Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Many packages of holiday alchemy have been mailed and delivered. A few more await delivery. Goodies are packed to go to NH and Maine as well. 22+ pounds of butter gave their lives for this year’s baking. 18 batches of caramel corn came out of the kitchen. (Keeping in mind that each batch bakes for an hour, I think I’m done with caramel corn for a while.) The coffee machine, who has been dubbed Massimo, was my constant partner in baking and the Fop helped too. The cats were not so much with the helping.

The best part is that all this baking gets me out of wrapping gifts – the Fop gets to manage the paper, tape and such. This works well because I suck at wrapping and he claims to suck at baking. (Though I’ll have you all know that the Russian teacakes he scooped did NOT burst into flames or otherwise end the world.)

In tree news, I found 2 ornaments on the floor this morning. The cats showed incredible restraint for many days. I’m actually impressed. I also achieved the right magical relative height for the tree-watering thingie to work its siphoning magic. Which is great until the 2 liter soda bottle that supplies the water is about 2/3s empty and the cats knock it over. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the mini-cats knocking it over, probably Abby…

The remaining to-do list for between now and leaving for New England Thursday morning:
- Laundry (UGH!)
- Spice rub experiment
- Wrap gifts I can’t let the Fop wrap
- More laundry (double ugh!)
- Pack
- Sleeeeeeeeeeeeep
- Ponder writing holiday cards

I’m procrastinating cleaning my desk. Is anyone surprised?

baking, cats, holiday alchemy, random, to do, trees

Grey-leaved Euryops

Originally uploaded by cce_photography.

Another shot from Longwood Gardens. One of the fun things about low light and dark gray afternoon is that you can get some striking contrasts in your composition. I did not expect this photograph to come out as well as it did. I love how intense the yellow is and how deep and dark the background became. I also like the sense of depth and depth of field – the front flower is in focus while the two behind are beyond the focal point, the third slightly blurrier than the second. Perhaps I’m too hooked on having my focal depth as tiny as possible.

I sent in my membership to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society today. The Philadelphia Flower Show is coming up. I went 2 years ago but skipped it last year. When I was living up North, the Boston Flower Show was a luxurious escape from Winter. Down here, the winter is much milder (more so this year) so the escape isn’t quite as necessary. Maybe by the first weekend in March there will be 3 feet of snow on the ground! A girl can dream, can’t she?

This morning, amidst a snow squal, a Nostalgia Electrics CCP509 Full-Size Popper arrived on the doorstep. Much glee all in one moment! (My birthday is Monday so there was little doubt that the sudden appearance of a popcorn popper was indeed a sign from the Birthday Gods. Oh, and the Fop clearly loves me.) I have, in fact, always wanted one and never been able to justify buying one. (A small part of me suspects that the Fop bought me a difficult to pack-up-and-move appliance in order to make it more difficult to move North.)

The snow was just a passing flurry. I am currently comforting myself with a bowl of freshly popped theater popcorn from the Fop-assembled popper. It’s Really Good Popcorn too. Crispy, crunchy, hot and yummy! Currently, the popper lives in the dining room making it convenient to the kitchen and the 3-prong outlets therein. It’s not like there’s much else for furniture in there anyway!

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Irony of the day: You can use iTunes to feed podcasts to your Zune. (This solution automates something you’d otherwise have to do rather arduously by hand. Apple likes to make things easier for all its users, even those stuck on Windows with a less-than-full-featured music player solution.)

snow, weather, popcorn, popcorn popper, zune, itunes, apple, philadelphia flower show, longwood gardens, flowers, photography, photographs, irony