October 30, 2007 by kim.

Ooooo - I bet you’re just dying to know where we are and what we’re up to! Some of you already know. Some probably have a hunch. Those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting us don’t know that what we’re up to is something we’ve been doing for the past two years.

Intrigued?

Here’s a hint, albeit rather gruesome: We saw a lot of roadkill while travelling across Pennsylvania.

What can I say? I write what I see.

*By the way - did you sing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” in your head when you read the title? I did.

Posted in Observation | 1 Comment »

October 26, 2007 by kim.

I will give you three guesses to figure out what we’ve been up to this week:

Stay tuned for the big reveal!

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October 26, 2007 by kim.

Oh my goodness! While walking along the streets of New York City, I ran into the famous director of “Stealing Kisses”, Chris LoDuca! I was able to snap a few pictures before he disappeared into the crowd:

Isn’t that just so COOL?

Posted in Annoyance | No Comments »

October 21, 2007 by kim.

I love taking pictures. I love birds. I love taking pictures of birds. Sometimes, I get so excited, that I forget how to take a decent picture:

Could you tell that it was a woodpecker I had zoomed in on? Yeah - me neither.

This is what happened when Chris took a zoomed-in picture, but lifted up the screen so that he would have a better shot. Something I might have done in the first place if I was thinking:

See what you can do when you use the old noggin?

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October 21, 2007 by kim.

For whatever reason, Chris and I both woke up at 4:30am. Maybe it was the meowing cat on our bed, or maybe the herd of elephants above us. Whatever the reason was, we were wide awake.

We laid there and chatted away, trying to decide if we should get up or not. When it got to be about 6:00am, I said that we should watch the sunrise. Chris suggested we go to the park. I said we shouldn’t because there are some weird people in that park when the sun goes down, and since the sun wasn’t up yet, I wasn’t going to take the chance.

We stayed in and Chris got the camera to take this picture:

Then, we fell asleep.

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October 21, 2007 by kim.

Matilda was going crazy today, hunting some invisible creature for over an hour. She’d go from one side of the victrola cabinet to the other, squeezing into the space between the cabinet and the wall, and generally going crazy, which drove me crazy. I had to see what it was that she was seeing. Was it a bug? Was it a mouse? I got on the floor and looked. I saw nothing. I put my ear to the wall and heard the neighbors and perhaps a faint scratching. I took some things out of the cabinet to open up the space, and kitty got in to check it out:

I don’t know if she saw anything, but she went in and out of there for another hour.

Anything to make kitty happy…

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October 21, 2007 by kim.

Look at this cake. Doesn’t it look nice? I baked it for our friend Ken’s birthday.

Yum! It tasted great!

It almost didn’t turn out that good, though.

Our friends were scheduled to come over on Friday night to celebrate Ken’s birthday. I did my baking on Thursday night so that I would be ready. Normally, this would have not have been a problem.

I decided to bake a chocolate cake with some peanut butter chips (instead of chocolate chips) to give it a kind of chocolate/peanut butter flavor. I had not done this before, so I was taking a risk by combining things that don’t mix well together. I mixed the batter and chips and put them into two 8-inch cake pans. I baked the cakes. I took them out of the oven and let them cool a bit before flipping them out onto a cooling rack. This is where things went downhill.

The chips had all settled to the bottom of the cakes, so when I flipped them out of the pan, they began to break in half. I quickly flipped them back and after they were cool, I put one onto a cake plate. I proceeded to shave off the top to make it level, which basically cut the cake in half. Then, I began to make the frosting.

I found a recipe for fudge frosting online. I had an idea in my head of what it would look like, but what was in my head did not in any way match what I cooked up in on the stove. Instead of being a rich, dark fudge frosting, it was a light brown, chunky, runny mess.

At this point, I could have (and should have) stopped and gone to buy some frosting before the store closed, but I wanted to see what would happen when I poured it over the cake.

Not one of my better ideas.

I decided I had better scrape it off, which took off another layer of cake. It had run into the middle, so I thought I’d just scoop out the middle and fill it in with the cake shavings that I had saved. That just made it worse, so I tried cutting it in half and putting the halves on top of each other, followed by the other layer of cake that had been shaved level and stacked.

Now it looked like a football. That wouldn’t do, so I cut off the corners and tried to make it into a round cake that ended up about as thick as a one layer cake. Pathetic.

Cake halves

Cake shavings

That was not how it was supposed to turn out. It was supposed to be a beautiful creation. I saved it for a backup, but I knew I would have to start over again. After all - I have a reputation to protect. The next morning I got up early and went to the store where I bought cake mix and frosting, and I baked the 13×9 size cake you saw at the top of the post before going to work which turned out perfectly.

Whew!

Posted in Food | 1 Comment »

October 16, 2007 by kim.

While talking to my folks this past weekend, my Dad and I got into a discussion about things that bug us. Bug being the operative word for this particular post.

The bug. You know what it is. It’s that obnoxious little (or sometimes large) station identification logo that appears on the bottom of your television screen, telling you what channel you are watching and sometimes, even what show you are watching.

I personally don’t find it necessary. I know what channel I’m watching. I picked it. Don’t remind me. I’d rather just see the whole show on my screen instead of pretending I don’t see that bug glaring at me.

I can understand what the cable stations are thinking, now that we have a billion channels to choose from. They’re thinking, “The person watching this show will equate the show with this station. They will think that this station is so wonderful they’ll wonder what other shows are on this station during the week. They’ll keep tuning in, over and over again, and the best news is that they’ll be subjected to the commercials that we air, and we’ll make a trillion dollars off of advertising! Let’s make sure they never forget what station they are watching. Let’s implant a subliminal bug in their brain so we can control their preferences from the comfort of their own couch. Bwa ha ha ha!”

That could also backfire, but they don’t think like that.

So – we’re stuck with the bug. Okay. Some stations make it transparent, or it comes and goes so it isn’t always on the screen. That’s fine with me. It’s less invasive that way. How very kind of them to think of us. There are some stations, however, that are COMPLETELY obnoxious. Is it really necessary to have the bug continually move and draw focus from the program? Do I need to see what show is coming next by having some animation take up 1/3 of the screen? No. No no no no. I know what’s coming next. I have the guide on the TV to tell me. I look ahead. I know how to do that. I’m pretty smart that way.

Maybe someday, the bug will go away. Or, it will get worse. I’ll just hope for the former.

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October 16, 2007 by kim.

Thought you might enjoy this picture of Union Square taken from Filene’s Basement on the 5th floor.

I’ve only been to one Filene’s Basement that was actually in the basement, and that is located on 6th Ave and 19th street here in NYC. The other two have needed escalators and elevators to reach because they both seem to start on the 4th floor. Kind of misleading, don’t you think?

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October 16, 2007 by kim.

While preparing for our bedtime snack on Sunday, Chris asked me if I would like to partake in the oatmeal raisin cookies that I had baked that day. “No”, I said, “My body is craving some fruit”. This is what I ate:

Hey – there was an apple in there. True, it was smothered in delicious, sugary caramel, but it was still an apple.

Come to think of it, I could have also had the cookies since raisins are a fruit, too…

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