The Price

Just finished Neil Gaiman's book of short stories, M Is for Magic. While I kind of hated the silliness of the first story, many of the other stories more than mad eup for it. I especially loved the shivery-ness of "The Price."

Chocolate and Raspberries

This chocolate crepe recipe from The Domestic Goddess is divine. Mine didn't look nearly as pretty as hers, but the taste was killer. Mmmm.....

Fine tuning

Here's the latest round-up of what I've been reading and watching.

This little novella is pretty charming. You have to love a book with characters named Ambrose Zephyr and Zappora Ashkenazi. Or at least I do. The End of the Alphabet is charming and sweet.

I may be the last person in the world to read The Outsiders, but I finally did. I listened to it at work and really really liked it. I cannot believe the author was only 16 years old. Geez! I was mostly touched by how caring and sweet the boys were to eachother even though they all identified themselves as hoodlums.

Service Included was a quick breezey nonfiction read about life as a server in a fancy restaurant. Pretty fun reading.

Hmmm.....funny in parts but so painfully (and I do mean squirming in my seat painfully) awkward at times. Knocked Up was somewhat fun, but I have a hard time believing a guy could be so damn socially challenged. And I've known some guys with really awful social skills. Meh.

Population: 485 is such a treasure of a book. The small town characters were so lovingly well described. And now and then I would stumble upon such a gem of a sentence. Like this one:

"Somewhere on I-80, still in Iowa, westbound mile marker 13, a little overpass, a blackbird teeters on a wire, flutters against the crosswind, and just as we pass beneath, he allows himself to be swept aloft and I think, these are the moments that fine-tune the spin of the earth."

Simply gorgeous.

Salty

The other day I was pondering my cupboards and how ugly all those food packages were. I decided to do a little something about that starting with the new canister of salt I had just purchased. So I took off the ugly wrapper with all the nutritional info and glued on something prettier.

Eventually, I intend to do something sorta like this. I'm an avid baker with chaotic cabinets full of a mishmash of all kinds of supplies. I need to get something better organized and nicer to look at. I really need a great solution for my ever-expanding collection of spice jars. Any suggestions?

Otis is Resurected

an oblivious dillo at dawn
Originally uploaded by slight clutter

I just listened to an amazing short story on This American Life. Otis is Resurrected made me laugh and want to bawl. Read it here or listen to it here.

Love the moodyness of that armadillo shot by Slight Clutter.

Disappointing

Isn't that a gorgeous cover and a geat title? Makes you just want to rush out to you library and pick it up, right? Well maybe resist that urge. I liked the first and last stories. All those in the middle were not so impressive.

Just wondering

Anyone know of any really fabulous gardening blogs out there? You know, the kind with beautiful pictures of all kinds of gardens that make your heart long for an enormous back yard (or any backyard at all really)? I feel the need to live vicariously through some garden pictures while its godawful cold outside. Any suggestions?