Thursday, October 25, 2007

I opened my Bacon Bar. It DOES smell like bacon...

It tastes like bacon, too. It's good!

It's really good. Soft and chocolatey, mixed with salty-chewy/crispy. Very good combo. Good amount of bacon (not too much, but plenty). The bacon bar is a brilliant invention! I am impressed.

It might even be in my top three, along with the Goji (pink SALT) bar and Matcha bar. I think it is!

Maybe Vosges should come out with a Liver bar next.

Your turn now, MUD! It's not so scary. Bristle thy courage up!

P.S. Once you open it, you can't not try it. The scent is enticing!

Posted at 5:46:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

We had butterscotch pudding! The cooked kind, of course, with a skim on top. It seemed the day for it. Gold and amber and rust and pearly grey, with tiny raindrops on the windshield.

I can't stop thinking about Raffles. Very anti-linearly. Yesterday's and today's episodes were just wonderful. The Chest of Silver and The Last Laugh. (Even if they do insist on combining two different stories into one episode, they don't do a bad job of it, for the most part). Dean even pointed out how I must've liked today's, as it was hurt-drug-torture Raffles!

I take it back about Anthony Valentine's mouth being too canary-eatingish. When he doesn't smile, Anthony Valentine's mouth and the looks in those glittering eyes are as Raffles-like as can be, without being the real Raffles. Nothing can match the real Raffles, of course, but he's been splendid. [Edit: I mean, it's like an actor trying to play Sherlock Holmes. You can think it's a wonderful portrayal, that he's really got the point and the spirit, but he won't ever be Holmes, of course.]

Even Bunny ("You dear little brick!") is really quite well done, if overly goofy. I do wish they hadn't played down Raffles' cruelty and mind games quite so much, though. Bunny needs to be manipulated more, suffer more, and get much more upset about it! But at least they make a stab. I can't say they don't make stabs at quite a lot of things. (The Turkish baths. That splendid pyjama-clad serious talk on the bed, Bunny not a little drunk. The impeccable cut of Raffles' clothes. The astonishing amounts of dialog taken directly from the books. The innumerable Sullivans. I'm not ungrateful.) And of course I can't help running back to canon after every episode, to remember how things really happened. The brain spins.

How's this for overmuch unspeakable:

Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa, his black hair tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against the light as though slashed out with the scissors.

Posted at 11:20:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Themetime Classic Rock was a great episode. And yes, I knew all along what kind of music Bob was going to play. (Music about rocks, of course.)

Whether or not raw milk counts as weird food, I'm pretty sure dried hibiscus flowers do, especially because they are so weird looking. (Highly sea creature-esque, actually.) Obviously, there was no question about me trying them. I mean, they're hibiscus flowers! And I'm happy to report that I love them. "A sweet & tart treat," indeed.

I finally got my new underwater gloves in the proper size, and I think I'm going to like them. Here's a picture (yeah, it was hard to take with my left hand, but I had to include my new watch, natch!)

Oh, and Postmaster Dave is retiring, and they're having a party for him at the post office next Thursday! I'm so glad it's before I leave for Hawaii!

Posted at 5:07:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Back from Sunny Maine! My eyes are reeeeally wonky, for some reason. Maine was super-sunny and warm. I was almost TOO warm! We had a very nice dinner at 555. I liked being able to spy on the hands of the prep chefs from our table in the loft above the kitchen. They wore gloves when preparing beets. Also, 555 made a superb cappuccino, with microfoam and the proper cappuccino proportions and everything. I also especially liked their salt. Everything we ordered was out of the ordinary and extremely good, and they even had out of the ordinary and extremely good vegetarian dishes for Dean, right on the menu. [Edit: Oh yeah, and we had warm cookies (3 different interesting varieties) and milk for dessert, and it was raw milk from a local farm. I don't think I've ever had raw milk before. Does that count as a weird (or at least unusual) food?]

Listened to XM radio all the way home, in our rental car. It only took 1.5 hours to fly to Oxford (nice tailwind, and Tango is speedy! ...we were going about 180 mph!), and 3 hours to drive home from Portland (+ about 50 minutes from Oxford to Portland... we hitched a ride with Jeff from the airport, and he dropped us off at the rental car place). Jeff was playing the radio in his car, and they had a news story about J.K. Rowling revealing that Dumbledore is gay, and I totally cracked up in surprised delight.

I really liked the paint guy, Tim. He reminded me of Rick, without being Rick-ish at all. We got lots of compliments on my paint scheme, and they really seemed to understand and appreciate it. As usual, they were very impressed by how detail-oriented we are. We like details.

Posted at 11:05:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Off to Sunny Maine!

Posted at 12:11:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

P.S. I should have mentioned: my tongue sandwich (actually a tongue-and-swiss) was delectable. (Even though that's kind of obvious.)

Posted at 7:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Yesterday for our last Tango trip before we bring him to Maine on Monday for his new paint job (which'll take a month, and we won't have him back until after Hawaii), we flew to Rick's (Runway Cafe) and, afterwards, near the Catskills, over Band-ville. We were originally going to go to Northampton, but I had a Rick's craving as we were flying along, so we diverted to Rick's instead, and it met the craving most excellently.

I had Rick's warm roast turkey, brie, and cherry preserves sandwich, as a wrap (the herb wrap contributed greatly to its perfection), and I think it was the best instance of that sandwich I have had yet, even though I still think it would be better with cranberry preserves instead of cherry. Rick's apple pie a la mode was also at its best, all soft and warm and melty, barely pie at all. (I'm not a pie fan, but I love Rick's apple pie.) Afterwards, I saved the address of Big Pink as a location on my Guy, switched to Off Road mode, and we followed the line straight toward Overlook Mountain. I never managed to spot Big Pink from the air, but we did fly right by it. It was bumpy near the Catskills, from the "mountain waves," Dean said. They did feel like waves.

I didn't take many photos, but Dean got a nice one of the Catskills near Big Pink, and I took a picture of Tango in the hanger before our flight. He was in there from getting his Annual Inspection last week, and the Airport Manager and mechanics told Dean that Tango had the record for the most-flown plane in a year (not including the rental planes, of course). Aka, Most Loved Plane!!

It was in the mid-70s today, so we went to our land. At Rein's on the way, I ordered a tongue sandwich. I haven't had one in quite a while (I usually get kippered salmon instead), but I was inspired by the fact that I was wearing my new
tongue-colored sweater and also by this appalling You Are What You Eat entry that I read a few days ago.

While we waited for the food to arrive, we made a wager about the height of my tongue sandwich. Dean said it would be up to the Hebrew National URL on the mustard bottle, and I declared that it would be higher. When the sandwich appeared, there was no contesting who had won: the spot on the side of the bottle was about 2 1/4" off the table, but my sandwich was head and shoulders (head and tongue?) above that, at least 3 1/4". (I measured with a strip of paper torn from the edge of the placemat.) The winner's prize was a five-minute neck massage at our land, and it was a very good one, too. Our land was beautiful, even though I had to keep moving my chair around, "chasing the sun" to stay warm. With all the trees, the shadows begin early. Here's a photo of some of the brightest trees, and a slice of the pond, all full of reflections.

I still can't believe tomorrow's Maine Day already.

Posted at 6:11:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.