Friends

...in the middle of the day. It did warm up to a balmy 10 degrees eventually. And, I haven't even factored in the wind chill. Tonight, the low is supposed to be zero. I walked to the supermarket, but I was okay, a little warm even, because of my double consonant legume jacket. (Click here and scroll down to the bottom for a photo.) The only parts of my body that went slightly numb and lost sensation during the 20-minute walk were my nose and the thin strip of cheek beneath my glasses and above the hood flap. Click above link to see exactly what I mean. No permanent damage though. It's all fun and games until frostbite.

I made some chocolate chip blondies last night. Can I just say again how much I love our new camera? I happened to have made some blondies in September of last year. (Click here for photo.) Again, the previous photo isn't terrible, but that was the closest I could get without it being too blurry.

I'm so EXCITED!!!!!!! Our new camera arrived this past Saturday, December 12, 2009. We needed an upgrade, because I couldn't take close-ups of my baked goods for this blog, not to mention photos of anything at night under artificial light. Both would turn out blurry. I had been thinking about and researching a new digital camera since before last Christmas. M10 gave the camera to me for last Christmas as a way to give me the liberty to spend the money. Thanks, M10, aka Sabbatical Funder! Child of delayed gratification that I am, I took nearly another year before I finally ordered a new camera. So that I avoid product placement, I won't name the camera. (You can e-mail me if you really want to know.) I bought a refurbished one, and it cost $200. Yes, spending that kind of money hurt a bit, but I'm so EXCITED about the photo quality. Check out the beautiful, crisp close-ups, one with soft-focus background, of these basic chocolate cookies that I baked today. I was thinking I could do "Bumpkin and Bumpkin"--a kind of "Julie and Julia" where I take a year and a half to re-bake all the baked goods on this blog so that I can re-take their photos. :P






Look at how the camera captured the little crumbles dangling from my bitten cookie. Wow! I love this camera!

I also baked some ginger cranberry scones on November 22, 2009. The photo that I took with my old camera wasn't bad, but it was taken during the day and at a distance. No way to take this photo at night, as the above three were, or up close on the old camera.

This is another entry that is out of date order, but perhaps it's a timeless message. Not really but that sounds good. ;)

Back in August (yes, August, bear with me), M10 and I were going to dinner with friends. I reached for the bag with my wallet and couldn't find it anywhere in our place. We went to dinner anyway, and I wracked my brain trying to mentally retrace my steps. The coffee shop. That's where we were that afternoon. "If we were in a place other than [Cute College Town]," our friend said as we sat down to dinner at about 6 p.m., "the coffee shop would be open, and we'd be able to check for your bag."

"If we were in any other place, the coffee shop would be open, but the wallet would be gone," I retorted gently. Sure enough, the next morning, when I asked the people at the coffee shop counter, they pulled out my bag. As they handed it over, they said they were very worried about whomever had left the bag. I didn't check until I left the shop, but everything in my wallet was there.

Fast forward to October, while we were in Oakland. M10 had just delivered a fabulous presentation but discovered that she could not find her wallet. After several searches of hotel meeting rooms and speaking to hotel staff, she came up empty. We wound up flying home the next day after an adventure with airport security (which I'll post about soon) without her wallet. The next weeknight back at home, I called the hotel just in case, against all odds, the wallet was turned in. After being on hold for a bit, Sue came back on the line and said, "Yes, we have found your wallet." WOW!!! Miracle of miracles. "It was found in the laundry room tangled up in the sheets. We'd asked housekeeping to keep an eye out for it." I thanked her profusely and asked her to thank the staff. M10 conjectured that she must have placed her wallet right beside her as she had come back to the hotel room to practice her presentation once last time while sitting on the bed. A week later, we received the wallet carefully packaged. All the cards, receipts, and odds and ends were intact. All the cash was gone. We mailed a thank-you note to the hotel. We appreciated the care they had taken to locate and mail the wallet back, we wrote, but we also wanted them to know that all the cash was taken. The wallet was, in fact, in the possession of the hotel the entire time, if one thought about it. Ah well, just another difference between a big city and a small town.

Last year, Mr. M12 drove us to buy a Christmas tree when the M12s came to visit us a few weeks before Christmas. (Christmas Tree Hunting) This year, I drove by myself in the living-on-a-prayer-rumbling-above-85 car we had rented for Thanksgiving with the M12s. I went to the same Christmas tree farm. The same man talked to me. Instead of delving into the husbandry of Christmas trees as he did last year, he talked more about the economics. $35 to $50 a tree. He sells about 300 a year--half of them white spruce cut from his land; the other half balsam firs brought in from a nearby town. Not a lucrative business, he assured me. He bought the land in 1986. He planted and could only start to sell twelve years after that. He used to work for IBM manufacturing. Business does better when it snows. I was there on a weekday after it had just rained. Very muddy, and I was probably his only customer for the day. He also told me how the tiny cabin he built where he waits for customers almost caught fire. Personally, I found it all fascinating, but it's probably more interesting being there than reading it on this blog.

The tree I bought this year was again an already-cut balsam fir, measuring approximately 7 feet 4 inches. A little taller than last year's. It touches the ceiling, and the tip bends a little. Peter, the Christmas tree man, had estimated last year that the tree was probably about 10-12 years old. This year's tree he estimated at about 14-years-old. Thank you, thank you, O Christmas trees.

Below is a silent (i.e., un-captioned) photo strip of my Christmas tree adventure. When I showed M10 the last photo of our roaring fireplace, she said, "Oh my goodness, we've become so Rockwellian." We're not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

This entry is out of date order. It should have gone before the last one, but alas.

M10 and I spent Thanksgiving at her brother and sister-in-law's. They've been mentioned on our blog before, and I gave them the codename M12s because he's two years younger. We rented a car, and I drove us down on Tuesday, November 24, in less then five hours, speeding to Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" on Sirius radio, not because I particularly like the song but because I needed to stay awake, especially since M10 was conked out after staying up grading and sleeping only seven hours over two nights. I'm not saying anything self-incriminating in this entry, but let's just say Kia cars start to rumble when pushed above 85 mph.

Mrs. and Mr. M12 took very good care of us, ensuring that we were properly stuffed not just on Thanksgiving but before and after. So many home-cooked meals. Thanks, Mrs. and Mr. M12! I drove us back up on Sunday afternoon. I purposefully saved this bit for the end: the M12s have a little one who is nine months old. He also happens to be our first and only godson. We were so flattered when the M12s asked us to be. Introducing M12.5...


Here he is playing next to M10 as she's preparing her next lecture. He is such a mellow baby. Never cries. Can play independently. Matches the decor and his auntie's outfit. The family M like their earth tones.


M12.5 busied himself with one of M10's architecture books. Villa Savoye (M10's birthday cake shape) is on the cover. M12.5 looks like he's interested in the book, but actually he preferred eating it to reading it.

This past week was M10's last week of classes for this semester. Yay!

This afternoon, I went to the winter market and bought two half-gallons of apple cider. One made exclusively from Macoun apples; the other from Chestnut Crab apples. Both ciders were unpasteurized, resulting in liquid apples in the mouth. Both were yummy. M10 thought the Macoun one tasted more like cider; the Chestnut Crab more like juice.

Also, M10 and I went to the local folk life center and saw the gingerbread houses on display. There were many more and they were more skillfully done than what I remembered from last year, but I suppose one needn't compare. Then, we went to the festival of wreaths, where local businesses decorate wreaths with ribbons and ornaments and gift certificates for a silent auction fundraiser to support a health center. We nibbled on cookies we recognized immediately as goodies from a local bakery. We're such Cute College Town Resident Experts now. It was all very festive.

To top it off, it started to snow around 3 p.m. today--first of the 2009-10 winter season! That didn't stop M10 who wanted to go for a 4-mile brisk walk. Off she went donned with gay apparel--hat, mittens, and scarf--as snow accumulated on our lawn. She's so Vermontey.