Archive for December, 2005
December 31, 2005 at 7:01 pm
- Best restaurant meal (pizza) : pizzeria bianco. probably our most anticipated restaurant experience in recent memory, we’d been waiting to visit this pizza mecca for about a year and a half. this place has been written up by many of the most regarded food writers in the country, and is widely believed to be home to the best pizza in the country, if not the world. the best pizza in the world, in phoenix? yup. Simply put, the best pizza we’ve ever had. To use Peter Reinhart’s words “perfect, i mean perfect, pizzas”. I’m still in awe.
- best dish that i can’t stop eating despite the pain that it causes: the dry stir fried chicken with chili’s at zoe’s in cambridge. i don’t know how they make this, but this chicken cooked with about 7,000 chili peppers, both dried and fresh, is crazy addictive. your mouth burns and your eyes water, but you can’t stop eating it. just watch out for those dried peppers. they’ll knock you on your ass.
- best evidence that i’ve gotten old (#1): i became a total NPR geek this year. i would hardly call myself a news junkie, but i found myself listening to it almost exclusively when in the car. informative, entertaining, …ah i might as well just move to the burbs and start spending all of my weekends at home depot.
- best evidence that i’ve gotten old (#2): we moved to the burbs and bought a house and i spend all of my weekends at home depot. ok, so it’s only 2 miles from our old place, but it feels like the burbs with all of the friendly neighbors and small-townness of it all. i seem to be working on about one life-changing event per year, so we’ll see what 2006 brings.
- best evidence that i still act like i’m 8: the many hairstyles of 2005. i’m not ready to look old quite yet.
- best article ever written about the BBQ at formaggio: spring is in the air.
- best addition to workday entertainment: streaming radio via BBC6, WXPN, and KCRW. they kept me entertained, up on all the latest bands that the kids are listening to, and i get to brush up on my british accent. also, a late addition to the list is my favorite new music source, pandora. you’ll be hearing a lot about this in the coming year, i guarantee.
- best meal (non-pizza): the Chef’s Whim at Craigie Street Bistrot with Gordon and Karen as our sort of good-bye dinner with them before they move to London. A pretty much perfect night with some amazing food and great company. it’s pretty much my idea of a perfect neighborhood restaurant. I wish there were more like it.
- best book: The Know It All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. a smart, incredibly funny account of a guy trying to read the entire encyclopedia brittanica cover to cover.
- best way to get drunk in nantucket for $5: the tasting tour at cisco brewers, makers of some very tasty beer and spirits. their $5 tasting tour is the best deal on the island. for $5, you get to sample 5 different beers, 3 different vodkas, their gin, and their rum. oh, and they’ll keep giving you samples of whatever you want if you’re nice to them. a nice way to spend an afternoon.
- best use of random plants growing in our yard: somehow, giant pumpkin vine planted themselves in our front yard. this is apparently the first time they’ve ever been there, and most likely came from either the compost in our backyard or from our pumpkin that got attacked by a band of squirrels last year. luckily, we know that these flowers are not only edible, but incredibly tasty when deep fried. if they come back nest year, we may have to do some covert missions to retrieve them again.
- best new tv show (drama): prison break.
- best new tv show (comedy): how i met your mother.
- best song: fix you by coldplay. every year there’s a song that i can listen to over and over and over. this was that song. even though it will forever be known in our house as “kirstin cohen’s song”
- best DIY fix-it project (tie): diagnosing, ordering the parts, and finally my fixing my car’s climate control system without breaking anything in the process. the world-famous medicine cabinet.
Tags: 2005, topten
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December 29, 2005 at 10:33 am
- sorry for the late posting. i’ve been busy doing nothing on my week off. doing nothing seems to take up a lot of time.
- santa was very good to me this year. i am a proud owner of a lovely sirius satellite radio. i’m coming with you howard!
- i also got a big scary circular saw. let’s hope i keep all of my fingers attached to my body.
- i am now a walking advertisement for formaggio.
- we finally rented our old apartment! goodbye rent+mortgage!
- pandora. this thing is just unbelieveable. it’s a free streaming music service where you create stations by entering songs or artists that you like. it figures out what makes that song or artist unique and then gives you other songs and artists with similar traits. it’s crazy how it figures out exactly what you like, even if it’s sometimes embarrassing. you can train it by telling it whether you like or dislike songs that come up, and it gets better and better at giving you the tunes that you like. give it a try. just plug in a song that you like and watch it work its magic. it’s a relatively new service, so the free service it still ad-free. we’ll see how long it stays that way.
- more house photos are up! feel free to fill in the empty spaces with furniture.
- i took my mom to baja last week. she seemed a little overwhelmed, but i htink she liked it. she’ll never get my dad to go there though.
Tags: 2005, topten
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December 23, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Tags: 2005, bathroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Tags: 2005, bedroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Tags: 2005, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:41 am
Tags: 2005, bedroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:41 am
Tags: 2005, bedroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:41 am
Tags: 2005, house, kitchen, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:40 am
Tags: 2005, house, kitchen, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:39 am
Tags: 2005, house, kitchen, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:39 am
Tags: 2005, diningroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:39 am
Tags: 2005, hallway, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:38 am
Tags: 2005, diningroom, house, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:38 am
Tags: 2005, chrismukkah, house, livingroom, photos
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December 23, 2005 at 11:37 am
Tags: 2005, house, livingroom, photos
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December 19, 2005 at 8:12 am
- this is my first morning in about 8 years without howard, and it’s sort of weird. i’ve pretty much listened to all 5 hours of his show every morning since i started working, and it’s become part of my daily routine. sure he’s a bit sick and twisted and juvenile and raunchy, but we all are. his humor and honesty is something that all of his listeners can relate to, and I was always of the opinion that people who didn’t like him just weren’t being honest with themselves. as i’m sure you all know, he’ll be moving his show over to siruis starting next year, so it will be interesting to see what happens. will his fans follow? is he worth paying $13 a month for? is santa a howard fan? does anyone really want to listen to this guy? only time will tell.
- don’t get me wrong, i love me some latkes, and we make some damn tasty ones (lacy, extra crispy, salty, and hot), but i really don’t like smelling like onions and frying oil for 2 days after. my hands still reek of them and i only ate two of them. and two chanukkah parties in one day is a lot to take. my belly doesn’t get along with jewish food.
- this is my last week of the work for the year. i get the week between xmas and new years off for vacation, so i’ll behome sitting on my ass watching tivo and eating xmas cookies. the best of 2005 list will appear next week. send in your nominations now!
- susanne has this theory that people don’t like us because i’m good at stupid games like ping pong, pool,and trivial pursuit. i can’t help it if i have mad mad skillz.
- i’ve never seen anyone more excited about a big night out to CVS.
- i’m pretty terrible at wrapping gifts. my problem is that i always use too much wrapping paper and end up having to go back and cut it smaller and smaller so that i can actually tape it. i’ve gotten slightly better over the years, but not by much. although i am proud that i was done with all of my shopping a full week and a half before xmas and didn’t have to deal with a single crowded mall parking lot.
- a visit to udupi bhavan, our favorite indian restaurant around. especially the “little pockets of heaven” (dahi aloo poori). do yourself a favor and get 2 orders of them.
Tags: 2005, topten
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December 12, 2005 at 7:34 am
- the return of the sauce. last year’s batch lasted us an entire year, so a few hours’ worth of work is definitely worth it. plus, it makes a nice gift for some lucky folks.
- the easiest chrissmukkah tree experience ever. we picked out the first one we saw, there was no one else waiting in line to pick them up, russo’s was smart enough to move the pickup area to the back so as to not create a complete disaster in the front parking lot, we got it into the house without dropping any needles, got it into the base and screwed in straight on the first try, and it looks pretty kick-ass. now when do all the presents for me start showing up underneath it?
- so it took me 3 hours to get home in the snowstorm on friday. luckily, i had a shoveled driveway to come home to thanks to susanne and our new best friend next door neighbor with a snowblower, humphrey. i can’t tell you how much more pleasant the winter is when you don’thave to deal with shoveling your car out on the street and having to deal with finding a parking spot that’s actually been shoveled well when you come home at night. it almost makes me not hate the winter. plus, we got some really really comfy and warm boots to help us with the shoveling. quite possibly the most comfortable things ever.
- thanks to the 4 guys who pushed my car out of the snow outside of shangri-la on friday night. i swear, we live in mayberry, everyone is so damn nice.
- mad hot ballrooom. a documentary about the required ballroom dance program in the nyc public schools. and just as i suspected, even as 5th graders, white people are terrible dancers.
- i’m in love with HD.
- have you ever actually roasted chestnuts on an open fire? i did yesterday. they’re damn tasty.
- the ansel adams exhibit at the MFA. despite the incredible crowds, you’re able to get up close with some amazing photos. makes all of those office posters of adams prints look like crap.
- i was really hoping that brothers pizza around the corner from us, but it just wasn’t our style. the greek style pizza just doesn’t do it for us, and reminds me of the pizza i used to get at camp from AHOP. it’s ok, but it doesn’t compare to armando’s. the search for a neighborhood pizza joint continues.
- windows live local’s bird’s-eye view. check out an address and click on bird’s-eye view. pretty incredible.
- after 8 years of listening pretty much every single morning, this is the last week of howard stern on regular radio. i’m not really sure what i’ll do without him.
- the greatest mac and cheese ever.
Tags: 2005, topten
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December 5, 2005 at 7:45 am
- it’s a festivus miracle! the medicine cabinet is done! some minor delays after the mirror was cut to the wrong size, but it went off without too many hitches. and it hasn’t fallen down. yet. hold your breath for me.
- since so many people have been asking, i’ll start putting up some after photos of the house. more on the way. by the way, here are the before pictures. especially the bathroom. just a bit of a difference, huh?
- i’m jsut fascinated by megastructures on the national geographic channel. i guess it’s my inner engineering geek coming out.
- i’ve been in some sort of cooking zone the past week. lots of new dishes made up out of the blue. the big winner this week was a fennel and lemon rubbed roasted pork loin with roasted cauliflower puree, beer braised onions and pan sauce. followed up with using the leftovers in a pork loin sandwich with the onions, bouq emissaire, olives, and dijon on a baguette. those are keepers.
- i was smart enough to buy a new shovel before the first snowstorm. also, big fan of having a garage.
- the return of the star cookie. basically, just pure buttery, sugary, salty goodness. these won’t last long.
- there will be two new additions to the carpenter family. and no, they’re not ours.
- i’ll finally be getting my HD bpx tomorrow. also tomorrow, the cooktop fan finally gets fixed. big day around here.
- the spot cafe. this little cafe in watertown with great sandwiches, amazing bread from a bakery in montreal, and pancakes the size of my head.
- this season of the real world (yes, i’m still watching it for some reason) was pretty terrible. with the exception of a few fights and polic run-ins, it was completely boring. the reunion special made up for all of it though. nothing like a bunch of quasi-D-list-wanna-be-celebrities going at it
- i’m just fascinated my megastructures. must be my inner-engineering-geek showing its face.
Tags: 2005, topten
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December 4, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Tags: 2005, bathroom, house, mirror, photos
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