NaBloPoMoDone!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by during NaBloPoMo! I appreciate your views and comments.

I especially wish to thank my vacation photos for making daily posts possible!

When I Grow Up...

I want to be THIS big!

(Photo borrowed from somewhere online.)

That doesn't appear to be a full-sized person holding that cat, but still. That's how big Hunter wants to be.

He is so eager to go outside. We were hoping to introduce him gradually, after the 6 weeks indoors the shelter insisted on.

Yesterday he snuck out on his own (twice!) and was so proud of himself.

Our babies, they grow up so fast.

Sigh.

Poulard en Papillon, Fermière

Claudia at Idiot's Kitchen has been extolling the virtues of spatchcocking, which reminded me of a recipe I collected early in my married life. I located it in an old binder, relegated to the back of the cookbook cupboard.

I used to collect recipes from magazines and, to keep my typing skills sharp, I would type them out. Later I got lazy and just taped them into the binder. Then the internet was born.

This looks so complicated now! But I remember it being very delicious. I believe it was the vermouth!

Bad Kitty

He spilled my coffee and broke my favorite cup. Then he looked at me with sad kitty eyes. I still love him. 

4 am

It's 4 am and there's a kitten hogging the pillow again. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 

A Different Kind of Hangover

After the cookie-kitten-nightmare night, I tried to take a nap the next afternoon. I would say I had a hangover because Hunter was hanging over my head.

There wasn't much pillow left for me.

We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On

My dreams are made on ordinary things. Last weekend it was kittens and cookies. But they were nightmares.

I spend a frustrating Friday making cookies for the book store's annual holiday party. It had to be from a cookbook for sale, it couldn't be something tried and true like Frank's Famous Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

So I picked Romeo's Sighs and Juliet's Kisses.

And it was a comedy of errors.

The butter for the Romeo dough was not soft enough, so the dough was dry and crumbly. I microwaved it a bit to melt it. After I had the Romeos laid out on the pan, I realized I'd forgotten the parchment paper. I reasoned that the cookies were so buttery, they wouldn't stick. They looked OK.

I made the Juliets with softer butter. Boy, the recipe was not kidding. They spread a lot. They looked horrible.

I decided to remake the Juliets, using some extra flour. I used parchment paper this time. They looked pretty nice.

Then I decided to remake the Romeos using parchment paper. They looked even nicer. But they were bigger than the Juliets.

By this time I was out of butter, so I had to go with what I had. In the morning I melted some chocolate chips and stuck them together. I did hear from a reputable source that they tasted good.

During the cookie making, I was fending off the kitten right and left.

It's no wonder I dreamed about cookies and kittens. At one point in the dream I had bandaged hands (from kitchen accidents and kitten clawing) and was scrabbling through a giant bin of trail mix in front of Costco, trying to pull out just the chocolate chips for the filling. I was surrounded by a herd of skinny injured kittens.

My Current Stack

It's a wonder there is any pay left at all. This isn't even all of them. There are more stashed elsewhere, plus the ones I've read already.

What is on your "to read" list?

The Last of the Red Hot Boston Photos

Apparently, no trip to Harvard is complete without seeing the glass flowers. You can visit both the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for the same price.

Harvard has a hobbit too. 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was so beautiful. 

Giant baby's head behind the MFA. 

Wonderland exists, at the end of the Blue Line. 

Press here to Cat Walk. 

Got the Bye Mom and Dad picture!

Long Beach

We were in Long Beach to hear Neil Gaiman speak on the penultimate stop of his short book tour. No pictures allowed, unfortunately. I was not aware that they would be selling SIGNED BOOKS so I did not arrive early enough to wait in the massive line. I guess I have enough books.

I saw a delightful addition to any cat lover's wardrobe.

The lobby of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts center is a mini Carpenters museum. If you are a child of the 70s you may remember many of their hits.

On the way home, we stopped by the American Horror Story "Murder House."

The photo is tilted, not because I am about to be murdered, but because I was shooting through the spaces of a chain link fence.

You see why I wanted to shoot through the spaces.

Annoyances

1.  Glasses.

Do you see something wrong with these glasses? I do. The optician didn't. They are so crooked I can't see out of them. I don't feel like making the long drive back right now so I am wearing the old ones for the time being.

2. Feedly.

Do you click on the "What's New" when you update your apps? I don't. Apparently I should, because Feedly don't work no more.

Oops.

3. Noise.

Well, that sign was a joke. We stated at a reasonably priced Best Western in Long Beach last weekend. The original room was directly over the ballroom, which was pumping out loud ethnodisco music. The replacement room was slightly better, but had both street noise and freeway noise. That's easier to ignore.

More Boston Photos

This is just a random slew of photos I want to save. This blog has become my scrapbook.

I've never seen LAX so empty. This was the walkway between terminals 6 and 7, about 9 p.m.

Dawn at Logan the next morning.

First opportunity to get a picture of the young man!

I saw many Little Free Libraries.

This is towards the end of the trip. He has just discovered I was taking stealth photos of him, i.e. I was holding the phone as if I were looking at something on it. OK Mom, that's enough.

Squirrel!

The acorn caps remind me of Frank's beret.

Zendalas

I brought these home from another class and Frank thought they were coasters. That's not a bad use for them. But then I need to make a few more for a complete set!

The top one had a template (pre-strung in zentangle talk). 

The second was freehand. I looked at the sample and thought, no way, I can't get that shape right. But you know, one step at a time, broken down, and look what a success it was.

It's just a good reminder. 

Starting a new job for the first time in many years, and at age 55 to boot, well, it's my favorite job out of all my jobs but still, there are things I must learn how to do. Little steps, small pieces, and it all comes together. How to ship a book. How to put a book on hold that is already in stock. How to open the store. (You have to count all the pennies!) What do you do when you accidentally lose a puzzle box in that mysterious black hole where two bookcases join at right angles. (The owner told me they had a live bird fly down into one of those spaces, so I don't feel so bad about just a jigsaw puzzle). 

It's just delightful when people I know come into the store, like my 6th grade teacher. After 40+ years she still remembers how much I liked to read. I remember she gave me an award for reading 100 books during the school year.

Freedom Trail

My plan was to take the T as close as we could get to the far end of the Freedom Trail, and then walk part of it. We desperately needed restrooms which we located in a nearby Whole Foods. We had a short uphill walk to the Bunker Hill Monument, but it was not too bad.

Uh, no. No way Handy was going up there. That was fine with me.

And we're off. And it was downhill. Yay.

Wonderful fall decorations around Charlestown. Look, a cat!

I loved the witch planted in the planter box.

Tasteful and traditional.

Simple.

A stop at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

The Constitution was in dry dock.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

Perhaps the narrowest house in Boston? I looked it up on Zillow. Labeled as "Skinny House," 2 Bedroom, 1 Bath, 1166 sq feet. Zestimate $696K.

North Church.

Paul Revere's house. Again with the people.

After the North End, we deviated from the trail and took the T back to the hotel for some R & R.