• Ah, Monday morning…
• Today is the first day in about 15 years that I haven’t received a morning newspaper. I decided that with the amount of time I spend in front of a computer on a daily basis, it was a waste of time and paper to actually have a paper delivered to my front door. The entire paper is online anyways, so it’s not like I’ll miss anything. Although the people who come to my office specifically to flip though the paper might miss it more than I will. We’ll see how it goes.
• To continue with the changes, after complaining about it for years, we finally dumped our regular phone line and signed up with Vonage. It just pained me to pay over $60/month for a phone that we barely used. Now for $15/month, we get all of the features we got before plus even more. Voicemails get emailed to us, we can continue to use all of our regular phone jacks and phones, we get to keep our old number, and there’s even software so that when somebody calls our number, it pops up on the screen with the callerID and I can actually answer it from anywhere. Very cool.
• After a summer in hibernation, our dehydrator has been brought back for some action. Plenty of just-past-their-prime apples and pears have been dried, along with some zucchini. Those zucchini were a surprise hit. I’ll definitely be making some more of those. Up next: an attempt at homemade raisins with some older grapes in the fridge. Yes, it’s been well-documented that I’m nuts. It’s ok.
• Speaking of raisins, my car has become a rolling Snack Shack. There are cheerios and cheddar bunnies and raisins and craisins and animal crackers and dried apple chips and who knows what else ground into every nook and cranny of the backseat. It gets so bad that I have to take the carseat out and shake the whole thing out because it’s so nasty. All of this is a result of trying to bribe the Lovely Tess into her seat, which she hates lately. No, I’m not above trying to bribe my child with food to do stuff. That’s parenting, right?
• There’s something about grilling outdoors when the temperature is in the 30’s and 40’s that warms me up. Oh, that would be the piece of chicken that’s on fire. Whoops.
• If anyone’s trying to figure out what to get me for the holidays, look no further: I would like one of these. I’ll even share some with you!
• I’ve been trying to get people to sign up on Twitter, but you people are all no fun. It’s even easier than blogging or updating your Facebook status. Plus, you can do it while driving. Not that you should.
• I think I’ll “share” the rest of the leaves in our yard with our neighbors. After all, they’ve certainly shared plenty with us. Slackers.

• It was a momentous week last week. I try not to espouse my political beliefs too much, but it should be blatantly obvious which way I lean. Needless to say, I am very happy with the results. Hey, the guy has a Twitter account and a Flickr account, so he’s ok in my book.
• Please go home and make these right now. You will be completely addicted to kale. The Lovely Tess could not shove them into her mouth fast enough (and compeltely cover her face, body, and floor with shards of kale). We will be making these continuously for the forseeable future.
• Hey, look! It’s my big bro in the New York Times! Apparently, he didn’t have time to shave or dress all CEO-like that day.
• I finally got my hair cut over the weekend. It was really shaggy. I kept it on the long side, not that I really had a choice. I think the guy cutting my hair said about two words to me: “trim?” and “OK?”.
• I got sick of paying $60/month for phone service that we barely use. So we made the leap into the VOIP pool and signed up with Vonage. Luckily, we get to keep our same phone number and since we have FIOS, we should have decent bandwidth and quality. We’ll see how it goes. Expect some hair-pulling in the coming weeks.
• The best part of Halloween leftovers? Whopper ice cream.
• I’m usually not a fan of biscotti, but the almond ones at Russo’s are something special.
• My idea to create that leaf compost bin didn’t quite work out. Faced with a mountain of leaves, limited time, and a setting sun, I bagged up 10 bags of leaves by hand. I’ll have to do it next year.
• Chocolate Brownie has officially replaced Chocolate Almond Fudge as my chocolate Clif Bar of choice. I don’t know what they did to the recipe, but they really did something bad to the Almond one. I’ll miss it.
• The Lovely Tess makes an excellent pie. I wonder where she gets it?
• The above image made the Lovely Suse laugh endlessly last night. It doesn’t take much, does it?

• Somehow, the time change hasn’t really affected us very much. This is mostly due to the fact that the Lovely Tess was nice enough to sleep in until 8AM on Sunday morning. Which means that she slept for 14 hours straight. Needless to say, we were all very happy when we finally got up yesterday.
• The Lovely Tess was a chicken for Halloween. Not that we actually saw her in her costume. We tried for two weeks to get her into her outfit, but every time we tried, it was if we had tried putting on a suit of snakes and razor blades on her. She just freaked out. We even taught her how to do the chicken dance and cluck. Oh well. So we resigned ourselves to the fact that she probably wouldn’t wear it at all, so we sent her to school in a black and orange outfit and her chicken outfit in a bag. Generally, her teachers have better luck getting her to do stuff than we do. And much to our surprise, the Lovely Tess spent her Halloween dressed like a chicken. The only photos of it we have our cameraphone shots of printed out pictures, which needless to say don’t look so great. But at least we have evidence that it happened, which is better than nothing.
• I must say, I’m really excited for election day. But I have the same feeling as when the Red Sox were up 3 games to none in the 2004 World Series. You’re hopeful, but you always expect something bad to happen. Not until the final out can you finally feel at ease and celebrate.
• We had our first-ever babysitter on Saturday night. Not a relative or friend, but a real live babysitter that you actually have to pay. I must say, it was a completely painless and worry-free experience. Everyone had fun, especially us.
• I thought that I killed our ice cream maker yesterday. The motor overheated and the thing just shut off. It would be completely justified as that machine has probably been used more than any other Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker in history. At least once a week for 5 years is more than we could have asked for. But miraculously, it started working again after I let it cool down. Still, I’m not expecting it to last too much longer. Maybe we need to buy one of those heavy-duty industrial ones?
• Oh, our stupid oven died again last night. I hate, hate, hate this oven. I also really, really, really don’t want to spend $3k on a new one.
• I’ve made the executive decision to not bag leaves this year. There’s nothing a hate more than bagging leaves (other than shoveling, which will soon be a thing of the past), so I’m going to just blow them all into a corner behind the garage next to the compost bin and create a big giant compost bin. That should work, right? I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.
• The Lovely Suse is in possession of one of the slick new MacBooks, and yes, I’m extremely jealous. They just feel so nice and sturdy nd sleek compared to mine. Oh well. Maybe mine will explode and Apple will have to give me a new one to replace it. Ah, a boy can dream, right?
• We made a recipe last week that I’m a little embarrassed, but really excited about. This Pulled pork sandwich recipe took all of about a minute to prep and 10 hours to cook in a slow cooker, and let me tell you, I was shocked at how good it turned out. it’s a little trashy with the only ingredients being pork shoulder, water, an onion, and a bottle of BBQ sauce, but we’re soooooooo making this again. But not for a little while. I think I got the meat sweats last week.

This thing is just awesome.

• The above moment was the response to “Tess, where’s your nose?”
• Well, at least I get to go to bed at a decent hour now. There’s always next year.
• Have there ever been that many people watching the Steve Harvey Show at one time?
• I eagerly neglected vacuuming this weekend as my shiny new (and free) Roomba is on its way. I really don’t enjoy vacuuming, so this will hopefully be my new best friend. We’re still deciding on a name for it. The Lovely Suse thinks it needs a strong male name because it’s all sleek and black. I want to name it Rosie.
• I finally gave up. After spending way too much time and too much money trying to resuscitate my PC, I’ve finally thrown in the towel. It still wasn’t working right and I’ve just had enough of it. I ordered a dirt-cheap refurb Dell 530s for not much more than I was spending to repair the old one. I swore that I’d never buy a Dell ever again, but frankly, I just don’t have the time to deal with it anymore. I use my MacBook for most things these days anyway, so the home PC isn’t being taxed too much. Hopefully this will do the trick.
• Speaking of tricks (and treats), the Lovely Tess will be a chicken for Halloween this year. That is, if we can get her to wear the costume. She’s not such a fan right now, but she has the chicken dance moves and the clucking down pat. We still have a week and a half to work on it, so we’ll try to ease her into it.
• How awesome is Amy Poehler?
• Who knew? I would humbly accept the position, I suppose.

• A picture perfect fall weekend in New England: Sunny skies, leaves changing colors, temperatures in the upper 60’s, and I spent the majority of it in a windowless classroom. Oh, the injustice. At least I got to enjoy yesterday.
• The Lovely Suse and I enjoyed a very nice anniversary dinner at Hamersley’s. One of Boston’s great rooms, the place just has a glow about it. The food ain’t too shabby either.
• It was a sad day yesterday as I took down the patio furniture and pulled out what was left of our tomato and herb plants. The Lovely Tess will be disappointed as she’s grown accustomed to getting out of the car, walking over the tomato plants, picking off a cherry tomato, chomping down, and covering herself in tomato seeds. I hope she doesn’t hold it against me. We also finally got around to cutting back our oregano and are in the process of trying to dry it in bunches. We’ll see if it works.
• For those of you who care, our PC is back working. Don’t hold your breath though.
• Our oven is once again working after replacing both control boards in it. Of course when I went to use it the first time nothing worked as I neglected to hook up one of the wires. Whoops. So far so good. Still, don’t hold your breath.
• we turned the heat on last week for a couple of mornings. Don’t be mad at me. It was damn cold.
• We said goodbye to Vickie this week. Vickie was one of these and we had her for about five weeks as part of a pilot program. I can’t say too much about her sa I signed a strict confidentiality agreement, but I’m looking forward to having one of her cousins in our home very soon.
• I’m loving apple season, but not as much as the Lovely Tess is. Her newest trick is to climb up on the sofa and take an apple out of the artfully arranged basket on the console table behind it. That girl loves her apples. Apparently when the Lovely Suse was booting up her MacBook this morning, the Lovely Tess said “apple”. Other new words this week include “cracker” and “Nana”.
• I”m very excited for an afternoon playoff game for once. I can’t stay awake for these late night games anymore. Yes, I am this old.
• I enjoyed a fun night out at Solea with my classmates on Friday night, but I think the idea of tapas was lost on some of them. More than once I heard “They keep bringing us all of these little appetizers. When are they bringing out the entrees?” I, of course, took advantage of this and ate everything in sight. You snooze you lose!

• Sorry for the late post this week. To say I’ve been busy would be an understatement. There are playoff baseball games to watch, you know.
• Speaking of which, I will refrain from making the obligatory “Why can’t the MLB start playoff games earlier?” routine. It’s a fact of life. Get over it. If you want to watch your team in the playoffs, be prepared to live off of 4 hours of sleep a night. If not, the world will still go on and you can get your beauty sleep. I won’t tell anyone.
• Saturday was pretty much the perfect quintessential New England fall day, so apple picking was required. We hit up Shelburne Farm for our annual outing of eating about 40 apples and succumbing to the alluring aroma of freshly fried cider donuts. Seriously, if there’s a more glorious thing than a still warm cider donut, I haven’t found it yet. The Lovely Tess enjoyed her donut as well, further proof that she has inherited my sweet tooth.
• This coming weekend is our 5th wedding anniversary. Seriously? Has it already been five years? I will celebrate it by spending the day in classes. Arghghghghghghhg.
• Oh, my stupid PC is still broken. It was fixed, after 4 trips to Microcenter, and then it was broken again. I’ve seriously considered just not fixing it and selling off the old parts, or buying a Mac mini or something. I don’t really need a PC, do I? In the end, I will of course fix it because that’s just what I do. It’s quite pathetic, actually. Because I know how to build them myself, I refuse to just buy a cheap Dell or something. Instead, I waste a week (or in this case two) going back and forth to the store until I get everything working right. It costs next to nothing to do, but the pain of continually slamming my head against the wall is just not worth it anymore. This is the last time. Seriously. Maybe.
• The Lovely Tess has learned to answer questions with yes or no. Although the answer is almost always no, no matter what the question is. “Do you want to take a bath?” “No, no, no, no.” “Do you love pizza?” “No, no no, no.” Do you eat your own boogers?” “No, no, no, no.” We can amuse ourselves for hours with this game.
• We also learned that the Lovely Tess is a huge flirt at school. She goes around kissing all of the boys and then making them do things. We are in some serious trouble with this one.
• I paid $3.09/gallon for gas yesterday. I was pretty sure that it was a typo, but it wasn’t. Did I miss something? Did they already start drilling in Alaska?
• The next time I wear a suit, I’m going to try to pull off a pocket square. That is an advanced move that I’m not sure I can handle, but I’m willing to give it a shot. There’s something classic about a pocket square that I dig, probably from watching so much Mad Men.

• My stupid home computer is broken again. It happens every six months and is always followed by about 4 trips to Microcenter to buy and return various parts, much teeth gnashing, lots of cursing, and countless hours surrounded by cables and circuit boards. Thankfully the Lovely Suse is always patient with my tinkering.
• Continuing with the theme of broken appliances, our newly repaired oven is acting up again. I think it’s the same part. At least I hope it is. This time, the oven just randomly shuts off randomly while baking. Thankfully, it was working on Saturday night as the Lovely Tess made her very first pizza. I have photos, but of course, they’re being held prisoner on my stupid broken computer.
• Yes, I watched the debate on Friday night. If by “watch” you mean “watched for half an hour and then fell asleep and woke up and the Tivo had changed channels to record Cheers”. I can assure you that I will stay awake for the entire VP debate on Thursday. That thing is going to be a trainwreck.
• I am ready to get no sleep for the next month watching baseball playoff games. Seriously, MLB, you can’t have games start earlier than 10pm? I’m sure all of you Yankee fans are feeling the same way. Oh wait…never mind.
• Our search for good Mexican food has finally ended. The hole-in-the-wall Taqueria El Amigo, just five minutes from our house, has answered our taco-loving prayers. The place is about 4 tables, has the best tacos I’ve eaten possibly ever, and will become our new go-to lunch spot for a long time to come. I expect that we’ll go here about 5 times in the next month. Finally!
• The Lovely Tess has learned to climb up onto our kitchen chairs. We are in trouble.
• My hair is officially shaggy.

• If you happen to be near a Sel De La Terre, do yourself a favor and go pick yourself up a bag of their potato chips. I think these might be the best chips I’ve ever had.
• The Lovely Tess is now sporting a new pair of pink Chuck Taylors and she loves them. She woke up from her nap yesterday, immediately ran over to her dresser, pulled her sneaks off of it, gave them to me, and sat down on my lap so that I would put them on her.
• I failed to mention it before, but we watch this video at least a couple of times a day. Some days, many many more. Try to get it out of your head. Go ahead, just try.
• We celebrated the Lovely Suse’s birthday at Craigie Street Bistrot on Saturday night. Does it seem like we go there for every special event? That’s because we do. It’s hands down our favorite restaurant in town, and it’s different every time we go there. We’ve literally never had the same dish twice there, as they change the menu every day depending on what’s fresh and in season. They’re moving to a bigger space in a month, and although I’m sure it will be great, it will never be the same as this tiny little basement space. We had to experience it one last time. I might have to say that this was the best meal we’ve ever had there. Included in our dishes were rabbit, hamachi, cock’s combs, octopus, and lamb (three different ways). I also have to say that I think lamb belly might be as good, if not better, than pork belly. Not quite as fatty but sooooooo tasty.
• Chicken recipe of the week: Hainanese chicken. This one is a keeper. Poach a chicken and use the resulting stock to make rice. Simple, easy, delicious.
• We now have a 30 year old Raggety Ann kitchen set. Vintage, baby. There’s no lead in there, right?
• How ’bout them Pats. Ugh. Is Tom Brady healed yet?
• Qik. Live streaming video from my iPhone. Crazy.
• Forget about sharp knives. My Microplane is the most dangerous tool I have in the kitchen. I shave off a chunk of my finger every month or so. That’s not so tasty in pasta. Speaking of which, we made the easiest and best pasta sauce we’ve made in a long time. A bunch of olive oil in a pan, toss in a bowl full of cherry tomatoes that you picked just a few minutes earlier, add in a clove of crushed garlic, salt, pepper, cook until the tomatoes start to burst. Add in your cooked pasta, toss in a handful of basil and a bunch of grated parm. Done.

• Don’t forget about George! He had a tough week last week with a teeth cleaning and some teeth pulling. He was a trooper though and got lots of extra attention.
• We took the Lovely Tess out for Indian food on Friday, and man, that girl loves her some tandoori chicken and rice and naan. I think it’s funny that we always get put in the same back corner with all of the other parents with kids.
• I think we need to take a Sofra break. The place has been open for not even a month and we’ve alraedy been there four times, including both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. We just can’t help ourselves. I think the word has gotten out because the place is packed now.
• I went ahead and Jailbroke my iPhone this weekend. There are some very cool things you can do with it that I hope won’t make it blow up.
• We went on a mad cleaning binge this weekend trying to clear out a whole lot of junk from the house. Sometimes we get a little crazy and a simple “straighten up the house” turns into cleaning out closets, vacuuming the basement, scrubbing the entire kitchen including the walls, fixing the chipped bathroom wall, gathering clothes to take to goodwill, and on and on. It’s like a sickness. It’s nice to have a clean house, though.
• The Lovely Tess has a very hard head. She walks into walls and falls on her face seemingly on a daily basis. But she cries for about 10 seconds and then is backing running around like nothing happened. She’s a little daredevil and it scares the hell out of me. She certainly doens’t get that from me. Although the hard head probably comes from me. I used to hit my head on things a lot. Certainly explains some things, huh?
• My hair is about a week away from “shaggy”. I’m digging it.
• We made some lamb burgers on Saturday. Mmmmmmm, lamb burgers. I can’t remember the last time I had a real hamburger, but for some reason, I got the idea in my brain to make lamb ones. Topped with some greens, tomato, onion, spicy mayo, and a black olive relish. That there is some good eats.