The Sopranos hits a little too close to home

Nate and I have recently been on a kick to "discover" our "new" neighborhood.  "New" as in, we've been living here more than a year and we haven't really checked out any nearby street but one.  Two weekends ago, we went out on a saturday afternoon walk and discovered a new favorite bookstore, burger joint, and cupcake shop.  (we could have been buying books, eating burgers and cupcakes for more than  year now?  pshaw!)

This past Saturday we decided to try out a little Italian restaurant that we had walked by many times and always thought "that place looks so cute."

It was a nice dinner; definitely good food, and about half full on a Saturday night, which made for a pretty quiet dinner.  Yesterday morning, I read online that our new restaurant, Lucca's, about 4 blocks from our house, was the site of a murder late Tuesday night (3 days after we had eaten dinner there!)  A body had been discovered in the basement, seemingly beaten and shot, though details have of course been withheld.  The victim is assumed to be the 47 year old restaurant manager, who I believe may be the man who was behind the bar all night.  Like 10 feet away from us.  In all the Italian restaurants in the city, who'd have thought something this juicy would happen at one we had been to, and in such a quiet neighborhood.  Small world, big city.  

If I could turn back time . . .

A friend of mine on facebook has a whole album of photos he made from this website, yearbook yourself.  It's slightly difficult to get your photo centered and an appropriate size, but if you have the time to invest in it, (as of course I do) it's well worth the effort.  This is what I would have looked like, if I had been hip in '66:

Actually, it's worth noting that the clothes I wore in high school and college probably would have been cooler in the '60s than they were in the 90's and 00's. 

And if I had invested this much time on my hair each morning, I would have looked this awesome in '94:

theme parties

are totally awesome. . . when the theme is filling yourself past comfort level with yummy food and then sitting around and watching almost an entire season of How I Met Your Mother.  Some friends and I recently decided to indulge all of our basest desires and sit around for the better part of a day watching one of our favorite shows.  The first get together was relatively tame - a pot luck lasagna night and each of the 8 participants picked their favorite episode from the first 2 seasons.  

This second get-together was a heartier and hardier affair.  The dish of choice was Texas beef brisket chili, from last month's bon appetit - Nate has been wanting to make it since the day the magazine arrived in the mail - and a deliciously easy beer bread.  I made 2 loaves of the bread, one with Sam Adams Oktoberfest beer, which was yummy but a little crumbly, and the other with Miller Lite, which stuck together quite nicely.  I'm considering using less butter next time - I think it could have been adequately delicious without the 1/2 stick of butter on each loaf.   Thanks to Ruthie, who again brought cupcakes from the Alliance bakery (see picture in previous post).  The red velvet cakes are not to be missed!

And we watched more than 2/3 of the entire third season.  Sandcastles in the Sand, you're up next.  One thing's for sure: if we have another one in November, it'll be the best Slapsgiving ever.