A "Wine Country" dinner

Well, I am extremely irked at myself for not bringing a camera along for the event, but Liza hosted a delightful dinner event this weekend. She had discovered an issue of "Cooking Light" in which a Wine Country dinner was featured, and she suggested we all bring a component of it to her house and make an event of it.

Here was our culinary challenge:

Champagne Pomegranate Cocktail
Mini Crab Cakes with Herbed Aioli
Mixed Greens Salad with Pears, Goat Cheese, and Fig Vinaigrette
Roasted Asparagus with Dijon-Lemon Sauce
Cedar Plank-Grilled Salmon with Avocado-Orange Salsa
Farro with Wild Mushrooms
Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

I had the easiest job: the cocktails, which we agreed will need to become a part of our repertoire in the future. And did the cooks ever rise to the task! The dinner was beyond delicious. Sure, there were some minor modifications: the mini-crab cakes were transformed into a succulent dip, the farro was reinvented as a tasty risotto, and the frozen yogurt became a refreshing sorbet. Those were merely the little changes to the menu that personalized the whole experience! Not to mention the fact that Liza and Sammy created a supremely pleasing atmosphere in their garden, and of course there was French wine to be sampled as well.

Merci, Liza! And merci to all the chefs who rose so capably to the task!

And for those of you who might want to give any of those recipes a shot as well, here they are. Enjoy! I sure did.

Goodnight, Tiger Stadium

Tiger Stadium is under demolition. Scott took these photos there the other day.

I was in someone else's dream

On Monday morning, I woke up to the urgent sound of the alarm and bubbled up out of a dream to hit the snooze button.

When I fell back asleep, the dream had changed. Now I was looking at my coworker Katy, who was sitting up in the bleachers at a stadium somewhere, looking rather confused. There were a lot of people milling about, but I didn't get to pay much attention to anything else before the alarm sounded again, finally bringing me into Monday morning consciousness.

That day, Katy came into my office. "I dreamt about you last night," I said. "You were sitting in the bleachers somewhere."

Katy, clearly taken aback, stared at me. "Are you serious?" she said. "Last night, I had a dream that I was at my old high-school football stadium, and for some reason there were all these people from work there."

I think I must have slid out of my own dream, hit the snooze button, and slid into Katy's dream, just for the couple of minutes between hitting snooze and being alarmed awake again.

How weird is that.

My cousin's family went camping...

... and it rained.

After all, it is Ireland...!

That poor little dog! Too great a picture not to post.

A picture of my mother

While I'm posting pictures: this is a high-school picture of my gorgeous mother. I wanted to show it to Norma in particular, since I was talking about this very picture last weekend at book club.


Why all the pictures? Well, as of today, I have a brand-new scanner... so I will probably be obsessively scanning pictures for a while! :-)

A picture from Jan

My long-time friend Jan sent me some pictures today that she found in her photo collection. Here's a baby picture of me that I don't think I've ever seen before!


I still have that picnic blanket!

Thanks, Jan!

Rainbow-related addendum

I got a message from a local blogger named Cameron, who directed me to another couple of fabulous photos of the Ypsi rainbow here: www.trustygetto.com. Lots of other good stuff on that blog, too. Thanks, Cameron - consider yourself bookmarked!

"A hug over Ypsi"

After The Rain 2
Originally uploaded by bluenotoko

As Wendy and I were driving back from yesterday's book-club gathering, we were completely astonished by the sudden appearance of a huge, unbelievably vivid rainbow in what seemed like a massive arc over Ypsilanti. I honestly don't think I've ever seen such rich reds and greens in a rainbow before.

We even saw it reflected in the river as we crossed over Riverside Park. The effect was downright fantastical.

After I got home, I saw people out of their houses all up and down the street, camera phones aloft.

What a sight!

Wendy coined the phrase "a hug over Ypsi" to describe it, and that's exactly what it looked like.

Click on the photo, shamelessly pilfered from Flickr, to see two more pictures of this incredible celestial showstopper, uploaded by the same photographer.

Wow!

That was a show!

Greetings, earthling

Well, if you happen to have a photo of a toilet standing at your front door, surely it begs to be blogged.

Without explanation.

A catch-up list

Recently, I have

- gone to a baseball game with Scott and the Lockwood brothers...

- saved up Coke Rewards points for a telescope, only to have Coke pull it from the available rewards...so I swore profusely and then cashed out my points for a hand-held Sudoku game and two beer coolers (only they call them Coke coolers: how cute!)...

- watched the stunning "La reine Margot" with the French film crew...

- threw out every food item and rinsed out every last condiment container in the fridge, since my fridge has decided it would rather be a furnace - and left several terse messages on my landlady's voicemail...

- spent a pleasing and barbeque-y evening at Sarah and Andy's...

- watched two episodes of the extraordinary "Mad Men" at Barb's and plan to continue to invade her house every Sunday night as the show continues...

- attended Tim Flood's extraordinary bass and electronics show at Kerrytown Concert House, after which, by sheer providence, I had the opportunity to enjoy a cocktail with Wendy and Liza at Cafe Felix...

- and spent a lot of time wrangling with myself over my upcoming book-club pick! I have it down to a couple of choices. Decisions are fun!

Reunion photo

Me and Gordon, frolicking on State Street, 18 years later.

Facebook!

My blog has suffered from my recent fascination for Facebook. This morning I acquired my one-hundredth Facebook friend, and frankly I don't think I even know any more people - at least none who are also on Facebook! So it's time to stop obsessing about it and to stop neglecting my poor little blog.

It's been fascinating, though. It really has.

One-time classmate Rom responded to my friend invite with the comment, "Of course I remember you: Mary Poppins herself!" In elementary school, I was a nerd (no, really, Maeve? can't be!), and Rom was "like, so-o-o-o cool," and obviously he still remembers me as the bookish and perhaps a little pompous kid that I was.

Yuya, who left after second grade, remembered me and sent a picture of his seven-year-old, which was bizarrely like looking back into time at the boy I knew.

Anushka and Caius both commented on one of the photos I posted. There's one where I am excitedly looking upward at something, and both my old elementary-school friends said they completely recognized my smile. I had another look at it, and I have to say, it's true: as a matter of fact I think there's a picture in my third-grade yearbook that looks much like that!

Grant and I exchanged a happy e-mail upon Facebook contact, and then to my astonishment I found he's been living in Ann Arbor for the last eight years! Here we grew up in Denmark and now both live practically in the same town.

And what about Silvia, whose wedding I flew to Italy for in 2000 and with whom I then somehow dropped out of touch? Thanks to Facebook, each of us knows what the other is doing now!

There are loads more fun connections. Long-lost ex-colleagues. Vague acquaintances. Family, of course, and friends. Only one book-club member so far, though!

I found my one-time housemate Gordon on Facebook months ago, and this past weekend, on a visit from San Francisco, he met me in Ann Arbor for lunch. This was someone who last saw me when I was a semi-psychotic twenty-year-old who was walking out of her lease without paying rent! Yet he was forgiving: water under the bridge and whatnot. A happy reunion.

Yay Facebook!

But the blog neglect's gotta go!