Weekend Update

I felt I'd had a particularly good weekend so time for another laundry list:

Friday night:

• Poodle and her main squeeze (MS) brought over furniture.
  
• Ferret fixed a tasty sweet and sour pork with rice dinner. I made a side dish of tofu (note to self: still need to ask mommy exactly how she makes it).

Saturday:

• Helped Poodle move! The weather was perfect, cool and cloudy - although it appeared like it was about to rain, it never did. Poodle nicely provided coffee from La Colombe and glazed donuts from Dunkin' for breakfast. Ferret and Tortoise and David wrestled down various heavy pieces of furniture while I ferried down little boxes. It was a nice time.
• After the move, Poodle treated us to lunch at Banana Leaf. I decided to play it safe this time and get the Beef Chow Fun. It did not disappoint. Next time though, I will take a cue from Tortoise and get the Beef Rendang. Good stuff good stuff. For an appetizer we tried the crispy squid; after eating several pieces we all declared it was awful.
• Shower and a two hour nap.
• Labbed it! I was actually pretty productive. Autoclaved bottles and tips, made CM (with a dash of trickery), fed cells, washed dishes, split cells.
• After a hasty dinner of leftover Beef Chow Fun and a large bowl of yogurt with honey, I sped off to Ferret's house to meet SS and AN for games. One round of Settlers of Cataan took about two hours. It sounds nerdy (and I guess it is, actually) but the game is bunches of fun. The basic premise is: you are a settler (of Cataan) and the goal is to build as many settlements and cities as you can. And to build, you have to collect resources from lands. Distribution of resources is governed by two things: the roll of the dice and whether or not the resource is adjacent to your settlement. Anyway, there is a lot of trading and strategizing involved. We hope to meet again next weekend for another round.
  
• After SoC, we played a couple of rounds of an Italian card game called Bang. This is also a fun game. For each round, one person is the sheriff, one is the renegade and the other two are outlaws (for more players there would be more outlaws and one deputy sheriff). The goal of the sheriff is to kill everyone else, the goal of the outlaws is to kill the sheriff, and the goal of the renegade is for everyone else to die. Again, lots of moaning and groaning and glee.
• Since I had received another disc of Ergo Proxy, Ferret and I watched that after playing games. The series continued to make no sense. We haven't lost hope that eventually we'll understand what is going on. Unfortunately, we've already watched half the series without additional comprehension. Perhaps something is getting lost in translation?

Sunday

• I started off my day correctly by going to TJ and making several key purchases.
• I went for a pleasant run outdoors on the trail by the river. That day, I managed to pass one chubby girl and one skinny girl who was running very slowly. Go me!
  
• I experimented with making a cafe au lait using my little frothing wand. It would have been more successful if I had added more sugar. But it was still enjoyable.
• I made a dauntingly large batch of jambalaya with chicken chorizo sausage and some plain chicken pieces. It's been a source of sustenance for me for a couple of days now. Somehow I'm not sick of it yet. Which is good because I've barely made a dent in it.
• I visited the new food store on my corner. It was instantly charming because of all the gleaming wood shelves, but it became a dearly loved store after I discovered panko crumbs in it. At less than $2 for 7 ounces, I was sold. Ever since TJ discontinued their panko crumbs I've felt discombobulated.
• After a few loads of laundry, I went over to Ferret's to watch Hellboy. Post on that later!

And that was my weekend. I've discovered that the weekend actually feels longer if you do more stuff during it. Weird but true.

Tony Living Large

A few days ago, Poodle and her main squeeze brought over a tall round table and its matching chair. They are to live with me for a couple of weeks while Poodle is homeless. As you can see from the picture, Tony has already welcomed them to my home. There is another picture I took of him lounging on the chair, but I haven't gotten around to uploading that yet. Mr. cat is the best.

Update: Here is that other picture of Tony.

Voting Madness in PA

FINALLY Pennsylvania got to vote! Go Hillary! I will be updating my NYT page incessantly for the rest of the evening.

Romeo and Juliet

I remember watching this movie when it first came out. I was 16 years old and watched it in the theater with Kara, my best friend. I'm not sure why we went to this movie, maybe because Leonardo diCaprio is cute? In any case, I didn't remember too much about it, so when I recently watched and enjoyed that other modern shakeup of a Shakespearean classic, Titus, I thought maybe I should give this version of Romeo and Juliet another try. Sooooo, it wasn't as good as Titus. Baz Luhrmann always does that sped up annoying camera thing and he was just trying a little too hard to be hip. Overall, it felt too glossy and shallow and unreal; the music was jarring. Leo is a good actor but even the most emotional scenes felt a little comical because it was so hard to take anything seriously. That was the problem, nothing felt quite serious enough. But it is difficult to completely mess up material this good, and a bit of the feeling did come through. Rate **

Stovetop Mac N Cheese

Bah!! In an attempt to follow through with New Year's Resolution #5 (Cook something new once a week, or at least twice a month), I decided to try Alton Brown's Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese. If you follow the link you'll see that the recipe had achieved rave reviews. Rave reviews, coupled with my own fondness for AB and the simplicity of the recipe led me to premature confidence that the recipe would yield fantastic results. :o( Unfortunately for me, this was not so. I wish I had taken a picture, but the result was very heavy with too much sauce sticking to each bite of pasta. I guess maybe it wasn't the best recipe to try on such a hot day, but I hadn't expected such a gooey mess! I mean, rave reviews!! Are these people all obese? In the end, I couldn't eat more than a few bites and opted for a crisp cool salad with some tasty French dressing:

3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
a little dollop of dijon mustard
some salt and pepper

Whisk ingredients vigorously until emulsified. Eat with TJ bagged salad with some parmiggiano shavings and perhaps a handful of walnuts and dried cranberries. Delicioso.