BLUE AND PINK DEVILLED EGGS

BLUE AND PINK DEVILLED EGGS, originally uploaded by the_moog.

Here's another old recipe. This totally cracks me up! Does anyone want to hold a mid-century cooking party with me?

Ham and Egg Combo

Ham and Egg Combo, originally uploaded by Miss Retro Modern.

I love this flickr group! They cook recipes from mid century cookbooks and upload photos, with appropriate food styling and tasting comments!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/midcenturysupperclub/

Schools OUT FOR SUMM-....march and april?

And just like that I'm done with my online ethics class. Yup, shipped off my final essay over the intertubes this morning. Feels sooo good.

Now I can tippity type all the day long to try to earn some cash. Ben is home with a headache this morning. He didn't really have to go into the office today so he's working downstairs. That means I get to work in my lovely craft room, ignoring any strange noises coming from dog downstairs because she is not my responsibility! Maybe Ben and I can even eat lunch together :-)

Shane was pretty funny. It had everything I expected to see in a Western - drunken brawls, quick draw shootouts, swinging saloon doors, covered wagons, smashing chairs on bodies, a guy getting shot and falling face first off a balcony, all that stuff. I'm trying to remember all the movies we've seen now. . .

• Sleuth - Brian
  
• xXx - Ben
  
• A Room With a View - Rachel
  
• Igby Goes Down - Trevor
  
• Cannibal the Musical - Nate
  
• Kill, Baby...Kill - Brian
  
• Keeping Mum - Cate
  
• Blood Simple - Shawn
  
• Marie Antoinette - Rachel
  
• Shane - Trevor
  

Hmmm, I feel like I'm missing one but it's not coming to mind. Well, anyway that's a pretty good list! And most of them are movies I wouldn't have seen if we didn't have the club.

My class is nearly over.

(I just like this 1923 photo of a ballerina. No reason)
Almost done! I finished my online class discussions. All I have left is a 14 page paper, due in 30 hours. I have an outline and most of the research done. I'll be so happy to be done with the class.

After ethics I go back to my old job to write up a final report on our last study. It'll take me a few days, but then I'll be officially done with that job too. That leaves transcription to fill my days. Yes, I suspect I'll be pretty bored. Hopefully I can volunteer at the cat shelter some more and visit Miranda and her new baby.

Tonight is another Movie Club. We're watching a western called Shane, Trevor's pick. We actually might have a large crowd tonight, maybe up to ten people. I better clean my basement tonight.

I usually like to have food for the movie watching, but money does not permit these days. Sadly, we're really feeling the strain of my reduced workload. We actually sat down and wrote out a budget last night - something we've never had to do. No restaurant week for us. No rabies shot for Molly this month. Some things will have to wait for better days.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must continue my internal battle as illustrated below.

26 years

Hoorah! Just a quiet celebration this year. Ben and I opened presents in bed this morning. I had lunch with him at my favorite sandwich shop, Panera Bread. We're going out to dinner and then having ice cream cake with friends. In between is normal stuff - transcription work, school work, walking the dog. Actually, I've been at the library for most of the day so I don't have to deal with the dog :-) It's nice and quiet here with wi-fi, allowing me to do lots of work and posting (as you may have noticed).

Birthdays always make me think of The American Astronaut. "Aren't you going to wish me a happy birthday?"

Welcome to the world

Congratulations to Miranda and Nate!

Azalea, born February 12








Congratulations Sylvia and Larry!

Lexie, born February 19

Open Your Golden Gates!

We had a fantastic three day weekend in beautiful San Francisco with my family. We stayed in a posh hotel near Union Square, next to lots of shopping.

That night we met with Drew for dinner and good old Ghiradelli ice cream.

Saturday morning we took a tour of Chinatown with Wok Wiz. Our guide Lola gave us cultural insights into the area, having grown up there. The tour capped off with a dim sum lunch.

At night we saw the local cabaret must-see Beach Blanket Babylon. I've seen it three times now, my parents much more. It's a hilarious fast paced musical revue with pop culture parody. It's been playing for 32 years and sells out every single show. They pack you into the Club Fugazi tight, elbow to elbow. But you forget about that as soon as the show starts.

Sunday we rented a car so we could cross the bridge to see our old house in Marin and the beach we used to visit.

We drove to Muir woods to ogle at the redwoods and sequoias. Despite huge crowds, the forest felt magical.

We crossed back into the city and did a driving tour of the Castro and Mission neighborhoods. We stopped to take photos of the pretty painted lady houses.

Then back to the hotel for a quick rest before eating a superb meal at Zingaro's. I'm going to try to recreate my entree later this week. To walk off dinner we hiked up to the Grace Cathedral and walked the labyrinth.

That night I opened some birthday presents and ate Valentines chocolates. Ben and I had a fast, safe flight back to Denver early Monday morning. The Salt Lake crowd weren't so lucky, but they eventually made it back too. We are all tired, like usual after a Waterhouse vacation, but we had a great time!

More photos are on flickr, mine and Ben's.

Hematoma! Hematoma!

nataliedee.com

I took a wrong step today and fell splat on the gravely asphalt. Yuck. Just a big swollen bruise. Although I scratched up the casing of my cell phone I was holding, luckily it appears to be functioning still.

How nice that Ben had a Valentine gift to give to me today - these cuddly pajamas! My old set were 7 years old and shrunken from the wash. I've been wearing sweats and t shirts to bed. It's so cozy to slip into these instead.

In other news, Miranda had her baby!! After a long labor (I think about 30 hours) she was finally delivered by c-section this morning. I'm so happy for them!

And just so we're clear...

So very not pregnant. The only thing gestating in me is a nursing degree.

Rate mine

uhh, 4? I have to agree with mom that the short trim above the lip is kind of weird. But on a "gross out" scale it's really not gross. Note how well the eyebrows complement the stache. Then again, I'm biased. Ben calls my crush on Edward James Olmos a "daddy crush." :-)

Bruce sorry I couldn't include you in my scale, but I didn't have a photo! I welcome other submissions though.

Intuition

Intuition from Brian Omura on Vimeo.

Edit

I made some changes to my moustache scale in the previous post. You can click on it again in the original post to see the new one. With some reflection I decided some of the order wasn't quite right, and I wanted to change some of the representation. I take these things very seriously. Serious.

Ben wanted me to point out that this is a "gross out" scale. That means 1 is the least gross, and 10 is the most gross.

Rock on

Songs and Bands I wish were in Rock Band
1) Don't Stop Believing - Journey
2) Another One Bites the Dust - Queen
3) I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
4) Don't Tell Me - Madonna
5) Don't Speak - No Doubt
6) Psychokiller - Talking Heads
7) Birdhouse - TMBG

cooking and crafts

Here are some of the good things we've been eating.

Magic bars, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, and coconut on a graham cracker crust.Steamed cabbage rolls with sweet and sour pork.
Roasted turkey, potatoes, and acorn squash.
Cupcakes!
Balsamic rosemary chicken skewered with cubes of brie.
The lovely spread for our Movie Club showing of Marie Antoinette.

And here are the few crafts I've been doing.
A Wool & Hoop embroidery kit project.
A design I came up with myself (well, inspired by some stuff I found online, but mostly mine).

A cotton dishcloth. I need to make more of these with a thicker pattern. Maybe cables...

Mountains of moustaches

Ben is growing a moustache. Yesterday he asked me "on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Tom Selleck and 10 being John Waters, where is my moustache?" I placed it at about a 6, but it's only partly grown in. We hope it will place a 4 or 3 when grown in. His scale intrigued me. What would a full moustache scale look like? I came up with the following. (Click to get the full sized view).

Doing this lead me to create the three laws for judging the awesomeness (and skeeviness) of moustaches:

1) A thick moustache almost always better than a thin one.
2) Moustaches look better on older men.
3) The eyebrows must match the moustache in bushiness.

Behind the scenes photos

Here are pictures from filming on Saturday, courtesy of Nate Walker. Today I polished the editing to a final cut. It needs widescreen bars, credits, and music slapped on and it will be done!

Ben worked from home today. It was lovely seeing him for breakfast and lunch. I made sausage, eggs, and toast to get us going. Then when we were both done at 4:00 pm we took Jem to Crown Hill together. It was cold today! I made hummus, falafels, and dill yogurt sauce for dinner. Last night we watched Waitress (good movie!) and so of course Ben asked me to bake a pie today. I made a tart apple and cranberry pie. It was quite good! We shared it with Nate and Miranda (one week overdue now) and Brian and then watched Arrested Development while our dogs played together. What a fun Tuesday!

Rough Cut done

Between editing I went home to watch some superbowl commercials and eat buffalo chicken pizza with my buds. Then we watched some Arrested Development. Because we CAN'T STOP! Then I went back to Brian's with him and tweaked all the transitions to smooth out the cut. He needs to go over it tomorrow to work audio magic with evening out background noises. I came home at 11:30 to a filthy house. Now my kitchen floor is swept, dishes are humming in the washer, and all the dog toys and dog toy fuzz have been picked up. only 12:30 am. not bad.

movie making

What a week! I've been running around for three days on very little sleep and the remnants of a cold. So I felt like the dead when Ben woke me up this morning.

We shot a new short movie yesterday! It's a script that Brian and I wrote a few weeks ago. Amazingly, we had a large crew and a great cast all by asking friends of friends to help out. We had a Friday night meeting and rehearsal and did all the shooting Saturday from 10 am to 7:30 pm. We worked on post production until 11:30 last night and we'll pick it up after church today. I got the play the female lead and be editor.

I gotta split for church now. I promise that someday I'll post all the great photos I've been collecting of craft projects and cooking and such.