Spooooky Pumpkins...

Yesterday R and I had a belated fall activity evening. As the weekend was so windy and cold and the thought of sitting in the studio with the windows wide open arranging the flower boxes was not going to be an option, we decided that we'd do our autumn display last night, when it was mild and pleasant.

While I was cooking up some dinner (winter turnips boiled with butter and salt, home made mac and cheese and garlic sauteed kale) R got to work with the pumpkin. For those readers out there who may want to know, "where on earth did you get such a gorgeous pumpkin?"well, this orange beauty was hand picked in the great pumpkin patch outside of Rochester, NY on October 8th.
First step in ghouling the pumpkin, the removal of the brain. pretty gruesome. pulp, seeds, innards, all over the kitchen floor.

Next, we searched all over the house for a variety of tools we could alter to help in the very difficult art of pumpkin carving. Big and small knives, grapefruit spoons and an xacto-blade. R thought it would be more interesting to carve out a spooky scene. Plus, my pumpkin faces were just not scary enough for our giant gourd.
After a dinner break, we got back to work, scrapping the idea of adding in a howling coyote. mainly due to the fact that my coyote looked more like a mutant rat. scary, but not in a good way.

The final test, once all the carving and scraping was done, was to put it in the window, put a votive candle inside, and turn out all the lights..... Are you scared??

Back for More Coffee.

Skip back to last weekend. If you can go back that far. It's cold, it's windy, the leaves are all over the ground, brown, dried up and very crunchy under your sneakers. We are back in Minneapolis. We are attending yet another wedding. (very delicious butter cream cake- each table got their own- nifty!). The wedding was held at The Minnesota Science Museum, all guests got free admission to exhibits- also nifty!


Spending yet another weeekend neglecting the cat and the piles of dirty clothes. The house is cold; the socks are just not long and thick enough. Winter is really close by. All I can hope for is more coffee. Thankfully, we are in the land of 10 000 coffee shops. I am trying to hit them all. R is really on top of her hometown geography. This trip, we travel on familiar coffee paths as well as down some shaky unpaved roads. The necessity to infuse our bloodstream with lots of caffeine makes the morning hunt for coffee an adventure as well as a requirement.

We hit about 4 cafes this time around. Betsy's Back Porch. Decent coffee with fity cent refills, lots and lots of space to spread out and interesting autumnal decorations. the plastic leaves, the wreaths, the scarecrows. (well you can kind get a sense of what kind of happening place this is from their website...) It is 4 short blocks from the house, ok?! Just to highlight the unique coffee culture of Minne - there is a Starbucks right across the street and it's monstrous parasitical nature didn't drive Betsy out of town.


scroll down a few days and we go back to some old favorites. Bob's Java Hut. Cool servers; not too cool to actually give good service and look good doing it. great match-books, strong Americanos, like we like it. Coffee shop is also a local gathering spot for bikers and their fans.




Next up, Anodyne. Great name. No idea what it means. Something about relieving pain.
They understand coffee. The place is packed. It's Sunday morning, the brunch crowd has taken over. strollers, couples, old folks. We go up to get some coffee and a scone- the best we've had in a while- dates and nuts, real buttermilk. (correction: we thought the scone was at Betsy's, but Ruby corrected me). I have never seen a woman (the barista) so miserable, so utterly bothered and in pain (from her late night jaunts?). and the tip jar looked quite empty from where I was standing. Here's a little tip for you sour lady: If you are not a people person, if you are bothered when asked to hand people empty cups with which to fill their self-serve coffee, pissed off when a customer asks you to reach into the jar to pull out a biscotti with a little piece of wax paper or just generally put off by the whole service part of the service industry, maybe, honey, you need to get yourself to a career counselor. But to be fair, they have a fabulous mural painted on the outside wall and some great interior design. I'll show you....


So maybe the coffee anodyne is really an attempt to heal the customers of their painful service experience. Now I get it.

Fall Travels

Ok. So these posts are going to be a little outdated. What can I say? I've been negligent. I'm sorry. I've had no time to post and nothing remotely revolutionary or enlightening to report. Instead of boring you with the personal drama - hating my work life, feeling trapped, done with city living, stressed out, bla bla bla, I'll share with you, my friends and random strangers, some highlights of our fall adventures.



First stop, Rochester, NY. Car rental. Car rental upgrade! A very very long drive up almost up to lake Ontario! Hold on. I have to take myself back 3 weeks... Well, with my horrible short term memory, I'm not sure how accurately I'll be able to recount any of this. Thank god for cameras. Really. I think that if it wasn't for pictures, I'd still be fighting with my sisters about what really happened the week of the Ice Storm in Montreal back in '96 or was it '97. Come on, who cares? (for the record, it was '98)

Anyways, back to the road trip. The leaves were beautiful. Yellow/green. Still early in the season.


The wedding was lovely and it was so nice to see so many friends. Rochester was fun. We took a tour of downtown. Some of the more upscale joints. As a certain Goldstein pointed out, "like St. Catherine Street with less strip clubs". And don't think he didn't do a very thorough search of the yellow pages. Enjoy some of the sights:


so that is the arm of the way-to-cool-to-actually-serve-you-or-even-give-you-water waitress we walked out on in a sort of cute outdoor cafe where the sunlight was so directly blinding I had to cover my seatmate's head with a menu, turned visor.

I think this one needs no explanation. We missed the Saturday afternoon BBQ but from what I hear, Rochester is a major dog town. The kind in casing, not on leashes.






And finally... this one is for Goldstein.

Wish you were here...

It takes a really long week to make you think about vacation again. Sad that this is the last official holiday of the summer and sadder still to look outside and see the clouds still hovering menacingly over the city. I thought I'd give you a beautiful sunset with which to end your work week and with which to usher in the long weekend.

The first picure was taken on the rocky beach in Yaffo. The sunset was in Tel Aviv. The sun litterally fell into the blue water and disapeared only seconds later.

Chuckie? Chess? is that you!??

I found this collection of cat food cans to be really funny. even funnier if you have ever been over and met Chuckie, Chess. or is it Felix?


I thought I'd take this oportunity to share with you all a little story about Chuckie/Chess. not long ago, my dear friend Gretchen a very very smart chick, once said to me: "So that one is Chuckie, but where is Chess?" Good question! Though his given name is actually Chess, I don't care much for that name. I think he is more of a Chuckie. That clearly confuses some people. He is a cat dealing with imposed schizophrenia. very complicated. Call him what you will. My father calls him Arthur.