How was your weekend? Ours was nice. My back is just about 100%…the less time I spend in front of a computer, though, the better. On Saturday my parents came over and helped us paint the bedroom. With the four of us working, it was finished quickly and it looks great. There’s a photo of the color here. It’s actually a bit darker in real life. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rufus Wainwright show was wonderful. His sister Lucy opened, and she was lovely and adorable. You can hear some of her music here. We greatly enjoyed her set and I hope her career continues to grow. Rufus stepped out onstage in a black-and-white print suit, and launched into what apparently was a new set. Which was obvious when he forgot the lyrics a few times. Which was very cute.

Rufus has some very devoted fans, people who obviously follow him around. There was one guy in the front row who leapt up after every song and applauded madly. Rufus seemed flattered, but after a while I would have been a bit like, “Dude, enough.” During the encore, this one woman moaned loudly during his performance, which was kind of funny but also kind of WTF after it happened several more times. Anyway, Susie got us great seats, and I deeply regret not bringing my camera. It’s just such a crapshoot - sometimes you can bring them in, sometimes you can’t - and I don’t want to have to go and leave my precious Rebel in the car. If I had brought it, though, oh the photos I would have. Ah well. A lovely night altogether.

Usually I reserve this spot on Monday mornings to talk about my weekend. Today, instead, I’m sad to let all you animal lovers out there know that Lisa’s cat Sally passed away yesterday after falling ill a week or so ago. It was a very hard day for Lisa and she was such a good mommy to Sally, all the way up until the end. Bye bye, Baby Girl.

Happy 2008, ya’ll! We’re now officially into Bush’s last year in office, and it feels so good. Let’s hope that next year we’re not sitting here crying about President Huckabee. I’ll be halfway to Canada before you can blink, people. Anyway, as usual, I started off the new year with a hangover. Read the rest of this entry »

Whew! What a busy weekend. Very fun, although I could really use a nap. A trip to Delaware, babysitting, gingerbread houses, shopping in the rain, cupcakes, a tea party…details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

We managed to get other things done this weekend, aside from lovingly gazing at the MacBook. We ran a ton of errands, decorated the house for the holidays, and I made some cupcakes. Photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

After helping out the animal shelter on Saturday, we felt our lives were missing something. So we now find ourselves in this situation… Read the rest of this entry »

Busy weekend! Saturday was the Santa Paws event to benefit the animal shelter; it wasn’t too busy but we enjoyed ourselves. Dogs wearing reindeer antlers = always funny. It was the first weekend (there are two more Saturdays), so we got all the kinks out and socialized with people we usually only see about once a year.

That evening we assembled our tree, and on Sunday we decorated. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you all have a nice holiday weekend? I hope so. We had a lot of fun, a lot of food, and I even got a bunch of Christmas shopping done. Hooray! Read the rest of this entry »

We’re back from Baltimore! Today will be spent getting Thanksgiving-related chores done, so I won’t be writing a big recap. However, you can look at a bunch of photos here.

Lisa’s birthday dinner was lovely. Maggie had given me a recipe for lasagna with spinach and ground turkey, and it came out nicely (can you believe I’d never made a lasagna before?). Charlotte brought a delicious salad, and we ended the evening with the strawberry daiquiri cupcakes. The cupcakes weren’t too hard to make, but I managed to create a mini-disaster. I was making the rum syrup (heating up sugar, water and rum into a thickened syrup) and accidentally let the pot boil over. Alcohol + stovetop burner = FIRE, so that was fun to watch. After it burned itself out, I was left with a ceramic burner top that has sugar cooked onto it. And a blackened pilot cover thingie. Hoping I will be able to get them clean.

This weekend I made some chocolate stout cupcakes (with Guinness, of course). I also had pumpkin cookies in the freezer and pulled those out and made a brown sugar drizzle. Delicious. We brought some over to Shannon and Matt’s house on Saturday night, where we visited with Liz and Jill and also got to meet little Echo for the first time! She is a chubby-cheeked little angel, full of snorts and smiles and coos. Big sister Sophie was delighted to have so much company and sang and danced for all of us as well. A very nice night! Read the rest of this entry »

Boy, did we have a great Saturday night. Before the Billy Bragg show, Susie was kind enough to invite us to dinner. We ate at Josie’s West in NYC, and it was fabulous. All-natural, hearty food with great cocktails (kiwi mojito!). In the car on the way into the city, Susie and I started saying the same things at the same time, and the shared-brain theme carried through all evening - we even ordered the same meal for dinner (thai shrimp and brown rice, if you were wondering).

Billy’s set was excellent, as always. He talked about Woody Guthrie, as he does, and made me giggle when he referred to the guys in Wilco as “The Wilcos.” He also told us about his new charity, Jail Guitar Doors, which provides guitars to prisons, helping people heal through the power of music. He founded it in honor of Joe Strummer, how much do you love him? Love him even more when I tell you that at one point he started playing Superstar by The Carpenters. And then stopped because not enough people were singing along. And I think he actually thanked me for at least trying. Ha! You know I can belt out some Carpenters, bitch. Read the rest of this entry »

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How was your weekend? Can you believe it’s fall already? Yesterday was 80 degrees, we were at the beach and the geekboy got a sunburn. It was fun, though; friends of ours got married recently and their families threw a cocktail reception at a beach club. I didn’t take too many photos, but here’s one. Susie and Al are missing from this photo because Al is in the hospital/bedrest with a blood clot in his knee. Everyone point at Al and say, “Awwwwwwww.”