Weekend update

Other than periods of torrential rain, the last few days have been pretty quiet around here. Not quiet-quiet (in the sense of being asleep at 4am), but quiet-ordinary (in the sense of nothing unexpected happening).

On the good-news front, last weekend my friend Marianne (also known as Miso) was in town. Marianne came here for a conference, but was luckily able to tack on a few extra days for some hanging out fun. Marianne arrived, of course, with beautiful knitted gifts.(This is yarn that Marianne spun herself!)

We were able to give Marianne a good tour of our local culinary delights, including Tex-Mex, BBQ, and burgers. Here's a picture of Marianne at the same BBQ place I took my mother and brother.


As an aside, I know that they smoke the BBQ with real wood, and that that's how it's supposed to be done and all, but every time we drive up to this place and I smell the burning wood, the Californian in me thinks "Forest Fire!"

Marianne and I also did a little baking, of course. We made cupcakes from Cook's Illustrated. We topped them with bits of toffee, and they were supremely yummy!We also baked up a batch of my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. [For those concerned about our waistlines, Marianne took some of the cookies home to Peso, and a big amount of the remainder we took to a dinner party, leaving us only a handful to eat.]

Here are a few of my favorite recent Natalie pictures:The whole album is below (also, here):

Also, for added cuteness, our friends recently got a super-sweet puppy. Here are a few pictures of Ponyo: