Snake Surly

I made the most excellent dinner. I was feeling kinda retro, so I made stuffed bell peppers and salad with blue cheese dressing. My mom used to feed us stuffed bell peppers, and I always liked 'em, but as always, Cook's Illustrated's recipes kick anybody else's recipe's ass. Sorry, mom. Instead of using standard 70's green peppers, this uses sweet red and yellow bells, and has a little cheese in it, which I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't use. I used like every pot and bowl and slotted spoon and pair of tongs in the kitchen, but it was definitely worth the mess. And the homemade blue cheese (Maytag) dressing was heaven on earth.

Then we watched Lost, which I'm really grooving on. Man, I love that Hobbit.

October 12, 2004

Oh God, I'm Repeating Myself

Today and yesterday were like carbon copies of each other. I got up too late to go to yoga, so I sat around and played the Sims2. I had coffee and toast while watching AMC (Babe has still not given the baby back to Bianca), and then eventually got hungry for a salad, so I went to the gym and used the ellipticals and then swam and then had a yummy salad-from-the-gym. Then I came home and debated whether to take a proper shower. I decided not to and just went to rehearsal looking like a slob. I rehearsed and rehearsed, then came home and had a gin&tonic and watched tv.

I need a disruption in my day, bad. Someone come over and interrupt me from my rut!

October 10, 2004

I am Cornholio!

Today, on a hot tip from Paul, Rob and I went over to Santa Cruz to go to a pumpkin patch with an allegedly difficult corn maze. It was a beautiful day, the pumpkins were beautiful and plentiful, and the corn maze? Well, it nearly killed us. We barely escaped with our lives, which would have been a disappointing end to a really great weekend.

October 4, 2004

Fumey Goodness

The furniture repair guy came this morning to fix the damage on the right arm of the sofa caused by me thoughtlessly and repeatedly putting damp drinking glasses on it. He was out of here by 11:30. You'd think that by now (4:30), it would stop reeking like a sharpie. It hasn't, and I think I'm getting a little high. I gotta get out of here.

Road Trip

Back from Oregon.

On Saturday morning, we drove my parents up to SFO, then hit the road after a silly detour in the City. We stopped in Orland to see the Vlaches. Ethan is just too cute. If he wants you to come see something, he'll hold out his little hand and say, "hand!"

There was another silly detour in Redding, then we drove on. I haven't seen Mt. Shasta without snow on it for years (or maybe even ever), and it looked smaller than I remembered.

Because of the silly detours, we didn't get into Ashland until about 6:30. I'd failed to get us a hotel, and we looked around fruitlessly for one, then gave up and went to a play. The only thing with seats available was Raisin in the Sun, which I wasn't all that excited about seeing, but turned out to be just fabulous. The set/costumes/tech were great, and with one glaring exception, the actors were all wonderful.

When the play ended, we had some food and looked for a hotel. There was no room in any inn in Ashland, so we headed up to Medford on an Aurora-like frontage road. Medford was pretty gloomy, but we did manage to find the real reason we'd gone up there in the first place. We checked into a Holiday Inn Express (what makes it "Express"?), which had the least comfortable beds and pillows I've ever experienced in a hotel. Neither of us got any sleep.

The next morning, we drove around Medford some more. Despite the stunning surroundings, the town was still gloomy in the even in the daytime. The downtown area was trying really hard to be cute, but everything was closed, including the coffee house. What kind of coffee joint is closed on Sunday morning? (And I don't mean that it was like 5AM. It was 10:30.)

After exploring for a while, we went to the house to meet the real estate agent. The house was gorgeous, but needed a lot of work. Still, I really liked it. I could tell pretty quickly that Rob didn't. We left and went back to Ashland for lunch.

We had a pretty blah lunch, then got back into the car to explore some more. Ashland is almost ridiculously pretty. It's like it's a set for a play. But a scenic designer couldn't have painted a set so vividly. The dark evergreens, the lurid autumn foliage and the blue, blue sky could only be believed in nature.

Following a tip from the real estate agent, we headed north again to see the town of Jacksonville. It's even quainter than Ashland. It's almost too quaint, like they're kidding about it. We looked around at houses, including a new copy of a Greene & Greene house up on a hill. It was insanely beautiful, and heartbreakingly priced at $1.6 milion. A house like that here (on five acres!) would be a steal at $20 million. Exhausted, we went back to the town and had margaritas and chips on the balcony of a hyper-quaint gold-rush era building. We discussed the merits of the house in Medford, and decided that we both didn't like it enough to move forward with it.

We eventually started the drive back home. Coincidentally, the book I'm reading aloud in the car right now is Microserfs. Interesting reading for people who are contemplating getting the hell out of Silicon Valley.

October 1, 2004

Kateus Domesticus

Nothing like a little mild weather to bring out the housewife in me. I drove over to Palo Alto, got some groceries at Andronico's, then wandered over to Nordstrom. I got a new pair of black ankle boots and some gym duds. The weather was even nice over here, but it was glorious in PA. It was just under seventy degrees and sunny with cute puffy clouds.

I came home, started dinner, cleaned the house, arranged some pumpkins on the table, and lounged around smelling the tomatoey garlicky goodness. And now Rob has just walked in, so I will go finish making dinner.