is itself an offshoot of the Rhin. After a dinner of extremely traditional German fare (think sauerkraut, lots of sauerkraut), we headed to the Academie de la Biere for some excellent beer. It was an excellent day.

Strasbourg, Day 2

We got off to an early start and began by climbing all of the steps (I lost count, sorry Mom) to the top of the Cathedral of Strasbourg:

See that flat bit next to the spire? That's where the stairs end up. LOTS of stairs.

It was worth it though; check out the view:

Nice, right?

We also took an audio-guided walking tour of the old town and Petit France, visited the Musee Historique de Strasbourg and enjoyed some lovely Doner Kabob for lunch. Before our trains that afternoon, we ventured out to the edges of town, near the European government buildings. They have a lovely park out there, called the Orangerie:

It goes on like this for quite some time. There's even a small zoo.

All in all, I think we had a wonderful time in Strasbourg. It is a really beautiful city, and much less to take in than Paris. I highly recommend it. After the park, it was time to head back to Strasbourg Gare Centrale to catch our respective trains. I headed back to Paris for the long trip back to Minneapolis the next day, and Andy started his 2nd leg of the trip, 3 trains to Hamburg.

I had an amazing time in France as always, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. More photos as always on my flickr page. As for me, I think I really need some sleep as it is approximately 3:00am Paris time as I type.

Paris 2011: Return from Strasbourg

2011-05-25T14:22:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to put a quick note up here to let my loyal readers know that I have arrived safely back in Paris from my lovely side-trip to Strasbourg. I do not have time for a full post since we have to get up super early tomorrow to start our trip home to Minneapolis (sniff!), but trust me when I say that Strasbourg is really lovely.

Photos and a full recap to come once I am back on American soil. Until then, a bientot!

Paris 2011: Day 5

2011-05-23T11:33:00.000-05:00

Any day that starts with this is going to be a good day:

A cafe au lait at the local brasserie.

From there, Andy wanted to experience the RER A line, since it is apparently the most traveled rapid transit line in the western world (or, outside Tokyo), so we walked over to Chatelet and hopped on. Our destination:

It really is a grand arch.

After that, Andy and I headed off to the Champs-Elysees while his mom went off for her second trip to the Louvre. We saw the usual Champs-Elysees sites, including another Arch for our trouble:

This one is actually an Arc, technically.

We meandered our way down, checking out the Peugeot store (NICE pepper mills, oh and I suppose they also make cars?), the menus at McDonald's and Quick, and the Virgin Megastore. It was a lovely walk on another perfect day in Paris. Next was lunch - we stopped at Monoprix for some cheese and various other yummy french foods (Rillette, anyone?) and lunched at the apartment and had a little mid-day sit-down. We thought perhaps we'd meet up with his mom again but no luck.

Our afternoon was spent in pursuit of a Metro themed t-shirt for Andy at Galeries Lafayette (no luck, boo!). En route, some more excellent Paris sites:

L'Opera, the nice one.

This is one of my favorite buildings in Paris. Not sure why.

We also went to a store that ONLY sells mustard. Oh France, so silly. We did not buy any mustard, but quite a lot of the quirky flavors were very tempting. Now we are at home, chilling out and watching the French Open a bit (the TV graphics and silly TV personalities are unchanged), waiting for dinner time. I think a brasserie may be calling our name.

Tomorrow: a morning train to Strasbourg. Yay!

Paris 2011: Day 4

2011-05-22T16:06:00.000-05:00

I did not take a lot of photos today, dear readers, so apologies in advance for the lack of photographs. My first task this morning was saying farewell to the rest of my traveling companions. Andy and his mom were headed in the direction of the Chateau de Versailles, and Brad had to head to the airport to meet/pick up his girlfriend. Since I was up, I decided to once again walk over to the Marche Bastille. Raspberries, radishes, and asparagii were acquired.

My next item of the day: Meeting my good friend Katherine at the Hotel de Ville. She lives in Bordeaux and took the train up for the day specifically to hang out with me! We wandered over to Notre Dame, then explored the Marais district where our apartment is and had a lovely lunch, enjoyed the sunshine, and generally caught up and had a great time. It's really too bad we live so far from each other - it would be really nice to see her more than once every year or two. Ah, well.

After dropping Katherine at her Metro, I headed back to the apartment and met up with the Versailles-going contingent. I think a good time was had by all. Andy and I went back out for some exploring and dinner a bit later and enjoyed a thoroughly french bistro kind of meal. I had the moules mariniere (mussels cooked in white wine) and he had a croque falstaff (grilled ham/cheese/tomato sandwich with 2 fried eggs on top). In keeping with that, I present to you my only photo of the day:

How many French items can you identify in this photo?

Ok, off to bed for me. Tomorrow we will be tackling the Champs-Elysees. Sing it with me... "Aux Champs-Elysees...."

Paris 2011: Day 3

2011-05-21T12:12:00.000-05:00

I am happy to say that we all slept much, much better last night and are feeling much less jet-lagged today. After waking up around 7:30 or so, I ran a quick errand to the nearest bakery for some croissants, a pain au chocolat, and a chausson des pommes. Oh, and a baguette. All for less than the 6 euro that Andy had given me. Score! I took them back to the apartment and they were all still warm for our breakfast. Yum!

After the delicious start to the day, we started a trip down to the vicinity of Montparnasse to see the Catacombs. We had a brief stop near Chatelet-Les Halles for a lovely cafe creme, facing the Fountain of the Innocents.From there, a straight shot on the RER to the Catacombs, where we had to wait in a not insignificant line to get in. But once in... wow. I had already been once but I forgot how creepy and impressive it is. And a nice walk, although it was a bit damp down there.

From the catacombs, we wandered down the Grande Boulevarde to the Jardin de Luxembourg:

More photos, as always, on my Flickr page. From there, to the Latin Quarter we went to have lunch at my Dad's favorite Greek place. So, so yummy, and they have apparently opened another outpost just down the block.

We then split up as Andy and I wanted to go to the Musee d'Orsay. I always enjoy the sculptures in the courtyard:

As you can see, another beautiful day in Paris. The Musee d'Orsay was PACKED, particularly due to the ongoing renovations. And, my polar bear was not there! I was so disappointed! But the rest of the art is still amazing, so there's that. And I think Andy really enjoyed it. Now we're at home, having met back up with Andy's mom and brother after their adventures on the Champs Elysees. We'll be leaving shortly for dinner at Chez Omar, another one of my favorites. Tomorrow: Katherine is coming up from Bordeaux and everyone else is headed out to Versailles. Yay!

Paris 2011: Day 2

2011-05-20T11:12:00.003-05:00

We had grand plans to get up early this morning and attack the day with a trip the Eiffel Tower, to hopefully avoid any crazy long lines. Sadly, our bodies all decided that catching up on sleep after our long trip was a much higher priority. Instead, we woke up at 8:30 and had a much more leisurely breakfast. We did, however, eventually make it to the tower:

It's been a long time since I went all the way up the tower. I forgot how cool it is up there. But wow, are there some serious lines. First you wait to buy your ticket (UGH!), then wait to get into the elevator. After checking out the 2ieme etage, there is another line for the elevators to the very top. And then a line to get back down. You see what I mean? So aside from the time we spent waiting (and waiting) in line, it was an excellent experience.

From there, we took the short-ish walk over to the Hotel des Invalides to check out Napolean's tomb:

He was not kidding around, apparently. Seems like an awfully big box for such a short human being, but then again I also didn't crown myself emperor. We then headed over to Montmarte and had lunch at this delicious place: Le Relais Gascon. We all had one of the Salades Geantes and they are AMAZING! I think I'll have to go back there every time I go to Paris. Yum! Then, of course, we had to check out Sacre Coeur:

The hill was fun to climb but we were all pretty much done after that. We had enough energy and time for the Dali Museum, but now we're back home, enjoying some cheese, bread, and a little sit down. It's excellent, and it's also another beautiful day in Paris.

Paris 2011: Day 1

2011-05-19T06:03:00.003-05:00

As reported elsewhere, I boarded Delta Flight 220 yesterday afternoon, destined for the City of Lights. And voila, here I am about 14 hours later. After an uneventful flight and RER ride into Paris, one of Glen's assistants met us at our lovely apartment in the Marais. Determined not to immediately go to sleep, we went out for an adventure at the Marche Bastille. Many people say it is one of the best farmer's markets in Paris.

Here is the obelisk in Place de la Bastille, where the infamous prison used to stand:

And here's a lovely scene from the market:

We got all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables. More strawberries (delicious ones) than we could ever eat for about 2 euro. It's seriously good stuff. And as you can see, it's a beautiful day in Paris. We're having a brief sitdown at the apartment and then it's off to enjoy more of the day.

Blizzard (almost) 2.0

2011-02-21T20:11:00.000-06:00

For those of you that live in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area, you are well aware of the major snow event we've been having. For those of you that don't live here, a brief summary: Yesterday at about 9:45 or so, I walked over to a neighborhood restaurant to have some brunch. It was snowing lightly but no big deal, just a light dusting. We went to the restaurant, had a super yummy brunch, and as we left noticed that everything was ALREADY covered completely in snow. Streets that had been bare and clear were solid white, and it was still snowing very heavily. As I type, it is STILL snowing outside. It lightened up a bit, but it never really stopped. So twice so far this winter, I've experienced 12+ inches of snow all in one go. The storm in December was already the largest storm in my lifetime. And this one looks like it's number 2 on that list.

I woke up plenty early this morning, anticipating some issues getting my car out, as I wasn't lucky enough to park in a ramp this time. This is the view that greeted me out my living room window:

I mean, I know I live on the garden level, but this is ridiculous. Andy and I had some breakfast (he's a state employee - no work for him today) and bundled up to prepare ourselves to go find Chad. We walked over to where I had parked earlier in the weekend and this is what we found:

Those are my car shovels (yes, multiple) and scrapers sticking up out of the snow. I walked to the car to start clearing it off and the snow was up to my knees, at least. As you can see, the plow had already done an initial pass, making this even more challenging. Andy and I dug right in, literally. After about 10 minutes, a kindly neighbor of mine, who happened to be out shoveling his driveway, offered us larger shovels and his assistance. After about a half an hour, Chad was free:

Well, more or less anyway. Back into the house I went to shower and get ready for work, which fortunately for me did not start until 10:00 as usual on my Mondays. The drive was extremely slow, but I managed to make it on time despite the snow event.

While I was at work, I got an email and text message telling me that Minneapolis has declared a snow emergency, a record 8th in this winter season so far. So parking this evening was a challenge, as the plows have only sort of gone by so all roads are down to one lane plus parking. With the storm totals topping 17" in parts of the metro, I guess I'm not surprised. And did I mention that it's still snowing?

Le Creuset Adventures: Cassoulet

2011-01-23T21:10:00.001-06:00

Since Christmas, I have been experimenting with all sorts of recipes for my shiny new Le Creuset. Lots of soups, mainly. However, there is one specific dish that Andy requested we try out once I told him about the shiny new cooking utensil. And that request was for Cassoulet. Cassoulet is a home-style french dish with beans, and all sorts of various meats that is all cooked together in one pot. Fancy versions include duck confit and lamb. I decided to make a more accessible, budget version. I based it on this recipe that I found online. Here was my starting point:

That's 2.5 lbs of pork shoulder, cubed in 1-2 inch pieces; one onion, 3 carrots, & 3 celery stalks, a couple of cloves of garlic, diced; 1 lb bacon, cut into 2-inch pieces; 4 chicken thighs, bone in, skinless; 2 lbs white beans (pre-soaked); 2 pork sausages (shallot & garlic); tomato paste; 1 can diced tomatoes; sage & thyme.

Step 1: Brown all of the meat, in batches, and then set it on a plate off to the side. This part will take quite some time, even with a giant pot:

Step 2 (not pictured): Add the veggies to the pot and cook until softened.

Step 3: Add all the meat back into the pot with the veggies and herbs. Mix well, allow to cook a while so all the flavors can start to come together.

Step 4: Add the beans, plus 2 TB tomato paste and 1 can diced tomatoes. Then add water until the beans are mostly covered:

In the meantime, you should have been preheating the oven:

Step 5: You should bake it, covered, in the preheated oven for 1 to 1.5 hours, until the beans have absorbed quite a bit of liquid and are completely softened.

Step 6: Enjoy! I skipped the bread crumbs because this already seemed like way more than enough food.

Note that my Le Creuset is 7.5 QUARTS. And as you can see, it was full to the brim. About halfway through prep, Andy and I realized just how much food it was going to be, so we invited some friends over to enjoy it with us:

Jill and Andrej seemed to like it. And I had leftovers for DAYS. I sent some home with both Jill and Andy, gave some to my parents, and I still had enough for lunches at work for 3 days. I think we figured out that it serves 12 people easily. Ooops. At least it was delicious!

Christmas Round-Up

2010-12-31T10:18:00.002-06:00

As I have always done since... as long as I can remember, Christmas Eve was spent over at my mom & dad's. Mom and I went to the 5pm church service with Grandma Opal, at the church I was confirmed at as a much younger person. It's a small congregation and the Christmas Eve service is always very well done. I do like singing the Christmas hymns, especially at the end when we sing Silent Night in candlelight. That's my favorite part. We came home to the traditional christmas tapes playing, and my dad just finishing up our Christmas feast. This year it was meatloaf, as featured on the family food blog. Yum! We exchanged some gifts and a good time was had by all.

The "traditional" Nativity Scene. I arranged it thematically this year. Over there on the far right are the Men of Science.

The Christmas tree chez Miller/Elvecrog. Mom and I showed a bit of restraint with the ornaments this year. Although the sheep of course still make an appearance.

Christmas day is always slightly more eventful. The morning is spent with the Jim Miller clan chez eux. They provided a lovely brunch, seen here:

Kelsey, working hard on brunch prep. Obviously.

The brunch spread. Mmmm, bacon.

Post-brunch, the gifts were exchanged and we made a phone call to our relatives in sunny Florida. That was fun. We may also have played some Super Boggle. I was doing pretty well when we had to quit and head over to the Elvecrog get-together.

Boggle

The Elvecrogs were their usual boisterous selves. Mom and I had been put in charge of food (there was a lot of stress about that, believe me), so we showed up with a big ass ham, LOTS of meatballs, and some turkey. I think the food was a hit. I spent almost all of my time working on the ridiculously difficult puzzle. As a result, I sort of forgot to take pictures of anything else...

Seriously, it was REALLY difficult.

In the days following Christmas, a normal routine has reasserted itself. One of my favorite gifts was the Le Creuset french oven that my dad got for me. Maren also got me a smaller Martha Stewart version. Here they are:

Aren't they pretty? I am anticipating many excellent cooking adventures. The first was last night, actually. I took the ham bone from Christmas (with lots of ham left on it....) and threw it in the big guy there with beans, carrots, celery, onion, thyme and a bay leaf and let it cook for 90 minutes or so. I have to say, the results were super delicious:

PLENTY of leftovers. Good thing it was yummy.

And now it's New Year's Eve and our party plans may be spoiled by the rain/snow/sleet we've got going on at the moment. We will endeavor to persevere. I think 2010 has been a good year and 2011 should shape up to be one as well. Happy New Year, all!

And yet more snow...

2010-12-20T20:55:00.000-06:00

I read somewhere that this is our 6th significant snow "event" in the last 7 weeks. It sure does feel like it's snowing constantly, so I guess that makes sense. Combine that with the fact that this is my late day at work, and my evening plans became pretty self evident:

It's a perfect evening to get all of that done, now that my car is safely parked during the 3rd Minneapolis snow emergency in the space of a week and a half. Now if they can actually plow the street next to my house tonight, I'll be all set.

Blizzard 2010: The Day After

2010-12-12T19:24:00.000-06:00

I woke up this morning to clear blue skies and absolutely freezing temps. I think there was no actual temperature the first time I checked and then it got one degree COLDER. But at least it wasn't snowing anymore. After a delicious breakfast and some hot tea, I bundled up and ventured out to check out the results of the most recent snowpocalypse.

I guess that yellow VW Beetle made it out somehow. I don't see it here, so either the owner performed a miracle or the City of St. Paul towed it away. Note that the sidewalk is only cleared to the edge of Andy's building. Sidewalk shoveling is the responsibility of the adjacent home/building owners, so I don't blame them for only going that far.

So much for that path to the street that someone went to all that trouble to clear out yesterday. I can see that the snow plow made quick work of it.

No one had yet cleared a path through this drift to the street. The sidewalk just sort of... stops. I had boots, it was OK. But they'll have to get to that eventually. But I imagine that for the time being, they have more pressing concerns.

They did finally plow a path between Andy's building and the parking lot. But I can see that none of his neighbors have yet made any efforts to un-bury their cars. Not that I blame them - who wants to do that in sub-zero weather if it's not absolutely necessary?

This guy only barely made it into the parking lot before giving up. Then the plow moved in behind him and he is now thoroughly stuck and will need a team of people with shovels to get out, I think. Here's the view at the front of that car:

Another good reason why Andy's neighbors had not yet bothered to shovel out their cars. Where were they going to go, after all?

As for me, this is the view from where my car was parked for the weekend:

A little bit of snow, but absolutely nothing compared to out on the street. And here's Chad:

No snow anywhere to be seen at 3 or so this afternoon. Andy is a genius. I was all set to blog that this was the best $10 that I ever spent, but then an amazing thing happened. Andy and I drove to the exit to the parking garage and there was no attendant on duty, and the gate just opened on a sensor as soon as I drove up to it. So it turns out that parking in the ramp cost me absolutely nothing at all. Brilliant!

Parking in both of the Twin Cities continues to be a complete disaster as they deal with the sheer amount of snow and number of cars that must park on the street, so I have retreated to the suburbs where my parents have ample space in their driveway. I'll hunker down here for the night and hopefully the freeways will be clear for my drive to work around 9:00am tomorrow.

How was everyone else's weekend?

December Blizzard 2010

2010-12-11T15:35:00.001-06:00

One of the local weather guys predicted that the snowstorm we are currently in the middle of would rival the Halloween Blizzard of '91. As I park on the street and am subject to snow emergency plowing/parking rules, some advance planning was required. After many phone calls and theorizing, I took Andy's suggestion and decided to park my car in a parking ramp in downtown St. Paul and hunker down at Andy's apartment for the weekend. As it turns out, this was a brilliant plan:

Andy and I ventured out to try and go to the gym - it's across the street from his apartment. Those are our footprints you see on the far right of the second to last photo. We waded through knee high drifts to find the gym open! However, 15 minutes after we got they, they walked around telling everyone that they were closing. Oh well, points for effort, I guess? After coming back through the knee high drifts, I took some of these photos. We are now once more safely ensconced indoors. We have plenty of food, beer, wine, and movies, so I think we'll stay. I just read that they've closed the airport completely for the first time in YEARS and Metro Transit has suspended all bus service. Even if we wanted to go somewhere, I don't think we'd get far.

This post marks my 100th on blogger, according to the screen on my Dashboard page. The blizzard seemed like the perfect subject with which to mark the occasion. Good luck out there to my fellow Minnesotans - stay safe!

National Blog Posting Month: A Retrospective

2010-11-30T18:16:00.006-06:00

So in this, my 4th year of NaBloPoMo, I am pretty proud of the fact that I didn't have to resort to some sort of Internet meme to keep the posts coming. Granted, not all of them were stellar, but I think I succeeded in getting actual content out there for each of the past 30 days. Even if it was just some random photos.

Since this is the last day, I think a sort of summary of this year and all past NaBloPoMos is called for. So here are links to my favorite posts from this year and from years past:

NaBloPoMo 2010:
Turkey Day
Stuffed Squash
Happy Birthday, Grandpa!
Beauty of Fall

NaBloPoMo 2009:
Turkey Day, Part 2
Old Friends
Day 5 - A YouTube Clip
Moon in the Morning

NaBloPoMo 2008:
Pasta Carbonara
A Day in the Life
Yes We Did
88 Years Young

NaBloPoMo 2007:
Les Aventures de Domo-Kun
Sunday in France
A 10 Hour Day
A Month of Posts - Day 1

To be fair, I stole those last two groups from the retrospective post I did last year. They are still my favorites from those two years, so I'm going to let it stand. One more post tomorrow (my 100th!) and I'll be done with blogging for a while. Happy December, all!

Out & About with the Grandparents

2010-11-29T21:59:00.000-06:00

My grandpa had a bunch of routine check-up appointments at the VA hospital today (it's an annual thing, apparently), which my mom was kind enough to chauffeur him to. Since they were going to be back around dinner time, I decided that I'd meet them + my grandma for some dinner after I got done with work. We headed to Kimson, a local Vietnamese restaurant that my grandma particularly enjoys. Here are my dinner companions:

After dinner we headed on over to G & G's house for a few rousing rounds of Bananagrams.

Have you played this game at all? It is sort of like Scrabble, except each player is working independently and creating their own matrix of words. I won quite a few rounds, and here are two examples:

It was a lovely evening with family. I don't see my grandparents enough - I should really head over there more often. They are the only grandparents I've ever known, after all, and they unfortunately won't be around forever.

So tomorrow is the last day of this NaBloPoMo nonsense... Is everyone excited? I may have to go one day over because this post marks my 98th for this blog. For the fellow number enthusiasts in the family, you can see why it would be hard to stop

End of a Long Weekend: Lazy Sunday

2010-11-28T14:56:00.000-06:00

It's the end of a four day weekend and I have to admit, I was not motivated to do much of anything today either. It's kinda cold and windy outside and it just seemed like a better idea to sit at home and relax. That's what weekends are for, right? Here are the two most pressing things I had to do today:

I have not quite finished the crossword yet, but it's getting there. Just a few pesky clues left. I may have to resort to Google.

In the meantime, this was lunch:

Quiche with broccoli, bacon, onions, and plenty of cheese. Super delicious, and it will make excellent leftovers for lunches this week. Yum. And for the first time since Thursday, I have not yet eaten any leftover turkey. I thought about putting some in the quiche but just didn't quite get there. I think I'll skip it for dinner too - I deserve a day off from leftovers.

This week promises to be busy as most of the people I work with worldwide did not realize that Thursday and Friday were not work days for me. So I should have a nice backlog of things to take care of when I get in to the office tomorrow. But for now, I am going to continue to be lazy and take full advantage of the rest of the weekend.

JBAB

2010-11-27T16:16:00.000-06:00

It's getting to be the end of National Blog Posting Month and, as with every year I do this, I am finally struggling with finding fun and exciting blog content. It's the weekend after turkey day, not much is going on, and there's a bunch of snow on the ground, so outdoor activities are few and far between. I went to the gym today and that's the most exciting thing so far. Not really very bloggable, particularly as I think they'd frown on my taking pictures at the gym. So I have decided to share some random photos from the last month or two that didn't make it on to the blog, for whatever reason. In roughly chronological order, here goes...

Andy and I went the season opener for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Basketball is actually his favorite sport, so it seems a shame not to mention it. Here are two photos from the game; pretty nice seats, I thought:

Here's one from the driving lessons with Kelsey. We passed that lady walking her dog approximately 6 times. I think she finally noticed after a while that it was the same car. I wonder what she thought we were doing?

Another outdoors shot; here's Andy on our walk that involved all of those stairs. He LOVES that jacket. He picked it up at a random rummage sale at Har Mar Mall a year or two ago.

Finally, some previously neglected Thanksgiving shots. The first is to prove to Nancy that I am not afraid to touch the turkey - I was rubbing olive oil on the outside of it just before putting it in the oven. The second shows Kelsey preparing the excellent relish tray. It's a multi-generational effort now, as you can see.

That's all I've got for today. Andy and I are off shortly to meet his parents for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Minneapolis. It's called Masa and it's an upscale but authentic Mexican restaurant. Should be yummy!

MN Wild

2010-11-26T20:03:00.000-06:00

Did today feel like Saturday to anyone else? Just me then? Ok. In any case, it was nice to have another day off work. Long weekends should come around more often.

After a morning trip to the gym to try and work off some of that turkey and pie from yesterday, Andy and I headed to the Xcel Center to see the MN Wild play the Nashville Predators (side note: Nashville has a hockey team? What?). We got some free tickets courtesy of his dad. Here's the view:

Pre-warm ups.

The two teams warming up before the game.

Let's Play Hockey!

The Wild were winning extremely convincingly after two periods, and the hockey was kind of boring, so we begged off after only two periods. But it was super fun to see hockey live - it is way more faced paced in real life relative to what it looks like on TV. The rest of the day has been devoted to not going shopping and eating some more leftovers. An excellent non-work day, as extra days off go.

Finally, I've posted the rest of my thanksgiving photos on Flickr. You can find them here.

Turkey Day

2010-11-25T18:32:00.001-06:00

As promised, my dad put me fully in charge of the turkey today. He was acting solely in a mentoring capacity. Here now, a photo montage.

So I think it turned out pretty well, don't you? It certainly tasted good, but I'm the cook so I'm not supposed to pass the final judgement. I'll leave that up to my readers who were in attendance. Speaking of, here's a few more photos:

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all. I am thankful for each and every one of my wonderful family and friends. I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Try not to go too crazy out shopping tomorrow.

Thanksgiving Prep

2010-11-24T20:50:00.000-06:00

My company decided to close our office today at 1:00pm, a welcome early start to the long Thanksgiving weekend. Plus, it meant I could drive over to my parents' house well before the snow storm started. And in a perfect twist of fate, the first snow flakes started to fall just as I walked in their door.

Tonight's activities were dedicated to prep for the big meal tomorrow. First, my dad made some pies:

Then my mom and I started the annual cranberry bread making ritual. Mom chopped cranberries while I assembled the rest of the ingredients. You can find the recipe here, and some photos below.

Did I mention that we make a double batch for Turkey Day? We love having lots left over to snack on for a few days. It just gets better with time.

Coming up tomorrow: I will be in charge of the turkey. We'll see how that goes. Wish me luck!

Baby Shower

2010-11-23T20:13:00.000-06:00

I'm getting to be that age where all of my friends are getting married and starting families. First Sha, followed by Jill, and then Jenny. Oh right, and Maren and Anne of $. And my cousin Sarah... Anyway, you get the point. Now my former coworker and friend Becky is about to have a baby. I went to her shower over the weekend - here are some photo highlights.

We all took turns guessing how big Becky's belly is/was by measuring out a piece of streamer and then trying it out. I was only off by a couple of inches, but not close enough to win the prize.

Mom-to-be and her cake. It was super yummy!

The lovely guests. It was pretty fun, and I even won a few of the games. :-)

She's due around Christmas and I know she'll make a wonderful mom. Congrats, Becky!

Winter in MN: What Not to Do

2010-11-22T19:29:00.000-06:00

Greetings, dear readers! Is everyone having a lovely Monday? Is it raining and freezing cold where you live? Well, it is here. On that note, can anyone guess what this is a photo of:

Hint: When I parked my car at work this morning, it was misting lightly. It did let up at some point during the day, but it never really got up above freezing. Then it snowed for a while. The sun never came out. Need another hint? Here's another photo with my library card for scale:

Some of you may be saying to yourselves, gee whatever that is looks familiar but I can't quite place it.

Get it yet?

Still struggling?

Give up?

Here's yet another hint: It perfectly matches Chad. That should help a lot.

Ok, last chance...

Here you go:

Yep, that is indeed the door handle off the front driver's side door of my car.

It was so wet and cold all day today that my doors had frozen shut when I left work this evening. Apparently I pulled just slightly too hard on the handle and pop, it came right off in my hand. Fortunately, the locks were not frozen, so I could still unlock the rest of the doors. I much more carefully tried the rest of them. Front passenger: no go. Back passenger: no go. Finally, finally, the back driver's side door opened and I clambered through and forced the front driver's side door open from the inside. Ugh.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning at the Toyota dealership to get this fixed. No joke, the service guy laughed at me a little when I told him what the problem was. I think I probably deserved that. Hopefully this isn't one of those seemingly small car maintenance things that costs a bunch of money to fix. I don't need that before I've even started my Christmas shopping. Note to self: be more careful trying to open car doors when it's possible they may be frozen shut.

Family Food Blog: Squash

2010-11-21T13:46:00.000-06:00

My post for today appears on the family food blog. You can find it here, but here's a preview:

Photo Quiz

2010-11-20T16:55:00.001-06:00

For anyone that is interested, the new Harry Potter movie was absolutely fantastic. I was holding my breath in parts of it, much to the amusement of my friends sitting nearby. However, it won't make much sense unless you're a fan. Which I am, and I plan to go see it at least one more time in theaters. And then wait impatiently for Part 2 to come out in July. The only flaw in the movie plan? Since it started at 10:30, I did not get to sleep last night until 2:00am. I think I'm getting to be not quite young enough to stay up that late on a day when I wake up at 6:30am.

Today has been a little rough as a result of all that sleep deprivation. However, Maren, Jake, and I rewarded ourselves for our HP dedication by meeting Andy for brunch this morning. Here's what was left of my tex-mex plate after I absolutely, positively could not eat anymore:

And here's Andy, looking somewhat scruffy. Which he claims is by my request, but I'm pretty sure that's not actually true. Maybe he's decided to put in a last ditch effort towards Movember?

In any case, Brunch was fantastic and left me not really needing to eat anything else until dinner. Which was sort of the plan. :-)

Also relevant to yesterday's post: Here, in order, are the answers to yesterday's photo quiz:

Chicago Skyline, July 2009. A trip with Andy.
Cows! At the U of MN St. Paul Campus
Howard, a penguin I won at the MN State Fair in 2009
The Great Leaf Pile, 2009
Montreal, Old Town, April 2009. Another trip with Andy.
Mt. Zion National Park, Utah. Part of my trip to Las Vegas, January 2010
Target Field, my first game. April 2010
Lake Harriet Spritual Community weirdness.
The Great Leaf Pile, 2010
Sunrise over Lake Harriet, October 2010
Grandpa's 90th Bday Party, November 2010

How'd you do?

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part 1

2010-11-19T20:46:00.000-06:00

I was about to leave to meet some friends for drinks before our showing of HP7 at 10:30 and realized I had almost forgotten to blog! Horrors! So, since I am extremely pressed for time, I present a highlight reel of photos featured on this blog since it's inception:

Bonus points to any of my readers who can identify all of the photos.

Happy Birthday to TJ

2010-11-18T20:34:00.000-06:00

Apparently one of the small loud ones (formerly, now a COTU) has a birthday today, if sources around the Intertubes are to be believed? Last year he was immortalized on my blog with an epic YouTube clip which heavily featured the Tunnel Park sand dune. This year, I just want to say, "Happy Birhday, TJ! I hope it's a good time."

Today is going to be a JBAB kind of day, I feel. Work days are hard - I don't do much besides go to the office, come home, have dinner, and then some TV and sleep. Not too exciting, really. So instead, a few more photo highlights from my most recent trip to Paris:

GIANT baguette.

Little, tiny beer bottles.

The arch outside the Louvre, which lines up perfectly with the Arc de Triomphe.

More tomorrow, I promise, before I go see the new Harry Potter movie. Harry Potter, yay!

Raspberry Tart: Dinner Party

2010-11-17T22:43:00.000-06:00

I am happy to report that the raspberry tart was a huge success at the dinner party this evening! Laurent (my former professor) had all of us over to this house and prepared some fantastic carrot/ginger soup, and a lentil/tomato/goat cheese entrée. Here are some photos of the lovely evening:

The group, enjoying our main course.

The lentil salad with goat cheese. Yum!

The extremely stereotypical and also delicious cheese plate.

Enjoy the dessert. :-)

We ate more than half of it!

My portion, with an added bit of whipped cream.

It was good to see them all again - we are going to try to make these a more regular thing. I'll have to come up with more delicious desserts. Although at the very least, I can always make my grandma's apple crisp.

Raspberry Tart in Two Parts: The Filling

2010-11-16T22:03:00.001-06:00

Santini may have been right in the comments to yesterday's post. I think this could also very accurately be called pie. But I like the word tart - seems more fancy, somehow. Not that there is anything wrong with pie in and of itself. Pie is delicious. In any case, let's all proceed to step 2!

(Note: The basis of this recipe comes from this link at The Kitchn.)

Today's cast of characters (note the appearance of yesterday's crust):

Step 1: Zest the lemons until you have about as much as you see here. 1/2 to 1 tsp, something like that.

Step 2: Cut the lemons in half and juice them into a large bowl. I used 2 lemons but you can use 3 if you like things really tart. It also depends on the size of the lemons:

Step 3: To the lemon juice, add the gelatin and stir until dissolved. Then add the sweetened condensed milk and the thawed (but not drained) package of raspberries:

Step 4: Using a whisk, mix until well combined, like so:

Step 5: Pour as much filling as you'd like into the cooled/prepared pie crust. You will probably have extra filling, which makes excellent pudding all on its' own:

Step 6: Cover and refrigerate until firm:

Tomorrow is the dinner party. I hope I can get some photos of people enjoying this wonderful tart. Yum!

Raspberry Tart in Two Parts: The Crust

2010-11-15T21:32:00.000-06:00

I've got a dinner party to go to on Wednesday (a reunion of the Twin Cities contingent of the GAC Class of 2005 French majors, plus our favorite professor), and I have been assigned the task of bringing dessert. I have an ambitious plan to make a raspberry lemon tart with a graham cracker crust. Because all of this needs to chill over night, after each step, I had to start tonight. So here are the instructions for part 1:

The cast of characters:

Also, you'll need to preheat your oven:

Step 1: Crush enough graham crackers so that you end up with 1.5 cups of crumbs, like so:

(Hint: It's about one plastic sleeve of crackers, in a standard size box)

Step 2: Melt 6 TB of butter and mix it with the crumbs, 1/3 cup of sugar (or less if you want less sweetness), and a 1/4 tsp of cinnamon.

Step 3: Once that is all incorporated, press it into the bottom of your chosen pan. I am using my quiche pan to make this whole thing more tart like. Also, I only want it covering the bottom, but it can also go up the sides if desired.

Step 4: Put it in that preheated oven for 7 minutes. Careful - if it cooks too long it takes on a solid-as-a-brick like consistency, which no one wants.

After baking, allow to cool and then chill overnight and proceed to Part Two, which we will all be enjoying tomorrow.

Lazy Sunday

2010-11-14T16:28:00.001-06:00

While not as snowbound as yesterday, today was another great day to sit inside the house and think warm thoughts. Since getting up just before 8 to once again move my car (stupid Snow Emergency parking rules...), I have been fully enjoying a day of not much of anything. I suppose I did go to the gym, but that's really about it. Mostly, I've been re-reading Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows in anticipation of the new movie (almost the last one!) coming out on Friday. And now there's figure skating of some sort on TV, so I am not very motivated to leave the house. :-)

Since today has been fairly low key and not very bloggable, here are some photos of my cooking adventures yesterday. Once I perfect the recipe, I'll post it to the food blog, I promise:

Putting the filling in the acorn squash.

Squash all filled and ready to go. I flipped them over before cooking.

The finished product. So very, very yummy.

There were a few things to tweak, I think, but it turned out well. And it did help keep my apartment nice and toasty. Plus, I had this for dessert:

The First Snowfall

2010-11-13T17:02:00.001-06:00

I just walked in the door from moving my car, because the city of Minneapolis has declared the first Snow Emergency of the season. Fitting that it came during the very first snowstorm of the year, or Snownami as Andy has been calling it today. We woke up this morning to a steady stream of wet, heavy flakes and it pretty much hasn't let up since then. I realize my blogging compatriots have all mentioned it already, but seriously, it's a snowpacalypse out there. Here now, some photographic proof:

Downtown Minneapolis at about 10am. It was really coming down.

The trees lining the lake. I like how the snow was sticking to the bark.

My front steps. The tree there is getting pretty weighted down.

More trees - plus you can see how hard it's snowing in this one.

I'm camping out inside and finding reasons to turn on the oven so it stays nice and toasty in here. First up is the famous cranberry bread, and then for dinner I am going to make a somewhat tweaked version of this squash recipe. I think we'll survive the storm.

Grandpa's Birthday Video

2010-11-12T18:46:00.003-06:00

I forgot to post this the other day and it was, now that I realize it, a glaring omission. Here is my mom reading her birthday poem to my Grandpa at his birthday party the other day:

Isn't it great? My mom writes them for all special family occasions and this was one of her best. And doesn't Grandpa look great for someone who has seen 9 decades? As he we would say, we're all just kids in comparison. Very, very true.

Not So Dark

2010-11-11T21:39:00.000-06:00

I'd like to add something to yesterday's complaining about the dark; it's not yet dark when I leave, and then dark again when I come home. Here was the view of the lake as I stepped out the front door this morning:

Not quite the pitch darkness I experienced on my way home yesterday. It was actually quite pretty and the air was clear and crisp. It's a nice pick me up in the morning and gets me ready for the day.

The other reason the darkness isn't completely soul crushing is because of the way my new office faces. Here's the view out when I got there this morning:

As you can see, I get the bright morning sun streaming in throughout the morning. It's warming and cheery. So until it starts being really dark in the morning, I can't complain too much about this whole daylight savings time thing.

However, they did say something in the weather forecast about SNOW tomorrow... I may have to complain about that.

Happy Veteran's Day to one and all, and thank you very much to all the veterans out there, particularly the one I like to call Dad. We send you out to fight our wars for us and can sit back here, safely in our homes. It is greatly, greatly appreciated.

Midtown Global Market

2010-11-10T19:50:00.000-06:00

Since tomorrow is a government holiday and Andy does not have to work, we decided to have dinner over on my side of town. That gives him plenty of time to get home in his now car-less state. Anyway, he took the bus after work and I met him at the Midtown Global Market

It's in the ground floor adjacent to the Midtown Exchange building. There are a bunch of international restaurants, hence the name. There are also a few gift shops, a grocery, and a branch of the Holy Land Deli. It's a fun set-up and we should really make it over there more often. It's not like it's that far away.

In any case, I had a lovely Vietnamese noodle salad from the Pham Deli, and then picked up some yummy pastries from the Salty Tart bakery. Definitely worth a trip back.

We were done with dinner etc by 7:00 and it was finally, 100% completely DARK outside. In fact, it had been dark out when I was driving over at 5:30ish. BOO! Is there somewhere I can lodge a formal complaint? I know we have daylight savings time every year, but every year it is just such a bummer...

More tomorrow - I'll try to have my own photos next time!

Calhoun Isles Community Band

2010-11-09T21:36:00.002-06:00

I believe I've mentioned before that I am a member of the Calhoun Isles Community Band. I just got back from rehearsal - we rehearse each and every Tuesday at a local Minneapolis elementary school. It's a great group of a people - an eclectic mix of retired people, people my age, and everything in between. We even have some original members from when the band was founded 25+ years ago. It's fun!

Anyway, we also have a YouTube page. We recorded videos at our most recent concert in October, but they aren't up yet. In the meantime, here are my two favorites from our big concert last spring:

Parade of the Charioteers

Music from the Incredibles

And finally, a photo from one of our concerts over the summer.

We play pretty much every week from June-August in the parks of Minneapolis/St. Paul and occasionally the suburbs. We haven an upcoming Christmas concert at Southdale Mall, and then another concert in February. We just started rehearsing the holiday music and it's a good time. I hope to see some of you at our upcoming concerts!

Refections on the weekend

2010-11-08T20:03:00.000-06:00

As reported elsewhere, we have been having unseasonably warm weather up here in the Star of the North. Andy and I took advantage this weekend and went for a walk from his house down to downtown St. Paul for some coffee. It entailed walking down a LOT of stairs right next to the James J. Hill house. Here are said stairs:

For those of you who like to keep track of that sort of thing, it was 137 steps from top to bottom. We passed some people who were running UP the stairs. It looked like it was something they did a lot, as they didn't seem to be working nearly as hard as I would have been.

There is then a short bridge over 35W and then you come to this:

More stairs! There are 50 of them from the bridge down to the campus of United Hospital. After some lazy time spent reading the paper at the coffee shop, we walked all the way back up. It was a perfect day for it.

That's 187 steps one way - someone who likes stairs should really go over there and enjoy them.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

2010-11-07T19:34:00.000-06:00

Today was OOTNDITHOD here in MN, particularly for November - I think it may have gotten up to 60, even. I spent a very large portion of it celebrating the 90th (NINETY!) birthday of my beloved Grandpa Bud:

The birthday "boy," enjoying the balloons one of the guests brought for him.

We had a big open house/party for the occasion. Many, many people came, both family and friends from throughout my grandpa's lifetime. Grandpa has always been super social and it reflected in the sheer number of people that showed up. Here are some photo highlights from the day:

Part of the festive decorations.

A photo of the birthday honoree at a much, much younger age. That's him on the left, I think.

Grandpa and his favorite (and only) daughter.

Three generations of Elvecrog women, plus a former childhood friend of my mother's.

There was delicious cake, lots of family fun, and I think a good time was had by all. It's too bad we don't have an excuse to have this sort of party more often. I don't see all the members of my extended family nearly enough.

Finally, at the end of the day, we brought those balloons over to their apartment to continue being on display:

Driving Lessons

2010-11-06T16:05:00.001-05:00

As some of you may already be aware, I have been giving my beloved cousin and former roommate some driving lessons. More specifically, how to drive using a manual transmission. Today was a scheduled lesson, and a beautiful day it was for it. First, we met at the Sole Cafe for some delicious Korean food.

From top to bottom, my beef bulgogi plus the traditional Korean side dishes, and Andy's jeyuk bokum, which is a spicy pork dish. It was all super delicious and the restaurant itself is super quirky - they have a giant TV playing some random Korean TV show on low volume over in one of the corners. It appeared to be some sort of fashion/makeover show the whole time we were there.

Andy started making his way home and P-Ster and I headed off for our driving lesson:

The P-Ster, in Chad's driver's seat, all ready and raring to go.

Two of our favorite (and often encountered) intersections. Dellwood!

Kelsey, triumphant after the end of our lesson. Some excellent progress is being made - she even got going on a fairly steep uphill. I'm so proud! (Or something).

And now I'm off to enjoy a walk outside on this beautiful November day. I can't imagine we'll have many more of these left.

P.S. - In case it's not clear, Chad is the name of my car.

Parisian Nostalgia

2010-11-05T19:56:00.000-05:00

Elsewhere on the intertubes (it's a series of tubes, haven't you heard?), my traveling companions from May have been posting photos from our trip to France. It's made me all nostalgic, and got me thinking about going again. Since I won't be doing that anytime soon, despite the fact that the Paris Boat Show (50th Anniversary Edition) is in December, I thought I'd follow suit and post some photos of my own. More specifically, the elevator series all together in one place. Here goes:

It really was a VERY small elevator. Just ask Mom - she wouldn't even get in it. I coaxed her into it one time and I thought she was going to have a panic attack with just the two of us in it.

Ah, Paris... even the elevator was distinctly Parisian.

Date Night: El Meson

2010-11-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

About a month ago, Andy and I went out to dinner for his birthday at a lovely place called El Meson. If you don't feel like following the link, it's a Spanish-Caribbean fusion kind of place. They have tapas and ceviche, and also some distinctly Latin American dishes, according to my friend whose husband is from Costa Rica. Anyway, we very much enjoyed the food and noticed, in looking at the menu, that they have a weekly "Date Night" special on Tuesdays. Small problem: I have band rehearsals every Tuesday. But, since we had an election this week, no rehearsal - they use our rehearsal space as a polling station. Woo - Date Night, here we come.

It's a set menu for date night, and it starts with a lovely strawberry & pecan salad. I forgot to take a photo until I'd eaten about half of it, but still - delicious:

The second course was a seafood paella for two. Normally at this restaurant, it runs $55 but with the Date Night special we got everything for $45 for the two of us. A great deal!

It was SUPER delicious. I may have to learn how to make an approximation of it, although perhaps not with seafood. There are sausage/pork versions that also sound delicious.

I forgot to take a photo of dessert, but we had the Key Lime pie. Not sure if it would have lived up to the Floridian standards for Key Lime pie, but I was pretty satisfied. Super yummy - I highly recommend it if you live in the area.

Beauty of Fall

2010-11-03T21:33:00.000-05:00

On my normal workdays (Tu-Fr), I leave my apartment at approximately 7:25-7:35. As it turns out, that is also just before sunrise for this time of year, at least until the end of the week. I walked out of the building the other day to one of the most lovely sunrises I've seen since living here.

Isn't it lovely? There have been a lot like that lately, although this one was more orange-pink than some of the others. Also, I love my lake. I know I can't live here forever, but I am certainly going to appreciate it for as long as possible.

Another lovely part of fall is that my neighborhood starts to decorate for the various holidays, to very cute effect. Here's the corner where I used to get off the bus, back when I worked downtown:

Nice, right? They do a good job. I'll have to try and take a photo of the Christmas lights once they go up. Also, this is another excellent photo for Santini's bench series. Not quite public transportation, but it'll do.

Finally, to follow up on yesterday's post, it appears that the governor's race has yet to be decided. Really, Minnesota? We have to live through another recount? I'm not sure I want to do this again... On the other hand, it does look like it will once again turn out as I'd like it to, but still... Ugh.

Election Day, 2010

2010-11-02T18:03:00.000-05:00

I did my civic duty today and headed over to my local polling place only a half hour after it had opened. There was quite a significant line for 7:30 in the morning, although nothing like the lines I encountered two years ago during the presidential election. Still, it was enough to make me slightly late for work, proudly wearing my red "I Voted" sticker.

The other problem with 7:30am, aside from the before work crowd, was that it was too dark to get any decent photographs. I went back this afternoon and remedied that problem:

My actual polling place. It acts as community rec center/warming house the other non-voting days of the year.

There's a nice little park right next to the building. I don't think that pool is going to be getting much use for quite some time to come.

All-in-all, I was entirely satisfied with my voting experience. Too many judges though. Now I just have to sit back and wait for the results of our usual 3-way governor's race. And hope like crazy that the people of the 6th district regained their sanity and voted Michele Bachmann out of office.

National Blog Posting Month - Take 3 (or is it 4...?)

2010-11-01T22:04:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again. Is everyone ready? November means it's National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo. I've been doing this since 2007, so it'd be a shame to drop the ball at this point. I did almost forget today, as the time stamp from this entry suggests, but I will endeavor to persevere from now on. One post, every day, for each day in November. And.... GO!

With the end of October comes raking season in the city of Roseville. As always, my parental units requested my help with this epic task. As may have been mentioned elsewhere, we are a well-honed team of three. Here now, a photo montage of our efforts:

The trees were looking pretty bare, and the city has a very specific deadline, so it was clearly prime raking time.

The backyard before we started, featuring the somewhat giant branch that fell from the cottonwood during Hurricane Minnesota (tm Gino).

Mom standing amongst our many, many piles in the backyard.

A couple of the piles on our trusty blue tarp. It's been our partner in leaf-raking for at least a decade and is indispensable in moving the leaves from the backyard to the pile in the front yard. We're a well oiled machine.

The backyard after we completed our epic task. It's a very tangible sense of accomplishment.

The To3 in front of the slightly-less-giant than usual pile of leaves. It did not in any way lessen our sense of a job well done.

I've got some other photos from recent events, but I need to save those up if I am truly going to blog each and every day this month. In the mean time, if you are so inclined, you can look back at my past NaBloPoMo efforts, both here on Blogspot and on Xanga.

Did someone say something about orange trees?

2010-10-09T16:01:00.000-05:00

I saw two of them on my bike ride with Andy today, on OOTNDITHOD:

This guy was over by Cedar Lake, not far from the Kennilworth bike path.

Towards the end of our ride, Andy and I looped through the Kenwood neighborhood and I spotted another lovely orange tree. Nice.

So what else has been going on since the Great MN Get Together? Well, I went one more time with Andy and extremely similar photos were taken. I'm going to upload all my photos to Flickr in the coming days, so look for them there. Also, my parents, Andy and I got to use Andy's dad's "beautiful people" seats for a late-season Twins game:

GZMoohoo, GRider, and I, enjoying the seats.

A couple of weekends ago, on a cool but sunny day, Andy and I went over to Como Park to visit the animals. It was too nice a morning to stay inside, after all. Turns out that there is a recently born baby giraffe:

Cute! His name is Howie. :-)

Two weeks ago, I went to my final wedding of the summer (of 3). This one took place in Vegas, baby, Vegas! I got to see yet another college roommate marry the love of her life. It was a lovely ceremony, outdoors at the waterfall at the Mandalay Bay. It was a nice trip and it was great to see Jenny so happy. They make a wonderful couple.

Jenny and Jason - Congrats you two!

The GAC girls at the reception. This is the second time this summer we've all been in the same place. Prior to that, it had been 5 years! Note: 50% of us are now married.

Other items of note... During our walk to the Farmer's Market last weekend, we strolled along the route of the Twin Cities marathon for a bit. Here are the leaders of the men's group - this is mile 7 and the marathon had started approximately 35-40 minutes before. FAST:

Finally, Andy and I went to the first game in the ALDS playoffs. Twins vs. Yankees. It was a fantastic game but ultimately dissappointing. Why is it that we can't manage to beat the Yankees?

View of the scoreboard from the "Beautiful People" seats.

The weather this weekend is truly FANTASTIC for October. I think a walk is called for. Oh, also: 25 miles today. Probably another 20 or so to come tomorrow, since it's going to be 80 again! Woo!

The Great MN Get Together

2010-08-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

You know it's the end of summer when the State Fair finally rolls around. Today is officially day 3 of 12 and then Labor Day and the start of the school year are upon us. I think that officially means that I only have a week or so of summer left! Maren and I marked the occasion by going to the Fair yesterday. She's not a native and this was only the 2nd time in her life that she'd been able to attend. I have a bunch of photos up on Flickr, but here are some highlights:

Maren and some lifestock in the Swine/Sheep barn.

Crop Art, always one of my personal favorites.

The state's second largest pumpkin in its' category.

In the past month or more since my last post, I have, as promised, gone to the Basilica Block Party. Here's the lead singer of Weezer climbing up part of the stage:

I also watched the very, very important World Cup final game at a local bar. Even the beer glasses were appropriately themed:

The team I was rooting for didn't win, but it was super fun none the less. The crowd was split down the middle in their loyalties so anytime something - anything - happened, there'd be a chorus of both cheers and boos. Definitely the right environment to watch the game. :-)

Other than that, I have been enjoying summer to the fullest. Lots of biking and walks around the lake and eating on restaurant patios when at all possible. It'll still be quite nice for a while but I'm starting to feel that the end is near.

Twins vs. Bluejays

2010-07-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

The game is currently going on in Toronto (or it might be over by now...), so I figured it was safe to include the below on my bike ride today:

Eventually the bike path is going to go under Target Field all the way to the river, but they haven't actually finished that part of it yet. For now it just curves up a hill and brings you to this parking lot. You can cut through downtown to the river but that seemed like not such a good idea at 6:30 on a weeknight. So back towards home I went. On my way back was Lake of the Isles, and it was too pretty not to take a photo:

When I was almost home, I was accosted by some tourists. "Hey, rider in the red jersey, hold on," they said (I was wearing my extremely obscure Vendee jersey today). Turns out they were from Chicago and they were looking for a decent bike shop. I apparently looked bikey enough that I seemed like a good person to ask. And they were right - I did know where the nearest decent bike shop was and was able to send them on their way before I continued on my route.

It was OOTNDITHOD, definitely. Also, while out and about a week or so ago, I passed the aftermath of that big storm we had a few weeks ago. I thought people might be interested to see what happened to that unfortunate white car:

I think it's fixable. Clearly the tree was a loss - maybe they'll replant something new? I wouldn't go with an Ash tree if I were them...

It's been a short week (yay!) and I'm pretty glad that tomorrow is Friday. I've got the Basilica Block Party to look forward to and some very, very important football on Sunday. Go Orange!

A break in the storms

2010-06-26T14:41:00.000-05:00

Maren and I had big plans for yesterday. We were going to have a group over and have a picnic/potluck in the park next door. Sadly, it was not to be. The worst storm of the summer came through at about 6, exactly when people would be making their way over to our house. But Desi and Andy had already made it over, so they helped us make a dent in the large batch of chicken we'd prepared. We played some Yahtzee and watched the hail come down. When it finally did clear up briefly, Desi made a break for it (although I'm not sure how she got home - even 35W was flooded) and the rest of us walked over to Sebastian Joe's where there was NO line.

Despite the not so auspicious start to the weekend, today dawned sunny and coolish. I decided biking was in order. By the time I got out there, it had become humid and warm, but I endeavored to persevere. I was confronted by some evidence of last night's storm before I even got out of my neighborhood:

I think the car is fixable, but they were extremely lucky. I chatted a bit with the guy who had started to clean it up and he said he usually parks his car across the street and had moved it about 30 minutes before the tree fell. He dodged a bullet there.

I took my usual route with a short detour here:

The river looked pretty high - all that rain had to go somewhere. Mostly, I just wanted to climb back up the hill from the Lock & Dam. It's killer, so I took another break very shortly thereafter:

More evidence that all that rain has to go somewhere - the falls were absolutely roaring. It quickly became too hot to stand in one place for too long (evaporative cooling only works when you're moving), so I headed for home. Plus, there is very important soccer on TV.

Oh, I almost forgot! Last weekend, a professional bike race came to town. Maren and I met Andy at the Minneapolis/Uptown leg of the race. Those riders are FAST:

I mean, it is just my crappy cell phone camera, but I don't think my regular camera would have gotten a much better shot of these ladies. It was amazing! Here are the men, stretching and preparing before their leg of the race got started:

Lance's team was here, but obviously none of the truly famous riders were participating. Still, all of them were way, way faster than me. Or Andy. Or anyone I know in real life. It was fun to see.

Summer

2010-06-16T20:50:00.000-05:00

According to one of the local news outlets, it has rained here all but two days in the month of June. I guess all that rain in Paris was just a warm-up to prepare me for home? Something like that. Despite all that rain, I have still been able to take part in some quintessential Minneapolis summer activities.

For my birthday last week, my parents, Andy and I went to Target Field to watch the Twins beat up on Kansas City. This is the view from our seats:

Pretty nice, huh? It had rained earlier in the day but cleared up just in time for a lovely evening at the ballpark. Then, over this past weekend, Andy and I persevered and went to the farmer's market. This is me on the walk back:

Andy says "Look at the French girl." And he's not wrong. :-) It rained a bit after I got that excellent baguette home just in time for lunch - it went well with the cheese we got at the market and the salad we made with the wonderful fresh veggies. Yay for farmer's market season.

Yesterday it was POURING down rain in the morning (are you noticing a theme...?) and I was a little concerned for my planned evening activities. Fortunately, it started to clear up and we were able to have our concert as planned:

That's us playing at the Lake Harriet Bandshell. The band has been around for a while and actually inaugurated the band shell when they massively remodeled it back in the late 80s. Last year we got rained out, so I was glad it was nice yesterday. Andy came, so I even had a fan. So far, I'm two for two on fan attendance!

Finally, today turned out to be OOTNDITHD (tm Gino). Sunny and in the 80s. After dealing with a minor Australia related crisis, I went home for some excellent biking. Remember my super cool new bike? It's still awesome. I went on my 5 lake, 1 river, 1 creek tour and took my food break/pit stop here:

There were LOTS of other people at the Falls who had the same idea as me. Tomorrow is going to bring more rain, so I doubt the summer concert series is going to continue it's no rain out streak. But who knows - my luck has been holding so far!

No Place Like Home

2010-06-07T19:21:00.001-05:00

I knew that my Paris trip was going to have to come to an end. And yet... a little bit more time would have been really nice. And perhaps slightly less rain. In any case, all of the photos from the trip are now up on Flickr - you can find the complete set here.

But I did have to get home, despite the loveliness of the City of Lights. You see, I had something really important to go to this weekend. One of my best friends (and a former roomie!), Jill, got married this weekend. She is now Mrs. Andrej Maczka! Congratulations to Jill and Andrej! They are in Panama by now, hopefully enjoying their honeymoon. And if they don't take a picture of the famous canal while they are there, they will have to answer to me. :-) Or something. I was the personal assistant to the bride, which essentially means I was running errands before the ceremony to make sure that everyone was where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be. Oh, and I was in charge of flower distribution. It was wonderful to be able to help Jill out on her big day and I know that they will be super happy together. Here are a few photos from the reception. There a few more and a video on Flickr as well:

The wedding party dancing together at the reception.

The happy bride and her 3 college roommates. It's the first time we've all been in the same place since we graduated in 2005.

It was a beautiful ceremony and the reception was super fun - good food, lots of excellent dance-able music and I got to catch up with some friends.

This week is going to be pretty busy as well - I've got tickets to TWO Twins games. The one on my birthday vs. the Kansas City Royals and then Andy has his dad's tickets for Friday vs. Atlanta. It's going to be a very baseball intensive week. So tonight, I am being lazy and enjoying my last full week of cable TV.

Last Day in Paris

2010-05-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

Here I am at the end of my Parisian vacation. It's flown by - I can't believe I've already been here 10 days. But alas, I have to get up at an ungodly early hour tomorrow and start making my way to the Aeroport Charles de Gaulle.

For my last day, we started out at le Jardin des Plantes, which is Paris' botanical garden. It was founded in the mid-1600s as the royal medicinal herb garden and has grown from there. It now includes a zoo, various educational buildings, and all sorts of themed sections. We began in the Rose Garden:

There are LOTS more flower photos on my Flickr page, way, way too many to post here. From the Rose Garden, we wandered the grounds a bit and then explored the Iris Garden:

It was SO lovely and it smelled amazing. It would have been even better if the sun had been out, but at least it wasn't raining. After a final lunch of a baguette sandwich and some cheese, etc, we headed over to the Rodin Museum. Because I'd been there before, I decided to just get the 1 euro ticket to the gardens. Here are some highlights:

Again, LOTS more photos on Flickr. I went a little camera happy today. On my way back to the apartment (I have to organize all my stuff and pack, ugh...), I snapped a picture of our local church:

It has been an extremely lovely trip and I need to thank all of my traveling companions for helping make it that way. I'll miss Paris but I'm sure I'll be back - after this many visits, there are still many things I have yet to do.

Au revoir Paris, et a bientot!

Musee de l'Orangerie

2010-05-29T11:51:00.000-05:00

Since all of us had super long days of walking yesterday, we decided to take it easy this morning. The men went out for their morning walk and my mom and I lazed around. Upon their return, my dad provided us with some yummy egg pies for breakfast:

Mushroom on the left, tomato/goat cheese on the right. Yum!

We then briefly headed in opposite directions. I went with my dad to help him with his pilgrimage to Cycles Laurent. It's way better if I let him tell the story. Mom & Jim headed to the market street near Les Halles to pick up some fresh fruit and dinner ingredients.

After lunch of bread and cheese and the aforementioned fruit, we changed plans because it looked like rain. Instead of the Rodin Museum, we headed to the Musee de l'Orangerie. It used to be a greenhouse for the royal orange trees but it's now a museum whose main feature is two rooms with mural sized paintings by Monet. They are of his famous water lilies. Here are my favorite photos:

As you can see, my Mom and I had a really excellent time. It's a lovely place, and small enough that you can really appreciate everything without going into Art-Overload.

After a brief side trip the Virgin Megastore (think Best Buy + Barnes & Noble) on the Champs Elysee, we are now back at the apartment watching some really excellent tennis on TV. In a bit, we'll have the rotisserie chicken we bought from a charming French butcher at the market today. There are too many crazy rugby fans around town to venture out. It's been a lovely day in Paris.