Depends on how you look at it

Saw the first dandelion of spring this week.

I love dandelions - they're such plucky, vivacious little flowers.

Weeds, you say?

Only for those who lack imagination.

In Which I Blaspheme

Of my many personal failings, both as a human being and a woman, there is one that never fails to be controversial.

And that, my friends, is my distaste for that sweet nectar of the gods.

(I don't really like chocolate.)

I feel a little left out, to be honest. It's lonely out here.

But I just would rather eat beets.

Or mushrooms.

Or asparagus.

Or Doritos.

I am not so much a sweet-tooth kind of girl.

But if I were forced to be, I'm really more of the key lime tart with raspberry sauce kind of girl, or the cake batter kind of girl.

Chocolate is just not my cup of tea.

And it's a little tough living in a chocolate-drenched world, like being left-handed or something; a constant mild inconvenience.

My workaround for the week:
Chocolateless Chocolate Chip Cookies: With Butterscotch.

No, it isn't "Butterscotch Chip Cookies". It's a subtitle, you see. It has a ring. Trust me.

Here is the super-complicated recipe. But beware, it's pretty tough.

Step 1: Follow a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
Step 2: Come to the line where it says "add your chocolate chips"
Step 3: Think, "UGH"
Step 4: Reach for your bag of delectable butterscotch (or cinnamon) chips.
Step 5: Add.
Step 6: Enjoy!
Step 7: Prepare yourself for the inevitable "I'm disowning you as a friend" or "that's un-American" jokes. They will come.

Oh yes, they will come.

But be tough.

You are not alone.

Why figure skating is the best Olympic sport

Why I like Olympic figure skating, despite the ridiculous costumes, scoring issues, and overall level of ludicrousness:

There is only one medal awarded every four years.

This seems like an Olympic given, right? But it's not.

Let me illustrate:

There are 838 skiiing events. 383 track events at the summer games. 176 types of speed skating and 865 types of team sports, and team sports are not compelling Olympic sports, let's just be honest. We love the idea of a solitary, world-class athelete sweating it out alone for years to win the elusive gold.

And yet, in a lot of Olympic sports, gold isn't all that elusive. You get more than one try. You can make mistakes.

Olympic figure skating, if it were structured like swimming, would give gold medals for:

most spectacular triple axel

best long program

best short program

best pairs lift

fastest spin

and so on and so forth.

So Michael Phelps? He's good and all. But his jillion gold medals are all for the same thing. Turns out the guy is a really fast swimmer.

In figure skating, Olympic medals do not rain down democratically every four years.

One medal. No second chances. Every single Olympic gold medalist - every single one - is a famous name that all skaters will recognize - dating back to the 20s and 30s. Even most non-skaters recognize some: Peggy Fleming. Dorothy Hamill. Scott Hamilton. Who won the silver medal any of those years? (*crickets*) The one winner of Olympic gold has a long, lucrative professional career awaiting him. Silver medalists get nothing.

The only thing standing between skating immortality and being an also-ran is a one quarter-inch wide blade of steel balanced on ice.

Tell me, how is that not compelling?

Having Hard Water Problems?

Check out my article at Got2BeGreen.com to find a helpful trick.

It revolutionized my drinking glasses' lives.

Love and Beethoven

When I was in college I spent a summer interning as a museum curator in Death Valley National Park.

Which seems odd to me now on several levels.

So I was in California for weeks on end, and The Mister (before he was The Mister) was lonely and sad in Maryland all by his lonesome.

So he hatched a diabolical plan, as he is wont to do.

He knew that I love classical music - piano solos in particular, and Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to be very specific. So very quietly, without telling, me, he started taking piano lessons.

He would talk to me on the phone, innocently tell me he was up to nothing in particular, and then laugh with glee and rub his hands together in devilish delight after he hung up.

(Or so I picture it).

So when I came back from my weeks away, The Mister sat me down and stunned me with his fluid rendition of Moonlight Sonata.

Romantic? Oh yes. And true to boot.

Then, when I went away one last time, to study abroad for a semester in Prague our senior year of college, he knew he had his work cut out.

And so he picked up a guitar.

And he's been playing ever since.

And sometimes, people ask him how he started playing the guitar.

And he says, "Well, Sarah went away".

And to him, this explains it all.

(I really love that man)

A New Story, Literally and Figuratively

I've officially had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to be able to run this 5k.

My foot took forever to heal, and now that it has I'm too far behind to catch up.

I'm really bummed.

In its place I've decided to take on something new. Something of a more sedentary nature.

We're planning a trip to the Middle East for two weeks in March, and I decided that I didn't want to be in a land with so much Biblical history without really remembering said Biblical history.

So I am reading the Bible all the way through, just like I would any other book, and I'm hoping to be done by the time we leave for our trip.

Right now, I am almost done with Numbers. This weekend I plowed through Leviticus. I feel like I could compose a poem about Leviticus. It would go like this:

Leviticus:

An odd bird.

Do you like it?

Hope it was a good one!

Gold?

Are you getting excited?

I haven't watched in years...this year I am determined to catch some of it!

Minestrone with a side of sauce

The other day I tried to make a minestrone soup. I had found this box of completely assembled soup ingredients in the kosher section of my grocery store. Seeing as Jewish grandmothers are generally known for making excellent soups, I thought it would be a good bet.

It looked like this:

As I was halfway through making it, I realized we had a problem: this soup was not going to be good. Not even a little bit. It was thin and watery.

Blech.

So I started maniacally throwing in everything I could find. Pasta. A bag of long-forgotten frozen vegetables that I was surprised to find we even had, because The Mister loathes frozen vegetables.

All this and now it was chunks floating in a watery broth.

Still blech.

A lightbulb went off. I had a solution.

Ten minutes later, we sat down to a nice bowl of steamy, hearty minestrone soup, served with crusty French bread. It was delicious.

Key ingredient?

A hastily dumped in jar of spaghetti sauce.

(Just like my phantom Jewish grandmother would make it)

Wireless Wednesday

A new tradition has been taken root over the past several months. Some would call it "Sabbath". Some would call it "Blackout". We call it "Wireless Wednesday".

One evening per week with no cell phones, no television, no laptops or internet.

A few Wednesdays ago, we had a Trivial Pursuit throwdown. I won't tell you who the winner was, because I am classy, but let's just say hypothetically that it was me. (Just between you and I...that's because it was me.)

Did you know that the Phoenix Art Museum is free on Wednesday nights? It's open until 9. And my favorite restaurant happens to be inside the museum. Dinner and an evening at the quiet, empty art gallery? One of my favorite Wireless Wednesday activities.

Another Wednesday, we went to the library on a cold evening and holed up in the group study room, studying Spanish sans laptops and drinking hot tea out of travel mugs. It was way more productive than studying WITH the laptop, to my surprise - amazing how distracting all the information in the world can be.

Tonight we are going to make dinner, cuddle up with blankets on what is supposed to be a rainy night, light some candles, and talk about our future. Some major things could be looming for The Mister and I.

I'll take that over technology any day.

Bake a cake? Don't mind if I do!

Sister-in-law ("Sister to The Mister"?) Virginia's cake recipe is not to be trifled with.

She is not playing around, folks.

This is one of the best, MOISTEST (that one's for you Emily, my sister with the irrational dislike of the word "moist") cakes you will ever taste.

The best part is that there are endless possibilities for the culinarily restless, ak.a. moi.

Chocolate cake mix with butterscotch pudding? Yes please. White cake mix with lemon pudding? pistachio? I think I shall.

So, here it is.

Box cake mix.

Box instant pudding (3 oz.)

2 cups milk.

2 eggs.

Mix.

Bake according to cake package directions

(add a teensy bit of time on the end, 2 or 3 minutes)

Go wild.

I'll be here, still laughing over my "Sister to The Mister" joke.

A Weekend Visit

This past weekend, my lovely sister-in-law Kim and her chocolate lovin' boyfriend Jay came to visit. We had such fun going to the farmer's market, to the Glendale Chocolate Festival (hence the chocolate lovin' part of Jay's title), and playing highly competitive games of volleyball(highly competitive, i.e. if someone managed to hit it properly they won. Because the rest of us sure couldn't).

They were also coerced into becoming tests subjects for my increasingly annoying habit of photographing everything around me *cue evil laugh*. Mwahahaha!

Here is some of my photographic loot:












if you are so inclined, you can view the full gallery here!

This made me giggle.

Dear Lord,

Help me to relax about insignificant details, beginning tomorrow at 7:41:23 a.m. EST.

Help me to consider people's feelings, even if most of them are hypersensitive.

Help me to take responsibility for the consequences of my actions, even though they're usually not my fault.

Help me to not try to run everything - but, if you need some help, please feel free to ask me.

Help me to be more laid back, and help me to do it exactly right.

Help me to take things more seriously, especially laughter, parties, and dancing.

Give me patience, and I mean right now!

Help me not be a perfectionist. (Did I spell that correctly?)

Help me to finish everything I sta

Help me to keep my mind on one thing ... oh, look, a bird ... at a time.

Help me to do only what I can, and trust you for the rest. And would you mind putting that in writing?

Keep me open to others' ideas, misguided though they may be.

Help me follow established procedures. Hey, wait ... this is wrong ...

Help me slow down andnotrushthroughwhatido.

Thank you, Lord.

Amen

Your input requested:

Best movies you've seen lately? Anyone? I need some movie ideas.

(And go ahead and skip the foreign language artsy films. When it comes to movies I have shockingly bad taste...I actually think Will Ferrell is really funny)

Or, just share your favorite movies of all time and maybe there will be some I haven't seen.

(p.s. Mine are Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and Thank You for Smoking, as a reference point)

What is Inspiring Me Today

Life is a pure flame,
and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Sir Thomas Brown

Glad I lost after all.

The Mister and I are in a book club. We get together once a month with friends and laugh and eat and drink wine and talk about a book. It's fun for people like us, who are dorky and yet social.

This month the book selected was A Prayer for Owen Meany. And boy, it is a big book. I mean, I don't usually get too intimidated by length but this is a VERY big book. With tiny font size and teensy margins.

I thought about lazing around and not reading it. Then The Mister read it, and proclaimed it AMAZING. That's how he said it, just like that - "this book is AMAZING".

But I still wasn't going to read it. Too long, and I have a book list as long as my arm that I want to get to.

Then, two weeks ago The Mister and I were having a spirited discussion about the word placement of a few lines from the TV show The Office. And we made a bet that we were each right about the exact quote. And we rewatched the episode, and of course I lost (was there any doubt?).

What did we bet? You guessed it - that I would have to read Owen Meany.

And you know what? It was seriously AMAZING.

This is why I live in Arizona

Yesterday morning: Flagstaff. 30 degrees. Irritatingly cold. Lots of dirty snow.

Yesterday afternoon (as pictured): Phoenix. The Valley of the Sun. 68 degrees. Sunny. Lots of time spent out by the pool.