It's raining 300 men

Thanks to bonemot, the following video caused much hilarity at the Chicken Soup cook-off (Jen won) and Coffee Cake bake-off (I won) last night:



I decided a while back that I wasn't going to see 300 because it looked way to violent for me. I have since reconsidered my opinion and might be easily convinced to go, even if it means having to hide my head on someone's shoulder for most of the fight scenes.

Present to myself

I've been coveting a stand mixer for a while now, as my little hand mixer was just too awkward to make cakes with. I was contemplating a kitchenaid, but the pricetag was really making me pause. And then I was inspired by human_loser and his new pet. He reminfded me that I love the mixer we had at home while I was growing up, an old Sunbeam Mixmaster. So I decided that since I have a cake to bake for this weekend, I was going to get one for my very own. Introducing my new kitchen toy:



Today I also used it for the first time to make the brownies that I loved growing up as well. And since I do not want to gain 500 pounds due to my new toy, you can see that they are already packaged up to take to work tomorrow so other people can gain weight instead:

My mallows are dreamy

I have the best friends in the world!

I was telling sebethis about Viva Puffs a while back, and about how much I love them. They are a graham cookie bottom, then a layer of jam, then a big puff of marshmallow on top, all covered in chocolate. They're delicious, and I've been unable to find them or anything like them in the States so far. I've been told that they sound like Mallomars, but Mallomars don't have the jam filling.

Anyway, on Monday sebethis walks up to me and hands me a box of Dreamy Mallows, which she found at Shop-Rite. Evidently she remembered me talking about Viva Puffs and realized that Dreamy Mallows might be pretty much the same.


Hopefully I'm going to get a Canadian care package from my sister soon, as she said that she would include Viva Puffs for me. Then I will have a side-by-side cookie taste test!

Queen of willpower

Sebethis went to Chicago last week and brought me back chocolates from Ethel's. They're amazing, but I only have one box. To make them last, I've been rationing them out. I got the box on Monday, and I've managed to only eat one a day!

See - only six gone (so far)!



Oh, and this has been a crazy weather week. On Wednesday it hit 28 celsius, and on Friday we had a huge snowstorm. Here's a picture of it what is was like walking home.



Bear in mind that it was more like an ice storm, and the snow was stinging. And the winds were crazy. Of course, I was just being a masochist deciding to walk home, but the good Canadian blood has to be handy for something.

I'm sad...

...because my favourite cafe in Philly - Dessert - is closing. We went there yesterday night to celebrate some good news, and there was a sign in the window saying they would be shutting down on March 31st. I'm so sad! Dessert is a great place to go and spend a few hours eating delicious sweets and playing trivial pursuit, or gathering with a group of friends for high tea. The atmosphere is fabulous and the owners are sweeties. I'm going to have to find a new place at which to be a regular.

Me Generation

According to that bastion of accuracy and comprehensiveness - Wikipedia, I am a member of the Me Generation. Or the Consciousness Revolution, or the MTV Generation,or Generation X, or Generation Y. I feel very confused.

Meme-alicious

Comment with the words "Top Ten" or "Top Five", and I will reply with a subject for which you will generate a top ten (or top five) list. Post the list and instructions in your own journal.

bonemot asked for the top 5 meals I'll never forget. Here they are in reverse chronological order, with one more as a bonus.

1. My first Passover seder last year. I took the day off work and cooked a full dinner for ten (with outside contributions for the soup and dessert). We had a bunch of little lesbians and one actual Jew at the table. Plus the best brisket ever.

2. Birthday dinner with Jen at Morimoto - $120 dollars (each), 11 courses, and no idea what we were going to get. Plus we got to say hi to and shake hands with Iron Chef Morimoto himself.

3. Birthday dinner in Scotland with Ruthie - I went traditional for this one. Deep fried Mars bar for starters, then after a cheesy movie we moved on to haggis and trifle. We didn't have birthday candles so we stuck an emergency candle in the trifle. Haggis is yum!

4. My first sushi experience with Susan just south of Whyte Ave - she ordered a plate of the stuff, sat me down, and wouldn't let me leave the table until I ate my half. She set me on the path of liking fish, both raw and cooked.

5. This one's fuzzy - I was in Israel with my family and was a bit overwhelmed by all the different food. I was about nine or ten at the time. I spotted pizza at a little food court type restaurant was relieved that it was something familiar. Unfortunately for me it was made with goat or sheep's milk, so that was an unpleasant shock when I started eating it.

Bonus round: Amy and I crashed a private dinner party that a Very Famous Canadian Actor was attending. It was very disillusioning as the actor, who is enormously talented and very very handsome, was also a chain smoker; swore like a sailor; and greatly enjoyed pontificating. Woe betide anyone who held a different opinion that he did.

Ew.

I am now extremely glad I do not eat pork. Usually.


What Happens When You Pour Coke On Raw Pork? - A funny movie is a click away

And the winner is...

aNobii!

Shelfari might look pretty, but it doesn't have the organizational abilities of aNobii. I can mark my books as finished (with date completed), reading, not started, or unfinished. Global editing is easy. Tagging is a breeze. There's a ton of sorting options. It warms the cockles of my little librarian heart.

Now, I wouldn't use it for cataloguing my complete personal library because it doesn't have some of the more powerful applications and tools, but that's why I'm a charter member of Librarything. But for compiling booklists, and especially for keeping track of what I read no matter who owns it, aNobii is the one for me!

Hermetically sealed

If I've ever lent you a book in the past, you know that I'm very stringent about what condition it needs to be in when it is returned. Pretty much if you break it (or crumple it, or dog-ear it, or heaven forbid - break the spine), you've bought it. I'm completely anal about keeping my books in the condition they were when they were acquired. Even bathtub reading is done very carefully and I'm a HUGE bathtub reader.

So, for those of you on my shortlist of people I'll lend books to - take a giggle at this entry I found on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Read the post. Then read the comments. Then run out and read Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, which is a wonderful book for those of us who love books.

Mission Accomplished!

For those of you following my 50 Book Challenge, I'd like you to know that I have achieved 50 books as of today! The 50th book was Dark Mondays by Kage Baker. Now that I have completed the 50 books for the year, I am going to continue to log all my books that I read in 2007 to see how much (and what) I actually read in a year. So far, I've read a lot of JD Robb (thanks, Jen) and smut.



On a related note, I've been experimenting with different websites to track my books and display them to you. I started with bookswellread, but decided after a while that I didn't like their interface or how slow it was. I then found Shelfari, which is pretty but does not allow you list books not in it's database (plus, it's count of how many books I've read is one off). Yesterday I discovered aNobii, which doesn't have the pretty interface that Shelfari has but is more powerful. I can list the date I finished the books on, and it keeps track of how many pages I read as well!

So now I'm torn between Shelfari and aNobii (and leaning towards aNobii). Which do you prefer?
Anobii
or
Shelfari

Adaptation

I just watched the BBC production of The Ruby in the Smoke, based on the first Sally Lockhart book by Philip Pullman



Philip Pullman is, of course, better known for his His Dark Materials trilogy, the first of which, The Golden Compass, is being adapted into a film with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

This series, however, deals with a plucky Victorian-era orphan. No, it's much darker than you might imagine.

Anyway, aside from having to cram a novel's worth of plot in 95 minutes, it was a fun movie to watch, and I look forward to the next one in the series, The Shadow In The North, later on this year.

My brilliant solution

For the past few days I have been craving chocolate. I've been haunting the vending machine at work, I've been daydreaming about chocolate at home in the evenings. Today I finally had a brilliant idea. I don't really need to eat my body weight in chocolate, thinks I. But evidently I need something chocolatey. So I went out and bought Dove Rich Dark Chocolate Flowers. How is this a solution, you might ask? Because I really do not like dark chocolate at all. So I figure I'll have one and it will give me my chocolate fix, but I won't be tempted to eat more than one. It worked quite well tonight - I had one and it was quite satisfying.

Of course, the plan would have worked better if I hadn't also bought a Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar...

Can't resist the library humour

Dewey Decimal System Helpless To Categorize New Jim Belushi Book