Again, I’m not 100% sure this list is complete. I’m going to bold some of the things that were my favorites this…er, last…year:

1. Love, Stargirl–Jerry Spinelli
2. Abadazad: The Road to Inconceivable–JM DeMatteis
3. Neptune Noir–edited by Rob Thomas
4. Blood Price–Tanya Huff
5. Looking for Alaska–John Green
6. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom–Cory Doctorow
7. Young Avengers–Allan Heinberg
8. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born–Peter David and Jae Lee
9. Kimmie66–Aaron Alexovich
10. Blood Trail–Tanya Huff
11. Undisclosed unpublished manuscript–a friend
12. Living Lost–J. Wood
13. Boy Proof–Cecil Castellucci
14. First Among Sequels–Jasper Fforde
15. I’d Tell You I Love You But then I’d Have to Kill You–Ally Carter
16. Size 14 is Not Fat Either–Meg Cabot
17. Buffy Omnibus, vol. 2
18. Gifts–Ursula LeGuin
19. Duma Key–Stephen King
20. Pirates of the Retail Wasteland–Adam Selzer
21. The House on Mango Street–Sandra Cisneros
22. Daniel’s Story–Carol Matas
23. Queen of Babble in the Big City–Meg Cabot
24. Big Boned–Meg Cabot
25. Ready or Not–Meg Cabot
26. Someone Like You–Sarah Dessen
27. Lily Dale: Awakening–Wendy Corsi Staub
28. When You Are Engulfed in Flames–David Sedaris (didn’t finish)
29. Ultimates–Mark Millar
30. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian–Sherman Alexie
31. Story of a Girl–Sara Zarr
32. Queen of Babble Gets Hitched–Meg Cabot
33. Janes in Love–Cecil Castellucci
34. American Born Chinese–Gene Yang
35. Of Mice and Men–John Steinbeck
36. A Raisin in the Sun–Lorraine Hansberry
37. Teaching Outside the Box–LouAnne Johnson
38. Little Brother–Cory Doctorow
39. Teaching with Love and Logic–Jim Fay & David Funk
40. Creating Classrooms where Teachers Love to Teach and Students Love to Learn–Bob Sornson Ph.D.
41. Another undisclosed, unpublished manuscript
42. Night–Elie Wiesel
43. The New York Four–Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
44. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns–Frank Miller
45. Y The Last Man–Brian K. Vaughn
46. Dead Until Dark–Charlaine Harris

*The unpublished manuscripts that I read are also among my favorites. I cannot wait until my friend has a book out on the shelves (which will be soon! whee!) and I can talk more about her.

Click here to view our Christmas card.

Jen tagged me. I was at work when I saw the post. I took this with my phone.

Rules

1. Take a picture of yourself.. riiiiiight.. NOW!
2. DO NOT change your clothes. DO NOT fix your hair.. Just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
5. Tag 10 people to do this!

Ten? Really?

Hrm…

Okay. Jessica, Nicole, Linda, Caoimhe, Kelly, Julie Anne and, oh heck, whoever wants to play. Just leave me a comment if you do.

Thursday night, I decided to make a cheesecake to bring in to work. It was the holiday luncheon day, and people were bringing in desserts to pass.

This is the recipe that my mom has used for my entire life. It has a sour cream topping, and it is most decidedly not New York style. It’s meant to be made in a store-bought graham cracker crust. I have adapted the recipe to make in a springform pan, but as I don’t currently have one (and didn’t feel like going and getting one), I just made the regular recipe.

Instructions:

Beat–

• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• dash salt
• 2 eggs (add one at a time)

Pour into crust. Bake 25-30 minutes at 350

Mix topping–

• 1 c. sour cream
• 2 T sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Pour and spread over cheesecake. Bake an additional 10 minutes. Let cool two hours and chill.

I find this recipe to be tasty on its own, but it’s also very good topped with fruit. (raspberries are my choice)

Since we had a snow day, I sent the cheesecake in with Rand…they got sent home at 10, but at least one person got a slice! I had a piece today, and I’m happy with the way it turned out. Rand had some too, but he prefers NY style cheesecake.

Here’s the half of the cheesecake that remains. Someone appears to have carved their name into it with a fork…not sure what that’s about!

I just mixed up the dough for the best ginger cookies evah, so I’ll be baking those later (will post photos, and recipe). I’ve got lots of plans…let’s see how it goes.

I’m going back to bed. I wish I’d known this before I showered…

Sadly, I did not take any photos…

Rand’s office Christmas party was this week, and I wanted to send along a treat. I decided to try out the brownie edge pan (which was a fabulous wedding gift from Jen!) and a new recipe.

Here’s the recipe:

Dense Fudge Brownies

Ingredients

1 cup  Unsalted Butter, room temperature
7 oz  Unsweetened Chocolate, chopped
5 ea  Eggs
2 tsp  Vanilla Extract
3 1⁄4 cups Sugar
1 2/3 cups All Purpose Flour
1⁄4 tsp  Salt
6 oz.  Semisweet Chocolate, chopped
1 cup  Pecans, chopped (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425.  Lightly spray the pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Place the 7 oz. unsweetened chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water.  The water should not touch the bottom of the bowl.  Stir frequently until chocolate and butter are completely melted.  Set bowl aside.
3. In an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs, vanilla and sugar on high for 10 minutes.  Reduce speed to low, add melted chocolate/butter mixture, and beat until combined.  Scrape the bowl well.  Next add the salt and flour and beat on low until combined.  Do not over beat.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the 6 oz of semisweet chocolate pieces and pecans.
4. Pour the batter into the pan and spread evenly.
5. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs.  Cool brownies completely in the pan.

They got a good review from Rand’s coworkers, and I sampled the leftovers. Mmmmmm. This is the first recipe that’s convinced me it’s worth making brownies from scratch. (Unless they’re something special, like Eden’s peanut butter swirl brownies, I’ve always preferred box brownies. Specifically Duncan Hines chewy fudge brownies.)

Recipe and pan can both be found at Baker’s Edge.

I’ll take pictures next time!

So, I finally got around to uploading some photos that have been hanging out on my camera for, oh, a month or so (as well as some recent ones). Will get to titles and descriptions soon.

The movie quote meme, which I saw first at So Anyway…

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search or other search functions.

Looks like we’ve got ‘em all, folks…thanks for playing!

1. I got a question. If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at like the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere? (Say Anything, Emma)

2. There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours. (The Princess Bride, Adam Selzer, Eden)

3. That’s it? Some faceless guy rips off all your clothes, and THAT’S the sex fantasy you’ve been having since you were twelve? (When Harry Met Sally, Emma, Eden)

4. I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer, and I lost the other ’cause I was so busy keeping my job I forgot to do my job. (The American President, Emma, Adam Selzer)

5. I mean, Led Zeppelin didn’t write tunes everybody liked. They left that to the Bee Gees. (Wayne’s World, Eden)

6. Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K. (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Adam Selzer, Eden)

7. I’ll trade with anyone who has a Jacuzzi. (The Muppets Take Manhattan, Lyanne)

8. I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you’ll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. (The Shawshank Redemption, Amanda/pafuts)

9. This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then - explode. (Serenity, voiceofkiki)

10. I got it! You daughter’s not your daughter, and the cash that used to be the jewels is now your underwear! (Oscar, guessed correctly by mom! Yay, mom!)

11. Oh, Joel Miller, you’ve just found the marble in the oatmeal. You’re a lucky, lucky, lucky little boy. ‘Cause you know why? You get to drink from the fire hose! (UHF, Adam Selzer)

12. In fact, I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare. (So I Married an Axe Murderer, Eden, Jenn)

13. It’s not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting *ideas*, and *thinking*… (Beauty and the Beast, Eden, Deoris)

14. Son, if I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes… now that would have been a tragedy. (Field of Dreams, Adam Selzer)

15. Please get out of my Van Halen t-shirt before you jinx the band and they break up. The Wedding Singer, Adam Selzer

So Thanksgiving morning, I woke up with what I thought was simply a particularly bad allergy-induced sinus headache. I medicated as I normally do and waited for it to go away. Sadly, it did not. I spent the day, pleasant as it was, feeling kind of achy and out-of-it. Friday was mostly the same; groggy and foggy-headed. Saturday and Sunday it all caught up with me. I slept a lot, sat on the couch and watched a lot of TV and movies, and didn’t leave the house. I tried to grade some papers on Sunday afternoon…I got a few done, and then had to stop because my energy reserve was completely sucked dry.

We’ve watched a bunch of episodes of The West Wing, the new Futurama movie Bender’s Game, The Thing, and some other things I can’t remember.

I ended up taking a sick day yesterday, so I could continue to recover, and it was more of the same. Sadly, Rand ended up catching…well, something. He went into work for a couple of hours yesterday and then came home and did the fever/chills thing for a while. I’m not sure he’s got what I have, because I didn’t run a fever like that. Today, I went to work and he stayed home.

I feel much, much better. I’m still a little tired, and feeling kind of behind in my work. Here’s to getting caught up. I hope everyone had a great holiday!

I don’t have a lot of time for a long and profound post this morning…we’re getting ready to head out to my second family’s Thanksgiving celebration. Suffice it to say that I have much to be thankful for. I have a family who loves me very much, and another one that has warmly welcomed me with open arms. I have amazing friends, both near and far. Even if I don’t get to talk to you as much as I would like, please know that I love you all dearly, and that I am so grateful to have you in my life. I have a job–a good job–that is helping me to gain valuable experience and become a better teacher. I have a home, and a wonderful husband who shows his love for me every single day.

So yes, I am deeply thankful.

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!