I'm Secretly Really Into Makeup

November thirtieth, here you are again. It's the final day of NaBloPoMo and my final post for the month - unless I think of something better to say before midnight.

Looking back it doesn't seem as though I've had a single interesting thought all month. So in that vein I shall come clean about the latest Kool-Aid I've imbibed.

Yes, I love Bare Minerals foundation. I never thought it would happen to me. I've always been a "please God no foundation" type but everybody was making such a stink about the stuff I decided to try it. If you hit the link above you will go to the page on Sephora.com where they are selling the starter kit (while you're there you might want to pick up this, or this, or one of these as well - all bear the Mel stamp of approval - except the first one which I haven't tried and hope to get for Christmas because I'm a big dork and I believe everything I read in a product's advertising copy) This is also bound to be good. When I say "good" I mean "fun."

Okay, back to the topic at hand. This Bare Minerals stuff is great! First of all putting it on is a very calming ritual. It's powder - but not super-drying - so it isn't cold and gloopy and you don't have to worry that you're not spreading it evenly. You just dust it loosely all over your face with a big, fat, soft brush. If you want more coverage you do it again. If you have spots to cover you hit those with a dab of the touch-up brush. You can't apply it badly (though you might want some help choosing the color to use) First you do the base, then you do the blush (I often skip the blush as I tend to be ruddy in the first place), then you do the translucent top coat. It takes no time and you don't even have to look while you're doing it.

You can't feel it on and, by some miracle, it really stays on. One thing I always felt was humiliating about foundation was the way it could end up on a person's shirt collar - UGLY. This doesn't do that - though I can't say I've rubbed my face in my shirt to force it.

Not only that but it's got SPF 15 and it's completely unscented. Since all the ingredients are inert they won't give you a rash either. High frigging five!

At first I thought, "well this stuff's fine I guess" but I kept doing it because I liked the ritual and because it has sunblock. More recently though I've grown accustomed to having really good-looking skin. Maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe that makes me product dependent. Nah - I can live without the stuff. I am chocolate dependent though.

There are plenty of brands of mineral makeup out there. Some are super-hippie-crunchy-pure and some are fake. I haven't tried any of those. I just know Bare Escentuals. Typical. The department store brand. I'm so bourgeois.

Thus ends my third NaBloPoMo. Now I shall go celebrate my success with a martini with blue cheese stuffed olives. Unless I go pomegranate - in which case, really no olives.

Thanksgiving '09 Rundown

Spencer looking like a homicidal elf.

Fay's not vomiting (fingers crossed), the laundry is in the washing machine, Pete's gone up to Vermont, there are still some Thanksgiving left overs in the fridge. Things are winding down. Probably. So I have a little time to list the things I/we made for Thanksgiving.

In the photo above you can see the turkey breast and stuffing, the brussels sprouts (chopped and pan fried in butter and garlic), the maple-tangerine cranberry sauce and cauliflower with brown butter, pears, sage and nuts (almonds and pecans). Not yet at the table are the sweet potatoes (just roasted and mashed with butter), the pan-fried crushed potatoes, the gravy, Pete, Lisa and I.

The turkey was brined then had ginger herb butter stuffed under its skin and was roasted. The recipe called for juniper berries which I couldn't find so I just left them out. It was fine. The stuffing contained cranberries, nuts and oyster mushrooms. It (and any other of the above courses which contained nuts) was supposed to have hazelnuts in it but I didn't want to spend all day shelling them so I substituted a mixture of toasted almonds and pecans. Also fine.

I bought a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie.

The only preparation I did ahead was brine the turkey (which I highly recommend) make the herb butter and stuff the butter under the turkey skin. Everything else was done on the day. It was a full day of cooking but at a leisurely pace. The only snafu was that the turkey finished maybe half an hour before we thought it would.

Except for the brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes which we wung (wow, that looks funny written out) and crushed potatoes (Martha Stewart) all the recipes were from the 2008 November issue of Fine Cooking magazine.

Thinking about it all is making me hungry. Since there were only four of us I halved the amounts in the recipes. Now I kinda wish I had more left overs. Oh well. Maybe I'll remember that for next year.

Better

We cut short our Thanksgiving holiday trip to take Fay to her regular vet and as Pete predicted, Fay started feeling better on the way home.

Pete was nice enough to bring me a (delicious) hot dog when we were on the ferry and Fay showed some interest in it. Once we arrived on shore I got some boiled chicken and rice out of the cooler to see if she'd go for it and, heck yeah, she did and she wanted more.

So at this point she's pretty much back to normal (here comes the family in-joke:) after ruining Thanksgiving for everyone.

Sick Fay

Stinkin' Post

Fay is feeling lousy. She hasn't eaten any thing since yesterday at 6:30 AM. Yeah and okay, then she barfed before lunch and hasn't wanted to eat a damned thing since. She's also been lying around not moving much.

I took her to a well intentioned but not very thorough vet here. He gave her subcutaneous fluids and some stomach settling medicine. So far it hasn't helped that I can tell.

The folks at her regular vet said she'd need more thorough testing. So I think we'll be cutting this trip short.

Shoes

It's another cheap-o post with a photo! Only it actually took a bit of time to compile and make this image. It's a whole lot of shoes that I'm unfortunately not going to buy for myself even though I like them.

The top row is from endless.com. The shoes with the grey backgrounds are from either neimanmarcus.com or Shopbop.com .

These, below, come from shopbop.com. The ones pictured with sock-like thingies come with the sock-like thingies. That's good (if you're into sock-like thingies) because they look like they'd be hard to find otherwise. Personally I don't know if I'd go for the s.l.t.'s. The grey suede ones don't have them but they still have the cool sculpted heel with metal accent.

And these are just silly.

There Will Be Rude Language Herein

I am attempting to make chocolate chip cookies and I'm in something of a rage.

I had forgotten that the beach house kitchen is not set up for baking in any way. Well, okay, there's a hand mixer and a couple of spatulas but that's it.

First of all the mixing bowls SUCK. Some girlfriend-beating asshole chef* advised my parents on the mixing bowls. He probably had some chef thing about how baking is for wussies so the mixing bowls are great if you need to marinate a salmon or make a giant manly caesar salad but they're too shallow for mixing batters. I was creaming the butter and sugar together and butter and sugar were flying all over the kitchen.

I changed to a large-ish salad bowl to incorporate the eggs and dry ingredients. That was an improvement but still not ideal. However, I've mixed up the batter and cooked the first batch of cookies only to remember that we don't have any cooling racks.

Fortunately the top oven is broken so I can cool the cookies on the racks in there.

Did I mention that there's an incomplete set of dry measuring cups? I'm lucky that there are any dry measuring cups. I'm sure I bought them myself at one time.

Oh, and because I was thrown by the lack of a quarter-cup measuring cup I left out one cup of flour so the cookies are a bit on the flat side. That's okay, there's plenty of sugar (!) butter and chocolate in them so they still taste good.

Oh, and another thing. Our friend Spencer has arrived and he's trying to take a nap. I'm not sure he's been able to sleep at all given, for one thing, the incessant large-scale leaf blowing operation that was going on across the street. If it wasn't that it would probably be mowing or hedge trimming.

People here are NUTS about their landscaping. It's got to be Martha Stewart perfect at all times. Of course they don't do it themselves. They hire crews of men with power tools to do it. It is impossible to have any quiet at all during a weekday over the summer. This being a holiday the crews are in overdrive to get the yards ultraperfecto before tomorrow. Laser-sight those hedges guys! At least lasers are quiet.

Once the leaf blowing stopped some crazy bird started kicking up a ruckus in our rhododendron out front. It sounds odd but this bird was really pissed off and letting the whole neighborhood know. I went out to take a look and it settled down.

Then I started mixing the dough with the electric mixer. Fay took noisy offense. I had to put her in the car.

Mixing done, Fay back in the house, cookies dolloped on cookie sheets. Now the part I expected to be difficult. Fay hates the oven. Any oven. Time to put the cookies in the oven and it will take more minutes than I want to leave her in the car outside. Pete and I worked out an emergency system. He holds her and her ears while I open the oven door and move the cookies in and out. It kind of works but now she's riled and barking at any unusual sound.

We suck as hosts if you're trying to sleep but we do provide flawed cookies.

*My brother was friends with the girlfriend of the girlfriend-beating asshole chef back when my parents first bought this place. My brother didn't know about the girlfriend-beating until later, after the couple broke up.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Practically everyone I know on Facebook posted this so chances are you've seen it too but

it is really good.

Mild Griping

Yep, sorry, I've been getting away with posting photos for more of November than I'd like to acknowledge.

Not today though. Nope, today I'm going to ramble about something or other until I feel like I've fulfilled my posting commitment.

Pete, Fay and I are at my parents' beach house for Thanksgiving. The weather is okay. In the morning the ocean looks so beautiful. The skies are grey so the ocean is a range of shades of glittering graphite and steel. When the sun pokes through the clouds in some places the sea turns silver. It's a dazzling feast for the eyes.

I did most of the Thanksgiving marketing at the local fancy-pants market. I was pleased to be able to find a turkey breast at this late date. I plan to brine it tomorrow. I've brined chickens before and they really come out well.

Today I was going to make chocolate chip cookies. I even put two sticks of butter in my jacket pockets (wrapped) to help them soften more quickly. It kind of worked, I guess. They got a little softer on the outside. You just can't really rush butter.

Anyway, since this is the beach house and you never know who was here last or where they put anything after the last time they used it, it took me about twenty minutes to find the cookie sheets. Then I started going through the cabinets looking for things like flour and baking soda and vanilla. I found all those things but what we don't have here is sugar. Who ever heard of a house with no sugar in it? No White sugar, no brown sugar. There is some ancient Sweet and Low which there's no way in hell I'll ever use.

I guess it's good that I found out today. I still have a few things to pick up at the market, like celery and onions. I would have been pretty pissed to be in the thick of cooking and not have any sugar on hand.

I wonder what other rude awakenings I'm due for in the next couple of days?

"Honey And Clover"

I neglected to mention that the title sequence below goes to the anime/Japanese cartoon, "Honey and Clover" which you can watch on Hulu.

It tells the story of the lives and loves of a group of art students who all live in the same apartment building.

I Am Obsessed With This

Other countries do T.V. So much better than we do. This thing's nuts.

The music and the visuals are out of control. <3

Fay's In The Bag!

She looks kinda like my grandfather here. She loves to travel.

@#$@%&

It's not even lunch time yet.

Motifs So Far 2

The spirals were popular last time so I made some more.

Happy Dogs

I missed Zoey last night.

It was stressful having her around because I knew her owners must have been really worried about her and because Fay was always trying to pick fights with her. I was pretty much carrying Fay with me everywhere to keep the peace.

But there were some really great things about Zoey. For example she was affectionate. She'd sidle up to me and demand patting. When I stopped she'd beat her tail on the floor and shove her head into me so I'd pat her again. Fay, although she's a pug, is not affectionate. She wants food, not patting. Ear rubs are okay but only to a certain point. Then it's "hand over the grub."

I took Zoey out for a walk yesterday. She tore gleefully through the woods. It was a beautiful thing to see. Because of her illness Fay can't do that anymore. She doesn't do gleeful displays anymore. She enjoys barking at and chasing cars but that produces satisfaction for her, not glee. Maybe it's that Fay can't caper anymore. Maybe she does feel glee (like when she's eating) but she just doesn't prance like she used to. Maybe it's age. I don't know.

Watching a happy dog lifts your heart. Fay is happy but in a more complex way. That's part of her charm. Simple dog glee is just so accessible though.

Zoey was also accommodating. She realized that Fay was not going to let her sleep in our room so she padded off to the guest room where I'd laid out a bed for her. When I got up in the middle of the night to dispose of a Fay turd Zoey looked up at me from her bed, wagged her tail then put her head contentedly back down.

There's no way I'm saying that I like Zoey better than Fay.

Fay is my girl. She's the one I spend most of my time with. She's got a huge personality and is very interactive. When she wants something (which is usually) she'll let you know. She's bossy and demanding and hilarious. I guess I don't really think of her as a dog most of the time. I don't know what that would make her. She's Fay - her own thing.

Zoey was just easy and pleasant to have around so I missed her.

The Visitor, Epilogue

Here she is, Zoey. She just left in a truck with her owner's son-in-law, Peter Prescott (not that Peter Prescott)

Last night I posted a found animal report on the local humane society Lost & Found blog. This morning I sent in a photo for them to post with my listing. A few minutes ago I checked the page to see if the photo had posted yet. It had, but to a lost animal report. The lost animal report that her owners had phoned in.

Technology proved helpful in this instance but not as quickly and easily as it did in that commercial for some smart phone or other.

So Zoey has gone home (she now lives not far from here on what we in these parts call the Lower Road. Pete, Fay and I live on the Upper Road)

I have to say that she is so much more polite and better behaved than a certain blob named Fay, who made my life more difficult by trying to get herself beaten up with her surliness and inhospitality.

What a load off! I'm gonna go eat something really good now. NACHOS!!!!

Who Are These People?

For God's sake we don't all live in California! What the hell is wrong with you people?!!!

Here's what my lawn looks like right now:

Real frost goes great with silvery sandals. Awesome.

And no, I am not wearing a wispy tank top with lace trim as a dress. It's 28 degrees!

The Visitor

Today I have a visitor. Her name is Zoe and she's a dog. A dog from Oregon. Loose in my yard in Vermont.

I called the phone number on her tags and got the vet who spayed her and gave her her rabies shot. They told me her name and the name of her owner. They also called the number they have for the owner.

I googled the owner and I may have found something on Facebook, of all things. I sent someone with the same name as the owner a message on friggin' Facebook.

I still haven't heard anything but it's early yet I guess.

Back when it was daylight I was kind of hoping Zoe'd take off and head home on her own. Then it got dark and I heard a lot of howling coming from lots of different places. We do have coyotes out here. I looked to see if she'd gone. Nope. So I let her in.

She's is in great shape, nicely fed, pretty teeth and she's very nice. She's been brought up right: I'm eating my dinner right now and she's not paying any attention to me. No mooching from her, unlike some people we know. She's lying peacefully near my feet underneath the table.

Fay is sequestered upstairs. You know how she is around food. There'd be blood if she had her way.

I guess I'll watch Zoe tonight if I don't hear from the owner. I've got a call in to the animal control officer too. I guess we'll just have to wait and see now. Kind of not psyched.

Payback Time

My physical knocked the wind right out of my sails - and I'm really healthy! What the hell is my problem? I'm even excited that I'm up to date on my tetanus shot.

Fortunately my wonderful husband took care of me tonight. He let me take a nap then he made me a manhattan, a cheese plate, a fresh salad and reheated some left-overs for dinner (I LOVE left-overs) He also set a fire in the fireplace.

He's so dreamy!

Cold and Starry

Tonight was the peak of the Leonid meteor shower. We had clear skies in VT but I still missed it. I have to drive down to Brookline today for my annual physical so I went to bed kind of early, at 11.

Fay woke up at 5 AM. I took her out but there was nothing doing in the sky.

While I didn't see any meteors I did enjoy looking at the stars. It's so cool to think that if I could see the dimensions of what I was looking at it would be a sphere, a planet, a sun - an object so very far away in space and not just a point of light. I love to think that my little fleshy mortal eyeballs can see even a trace of something so far away.

Back To Earth

Wasn't that last post pretty? I neglected to mention that once I got home and unloaded the car I had to clean heaps of mouse crap off the stove top. It's that time of year - they want to come in where it's warm now.

As for Sailors' Delight - YES! Sun sun sun all week! I'm hoping to sneak the last of my fall gardening duties in in the next couple of days.

Weather Report

The scenery on the drive up from Cambridge to Vermont was really beautiful tonight. A thick mist arose just as the sun was setting a beautiful orange red. I got a little flash back to Halloween as I passed the graveyard just outside of Keene, NH: soupy fog winding about the headstones. Spooooooky!

I hope that the adage, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight" holds true for tomorrow.

Oh Boo-Hoo.

Pete and I just got back from our former local, the Beacon Street Tavern. We had a lovely evening there as usual thanks to our pals Walshie and Dermott.

Everybody does not know our names there, just Walshie (the manager) and Dermott (the bartender/assistant manager) I don't want everybody to know my name. That would weird me out.

It's our former local because we moved.

We haven't found a new local in Cambridge yet. That's where the boo-hoo part comes in.

It's so great to have an easy place where you can go and have a drink, a decent meal and a nice trade of insults with the bartender. We haven't been out in our new neighborhood enough to find that yet.

I suppose we need to work harder at it. Boo-hoo.

A Sorry NaBloPoMo Post

Here's my progress on the cabled knee socks that I started in July. If they weren't going to be knee socks I'd be done by now.

Of course I'm putting them aside now to work on the Lust Blanket.

Has anybody noticed that every episode of "House" is exactly like every other episode of "House"?

We Got A Good One

President Obama walks through grave markers during a unannounced visit to Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday. (AP)

I swiped this photo from today's WBUR e-newsletter.

It is so wonderful to have a President who thinks about the people who will be affected by his decisions. He understands that the lives of thousands of individuals are at stake. He wants to feel the weight of what his decision will be.

I am impressed.

Motifs So Far

Here's what I've got so far for the lust blanket. These have been made over the last several weeks. I'm not positive that all of these will end up in the final product but it's a start. I'm going to make a bunch more larger motifs and then assemble them together with crochet.

It's really fun to be able to try out new techniques and to see what all of these odd yarns I've always been curious about can do. I predict that there will be a lot more ruffles.

Field Trip Part II

Yesterday I went to a YARN WAREHOUSE!!!!!!

I got all of this FRIGGIN' AMAZING YARN for super-duper cheap!!!!! Not only that but it was so fun to be in a yarn warehouse. It's something that fiber nuts dream about. I managed to keep my head though because I was on a mission: I needed materials for my newest art project, the Lust Blanket.

The Lust Blanket will be a freeform construction - my first attempt. You might think, "Freeform. No rules. Easy." That's not what I'm thinking. I'm finding it a little tricky to decide which method, which motif, which pattern, which color combo to try next. All the possibilities are blowing my mind.

I'll plow through though - the yarn is calling me...

Field Trip

I'm going on a field trip today so I made myself some lunch to take with me.

Pancake News

I made pumpkin pancakes this morning. Above is a shot of the stack I made for Fay.

Because I made them before I had even one sip of coffee I forgot to add the one egg that the recipe calls for. The pancakes are still good. They're a bit gluey and you don't get as many of them but they're not by any means a disappointment.

The reason I'm telling you this is that if you're out of eggs one morning but you still want a hearty breakfast you can still make these tasty pancakes.

I Think I Drank Too Much Coffee This Morning

This is how this year's INaBloPoMo seems to be working for me: I do a post early in the morning to get it over-with. Later in the day I think up something that seems better and I post that too. I hope I'm not over-posting. Sorry if it gets annoying. Feel free to skim.

The morning post for today is about Regular Exercise.

I recently found myself a copy of Wii Fit Plus. I wanted to get Wii Fit last year but it was sold out everywhere. Good enough I guess - I feel like I lucked into the update.

I haven't figured out how to get a good work out from it yet but it is really fun. Unfortunately it keeps telling me that I have physical retardation. I've always been uncoordinated but I never knew my balance was soooo bad. I manage not to fall down most days so I figured my balance was good enough. Not for Wii Fit Plus.

Most of the games are very balance-based. You have to keep your center of gravity within a certain zone to do well. It grades your yoga for God's sake! It's not enough to do the pose as well as you can without falling down. You have to be still as well to rack up the points. Points in yoga! How are you supposed to "accept yourself as you are" when they play the sad music at the end of a pose because you only got thirty points?

One thing I found out is that I'm a spazz. I didn't know. When things in a game start to go a little off I freak out and overcompensate. I always thought I was kind of laid back. Not when it comes to control of my body. Who knew? Probably everybody who knows me.

For a real workout I've been using "My Fitness Coach" which is the Wii version of "Yourself!Fitness." I love "Yourself!Fitness" as you can tell because I post about it all the time. The Wii version is not quite as good but it still delivers an excellent workout. I am good and sore most days and I keep going back for more because it works and it's not boring.

One helpful feature of getting regular exercise is that it inures you to discomfort. ("Inures." Like that? Crossword puzzle word) Exercising is a little uncomfortable while you're doing it but it needs to be done and you're busy doing it and you don't want to think about it too much so you keep going. Fine. No big deal.

This is good because later on, out in the non-exercise world, when you're in a situation where you are forced into discomfort you're used to it and you barely notice.

Did I go on enough? Sorry. It'll probably happen again.

Shots! (Not The Fun Kind)

Highway hypnosis. Fay and I drove from Vermont to Jamaica Plain (Boston) and back today so she could have her usual six-week check-up with the neurologist. We are both zombified and I just want to go to bed without any supper.

I'll have to power through though so I can try out the exciting new skill I learned today at the vet: how to prepare a hypodermic syringe for subcutaneous injection!

Fay's usual injectable medication now comes in a new formulation with no preservatives. They used to pre-load the syringes for me. Now I have to make it fresh myself. The neurologist's assistant showed me how to assemble and load a syringe today. Neato! And see - I can spell "syringe" correctly too!

I love a new skill! I wish it were karate or making a sea-worthy canoe out of rushes or dancing a tango or something else more exotic though. Maybe later. I'm not dead yet.

More Fashion Advice

Since it's a rather gloomy day today I'm having some Frankenberry as a snack. Believe me, the pink color is far more intense in real life than it is on your monitor. Sometimes I wish my hair was that color.

And with that, here's some more opinionated fashion advice:

Another outfit to maybe think about not wearing. Thank you in-box.

Ugly Trend

These leggings are so ugly.

I have seen them out in the real world a couple of times. Only, thank God, on women under the age of twenty-five. They all had perfectly good figures and they all looked terrible in these leggings.

A man might disagree, I don't know. Maybe guys like the ten-ton-sausage-stuffed-in-latex look. Perhaps to them it screams S-E-X!!!! But if you're over twenty-five (and therefore expected to have some sense) and you want to look like you have some class, don't wear these.

Maybe if you're emaciated and trying to look like you aren't then they could work.

If you really must wear hideous leggings this style is surprisingly more flattering to the non-emaciated figure:

I saw a regular woman (probably in her thirties) wearing these the other day and, while really not to my taste, they were in fact flattering.

One more thing about leggings: wear a long top with them. Really, cover your butt and your crotch. I don't care what the other girls are doing. You'll thank me when you see photos of yourself a few years later. Or you'll wish you'd listened to me.

Yes, I do know this from experience.

Success

It was another very productive day of gardening for Michaela and me.

I sprayed organic herbicide on the weedy areas that Michaela had cleared with her brush cutter last week while she (again doing the hard part) covered what I'd sprayed with cardboard and then mulch.

So tidy! Take that, noxious weeds! This is a job that we'd been trying to get done for years but things kept preventing us. Things like flat tires on all the wheelbarrows or I didn't order mulch in time.

We also put in the garden arch that used to be in our (Pete and my) front garden in Brookline. It looks nice and straight. Wait till the wind blows. It wasn't a fine install. I just wanted to get it out from under the eaves of the house where it would get pounded by roof-shed snow.

Here's the view over the herb garden again. I hope you can tell that everything is much neater and we're starting to gain control over the areas that had been overwhelmed by weeds.

Now I just have to take some triangulated measurements, do a few scale drawings and figure out what new shrubs and plants I want to put where. I'd better get those measurements before the snow flies.

In other fascinating news, I had fun making dinner tonight.

On Monday evening Pete and I had a nice date at the restaurant of a local inn. Pete ordered the lamb shank. I knew something was wrong when he asked the waitress for a steak knife.

Let's just say his dinner was disappointing. But to me it presented an exciting challenge: could I take his left over lamb shank (and there was a lot of it) and make it good? I found out tonight.

The answer is yes! I think they forgot to braise the thing at the restaurant. I popped it into a saucepan full of sautéed onions, red wine, beef stock, a bit of tomato paste, salt, pepper, rosemary and bay leaf and simmered it all for a little over an hour. HAH HA HA HA! Success!

It needs potatoes though.

So now I'm looking around for some chocolate. I hope we have some somewhere because I am NOT making cupcakes tonight.

Some Things I've Learned Recently

Number one, when reading a blogger.com blog DO NOT EVER (unless you're looking for porn) hit the "next blog" button at the top of the page (conveniently located next to the "report abuse" button) Learned that the hard way.

Feel free to hit the "follow" button, especially if you're reading my blog.

Number two, (hee hee, number two! Ugh, sorry.) Maybelline bronzing powder, the cheapest brand I could find, is an excellent product.

I don't normally use bronzing powder because I'm Palefaced and Proud* (and curly hair proud too - no capitulating to the straight hair standard!) I needed it this week to go as Rachael Ray for Halloween. I was going to use a hint of orange makeup from the costume shop (her T.V. makeup always looks overly orangey to me) but there was no way I was going to pay $8.99 for a pan of orange makeup.

Maybelline to the rescue. I bought a nice, dark color that I thought would instantly look glaringly wrong on me. In fact, I had to really cake it on to make it look overdone.

Of course I was wearing a very dark brunette wig at the time. Maybe it would look wrong with my real coloring? Nope, I just tried it. You can barely tell. Maybe that's why it's cheaper - not enough expensive pigment. Anyway, I thought it was a good way to build up a "natural sun-kissed" look. Not what I wanted it for and not something I'm likely to use again, but there it is.

Number three, "mayhem" is a crime in California. According to Wikipedia, mayhem consists "of the intentional and wanton removal of a body part that would handicap a person's ability to defend himself in battle." Also, "the noun 'mayhem' and the verb 'maim' share the same root, the Old French 'mahaigne'" which I'm guessing means "to harm in some way."

New topic:

You may have noticed I'm posting more regularly. Well it's NaBloPoMo (which I still think should be called INaBloPoMo - International Blog Posting Month) I hope to continue the daily posting habit long after November as well. If I don't then how else will anyone know what I had for lunch or how my latest pair of socks are coming along (which you still don't know) or what I think about shoes?

*Don't feel that I'm anti-tan across the board and I'll hate you if you have more melanin than me and you use it. Tan or fake tan if you want. It's none of my business.

Kabocha Success

Tonight I finally had success with kabocha.

I adapted a recipe from Washoku, by Elizabeth Andoh. To me, reading this cookbook is like going to a spa. Everything about it is really beautiful. I would have been very surprised and disappointed if the recipe had failed.

The original recipe calls for ground chicken which is cooked after the kabocha, in the same broth. Instead I just stopped the recipe at kabocha and skipped the chicken altogether. As a result now I also have some very tasty soup broth that I can use to make something else.

The resulting kabocha has a subtle and smoky taste and a texture similar to that of roasted chestnuts. I will definitely make this again.

So This Cow Walks In To A Bar...

Okay, he's drinking from his right nostril in this photo. He/she's (he is a cow) an ambidextrous drinker. Later I found out that this is someone I know. He didn't say hi to me because he didn't recognize me. Clearly I didn't recognize him either.

I was dressed as Rachael Ray:

Later he let me try his mask on:

Kind of bizarre.

Pete had a gig that night. Here he is with his scream mask on:

And here's the band playing "The Monster Mash"

Left to right:

Paul (cow) Kenny (medical zombie) Nate (Carmine Apice) Pete (strawberry wig) Erica (slug with pigtails) Jeff (the very top of his head in the waaaay back - he's a skunk) George (convict) and a girl I didn't meet. Last two photos by Michael Wagner.

Ghosties

Spooky Ghostie cupcakes!

They are Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World topped with seven-minute (more like twenty-minute) frosting from Epicurious.com. Seven-minute frosting contains egg whites so these are not vegan cupcakes.

The eyes are mini chocolate chips. It took me a minute to figure out that I should put the chips on point-side in.

Also, I was wearing my pumpkin-head wig for a time while making these. I don't have photographic proof. I ended up taking the wig off however because the hair would fall in my face and I couldn't see very well. I don't know how you people with hair can get anything done.

This was my first batch of seven-minute frosting. Like I said, it took more than seven minutes for the egg whites to whip to stiff peak stage. That's really not a deal-breaker for me though. This frosting is fun to play with - very fluffy. It's exactly what you want to use to fill a cupcake or layer cake. I definitely prefer it to buttercream. At our house the frosting hardened by the end of the night, the ghosts formed a crust of meringue but were still soft inside.

Halloween '09

I love Halloween so much.

It's just wonderful to be in a bar and see a cow drinking through a straw that's stuck up it's left nostril.

Wouldn't it be cool if people felt free to wear costumes every day? You'd still have the element of serendipity because not everyone would wear a costume every day. You'd have normal people plus the occasional Bo Peep or pirate or skunk, etc. And any day you wanted you could be whatever you wanted to be.

I mean, anyone actually can dress as whatever they want as it is. Maybe not to work, but around the house, running errands, going to a ball game...

I've got more to say about this but I haven't thought it out yet - and I'm supposed to meet Pete at a craft fair, so I've got to go. More later.