17
Feb, 2006

the electric company!

about six years ago, when i lived in a different cable company’s broadcasting area, i was watching the late night “noggin” channel, curious to know what an educational children’s channel would broadcast at 2:00 in the morning. i was thrilled to discover re-runs of sesame street, the electric company, and 3-2-1 contact from the early 70’s! i watched for several nights in a row and taped some of the episodes (i have no idea where that tape is now). each night i giggled as i saw sketches i hadn’t seen since i was very young but which had made their way into my family’s list of “lines we chew” (it’s a very big list). soon, i got tired of staying up so late and i stopped watching. then we moved to a non-noggin area of the country. then i heard that noggin had stopped airing these old shows anyway. i was sad.

then, about two weeks ago, i learned that one of the newest additions to the “let’s put old tv shows onto dvd and then people will pay us money for old crap that’s been lying around in our archives for decades!” trend was…the electric company! this show is strangely near and dear to my heart. while i can still turn the tv on to watch sesame street (albeit a rather different street from the one i watched as a kid), electric company is no more.

my mom told me once that she believes that the reason i learned to read without much trouble was that i watched the electric company. really? a tv show taught me how to read? hmmm…. i wanted to check this out as an adult and see what they did. as a kid, i didn’t really notice a difference between sesame street and electric company (except maybe that the e.c. didn’t have muppets. or a street.) was it really more reading oriented?

when i watched it on noggin, i was surprised to realize that the show featured morgan freeman, bill cosby and rita moreno. no wonder those people always seemed so familiar in movies!

so the whole point of this is that i have in my possession a rental copy of the electric company dvd! i watched it this morning while biking indoors and it made me absurdly happy. i watched the very first episode and saw familiar faces like “fargo north, decoder” (he wasn’t just a muppet!). i saw bill cosby (chewing on a cigar?!) mediating between two characters who couldn’t agree on the correct way to pronounce the letter g (g as in gum or g as in giant?). i saw the two ladies on a tandem bike who always argue about using the right word (“hey, do you like my new giggles?” “you mean goggles!” “no, goggles is the noise you make with mouthwash!” “you mean gargle!”…). i saw the puncutation song (and realized that in my head i had sung it with a different ending when i was a kid–probably morphing it with another song from somewhere. wow. that was a trip back into the brain-of-the-past!). i saw the cartoon with the little aliens and the giant monolith and theme music from 2001: a space odyssey. i saw “love of chair.” i saw morgan freeman and rita moreno sing the “e.z. reader” song (“easy reader, that’s my name, i say, uh..uh..uh..” does anyone else remember this song?!) i saw (and i think this was my favorite thing today) the “it’s the plumber, i’ve come to fix the sink!” cartoon!!! it was a solid half hour show (none of the namby-pamby 25 minutes so there’s time for commercials (i mean “show all the sponsors”). the biking time just flew by. apparently, the secret to getting me completely distracted from the boredom of indoor biking isn’t just watching tv, it’s watching shows that trigger nostalgia. hmm…. what else could i watch…

Posted in fun stuff, stuff that sparks a glow in my soul, trip down memory lane | 1 Comment
16
Feb, 2006

snow day! (at least for half of it…)

they closed work early! i had one family show up for storytime and all the staff were grousing that we’d even been sent in to work in the first place since everyone else was closed, but hey, i got in a half-day of almost uninterrupted work and now i only have to make up a few hours (no freebie hours at the new job, i guess).

on the way home (25 mph on the highway) as i passed a large stand of trees, a gust of wind (i think) blew a giant drift of snow into the air, swirling it into a lovely spiral pattern that slowly flew across the road. i wanted to just stop and watch it, but i decided that probably wasn’t safe. it was so beautiful.

now, i think i’ll curl up with a nice hot lunch and a good book.

Posted in winter | Comments Off on snow day! (at least for half of it…)
15
Feb, 2006

it’s snowing!

finally!! winter returns! apparently this year it geared up way too much before the holidays and then was too tired to do much of anything for the past few months, but tonight it has set to work again, coating everything with a lovely, thick, cold white comforter.

Posted in winter | Comments Off on it’s snowing!
14
Feb, 2006

happy valentine’s day!

mr. happy stuff and i are both busy this evening, so we decided to have our valentine’s day date at lunch since i have the day off. we chose to use a gift certificate a friend had given us a few months ago and so we were able to have a “fancy” lunch downtown. the gift certificate was good for several different restaurants, so i suggested we try one we hadn’t been to before that happened to be a seafood place. mr. h-s happens to like seafood while i am not so crazy about it. i have, in my adulthood found a few varieties of fish that i enjoy eating, but i still shudder at the texture of crustaceans and the thought of having to crack their exoskeletons in order to extract meat gives me the heebie-jeebies. so, my man was surprised that i suggested seafood, but i was confident i’d be able to find something i’d enjoy.

on the way into the restaurant, we were walking downtown among the government buildings where lots of people in serious businesswear were walking around. i enjoyed seeing one woman dressed all in a classy black outfit whose socks were peeking out just slightly and i could see that they were black–with red hearts on them! :) there was also a man in the restaurant who had a business suit and a tie with “conversation hearts” all over them.

i waivered between ordering a scrumptious sounding grilled chicken and guacamole sandwich and grilled ahi tuna tacos, but decided to pull out the old rule of thumb of ordering something i would never think of making at home, so the tacos won out. i had requested that they cook the tuna a little more well than the “rare” listed on the menu, but i still confused the tuna chunks and the pieces of tomato (at least, i think there were some pieces of tomato…), but it wasn’t as gagging as i’d thought “raw fish” would taste. if i didn’t think, “i’m eating raw fish” it was actually pretty tasty! (nonetheless, it was a bit distracting) the “tacos” were fashioned into cone-shapes rather than the traditional “taco” shape and the tuna was accompanied by a rather spicy pineapple mango salsa that was so juicy that each bite i took created a little fountain of juice from the opposite side of the taco. i just decided to think of it as “dressing” for the pile of greens that were served with the tacos. oh, i almost forgot my favorite part! since we had a gift certificate to spend, we got salads to start the meal. mr. h-s got a caesar salad (boring. even he admitted that while it was good, it was… a caesar salad.) and i got the house salad which was field greens, chevre, finely chopped candied brazil nuts and vidalia onion with a blueberry vinagrette. oh man. that was really, really tasty. it was a last minute addition to our order, but probably my favorite part of the meal. i ate every speck and if i didn’t think anyone would care, i probably would have licked the bowl. i wonder if they sell that dressing….

we ended the meal by splitting a chocolate dessert. the name is escaping me now. what’s it called when they make little chocolate cakes and the middles are all sunken in and filled with liquid chocolate goodness? yeah. that was tasty too. sigh. what a nice valentine’s day treat. and since it was lunch, there wasn’t a crowd and nobody tried to sell us roses or a serenade. plus, our gift certificate went a lot further and… i just checked out their dinner menu online and i think we had better choices at lunch. in case you’re curious, mr. h-s had a brown-sugar glazed salmon with dijon mashed potatoes. i tried a bite. that was yummy too.

note:  the restaurant reviewed here is ocean grill

Posted in reviews, yum | 1 Comment
13
Feb, 2006

sometimes it’s the everyday things

my house is relatively tidy.

my laundry is half done.

my fridge is full of food.

i was in bed until 1:30 yesterday reading a book.

life is lovely.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on sometimes it’s the everyday things
11
Feb, 2006

new stuff

today i tried out my free bus pass for the first time. one of the perks of my new job is a free pass to use the city bus pretty much anytime i want. it sort of, kind of, reminded me of riding public transportation in europe. only it was snowier today than it’s ever been when i’ve travelled in europe. and buses come less frequently than subway trains. maybe i’ll try to add to my once-weekly “buy-nothing” day with a once-monthly “car-free” day. maybe.

i also tried batch #2 of the bread of the month–baguettes! this time, instead of trying to do all of the mixing and kneading in the kitchen-aid mixer i did all of the kneading by hand. the dough was much more bread-like and much less liquidy. the taste is pretty good still, but at least one of the loaves is less airy than last time (i’ll cut into the second loaf later this evening). i wonder if that’s because of the kneading or the fact that i let it rise fully twice (so three separate risings, total) the last time because i didn’t think it was going to work…i have no idea, but once again, it looks like real bread! yippee!

my running friend came over today and we ran together for the first time in a very long time. i had run yesterday by myself, but it’s so much more enjoyable with a friend. she brought her dog and the kitties seem to be warming up to the idea of dogs. maryann still keeps her distance, but ginger sniffed and was sniffed and had only a subtle mohawk.

Posted in fun stuff, winter, yum | Comments Off on new stuff
09
Feb, 2006

one more food post for the day

i love it when you get to the bottom of an ice cream cone and you’ve pushed the ice cream all the way to the bottom so the cone is just a tiny bit soft and you pop the whole bottom of the cone in your mouth for one cold, crunchy, creamy sweet bite.

Posted in yum | Comments Off on one more food post for the day
09
Feb, 2006

fresh frozen

for the past few mornings, we’ve been out of milk, so i’ve had to get a little creative with my breakfast. this morning, i had my homemade plain yogurt, my homemade strawberry jam, blueberries and white raspberries that i had frozen this summer from the farmer’s market, and my homemade granola all mixed together. topped with an eggo waffle. ok, so the eggo sort of breaks the pattern of delicious, from-scratchy goodness, but i sort of like them. better than the waffles i get out of my waffle maker which makes the syrup wells too deep, so it’s just too crispy. i like it to have a crispy outside, but a chewy inside. and i think i’ve bought eggos about… three times in my life maybe.

but the exciting part about my breakfast for me is the berries. it’s kind of like being able to unwrap a little present that i made for myself in the summer. plus, they have all kinds of antioxidant and fiber goodness in them, so i can feel all self-righteous and truly enjoy the flavor as well (not like some vegetables i could mention, which i only pretend to enjoy. or which i just tolerate because i’m a grown-up and they’re good for me.).

the whole combination (sans waffle) sort of reminds me of bercher muesli (how do you spell that, mom?) that we used to have when i was a kid. some sort of mix of fruit and cereal and something yogurty (possibly yogurt) that we’d keep in the fridge and have servings for breakfast and snacks.

and following that train of thought out of the station, saying the word “sans” above made me think of paris, and for some reason brought back the mental picture of one of our bicycle tour guides who was riding a cruiser bicycle while wearing a slimline skirt and high heeled boots and looking very classy. oh those parisians. actually, i think she was an american doing a fine job of masquerading as a parisian, so maybe true parisian women wouldn’t ride bicycles. not sure on that. ah, paris. i’m glad i can still visit in my memory. maybe next month, the bread of the month that i’ll attempt to learn to bake should be croissants. or… maybe not. did i tell you i successfully made baguette last week? very strange dough, but surprisingly delicious!

Posted in trip down memory lane, winter, yum | 1 Comment
08
Feb, 2006

round and round

this last weekend was my church’s annual retreat weekend. at the last minute, i was able to hitch a ride with friends as mr. happy stuff was unexpectedly held up at work. in the car on the way there, i sat in the back seat next to the 18 month old. we had a great time. i sang him some songs from storytime at work and when we got to “the wheels on the bus” he started doing the “round and round” hand motion along with me. i figured he must have sung the song before, but when i asked, his mom said she might have sung it once or twice, but she didn’t think she had done the hand motions specifically before. for the rest of the trip, he would occasionally start twirling his hands around and saying, “roun’ an’ roun'”–i feel honored.

Posted in stuff that makes me smile | Comments Off on round and round
03
Feb, 2006

laughing in the night

last night i woke myself up laughing. i was having a dream about pets and about the relative touchy-feeliness of cats vs. dogs and then mr. (dream) happy stuff said, “yeah, well, the worst is my doctor who has a pet stork who is very skittish. her bird is so skittish that the doctor has become very timid around even her patients. during my last examination, she made me stand on one foot for fifteen minutes before she would agree to make a diagnosis.” yeah, it was a dream. it doesn’t really make sense, but when you’re asleep… this stuff is hilarious! i actually laughed two “ha-ha’s” in my sleep. then, realizing that i had laughed aloud, i started laughing at myself for laughing. this woke up mr. happy stuff who then insisted that i tell him what was so funny that it would wake me up laughing. the more he insisted, the funnier it became that i was going to have to try to explain this ridiculous scenario to him. finally, in between bursts of laughter (i was in tears, laughing at this point) i got the whole story out and he said, “you’re really weird, dear.” which of course made me … laugh.

Posted in laugh | 2 Comments