Riding off into the sunset

Dad came by for a visit today on his scooter. Here are some pictures we took of him heading out...

Pumpkin head

The virtuous life is rather dull sometimes.
So, yesterday I made some pumpkin bread. It turned out great!

The flavour came out just like the muffins from Perry's Bakery (Main Rd. in Westport, MA) that Dad used to get for us. Yummmmmmmm! It was a bit more delicate in texture though.

Anyhow, I used an amalgamation of different recipes and came up with this...

Preheat oven to 350 and in a big bowl mix together:
-1 15oz can of plain pumpkin puree
-1 & 2/3 cups sugar
-1 soft stick butter
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-4 large eggs

Add to the wet mixture:
-3 cups all purpose flour
-2 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1/2 tsp ground ginger
-1/2 tsp cloves
-1/2 cup coarsely chopped cashews
-1/2 cup dried currants

Pour the glop into a silicone bundt or tube pan (no greasing!) and bake for an hour. When a bamboo skewer comes out clean it's ready for the cooling rack. I think you are grown up enough to take it from here.

The Newsletter

So, the company Mr. works for let him put out a digital copy of our neighborhood's latest quarterly newsletter. It's really neat for me to see what the old boy does when he retires to the dungeon every day (in other words, the downstairs office). Take a look!

Go to the show

Kirk has on a show of his pastel portraits at the Morse Institute Library in Natick, MA. He models his work after photos of Native Americans by Edward S. Curtis. If you are local, then check it out! It runs into March.

Sneaky packing

Damn I'm good...How long do you think it'll take Bebalu to find and demolish the swedish fish?

Space oddity

So, I had a ct scan yesterday. It'll be the closest I ever come to space travel...It was pretty fun holding my breath while going thru the giant donut-hole scanner.

The best part was when the doctor showed me my own innards. So cool! Granted, it's a bit of a disappointment to find that there isn't a little workshop of elves that keep me going. However, there was something hugely gratifying in finding the thing causing discomfort is a tiny little blip compared to the black hole of Calcutta that my mind had worked up (you think I whine a lot? You should hear the inner drama queen!).

Also, I have a great skeleton. One day these bones are going to Hollywood baby - I just wish they'd take the rest of me along:)

Winter

Okay, so we do actually get winter here. Granted, it's short and really just a few weeks to help us differentiate between autumn and spring, but sometimes it gets a little chilly. Here's a picture from this morning before the sun broke up the ice. Not very impressive when you see that there is a program on the tv for trucks taking shortcuts over ice in the Alaskan winter. Still, not so bad for North Carolina!