Intermezzo

(Top) Surprisingly, both the nasturtium and the clover on my windowsill have burst into flower.

(Bottom) Boo adores his clunky stuffed "Hamster Baby."

I need a tripod. Stat!

I've been poking at some of the multiple exposure photos I took in the Autumn with the intention of making HDR pictures from them. I did a few then, but I finally got around to compiling more the other day, so here are a couple. There are a few schools of thought re: HDR photos. Some people see them as a way to create hyper-realistic images, and scorn those that are a bit over the top, some people figure if they're doing a type of digital photo manipulation anyway, they may was well go crazy with the curves and levels, and some people (like me) especially like images that are just on the edge of realistic and fantastical. Some of the uber-crazy images, though fun to look at, are just a bit over the top, though I do really like things that look like they just might be from another world that's reeeeally similar to ours.



Another thing this reminded me of is the fact that I need to find a tripod of some sort--it was a challenge, balancing the camera on various things to try to get the identical picture multiple times. I've tried using the same photo, and changing the exposures in Photoshop, but it never gives quite the effect I wanted.

Sentimental Lentil

So many of the soups I muck about with don't have precise measurements, and are based only on the stuff I know ought to be in there.

I'm making a lentil soup today--that's the raw stuff in the picture. I just thought it was colorful and interesting to look at, so I snapped a photo.

I first became interested in trying a lentil soup after the Boy and I had an amazing batch of soup at a little Middle Eastern place near where we lived up north. It was incredibly fragrant--you could smell the nutmeg and cumin before you even took a bite. Sadly, I think that batch of soup was a mistake of some kind--maybe the lid had come off the nutmeg, and they'd dumped in more than they'd intended. We went back several times, but the soup was never as good.

The weekend we had the lentil soup at The Bronte Bistro (a novel idea!) attached to Joseph Beth Booksellers, and that reminded me I'd been wanting to try making it.

Into my trusty slow cooker, I threw the following:

Lots and lots of chicken stock, and a scoop of MSG-free chicken soup base for more flavor
about a pound (?) of red lentils, cumin, finely chopped ginger, about half a grated nutmeg (which would be maybe a little less than a teaspoon of powdered?) spring onions, chopped onion, chopped red potatoes, celery, sea salt... and that's it, I think. I may decide it needs something else later. Soups are fantastically easy in that they lend themselves so nicely to improvisation.

Auto-Butler!

It was a lovely, lazy Saturday morning this weekend. So lazy, in fact, that neither of us went downstairs to get breakfast. And yet... we both had a hot bowl of delicious, nutty oatmeal while lazing around. Mmm.

Those of you with a slow cooker may want to try this, for those mornings when it's cold outside and you just can't bear the thought of trudging to the kitchen and getting your feet cold while making brekkies. Or, for that matter, any morning you won't have time to make breakfast.

We ended up bringing the slow cooker, two bowls and spoons, and some brown sugar and raisins upstairs last night, and this morning it was perfectly done, and piping hot.

Make sure you use steel cut oats for this, or you'll have baked a little oatmeal puck overnight with the regular kind.

The Best Oatmeal Ever

• 1 cup of steel cut oats (seems like they're pretty easy to find at regular groceries these days)
• 4 cups water or milk (I always go at least halvsies in milk's favor. It's yummier)
• a dollop of vanilla extract
• few shakes cinnamon
• a shake of ground nutmeg, or grate about a half one fresh
  

Put all the above in your slow cooker, and turn on "low" before you go to bed. This recipe is pretty flexible--you can leave it 8 hours, or if you sleep in, it'll still be fine at 11 hours.

In the morning, drop in some raisins and/or other dried fruits, and stir to coat, and let soften while you're fiddling with bowls and such. I've tried putting raisins and dried cranberries in the night before, but the raisins tried to turn back into grapes--completely round and with a tanginess I wasn't sure I liked as well as the sweetness of the dried ones. You're welcome to try either way, of course!

Sprinkle with brown sugar, add a bit of totally optional milk (which I don't really think it needs), and lounge around enjoying the best oatmeal ever.

For a toothier, nuttier version, you can also make this recipe (with the same ingredients and measurements) on the stove. That also is amazingly yummy.

Oh, and PS...

Regarding the previous goi cuon post... if the flexible and sort of sticky texture of the uncooked fresh rolls doesn't suit your fancy, you can also use the same spring roll wrappers in cooked rolls--they crisp up beautifully to make those lovely crackly thin rolls restaurants serve.

You can stuff with items like bean sprouts, chicken or shrimp, and thinly sliced cabbage, or really, whatever you'd like. Then they can be deep fried, pan fried, or baked: pop into a 425 F degree oven for about 20 minutes, turning the rolls about halfway through.

I think that yummy sauce applies no matter what you're doing.

Goi Cuon!

"Bless you!" is one appropriate response when someone says, "Goi cuon!" Another appropriate response is, "Yum!"

Goi coun (pronounced "goy coon," I believe) is a Vietnamese summer roll, and while The Boy and I have enjoyed ordering them at restaurants for a while, we'd never imagined they could be so easy to make at home.

It's hardly surprising, really, since they're not cooked in any way. Recently I stumbled over a recipe for the transcendently delicious sauce that goes with the rolls, and we thought we'd give the whole shebang a try. Here's how you too, can enjoy these lovely little hand-salads.

You will need (and we found everything odd at our local Kroger, by the way):






1. Wraps, and a variety of stuffings--any or all of the following:

• Rice spring roll wrappers - we found ours in the flat round package linked
  
• rice noodles (rice vermicelli--they mostly come dried in like long very thin white tangles in bags)
• cucumber - long skinny pieces
  
• carrot - long minced skinny pieces again
• shrimp
• avocado (which I happened to have--that's the mushy green mass in there)
• fresh cilantro
  
• fresh mint
• lettuce (chopped thin)
• other meats like fish or chicken--I imagine any red meat would be just too heavy here, though you can try, if you want.

2. Articles for the luscious sauce

• Hoisin sauce, which you should be able to get in your local grocery in the Asian section. We found ours in Kroger.
• Chunky peanut butter
• garlic, crushed
• lime juice
• sriracha hot sauce if you so desire
• a bit of soy, to balance the sweetness of the hoisin and the heat of the hot sauce
• a bit of water, if it seems too thick
  
• a few drops of fish sauce, if you so desire
  

Really, the only cooking involved here is melding the ingredients for the sauce together. Put a large lump of peanut butter into a pot, and begin warming it while adding the rest of the ingredients, and allowing it to warm together and become smooth, aside from the peanut lumps. You can then pop the sauce into a bowl to cool to a reasonable temperature while you assemble your goi cuon.

This would be a perfectly lovely thing to do at a dinner party--set out the ingredients, and let everyone roll their own and eat as they go. In fact, these are best eaten fresh--the wrappers tend to get sticky if left for a while. Not that that detracts from the taste at all, but it can make handling them a little awkward.

The spring roll wrappers are like crackly paper, so set out a large flat bowl of hot/warm water along with your plate of stuffings and bowl of sauce. Place a wrapper into the water for a moment (or at least get the whole thing wet if the bowl's not big enough), and give it a few seconds until you feel the texture begin to change. Don't wait until it's floppy--it should still be a bit firm when you set it on your plate and add fillings to it. The wrappers will get floppier as the minutes go by, even out of the water, so you want to have something semi-firm to work with.

I wrapped ours like little burritos - place the fillings in a lump at the edge of closest side to you, roll them toward the middle once, then fold the two edges in, and continue rolling for a neat little package.

I admit, they look a little odd - the wrappers are flexible and practically see-though. And the texture is a bit out of the ordinary as well. They can be a bit floppy and sticky. But combined with the sauce, they're just fresh and delicious as anything.

The good stuff

RCRD LBL is an online record label (Surpise! Vowels!) that offers free MP3 downloads of its artists in true hipster fashion. In fact, here is one of my current favorite songs from Caribou. Here. He looks like a high school science teacher, but in fact, he makes lush and lovely music.

While you are listening, why not read a book? I'm currently reading The Terror, by Dan Simmons. It tells the story of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to the Arctic to search for the Northwest passage using the two steamships, The HMS Erubus, and The HMS Terror. There is a lot of ice involved. So far, I have needed to curl up in very warm blankets in order to read it. It's vaguely a historical novel, however, I'm not sure whatever it is that is plaguing the two ships in their ill-fated voyage is entirely natural. The story so far is intelligent, interesting, and creepy.

The fortitude of the men traveling to the far reaches of the globe so long ago must have been incredible. Imagine voluntarily sailing off, knowing it would be years before you'd see home again, and knowing there was a strong possibility you'd be burying some of your friends and crewmates at sea, or chipping into the arctic ice in an effort to put their bodies to rest.

Now, (unless you're WomanNorth, and you didn't need to imagine the Arctic) stop imagining, and make yourself a nice cup of steaming hot cocoa.

My kitchen goes East.. or at least, it tries.

So I made those samosas, and then I found an interesting recipe for Indian chappati bread on a website called Show Me the Curry. The site was made by two Indian women who are busy moms, but wanted to show people how to cook authentic Indian food in simple ways. I particularly like the fact that they add videos for most of the recipes. The videos aren't super-professional, which I like. You can tell you're in someone's real kitchen, and that Anuja and Hetal are friends in real life. More power to them for making a website that's such a resource!

The two recipes I've tried and that have been great are the chappatis (plain flatbreads good with yogurt, or for dipping) and the aloo paratha (uses the chappati dough), which is a potato stuffed flatbread. Be sure not to miss the video down at the bottom of the page.

I'm glad there were videos for them both, as the parathas were a bit difficult for a first-timer to get right. The recipe involves patting out flat circles of dough, placing stuffing in the middle, sealing it like a dumpling, but then flouring it, and actually rolling it flat again with the filling inside. Don't let this daunt you, though! I recommend trying them--we ate our parathas with a lentil dish from Tasty Bite, and they were great. I think with a little practice, this would be a pretty quick meal. I fiddled with the seasonings a bit, and since I don't care for cilantro, I used celery leaves instead, and that worked really nicely.

The only thing I would add for those of us who haven't rolled stuffed dough before is to make sure the stuffing is pretty dry--just moist enough to squeeze into balls. Mine was a bit moister when I first started, and my first paratha exploded when I tried to roll it flat. :( I still got a few leaks on a couple other ones, but all in all, they turned out really delicious and hearty.

They were much less delicate than samosas (though those are delicious in their own right), and I bet the completed parathas freeze well, an would be perfect for lunches and such.

Such a very important update

Yeah...no. I lied. It's not important. I've just been thinking about things like Twitter, to which people voluntarily submit up-to-the-minute news reports about the mundane details of their days. These reports are sped over the interwebs directly to their friends, who can keep tabs on them at all times. It seems like knowing that so-n-so just ate a cookie or found their lost keys would be not only tedious, but an overload of information. Also, do we really want to voluntarily let people that far into our lives?

It makes me a bit worried about people in general. How can we continue to care about protecting our privacy when we're voluntarily allowing the whole world to spy on our every move?

Technology has made the world so much smaller. We're connected virtually to a vast crowd of people. It's made contacting someone a continent away as easy as popping next door. Things like MySpace and Facebook make it smaller still, where we can even know day to day what a friend has been doing. Twitter brings it an even more microscopic level--an up to the minute level. It's this last part I'm so very unsure about. Sometimes, especially in this day and age, I want the world to stop at the walls of my house, and not come inside.

I like being in contact with the people I care about. I enjoy knowing what folk are up to. I want my friends to know what I'm up to. However, I doubt I'll ever feel okay about serious twittering. I'm sure none of you are sad about that.

If I were to twitter, what sorts of things would I write?

I lost a red sweater. Then I found it.
I did work on the computer.
I thought about making goi cuon for dinner tomorrow.
I walked upstairs. I walked back downstairs.
Laundry. Cleaning.
Talked to my neighbor.
Soy candles smelled nice.
I worked on building a webcomic wiki.
I took off the red sweater that I found.
I lost the red sweater again.

Is anyone thrilled? Neh. I didn't think so.

Mesmerizing

Solar from flight404 on Vimeo.

People have been making lovely music visualizations using Processing 1.0. Here's one from a user called flight404 on Vimeo.

Samosa Time

Tonight's kitchen adventure: Samosas, which are Indian pastries stuffed with curried potato and vegetables.

I admit I nicked the photo to the left from the nethers of the interwebs. By the time I thought about taking pictures of ours, they were pretty much gone. Next time I'll take pictures of the actual thing.

Over the past while, we've stocked up on some of the basics needed in Eastern cooking: Garam Masala, Hot Madras curry powder, regular yellow curry powder, fresh ginger, cardemom leaves--stuff like that. These are things that we don't use all that often, and will probably last us forever and a day. They're good to have around in case of a sudden hankering for Thai or Indian food.
I apologize for not having exact measurements on some of these things. I improvised a bit, and didn't measure some items in the filling.



For the shells:

• Mix 1 & 1/2 cups flour with 1 tsp salt
• Add 4 Tbs shortening, and cut together till crumbly.
• Add 5 or 6 Tbs cold water, just enough to make a kneadable mass.

Get your hands into it, and knead it together for a few minutes until it becomes smooth. Set it aside in a covered bowl to "rest." God knows what tuckers pastry dough out so much, but it needs a lot of rest, apparently.

After tucking the pastry in for a nap, (quietly) start in on the filling.

You can do one of two things here. You can go whole hog, and boil a bunch of potatos and make real live lumpy mashed potatos, or you can do as I did, and mix up a pack of dehydrated mashed potatoes, mince another potato finely, and cook that up with the rest of the filling.

In a frying pan, put a little of your favorite oil down and add the following:

• minced onion
• minced potato (if you cheated like I did)
• some grated or very finely chopped fresh ginger, or a few shakes of powdered stuff, I guess
  

Once the onions start to brown just a bit...

Add the mashed potatoes
some green peas
few shakes of Hot Madras Curry Powder
some Garam Masala
a bunch of plain yellow curry powder
salt

At this point, you can add some optional stuff, like chopped cashews, corn, or meat of some kind, if you'd like. I found these to be pretty substantial with just the vegetables, but do what you think would be yummy.

Mix it all together while heating it up. You should be able to taste test and see what you like here in terms of spices. I wasn't sure about the plain curry powder, but it turned out it needed more than I thought it would.

Take the filling off the heat, and set it aside.

Now, wake up the pastry, take a chunk of it, and begin rolling it out. You'll want a bowl or a large circular object (about 5-6 inches across) to cut out circles of pastry. Roll it out thinly, cut large circles and set them aside, making sure you flour so they don't stick together. Once you've used up all the dough, take a sharp knife and cut the circles in half, one at a time as you use them.

Take each half circle, dab some water around the lower edges, plop a decent blob of filling down in the middle, then fold the edges together and press well, so you have a little triangle with a rounded bottom. Wash, rinse, repeat until all the samosas are stuffed.

At this point, you can do one of two things. You can either deep fry the samosas, or you can bake them. Since deep frying is the traditional method, I tried it, but frankly, it was kind of terrifying in our little kitchen, and I don't think I'll do it that way again, even though they were delicious. I did find a recipe with baking directions, so that's what I'm posting.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F, place the samosas on parchment paper on a pan, and pop them in the oven.

Once they're in, turn the oven down to 300, and let them bake for 45 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

You can dip them in chutney, or eat them plain, like we did.

YUM.

Makings

I have been making.

We got couple lovely couch cushions several months ago. Their covers were made of a soft woven brown fiber with a bit of a sheen to it--nice and nubbly. Unfortunately, they were sewn really shoddily, and since they were woven, they were just falling apart after only a few months. It was a shame to let the fabric go to waste, and since I lost my last pair of wrist warmers (Wrist dickies, as we refer to them. Remember turtleneck dickies from the eighties? It was just a neck and a bit of cloth, so you looked like you were wearing a turtleneck without bothering to actually put one on under your sweater. ) err... sorry about the detour. Since I lost my last pair, I thought I'd repurpose the fabric to make new ones.

I reused the zippers, and made use of the silk edging already on the inside of the cushion cover. I added some reinforcing ribbon, and a loop and button to close it at the top. I also had to add a long loop of thin ribbon on the inside at the elbow end, so I can hold that with my teeth as I zip them up. Otherwise I'd have to have the Boy zip them up, and that would just be lame. This one needs a little more stitching added to the ribbon, but it's basically done. Both of them took me about an evening.


Not a difficult project, and my sewing machine was lovely and behaved perfectly. I seem to have the tension issue well in hand.... Quite accidentally, of course, but I'm not touching it, since it seems to be a-ok. This is a machine the Boy got me a couple Christmases ago. I remember using my mother's machine, which required hours of squinting and threading needles and trying to readjust bobbins... All of which, doubtless, was my fault. But this new machine is fancy. The little design on the black ribbon is made by the machine sewing little patterns. Fancy. It is too fancy to be Amish. (link to a sweet children's book--check out the illustrations about halfway down the page.)

In other, more edible news, we made a butternut squash soup that turned out quite yummy.


I'd never made one, but we'd liked a few we'd tried various places, and it seemed easy enough. I wasn't quite into any of the recipes I found, so combined the parts I liked into a slow cooker recipe that turned out really nice. It's very simple, and very comfort-foody.

• 1 raw butternut squash
• a pat of butter
• nutmeg (I grated about a third of a "nut" of nutmeg--I think that would be about a half teaspoon of the ground stuff? I kind of wished I'd used more though.)
• hot madras curry powder - a decent amount. it's not that spicy, and the finished product is not at all spicy.
• cumin - a nice shake, but not too much, because it can overpower the taste of the squash
• chicken stock - I used enough to just come to the level of the cubed squash in the slowcooker.
• sour cream - a heaping tablespoon
• one dollop of cream or milk

Cut the squash in half, and then slice it so that you can cut off the rind. Once that's done, cube it, and throw it in the slow cooker with the stock, butter, nutmeg, curry powder, and cumin. Let it cook away on medium high for 2 hours, or you could put it on low for 8 hours while you're at work.

At this point, the squash may not be totally mushy, but will be soft enough to blend. Scoop the chunks out into a different bowl, then blend them several at a time, pouring them back into the slowcooker as you go. Add stock while you blend to keep things moist. Some people might like theirs silky smooth, but I found it was really pleasant with a little texture to it, so I didn't blend forever.

Once everything's blended, turn the heat to medium or a bit lower, and wisk in the sour cream and a blop of cream or milk. If you boil at this point, it'll curdle, so keep the heat down a bit.

You can serve right away, or let it simmer another while. We served it with a couple sage leaves, and a bit of sour cream. I have a feeling this soup is one of those ones that will be even better the second time around. The recipe makes quite a bit, so you can pack it up into the freezer or fridge to use another day like we did.

Power Struggle

I admit it--I have one of those big monolith computer monitors. You know, the kind that extend forever behind? Actually, I'm not complaining. It serves me perfectly well, and has a pretty big screen, which is nice. However, I think one of the main reasons I haven't thought about replacing it involves the cats.

When the weather started to turn cold a few months ago, Nihao discovered she could satisfy both her urge to constantly be practically on top of me, and her obsession with warm things--by perching on top of the back of the monitor. I also discovered I could keep her from lolling all over the keyboard by encouraging her to go up there, without being punished by the (very loud) self-righteous howls that happen when I put her on the floor. So when she hops up looking for attention and I'm in the middle of something, I pat her and then aim the front of her toward the screen. She reaches her front paws up to the top and waits, looking back at me disapprovingly if I take too long. So I grab her chicken legs and hoist her butt the rest of the way up. She's trained me well.

Her sleeping up there has led to a few awkward moments when our clumsy queen has managed to slide off the side into the gap between the monitor and wall (while sleeping!?), flailing her claws about in a vain effort to catch herself. Other than that, though, it's been quite nice for both of us. She gets a warm and close place to lie, and I get to see her resting her face like a puppet over the top of my screen. Which is adorable. Especially when she flops her face right over the edge so her bottom lip gets pulled back. She looks like a complete nerd-dork. I love it.

(incidentally, for those of you wondering, the monitor seems to be fine. I vacuum any hair off it, and it has plenty of venting on the sides and back for the heat to escape. )

Moving on... Just recently, Boo has discovered the joy of the warm monitor as well. He's a particularly cautious cat, and spent about 10 minutes hanging off the shelf directly above the monitor, with just his front paws resting on it, sniffing and testing the waters. Eventually he decided it was safe, and veeerrry slowly lowered himself onto it and lay down.

The problem now is that I have one monitor, and two cats who want to be on it. Actually, it's mostly just a problem for poor Boo. When Nihao made her way to the shelf above, she seemed ambivalent to the fact Boo was already on the monitor. So ambivalent, in fact, that she climbed down onto it and proceeded to lie on top of him, shoving him off the edge. So graceful.

So now Boo waits until Nihao climbs down, and then immediately occupies her spot. Hopefully there won't be any more forcing him off the back again. Poor thing.

Lovely things...

Steampunk Aesthetics

I was fascinated with steampunk and gaslight ages before I even really knew what they were. I've turned over in my mind a couple times what it is I like about those things, but had never come to any conclusions, or even a good way to describe what those things--or styles of things-- actually are.

I was reading an article over at BoingBoing (link goes to an incredible steampunk project) which lent itself to people commenting about the steampunk aesthetic, and was impressed by one commenter to sum the whole thing up pretty nicely.
___________________

Cheqyr says:

First, I love steampunk for the same reason I love antique wood furniture as compared to the particle-board, veneer, and plastic crap we produce nowadays. The antiques are more beautiful, more durable (chip oak, it still looks good; chip laminate and it's like an open wound), and they have a sense of history about them.

I'm writing this at an oak desk which was made around 1900 and will probably be around in 2100. That provides an enormous sense of comfort and "place" in a world of disposable things.

Steampunk has that same aesthetic. In the early-to-mid 20th century, technology became increasingly less simple and less "organic". Simple base materials of wood, copper, oil and glass -- and big chunky mechanical parts like wheels and gears -- were increasingly being replaced by aluminum, plastics, industrial lubricants, circuit boards and computer chips.

When I look at a train from the 1890s, I can see how all the parts go together, and I can even imagine myself capable of building one given the basic raw materials (and the machine shop of my dreams). Nothing requires a clean room or microscopic engineering tools. It's technology I can relate to -- "open source" in the physical world.

Now, that's just the Victorian aesthetic. But there's an added fantasy element of steampunk too: the idea that you could build a robot or a time machine with wheels and brass gears and maybe a handful of exotic material like Cavorite.

This type of Steampunk embodies the romantic idea that all our technological marvels (and more) might exist, but in a way that makes them more comprehensible, durable, and accessible to the common folk.

And that's what I like about it.
________________________

*Points at the above quote* This.

Regarding the post below

It's also worth mentioning that you should take the time to go to the site and see the trailer for Cougar Interactive's flagship title, uh... Zoo Race.

It's... eh, forget it. There's just nothing I can say, except that you probably thought nothing could be more random or weird than that last clip. Well, you were wrong. So very wrong...

PS. It's noteworthy that all the "awards" won by Zoo Race are either a stamp indicating it doesn't contain any viruses, or are the "five star award" that's given to every item on a various download sites regardless of quality. Kind of damning with faint praise. :(

PPS. *sigh* "Oh great... I'm a horse now."

There are no words...

...for how bizarre this is. All you need to know is that it's a trailer for a real, actual game from a company called Cougar Interactive. It's a real game. A real, serious game.

I never knew Noah was so whiney.

Now Put on Your Shoes

And hie yourself hence over to the "Hark! A Vangrant!" blog or Kate Beaton's actual site to check out the latest series of one-off comics she's making, based on a list of historical figures the general public submitted. The consensus was as follows:

1- Soren Kierkegaard
2- Benedict Arnold
3- Agnes McPhail
4- Mary Shelley
5- Queen Elizabeth I
6- Emperor Norton
7- Benjamin Disraeli
8- Nikola Tesla
9- Genghis Khan
10- David Hume
11- Henry VIII
12- Thomas Beckett
13- Jerry Thomas
14- Pope John Paul II
15- Geoffrey Chaucer
16- Marcel Duchamp
17-Sylvanus Griswold Morley
18-The CBC
19- Jean Baptiste Lamarck
20-Heritage Moments

Here is one of her little autobiographical comics.

(click to enbiggen)

So far, so amusing. I have to admit I love Kate and her quirkitudes. She writes and draws charming comics about life in the Maritime provinces, and other such goodness. She hasn't been an internet presence for all that long, but I can see her going far. *waves* Hi Kate! Do well!

Kitchens around the world

Here's an excellent resource for international recipes. I do a lot of Thai food, so this will be very handy for extra recipes there, as well as letting me branch out.

We finally got a mortar and pestle the other day, so that'll let me use things like the whole cardamom leaves we have other than to just drop whole ones in soup.

The Darkest Night of the Year

So, it being Christmas-time, and this being Cincinnati, this Saturday we made the first step in what we hope will be a long-standing tradition of yearly attendance at the homecoming (from tour) show put on by Over the Rhine at the Taft Theater. The show was breathtakingly lovely, as is the norm for OTR, though I hadn't seen them in several years.

It's been so long since we've been to a proper show. There are several potential opportunities coming up, though, so we'll have to get off our duffs and go to one or more. Yo La Tengo, the Bravery, Band of Horses, etc. We're lousy hipsters. Not that that's anything new.

Speaking of musics and such-lot, I've added a last.fm player to the blog here. I'm having a bit of fun with that, since it logs everything you listen to, making it possible to create playlists and "radio stations" of your songs online from whatever ones they also have in the Last.fm library. I have high hopes, though undoubtedly the player will pick out some random embarrassing song and just play that over and over. I'll regret forever looking up the theme song for "Hong Kong Phooey" or whatever. Actually though, I'm sure what you'll find is a big chunk of Christmas music, since I just loaded the player this week, and have been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens holiday songs. Hopefully you'll find it gets more diverse eventually.