snaps

Ugh, I just gorged on several of the gingersnaps that my sister & I baked last night; they are so addictive. But probably not the best idea for breakfast, heh. I couldn't help myself, though! I am definitely one of those people who is visually suggestible when it comes to food - if I see it, I want it. If I don't, I largely tend to forget about it. So, I try to keep that in mind, and keep most food out of my line of vision. :)

In any case, I thought I'd share this recipe, because it is one of my favorites, and one of the quickest & easiest cookie recipes I know. A friend named Rachel shared it with me my junior year of college; I think we baked together for the Computer Science Department get-together, and since then I've been a diehard fan of these cookies. It certainly helps that I'm a ginger-flavored-anything addict, especially gingersnaps. I am absolutely in love with Carr's Ginger Lemon Cremes and Newman's Own Ginger-0's.

Well, without further ado:

GINGER SNAPS

3/4 cup margarine/butter/shortening
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ginger

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Mix all ingredients.
3. Form into balls and roll in sugar (not necessary; cuts the spiciness).
4. Place wide apart on slightly greased cookie sheet(s).
5. Bake 7 minutes for chewy or 10 minutes for crisp.

Enjoy! :)

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: The Cobweb AUTHOR: Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George
	TITLE: I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers AUTHOR: Thomas Hine
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens
	TITLE: Middlemarch AUTHOR: George Eliot

zzzz

Insomnia again last night, so I read several essays from Augusten Burroughs' Possible Side Effects. I was literally up until 4am. It was no fun. I didn't really think that the jasmine tea that we all shared at the Vietnamese restaurant last night was the cause of the problem, but Karen reported having had the same difficulty sleeping, so that must've been it. That, and I've got a lot of stuff on my mind. I kept jumping out of bed to make lists and write stuff down. I don't know if it was the lists that were keeping me up, or that I was making lists because I was up. Eh. Either way...it was a long night. I hope the lack of sleep doesn't kill me later on this week.

I am finding the book to be fun to read, if not as amusing as I think the author would like it to be. But he's fun. Reminds me a lot of David Sedaris, but that could be a bad connection, because the last Sedaris book I read was years ago. Maybe it's just because it's a collection of humorous essays about a man's life. And they're both gay. Hmm. Anyway, I wasn't expecting the book to be what it is, but I am flying through it. Oh, and I never noticed that the cover has a six-fingered hand (see below). Seriously. I've owned this book for a couple of years now, and I never noticed it. And I only really did notice it when I was practically delirious from lack of sleep yesterday. Hah.

On a kind of amusing and entirely unrelated note, I found a note I wrote several years ago that queried: "What the hell happened to Collective Soul?" Oddly, I actually saw them play live a couple summers ago (clearly after I had written the above) - they opened for Live. I just thought that was funny, that I wondered at their continued existence and then they resurfaced. Hah, I amuse myself very weirdly. But, it's been interesting going through a bunch of old notes that I saved forever & am beginning to finally realize I no longer need....

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: Possible Side Effects AUTHOR: Augusten Burroughs
	TITLE: I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers AUTHOR: Thomas Hine
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens

it's ba-ack!

So: ska (and other related late-nineties music) is apparently back, full-force. In the past year, I've seen so many shows of bands who have either reunited recently, have started touring again, or who I haven't seen since I was a wee one in high school! Less Than Jake, The Toasters, The Pietasters, Rancid, The Pilfers, and the other night: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.



Also, No Doubt and The Offspring have recently reunited. Among many others. It's insanity! But very excellent insanity.

It's been fun to return to some of the venues I haven't haunted since I was a little, awkward, teenaged rude girl.

Before we left for the show, we cooked this for dinner:


Actually, it was super-delicious fajitas. But those colorful veggies were the mouth-watering first step. I just wanted to share.

Oh, and to top off all the nostalgia, Radio 104 returned last year. Hurray!

(Happy New Year, everyone! I wrote most of this post yesterday, but didn't get around to putting it up, which is why it's not really all 2009-y, haha. I'm not a big New Year's person anyway, though - it's just another day, to me. The only thing I like about it is writing the new year on checks, hah.)

resolving.

I think my "New Year's Resolution" (I don't usually make any whatsoever, so take this with a grain of salt!) is going to be to post more on my blog...especially about my return to Connecticut, and what it's taken for me to settle back in here. For quite some time I was loath to even admit that I was back here, a state I never really wanted to end up in, and newly single again after four (long) years. However, I've decided to start 2009 with a clean breast and a fresh slate and all that jazz (did I mix up those metaphors? hmm). It's been really a very difficult year for me, but I'm growing used to being here, and really giving it my all. I'm trying to find a niche for myself here. I don't plan to stay here for good, certainly, but for the time being it's been nice to be able to save a little bit of money and slow my life's pace down a bit (sometimes too much for me, though!). It's been a time of self-discovery, as I try to figure out Big Questions, such as where I want to live next (fun) and what I ultimately want to do be when I grow up (librarian, perhaps?). Everything is still seriously up in the air; maybe I should have started documenting all of this sooner, but oh well. Here I am now. And you all will get the exciting opportunity to watch me make big decisions (eep) and, hopefully metamorphosize into much more of the woman that I want to be.

Wish me luck??

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: Duty AUTHOR: Bob Greene
	TITLE: I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers AUTHOR: Thomas Hine
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens

ghost parking lot

Spurred into curiosity by villagecharm, who recently posted about Connecticut, er, curiosities, I was doing a bit of reading up on such things, and stumbled across this gem, which I am so upset that I never got a chance to see:


Ghost Parking Lot
(photo courtesy of: wonderland of awesome)

Boy, that must've been a sight to see...even if it doesn't appear to have been kept up very well....

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid AUTHOR: Bill Bryson
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens
	TITLE: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde AUTHOR: Robert Louis Stevenson

whoops...

...look what I did:



No, that's not some sort of optical illusion - we have mug hooks under our cabinets, and while putting dishes into the dish drain this morning, I accidentally hit one of the hanging mugs and knocked it down. It did some impressive falling and cracking, such that it split evenly into two almost precisely-halved pieces. I'm more impressed with myself and my "breaking skills" than anything else, especially because I don't much care about those mugs - they were passed on from my mother's overstock, so they weren't particularly close to anyone's heart.

I'm just glad I won't be cleaning up pottery shards for the next several days! xo

up all night

Thanks, coffee.

I definitely learned a valuable lesson this weekend. On Friday, Augie & Luke had a really interesting discussion about Augie's plans to go home (it was already into the wee hours of the morning, so I suppose I should say "Saturday" instead) and drink some coffee before going to bed, so that when he woke up a few hours later, he'd be good and awake to drive to NY to pick up his friend. I was shocked - drink coffee before going to bed?!

But, I understood it all too well tonight.

After watching Music Within (really good!) at Sarah's, then stopping at Target to pick up a gift for Frosty's Friends (my sisters & I have made this a yearly tradition), I headed to Borders for the Central CT Knitting for the Greater Good meeting (wow, it was such a giving evening...), for which I am working on this blanket. I stopped at the coffee counter to get a gingerbread latte (I love seasonal drinks), as I normally do. I didn't even make it through half of the drink throughout the course of the evening, so I was not surprised while on my way home to find myself yawning. I was pleased by this, though, because I was feeling slightly run down, and I was hoping to get to bed early. My evening company had postponed to Monday night, so I finished watching Akira and then read a few pages before turning off the light to go to sleep. It was quite early for me - around 9:30 or so. I had a bit of trouble nodding off, but that's not abnormal for me no matter what time it is.

What was out of the ordinary was waking up at 3:45...and not being able to go back to sleep! I finished a book, I played around on my phone, I read more of another book, I caught up on my blog reading, I lay around thinking about all the things I should be doing while I was so awake and alert...and finally, I gave up the battle for sleep. My upstairs neighbor, who works construction and usually gets up around 4:30 or 5, was up after I was. Ugh.

I don't feel tired, and my body doesn't feel exhausted, but...I do feel like my eyes could close, if I were able to get my body to want to sleep. Blah. I just had a little snack (bad, I know, if I'm planning to try to catch another few minutes, but I was hungry!), and now I'm contemplating getting back in bed with a book. I probably won't sleep again (unfortunately - or fortunately? - all of the books I'm reading now are quite engaging), but at least I'll be "resting".

Bah. Coffee. Now I get why people drink decaf. I mean, I'm not going to anytime soon - I largely drink coffee for the caffeine, not for the taste (although it's certainly grown on me - but I'm more apt to pick up an energy drink if it comes down to that) - but, I can understand it now. Haha!

Hope everyone else out there is well-rested for the start of another week...xo

toothbrush, toothbrush, you've come back to me!

(Thanks to The State for the unforgettable title reference....)

Okay, so: I have purchased three new toothbrushes in the past month. Unbelievable, right? And this coming from a girl who buys once once every...maybe year? (Sorry, Liam.) It appears to be due to some odd mental block of mine - well, the first one, I bought because I needed a new toothbrush and actually thought to buy one. Okay, good start. The second one, I purchased because while I remembered every single other thing I needed to pack to house-sit for my sister, I managed to somehow forget a toothbrush. --Have I mentioned that my brother-in-law in a dentist? I don't know how I didn't think "dentist...toothbrush". But also, you'd think a dentist would have extra toothbrushes all over his house, right? My theory is that he hoards them all for himself.

In any case, the third I had to buy today, because I once again packed everything but the toothbrush. I guess it kind of makes sense; when I go through my bathroom gathering all the things I'll need - shampoo, conditioner, razor, face cleaner, moisturizer, etc. - I don't generally look at the toothbrush holder, since it's in its own separate place. But it's frustrating, because clean teeth is the one thing I absolutely must have. So, now I'm totally stocked up on toothbrushes for the next...3 years? :)

xo