May your holiday season be filled with wonder.

Love,
Pete, The Lovely Suse, The Lovely Tess, and George

• Please, don’t make me shovel any more snow. I’m hoping Santa brings me a snowblower for christmas. Speaking of which, we borrowed our neighbor’s snowblower yesterday and promptly ran over the sunday newspaper with it. It took a hammer and chisel to dislodge it.
• Since Tess is always sneezing and having a runny nose, I now carry a handkerchief around with me. That’s right, I’m now a guy with a snot-filled hanky in my pocket at all times. It’s like I’m 70 years old. But seriously, it’s so much easier (not to mention environmentally friendly) than dealing with a wad of tissues.
• Over the course of a few hours last night, we had the ice cream machine, crockpot, and food dehydrator running. We also had dinner cooking and chestnuts roasting in the oven. So much for being energy efficient.
• Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier during the week. I never ever thought I would see the day when my alarm goes off at a time that starts with a “4″. And most days, I’m actually awake before it goes off. What the hell is wrong with me?
• Does anyone have gloves that actually keep their hands warm? I have about 6 different pairs of gloves, none of which actually keep my hands warm for more than three minutes. I think I might actually need to spend the money on decent ones so I don’t lose a finger then next time I’m out shoveling.
• My company wisely shuts down between christmas and new years every year. Due to the way the days fall this year, I have eleven straight days off starting this weekend. I can’t frigging wait.
• For fans of Pixar films, here’s a cool list of inside jokes in their movies.
• I’ll admit it: I like listening to holiday music. Not all holiday music, but the kind you hear in a Pottery Barn or Banana Republic or something. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the like. You know, something that swings. So sue me.
• I start school in March. Better get as much Pete time as you can before then, because I won’t be coming out of my hole until 2010.

• We got our tree this weekend, and thanks to our new tree stand (thank you ebay), it was almost a flawless mounting. Almost. It took about 3 seconds to lock the tree into place, but later when trying to make some adjustments, the tree started tipping and almost went crashing to the ground. A last minute grab by me saved the day. I saved Christmas! But seriously, this tree stand rules. No more of those stupid screw-in jobbies.
• We finally got off our asses and made our holiday cards. They’ll hopefully be sent out next week, and let me tell you, we are a very excited to see how they come out. There are those times where you have a vision of how you want a photo to come out, but usually, our lack of talent prevents us from getting the shot that we really wanted. Of the hundred shots we took, only a single one came out right, well lit, in focus, and with the subjects looking right. We hope everyone likes them as much as we do. And no, the photos above and below are not the ones that we are using.
• A new parent’s worst nightmare came true yesterday. Frankly, I’m surprised we made it 6 months without it happening before. You’re in fear every day that it might happen, and you think about how you might handle it when it acually happens, but nothing can actually prepare you for when it actually happens. Of course, I’m referring to your child pooping while in the tub. Luckily, both of us were home when it happened, because it took an all-hands-on-deck reaction to recover from it. I think we handled it ok, and Tess smiled through the whole thing.
• I discovered that I can recalibrate my oven by 35 degrees. Our oven has been pretty awful lately, not getting hot enough, not firing back on after losing heat when the door is opened, etc. With a little tweaking, bumping the temperature up by 35 degrees worked wonders. It’s still 15 degrees off, but it’s better than being off by 50. Of course the question you’re all asking is how has it impacted your pizza making? Of course. Let me tell you, it did nice things. The pizza stone measured 623 degrees after preheating the oven for an hour, which was about 100 degrees higher than before. Ok, I don’t hate our oven as much any more.
• Speaking of ovens, I found a crockpot for cheap last week, and I figured it was worth a shot. We tend to make a lot of braised dishes during the winter, and this would allow us to make dinner in the morning and let it cook through the whole day. It’s nice to think that you can just throw everything in the pot and turn it on, but it’s not quite that simple. If you’re cooking any sort of meat, you still have to brown it before you put it in the pot. For example, our first attempt was a braised chicken with fennel, olives and lemons. We still had to brown the chicken, add the fennel, and deglaze the pan with wine, before finally putting it in the pot. We let it cook on low for about 6 hours, and let me tell you, it came out pretty damn well. It doesn’t get the same sort of browning and caramelization that traditional oven braising turns out, but it definitely did the trick. I can see us using this for a bunch of things, so I think we’ll keep it. Yes, I’m using a crockpot.
• I think it’s official that the torch has been passed and the Lovely Suse and I are officially in charge of latke making. I like them super crispy, but still thick enough that there’s some good potato flavor in the middle. They also have to be salty enough, because all fried things love salt. Amazingly enough, we didn’t reek of oil and potatoes at the end of the day. I’m not quite sure how that happened.
• My fall project finally paid off last week. Let’s just say it’s going to be a very busy and interesting two years. More details to come.
• I got what was maybe the fastest hair cut of all time on Saturday. I walked into my usual place, they pointed toward the back to get shampooed, the woman shampooed me without saying a word, walked me to a chair in the front, and I sat there for a couple of minutes. Two woman at the front desk talked loudly in Lebanese, one of them came over to me, and while still talking to the other woman, started cutting my hair. It wasn’t until about 2 minutes into the haircut that she even acknowledged me with a “Hi, how are you?”, and then immediately went back with her other conversation. She never asked me how I wanted my hair cut or how short I wanted it, but she seemed to be doing a good job, so I let her keep going. After about 5 minutes, she was done, and it looked good. Um, ok.

• So around once a year, I pull some muscle in my upper back that makes it painful to do pretty much everything, and the only thing I can do about it is to take some drugs, put some heat on it, and let it fix itself. Something completely non-strenuous and stupid always causes it, and I know the second it happens that it’s going to be bad. And it always happens on a Thursday or Friday to ensure that my weekend will be a complete wash. To top it all off, Tess got her first really bad cold, so having a whining baby up all night doesn’t exactly promote fast healing. Let’s just say I’ve had better weekends. And I smell like Tiger Balm.
• Get ready for lots of photos. The Nikon 18-200mm is on the way.
• We tried out the video chat capabilities of Skype this weekend, and I was surprised how good it was. Decent quality full-screen video and perfect sound. While we’ve used Sightspeed in the past, we’ve always had problems with the audio; low volume, lots of echoing and feedback. Bye bye Sighspeed, hello Skype.
• It’s snowing today. I’m not happy about that. The Lovely Suse gets a snow day today. I wish I had a snow day. I think I need to buy new shovels this year. It drives me insane that the $20 shovels from Home Depot have plastic blades that crack after heavy use. And of course, you can’t buy a replacement blade, so you have to go out and buy a whole new shovel. I’ll have to do some research. Who wants to buy me a Wovel?
• Despite my water-conservations tendencies, I have a habit of flushing a public toilet before using it. There’s a good reason for it, one that I highly recommend to everyone, and it paid off last week. As I flushed a perfectly normal looking and clear toilet at work, the water level started to rise and rise and rise. And kept rising. I did the obvious thing and turned and ran out of the bathroom as quickly as possible. Hell, that’s not my problem. Now if I had used the toilet and was then confronted with this predicament, it would be my problem and my embarrassment. I would feel a little more guilty letting that overflow without claiming some sort of responsibility. So I ask myself, “Do I feel bad about wasting water like this?” I think I’d feel worse about the alternative.
• Due to the fact that the Lovely Suse doesn’t have her own top ten list, I’ll be a graceful loser and note the fact that I am no longer undefeated at backgammon this year. The Lovely Suse won fair and square, although she may have slipped in some loaded dice when I wasn’t looking.
• Don’t tell anyone, but I have a secret stash of Junior Mints in my bag. You know, just in case.
• Somehow, we’ve made the switch to buying all of our cereal at Whole Foods. They’re tasty, they’re inexpensive, they’re mostly organic, and did I mention that they’re tasty? I’m currently enjoying their version of honey bunches of oats, honey smacks, shreaded wheat, some sort of golden flaxseed flakes, and these cinnamon crunchy things. I like cereal.
• This is the time of year when I get a ton of emails and hits from people looking for Star of David tree toppers. The truth is, this is really a snowflake tree topper that happens to look like a star of David, and it was bought at Target a few years back (but no longer sold). I really need to start making these for real and start selling them.