Musti-ry Solved!

The little white cat with the huge head that I found last time I was at Kimono My House finally has a name.

According to this, the cat is named Musti, is Belgian, and has nothing to do with Sanrio, aside from looks. I spent a fair amount of time online trying to find the name of what I assumed was a Sanrio character. What a relief. Also a ripoff. But cute, too, and kind of looks like Bucky, which is why I bought it in the first place.

Spräng!

In the spirit of Ikea, spring is spräng in Mid-town, CT. Sure, it's still cold at night, and who knows if the already budding flowers will survive, but it feels sprängy, and nothing else matters.

I threw some more photos into my flickr Middletown set, and I think I'll have to create some new sub-sets for Middletown stuff at some point. There are actual recognizable things like buildings and areas, but there's plenty of random stuff that I take pictures of when I go wandering the streets. Right now it's all just here.

From Boing Boing...

"Device tells you if you're boring
MIT Media Lab researchers are building a device to help autistic people determine if they're boring or annoying the person they're talking to."

Why is this for autistic people? I'd buy one, carry it around, and make people wear it before talking to me. Or wait, I could just walk away.

The project sounds interesting, I just don't get why this is needed for the autistic population, especially if they would need to be trained to use it. Train people to ask "Am I boring you?" every so often, and train people to honestly answer the question.

Hibernation?

I've been sluggish the last week or two, and I think it's weather related. We should be springing around around here, and it's still kind of blustery brisk. I also can't seem to get enough sleep, but that might be stress-related. Or a sign to hibernate because spring ain't comin'.

To help myself out, I decided to make something comforting for dinner last night. I used epicurious.com and came up with Artichoke and Mushroom Lasagna. You can check out the specifics of the recipe yourself, but the basics were no-boil noodles and a white bechamel sauce, alternating with layers of cheese and vermouth-cooked artichokes and mushrooms. I lightened it up a bit due to availability and cost of ingredients, so I used part-skim mozzarella, and soy milk instead of whole, with a splash of half and half to richen things up.



Some Brussels sprouts, olive oil ciabatta, a bottle of wine, and we were good to go. Very comforting, and very different than any lasagna I've ever had.

Part of my exhaustion may be due to the DMV and my own stupidity. I went yesterday morning to finally transfer my title and registration and get my CT plates. I got a number and waited for my turn at the counter. When I got up there 30 minutes later (not bad actually) the guy asked for my paperwork, including the form that nobody told me to fill out. I was given the form and told to come back up when it was completed. I needed a ballpoint pen to fill out the triplicate, white-pink-yellow form, and of course, the ball-point pen machine on that floor wasn't working. I went downstairs and paid 25¢ for my pen, got back upstairs and filled out my form, went back to the counter only to find that my temporary insurance card expired on March 13th (Happy Birthday Dad!). Needless to say, the current card was not in the glove compartment, so I drove the 20 minutes back home to find it, returned to the DMV with everything in order, and promptly parted with $125 (the reason I had put off doing this) in exchange for some plates and some papers. I even got suckered into buying new license plate bolts at the DMV store that DIDN'T FIT MY CAR! All is fine now, and I feel a little bit more like a real resident of the Nutmeg State.

Tomorrow the Botaknist is coming to town for a visit, in her NEW CAR! She has been making use of the much-loved-but-hardly-ever-driven Cupcakemobile since her much-loved-and-much-driven Honda Shuttlepod finally crapped out on her. We'll probably get some breakfast and then collectively explore the area. I believe SOMEONE has compiled a list of yarn stores in the area and is eager to drive to some or all of them in her NEW CAR. I'm excited to hear what kind of DMV gouging she has in her state!

A goody

http://www.consumerist.com/

Weak week...

Another week has passed, of little consequence. The local students are on spring break and very few of them are locally located for it. I have been inexcusably exhausted and feeble all week. Yesterday, however we went to Ikea to get a chair (PöANG!) and hung out in New Haven a little bit. We got lunch near Yale and walked over to the library building.



Card catalogs at Yale.

The campus is crazy gothic, maybe worse than Duke, but you walk in the library and there in the stony halls are computers and copiers and various modernica. Kinda strange.

We came home and put together our chair and footstool, and then we ventured to Hartford to see the movie Bubble at Trinity College.




Crazy curtain in the theater.

I also should mention some culinary items from the past several weeks, including my birthday cake...



...thanks to Mrs. Cupcakes and the Botaknist! It is the family Finnish Sour Cream Cake recipie, with extra awesome candles from the Stop & Shop.

Also recently, I poached pears in ginger ale!



...which I pretty much did just to try it once. They were pretty good, especially with a scoop of ricotta cheese.

The most pleasant surprise of my own doing, was a potato and salmon fritatta, using some left over parchment cooked salmon. Excellent!




I've had lots of time in the kitchen (and everywhere else) lately, so I've cracked the spine on more than a few of our cookbooks, and I stole a few copies of Vegetarian Times Magazine from the laundromat. I've also become hooked on Good Eats with Alton Brown on the Food Network, what with his science and history and zany madcap antics. I've attempted pumpkin pudding, chocolate truffles, various fish treatments, cooking with barley, bread and cookie baking, all to some degree of success. I'm not gonna quit my day job, but it is pretty satisfying to succeed in the kitchen.

Let's catch up...

I'm still uploading photos to flickr, but this weekend was adventure filled, thanks to my cousin Anne. Our original plan was to have her come to Middletown, on her way from NYC to Providence, RI and have a little visit, see our place and that would be that. On friday, however, she got the bright idea that maybe I should come to NYC, we could hang out Saturday while Val was conferencing in Boston, and then return to Middletown for Saturday evening. I further adventurized things by suggesting that we ALL go to Providence on sunday.

Friday afternoon I drove to New Haven and parked at the train station. I caught the 4:24pm train to Grand Central Terminal and was there by 6:20pm. I found Anne and we met up with her friend for dinner. We wandered around Manhattan a bit, and headed for the Holiday Inn.

Saturday we brunched with one of Anne's childhood friends, and then proceeded to seek out the studios for the Daily Show. After that we strolled around, passed on the 60-90 minute wait to observe from the Empire State Building, and headed back on the train to New Haven. We came home, found Val and had dinner at Little Tibet.

On Sunday we had breakfast at O'Rourke's, did laundry, and then headed over to Providence. We wandered the streets of Providence, loitered around near Brown, and then had dinner before taking Anne to pick up her rental car at the airport.

Lots of miles covered, and a good experience on how to take the train to NYC. SUCCESS!

Episode 316, or "Here we snow again..."

So, this snow had a name for some reason, and that name was Doreen. Looks like one of the local news outlets felt that general terms like "nor'easter" and "clipper" weren't enough, so they came up with their own list.



Doreen gave us about 4 inches of snow, a nice blanketing considering it has been cold here anyway, and if I'm gonna suffer cold it's nice to at least have snow cover.



I like it. I walked around, got a cup of coffee, took some pictures. It doesn't stop everything here like it did in NC, but it slows things down. Another thing it did this afternoon was lightning and thunder and snow. All at the same time. Thundersnow they call it. Doreen Thundersnow.