Christmas in November and Brain Farts

One of my little teaching secrets - which I'm not sure I can call a secret, since it's on the internet and free to all - is this guy's website.  Over the past few years, I have come to know the selection of music at this site very well and it's a great place to find easy pieces to use as supplements to my usual method books.  Perhaps I rely a little too much on this website . . . 

         This past weekend, I taught some extra lessons to make up for lessons we'll miss at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and to help prepare for the recital.  One student, who is taking off a few weeks around Thanksgiving, had an extra-long lessons, so I decided it was a good time to learn a Christmas carol, since I won't be seeing her as much in early December, when I would normally teach carols.  I brought her Deck the Halls and she learned it in record time; I almost ran out of things to teach to fill up the hour lesson.  

        When I came back for our regular lesson this week, her mom said to me, "Deck the Halls, yeah, she learned that last year."  I had printed out the same exact song, from my favorite website, and taught it to her last year.  No wonder it was so easy for her to learn!  So I said to my student,  "I'll bring you a new Christmas song next week," which she took to mean,  "you're not allowed to play this one anymore."  

        Not to worry, Claire, you may still play Deck the Halls - and it sounds so good when you play it!  But there's no rule about how many Christmas songs you're allowed to play.  I probably play 50 different Carols, so I think you can manage 2 this year.

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.

Jenny's birthday festivities

Jenny's birthday was last weekend and I was happy to host a ladies-only dinner party in her honor saturday night.  The evening was high class from top to bottom.  We started off with baked brie and white wine, courtesy of Jenny's cousin Katie, and we sat out on my deck amongst the flowers before dinner.  The main course was a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with maple sauce, mashed potatoes, and an avocado and mandarin orange salad with homemade poppyseed dressing, supplied by Anna.  

Dessert was champagne and carrot cake, as Jenny requested.  I was happy to try out a new recipe I found in my Martha Stewart magazine - 3 layers!  I even made enough extra frosting to dye and decorate with.  I take great pride in assuming that this cake would not end up on my new favorite blog, cake wrecks.  Ruthie also brought a box of beautiful cupcakes from a bakery near her new apartment.  Unfortunately none of us had room for them at the time, but the next night I enjoyed eating the one I kept.  It's the one on top in the picture with pink and green swirls.  Someone suggested that I wanted it just because it was pink and green.  I cannot argue.  But it was also vanilla cake and very good frosting so who can blame me?   

Movie Minutes

My netflix queue has over 50 movies on it, most of which are old and I'm not interested in seeing.  This is what happens when you live with a boy whose main objective in life is to see every film in the American Film Institute's list of top 100 movies of all time.  That is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

             I try to always have one girly movie from netflix in the house.  Sometimes they're mindless goodness like 27 Dresses.  Lately I've been taking netflix's suggestions.  They say because I liked the original Parent Trap, that I would enjoy watching "The Courtship of Eddie's Father,"  a movie that made me realize that a very young Ronnie Howard was not such a great actor but still very cute.  The plot was also surprisingly complex - I always expect movies from that era to be pretty predictable.  This one was, but only after going through a few plot twists.   I have also been enjoying the "Anne of Green Gables" series thanks to Netflix.

             This past Thursday, Nate and I went to the Landmark Century theater, which shows mostly independent and foreign films.  We used to go all the time, when we lived a little closer to it.  We decided to go see "Man on Wire," a movie about the french tight-rope walker who walked between the tops of the 2 towers of the World Trade Center.  It was a good way to spend a rainy afternoon.  A lot of the movie was centered around the act of breaking in to the WTC in order to get to the roof and set up for the stunt, which is a very uncomfortable subject for all Americans at this point.  The guy was definitely a little crazy, but that is unfortunately the mark of most great artists.

Up next on the queue: Anne of Green Gables, the Continuing Story,

Coal Miner's Daughter

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, disc one.